Psychology as a Moral Science

Svend Brinkmann is Professor of Psychology in the Department of Communication and Psychology at the University of Aalborg, Denmark. His research areas are general psychology and qualitative methods, and he is co-director of the Center for Qualitative Studies at the University of Aalborg and also editor of the journal Qualitative Studies. Svend Brinkmann has published books in Danish about the mind, identity and the philosopher and psychologist John Dewey, and he is co-author (with Steinar Kvale) of the English language book InterViews. In addition, he has published several journal articles about the philosophy of psychology, qualitative methods, moral inquiry, and approaches to human science such as pragmatism, hermeneutics, and discourse analysis.

• Dedication.- Foreword.- Preface.- Acknowledgments.- Psychology and morality: An interpretive-pragmatic view.- Part I: The Place of Value in a World of Psychology.- The psychological social imaginary.- Changing psychologies, subjectivities, and moralities.- How psychology makes up people.- Part II: An Inescapable Morality.- Facts, values, and the naturalistic fallacy in psychology.- Moral realism.- Moral practices.- Conclusions.- References.

"This provocative work seeks to provide a response to the question 'What does morality have to do with psychology in a value-neutral, postmodern world?' Arguing from an interpretive-pragmatic view, Brinkmann argues that psychology is fundamentally grounded in moral concern. ... Brinkmann makes a case for understanding morality as fundamentally embedded in social practices; a case in which figures such as Aristotle, Dewey, Heidegger, MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor loom large in the background." (Edwin E. Gantt, Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 36 (1), 2016)