Against the reduction of teleology to sophisticated causal explanation

Abstract

The purpose of science is to provide an account of what is going on behind the phenomena we experience. In psychology, such a task may be approached from two different perspectives. For those espousing a naturalistic–monistic approach, it implies accounting for human behavior via an appeal to explanations by causes. To exponents of a humanistic–pluralistic approach, it will instead entail adopting a teleological outlook via an appeal to explanations by reasons. While presented as an attempt to restore the latter framework to psychological research, Arocha’s account ends up unintentionally endorsing the former, which he purports to reject. It is herein asserted that psychology requires the adoption of a genuinely teleological—that is to say, intentionalistic—framework to account for what is going on behind the observable, thereby contributing to addressing the replication crisis and laying the ground for reforming psychology.