Uljana Feest, "Operationism in Psychology: An Epistemology of Exploration" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
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What is the book “Operationism in Psychology” about and why is it relevant?
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdork, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talise and Sarah Tyson. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Ulyana Feist, professor of philosophy at Leibniz University in Hanover, Germany. Her new book, Operationism in Psychology and Epistemology of Exploration, is just out from Chicago, University of Chicago Press. About a hundred years ago, prominent psychologists Stanley Smith Stevens, Edward Tolman, and Clark Hull spearheaded the idea of linking psychological concepts such as memory to specific experimental designs.
In Operationism in Psychology, Feast offers a rich analysis of this link as a method for making progress in epistemically uncharted scientific territory. She considers the conceptual, epistemic, and methodological issues involved when it's not clear what a target target of research is like, or even whether it exists. She provides an updated interpretation of what operational definitions are and how they function in psychology, and she shows how these foundational issues in psychology intersect with philosophical debates about conceptual change, natural kinds, and mechanistic explanation. Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Ilyana Feast. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy. Hi. Um, I'm very pleased to be talking with you about your
Just Out Book, Operationism in Psychology, Towards an Epistemology of Exploration in Psychology. Before we get to the contents of the book, maybe you can tell us a bit about yourself, you know, how you became a philosopher, um, and how this book came about. I mean, one of the things that you say is, you know, this was a long time coming, and the the the book definitely definitely shows that there's a lot of territory that you cover. But um so how did you get to where you are and and and to this book?
Yeah, thank you. Well, yes, like you say, it's it it was a long process and it I mean, I would say it actually really did start with me being a psychology student like decades ago. I started studying psychology. Um In Frankfurt, Germany? Because I you know, I was interested in psychology, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what y what it was that I was interested in. And it became clear early on that I was less interested in the content or I'm like in the I mean I'm interested in the content of psychology, but I was less interested in finding out things about the mind or behavior or whatever and more interested in
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the book “Operationism in Psychology” about and why is it relevant?
0:00–9:58
2
How did Uljana Feest’s background in psychology and philosophy shape the book?
9:58–21:24
3
What is an “object of research” and how does it differ from a phenomenon?
21:24–29:49
4
Why does Feest describe the epistemic perspective as “blurry” and how does that affect experiments?
29:49–38:00
5
How do implicit‑memory and semantic priming illustrate operational definitions?
38:00–46:03
6
What role do natural kinds and realism play in the ontology of psychological objects?
46:03–54:15
7
How does the replication crisis relate to operationism and the search for scientific rigor?
54:15–59:24
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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