So...Psychology: science or not?

[vacognition]

Generally, at this site, we debunk things that claim to be sciences that aren't. Still, I want to take a moment to debunk claims that psychology is not a science. ("Psychology is not a science" gets 25,000+ hits on Google, so this is not a straw man.)

I occasionally hear the claim that psychology isn't a science because psychologists don't do experiments. That claim is easily debunked by doing a psychology experiment.

The next issue is to separate out psychologists who do not use the scientific method, such as Freud. There is nothing about psychotherapy that makes it innately unscientific. One can -- and many do -- rigorously evaluate different psychotherapy regimes. And, in any case, psychotherapy is only one branch of psychology. It's like arguing about whether physics is a science because some cosmologists don't do experiments.

Then, you will hear that psychology is not a science because psychology models aren't as good at predicting behavior as, say, Newtonian mechanics predicts the trajectory of a projectile. This is a fair claim if that is how you want to divvy up the world, though it does exclude the study of turbulence and possibly the climate as a whole from the realm of science.

If anybody nonetheless thinks that psychology is not a science, please post away and we'll see where we get. In some senses it does not matter what labels people give this field of knowledge or that field, but to the extent that the belief that psychology is unscientific keeps people away from the cognitive sciences, I think it's a problem. At least, it's worth debating. (I have a longer version of this argument here, if anybody wishes to read it.)


This question must have come up on this forum before, but strangely nothing came up when I searched for with keywords "psychology" and "science." Still, it's worth having the discussion again.

 

[Arkayik]

There is a similar thread already going

//forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=109239

Cheers,

Ark

 

[vacognition]

psychology = psychotherapy?

There is a similar thread already going

Hi Ark. I saw the other thread, which was why I started this one. It seems that when many people say psychology is not a science, they mean that psychotherapy isn't a science. So I guess it is an independent question as to whether anybody thinks that the study of vision, memory, audition, language, thought, etc., is not a science. In fact, there is the question as to how many people are aware that there is a field that studies the human mind and human behavior which is not psychotherapy.

 

[Jeff Corey]

There also is a field that doesn't limit the study of behavior to humans and gets along just nicely without ever referring to "mind".

 

[Arkayik]

Ok, I stand corrected.

I would think you could scientifically study woo, and indeed even religion, given the appropriate methodolgy. So, there are pitfalls in any sort of generalization, psychology can be drek or hard-core science, depending on the method of investigation. I might hasten to add that no scientific genre is immune from bad methodology. If the method is flawed, so too the conclusions...

There also is a field that doesn't limit the study of behavior to humans and gets along just nicely without ever referring to "mind".

The anthropology of humans or did you have something more esoteric in mind?

Cheers,

Arkayik

 

[Whack01]

people tend to confuse psychiatry and psychology due to their similar natures. Psychiatry is usually fairly scientific in my opinion whereas psychology usually based on subjective opinions and conjecture.

The difficulty I have with treating psychology as a science is the inherent inability to establish a proper control group, in that persons could be lying, mis communicating or misinterpreting highly subjective experiences/thoughts. That's only the first of the problems, but without the ability to establish a control you can kiss the rest of the scientific method goodbye. I've never undertaken a rigorous study of psychology due to that fact. On the other hand psychiatry lends itself to the scientific method much more readily and I'd be happy to study it, if I had the time & money.

However, I would say that psychology is a logical & philosophical discipline, but I simply don't see how it can be a scientific one. I think the thing to remember is all that is science is logical, but not all that is logical is science.

 

[dann]

"Behaviorists achieve this objective stance by refusing to deal with what they call the "black box" of the mind."

A psychology that refuses to deal with the mind is a contradiction in terms. The mind, however, is a difficult thing to study. People lie, for instance, to themselves and others, which, of course, is a well-known fact. Thus it can also be studied.

 

[blutoski]

"Psychology" is also a very broad field, including some hard scientific elements. At UBC, there is a B.Sc in BioPsych. Sort of physiology with a special focus on the brain. Think of everything from lab rats and mazes to human psychopharmacology.

Barry Beyerstein ([bcskepticswiki]) was a psychologist, and founding member of CSICOP. He started out studying reasoning errors, which is what brought him to skepticism. His last focus of study was how addictions appear to function in terms of the interaction between phychochemistry and behavior.

 

[blutoski]

However, I would say that psychology is a logical & philosophical discipline, but I simply don't see how it can be a scientific one. I think the thing to remember is all that is science is logical, but not all that is logical is science.

Well, no, technically, when people use the expression 'a science' they usually mean a 'natural science'. Science literally just means a focus of study. So, Christian Science isn't the contradiction in terms that it first appears to be.

Some elements of psychology can do experiments with double-blinding and control groups and so on, and we can learn a lot from it. An example would be experiments about learning with rats in mazes (biopsych). Another would be trying to understand whether people who score in a certain way on tests will be better at certain jobs (occupational psychology). Making an inventory of common reasoning errors and their possible physiological bases (this is a bit of a blend between biopsych and cognition experiments). The point is that some specialties lend themselves somewhat better to the scientific method than others.

In the latter two examples, there are two levels of understanding: the objective recording of human behavior, and the inductive process of building a model to explain it. The former is very much like a natural science, while the latter may or may not be, depending on the naturalistic underpinning of the proposed model.

 

[Dancing David]

"Behaviorists achieve this objective stance by refusing to deal with what they call the "black box" of the mind."

A psychology that refuses to deal with the mind is a contradiction in terms. The mind, however, is a difficult thing to study. People lie, for instance, to themselves and others, which, of course, is a well-known fact. Thus it can also be studied.

People who insist that the mind exists without defining it or demonstrating its existence are engaging in faith not science.

 

[dann]

People who insist on presenting arguments or even positions that doubt the existence of the mind aren't exactly engaging in science ...

 

[Dancing David]

What evidence is there for a mind, tell me how you would set it up, protocols and controls, just because some people believe in the Big Sky Daddy does not mean that the Big Sky Daddy is real.

And to give you a hint, there is a brain and it has processes therein, if you are like some you are just adding a layer of semantic to the processes that already exist.

So
1. Define mind in a meaningful way. (One that has an observable correlate that shows a meaningful distinction from 'brain process'.
2. Tell me your protocol for showing that it exists.
3. Show how you reduce and isolate factors.
4. Discuss control groups.

The fact that the ancient greeks all beleived that the pnuema was a froce that made things alive, does not mean that it existed.

So put up or silence your self.

You show that science can demonstrate the boojum of the mind. The burden is on YOU to support your notion that the mind can be shown to exist.

 

[Jeff Corey]

People who insist on presenting arguments or even positions that doubt the existence of the mind aren't exactly engaging in science ...

I've been practicing and teaching psychological science for over 40 years and have a much better idea than you do about what is, and what isn't, science. Also, your impressions about what behaviorists, especially radical behaviorists, believe is inaccurate.

 

[dann]

What evidence is there for a mind, tell me how you would set it up, protocols and controls, just because some people believe in the Big Sky Daddy does not mean that the Big Sky Daddy is real.

This is as far out as the people who need a proof that reality exists.

And to give you a hint, there is a brain and it has processes therein, if you are like some you are just adding a layer of semantic to the processes that already exist.

Why do you think that there is a brain and that it even has "processes therein"? Are you suggesting that instead of using the word mind, we now start calling it brain processes? I still prefer mind! (And could you please tell me why you suddenly start to talk about the brain and its processes? Why don't you talk about goldfish or rainbows? Could it be because you actually know that the mind is situated in the brain and obviously consists of the "processes therein", i.e. in the organ of the mind?

So
1. Define mind in a meaningful way. (One that has an observable correlate that shows a meaningful distinction from 'brain process'.
2. Tell me your protocol for showing that it exists.
3. Show how you reduce and isolate factors.
4. Discuss control groups.

Define in a meaningful way why the hell I should care what you choose to call the mind instead of the mind?

The fact that the ancient greeks all beleived that the pnuema was a froce that made things alive, does not mean that it existed.

Really? You are so clever, I'm awed at your cleverness!

So put up or silence your self.

You show that science can demonstrate the boojum of the mind. The burden is on YOU to support your notion that the mind can be shown to exist.

And when did the mind suddenly become boojum? When you started calling it brain processes instead? The burden is on you to tell us why you appear to associate mind with the brain and the processes therein.

 

[dann]

I've been practicing and teaching psychological science for over 40 years and have a much better idea than you do about what is, and what isn't, science.

This is a very clever argument, Jeff. What is your point?

Also, your impressions about what behaviorists, especially radical behaviorists, believe is inaccurate.

OK, would you mind telling us why you "believe" that my "impressions (...) "is inaccurate"?

 

[Dancing David]

This is as far out as the people who need a proof that reality exists.



Why do you think that there is a brain and that it even has "processes therein"? Are you suggesting that instead of using the word mind, we now start calling it brain processes? I still prefer mind! (And could you please tell me why you suddenly start to talk about the brain and its processes? Why don't you talk about goldfish or rainbows? Could it be because you actually know that the mind is situated in the brain and obviously consists of the "processes therein", i.e. in the organ of the mind?



Define in a meaningful way why the hell I should care what you choose to call the mind instead of the mind?



Really? You are so clever, I'm awed at your cleverness!



And when did the mind suddenly become boojum? When you started calling it brain processes instead? The burden is on you to tell us why you appear to associate mind with the brain and the processes therein.

So in other words Dann, it would appear that you have an appeal to populism, sarcasm, and weak (as in not srong) appeals to emotion.

What is very clear is that you don't understand science and that you are engaging in philosophy.

The method of science does come down to defintions, hypothesis, thesis, reduction, exclusion, testing of variables and analysis of confounding factors.

You don't define mind, in the way that say science will assign a meaning to 'temperature', so without a definition you are not engaging in science, you are engaging in speculation. Way to go Dann, you aren't trying to even set up a model to test your assertion that mind exists. that is worse than a 'black box; defintion, that is wishful thinking.

Whatever.

 

[Dr. Imago]

The method of science does come down to defintions, hypothesis, thesis, reduction, exclusion, testing of variables and analysis of confounding factors.

Yes.

It is perhaps more difficult in psychology to remove confounding variables, but this can be done. Experiments need to be carefully crafted to minimize bias in all its forms, but by controlling variables in an experiment you can minimize this.

Science seeks only to quantify observable phenomenon. This is more difficult with subjective endpoints, and can create what are observed as soft findings. Furthermore, in the study of psychology, we can become fairly good at observing and predicting what groups of people will do in a given situation, but still unable to predict what an individual will do. This is sort of the "Heisenberg uncertainty principle" of psychology. It has also been described as the Hawthorne effect.

A well designed study that controls for bias is able to quantify behavior, which is what is really being studied in psychology experiments. This, by itself, meets the definition of science. Much conjucture and additional questions subsequently arise about "why" the observed phenomenon occurred, and then you start delving into the realm of philosophy or theory of mind... which can beget more experimentation that often becomes more complex and problematic.

-Dr. Imago

 

[Jeff Corey]

...A well designed study that controls for bias is able to quantify behavior, which is what is really being studied in psychology experiments. This, by itself, meets the definition of science. Much conjucture and additional questions subsequently arise about "why" the observed phenomenon occurred, and then you start delving into the realm of philosophy or theory of mind... which can beget more experimentation that often becomes more complex and problematic.

-Dr. Imago

Exactly my point. All psychologists can study is behavior. The term "mind" adds nothing and serves no purpose. In everything I've published, I never had to use the term. Once when someone wanted to adapt one of my articles for a student workbook, he wanted to change the title from "Psychological set and ..." to "Mental set and...". He seemed puzzled that I refused to permit him to do it.

 

[dann]

You don't define mind, in the way that say science will assign a meaning to 'temperature',

You are right! I definitely don't!
(Science, by the way, does not "assign a meaning to 'temperature'". It finds out what heat (and the lack of it) is.)

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I said it once and I'll say it again:

The problem is about Consciousness