4 hours ago, DonAthos said:
But then, I’m not arguing that “psychology should be part of philosophy”: I am arguing nothing with respect to psychology, except that psychology (as all special science) does not stand apart from philosophy, but it is a narrower and more specialized focus.
There is an interesting quote from Peikoff, 1991:
_Ayn Rand regarded her theory of concepts as proved, but not as completed. There are, she thought, important similarities between concepts and mathematics still to be identified; and there is much to be learned about man’s mind by a proper study of man’s brain and nervous system. In her last years, Miss Rand was interested in following up on these ideas—in relating the field of conceptualization to two others: higher mathematics and neurology. Her ultimate goal was to _ integrate in one theory the branch of philosophy that studies man’s cognitive faculty with the science that reveals its essential method and the science that studies its physical organs.
This is pretty much the current program of today’s field, Cognitive Science. It’s also important to realize that Rand developed her ideas at a time when linguistic analysis in philosophy and behaviorism in psychology were dominate. But the science behind the operation of sense organs, childhood development, etc. played a large role in helping her to develop the ideas in ITOE.
Rand also says of Aesthetics:
The esthetic principles which apply to all art, regardless of an individual artist’s philosophy, and which must guide an objective evaluation . . . are defined by the science of esthetics —a task at which modern philosophy has failed dismally.
A “science of aesthetics” would be every bit as comprehensive as the "science of epistemology " as developed in the ITOE. She considers epistemology to be a science (and she’s not just using the term “science” metaphorically):
_ Epistemology is a science devoted to the discovery of the proper methods of acquiring and validating knowledge. _
There would also be a significant overlap and interdependency between the sciences of epistemology and aesthetics - they are not mutually exclusive.