The metaphysics of Psychology and the equal validity of Native American Mythology

[rsaylors]

Hi,

First, i'm not sure if this is the right board. I honestly don't think of the social-sciences as proper sciences like physics and chemistry, but rather socially-constructed histories that reflect the spirit of the day in which they are written.

From that perspective I find that there are two aspects of social theory that are in gross opposition to one-another. First, there is an empirical observation of behavior, a physical fact that can't be disagreed with rationally. Second, there is the explanation of the reason and meaning behind that behavior, entirely bound up in a series of metaphysical assumptions that defy rationality.

While I do admit to the fact that bio-psychology is empirically valid in the social-sciences, the question of meaning seems entirely socially constructed. We offer connotative meanings when we create labels for behaviors, we assume a common set of metaphysical perspectives when we use theories to say why something happened.

Over all, I just can't see how psycho-analysis, Skinner's behaviorism, the earth-sky spirits of native Americans or any other explanation for 'why' people behave as they do are dis-provable. All of them equal explain behavior, and if all of them accept and integrate bio-physical observations into their paradigms all of them have equal predictive validity.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I thought this forum would be a great place to hash-out where I might be off.

Thank you,

 

[BravesFan]

If you are trying to equivocate the real condition we call "neurosis" with sky spirits as being equally "knowable" I would say that you were highly incorrect as we have repeatable disorders being corrected with prescribed medications and therapy. Whereas "sky spirits" as you call them are just myth's with no fundamental evidence to back up their existence. Not to mention that while the "why" for any individual behavior may be elusive and/or highly personal and perhaps not "knowable" the "why's" of group and the individuals in those groups have occurred often enough that we have them written down in books like the DSM IV.

We kinda DO know "why" people do things.

 

[rsaylors]

If you are trying to equivocate the real condition we call "neurosis" with sky spirits as being equally "knowable" I would say that you were highly incorrect as we have repeatable disorders being corrected with prescribed medications and therapy. Whereas "sky spirits" as you call them are just myth's with no fundamental evidence to back up their existence. Not to mention that while the "why" for any individual behavior may be elusive and/or highly personal and perhaps not "knowable" the "why's" of group and the individuals in those groups have occurred often enough that we have them written down in books like the DSM IV.

We kinda DO know "why" people do things.

This correlation and categorization of observed behaviors into generlizable groups isn't what i'm questioning. What i'm questioning is the meta-physical assumptions that go along with the psychological paradigm.

If i say you've got a "earth spirit" and that Prozac has been shown to help with "earth spirit" why is that any different than saying you have "depression"; We have proven the existence of "Earth Spirit" among many people and even have empirical evidence of brain-chemistry imbalances caused by earth spirit.

See, my problem is that it's all just a labeling mechanism mean to appeal to a modern aesthetic, there's nothing "right" or "wrong" about the labels as-long as they are consistent, rigorously applied and not used as an excuse to not-think.

 

[dafydd]

This correlation and categorization of observed behaviors into generlizable groups isn't what i'm questioning. What i'm questioning is the meta-physical assumptions that go along with the psychological paradigm.

If i say you've got a "earth spirit" and that Prozac has been shown to help with "earth spirit" why is that any different than saying you have "depression"; We have proven the existence of "Earth Spirit" among many people and even have empirical evidence of brain-chemistry imbalances caused by earth spirit.

See, my problem is that it's all just a labeling mechanism mean to appeal to a modern aesthetic, there's nothing "right" or "wrong" about the labels as-long as they are consistent, rigorously applied and not used as an excuse to not-think.

Calling a depression an earth spirit does not make it an earth spirit. The Humpty Dumpty approach does not work.

 

[keyfeatures]

See, my problem is that it's all just a labeling mechanism mean to appeal to a modern aesthetic, there's nothing "right" or "wrong" about the labels as-long as they are consistent, rigorously applied and not used as an excuse to not-think.

Labels must also be sensible. In other words, empirically observable. Would you say "earth spirit" is sensible or empirically observable? The same might be said of the label "depression" to a lesser degree but we certainly have something more tangible from the DSM than from Native American pantheism. Further, depression in terms of DSM is merely a collation of symptoms, not a cause of symptoms. From what little I understand of "earth spirit" it claims to be causal. This is a non-sensible proposition.

Psycho-analysis is pretty much discredited and can be considered pseudo-science.

See Ayer for a reasoned account of truth and logic. He's very helpful on these issues and can explain it better than myself.

 

[Dancing David]

Hi,

First, i'm not sure if this is the right board. I honestly don't think of the social-sciences as proper sciences like physics and chemistry, but rather socially-constructed histories that reflect the spirit of the day in which they are written.

From that perspective I find that there are two aspects of social theory that are in gross opposition to one-another. First, there is an empirical observation of behavior, a physical fact that can't be disagreed with rationally. Second, there is the explanation of the reason and meaning behind that behavior, entirely bound up in a series of metaphysical assumptions that defy rationality.

Welcome.

I think you are going to have to define terms here,:
Meaning in what sense?
In behaviorism and most modern psychology you don't try to answer that question unless you want to run a really complex study.

So say you want to isolate social aspects of the behavior, that requires some rather sophisticated protocols and data sets.

But in behaviorism the consequences of the behavior are the meaning.

While I do admit to the fact that bio-psychology is empirically valid in the social-sciences, the question of meaning seems entirely socially constructed.

Semantic meaning yes.

Possible theories of interactions, yes and no.

Now it really depends on your usage of meaning.

We offer connotative meanings when we create labels for behaviors, we assume a common set of metaphysical perspectives when we use theories to say why something happened.

Science does not really get into why but what.

Over all, I just can't see how psycho-analysis, Skinner's behaviorism, the earth-sky spirits of native Americans or any other explanation for 'why' people behave as they do are dis-provable.

I will try to remain neutral.

Some of these theories have predictive power some do not.

Psychoanalysis is total rubbish.

All of them equal explain behavior, and if all of them accept and integrate bio-physical observations into their paradigms all of them have equal predictive validity.

Not really you have yet to demonstrate what predictions the native american mythology makes a theory or to show its demonstrative power.

Psychoanalysis have no predictive power.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I thought this forum would be a great place to hash-out where I might be off.

Thank you,

The way this is phrased I would guess you want Religion and Philosophy.

Welcome gain.

 

[Dancing David]

This correlation and categorization of observed behaviors into generlizable groups isn't what i'm questioning. What i'm questioning is the meta-physical assumptions that go along with the psychological paradigm.

Create a coherent set of definitions from the native american mythology and show the way they have predictive power.

Then we can talk.

If i say you've got a "earth spirit" and that Prozac has been shown to help with "earth spirit" why is that any different than saying you have "depression"; We have proven the existence of "Earth Spirit" among many people and even have empirical evidence of brain-chemistry imbalances caused by earth spirit.

Only as a semantic substitution, if you assume that the earth spirit is just a semantic equal to depression.

But not with an actual non-semantic substitution.

You haven't defined the characteristics of an earth spirit and its qualities so it is meaningless.

See, my problem is that it's all just a labeling mechanism mean to appeal to a modern aesthetic, there's nothing "right" or "wrong" about the labels as-long as they are consistent, rigorously applied and not used as an excuse to not-think.

Sort of if we say that 'earth spirit' is a semantic substitute for 'depression', yes.

But that is changing the meaning of the term, if you are saying instead that the use of the phrase 'earth spirit' with 'this list of characteristics as defined in native american mythology' then no.

In the second case you have not shown what definition of earth spirit you are using and what data shows its predictive value.

 

[Bikewer]

Describing human moods as being the result of an imbalance of one's "humors" was a useful description of various conditions for quite some time; literature is full of folks being "choleric" or "phlegmatic".... Some of those terms still hang on.
We know better now, as several above have noted.

 

[dafydd]

I'm feeling a bit earth spririted today.

 

[aggle-rithm]

This correlation and categorization of observed behaviors into generlizable groups isn't what i'm questioning. What i'm questioning is the meta-physical assumptions that go along with the psychological paradigm.

If i say you've got a "earth spirit" and that Prozac has been shown to help with "earth spirit" why is that any different than saying you have "depression"; We have proven the existence of "Earth Spirit" among many people and even have empirical evidence of brain-chemistry imbalances caused by earth spirit.

See, my problem is that it's all just a labeling mechanism mean to appeal to a modern aesthetic, there's nothing "right" or "wrong" about the labels as-long as they are consistent, rigorously applied and not used as an excuse to not-think.

For some reason, this post seems very reasonable if I imagine it spoken with an Indian accent.

 

[Scott Sommers]

Welcome,

For some reason, this post seems very reasonable if I imagine it spoken with an Indian accent.

I understand the problem. It's one that comes up in social sciences and in clinical psychology particularly. Another way to describe it is that of a doctor diagnosing a patient with agoraphobia. What's that? An anxiety disorder characterized by anxiety in situations where it is perceived to be difficult or embarrassing to escape - as the great Wiki puts it. But what good did the diagnosis give us? The doctor might as well have diagnoses a patient as having "an anxiety disorder characterized by anxiety in situations where it is perceived to be difficult or embarrassing to escape". There is no understanding gained from the diagnosis.

rsaylors, if this is your, you would be wrong.

A well-developed theory does not just name the objects within its field. It links these objects with objects in other fields. I don't know much about depression, so let's talk about something psychological that I do understand - learner motivation. Learner motivation could not just as easily be labeled "earth spirits" because it can linked theoretically to networks of objective and observable qualities. Learner motivation is found only in certain conditions. It is not found in other conditions.

I suppose we could give that thing found in those conditions and not in others another arbitrary name, but that's a linguistic issue and not an entomological one. Learner motivation is that thing and not other things. It needs a name that can distinguish it from them.

I don't know if that makes sense to you.

 

[Jeff Corey]

...Over all, I just can't see how psycho-analysis, Skinner's behaviorism, the earth-sky spirits of native Americans or any other explanation for 'why' people behave as they do are dis-provable. All of them equal explain behavior, and if all of them accept and integrate bio-physical observations into their paradigms all of them have equal predictive validity...

I get the impression that you don't know a lot about Skinner's radical behaviorism, otherwise you would not be lumping it in with those other things.

 

[rsaylors]

Thanks for letting me spit-ball this with you guys:

I get the impression that you don't know a lot about Skinner's radical behaviorism, otherwise you would not be lumping it in with those other things.

I get the impression that I don't know a lot about a lot.

I did read the Cooper book on behaviorism and speak often with my wife who's finishing out a masters in the subject... but heck, there's everything I don't know about my own field; so yea, I honestly don't know "a lot" about much of anything.


Thanks for the friendly condescension! (i'm used to rude condescension ;-) )

Learner motivation could not just as easily be labeled "earth spirits" because it can linked theoretically to networks of objective and observable qualities.

So you're saying that earth-spirits is too wide of a theory; without the discriminate validity of any construct it fails to be part of a falsifiable nomological network?

Create a coherent set of definitions from the native american mythology and show the way they have predictive power.

Then we can talk.

Seriously, I'm about to do something along these lines; which is why I'm asking the question.

You haven't defined the characteristics of an earth spirit and its qualities so it is meaningless.

I think what i'm getting at, and I'm talking out loud here, is that the explanatory power of related constructs will be the same (no disagreement over empiricism) but rather a different set of political and social meanings will be attributed to the empirical observations; ones that stay within the empirical truth but eschew the socially-constructed norms that define the connotative meanings.

We may not even need generalizable abstraction to create transferable consistent knowledge.


Essentialy:

I want to look at Qualia (see Wikipedia, I'm not allowed to link yet) in a rigorous consistent way; without disagreement with our empirical observations, but rather as a method of investigating the influence the social-world around the influence of our empirical methods.

It seems to me that our empirical observations in social-science are highly influenced by norms and assumptions that are not true, just socially constructed. (which, of course, disenfranchises and represses those that don't share these arbitrary social norms)

 

[Mashuna]

Here's the link for you Qualia^WP. I suspect you'll find a number of people around here who dispute the existence of qualia (in terms of qualia being a coherant concept).






It's a funny word when you type it. Qualia.


Quaaaaaaaallllllllllliiiiaaaaaaaaaaaa.

 

[keyfeatures]

A quale is simply the way the brain symbolically represents to our awareness a given set of sense-content data. For example, light of wavelength x = this shade of red. People get very hung up on whether "this shade of red" is represented by the same symbol in different people. However, this is rather a trivial issue. All that matters is that the brain provides our awareness with a consistent symbol. Whether this consistent symbol is different in a different person doesn't really matter. What matters is that it is consistent and that is should be consistently different for a different set of sense content data (the problem of colour blindness comes about when this is not the case). Consistency means that the maps between two different individuals will be topologically congruent - i.e. translatable.

As such, qualia are just the analytic symbolic tautologies of sense-content data. That they are pretty similar between different people can be hypothesised by examining the similarity of the systems (dna / brain structures / environmental inputs) between different humans. An identical system will give identical input / output. A different system provides the possibility of a different symbolic representation.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Thanks for letting me spit-ball this with you guys:


I get the impression that I don't know a lot about a lot.

I did read the Cooper book on behaviorism and speak often with my wife who's finishing out a masters in the subject... but heck, there's everything I don't know about my own field; so yea, I honestly don't know "a lot" about much of anything...

If you're talking about John O. Cooper, Timothy E. Heron, William L. Heward, Applied Behavior Analysis, that's a start. Skinner's About Behaviorism might be better for the basics.