www.QualResearchPsych.

com Qualitative Research in Psychology 2004; 1: 3 /14

Staking our claim for qualitative

psychology as science
Rom Harre
Georgetown and American Universities, Washington, DC 20057, USA; Linacre College, Oxford, UK

A science includes both a system of concepts for the classication of

phenomena and a set of rules for constructing models of unobservable
process by which the phenomena are generated. The phenomena of the
human sciences are meaningful and of the natural sciences, meaningless.
Correspondingly, there are discursive modes of representation and
complementary material representations. Eschewing quantitative
representations excludes material phenomena from psychology. This
does not mean that all mathematical forms of representation should be
excluded: arithmetic is little use; algebra marginal but geometrical/
structural mathematics is of value. However, grammar (in Wittgensteins
sense) is another disciplinary matrix for representing forms of order. A link
with neuroscience can be made by using qualitative methods to identify
tasks and neuroscience methods of understanding the brain as a tool.
Qualitative Research in Psychology 2004; 1: 3 /14

Key words: classification; discursive; geometrical/structural; grammars;

meaningful phenomena; metrical; models; neuroscience; task/tool meta-
phor

Introduction cisms have been directed against the linger-

In the last few years, a variety of new
approaches to the project of creating a
scientific psychology have emerged. How
are we to bring into being a truly scientific
psychology, scientific in the sense that
physics and chemistry are scientific? Each
of these attempts has been set against one or
another aspect of the mainstream. Criti-
ing positivism of much experimental
psychology, against the universalistic as-
sumptions in the presentation of empirical
studies, against the metrication of phenom-
ena which are defined by their meanings,
and against the use of causal concepts in the
description and explanation of normative
processes, eliminating human agency. We
have had ethogenics as an alternative social

Correspondence: Rom Harre, Psychology Department, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, USA.
E-mail: harre@georgetown.edu

# Arnold 2004 10.1191/1478088704qp002oa

4 R Harre
psychology (Harre and Secord, 1972); we
have had discursive psychology (Edwards
and Potter, 1992), cultural psychology
(Cole, 1996), critical psychology (Parker,
2002), knowing of the third kind (Shotter,
1993), social constructionism, and more.
Aside from the diversity of names, there
has been a remarkable convergence of prin-
ciples among the various alternative ap-
proaches. Psychological phenomena, such
as the display of emotions, the solving of
problems, the recollection of past events
and the anticipation of the future, are
discursive acts, meaningful performances
by skilled human actors. While the phe-
nomena are collective, the abilities required
to bring them into being are personal. The
evolving patterns of episodes in which
psychological phenomena are brought into
being are expressions of locally valid
norms, conventions and customs. Psychol-
ogy is the scientific study of meaning mak-
ing and management, and the skills
necessary to accomplish it.
Qualitative psychology is one among
other manifestations of these principles,
having its place in the project of trying to
make psychology scientific. What is the
peculiar contribution of qualitative psychol-
ogy to the movement? Answering this ques-
tion is the aim of this paper. At the same
time there are aspects of quantitative meth-
ods that are compatible with the overall
aims of the movement, to which qualitative
psychology belongs, that should not be
abandoned. Certain mathematical styles of
representation may prove invaluable.
Why should students of human life care
whether their methods of enquiry meet the
standards of the mature sciences? Critics of
the use qualitative methods in psychologi-
cal research frequently declare that these
methods are not scientific. The irony is
that set against the methods in use in much
of mainstream experimental social psychol-
ogy, cross-cultural psychology, cognitive
psychology and so on, it is the qualitative
techniques and the metaphysical presump-
tions that back them that come much closer
to meeting the ideals of the natural sciences.
Part one: science and the uses and
misuses of mathematical
representations
What are the characteristic elements of a
genuine science?
A science makes use of two interconnected
conceptual systems. One of these consists of
the conceptual requirements for the identi-
fication, individuation and classification of
the phenomena of the domain of interest of
the science. For example, vulcanology iden-
tifies and classifies eruptions and earth-
quakes. The other consists of the
conceptual requirements for the explana-
tion of the patterns that emerge from the
study of the phenomena. There are likely to
be rules for the construction of models of
unobservable processes, as well as various
causal and other explanatory concepts. For
example, vulcanology makes use of the
concepts of plate tectonics to account for
the volcanic phenomena it has identified
and classified.
Quantitative descriptions of phenomena
are sometimes convenient, but there is no
essential demand for them to be used in any
domain of science whatever. To understand
this point, we need to attend to the role of
mathematics in the sciences. I mean real
mathematics, not statistics!
The fundamental distinction between hu-
man sciences and natural sciences is based
on the distinction between meaningful and
meaningless phenomena. Human sciences

consist or should consist of studies based
on the identification and classification of
phenomena with respect to their meanings
and the principles of order that are mani-
fested in observable patterns. The human
sciences study the intentional properties of
things and events. The natural sciences
consist of studies based on the identifica-
tion and classification of phenomena with
respect to their material properties.
As far as qualitative concepts tend to pick
out intentional properties of the flow of
human action, their use is consonant with
the basic distinction between the two main
clusters of sciences. Metrical descriptions of
phenomena are required according to the
demands of quantitative methods. To deny
that this mode of description makes sense
for psychological phenomena has no
implications whatever for the question of
whether there are mathematical analyses
appropriate for psychology seen as the
study of meaning making and rule follow-
ing. I will develop this point in detail below.
Modes of representation
Every science must be based on a way of
representing the phenomena in its domain
of interest.
1) Social and cognitive phenomena can be
represented discursively, that is by the
use of words, that is qualitatively.
There is a powerful and well-estab-
lished vocabulary already in the verna-
culars of all cultures for the description
of psychological phenomena. In light of
this, a case needs to be made out for
abandoning or supplementing these
vocabularies with terms of art. The
vocabularies of the vernacular are
neither nave nor vague. They are com-
plex and subtle. As Wittgenstein made
clear, so long as we are busy conducting
our lives, the common vocabulary
Staking our claim for qualitative psychology 5
works very well. Only when we stand
back and reflect on our activities are we
likely to slip into misunderstandings of
the very terminology we know how to
use in the management of life.
2) Material phenomena, the domain of the
natural sciences, have gradually come
to be treated metrically, that is quanti-
tatively. Since the nineteenth century
we have had a powerful set of concepts
for metrical descriptions of material
phenomena, such as shape, motion,
colour and so on. The aetiology of
some of these concepts is complex. For
example, the use of wavelength to
provide a metrical description of col-
ours has a long history of the inter-
weaving of explanatory concepts with
observables. We can use wavelength to
describe a colour identified by a visible
sample because we believe that there is
a thoroughgoing relationship between
wavelength and experienced hue.
Other concepts are needed to complete
this story, such as saturation.
Despite its current prominence, the qua-
litative/quantitative distinction is superfi-
cial. It is derivative from the more basic
distinction between two kinds of properties,
intentional and material. All phenomena,
intentional and material, are grounded in
spatio-temporally-locatable state of affairs.
A sound has material properties (loudness
measured in decibels, pitch measured by
frequency, and so on). However, when it
plays a role in some human slice of life, it
has intentional properties (for example, a
warning). Attending to the former is the
work of the natural sciences, while attend-
ing to the latter is the work of psychologists
and other human scientists. Thus, there are
two ways of taking movements, sounds,
brain states and so on.
6 R Harre
Anything of which a human being can
become conscious has this potential duality.
Bodily feelings as much as material objects
are in need of interpretation, as to their
meanings and propriety in the circum-
stances. Wittgenstein should be our guide
on these matters. The meaning of anything
in the domain of human consciousness is
revealed by asking what role it plays in
some human practice. Thus, a stab of fear is
as much a warning as the tolling of a tocsin.
As remarked above, since the 19th cen-
tury material properties of phenomena have
been quantifiable, or at least analogues of
them have been, like the use of the expan-
sion of a column of mercury to establish a
metric of temperature. We have no idea how
semantic, intentional properties of phenom-
ena could be quantified. Neither Lickert
scales nor statistical analyses of populations
of cases make any sense in the domain of
meanings, as we shall see. By eschewing
quantitative forms of representation, we
exclude the material properties of phenom-
ena.
In so doing, we refocus the search for
principles of order from causality and cau-
sal mechanisms to conventions, customs,
habits and practices. This suggests a close
tie between qualitative methods in psychol-
ogy and Wittgensteins psychological inves-
tigations (Wittgenstein, 1952). The meaning
of a material entity is its use in some
practice, and every practice is, in various
ways, subject to normative appraisal. This
ties in with Wittgensteins focus on lan-
guage games, practices in which meanings
are made and managed, and grammars,
representations of the explicit, but more
usually implicit conventions, customs and
local standards of correctness with which
our actions are surrounded.
However, eschewing quantitative con-
cepts for representing psychological phe-
nomena, such as displays of emotion,
patterns of decision making, remembering
and forgetting and so on, should not deprive
us of the power of mathematical thinking.
Mathematics has two main virtues:
1) It allows a managed level of abstraction
to be reached. For example, Aristotle
invented formal logic by using letters to
represent any descriptive sentence
whatever, allowing the logical forms of
different kinds of arguments to be
abstracted and examined for validity.
This virtue carries with it the comple-
mentary danger that abstraction can
eliminate the relevant meanings of the
basic discursive units from which the
pattern was drawn. Thus, every mode
of abstraction also selects some feature
of the original discourse to highlight,
eliminating others. Only truth and fal-
sity of statements were preserved in
this kind of abstraction.
2) A mathematical system has precise
rules for the development of mathema-
tical descriptions of phenomena, obser-
vable and unobservable. This allows for
a running comparison between the
modes of thought, feeling, action and
perception that people actually use and
the idealizations abstracted in the first
stage.
The question is not whether we should
eschew mathematics altogether, but to
which branch of mathematics should we
turn?
The role of mathematics
First a general warning: promiscuous use of
mathematics as a mode of representation
can breach the requirement that psychology
should be the science of meaningful phe-
nomena. We must pay close attention to
which aspect or branch of mathematics we

are using, so that the level at which mean-
ings are still maintained should not be
breached.
The traditional divisions.
Traditionally three branches of mathematics
have been taught and used separately. Re-
cent developments, inaugurated as long ago
as the seventeenth century by Descartes,
have led to a higher order unification of the
traditional Big Three, but for practical pur-
poses it is helpful to look at them as distinct
ways of representing and so of thinking
about phenomena.
Arithmetic : That branch of mathematics
that is concerned with the manipulation of
numbers as such. It includes the familiar
operations of multiplying, taking a root, as
well as more recondite procedures, such as
summing series. In the hands of psycholo-
gists, numbers have been used simply de-
scriptively, for counting and comparing
groups of individuals as in statistics, and
for counting applications of the standard
unit of a metric as in Lickert and other
ordinal scales.
In neither case are these techniques of
much use. Relative sizes of groups are the
raw material of the arithmetical calculations
in statistics. Unfortunately, the almost ubi-
quitous commission of simple fallacies in
drawing conclusions from the results of
these calculations renders the whole busi-
ness worthless. For example, it is a fallacy
to infer an individual propensity from a
statistical analysis of the distribution of a
property in a population.
It is a fallacy to use Fisherian confidence
levels to infer the likelihood of there being a
causal relation between two correlated
properties in the psychological domain.
This presumes a positive answer to a funda-
mental question as to whether there are any
causal relations between intentional proper-
Staking our claim for qualitative psychology 7
ties of psychologically relevant states of
affairs. It is hard to imagine what such
relations might be. That making a promise
is an act of commitment does not entail that
promising causes someone to expect good
things from the promiser. The indexicality
and contextuality of the act if nothing else
ensure its particularity. The beneficiary
must understand the meaning of the action
in the context of the promisers character
and mode of life.
Variations in responses to the same con-
ditions of thought and action are not the
sign of the effect of ceteris paribus condi-
tions on the necessity of a causal law. They
are a sign of the indexicality of the meaning
relations washed out in the statistical pro-
cedure.
All this has been demonstrated repeat-
edly, most recently by Danziger (1990).
Psychology is a strange discipline in many
ways, but the way in which practitioners
have simply ignored these demonstrations
is astonishing.
The instinct that leads many psycholo-
gists now to move to qualitative descrip-
tions of phenomena simply bypasses the
fallacies of statistical analyses, since what-
ever else they may be, they are surely
quantitative. If you avoid statistics then
you avoid the fallacies. Our verdict on this
branch of mathematics must surely be:
Avoid it!
Algebra: abstractions /functions and
what satisfies them : As remarked above,
Aristotle inaugurated the technique of using
letters in representing cognitive processes
as a way to abstract a general pattern of
reasoning exemplified by many concrete
instances. There must have been millions
of occasions on which someone reasoned in
the following pattern: All woolly mam-
moths are dangerous; these creatures are
woolly mammoths, so, my God!!! These
8 R Harre
creatures are dangerous. It was just as well
for us that our ancestor followed this
schema.
Aristotles invention of a logical algebra
allowed him to abstract a common pattern
from innumerable examples of similar cog-
nitive performances. This was the first step
to a formal treatment of cognitive psychol-
ogy, as he studied arguments of these forms
in search of principles of validity, and
identified the fallacies that arose when
they were not properly implemented. The
abstract pattern of our wary mammoth
hunters thoughts could be expressed in a
syllogism in Barbara, which might look like
this:
M a P the life of an individual. Finally, contex-
S a M tuality concerns the role of the material and
S a P social context in determining the meaning
Here is a valid inference pattern exempli-
fied in untold numbers of similar patterns of
particular sentences, about a myriad differ-
ent subject matters, for example, All men
are mortal, all soldiers are men, so all
soldiers are mortal. This pattern of reason-
ing no doubt occasionally crosses the minds
of Presidents and Prime Ministers as they
send their men into action in the search for
mythical treasures in far flung places.
In order to see the limitations to this
algebraic technique as a complete recipe
for cognitive psychology, we need to note
three attributes of actual cognitive pro-
cesses, and of the meanings through which
they proceed (Winograd et al ., 1986). These
attributes have been noted often enough,
though in different ways and using different
descriptive terms. There is indexicality,
historicity and contextuality. We can planes and solids obey certain general
describe them independently, though in
practice they run together in attention to
the uniqueness of the particular case. They
limit the possibilities of understanding ac-
tual human cognition by the Aristotelian
technique of reaching a common level by
abstraction, using the algebraic method.
The phenomenon of indexicality is the
completion of the meaning, lexical or social,
of a human act by taking account of some
fact about the actor or speaker and the
moment of the performance of the action
or the issuing of the utterance. For example
the word I is used to index the content of
an utterance with the spatial location of the
speaker and his or her moral standing, since
I is typically used in acts of commitment
such as promising. The historicity of an act
is the accretion of meaning through the past
uses of a practice both in a society and in
of signs and actions, as episodes unfold.
These features of cognitive and social
practices are evident in phenomena as
diverse as remembering, making decisions,
medical diagnosis, becoming friends and so
on. In so far as abstraction deletes indexi-
cality, historicity and contextuality, so it
endangers the scientific status of research.
Though every planet moves according the
law of inverse squares, each is unique. In so
far as there is planetary science, it is
extraordinarily indexical! Compare the to-
pography of Mars, Earth and Venus, for
example.
Our verdict is cautious: use abstraction
with great care to avoid eliminating the
level at which meaning survives.
Geometry : This branch of mathematics
began as a theoretical analysis of the prin-
ciples of spatial structures. Points, lines,
principles of order, the theorems of Euclid.
Associated with these are rules for the
construction of a huge variety of spatial
structures. The search for principles of

order was not confined to spatial structure,
but even in the ancient world extended into
the principles of order for meaningful dis-
course, grammar. Physics extended the do-
main of order, including causal laws as one
category of such principles, though this has
been almost wholly abandoned in favour of
the use of symmetry principles.
One of the major criticisms of traditional
experimental psychology was the almost
complete neglect of the structures of the
episodes in which psychological phenom-
ena were generated. This was particularly
obvious in the case of social psychology in a
host of notoriously bad studies, which
should perhaps remain anonymous! For
example aggression was studied by looking
at the conditions under which a person
became aggressive, without any detailed
study of the unfolding of the episodes
in which aggressive acts occurred, particu-
larly with respect to the performances of the
other people involved. Nor was any account
taken of the aftermath of an outburst
of anger, its management, and its final
dying away. Structure and movement
must find a place in psychology. How might
we represent the pattern of thought
and feeling that is manifested in movement.
We are too sophisticated to imagine any-
thing like mental forces pushing people
along as if they were canoeists paddling in
a cross current. Thoughts and feelings are
manifested in movement, but how might
this be represented perspicuously? Geome-
try offers us the technique of vector repre-
sentations.
Some early and clever uses of vectors in
social psychology can be found in the works
of Kurt Lewin (1951), with his concept of
the krieglandschaft. The power of the war
landscape could be represented in a net-
work of vectors expressing the perceived
threat or danger. A vector expresses two
Staking our claim for qualitative psychology 9
aspects of a phenomenon, its magnitude
and its direction. For example, a northerly
wind at 50 kph can be represented by an
arrow half the length of the arrow represent-
ing a wind of 100 kph. Threats in trench
warfare have a direction, that from the
enemy guns to the advancing soldier, and
a magnitude, how dangerous is the threat.
The movements of soldiers in no mans
land can be explained by representing their
beliefs about the texture of threat as vectors.
More recently, Goffman used similar con-
cept to analyze the fears of people walking
through an urban landscape (Goffman,
1972).
The verdict is encouraging: the use of
vectorial thinking is a useful tool, and to be
encouraged.
Though we can find a place for certain
kinds of mathematical methods in a scien-
tific psychology, the respectability of our
discipline as science does not depend on
the use of formal techniques of representa-
tion. Informal and qualitative systems of
concepts have as much right to be used in a
disciplined methodology as the formal con-
cepts of algebra (abstraction) and geometry
(structure).
Part two: other disciplinary matrices
Grammar
The rule metaphor, together with such
notions as schemata and scripts, are
concepts in the same arena. They enable
us to represent structure and movement,
unfolding and so on. We must exercise the
some caution in eschewing the temptation
to insert rules and meanings into the heads
of actors as if they were representations of
hidden causal mechanisms.
10 R Harre
In this part of the paper I will be sketch-
ing some extensions of the concept of a
grammar, originally drawn from the later
philosophy of Wittgenstein (1952: 143 /241)
A grammar, in the extended sense given to
the word by Wittgenstein, is a list of rules
apposite for some practice or set of prac-
tices, such as speaking intelligibly, conduct-
ing a trial in a courtroom, playing a game,
shopping, getting dressed, and so on. Some
grammars are sets of explicit instructions,
followed consciously by an actor. Some
grammars are devices by which a com-
mentator can express the implicit norms of
a practice, that exist, in reality, only as
learned habits and skills. Wittgenstein was
very careful to point out that it is a serious
mistake to presume that regular and accoun-
table activities that seem to involve implicit
norms are brought about by unconscious
versions of explicit rule following. There
has been a tendency to insert scripts into
the heads of actors as if they were uncon-
sciously followed in performing some
everyday task correctly. Adopting Wittgen-
steins terminology should bring with it his
caution against this tendency, a tendency
which leads to a pernicious mentalism. The
alternative is not materialism, but the reali-
zation that most of our psychological lives
are lived in the actual or potential presence
of others.
Taking the population at large we can
identify FOUR grammars (principles of dis-
cursive order) that seem to animate the way
people talk about and attempt to explain
what goes on in their lives. At the same time
these are also some of the ways by means of
which people live their lives and manage
the essential cognitive tasks of the everyday.
I want to emphasize how natural it is to use
the four grammars both to live and think
about living. These grammars, I believe, are
involved in both discourse and metadis-
course. One of the current metadiscourses is
the cluster of rather diverse discourse prac-
tices we call psychology.
One possible way of individuating gram-
mars is to classify them by reference to the
basic kind of entities that their use presup-
poses. In tabular form, and smoothing over
the fuzzy boundaries between them, we
seem to have the following:
1) Soul grammar: words like sin, after
life and so on. This grammar is still in
use by a great many people, and pre-
supposes an entity-like core that con-
stitutes the real person.
2) Person grammar: words like I, guilt,
responsibility, pain and so on. This
grammar is the most widely used and
also the most under threat from gram-
mars having their original role in the
natural sciences. The domain of this
grammar is the world of persons, em-
bodied centres of consciousness, cap-
able of thought, feeling and action.
People are distinguished from all other
organic beings by their linguistic and
other symbolic capacities, that far ex-
ceed the corresponding capacities of
other minded beings, like dolphins
and chimpanzees.
3) Organism grammar: words like heart,
gene pool and so on. The ontological
unit is the human being, qua member of
the species homo sapiens . To think of a
human being as an organism is to
detach that being from its cultural/
historical matrix, except in so far as
this aspect can be claimed to be genetic
in origin.
4) Molecular grammar: words like free
radicals, and so on. Molecules are the
units of the chemical sciences. Many of
the concepts of the organism grammar
have versions which include concepts

from the molecular grammar. This
raises questions about reductionism
that are outside the scope of this paper.
1 and 2 tend to discursive modes of expres-
sion, while 3 and 4 tend to formal modes of
expression, using explicitly defined con-
cepts usually with some metrical aspect.
Only three of these grammars are in use as
principles of order in contemporary psy-
chology, and there is a tendency to reduce
them to two, namely 3 and 4. The soul
grammar has not been in use in academic
psychology for at least a century. The
obvious objection to the pursuit of the
reduction project is simple: the phenomena
with which psychology purports to deal are
described in a vocabulary that identifies
these phenomena independently of the
material description of the bearer of the
phenomenon. Wittgenstein was very good
at pointing out that such cognitive skills
as reading have been identifiable for at
least three thousand years without benefit
of any concepts from the organic or
molecular grammars. A recent book by
Papineau (2002) spells out this point yet
again.
Where does the reductive impulse come
from? A nave idea of what constitutes a
scientific discipline is part of it. Since only
material properties are genuinely metrical,
anyone who thinks that to be scientific is to
use numbers, would tend to look on me-
trical concepts as the only genuinely scien-
tific ones. There is the medicalization of
morality, very noticeable in the USA where
ritalin is routinely used to maintain disci-
pline in school. There are some aggressive
atheists who think that preserving persons
is tantamount to re-instituting the soul
grammar. It is only too painfully evident
that the Nobel Prize for achievements
in one of the physical sciences is no
Staking our claim for qualitative psychology 11
guarantee against talking nonsense on hu-
man affairs.
Moreover, by abandoning the Person
grammar we abandon psychology, since
the phenomena are defined as what people
think, feel and do.
Part three: joining the winners: melding
qualitative methods with neuroscience
Neuroscience is a powerful and burgeoning
discipline. It has obvious connections with
psychology. Can we find a way of maintain-
ing the Person or P-grammar, and hence
maintaining the topics to be inquired into as
psychological and the methods as meaning
and rule oriented, and at the same time
linking it non-reductively to the material O-
and M-grammars?
The art of science is the creation of the
potent metaphor or model. Here is one
proposal: the task/tool metaphor. Cognitive
Tasks are described and sometimes mana-
ged in discourses shaped by the P-grammar.
For example, each year I have the job of
remembering my wifes birthday. One way
to do this is to use the resources of my brain,
in short the hippocampus as a threefold
neural net, linked to the entorhinal cortex
and so on (McCleod et al ., 1998). Alterna-
tively, I can make a note of the date in my
diary. That too is a material cognitive tool.
There are various Material Tools I can use to
carry out cognitive tasks. Tools divorced
from their role in human practices and
considered only as material things are de-
scribable in the O- and M-grammars. How-
ever, such material things are describable as
tools only when taken up into in the P-
grammar. Similarly, a hand is just a bundle
of bones and tendons considered in its
materiality. However, when it is being
used to sign a document promising to
12 R Harre
hand over the kingdom to the ruler of a
neighbouring duchy it is a tool. A bit of
wood attached to a sheet of steel becomes a
tool, a spade, when it is put to use in the
personal project of digging the cabbage
patch.
The task/tool metaphor provides a natural
and very precisely defined link between
qualitative psychology with its attention to
meanings in cognitive tasks and neuropsy-
chology, with its attention to the material
properties of cognitive tools. Furthermore, it
is a non-reductive relation since the tool-
hood of a palmtop computer or the hippo-
campus is a concept that makes sense only
in the domain of concepts for meaningful
and normatively constrained human action,
the P-grammar.
Neuroscience and discursive psychology
using qualitative methodology are natural
partners. Each provides problems for the
other to solve. What bit of the brain is used
to perform this task, say choosing a font for
a business card? What task is this bit of the
brain used for, say the right temporal lobe?
We could call the fruitful interaction be-
tween discursive psychology as the study of
human practices by the use of predomi-
nantly qualitative methods and neuropsy-
chology as the study of the organic tools by
means of which people carry out these
practices hybrid psychology.
The project of a hybrid psychology
What would a research program built on
these principles look like? Here is a brief
sketch of the methodology set out in detail
in Harre (2002).
Step one.
a) Analysis of the performance of some
cognitive practice such as remember-
ing, classifying, reasoning or calcu- defined in the P-grammar.
lating, from initial situation to
completion.
b) This yields a catalogue of meanings and
standards of correctness and propriety.
c) Each can be expressed as a set of rules,
constitutive and regulative.
Commentary: This step seems to have
been adequately founded in the develop-
ments of discursive psychology in
which qualitative methods play an essential
part.
Step two.
Make a formal analysis of the sets of rules
which must be realized in a computational
model of the process. Using the principle of
Multiple Realizability (the same program
can be run on all sorts of different material
devices) make a conjecture as to the neural
structures and processes needed to run a
suitable version of the above computational
model.
Commentary: Expert systems and the like
are poor models of the brain processes
which might realize them. However, some
faith has been revived in cognitive science,
though not yet fully restored! PDP or con-
nectionist machines can perform the same
computational tasks as von Neumann ma-
chines (the standard computational archi-
tecture, of central processing unit, satellite
memory stores and so on) but do not require
any of the implausible architectural as-
sumptions of the Symbol System hypoth-
esis, such as unique one for one
representations of elementary units of
knowledge.
Step three.
Use the connectionist working model as a
guide to hypotheses about the workings of
the brain as the Person carries out the tasks
Commentary: The beauty of the hybrid
psychology proposal is that the brain is

taken up into the P-grammar where it is
interpreted as a system of tools. Any at-
tempt to make the assimilation in the con-
trary direction deletes the concept of a
person since none of the crucial moral
concepts definitive of personhood have
analogues in the O- and M-grammars. A
behavioural science without the Person is
not a psychology at all.
Opening out the research domain
Having identified and described a practice
and having used the task/tool metaphor to
pose research questions to our neuroscience
friends, we need to open up another range
of questions. How have these practices
come to be? What are their historical and
cultural origins? At this point discursive
psychology joins forces with cultural and
historical psychology (Stearns, 1994) and
with psychologically oriented anthropology
(Wierzbicka, 1999). In each of these fields of
research, qualitative methods are required,
since the questions to be answered are
concerned with meanings and local rules
of correctness and propriety.
However, the historicity of human prac-
tices is as much a feature of psychology as a
human practice, as it is of any other activity
that people engage in. In the twentieth
century we had two main ways of under-
standing human thinking, feeling and acting
to choose from: the behavioral and the
Freudian. Though the project of hybrid
psychology, the fruitful marriage of discur-
sive psychology with its emphasis on mean-
ings and rules, with neuropsychology, with
its emphasis on mechanisms of cognition, is
presented here as a step beyond the para-
digms of the twentieth century, it is itself
historically located in the twenty first cen-
tury, in which it will surely become the
dominant model for psychology. Eschewing
the more extravagant excesses of post-mod-
ernism, it is a project that has close histor-
Staking our claim for qualitative psychology 13
ical and cultural links with the movement
to transcend the modernist aim of a once-
for-all science of human life, without slip-
ping back into scientism of the past.
Though I cannot imagine the historical
transformations from which the successor
to hybrid psychology will emerge, that there
will be a successor is undeniable. Yet, just
as Behaviourism and the Freudian take on
the sources of our thoughts, actions and
feelings, have each shown us something
about ourselves, so too will the historian
of the future, looking back on the era in
which qualitative methods took over from
the crude scientism of statistically pre-
sented psychological experiments, see its
peculiar contributions.
Conclusion
Ironically, the objection that qualitative
methods are not scientific, is rebutted not
only by the fact that they meet the demands
of the methodology of the natural sciences
more truly than do the methods of main-
stream quantitative methodologies, but by
the fact that they are essential to neu-
roscience! The study of the brain is of
relevance to psychology only in so far as
people use their bodily organs as tools for
various human tasks. Since many of the
tasks involve the management of meanings
within normative frameworks neuropsy-
chology could not exist without the meth-
ods by which the tasks of everyday life are
described and analysed. And that means
qualitative methods.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Brendan Gough and Ian
Parker for their invaluable advice in the
preparation of this paper.
14 R Harre

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About the author

RO M HA RRE is Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford and teaches in Washington DC at
both Georgetown and American Universities. His current interests include developing the
relation between discursive psychology and neuroscience, further developments of social
constructionism, avoiding the accusations of relativism, and continuing his long standing
interest in the interpretation of recent physics.