Field of Psychology is restricted to humans where as the field of philosophy can address anything that is in the universe. In this sense, psychology is a subset of philosophy. But both psychology and philosophy (and science as well) are dependent on five human senses for the acquisition of knowledge. Spirituality uses extra sensory perception for the acquisition of knowledge. So the knowledge acquired by this method supersedes both philosophy and psychology as well as science. Following references provide an example.

"Sri Ramakrisha The Great Master" by Swami Saradananda, (tr.) Swami Jagadananda.

"The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna." by Mahendranath Gupta, (tr.) Swami Nikhilananda.

Above books available across the world at Vedanta Society bookstores.

http://www.vedanta.org/wiv/links/centers.html

http://www.chennaimath.org/istore/product/sri-ramakrishna-the-great-master/

http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Sri-Ramakrishna-Abridged-Edition/dp/0911206027

Dear Vikram Zaveri

"Spiritual development" (as it is meaningful at all) refers to continuing and continuous personal development (betterment) -- nothing super natural (like extra sensory perception) in this definition.  Other definitions are simply unintelligible.  In  the interest of rationality (and of decency), I can submit that there is a prescribed path for personal 'spiritual' development which is entirely rational, and realistic (based in the actual, real world): it can be argued (and HAS been argued) that this is the real CORE OF BUDDHISM -- the actual interpret-able meaning of ALL the words of the historical Buddha.  Having read all of these words (but for the book of special instructions just for monks), I can testify to this and HAVE. See the "Core Buddhism" Project: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Core-Buddhism

[ Show me someone who [ supposedly considers and ] "thinks of everything", and still has something in his/her mind, and I will show you someone who understands nothing.  The essence (nature) of anything, at the core, IS the essence (nature) we give it, and that should be empty -- basically, to have/show no bias.  The inherent nature of every thing (concrete, or at whatever conceptual level 'IT' is) is emptiness (

Dear Brad Jesness

Buddha's followers and their doctrin of nothingness and emptiness was defeated by Sankaracharya and therefore Buddhism which is an offshoot of Hinduism could not servive in India. Sankaracharya pointed out that the doctrin of emptiness and nothingness is no where to be found in Vedas and Upanishads which consistently upholds the existence of all pervasive infinite Brahman. Sankaracharya asserted this in his Mahavakya "Brahma satya jagat mithya." meaning Brahman alone is real, the world is an illusion. So the reality is based on Brahman and not on emptiness or nothingness. Universe arising from nothingness is as absurd an idea. The Brahman is also described as the sound potency Om. In the ultimate sense, Brahman could not be described but experienced. Spiritual development in Hinduism means experiencing this Brahman and uniting with it. Hinduism recognises both dvaita (dualistic) and advaita (non-dualistic) modes of experiencing Brahman. In advaita mode the individual soul dissolves in the all pervasive brahman and does not maintain his separate existence but in dualistic mode the individual soul experiences Brahman while maintaing his separate existence. This is possible through the extra sensory perception. Sri Ramakrishna experienced both these modes. Buddhism rejects the dualistic mode of worship and supports atheism.

Dear Vikram Zaveri

I agree basically agree with a good part of your last sentence : Buddhism rejects dualisms (

Dear Vikram Zaveri,

emptiness =/= nothingness.

"“Emptiness” is a central teaching of all Buddhism, but its true meaning is often misunderstood. If we are ever to embrace Buddhism properly into the West, we need to be clear about emptiness, since a wrong understanding of its meaning can be confusing, even harmful. The third century Indian Buddhist master Nagarjuna taught, “Emptiness wrongly grasped is like picking up a poisonous snake by the wrong end.” In other words, we will be bitten!

Emptiness is not complete nothingness; it doesn’t mean that nothing exists at all. This would be a nihilistic view contrary to common sense..."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lewis-richmond/emptiness-most-misunderstood-word-in-buddhism_b_2769189.html

Emptiness: The Most Misunderstood Word in Buddhism

Because things have gotten off on just one track, I would hope to get back to the perhaps clearer issue AND to the overall issue, so I will repeat the basic question:

Do philosophers sub-serve psychologists and are they dependent on psychologists' views?

[ Note: the issue is not about what distinction philosophy and psychology have in their basic definitions, but IN PRACTICE: how much does one depend on (and/or is limited by) the OTHER.   Let's try to address this matter (which seems very important to me). ] 

What I am truly "driving at" is how did we get in the following MESS ? :

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Re_In_what_sense_if_any_can_psychology_be_a_science#view=58bf1513f7b67ed4a21dba92 

WHEN, available to us is:  the top post of https://www.researchgate.net/post/Re_In_what_sense_if_any_can_psychology_be_a_science (a great foundational rationale for human ethology -- and an ethogram)

[ Please address responses directly related to the overall question via salutation "Dear Brad Jesness" OR otherwise indicate that your intent is to try to answer the whole question. ]

I think in example-mode, and would like to give examples:

1) John Searle, a contemporary philosopher, proposed a thought experiment "Chinese Room".

http://www.iep.utm.edu/chineser/

This has attracted a lot of attention from computer-scientists, neuroscientists, physicists, etc..

2) Benjamin Libet, a late pioneering neuroscientist and the first recipient of the Virtual Nobel Prize in Psychology, did experiments that suggested "free will" is an illusion.

This attacts the attention from all walks (including scientisits) of life, e.g.,

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/science/02free.html

3) Sir Roger Penrose, a mathematical physicist who shared Wolf prize with Stephen Hawking, has "written books on the connection between fundamental physics and human (or animal) consciousness. In The Emperor's New Mind (1989), he argues that known laws of physics are inadequate to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose#Physics_and_consciousness

4) Christof Koch, an eminent neuroscientist, previously a professor at CalTech, used to be a proponent of the idea of consciousness emerging out of complex nervous networks, an idea shared among naive realists.

But in January 2014, he published "Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist" :

http://www.skepdic.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/christof_koch_consciousness.pdf

On the third page of Chapter 8 [by scrolling down about 60% into the book],

"I used to be a proponent of the idea of consciousness emerging out of complex nervous networks. Just read my earlier Quest. But over the years, my thinking has changed. Subjectivity is too radically different from anything physical for it to be an emergent phenomenon. A kind of blue is fundamentally different from electrical activity in the cone photoreceptors of the eyes, even though I’m perfectly cognizant that the latter is necessary for the former. One is intrinsic to my brain and can’t be inferred from the outside, whereas the other has objective properties that can be accessed by an external observer. The phenomenal hails from a different kingdom than the physical and is subject to different laws. I see no way for the divide between unconscious and conscious creatures to be bridged by more neurons."

"...This point of view does come with a metaphysical cost many are unwilling to pay—the admission that experience, the interior perspective of a functioning brain, is something fundamentally different from the material thing causing it and that it can never be fully reduced to physical properties of the brain ...

I believe that consciousness is a fundamental, an elementary, property of living matter. It can’t be derived from anything else; it is a simple substance, in Leibniz’s words."

@Yunsong Huang:

I think most western savants like Roger Penrose and Freud and all physicists and cosmologists are very much confused about consciousness and the origin of the universe. Non of what they propse makes any sense. Their teachings are reflected in your comments like,

"I used to be a proponent of the idea of consciousness emerging out of complex nervous networks."

"I believe that consciousness is a fundamental, an elementary, property of living matter "

" I see no way for the divide between unconscious and conscious creatures to be bridged by more neurons."

Then we have the cosmologists who talk about zero point energy, planck energy, dark energy and so on... and none are able to say anything about the origin of energy. Some cosmologists can go as far as the Inflaton from which their creation begins. But no one has any idea where Inflaton comes from. It is just there. Recently some proposed Higgs field to be Inflaton. In addition to all this nonsense they keep talking about theory of everything, but their everything does not include consciousness. This only shows that they are groping in darkness.

What these people are searching for has already been discovered by the great Gurus of India like Krishna, Sankaracharya, Ramakrishna, Raman Maharshi and many others. They have verified their finding by first hand experience of reality. They have described this reality as Brahman which is defined as Sat Chit Ananada. When translated it means "Existence Knowledge Bliss" This Brahman is of the nature of pure consciousness (Spirit) and is all pervasive infinite, indivisible and perfectly motionless. This is the only field that can replace the Inflaton of the Big Bang theory from which the entire universe emerge. When this motionless Brahman begins to move, it becomes energy. This is the birth of energy. All fundamental particles of physics emerge from Brahman the unmanifest. I have listed some of the articles for further details.

Similarly western psychologists and scientists are also groping in darkness with respect to mind and its function. Most of them don't think that mind is a form of matter because scientists don't know what kind of matter the mind is made up of. Following is what I propose as to functioning of the mind.

Consciousness and unconsciousness are states of the mind. If you take mind as a bulb, and light and darkness as the consciousness and unconsciousness, then it becomes easy to understand that there is a power like electricity that lights the bulb when turned on. This power that lights up the mind is the Spirit. When the mind detaches from the Spirit, it becomes unconscious. When you look at the eyes of a new born child you can feel this Spirit, it is pure life. There is very little mind there, virtually no intelligence, no wisdom, just pure life. This spirit is capable of growing a mind for itself just like the body. Materials of the body are known to science, but the materials of the mind are not known to science. Materials of the mind also come from the food that the person eats. Every food eaten has an effect on the mind. The extreme examples are the drugs and alcohol.What is this subtle material that comes out of the food and cretaes the mind is not known to science. If a person stops eating food for few days, his mind will begin to decay. Man identifies himself with his mind and ego. Ego is another outgrowth on the Spirit. So when a man says "I", he means his body, mind and his ego. Most men cannot distinguish between their mind and the spirit. So the man operates with his mind. The man is verily what his mind is. But the mind is ever changing phenomenon. It is subject to growth and decay. So when the mind dies, we say that the man is dead. But what about the Spirit behind? Does it die? Most of the men go through the life without wasting much time on such questions. But some men, instead of looking outward, they look inward (evolution of third eye necessary) at their own Spirit and discover some truths about their own spirit and then tell them to others. One such truth is that their Spirit is not localized or restricted to their own body and the mind, but is all pervasive (Brahman) and supporting everything living and non living in the universe. It is the ego that gives a sense of separation from the rest of the universe. So when this ego dies the infinitude of the Spirit is realized. This is easy said then done. Such realization does not occur in one life time. Man has to go through repeated cycles of birth and death before he can acquire such knowledge. So the theory of rebirth is fundamental to such understanding.

Experience of presence of Brahman (God) is accompanied by ecstasy which far surpasses the experience of orgasm. Such experiences are qual in nature. Therefore scientific proof that a person has experienced orgasm or that a person has experienced Brahman cannot be given.

https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=21109

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Big-Bang-Assumptions-Problems/dp/1613245777/ref=sr_1_5?

s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333360764&sr=1-5

Chapter Consciousness and energy

Article Periodic quantum gravity and cosmology

One correction, Vikram, the quoted are not my comments, rather, are those of Cristopf Koch, from his recent book.

@Vikram Zaveri,  Buddhists do experience oneness, togetherness, all-connectedness, or the void, no-self (anatta), which is pure ecstasy.  Besides Buddhists, I believe other sects of other religions also record variations of this experience. So, nothing needs advertisement here.

We just don't call it Brahma, because there's lot of cultural/religious baggage associated with this notion. In Buddhism we call it something else, because there's specific mechanism it has a role in playing.  This is what Zen Buddhists are supposed to be enlightened about.

@David Taffel, to add to that, 

Carl Jung, who broke up with Freud, "influenced one philosophical interpretation (not the science) of quantum physics with the concept of synchronicity regarding some events as non-causal. That idea influenced Wolfgang Pauli (with whom he developed the notion of unus mundus in connection with the notion of nonlocality) and some other physicists."

Carl Jung coined a term "collective unconscious", referring to "structures of the unconscious mind which are shared among beings of the same species."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious

BTW, Buddhism studies (aided by first-hand experiments) the structure of mind.

@Yunsong Huang:

I agree with you.

A popular misconception is that science advances under the assumption of materialism, and the success of science in turn corroborates materialism.  This misconception is evident in much of the philosophy / psychology discussion.

I think science neither proves nor disproves materialism, and science can advance merrily without the assumption of materialism.  The core of science is about discovering regularities, which last a certain amount of time, and whose corollaries can be verified by experiments, repeatedly. 

Concerning what is ontologically the most fundamental?  Is it matter (or quantum field, quantum vacuum, vibrating strings, discrete space-time bricks, ...), or is it Spirit?  Science doesn't say, and science cannot say, because this concerns metaphysics, instead of physics.

An idealistic model would be perfectly able to formulate the scientific practice.

What's ontologically primary is a stupendous number of state machines. Each state machine contains a stupendous number of discrete states. One state machine corresponds to one sentient being, like a person, a dog, a bird, a worm, or an amoeba.

There is no external, objective, and absolute reality. No whatsoever. This is a key message of the theories of relativity (saying, space-time is relative) and the quantum mechanics (saying, matter is relative). What appears objective, is because of the statistics of a large number of correlated state machines. [Note, those state machines, because of varying degrees of correlation, are clustered into different realms.] What appears objective, is only a virtual reality (where the underpinning state variables are those of the correlated state machines); what appears objective, is an illusion, a dream.

You've probably never heard of the terminology of such a theory. Well, let me translate.

State variables: seeds

State machines: Tathāgatagarbha, or Alaya-vijnana (the storehouse consciousness), etc.

To achieve complete awakening, knowing utterly everything there is ever to know, is the result of 'revolution of the seeds', is to achieve Buddhahood. The practice of seeds-defilement and seeds-revolution, is the path leading to Buddhahood.

A couple of things to add.

1) Virtual reality does follow apparent 'rules' (the so-called 'physical rules'), and as such, it shows regularities. However, on a more fundamental level, those 'rules' are merely virtual, and therefore can be bent. This is exhibited by the so-called 'mystic power', like Jesus walking on water, Buddha levitating across a river, etc.

2) State-machines and state-variables are abstract; they are not solid stuff like a computer. What I describe is certainly beyond the words. The words are like a finger, pointing to the Moon (which is a famous analogy in Zen Buddhism).

NATURE news

"Physicists bid farewell to reality?

Quantum mechanics just got even stranger."

by Philip Ball

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070416/full/news070416-9.html

[An experiment] has convinced Zeilinger that "we have to give up the idea of realism to a far greater extent than most physicists believe today."

... This doesn't rule out all possible non-local realistic models, but it does exclude an important subset of them. Specifically, it shows that if you have a group of photons that all have independent polarizations, then you can't ascribe specific polarizations to each. It's rather like saying that you know there are particular numbers of blue, white and silver cars in a car park — but it is meaningless even to imagine saying which ones are which.