Events and Constructs

Noel W. Smith

From the book:

The Myth of Mind. A Challenge to Mainstream Psychology and Its Imposed Constructs

Published with the author’s permission

Events and Constructs 

Psychologists today are not only in disagreement about their subject matter, but their field is highly fragmented in its theoretical and methodological approaches. This is due in part to increasing specializations but also to age-old disagreements about psychology’s constructs.

Is psychology about consciousness, self, and information processing? Is it the study of a mind and the mind’s representations of the world? Is it a study of behavior influenced by a cognitive mind? Is it just behavior? Is it the action of the brain on the organism? Is it interactions of organisms and objects in a context? Or is it action of mind and body.Much of the disagreement stems from the failure to distinguish events from constructs and to build scientific constructs on events from which the constructions are derived rather than starting with constructs and interpreting observed events in accordance with those constructs. That is, the failure is twofold: the confusion between constructs and events and the resulting failure to develop valid scientific constructs.

A few scholars such as Skinner (e.g., 1953, 1990) and Kantor (e.g., 1922, 1953, 1981), attacked the problem repeatedly over a period of many decades. Kantor (1963-1969) attributing the underlying cause for the shortcoming to our spiritistic culture: The constructs come not from observation but from our cultural beliefs. Often constructs which become discredited in science merely take on new names. For example, soul became mind which became brain powers or processing. These constructs continue in use despite their dubious scientific status. 

 In a book on psychology’s theoretical issues, Bem and Looren de Jong (1997) described the volume as a “comprehensive guide” yet did not mention the critical issue of constructs. The authors are in venerable company, for the debates over many centuries about the nature of mind and body also failed to recognize the nature of constructs and their confusion with events, probably because of the influence of cultural assumptions. The confusion continues today as exemplified by Reber and Reber (2001) who stated in their psychological dictionary that “one infers a construct whenever one can establish a relationship between several objects or events” (p. 148). It is not the construct that is inferred, for the inference is a construct.

Objective or scientific constructs as opposed to cultural constructs such as mind in a body are based on the observed interaction of objects or events. They could take the form of a correlation, diagram, description, or other means of designating an event. Of various psychology dictionaries Colman’s (2006) comes close to a good understanding of a construct when he defines it as “a model based on observation guided by a theoretical framework”. 

 This book will address the two topics: the distinction between events and constructs and of the proper use of constructs. Because science is built on observations of events from which constructs are derived, a full understanding of the distinction between them and the proper use of the latter is of critical importance in the advancement of science.

The failure to make this distinction has been a major impediment in the attempts to develop a science of psychology. In one context or another and to varying degrees this problem has been addressed by others, such as some of those cited here; but this book will concentrate primarily on this problem and attempt to identify it more distinctly. It will provide examples of uses and misuses and will suggest some criteria that might be applied to scientific investigation. Even with the strong influence of culture that supports misuses, the criteria can provide guidelines toward avoiding some of the hazards. 

 A construct (or construction) is, as the name indicates, something that is constructed and is not an observed event. It is an invention or contrivance. In fact anything that is not an event but represents one or purports to represent one is a construct: a theory, a hypothesis, a principle, a mathematical formula, a measurement. These are all constructed. Even a description is a construct, for it is not the thing that it describes. Scientific work is mostly a procedure of developing constructs; but, as Kantor (1957) noted, “hypothetical entities may not be arbitrarily created” (p. 59). 

He referred to the precautions necessary for each of three types of constructs. 

Descriptive constructs, he held, are most valid and useful when they derive from contacts with events; they are of decreasing validity and usefulness when they are (a) analogies, (b) borrowed from other fields such as biology or physics, and (c) total inventions such as brain as a psychological organ.

Explanatory constructs (causality) may relate psychology to biology, chemistry, and social events but may not be reduced to them. They are more analytical ways of relating things and events than is simple description (Kantor, 1983) but may still be regarded as forms of description. Explanation builds a body of knowledge when one functional––a description of relations or interactions––is integrated with another that has been functionally related to still others. 

Manipulative constructs are so called because they get restated or modified to facilitate the investigation. They involve problems, theories, and hypotheses that can be validated only if “securely connected with events” (Kantor, 1957, p. 59). 

 Descartes’s soul, Leibnitz’s monads, Hume’s impressions, Locke’s ideas and sensations, La Mettrie’s brain springs, Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception, Müller’s specific nerve energies, J. S. Mill’s mental chemistry, Titchener’s sensations, Woodworth’s O, Köhler’s isomorphism, and Hull’s drives, to name but a few, are all constructs out of psychology’s history. What is critical to scientific psychology, however, as a number of authors over a period of half a century have noted (e.g., Ebel, 1974; Kantor, 1947,1953, 1957; Lichtenstein, 1984; Moore, 1998; Observer, 1983; Smith, 1993a, 2001), is whether the construct was derived from an event or was imposed on it. 

In all of the historical instances cited, the constructs were drawn from traditional cultural sources and imposed on the events. For example, Titchener observed his subjects’ reports on their responses to experimental tasks but assumed he was investigating mental elements and imposed this construct on the reports. 

These historical constructs are continuous with those of today such as mental representations, storage and retrieval, processing, consciousness, will, and self that are pervasive in mainstream psychology. The events are the seeing, believing, recollecting, thinking, imagining, and other concrete human actions. An event is anything that happens whether we know about it or not. Events may be examined and known through

(a) direct observation with or without use of instruments but with minimal manipulation of the target events,

(b) transforming contacts involving manipulation, and

(c) remote observations requiring indirect contact and inference (Kantor 1953, pp. 15-16). In scientific work the connection remains firm no matter how many links occur between the target events and the investigator. 

 The distinction between constructs and events is critical. It determines, for example, whether we treat the brain as a determiner of behavior or a participant, perception as a representation or an organism-object interaction, remembering as storage or as reenactment, intelligence as a power or a description, human activity as mind-body connections or interactions in a context. Wundt held that we cannot know consciousness, only its effects. And he was right to acknowledge that we cannot know an ethereal construct.

But did he need to invoke a construct or could he have simply referred to the responses that he was actually measuring as comprising consciousness? Were Titchener’s subjects introspecting their elementary sensations, mental atoms, or making sensory discriminations of objects and events? 

Posner and Raichel (1994, p. 24) well illustrate the confusion between constructs and events. They provided a graph in which they claimed to have plotted the brain on the horizontal axis and mind on the vertical. They did plot at varying levels of detail the imaging techniques applied to the brain, but the “mind” turned out to be time and was graphed as such. Skinner (1963) pointed out that mind is often used as a “mental way station” to fill in gaps between independent and dependent variables. 

 As another example of confusing constructs and events, in an effort to justify unobservables in psychology, Bornstein (1988) claimed that “psychologists investigate internal processes such as feelings and motivations” (p. 820). Here he lumped together an event, feelings, and a construct, motivation, under another construct, internal processes. Let’s examine each of these.

(a) Feelings: If one wins a lottery, one’s joyous behavior is a real event. A feeling, then, is an event consisting of a person in interaction with the thing felt about, such as joy upon seeing one’s winning number.

(b) Motivation: Why did one buy the lottery ticket? One must have been motivated. But what is a motive? It isn’t anything in itself, but it should have a specific referent in identifiable events. Perhaps the purchaser decided that the ticket proceeds go to a worthy cause. A motive is a construct of causality, not an event, but can be a useful summarizing term if it has identifiable referents in which case the construct is a convenient shorthand for the events. However, contrary to Bornstein, we don’t investigate the motive as such; for it is only an abstraction, a construct. What we investigate are the specific conditions that lead to a particular behavior, such as the behavior preferred by a teacher or an employer that we refer to as motivated.

(c) Internal processes: Bornstein’s final example and his intended all-embracing one is also a construct rather than an event. It assumes that nature has divided us into two parts, internal and external. If referents for “inner processes” can be specified, then the inner-outer distinction no longer holds; for identifiable events of nature––the joyous behavior of a winning ticket, the desire to support a worthy cause–– become the focus rather than a constructed duality of inner and outer. But this construct of internal processes is usually one of mind-body dualism, and dualism has no such referents.

It is a category error in Freeman’s (2001) terms (after Ryle, 1949)––an error which he attributes to a history of three centuries, actually about twenty-two centuries in the Western World and perhaps 3000 years in India: see Kantor (1963-1969); Smith (2001). One world is inside and one outside. Skinner (1990) called this the “copy theory”––the real world copied into the mind or brain––which requires something to see the copy. It also requires the central nervous system to be a cause of itself. 

Bornstein went on to justify unobservables in psychology by way of claiming that gravity is an unobservable that physicists study indirectly. Yet according to theory in physics, gravity is not an unobservable but is an event involving the interaction of bodies in space; and this interaction may be observed, measured, and described mathematically, the measurement and mathematical description being useful constructs derived from the events. 

It is defined by and consists of these properties and perhaps others that remain to be observed (and which would be constructs if postulated). We may similarly observe events of humans in interaction with their surroundings and describe these interactions rather than starting with cultural constructs and imposing them on the investigations. Schlinger (2003) has described the problem this way: “Rather than constructing formal definitions a priori and then looking for instances of them, scientists must discover the definition. . . . This is done by experimentally analyzing behavior and then looking for order therein” (p. 23). 

Despite some claims that “theoretical terms” (constructs) and observational terms are equally inferential and unreliable, Clark and Paivio (1989) cited several empirical studies of these terms that support the greater reliability and validity of the latter and the clear distinguishability of the two. The investigators found that “observational terms refer more directly to observable phenomena than do theoretical terms and are relatively more stable and definite in their meanings” (p. 510). Further,…the data suggest that scientists do and ought to maintain distinct attitudes toward observational and theoretical terms when thinking about or communicating scientific ideas. Observational terms have more stable and universal meanings, and participate in statements that can be empirically validated by virtue of their concrete referents (p. 510). 

Kantor (1959) laid out an entire postulate system that can be used as a guide for scientific investigations (see Clayton, Hayes, & Swain, 2005), but even the postulate system starts with observable events on which the constructs are built. 

 A major choice for investigation is whether a system should be construct-based or event-based. That is, do the investigators begin with constructs with which they interpret events or do they begin with events and develop their constructs from those events? Kantor (1981) argued that “In general a valid logic of science must be founded on a full appreciation of the relations between events and constructs” (p. 6) including the clear distinction between them. Lichtenstein (1984) advanced a similar point: 

 When one follows carefully what is entailed in scientific work we have a basis for distinguishing among data, investigative operations, and constructions. The construction phase becomes particularly important when it is realized that it is here that most disagreement in science arises. Constructs are more likely to be sound when they are derived from direct contact with events whether involving manipulations and measurement or not. Unfortunately scientists when they are in the grip of tradition are usually unaware of the fact. Thus astronomers found circular orbits [rather than elliptical] for the planets reasonable and biologists described in detail the homunculi in sperm cells. (p. 471) 

Valid scientific constructs require grounding in events at all stages in the scientific enterprise and such grounding requires recognizing what are constructs and what are events.