Conceptual Issues in Psychology

The new edition of "Conceptual Issues in Psychology" provides a comprehensive and up-to-date textbook available for advanced undergraduate courses in the philosophy and theory of psychology. It provides a broad treatment of the main conceptual issues in psychology, explains what they are, outlines the main approaches to them and shows their relative merits and demerits. In the first part of the book, the author covers the more substantive philosophical questions such as free will and determinism, consciousness, and the relation between body and mind. Empirical work in psychology which is relevant to these problems is considered and the methodological problems of introspection and sources of artefact in experimentation are discussed. In the second section Elizabeth Valentine deals with the different theoretical approaches and types of explanation within psychology, such as behaviourism, reductionism, computer modelling and purposive explanation. This book should be of interest to students of psychology, philosophy, and social sciences.