The horizontal worldview: A Wittgensteinian attitude towards scientific psychology

Abstract

Many scientific psychologists (implicitly) adopt a vertical worldview. This worldview assumes a layered supervening ontology and thereby invites a reductionist stance on explanation. In the present article we direct attention to an alternative attitude towards reality, the horizontal worldview. We draw on Wittgenstein as an example of this alternative attitude. In his later writings Wittgenstein showed his readers how to resist the urge to derive underlying principles about reality by tirelessly reorienting inquiry “sideways,” to the surrounding circumstances that were excluded from consideration. We go on to identify similar horizontal thinking in scientific psychology and demonstrate its merits by discussing Gibson’s approach to visual perception, a Heideggerian approach to skill acquisition, and by discussing psychological traits and the use of concepts. By clarifying the particular surrounding circumstances that a vertical view neglects to consider, a horizontal attitude can render a vertical analysis superfluous.

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