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The purpose of this paper is to present some ideas from philosophy of science in a nontechnical way that may help to clarify some of the issues raised by Laor's interesting paper, “Psychoanalysis as Science: the Inductivist's Resistance Revisited” (1985). I am very sympathetic to the message expressed in his concluding paragraph:
There are no quick and simple answers known to us. We should be able, however, to keep and to contain our skepticism, and carry on exploring in our practice, report on our results, and discuss our different ideas respectfully. Any psychiatrist who endorses psychoanalytic theory in his reasoning or practice—in part or wholesale—might wish to address these questions. Anyone who has any new ideas to report will, I suppose, meet an eager public.… But novelties will come and be spotted easier if critical debate is encouraged and derogation is avoided. Especially since derogation often hints at the demand for perfection, it is a positive disincentive for new, untested, possibly unacceptable
Page 299ideas. But we have to encourage these and hope to improve them” [p. 164].
Notwithstanding this important message, Laor's attack on inductivism contains significant logical errors and misconceptions, which I will attempt to elucidate. Following my critique of Laor's paper I will try to present a different perspective on the problem of scientific perfectionism that of hope will have a constructive influence.
I will begin by trying to demonstrate that Laor offers a very confusing and distorted picture of inductivism. He recognizes that modern inductivists reject “the view that scientific generalizatons are certain truths” and “maintain that empirical generalizations are only probable” (p. 150), but he goes on to claim that “perhaps it may also be clear now why inductivists who are so reluctant to see the primary failure of their own methodology, the methodology that promises a clear-cut decision-making procedure for science, are so intolerant of seondary failure