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[clamore]

I just had a really interesting participant in my study. He came in quite cheerfully and filled out the surveys, then told me that while his class only required three hours of research participation, he had taken part in six. Not to be a keener, but rather because he didn't see psychology as a legitimate science and wanted to experience our so-

Comments

[wily_fox]

Clearly a case of hysteria. Didn't you get your penis as a child?

[mykyta_p]

Meh. It is difficult to study anything besides behaviour in as rigorous a fashion, but when one doesn't attempt to, one misses a big part of the story.

Maybe less rigorous ideas on psychology can't be applied as readily, but studying the 'how' and ignoring the 'why' feels hollow to me. Human minds aren't physical particles or biological systems, where you can just observe a correlation or a cause-and-effect, and extrapolate the whole story; they are conscious, self-modelling entities, and that makes things a lot more complicated. And again, if you don't bother asking *why* people act the way they do... what's the point? Isn't that, really, the most important part?

And you shouldn't put "social" sciences in scare quotes. Firstly, because scare quotes are evil. And also, because some social sciences are quite science-ey. Sociology for example, or my darling economics.

[mykyta_p]

Also this was meant as a reply to the first post, not to the comment. >_> User malfunction.

[clamore]

Sociology is not at all sciencey, and economists themselves admit that they can't predict things reliably. They're called 'soft' sciences.

Otherwise, see Leela's comment below!

[os_leela]

"Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist needs to get their head examined."

[os_leela]

...The brain is the most complex mechanism that we have ever found. It has been very hard to isolate certain functions and get them to work predictably- Skinner and Pavlov are well-respected by the scientific community because they did just that. Sadly, it's only neuroscientists that make real strides to map out the complexities; it seems like all the other fields of psychology are just making predictions of what the neuroscientists are eventually going to find.

[clamore]

Yes yes yes! That exactly.

[mykyta_p]

I think neuroscience and psychology might be looking at different layers of the same thing. Understanding the structure of the human brain will not explain the human mind, which is a process or pattern for which the brain is the medium. Even if it were possible to "see" thoughts and ideas represented as physical phenomena in the brain, doing so would not help one understand what those thoughts and ideas and the relationships between them mean to the mind that is having them. Trying to understand the mind by studying the brain is like trying to understand software by studying the computer hardware on which it is running: theoretically possible, but only if you're willing to somewhat miss the point. Such are my thoughts. >_> I really think focusing on this misses some of the point of psychology, which is to really try and understand the mind, and why we think what we think and why the things that mean stuff to us mean what they do, and so on.

Dark

[anonymous]

"Pavlov's Pothead...I hear a bong clink and my eyes start to water."

Re: Dark

[wily_fox]

Schrodinger's pothead: If locked alone in a room with a lighter that may or may not light (but activates independent of output), the stoner is given a pipe loaded with skunk attached to the lighter. Because the stoner does not by any measure constitute a conscious observer, he exists simultaneously in a state of being stoned and not stoned until confirmed by observation.

Freud's pothead: Oral Fixation combined with lack of superego integrity. Treat with cocaine.

Marxist pothead: Bogarting is a bourgeois practice; Puff, puff, pass.

Re: Dark

[anonymous]

You've got me giggling like a school girl over here!