AG Heinzelmann, 09.01.2026 Operationism and Exploratory Research in Psychology

The talk will provide an overview of central themes from my recent book, Operationism in Psychology: An Epistemology of Exploration (2025). I will begin by arguing that a key challenge researchers face has to do with (what I call) the “epistemic blurriness” of their objects of research. The talk will present a philosophical framework for analyzing strategies researchers have at their disposal for dealing with this predicament and, thus, for exploring their objects of research. My framework is inspired by an analysis of early- to mid-20th century operation(al)ism: According to this analysis, the practice of “operationally defining” concepts pertaining to the subject matter allows researchers to get a conceptual and experimental handle on their objects without committing them to a naïve theory of meaning or trapping their practices in circularity. I will argue that the epistemic blurriness of psychological research objects is not restricted to explanatory questions but extends to fundamental descriptive and taxonomic questions.  I will then introduce an account of experimental inferences in psychology to drive home the difficulties of deriving descriptive statements about objects of research from experimentally produced effects. These difficulties once again highlight the degree of epistemic blurriness with which psychological objects present themselves to researchers. I will argue that my account opens up a path forward.

Uljana Feest is professor of philosophy at Leibniz University, Hannover (Germany). In her research she specializes on the philosophy and history of the cognitive and behavioral sciences, with special focus on experimental practices of knowledge generation and concept formation in these fields. She uses an approach that integrates the history of psychology with the philosophy of psychology. Feest has published articles about introspection, phenomenology, the history of analytic philosophy, the epistemology of experimentation, validity, and the replication crisis in psychology. She is the author of Operationism in Psychology. An Epistemology of Exploration (University of Chicago Press 2025). She has recently begun to work on a new project, analyzing the history, investigative practices, and social relevance of personality research.