You will no doubt have noticed that Thomas Nadelhoffer’s article on free will draws a lot on philosophy — and that it includes long, unfamiliar, philosophical words like ‘compatibilism’. Philosophy is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence. At first glance that looks nothing like psychology, so why is philosophy here and complicating your lives in a psychology magazine?
Actually, psychology and philosophy have a lot in common and frequently draw on one another. Both disciplines are concerned with understanding human nature, so we try to address many of the same questions. Issues like nature– nurture and free will–determinism were debated for centuries by philosophers before psychology emerged as a distinct subject. During the twentieth century, however, psychology brought the application of the scientific method to these questions, providing philosophers with rich evidence to draw on.
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