Special Issue “Exploring Human Subjectivity“

“Subjectivity” has traditionally been opposed to “objectivity” in science and considered something to be avoided to reach true and valid knowledge, free of potentially misleading personal values and assumptions. However, a growing body of informed critique from fields of knowledge such as the Philosophy of Science among others, has been deconstructing the potentially dangerous notion that there can be such a thing as totally sound knowledge, completely free of values and subjective assumptions. This deconstruction and the consequent need for alternative reconstructions is especially relevant in psychology, where almost every knowledge claim is based on the study of human meaning making processes that are by definition subjective.

The rigidly dichotomous construction of knowledge as either “objective” (i.e., sound) or “subjective” (i.e., unsound) has led psychology to some relevant dead ends. One of them is the so called “replication crisis” and the misuse and excessive dependence on inferential statistics. Another one is the relatively lesser visibility of alternatives that address the study of human subjectivity not as something to be eliminated but as a challenge to be overcome.

The goal of this Research Topic is to increase the visibility and dissemination of contributions that open possibilities for studying human subjectivity in scientifically rigorous and promising ways. Among them, advances in the psychological assessment of personal construct systems, computational linguistic-based methods, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, New Statistics, Fuzzy Logic and Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, are welcome.

Keywords: Subjectivity, Linguistics, Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Communality, Neuropsychology