Re: Unsolved Problems in Psychology
Posted by
Carl Tollander on
May 17, 2012; 4:16am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Unsolved-Problems-in-Psychology-tp7555188p7563130.html
Eric,
Re: 1) humming makes my sinuses happy, generally.
Re: 2) I quite agree, it's not so simple. Yet, one has to start
somewhere, and the 'magical thinking' pejoration is, by my lights,
kinda simple on the face of it. I don't agree, by any stretch,
that all 'bright minds' are necessarily scientists. Science, as I
understand it, is a continuous process of intensively figuring out
what are the right questions to ask and wondering how to interpret
such data as one can find or generate. I do not see that it is
legitimate, even in science terms, to cast the folks who sincerely
tried to make sense of their experience as living in cartoons
because they did not choose to live in the context of one's decades
of training in whatever discipline.
Re: Is there anything
you think is a "solved scientific question" or do you think the
category is
incoherent? Yes, since I think science is about rigorously evolving
questions, yep, the notion of "solved scientific questions" is
indeed, at the very least, incoherent. Which is not at all to imply
one can't aim one's canon, but that's a different world of
discourse.
C
On 5/16/12 9:45 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote:
Well, to make two more general claims then:
1) I am not sure anyone
is able to play the game in the order you suggest. Oh, some
people can hum a
few bars, but until you break out specific examples and dig into
the details of
them, it is just humming.
2) The line between a tech problem and a
science problem cannot possibly be as simple as you suggest. By
my read, at one
point the trajectory of a cannon ball
was
a scientific question, there was a genuine question of
how a cannon ball
flew, and bright minds - people we would now call scientists -
wrestled with
the possibilities (a startlingly large part of the population
still think
falling works like the roadrunner cartoons). I can't see how you
think it is a
"tech problem".... except.... in so much as it is a solved
question, it is now
something that it is fairly easy to do tech with it.
Is there anything
you think is a "solved scientific question" or do you think the
category is
incoherent?
Eric
On Wed, May 16, 2012 11:15 PM,
Carl
Tollander [hidden email] wrote:
Eric, so you've got a tech problem, not a science
problem, and sure, the tech problem of trajectories wrt
local gravitation can be "solved". How do I aim the
cannon (or the canon) and better, how do I metabolize my
error when my initial notion turns out to be a bit off.
Still, do we understand gravitation in the (apparently
more general) context of quantum mechanics, well, no. So
there again is my worry about the notion of "solved a
problem", which seems, um, problematic.
As to your idea of "the game", my text was in reply to
Jochen and perhaps others who, perhaps, had weighed in on
the idea of "magical thinking" as, somehow, a bad thing,
rather than Nick's inner universe, specifically.
Carl
On 5/16/12 8:41 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote:
Carl,
My guess is that Nick can't play the game to anyone's
satisfaction in the order you proposed. He could go
down that road, but it will digress endlessly and
readers will become sad. The only way to have things
stay on topic is for someone to propose things until
they find one Nick thinks has been solved.... and only
then will he be able to explain in any satisfactory
detail what it means (to him) for that particular
problem to be solved. If five things are found that he
thinks are solved, presumably some sort of general
rule will emerge.
Eric
P.S. To flip the question (and please rename the
thread if you take this bait): As far as I am
concerned the problem of the path of a cannon ball
shot out of a cannon is solved. It was solved several
hundred years ago, parabolic trajectory, a little wind
resistance, blah, blah, blah. If you think that
problem is
not solved, I would love to
know the sense in which it is not.
On Wed, May 16, 2012 09:39 PM,
Carl Tollander <carl@...>
wrote:
OK, what does it MEAN to you to have solved a problem in psychology?
Are there criteria you can state succinctly?
Where did those criteria come from?
If you really can't say, phlogiston will have to do. Folks were
grappling with how to describe their inner experiences coherently, given
all the other things they were thinking about. I'm not prepared to be
snarky about how they were (or are) deluded, or ignorant, or dim.
All explanations worth their salt start out magical. Somebody,
somewhere, somehow, perceives that the best data they can access or the
best conversations they can find, don't make sense in some newly
understood context, and makes a leap.
C
On 5/16/12 4:25 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> It is the task of science to replace magical explanations by
> scientific ones, isn't it? Chemistry has replaced alchemy,
> astronomy has replaced astrology, neuropsychology has
> replaced phrenology, etc
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/mysticpolitics/6333162973/
>
> I must admit I was hoping we could lure Nick
> back to the list from his self-chosen exile by asking
> some provocative questions. What would Nick say,
> are there any unsolved problems in psychology?
> Is there still any phlogiston theory in it which is
> waiting to be replaced?
>
> -J.
>
>
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Eric Charles
Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601
Eric Charles
Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
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