A possibilidade da conceitualização da psicologia na obra de Rudolf Carnap

Abstract

Seeking a clear conceptualization for scientific psychology is important, once would enable communication between different areas and approaches, and some interpretative mistakes would be avoided. Furthermore, scientific research needs conceptual rigor to avoid mistakes like studying a wrong object or one that does not even exist. A significant historical movement that tried to solve the issue of conceptual confusion in psychology and to build a solid base of dependable, clear, and unambiguous concepts was the movement of logical empiricism, logical positivism, or neopositivism. One figure from this group that we can highlight is Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) who was the main responsible for proposing a system of the constitution that would make possible the foundation of psychology. Although Carnap has developed a thorough work in search of a precise conceptualization for psychological concepts, some books on the history of psychology do not speak about this movement or when they do, they present their ideas in a reduced, superficial way and with several theoretical mistakes. Thus, the objective of this thesis was to conduct a study of Carnap's work, seeking to present the author's proposals, the development of his ideas, and theoretical changes related to the possibility of a clear conceptualization of psychological science, opposing Carnap's simplistic interpretation. Radical physicalist who seeks to reduce psychological concepts to physical concepts. We then demonstrate that physicalism was just one of Carnap's proposals, which was later restructured and abandoned because it failed to encompass the theoretical concepts of psychology.