Mental Causality and the Foundation of Scientific Psychology According to Edith Stein

Abstract

The question of causality pervades the foundations of science. In particular, the question of psychic causality underlies the foundations of the various approaches of present psychology, although it is not explicit or even recognized. Resort to the theme can help to clarify epistemological issues that delineate scientific psychology. In this sense, the objective of the work is to present the conception of psychic causality present in the work of Edith Stein (1891-1942), Psychic Causality (2010). The method of historical investigation was used. The author criticized the emergent experimental psychology, which underwent psychologistic and naturalistic reductionism by separating itself from philosophy. Edith Stein defended the possibility of a scientific psychology sustained by the (phenomenological) definition of the human person. Her understanding of psychic causality fits the distinction between the immanent lived experiences and the intentional lived experiences of the flow of consciousness. Stein differentiates the scope of deterministic causal events from those scopes of motivational relations that are not subjected to deterministic connections. It is concluded that only a rigorous philosophical elaboration of the different types of legality to which the psychic phenomenon is submitted can provide to Psychology a valid foundation and autonomy in the dialogue with the other natural or cultural sciences.