Joseph F. Rychlak

This term refers to Rychlak's argument that psychology with ecological validity should be directed toward issues that are relevant to our lives.

[2] After his graduate degree, Rychlak joined Douglas W. Bray's 25-year Management Progress Study as a personal interviewer.

[3] This longitudinal study helped him design a "life themes" scoring system that enabled them to numerically analyze the information he received from his interviews.

The scoring system and subsequent data are detailed in his book, Personality and Lifestyle of Young Male Managers: A Logical Learning Theory Analysis.

[3] It was when Rychlak was a student of George Kelly at Ohio State University that he felt drawn to the views of Immanuel Kant.

[3] Teleology, in which events take place for the sake of an end goal, is what led Rychlak to his logical learning theory (LLT).

This meant that he thought that all human actions were self-directed through the four causes - material, formal, efficient, and final causes - and not through mechanistic or deterministic causes.

Rychlak stated that artificial intelligence cannot exhibit such cognitive processes, nor can they predicate meanings like a person can or apply reasoning to rules.

Where a psychologist can modify their view and treatment of an individual, Rychlak insists that the judicial system looks at full picture of human behavior, employing Aristotle's four causes.