Measuring the Mind - Conceptual Issues in Scientific Psychology

Scientific questions in psychology are often framed under the assumption that constructs such as emotion, memory, intelligence, and disorder are stable, measurable entities. Yet growing empirical evidence challenges the assumption that these categories correspond to mind-independent ‘natural kinds’. Instead, they are heterogeneous, complex, dynamically emerging, context-sensitive, and ad-hoc instantiated; they are not tokens of fixed types but situated constructions that emerge from interactions among neural, bodily, and environmental factors. Variation across individuals, contexts, and times is therefore not noise or error, but a structural feature of psychological phenomena.

Significant questions are raised about what psychology can meaningfully measure, explain, and replicate. What ontological commitments are implicit in contemporary psychological measurement practices? Does measurement discover psychological phenomena, partially constitute them, or merely stabilize patterns of variation for pragmatic purposes? To what extent do replication failures reflect construct instability rather than methodological error? If psychological categories are populations of variable instances rather than fixed types, how should this modify explanation, generalization, and theory-building? Are constructs better understood as tracking processes, patterns of variation, or situational regularities rather than latent entities? Would a conceptual shift, making variation the ‘default ontology’ in psychology, solve the problem of measurement?

The conference is organised by the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, and is open to PhD and MA students, as well as junior researchers (postdoc). 

Date: May 29-30

Format: mixed 

Contact email: [email protected]

Organizers: 

Drd. Daniela Nica

Drd. Sandra Branzaru