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I welcome the opportunity to reply to Dr. Brender's critique of my paper, “The Logic of Psychology.”
To begin with, I note Dr. Brender's statement that my paper “is an interesting but curious amalgam of question-begging, half-truth, non sequitur, methodological naivete, and downright error.” This is strong language, not customary in scientific discussion, and I regret that he chose to use it.
So far as I can see, all the points made by Dr. Brender are discussed in detail in my paper. It would serve no useful purpose to reiterate the same positions over and over again. I prefer, therefore, to take up some of the misconceptions in Dr. Brender's critique and to indicate some new directions in which my thinking has been going since my paper was written.
First of all, Dr. Brender seems to equate observation with simply noticing anything. It should be clear that as a scientific tool observation is not naive; it is a highly sophisticated procedure which does the best possible under the circumstances.
In order to clarify the dispute between observation and experimentation it is necessary to ask: what is the reliability of a fact established by either method? Naturally it will vary and, by and large, if a fact is really established experimentally, its reliability is higher than if it is observational. But the difference is not an absolute one. Even in the most ideal circumstances experiments are subject to error, and reliability is not perfect. Conversely, while careful observation may be subject to error, it is not a haphazard affair.