Conceptual engineering and operationalism in psychology

Abstract

This paper applies conceptual engineering to deal with four objections that have been levelled against operationalism in psychology. These objections are: (i) operationalism leads to harmful proliferation of concepts, (ii) operationalism goes hand-in-hand with untenable antirealism, (iii) operationalism leads to arbitrariness in scientific concept formation, and (iv) operationalism is incompatible with the usual conception of scientific measurement. Relying on a formulation of three principles of conceptual engineering, I will argue that there is a useful form of operationalism that does not fall prey to these four objections.