Uljana Feest, "Operationism in Psychology: An Epistemology of Exploration" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
An interview with Uljana Feest
New Books in Psychology · Marshall Poe
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (traffic.megaphone.fm) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
About 100 years ago, prominent psychologists Stanley Smith Stevens, Edward Tolman and Clark Hull spearheaded the idea of linking psychological concepts, such as “memory”, to specific experimental designs. In Operationism in Psychology: An Epistemology of Exploration (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Uljana Feest offers a rich analysis of this link as a method for making progress in epistemically uncharted scientific territory. Feest, a professor of philosophy at Leibniz University in Germany, considers the conceptual, epistemic, and methodological issues involved when it is not clear what a target of research is like or even whether it exists. She provides an updated interpretation of what operational definitions are and how they function in psychology, and shows how these foundational issues in psychology intersect with philosophical debates about conceptual change, natural kinds, and mechanistic explanation.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology