Eric,
A cannonball shot into the air eventually returns to Earth. In Newtonian physics, we say that the cannonball does so because the Earth exerts a force on the cannonball which pulls it back down. Would you say this is a magical explanation? Why or why not? Also, would you say this is an instance of a paradigm at work? ________________________________________ From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of ERIC P. CHARLES [e...@psu.edu] Sent: Friday, May 18, 2012 2:25 AM To: Russ Abbott Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unsolved Problems in Psychology Russ, I am about to get a bit defensive. I'm not sure why I feel the need to defend a discipline I am largely disenchanted with, but here it goes: While I would NOT want to let "generally accepted" be a criterion for "solved", I am a bit perturbed by your suspicion that psychology lacks generally accepted results. Psychology has been an academic discipline for over a century, and likely has more professional members today than any other academic discipline, especially if you count people who do psychology-leaning neuroscience. There are several major conferences in psychology that have more than 10,000 attendees. There are over 1,000 peer reviewed academic journals in the field. There are at least 10 major journals dedicated to literature reviews establishing results as generally accepted, and several have been operating for over 100 years. For a discipline without a dedicated category, psychologists have also garnered a pretty impressive number of Nobel Prizes. On what possible basis would you think there was not a MASSIVE body of generally agreed upon results? We don't even have to get to the professional level for evidence: Any introductory psychology textbook is full of references to published results that are generally accepted. And a standard-size introductory psychology text is now around 800 pages long. There are between 12 and 20 standard mid-level courses in the field, each with a wide range of textbooks filled with generally accepted results. On what possible basis would you suspect there are few generally accepted results, and what could you possibly mean by claiming that any any accepted results would probably be 'low level'? While, as in any science, some percentage of the accepted results will later turn out to need revision (sometimes rejection, but more often notes regarding required circumstances), there is a lot that psychologists know. The big problem in psychology (IMHO) is the lack of a paradigm that effectively organizes the accepted results and shows where to seek results in the future. Eric On Thu, May 17, 2012 10:19 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 ============================================================ 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
