Relationship between logic and psychology

by

Can we find a relationship between logic and psychology? Two branches that are responsible for studying processes involved in human reasoning -to mention just one of its many objects of study-, each with its aspects, approaches and applications.

Relationship between logic and psychology
Relationship between logic and psychology

At first glance, we can notice a relationship between these two disciplines. However, we need to further illustrate this relationship., so it is up to us to make a brief sketch in these two disciplines, in order to detect the meeting point that exists between logic and psychology respectively.

Logic: the study of human reasoning

Logic is a branch of philosophy that deals with studying all the processes present in human reasoning. Its objective is to understand the way in which societies are able to arrive at valid thought, that is: the truth given through rational thought.

It is known as a formal science, since it works through reason, finding that all its knowledge is obtained a priori and not through empirical observation or in a factual way. Some of the elements he studies are processes of human thought, such as inference, propositions, demonstration, etc.

Logic plays a fundamental role in the development of multiple disciplines and / or areas of application thanks to the fact that it allows a solid basis for the acquisition of knowledge itself, which starts from the idea that Reasoning must have the necessary criteria to lead societies to the truth.

Given this, logic is responsible, historically speaking, for the fact that multiple disciplines currently have the necessary pillars for the production of useful knowledge, which lead to real and coherent results starting from the reasoning itself, without leaving aside the methodological aspects of each discipline.

Psychology: the study of human and animal behavior

Psychology is a discipline responsible for the study of human and animal behavior, in order to analyze, understand and predict it properly. With this principle, psychology immerses itself in an infinity of elements with the clear purpose of understanding the reason for behavior itself .

Some of those elements are so-called processes. Yes, as we have read. Processes are all those mechanisms of the cognitive type that allow humans and animals to acquire knowledge, considered the primary mechanisms to detect, encode and analyze the information present in the environment.

Part of these processes are: attention, memory, hearing, vision, perception, etc. Each of these are treated in psychology as a starting point for understanding both human and animal behavior.

This, at least, to place us in a place with respect to the occupations of psychology, which today serves in hundreds of areas of applications and specialties. It is, in the least case, a discipline responsible for explaining behavior through different methods, both quantitative and qualitative, to reach its findings according to the approach.

Psychology today has a wide variety of areas such as the case of logic, thanks to the fact that they have generated great contributions to the understanding of its objects of study. But how can these two areas relate to each other?

How is logic and psychology related?

As we can imagine, the meeting point of psychology with logic lies, to a large extent, at the moment of specifying its focuses of study: thought. While we know that psychology has also devoted part of its efforts to the study of observable behavior as an attempt to produce a purely empirical object of study, it has not ruled out the study of processes.

In this way, we detect that there is the same interest in psychology and logic, at least in what concerns the focus of their studies. Logic and psychology make an analysis of thought, in order to understand how it affects human life in essence. However, this starting point does not walk hand in hand at all times.

Although logic and psychology show great interest in human thought, each contemplates, in principle, different methods for the study of it.

To begin with, logic, as a formal science, starts from reason as an element to understand human thought from an a priori approach. Meanwhile, psychology refers to experimental methods in which it performs constant evaluations and contrasts results to, at least, verify hypotheses.

In turn, logic approaches human thought from processes composed of a taxonomy different from psychology. The first conceives inference, propositions, demonstration, etc., while psychology contemplates a different look, oriented towards processes as a cognitive quality.

Studies conducted by Piaget himself, a Swiss psychologist who specialized his studies in the development of children, show that psychology cannot be involved in the studies of logic, and in the same way, logic could not intervene in the methods of psychology. We find then that there is a strong epistemological difference between these two areas.

An explanation for thought, with different purposes

We can specify that both psychology and logic are interested in human thought, but the interest of their approaches enjoys different directions. Logic would not be very interested, for example, in making predictions about behavior, while psychology would. And just like this, there are many examples in which we can contemplate differences in their praxis.

In this sense, psychology and logic are related in terms of their material object of study, but their formal object acquires, precisely, a completely different north. In this way, logic and psychology share the same object, but differ in the orientation of their studies respectively.

A way of explaining human thought, with different purposes. This is how we could conclude the relationship between psychology and logic.

Read also: Relationship between logic and psychology

This post is also available in: English Español (Spanish)