ON THE EMPIRICAL CONTENT OF SOME THEORIES OF COGNITIVE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (DISSONANCE, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, SCIENCE

This dissertation deals with a conceptual confusion in cognitive social psychology which led to the formulation of influential theories without empirical content. Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance is used as a case study. I show that cognitive social psychology is grounded in common-sense psychology and, in its scientific theorizing, it co-opts the commonsensical ascription of mental states in explaining behavior. It assumes that persons have beliefs/cognitions and also likes, desires, and miscellaneous affective states. The principal argument of the dissertation is that the technical terms of social psychology, e.g., 'cognition', are dismembered versions of commonsensical concepts, e.g., 'belief'. The concept 'belief' is explicated in order to demonstrate the following points: (1) We are able to interpret the behaviors and utterances of other human beings only on the assumption that we choose to ascribe beliefs, desires, and other mental-state terms to them, and only on the condition that we assume their belief system to be largely true and largely consistent (the principle of charity). (2) In ascribing beliefs to others, we commit ourselves to regarding 'believers' not to be aware of holding inconsistent beliefs, and to assuming that 'believers' will want to remove such inconsistencies when these come to their awareness (the principle of consistency of beliefs).;A reconstruction of Festinger's theory is presented in order to demonstrate its structure. It is argued that Festinger's thesis that dissonance-reduction is a motive is empirically vacuous. His assumptions that his theory needs empirical confirmation and that such confirmation can be provided by social psychology experiments are both false. It is suggested that the long-time standing erroneous belief that Festinger's theory and other theories of cognitive consistency are empirically confirmable scientific theories is the result of a confusion between complex commonsensical concepts and concepts of cognitive social psychology.;Some aspects of common-sense psychology as a theory are discussed. The concept of desire is explicated, and a principle of desire conflict is formulated. It is argued that Festinger's examples of cognitive dissonance are better explained as instances of conflicting desires.