the philosophy of psychology (split from has psychology helped or hurt you)

[Mole]

In your opinion, do you think it's worthwhile to pursue this "religion"?

Yes, I do.

I think it is worthwhile to pursue evidence and reason in science, and I think it is equally worthwhile to pursue the suspension of disbelief in art and religion.

And I know this is somewhat heretical of me but I prefer art and religion to science.

It seems to me that we do some things because we need to, and some things because we want to. And it seems to me that we do art and religion, not because we need to, but because we want to.

So it seems to me that art and religion are a noble endeavour.

But no matter how noble, we need to keep a clear head, and make the proper distinctions between art, religion and science.

 

[á´…eparted]

Yes, I do.

I think it is worthwhile to pursue evidence and reason in science, and I think it is equally worthwhile to pursue the suspension of disbelief in art and religion.

And I know this is somewhat heretical of me but I prefer art and religion to science.

It seems to me that we do some things because we need to, and some things because we want to. And it seems to me that we do art and religion, not because we need to, but because we want to.

So it seems to me that art and religion are a noble endeavour.

But no matter how noble, we need to keep a clear head, and make the proper distinctions between art, religion and science.

This would be much smoother and I and others would take MUCH less issue with you if you made things like the bold clear at the get go.

While I disagree with your opinion, and pointed out how it's wrong, that's fine because your ultimately not using it as a basis to devalue the field or claim it's not viable or fair to use.

 

[Mole]

This would be much smoother and I and others would take MUCH less issue with you if you made things like the bold clear at the get go.

While I disagree with your opinion, and pointed out how it's wrong, that's fine because your ultimately not using it as a basis to devalue the field or claim it's not viable or fair to use.

Make no mistake. I am claiming that psychology is not science just as Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science is not science.

I see science as using our prefrontal cortex to think critically, while psychology, religion and art put our critical minds to sleep for a while, suspend our disbelief, and engage our imagination.

And hey, with imagination, what's not to love?

 

[Forever]

We are meaning creating animals and we need meaning to guide our thoughts, feelings and interactions.

Mythology is a system of meanings.

And this system of meanings provides an intelligible environment in which we operate. And mostly our system of meanings, our mythology, is invisible to us but guides our thoughts, actions and interactions.

This is complicated by the fact that we also have a mythology called individualism where we see ourselves as the author of our thoughts, feelings and interactions. Just as a book has an author, we see ourselves as the author of our thoughts, feelings and interactions.

However the book is dead, and so the author is dead. And this opens up the whole rich field of mythology to us, without being hamstrung by individualism.

We can start to see the ways in which we live out our respective mythologies. For instance we can contrast the way Americans and Australians live out their different mythologies.

All this is of course anathema to those who who completely and uncritically believe in individualism. God help them.

Haha Ni ascertains to me that certainly I am not the author of all of my thoughts at least. Yes cultures are radically different. That's why I've taken up an interest in Anthropology recently. It's incredibly amazing at how one could view our culture through different terms here in America and radically disgusted but if we use it in all the terms we're familiar with, it's like there's no problem with it at all. Today I figured out I'm primarily a pluralist in Anthropological thought.

Yes, I do.

I think it is worthwhile to pursue evidence and reason in science, and I think it is equally worthwhile to pursue the suspension of disbelief in art and religion.

And I know this is somewhat heretical of me but I prefer art and religion to science.

It seems to me that we do some things because we need to, and some things because we want to. And it seems to me that we do art and religion, not because we need to, but because we want to.

So it seems to me that art and religion are a noble endeavour.

But no matter how noble, we need to keep a clear head, and make the proper distinctions between art, religion and science.

I agree that all 3 still need to be treated as separate and to respect others in their views. Although I'd love to start pursuing art and see where that takes me and as I settle down in life I want to see how religion goes. (If it even should still exist in the mainstream) Science, I like for the hard sciences, like chemistry being my favorite because of it's transformative nature so symbolically it means a whole lot to me.

 

[á´…eparted]

Make no mistake. I am claiming that psychology is not science just as Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science is not science.

I see science as using our prefrontal cortex to think critically, while psychology, religion and art put our critical minds to sleep for a while, suspend our disbelief, and engage our imagination.

And hey, with imagination, what's not to love?

Your opinion is irrlevant to me since you're fine with psychology after all.

 

[Zangetshumody]

[MENTION=3325]Mole[/MENTION]

Its really hard to keep track of the myriad mistakes and presumptions I see you projecting onto all the issues that surround this topic, I would have navigated them from the outset, in quite a different fashion.

Using "falsifiable hypothesis" does not forge unity in any field that has not already been relegated as junk approximation (utilized only for the purposes of technical application, and when relied on in any serious and semi-philosophical thinking, produce stupid and useless claims and sentiments;- ie. many people harp on about the eventual end of the universe as predicted by entropy, when the theory of thermodynamics does not even apply to any of the weak nuclear forces empirically accounted of in nature).

Science is closer to the religiosity you profane, the religion of falsification being confused for verification;- which right at the start, presumes an epistemological pluralism that is already automatically acquiesced to (there are deeper philosophical implications in the stupidity of taking this step from the outset: blundering presumption about the force that time itself possesses, and the implicit distinction between an ordering force beyond the present-time, that we can only know and perceive as its controlling effect for our present[-time] observations; [and then I am baffled to understand, how any thinking person can make the mistake of thinking, that science can tell us anything on the questions of free will, and conscious-direction (ie decision making), when it already possesses a structure that could only hold authority over these matters, after one had already decided that science itself, was the overmind with the greatest human intelligence, claiming a power to define its subordinates according to its image... really.. quite a feeble bandwagon-cult (of nonthinking), that Scientism fanatics have given themselves over too.]

The task of any serious explorer would be to account for a system -especially of a "science" that is as immaterial as the mind- with an account that is not prone to a falsification, and thereby preventing the otherwise necessitated fracture of the field into competing claims, or a sham of loosely connected theorems that all collate against the background of a nebulous terra-incognito, the blank space upon which all the various tensions of consistency are conveniently projected to rest on (in hard physics, this is known as the big bang).

Plato solved these issues, which have their nexus in the misapplication for the principle of transitivity (that are obtusely ironed over in vulgar-scientific/secular thinking of today), by creation of the "ideal form"; and now Scientific reverence, has displaced the "ideal form" for an impossible pursuit of a scientific-Holy Grail that has yet to be presented to us, but we all fear the wroth of Science when not blindly agreeing that Science is capable of testing for the ultimate narrative for a cause, and thereby "knowing it (sic)" by falsification, to not confess these sentiments is the greatest heresy (I can imagine Richard Dawkins getting hot with anger even now, over any professed doubts). I would remind Scientists, that not only in principle does falsification never lead to verification (unless you have blind faith in those tasked to fudge the translated explanations into comprehensible language), but also that the rigor itself has yet to produce any hard truth in any matter;- it is quite obviously a massive and collective con-game, where we have already displaced so much old science already by "newer and better" science, that the more "newer and better science" that we get to look-forward to receiving, must be even better-er!...

^Bandwagon.

Furthermore, my critique in the third paragraph, is also the reason why Science has come to a grinding halt in dealing with quantum mechanics (for over four generations, the field has probably lost more understanding than was crafted on those topics in Heisenberg's day), which answers why mathematical modeling is epic-ly reaching the status of idol worship, so as to cover over the obvious and embarrassing problems of fudging some comprehensible account, that what would otherwise be required to hide the deep implications in the futility of Science, at the deepest level of empirical observation.

 

[Zangetshumody]

Also [MENTION=3325]Mole[/MENTION]

I am now going to deal with your critique of the way that you depict psychology as a religious enterprise:

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Preface commentary:

You say religion and ergo psychology is about super-natural beings, and that real people are unimportant in the scheme's or workings of the supernatural entities contained in the religion.

This seems more like a cartoon argument than one given any real serious contemplation. Already committed to epistemological pluralism, just to have setup a massive mud slinging pit that is not allowed to talk seriously about those "supernatural entities" to any degree...

-------------------------------

If we take psychology to be the study of the soul, and also take it to be a religion (albeit a secular one as you stipulate), then how might we claim to be hurt by it, unless we displace the authority of psychology by some better account for psychology? Perhaps a sociological theory of oppression, that would regard that psychology as merely a form of interference in some greater Sociological scheme, making the psychology sub-ordinate to a greater conception of human-value (probably through some utility based definition of liberty).

Your setup necessitates claiming a hierarchy of knowledge, either, in some kind subordination as I have given an example of (just above), or, of the meaningful service that psychology has promoted some higher/est material aim (ie. the human-value that is affirmed by some system of philosophical thought). That on its own would not be troublesome, but by your very positing, you have already condemned all possible knowledge in philosophy and psychology as "not knowing.. consciousness", so then why are you interested in seeing expressions of those hierarchies constructed? So as to play at knocking down the "religious sandcastles" that you have invited people to make for your inspection? Another analogy which is perhaps more stark: encouraging an "animal" to dance for you, so that you may then proceed to make light of its efforts.

 

[Litsnob]

This sounds startlingly familiar, after all Catholic means universal. So just as Catholicism is universal, psychology is universal.

And indeed the claim that everyone is the same inside ultimately, is tantamount to calling us Children of God.

Yes, psychology has borrowed the tropes of religion and dressed them in secular clothing.

Or, this is just how human beings see the world and when we add gods we call it religion and when we take gods away we call it psychology.

 

[Mole]

Another analogy which is perhaps more stark: encouraging an "animal" to dance for you, so that you may then proceed to make light of its efforts.

Indeed, I am a dancing animal, for every second day I spend five hours connected to a dialysis machine that takes my blood, cleans it, and puts it back in my animal body.

At first I thought I wouldn't be able to bear this until I started to dance.

With my blood coursing through a complex machine I dance in a heavy, high tech chair to 50's Rock and Roll for hours at a time.

It can take up to half an hour for my animal body to become hot and reach my second wind, then I feel I can dance for ever.

And then the endorfins take over and I reach the runners high, but in this case, the dancer's high. Yes, I have reached an altered state of consciousness where time disappears, my inhibitions attenuate, and the world is beautiful.

 

[Zangetshumody]

Indeed, I am a dancing animal, for every second day I spend five hours connected to a dialysis machine that takes my blood, cleans it, and puts it back in my animal body.

At first I thought I wouldn't be able to bear this until I started to dance.

With my blood coursing through a complex machine I dance in a heavy, high tech chair to 50's Rock and Roll for hours at a time.

It can take up to half an hour for my animal body to become hot and reach my second wind, then I feel I can dance for ever.

And then the endorfins take over and I reach the runners high, but in this case, the dancer's high. Yes, I have reached an altered state of consciousness where time disappears, my inhibitions attenuate, and the world is beautiful.

As you haven't taken the effort of making a direct point of contention in your response, I am left to surmise and wonder if your answer is supposed to be an account for such a strong sense of self-pity, that it tacitly permits the decision to spread your belief of dance, while insulating yourself against all threats to its emotionally premised attachment, by obtusely flouting and feinting unpreparedness at any deep or real intellectual discourse that might deprive you of the vehicle of spreading the dance-gospel, so that you might get to conduct that rhythm over a wider pool of sympathetic hosts, for your gift of dance to extend beyond your own personal enjoyment of it.

That is a point of view that I can't force you to relent; but I am sensitive for people treating the intellect in such a subversive and fickle way, so as to deploy all manner of tact to avoid, what you might even describe as: an alternative plausible explanation.

I have some interesting reproofs of the skeptical outlook:
Commitment to skepticism is already an untenable first step, how can one decide to place full confidence in perpetual uncertainty, already the aim of a skeptic for choosing his skepticism, is often the root of a folly that is only pursued further by its proceeding skepticism. And so skeptics are already driven along the inclination through the axiom [and self fulfilling prophecy] in their [unsettled] purpose, being blind to the inherent nature in their own skeptical-project, because of their refusal to fully recognize the operation and force of the axiom, that persists just below the midst of their own skeptical-project.

Therefore skepticism is a position that operates from a self-deception: where the self has fixed upon attuning itself to not hear what is sound; with an attached caveat that it will begin to listen, after a dilemma or trial is made resolved, so that it can recognize what it sound by knowing of a test (forged in substance of the dilemma's resolution (which is also the seat of the presumption Skepticism is founded on)) rather than by the proper focus (and unity) of the intellect.

There are more crass and simplistic measures to debunk skepticism, but I will digress on that if it later proves warranted...

 

[Forever]

^^ This guy should be writing papers.