ReviewFrontiers in psychology2024
Epistemic circularity and measurement validity in quantitative psychology: insights from Fechner's psychophysics.
Review in Frontiers in psychology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Measurement in the Ultimatum and Dictator Games: Construct validity, standardization and the problem of coordination.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2026Article
- Introducing the Ottawa Clinical Fear of Recurrence-Self-Report; A New Assessment Tool for Clinical Fear of Cancer Recurrence.Psycho-oncology · 2026Article
- Statistics is not measurement: The inbuilt semantics of psychometric scales and language-based models obscures crucial epistemic differences.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Psychology's Questionable Research Fundamentals (QRFs): Key problems in quantitative psychology and psychological measurement beyond Questionable Research Practices (QRPs).Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
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Abstract
The validity of psychological measurement is crucially connected to a peculiar form of epistemic circularity. This circularity can be a threat when there are no independent ways to assess whether a certain procedure is actually measuring the intended target of measurement. This paper focuses on how Fechner addressed the measurement circularity that emerged in his psychophysical research. First, I show that Fechner's approach to the problem of circular measurement involved a core idealizing assumption of a shared human physiology. Second, I assess Fechner's approach to this issue against the backdrop of his own epistemology of measurement and the measurement context of his time. Third, I claim that, from a coherentist and historically-situated perspective, Fechner's quantification can be regarded as a first successful step of a longer-term quantification process. To conclude, I draw from these insights some general epistemological reflections that are relevant to current quantitative psychology.
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