Can Social Action be Voluntary Action?

Abstract

This paper explicates the conceptual limits and moral problems brought about by the use of social constructs for deriving a second-order description of an individual psychological process, made by reference to the social constructionist analysis of emotions. The metaphysical and moral naivety of psychologists is argued to be shown in the way they engage in a study of social phenomena without inquiring into the agentic-moral conditions which set the phenomena in place. It is proposed that psychology reform its practice in two directions. First, psychology's respect for truth should be maintained in its unconditional recognition of the first person as the source of meaning and truthfulness in all places at all times. Second, its duty is paradoxically defined as that of performing an act of collective remembrance through recounting the common expressions used in a social collective.