Three Arguments Against Methodological Solipsism as a Research Strategy of Psychology

Abstract

Contemporary cognitive psychologists share methodological solipsism (MS) as a general research strategy. MS postulates that a complete explanatory level dealing exclusively with processes within an organism is the domain of psychology. The paper undertakes a critical review of MS. By reanalysing the debate between proponents of MS (cf. Fodor & Pylyshyn, 1981) and proponents of ecological realism (cf. Gibson, 1966, 1979), it will be shown that MS is theoretically unsound. As a second step, problems concerning the concept of transduction and invariance detection, using movement perception as a concrete example, are discussed. Existing findings do not support the principle of MS. The third step consists in discussing the status of MS in the theory of problemsolving developed by Newell and Simon (1972). The next section of the paper is devoted to the development of a model that fulfils the conditions stipulated by the critique of the principles of MS. The last part presents a summary of the differences of the developed model in relation to MS.