Re-Thinking the Place of Semiotics in Psychology... 103a respectable, realist, naturalist science, proponents of the new scientific psychology were
keen to shake off Cartesian dualism and restrict psychology‘s subject matter and methods to
what they regarded as legitimate science. Despite the broader conception of science held by
some of psychology‘s pioneers – notably Wundt, James and Freud – psychology aligned itself
with Naturwissenschaften and against Geisteswissenschaften, simultaneously supporting the
related methodological split between causal explanation and hermeneutic inquiry. For
decades psychology operated according to the principle later spelled out by Eysenck (1985):
―an approach which stresses meaning is the exact opposite of the natural science approach
which stresses the study of behaviour‖ (p. 194). Hence, anything that deals with the
understanding of meanings, with hermeneutic inquiry, was not considered a proper subject for
scientific psychology. This view was reinforced by the treatment of meaning in the extra-
psychological and non-mainstream psychological literature, where it was widely agreed that
meaning is so inherently elusive, variable and multi-faceted that it precludes any kind of
coherent scientific treatment (Langer, 1942), quite apart from the fact that certain types of
meaning are "at the very limits of the ineffable" (Bertalanffy, 1981, p. 50). The
science/meaning divide became especially firmly entrenched as a result of the post second
world war methodological consensus in psychology, which, once again in the name of
science, privileged quantitative over qualitative methods (cf. Michell, 1997, 1999, 2004).
But one type of meaning was considered scientifically respectable in mainstream
psychology. This was the idea of the internal mental representations required for cognitive
processing. Developments in computer technology appeared to vindicate the central thesis of
the so-called cognitive revolution, that ―internalism‖ vis-à-vis psychological states does not
require, as the behaviourists believed, unscientific commitment to the Cartesian ―ghost in the
machine‖ (Ryle, 1949/1973). According to psychology's representationist epistemology,
cognition is an internal process of symbol manipulation, and cognitive psychology‘s aim is to
identify and elucidate the information-processing components of cognition. Even when
cognitive psychology gradually evolved into the cognitive sciences, against the background of
debates between the old symbolic paradigm and the new connectionism (Bechtel &
Abrahamsen, 1991), the computational idea of meaning as mental representation, albeit in
more sophisticated and disguised form, was never abandoned (cf. Barsalou, 1998, 1999;
Bickhard, 1996; Billman, 1998; Fodor, 1981, 2008; Heil, 1981). But of how mental
representations get and retain their meanings no acceptable account could be given. Fodor
(1985) conceded that ―Unfortunately, of the semantic problem of mental representations we
have, as yet, no adequate account‖ (p. 99). Instead, the strategy was cavalierly to wave aside
the issue via further appeal to the computer analogy; since the mind is a syntax-driven
machine, ―the theory of mental processes can be set out in its entirety without reference to
any of the semantic properties of mental states, hence without assuming that mental states
have any semantic properties‖ (Fodor, 1985, n. p. 94). Problem solved. The question of
meaning need not concern us.
In sum, psychology's neglect of semiotics is the direct result of the marginalisation and
neglect of meaning in general during the development of psychology as a science. Signs and
symbols lie on the scientifically intractable "meaning" side of the science/meaning divide,
and they require hermeneutic inquiry or qualitative methods rather than the causal explanation
and quantitative methods that are held to be the hallmarks of scientific psychology.
Furthermore, the existence of computers shows that we can securely proceed with the mind-