Jan Smedslund (1999) made an attempt to show that (memory) psychology is ps
eudo-empirical because the laws formulated on the basis of experiments are
only apparently empirical. In reality, he claims, the laws are necessarily
true because they follow from presuppositions included in the applied conce
pts. He stated that in order to understand psychological phenomena, it is s
ufficient to work in an armchair, there is no need to enrich our empirical
knowledge because the basic insights are logical in nature. Smedslund suppo
rted his position by demonstrating that several findings from memory psycho
logy logically follow from a small number of axioms in his 'psychologic', a
nd these axioms are, in his view, consensually true. Therefore, psychologic
al experiments cannot prove or falsify the predictions. In fact, the experi
ments only test the realization of the rather uninteresting auxiliary hypot
heses. In his view, real empirical predictions are only possible in those c
ases when psychological variables are linked to physical or biological vari
ables, e.g., brain structures. We do not share his position, and in the fol
lowing, we want to develop our arguments.