Doug,
I think it's a form of play. Possibly a form that is not your cup of tea. Intellectual play and science are alike, in my world, because both explore contradictions in our ways of thinking of things. Oxymorons, like "psychological science" or "thinking machine" or "conscious animal". Resolving these contradictions usually involves some reconstructive work on both sides of a conceptual seam that we may at first have been unaware of. Hard to know when this sort of play metamorphoses into work or when attempts at systematic work devolve into play. But you can ignore us. Nick From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 9:59 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group; russ.abb...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unsolved Problems in Psychology Sorry, I've totally lost track, if in fact I ever understood what this new thought exercise was. What's the point? What's the goal? What's the deliverable? Is there any more depth to this new discussion aside from considering how people talk about discussing how actual scientific achievement is accomplished? Unfortunately, I suspect the goal *is* to discuss the discourse about talking about how work is actually done. I may be wrong, though. -Doug On May 17, 2012 7:21 PM, "Russ Abbott" <russ.abb...@gmail.com> wrote: Perhaps we can approach the question of which problems in psychology have been solved by asking which published results are generally accepted. I suspect there are quite a few--even if most of them are relatively low level. -- Russ On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 6:30 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <e...@psu.edu> wrote: Arlo, I agree completely about the process point. I was a bit less certain when you said, "something difficult about psychology is that much of the data has to be collected through someone else - those [people] involved in the study" I assume you would consider a person to be part of the physical world, treatable in most ways like any other type of object. Yes? If so, how is your statement different than the following, "something difficult about chemistry is that much of the data has to be collected through something else - those chemicals involved in the study" Eric On Thu, May 17, 2012 06:23 PM, Arlo Barnes <arlo.bar...@gmail.com> wrote: It seems so far science and tech have been regarded as thing, or adjectives to describe 'problem' - whereas I consider them processes (and to a much lesser extent philosophies in the) and not necessarily even ones with discrete ends, but more a recursive approach - I see a phenomena, I make a 'magic' explanation, I collect data on it, and see if the magic matches the data. If not, I revise the explanation. If so, I see if it predicts more data. Wash, rinse, and repeat. Really we are making rules (that are not perfect and have exceptions, and are therefore not 'done') and making more rules that govern the exceptions (and those rules also have exceptions). So we have something asymptotically approaching whatever objective Truth/reality there is by way of infinite regression. Then if we are doing tech, we makes things that take advantage of this set of rules and therefore work most of the time. I think something difficult about psychology is that much of the data has to be collected through someone else - those involved in the study. -Arlo James Barnes. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
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