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On Establishing Necessary Human Abilities and Disabilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

V. J. McGill
V. J. McGill*
Affiliation:
Institute for Philosophical Research
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Abstract

This is a discussion of the claim by certain recent philosophers to have established universal human abilities and disabilities on “logical” grounds, or as a priori necessary. These traits would be independent of empirical conditions, and not of the sort which could be disproved by psychology which, accordingly, would share its field with the a priori philosopher. The author agues, using a series of examples, that these supposed traits do, or could, vary with empirical conditions, and that it is unlikely that in this psychological area there is any good alternative to inductive methods.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 1962 , pp. 393 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1962

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References

1 B. F. Skinner, “A Case History in Scientific Method,” in Psychology: A Study of a Science, New York, 1959, Vol. II, pp. 359ff.

2 London, 1959.

3 Op. cit., p. 189.

4 Ibid., pp. 182–183.

5 Ibid., p. 182.

6 Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 419–420.

7 Ibid., p. 421.

8 Op. cit., p. 171.

9 Ibid., p. 182.

10 Ibid., p. 107.

11 Ibid., p. 127.

12 Ibid., p. 107.

13 Ibid., p. 172.

14 Ibid., p. 130.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., p. 129.

17 Ibid., pp. 109–110.

18 Ibid., p. 134.

19 Semantics and Necessity, New York, 1960, p. 173.

20 Ibid.

21 Jean Piaget, Judgment and Reasoning in the Child, New York, 1928, p. 235.

22 Ibid., p. 171.

23 E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, Vol. I, p. 428ff.

24 Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, La Mentalité Primitive, Paris, 1922, pp. 96, 98, 104, passim.

25 Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und Phänomenologischen Philosophie, §§ 41–42.

26 Ibid., § 42.

27 Logische Untersuchungen, V, § 14 and VI, § 4.

28 Ideen, op. cit., § 82.

29 Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, 1905–1910.

30 Ideen, op. cit.