What Is Psychology About? Toward An Explicit Ontology

Abstract

Commentators have criticized psychology's overemphasis on method and its simultaneous neglect of questions regarding the subject matter and purpose of psychology. This article summarizes four problems that have resulted from the privileging of method, and in each case illustrates how an explicit ontology provides at least partial solutions to these problems. This article also suggests three metatheoretical assumptions based on the thinking of William James that would allow for the establishment of an explicit ontology and that would allow for psychological entities per se to be studied without the threat of biological or other kinds of reductionism. Finally, concerns that may arise in the formation of an explicit ontology are briefly addressed.