Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology

Derek Bolton seeks to “deconstruct” a number of traditional dichotomies. Among these are the dichotomies delineated by Karl Jaspers and other early writers in the Geisteswissenschaften between meaningful and causal connections, and the correlative methodological dichotomy between hermeneutic interpretation and causal explanation. Bolton attempts to surmount these traditional dichotomies by attributing a causal role to meaning: meaning, as encoded in the brain, causes various behaviors; in particular it causes intentional or goal-directed behaviors. Bolton contends that, when fully explicated, the notion of a neuro-causal role for meaning gives rise to a new research program that he calls “cognitive-behavioral semantics.” This research program can provide the theoretical basis for the science of psychopathology as well as for other psychological and social sciences.

Bolton’s cognitive-behavioral semantics may prove to be a fruitful research program. Like all research programs, the proof will lie in its capacity to guide scientific investigations that do in fact make new discoveries. We wonder, however, why Bolton thinks it necessary to view his program as somehow “deflating” previous distinctions among conceptual and methodological approaches. We can discern no reason to believe that the causal properties of meaning, if there are such, are the only properties of meaning: meaning may have other properties as well, properties that can be characterized only by taking conceptual approaches quite different from Bolton’s. Or, expressed slightly differently, there is no reason to assume that the neurological role of meaning in causing human behavior is the sole role of meaning in human life. Consequently, Bolton’s cognitive-behavioral semantics can provide only one approach to the reality of meaning, one approach among others. We see no reason to follow Bolton in his attempt to “deconstruct” other, non-causal approaches to meaning. Indeed, we think this would be a serious mistake: it would blind us to properties of meaning that could be illuminated only from those other perspectives.

By reasoning in this way we are, of course, simply endorsing Jaspers’s multiperspectivalism (Jaspers 1963a, 555–62; 1965, 464–70; 1956, 149–239; McHugh et al., 1986; Schwartz et al., 1988). Jaspers thought that there were many different, valid points of view on human reality. Each point of view, by providing the methodological [End Page 277] and conceptual framework it does, gives us access to certain aspects of human reality. It also limits our access, however, by disregarding other aspects of that same reality: each particular method and mode of reasoning is necessarily one-sided. A scientific perspective that, for instance, searches for causal connections and sets up prediction as a methodological requirement ignores other features of the same entity.

Each point of view serves a scientific purpose by guiding and informing empirical inquiries into specific components of the reality. Jaspers thus thought of scientific perspectives as akin to Kantian “Ideas” (Ideen) (Jaspers 1971, 462–86; 1963a, 560; 1965, 468). “Ideas” serve a purely regulatory function: they conceptually predelineate and focus scientific investigation. As exclusively regulatory, the “truth” of a perspective turns out to be a heuristic truth: does the perspective in fact help us to uncover otherwise inaccessible facts? Because different perspectives help us to unearth facts not accessible from other perspectives, multiple perspectives are equally “true.”

Jaspers realized, moreover, that as science advanced, perspectives would undergo change. New ones would arise, and old ones would be subjected to transformation. Witness, for example, the modifications in the field of hermeneutics that have emerged since Jaspers. Moreover, novel perspectives may envision a combining of items which earlier perspectives had posited as separate. But this constant conceptual and methodological innovation, according to Jaspers, would not diminish the need for a variety of different perspectives on human reality (Jaspers 1956, 85–211; 1971, 463–86). Bolton’s new cognitive-behavioral semantic perspective may prove to be an important contribution to this fluid scientific process. By using it, scientists may uncover hitherto unsuspected ties between meaning and causality. We see no reason, however, why this should prompt us to set aside other still helpful, but different, perspectives.

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