Psychology

[pljames]

I have neither a degree or phd in Psychology, but I love it. Why is they can put a man on the moon, transplant a heart, but they cannot they cannot figure out the mind and all it intricacies? pljames

[MulderMan]

the psychology of the mind is not a "physical" thing though, that could be psysicaly studied - if you get what i mean.

[kriminal99]

Psychology is for the most part an ill-concieved misapplication of the ideas that allowed people to succesfully investigate the classical sciences... The difference for the most part being the lack of ability to directly test the outcome of every question they might want to answer.

 

The truth is there is plenty of information contained in common experience to answer any (non-physical) question about the human mind... but you have to know what to do with it.

[Void]

...The difference for the most part being the lack of ability to directly test the outcome of every question they might want to answer.

 

 

I disagree. You can directly measure several "outcomes" in psychology. I'll list them for you:

 

Galvonic Skin Response

Eye tracking

Reaction time

Heart Rate

Hormone levels

Hours of sleep

Non-verbal cues

Language

 

Shall I go on?

 

You can't measure MENTAL phenomena directly BUT you can measure BEHAVIOR directly. Remember behaviorism? Thus, we often infer mental process from behavioral action.

 

For example, if I want to know how people solve math problems, I obviously can't observe their MENTAL calculation, but I can ASK them to WRITE OUT the steps they take in solving the problem.

 

And I say to the skeptic, does the difference really matter in this case?

 

It might, if you believe that the aid of representing something on paper has an effect on solving the problem (which I suspect for complex problems it might).

 

In addition, it is quite possible to mis-apply scientific methods within any field of science.

[Mokele]

You can't measure MENTAL phenomena directly

 

Well, you kind of can, via fMRIs, PET scans and the like. With those you can measure what parts of the brain are activated by particular stimuli and problems. It's not *quite* measuring thoughts directly, but it can measure mental phenomena in a way.

 

Of course, it'll be much more useful once these machines a) have sharper resolution and b) are smaller than a volkswagon. Research subjects typically have difficulty engaging in daily life activities with a magnet the weight of a Buick on their head. ;-)

 

Mokele

[Void]

..Of course' date=' it'll be much more useful once these machines a) have sharper resolution and b) are smaller than a volkswagon. Research subjects typically have difficulty engaging in daily life activities with a magnet the weight of a Buick on their head. ;-)

 

Mokele[/quote']

 

Agreed.

[reverse]

I disagree. You can directly measure several "outcomes" in psychology. I'll list them for you:

 

Galvonic Skin Response

Eye tracking

Reaction time

Heart Rate

Hormone levels

Hours of sleep

Non-verbal cues

Language

 

Shall I go on?

 

.

 

hey, wait just a second!

that's the test for a replicant on BLADE RUNNER.

[Glider]

We call it Voight-Kampf for short

 

[reverse]

From a psychology point of view, that film was fascinating.

 

I especially like the way the soldier replicant made the realization about the "value of life".

Just before it expired and became pro life despite its training.

Phillip K Dick asks some brilliant questions about the nature of the mind of man in that film.

[The Brind]

Why is they can put a man on the moon, transplant a heart, but they cannot they cannot figure out the mind and all it intricacies?

 

You answered your own question "all it's intricacies".

 

The human mind, which of course can be studied scientifically because it is a physical thing called a brain, is much more complex that rocket science and heart surgery!

[kriminal99]

I disagree. You can directly measure several "outcomes" in psychology. I'll list them for you:

 

Galvonic Skin Response

Eye tracking

Reaction time

Heart Rate

Hormone levels

Hours of sleep

Non-verbal cues

Language

 

Shall I go on?

 

You can't measure MENTAL phenomena directly BUT you can measure BEHAVIOR directly. Remember behaviorism? Thus' date=' we often infer mental process from behavioral action.

 

For example, if I want to know how people solve math problems, I obviously can't observe their MENTAL calculation, but I can ASK them to WRITE OUT the steps they take in solving the problem.

 

And I say to the skeptic, does the difference really matter in this case?

 

It might, if you believe that the aid of representing something on paper has an effect on solving the problem (which I suspect for complex problems it might).

 

In addition, it is quite possible to mis-apply scientific methods within any field of science.[/quote']

 

The questions that I was referring to were questions like "how do we form ideas", "how do we think", "what is consiousness" etc. Those tests are not directly testing what the general populace would want to know. Therefore a lot of reasoning is needed in connection with the results to get any useful information out of them.

 

One problem with behaviorism that you wouldn't know what factor to test in relation to a certain behavior without a first person motivated theory of mind. But if you have such a theory developed to a point where you always know what factors to test, you don't need behaviorism anymore because the first person theory contains the information that you REALLY are interested in.

 

Most human reasoning regarding other people's behavior consists of them manipulating their own experiences to mimic what the other person might be experiencing in their own head. (This is what we substitute for measuring someones mental experience) Empathy, anotherwords. This is an important factor of human behavior in itself. Behaviorism doesn't directly advance the ability to do this.

 

@Mokele Those things are just correlated with mental experiences correct? Of course it would be impossible to ever prove that they are one and the same. There are many theories regarding this type of thing, some of them which claim things like how the actual feel of consiousness is a fundamental property of matter. It is difficult for many psychologists to understand these theories so they often are just ignorantly tossed aside as being silly. This is a perfect example of something valuable learned from philosophy - Experienced philosophers don't angrily toss out theories thinking they understand them with a straw man argument in their mind instead.

[Void]

The questions that I was referring to were questions like "how do we form ideas"' date=' "how do we think", "what is consiousness" etc. Those tests are not directly testing what the general populace would want to know. Therefore a lot of reasoning is needed in connection with the results to get any useful information out of them.

 

One problem with behaviorism that you wouldn't know what factor to test in relation to a certain behavior without a first person motivated theory of mind. But if you have such a theory developed to a point where you always know what factors to test, you don't need behaviorism anymore because the first person theory contains the information that you REALLY are interested in.

 

Most human reasoning regarding other people's behavior consists of them manipulating their own experiences to mimic what the other person might be experiencing in their own head. (This is what we substitute for measuring someones mental experience) Empathy, anotherwords. This is an important factor of human behavior in itself. Behaviorism doesn't directly advance the ability to do this.

 

.[/quote']

 

My behaviorism comment was to illustrate that psychologists are interested in more than just mental phenomena, however the questions to which you refer, are lofty goals indeed. I am not quite sure about your TOM examples, I usually just think of the fall of behaviorism as product of the realization that the mind/brain mediates our experience of the world. Whether others are aware of "mind" is another set of questions.

[Mokele]

The questions that I was referring to were questions like "how do we form ideas", "how do we think", "what is consiousness" etc. Those tests are not directly testing what the general populace would want to know.

 

And why do I, or anyone, give a crap what "the general populace" wants to know? If they want to know it so badly, then they can go to school and get a psychology degree and solve it.

 

One problem with behaviorism that you wouldn't know what factor to test in relation to a certain behavior without a first person motivated theory of mind. But if you have such a theory developed to a point where you always know what factors to test, you don't need behaviorism anymore because the first person theory contains the information that you REALLY are interested in.

 

Strawman fallacy.

 

Furthermore, as for what to test, it's blatantly obvious from the animal's evolution. You don't test a sloth running through a maze, nor do you expect a snake to be positively reinforced by a carrot. You can predict the sorts of behaviors that can be used simply by physiology, ecology, and evolutionary history.

 

Those things are just correlated with mental experiences correct? Of course it would be impossible to ever prove that they are one and the same.

 

That doesn't mean it can't be of use. You can't *prove* most of science, since it's based on empirical observation. But you *can* reduce the chance that you are wrong to less than a tenth of a percent with suitable experimental design, even in correlational studies.

 

There are many theories regarding this type of thing, some of them which claim things like how the actual feel of consiousness is a fundamental property of matter. It is difficult for many psychologists to understand these theories so they often are just ignorantly tossed aside as being silly.

 

You mean like your own ignorant dismissal of psychology because you can't understand it? I'd bet you've never even actually taken a psych course.

 

Psychology is under no obligation to test every 2-bit crackpot philosophy, and, under certain circumstances, these philosophies are simply untestable wastes of time.

 

This is a perfect example of something valuable learned from philosophy - Experienced philosophers don't angrily toss out theories thinking they understand them with a straw man argument in their mind instead.

 

No, experienced philosophers don't. You have done both of these. Your homework is to complete this logic sequence.

 

Mokele

[kriminal99]

My behaviorism comment was to illustrate that psychologists are interested in more than just mental phenomena, however the questions to which you refer, are lofty goals indeed. I am not quite sure about your TOM examples, I usually just think of the fall of behaviorism as product of the realization that the mind/brain mediates our experience of the world. Whether others are aware of "mind" is another set of questions.

 

Well, to get my argument just ask yourself how a behaviorist comes up with a factor he is going to test to see if it is correlated with a certain behavior. At first you might just say intuition, or random guessing, or whatever else, but as the factors which are correlated to certain behaviors become less and less obviously correlated to the responses you need more and more complicated reasoning to come up with theories to test. Ultimately you would have to have a complete theory of mind to know what factors to examine.

 

And why do I' date=' or anyone, give a crap what "the general populace" wants to know? If they want to know it so badly, then they can go to school and get a psychology degree and solve it.

 

Strawman fallacy.

 

Furthermore, as for what to test, it's blatantly obvious from the animal's evolution. You don't test a sloth running through a maze, nor do you expect a snake to be positively reinforced by a carrot. You can predict the sorts of behaviors that can be used simply by physiology, ecology, and evolutionary history.

 

That doesn't mean it can't be of use. You can't *prove* most of science, since it's based on empirical observation. But you *can* reduce the chance that you are wrong to less than a tenth of a percent with suitable experimental design, even in correlational studies.

 

You mean like your own ignorant dismissal of psychology because you can't understand it? I'd bet you've never even actually taken a psych course.

 

Psychology is under no obligation to test every 2-bit crackpot philosophy, and, under certain circumstances, these philosophies are simply untestable wastes of time.

 

No, experienced philosophers don't. You have done both of these. Your homework is to complete this logic sequence.

 

Mokele[/quote']

 

Psychologists are not socially signifigant, neither are any of their arguments which are not convincing to the layman. Why should I believe that a psychologist is any more a credible source on theory of mind than is the local preacher if they do not provide arguments which I find convincing?

 

A strawman fallacy is when someone provides an argument similar to an argument provided by someone else but is more easily defeated. If you were to accuse someone of using such a tactic, you would actually have to provide the real argument and show how it is superior to the opponents version of it.

 

For example, if you were to say that you don't put a sloth in a maze or give a carrot to a snake as a response to my prior argument, when the argument was talking about how things which are correlated to certain behaviors get less obviously related to their causes then you would be using the straw man fallacy because you are using extremely obvious relations. Typically when someone uses a strawman fallacy they will be accusing the other person of saying something "stupid" when in fact they do not understand the person's argument. This shows that their motivation has nothing to do with understanding the nature of the topic but rather making the other person to appear foolish to restore any self esteem lost from being wrong. (Usually made by people who want to believe they are infallably intelligent and for some reason the world has to accomadate this belief so they are justified in such behavior)

 

In any case an example of step in the direction I am speaking of a relation might be that if a person has a bad childhood then they interpret insults made in a certain fashion by friends as compliments or to use behaviorist's rediculous terminology "reinforcement". If you experienced this yourself of course it would be obvious to test it, but if you want to come up with such factors on your own you would have to come up with a first person based theory of mind. Another might be testing which kinds of sounds a person is likely to enjoy. etc. The more remote the factors the more complex your theory of mind has to be to identify them as potential factors, until eventually you don't even need anything but your first person theory of mind.

 

The problems with experimental design are far from being the only issue (not what I was speaking of originally -SM2) but since you brought it up let me elaborate on "this less than a tenth of a percent" bit. Lets say I am going to conduct a "scientific experiment" so I go downtown and petition people to participate. I go to a street corner and start handing out fliers. Little do I know (or perhaps I DO KNOW and am using it on purpose) the people at that street corner have a 66% probability of having a certain personality (because of proximity to a nearby coffee shop for instance) and this personality has a correlaton to the dependent variable of 75%. Now consider that this just one among what could be many potential sources of bias. Do you think they are going to, or be expected to control all of these factors? No. Do you think they could easily take advantage of this to get the results they want without anyone looking at the results being any the wiser? Easily. Less than a tenth of a percent? I think not.

 

But as I said this isn't even what I was talking about. What I was saying is ASSUMING you knew that x physical brain process was 100% correlated to y mental phenomenon, this does not mean they are one and the same. It doesn't mean necessarily the physical process has any potential to explain the mental process. For example, the brain could simply be something metaphorical to a transformer. Maybe it takes energy of an unknown form and changes it into electrical, chemical and mechanical energy. In which case the faculties of raw memoryless, emotionless "awareness" could exist somewhere which is nowhere near the human body. Or even the "raw feels" of what we experience with our senses could be determined by such a foreign faculty.

 

As for your counter accusation, several points.

1) I am not angry

 

2) Scientists do not generally recognize their own ignorance. Its ok to be wrong, its not ok to pose an authority figure and constantly become frusterated with people who do not treat you as an omniscient god.

 

3) I understand the arguments used to back up these types of thinking very well, as well as their motivation, as well as other arguments that I feel are superior. Of course I am always open to hearing personal adjustments or additions to arguments popular among scientific thinking, that doesn't mean I won't be critical of them.

[Void]

Well' date=' to get my argument just ask yourself how a behaviorist comes up with a factor he is going to test to see if it is correlated with a certain behavior. At first you might just say intuition, or random guessing, or whatever else, but as the factors which are correlated to certain behaviors become less and less obviously correlated to the responses you need more and more complicated reasoning to come up with theories to test. Ultimately you would have to have a complete theory of mind to know what factors to examine.

.[/quote']

 

Ok...I am pretending to be a behaviorist...

 

I imagine that by OBSERVING the behavior in question, I would be able to identify particular environmental antecedants. Then, I might try to experimentally manipulate the presence or absense of said stimuli to see if the behavior in question manifests.

 

Now I am a student of modern psychology...

 

"but as the factors which are correlated to certain behaviors become less and less obviously correlated to the responses you need more and more complicated reasoning to come up with theories to test."

 

So lets suppose, I am looking to see if my dog begs when I present food. You would expect that correlation to become smaller over time? Thus requiring a more complicated theory (over an above a simple S-R approach) to explain this?

 

You are not being clear. You probably mean, that as the behavior becomes more complex, you need more elaborate (and reductionistic) behavioral theory to explain it? Uhmmm welcome to the 1960's. This is old news.

[Mokele]

Its ok to be wrong, its not ok to pose an authority figure and constantly become frusterated with people who do not treat you as an omniscient god.

 

Re-read this, then go back and look at every post you've made on this forum.

 

Notice something?

[reverse]

 

Furthermore' date=' as for what to test, it's blatantly obvious from the animal's evolution. You don't test a sloth running through a maze, nor do you expect a snake to be positively reinforced by a carrot.

Mokele[/quote']

 

 

I don’t know about the rest of you but I really want to see a Sloth in a maze and a snake with a carrot.

 

is it going to be an upside down hanging maze?

will it be three dimensional...I'm guessing there will be no award for speedy completion.

 

What do snakes eat anyway...will they eat carrots...what about if it is cut up small and wiggled about...

[Mokele]

I don’t know about the rest of you but I really want to see a Sloth in a maze

 

Well, I haven't seen that, but I *have* seen a sloth-fight. It took a total of 10 minutes, during which a grand total of 3 blows were exchanged, each of which took longer than 5 seconds to deliver.

 

What do snakes eat anyway...will they eat carrots...what about if it is cut up small and wiggled about...

 

They eat animals, and none of the nearly 3000 species is even omnivorous, let alone heribvorous. They respond primarily to chemical cues. Visual and (in some species) heat cues provide additional stimulation, but it's scent first and foremost.

 

And we now return you to our regularly scheduled thread.

 

Mokele

[The Brind]

The questions that I was referring to were questions like "how do we form ideas"' date=' "how do we think", "what is consiousness" etc. Those tests are not directly testing what the general populace would want to know. Therefore a lot of reasoning is needed in connection with the results to get any useful information out of them.

[/quote']

 

You are correct that Psychology has not been able to solve these questions... and you are also correct that it is answers to these questions that the public would like to see answered.

 

But hold on a minute...

 

All the sciences have large unanswered questions...

 

What happened before the Big Bang?

Will the universe go on forever or not?

How did life begin?

How can we cure people who have Aids?

Is there life elsewhere in the universe?

 

etc etc...

 

Just because questions remain that doesn't mean the whole field is misconcieved...

 

And besides we have made some progress in answering the big questions in psychology...

 

Q. "How do we form ideas?" A. Things move around in our brains.

 

Q. "How do we think?" - A. Things move around in our brains.

 

Q. What is consciousness? A. It's when things move around in our brains.

 

 

You see! It's easy really!

[reverse]

Q. "How do we think?" - A. Things move around in our brains.

 

You see! It's easy really!

 

 

Oh…you think it’s the blood and the chemicals moving around making the ideas…

 

Hmmm…I thought that they made the emotions…

 

 

.I thought that the ideas were structural and electrical…

 

what “things” moving around ???

[Mokele]

what “things” moving around ???

 

Ions, specifically sodium and potassium. The movement of these ions across special gates in cell membranes is what produces "action potentials", the pulses that travel down nerves. It's less elctricity, and more a traveling flux of ions across a cell membrane.

 

Mokele

[pljames]

Dear Students and PHD'rs of Psychology.

 

I am addicted to the computer/net because one, I am color blind and I am mesmerized by the color ,text and pictures. My wife who has a degree in Psychoogy tells me I need professional help. I do stay on hours at a time. Its instantaneous information at my fingertips. i was deprived of a education as a child and for some reason I cannot explain I want to catch up, but I dont think thats possibel. Do I sound as I need professional help? Sometimes I do and then I don't. This is no joke or my warped sense of humor. pljames

[Glider]

It is a problem if you can't go without spending hours at a time online. Try it and see how you feel. See how you feel not going online for a week. Check your mail and stuff, but then come off and do something else. Take your wife out or just spend time time doing other things. If you start feeling edgy or can't think of anything but being online or messing with your computer, then you may well have a problem.