Semiotics

Re-Thinking the Place of Semiotics in Psychology... 115

are investigated by physics or chemistry. Therefore, realism is simultaneously non-dualist and
non-reductionist.
The fourth key point about realism concerns its support for a broader than usual
conception of scientific method. Mainstream psychology's views notwithstanding, the core
method of science is neither measurement, nor experimentation, nor even observation; it is
critical inquiry. Science involves the investigation of the ways of working of the natural
world (including the mental and behavioural ways of working of human beings). As Haack
(2003) avers, science and its aim of objectivity are continuous with normal inquiry in any
field:

Respect for evidence, care in weighing it, and persistence in seeking it out, so far from

being exclusively scientific desiderata, are the standards by which we judge all inquirers,

detectives, historians, investigative journalists, etc., as well as scientists ... Scientific

inquiry is continuous with the most ordinary of everyday empirical inquiry. There is no

mode of inference, no ̳scientific method‘, exclusive to the sciences and guaranteed to

produce true, probably true, more nearly true, or more empirically adequate, results. (pp.

23-24)

Instead, being premised on the acknowledgement of our cognitive fallibility, the core of
science is inquiry which proceeds carefully, critically, and self-critically, by employing the
best available error-detection mechanisms (Haack, 2003; Michell, 2001, 2004). This broad
conception, which includes conceptual analysis, was part of science from ancient Greek
times, but was lost sight of with the advent of the new tools of experimentation and
mathematization highlighted during the scientific revolution (Machado & Silva, 2007). As
Michell (2001) notes, nineteenth century scientists also lost sight of Galileo‘s realist warning
that we ―must not ask nature to accommodate herself to what might seem to us the best
disposition and order, but must adapt our intellect to what she has made‖ (in Michell, 2001, p.
214).^9 This has two implications which cohere with the previous points. First, with respect to
subject matter, if nature contains relations, then we must avoid what Cohen & Nagel (1934)
described as the fallacy of reduction in science, i.e., believing that because science often
analyses things into their constituent elements, it thereby "denies the reality of the connecting
links or relations" (p. 383). Secondly, with respect to specific methods, the choice of
quantitative or qualitative method is to be determined empirically by the nature of the subject
matter, and not via a priori ideological or philosophical commitments. Hence, if certain
relations, such as cognition or meaning, are found to be nonquantitative, then it is
scientifically inappropriate to proceed with their investigation using quantitative methods.
Taking together these key aspects of a realist approach, we can now briefly revisit the
four reasons for psychology's neglect of semiotics, and how their legacy continues in the
perceived hold-ups to semiotics-psychology integration.

(^9) Nevertheless, this broader view of science as critical inquiry that is continuous with normal inquiry was supported
by some of the founders of psychology. For example, Freud belonged to the tradition that rejected the German
dichotomy between the Natur- and the Geisteswissenschaften (cf. Schilder, 1935/1950), and he always
adhered to the broader classical view of science as critical inquiry: ―Scientific thinking does not differ in its
nature from the normal activity of thought, which all of us ... employ in looking after our affairs in ordinary
life‖ (Freud, 1933, p. 170).