Abstract

The resulting separation of the two disciplines was probably inevitable, but there is a question whether it has not gone too far and also whether it has actually gone as far as is commonly supposed. Do psychologists succeed in avoiding philosophy, and do philosophers succeed in maintaining their aloofness on analytic, methodological or categorial levels, with nothing implied as to mental activity or behavior? The jurisdictional problem cannot be resolved if each side simply retreats before the other, back toward its inner citadel: experiment, on the one hand, and logic, on the other. For experimental results have to be interpreted, and interesting problems of method and sometimes epistemology are involved which experiment cannot settle. Similarly, if the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments depends, in the final count, on attention-span or memory-span, and a theory of the meaning of proper names can be tested by a canvas of actual usage, then even logic is not autonomous.