Abstract

Experimental psychology emerged as an independent discipline in the mid to late nineteenth century, as one expression of the positivist movement to supplant various branches of philosophy with science. The founders of psychology claim to answer epistemological questions via their empirical research and theories, and much of their work can reasonably be regarded as naturalized epistemology. Of course, experimental psychology quickly assumed aims beyond epistemology. However, philosophical issues continued to heavily influence the aims and nature psychology at least into the nineteen-fifties, with the rise of the neo-behaviorist movement. ;Ludwig Wittgenstein was harshly critical of experimental psychology, though the precise nature of his objections is debatable. It appears that Wittgenstein believed naturalized epistemology was itself an ill-conceived movement whose fundamental flaws are relatively apparent in psychology. When applied to the historical study of experimental psychology, Wittgenstein's ideas imply that psychologists have not had the degree of success with epistemology that they claim. Moreover, the root confusions which led psychologists to approach philosophical problems from an inappropriate, scientific vantage are woven into the fabric of experimental psychology rather widely, and cannot be neatly isolated or extricated.