Cognitivismo, uma abordagem parcialmente nomotética

Abstract

By idiographic approaches, it is understood those that comprehend their object of study as unique, and, therefore, unrepeatable, not being necessary to formulate theoretical generalizations, discovering laws and predictions. Nomothetic approaches, on the other hand, refer to those that understand their object of study as subject to regularity and, therefore, it is up to the elaboration of generalizable theories and the discovery of laws and predictions. The various schools that make up contemporary Psychology, such as Cognitivism, can be, and generally are, categorized according to such classifications originated in the Baden School in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Germany. This theoretical research, in the area of Philosophy of Psychology, aimed to describe the possibilities of types of explanation and prediction of contemporary Cognitivism, as well as some of its possible limitations. For this, as specific objectives, it sought to review (a) the general characteristics and philosophical foundations, especially the epistemological ones, of modern science and the type of nomothetic research and (b) the defining aspects and metaphysical assumptions, mainly epistemological, of Cognitivism. In this sense, an attempt was also made to discursively analyze (c) the compatibility between modern science and the nomothetic approach; (d) the compatibility between the relationship of modern science with Cognitivism; as well as (e) some of the possible limits existing in the cognitive psychological explanation. In the end, it was concluded that (i) it is logically adequate and more accurate to understand Cognitivism as a partially nomothetic approach. In addition, (ii) some of the limits contained in the cognitive explanation of its object of study were shown, with emphasis, under a pluralistic perspective of explanation, for the types of questions currently possible by the empirical sciences, namely, why-questions, how-questions and how-possibly questions.