Faith healing vs. modern medicine? (Moved from "Bible in a year" thread)

[tkae.]

It is a question of hierarchies. Natural Selection is abstracted from the taxonomies of biology. Biology is not abstracted from Natural Selection. So Natural Selection is at a higher level of generality and abstraction than biology. So in the hierarchy, Natural Selection contains biology, but biology does not contain Natural Selection.

Hierarchies you say?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

Part of a series on
Evolutionary biology

Evolutionary biology isn't part of a series on natural selection.

Natural selection is part of the series on evolutionary biology.

Hierarchically, biology is above natural selection.

 

[Coriolis]

This itself is suspect. Psychology is the red headed stepchild of the natural sciences.

Not that I agree with Mole. His reasons for saying the Psychology isn't a science are wrong. But the general claim is up for debate. You yourself said that the scientific method relies on experiments that involve observations.

There is no reliable method of this in Psychology, and therefor Psychology is not reliably a natural science. You can only observe behaviors, and even behaviorism has evolved away from being solely behavior-based.

I am not a psychologist, and so cannot vouch for how closely that field adheres to scientific methods. I simply provided the yardstick. Others can complete the measurement.

Is Psychology a definitive science? I won't answer that because of the shitstorm that could happen with psychotherapy insurance coverage and our access to science conventions. You don't answer this question out loud just like you don't say the name of the man who tried to kill Harry Potter. In the current academic culture, science is respected and philosophy is not, despite the fact that any Psychology involving thought rather than behavior is firmly founded on philosophical bases rather than scientific ones. But again, psychologists wouldn't get even 1/4 the respect if they were philosophers rather than scientists, so I won't say it's not a science. I will say that if the physicists and the geologists ganged up on us tomorrow and kicked us out of their clubhouse then I wouldn't be surprised.

Well, in Isaac Newton's day, even theology was considered closely enough related to physics that the chair of the one department moved on to take over the other at one point. I wouldn't be so quick to kick anyone out of the clubhouse who was trying to learn about the human condition through observation and experiment, with an eye to reproducibility of results. At least those psychologists employing such methods would be welcome.

 

[tkae.]

I am not a psychologist, and so cannot vouch for how closely that field adheres to scientific methods. I simply provided the yardstick. Others can complete the measurement.

...

Well, in Isaac Newton's day, even theology was considered closely enough related to physics that the chair of the one department moved on to take over the other at one point. I wouldn't be so quick to kick anyone out of the clubhouse who was trying to learn about the human condition through observation and experiment, with an eye to reproducibility of results. At least those psychologists employing such methods would be welcome.

It depends on what type of psychologist you're working with. Behaviorists and cognitive-behaviorists are entirely about data. Psychodynamic schools think data is useful but can't be accurate (unless it agrees with them). Humanists think data is suspect because phenomenology is nearly impossible to quantify.

Behaviorists say that phenomenology has no place in psychology BECAUSE it can't be quantified. Humanists say that if you remove it from the study of psychology, you're not even studying psychology anymore. Psychodynamists say this is all the result of deep-seated desires to fuck our mothers.

It's super political. Like, even within Psychology departments there's vicious divisions. We have two professors -- a clinical psychologist and a religions psychologist -- who you're very careful to bring up in the other's class. Religions psychologist believes that mental disorders are an arbitrary assumption we make about others and that labeling them as abnormal and treating them like they're defective is cruel (the Zsasz theory). Clinical psychologist obviously believes the opposite, and that refusing to provide them care is cruel. Shit gets real when you mix in the suffering of others. It's a Cold War only because they both have tenure, but in many cases that hasn't been true. Psychologists will at times launch all out war on each other, if they even talk to each other. At our state psychology conference, the psychodynamists have their own conference in the same city over the same weekend, but have separate events and attendees.

It can even get bizarre. My department head -- an I/O psychologist -- walked into my Abnormal Psychology class once and made a joke about he didn't have to take a class on crazy people.

Nature vs nurture, behavior vs thought, unconscious vs subconscious/preconscious, etc. Every science has their factions, but psychology's factions are intense because they aren't just basic disagreements about whose subject is more important, but basic disagreements on the nature of facts. They're philosophical differences (that word again). For example, my basic assumption is that humans are driven by an innate desire to grow and continue living. A behaviorist's basic assumption is that humans are catalogs of their learned behaviors. I assume that our desire to grow shapes our behavior, while a behaviorist would say that learned behaviors shape our growth. Psychologists can agree on facts only until you get to the point of application and implication. Then shit hits the fan.

 

[Showbread]

It depends on what type of psychologist you're working with. Behaviorists and cognitive-behaviorists are entirely about data. Psychodynamic schools think data is useful but can't be accurate (unless it agrees with them). Humanists think data is suspect because phenomenology is nearly impossible to quantify.

Behaviorists say that phenomenology has no place in psychology BECAUSE it can't be quantified. Humanists say that if you remove it from the study of psychology, you're not even studying psychology anymore. Psychodynamists say this is all the result of deep-seated desires to fuck our mothers.

It's super political. Like, even within Psychology departments there's vicious divisions. We have two professors -- a clinical psychologist and a religions psychologist -- who you're very careful to bring up in the other's class. Religions psychologist believes that mental disorders are an arbitrary assumption we make about others and that labeling them as abnormal and treating them like they're defective is cruel (the Zsasz theory). Clinical psychologist obviously believes the opposite, and that refusing to provide them care is cruel. Shit gets real when you mix in the suffering of others. It's a Cold War only because they both have tenure, but in many cases that hasn't been true. Psychologists will at times launch all out war on each other, if they even talk to each other. At our state psychology conference, the psychodynamists have their own conference in the same city over the same weekend, but have separate events and attendees.

It can even get bizarre. My department head -- an I/O psychologist -- walked into my Abnormal Psychology class once and made a joke about he didn't have to take a class on crazy people.

Nature vs nurture, behavior vs thought, unconscious vs subconscious/preconscious, etc. Every science has their factions, but psychology's factions are intense because they aren't just basic disagreements about whose subject is more important, but basic disagreements on the nature of facts. They're philosophical differences (that word again). For example, my basic assumption is that humans are driven by an innate desire to grow and continue living. A behaviorist's basic assumption is that humans are catalogs of their learned behaviors. I assume that our desire to grow shapes our behavior, while a behaviorist would say that learned behaviors shape our growth. Psychologists can agree on facts only until you get to the point of application and implication. Then shit hits the fan.

As someone working on a graduate degree in the field of Psychology/Counseling I would like to add that most most Psychologists are much more integrative than this. I've never met someone in the field who is so specialized that they deny the legitimacy of all other factions. Especially the Nature vs Nurture debate. Anyone who knows their stuff will tell you that pretty much all current research points to nature AND nurture as defining behavior.

In terms of following the scientific method, they do the absolute best they can. But at the end of the day, humans have too many variables to control. Behavior is not like a chemical reaction where you can study pure substances in a controlled laboratory. No matter how well you control an environment, human beings bring their past with them. On top of that, human behavior and emotion is so nuanced that traditional quantitative research just can't capture everything. But, just because we can't do research that definitively proves a point in 100% of cases, doesn't mean things aren't worth studying. I'd give a detailed breakdown of how behavioral research works, and the differences between qualitative and quantitative studies, but I think that would be an even bigger derail.

 

[Mole]

As someone working on a graduate degree in the field of Psychology/Counseling I would like to add that most most Psychologists are much more integrative than this. I've never met someone in the field who is so specialized that they deny the legitimacy of all other factions. Especially the Nature vs Nurture debate. Anyone who knows their stuff will tell you that pretty much all current research points to nature AND nurture as defining behavior.

In terms of following the scientific method, they do the absolute best they can. But at the end of the day, humans have too many variables to control. Behavior is not like a chemical reaction where you can study pure substances in a controlled laboratory. No matter how well you control an environment, human beings bring their past with them. On top of that, human behavior and emotion is so nuanced that traditional quantitative research just can't capture everything. But, just because we can't do research that definitively proves a point in 100% of cases, doesn't mean things aren't worth studying. I'd give a detailed breakdown of how behavioral research works, and the differences between qualitative and quantitative studies, but I think that would be an even bigger derail.

There is no equivalent to the periodic table in psychology, and there is no equivalent to natural selection, and no equivalent to general relativity or quantum mechanics, so following the scientific method in psychology is only to increase its status by associating with science, quite like Christian Science.