In a recent article Fowers and Richardson raised epistemological eyebrows by recasting the cognitive aggression formulation of Huesmann, Eron and associates within a critical hermeneutic analysis. They highlighted certain ideological and value choices, especially of `liberal individualism', linked to violence and its control; these constrained research and limited the range of questions asked. This `hermeneutic' vs `naturalistic, empiricist' debate offers a valuable starting-point for a broader, critical-historical, multi-level analysis of phenomena such as aggression. After historically situating Huesmann and Eron's research programme within mainstream psychology, the development of a consensus about aggression research strategies is traced at three levels-scientific, meta-scientific and extra-scientific. Such historical and multi-level analyses point to a need for both traditional positivist and alternative perspectives to reconceptualize, for both their research and practice, the moral dimension of scientific psychology.
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