Theoretical Psychology and the Principle of Universal Evolutionism (Report at the Conference)

Th e presentation outlines two levels of psychological theories: Th eories of the fi rst level explain certain types of behavior by means of individual peculiarities; and theories of the second level, used implicitly, rarely become the subject of an explicit analysis. Th ese theories of the second level may answer the question of how living things are organized and why the mind is organized in certain ways and not others, they allow us to understand the general principles, provide us with philosophical answers to the question of why a human is what it is and allow us to organize specifi c psychological research. Th eoretical psychology can be defi ned as a set of theories of the second level. Th e concept of theoretical psychology denotes that both the formation of theories and their verifi cation may relate explicitly to a higher level of conception. Th e idea of human as a creature that has risen in the course of global evolution and the idea of mind as a result of self-organization of the interaction between cultural and biological forces, require a diff erent structure of psychological science.