Women and Men

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

a more valid comparison is that the planets go around the sun, and the reason why is gravity.

You're not seriously telling me that psychology is as an exact a science as physics, chemistry, or biology, are you?

Let's use the two things brought up already. we know that peple and animals CAN be conditioned, and we know basically how to do it. We DON'T know how many attempts, or why the brain adapts that way, how much time it will take, or even what specific criteria are needed to calculate these times and repetitions.

With Gravity, we DO know that the attraction is a function of mass and distance. the attraction is proportional to the mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance. we know exactly how differences in gravity can calculated and the distance.

Seems like we know a lot more about gravity than we do about behavioral conditioning. Sure we don't know everything, but that's not the requirement I'm stipulating anyway, so it's a fallacious argument.

My greater point, it should be noted, is not that psychology is useless. It is, in fact, both interesting and useful. It's also a young science, so it's entirely possible that we will be able to achieve the exactness available in other sciences. We just haven't to date.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

no, your example show us how it works, but does not point out the why of it working...

And no its not as exact as mathamatics or chemistry... unless you add in medicine which is both an offshoot and an ancestor of psychology (if you count philosophy as a primative form of psychology)

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

actually, the "why" behind planetary orbits is gravity. "Why do the planets go around the sun?" "Because of their gravitational attraction." That response is sensical one. And that is the sense of "why" i meant all along. I'm saying we don't know even that about conditioning.

You can't fairly call philosophy psychology, it'd be inaccurate for most early philosophy, and even if you did, you'd have to call Philosophy Physics, biology, and religion as well. As well as a hundred other fields.

[JP Dogberry]

Gee, I always thought that the Sun's mass created a curve in space time, and that the Planets where moving straight - through Curved Space-Time.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Great, the why being planetary orbits is gravity, you still havent answered the why behind gravity which was the original assertation.
I do think you can count some early philosphy as psychology however, even if the bulk of it has nothing to do with psychology.

A side point- Neurochemistry and Psychiatry are offshoots of psychology and I dont here people calling them psudosciences.

[EUOL]

Wow.  This topic got diverted.

Of course, its ended up being far more innocent than I thought it would be when I first saw the title.  For some reason, I figured it would be a thread about Fuzzy telling us bachelors why we specifically aren't married....

(She had a brief discussion about this with my brother on another thread.)

[42]

You can't fairly call philosophy psychology, it'd be inaccurate for most early philosophy, and even if you did, you'd have to call Philosophy Physics, biology, and religion as well. As well as a hundred other fields.

Actually, from my philosophy classes, philosophy includes all forms of thought. In fact, when drawing out the branches of philosophy it includes all hard sciences. And hard sciences definitely have their own philosophical line of thinking that many people disagree with. the scientific method being the most prominent. And PhD means Doctor of Philosophy.

[fuzzyoctopus]

I was just teasing Spriggan and you know it.

I feel very accomplished to have started such a divergent and active topic.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

eh

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

1) no, i didn't explain why gravity is. The reason I didn't was because it wasn't an appropriate comparison to what I was saying about psychology

2) I never denied psychology grew out of philosophy. What I said was that it wouldn't be accurate to say philosophy was early psychology. it's not. in fact, if we're going back to greek philosophy, very little of it is, if any. Ethics, yes. Political science, yes. psychology, not really. The two are not equivelent and it's misleading to assert that you can call philosophy by the moniker of "psychology." Especially in the way that Jeffe originally suggested.

3) Neurochemistry is more tied in with biology and chemistry than it is with psychology. It's explaining what chemicals do to brain processes. (as a side note, it largely ignores anything NOT having to do with chemical processes as well, and therefore is quite suspect). And Psychiatry IS frequently put down. Since it is the actual treatment, in fact, I hear MORE people knock therapists and "shrinks" than psychologists.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I dont see why the two examples are so different

you said

no conclusive theory about WHY behavioral conditioning works

and I said that there wasn't any conclusive theory about why gravity works.

As for the hows there are plenty of theories about how the two work and many of them are treated in a very scientific way.

I never meant for you to take my statement as all philosophy in the past was psychology, and if you did thats your misinterperitation. Some of it was arguably psychology however, just like some of it was medicing, geometry and so on.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

that knocking though has more to do with psychologists than psychiatrists... after all a psychiatrist holds a medical degree and is therefore a kind of scientist, with a pretty good understanding of brain chemistry and makeup.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

i know you said that, but the two problems are not of equivelant status. Besides, I did point out already that there is more understanding of the nature of gravity than the nature of behavioral conditioning.

Yes, there are plenty of theories, some of them demonstrable. But none of the grand ones, say, of a comparable order of Newton's laws or Einstein's relativity, are even testable, because they rely on making up what the motivator is. the arguments around theories (like Attachment, Freud's psycho-sexual, or Erickson's psycho-social theories) proceed on the basis, essentially, of what is agreeable to the community and what people think is reasonable. That's not inherently wrong, especially if you're a Kuhnian, but it does show a lack of discussion about evidence and observable data.

which, in a nutshell, is why people will say it's a "junk" science. Because the theories start with observable data, but don't continue with them. Or, when the do continue with them, there is no way to gain the observable data the theories predict.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

that knocking though has more to do with psychologists than psychiatrists... after all a psychiatrist holds a medical degree and is therefore a kind of scientist, with a pretty good understanding of brain chemistry and makeup.

Sure, they have a degree, but so do most psychologists. It doesn't translate directly to respect. I see more disrespect for therapists than I do for theoreticians.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I disagree, after all physicists and theoretical mathmaticians are often mocked because their work has no practical applications. I think its more of the anti intellectual current that runs in society than a judgement on what they do.