fostel@Ucb-Vax@ncsu.UUCP (09/28/83)
I must say its been exciting listening to the analysis of what "Rational Psychology" might mean or should not mean. Should I go read the actual article that started it all? Perish the thought. Is psychology rational? Someone said that all sciences are rational, a moot point, but not that relevant unless one wishes to consider Psychology a science. I do not. This does not mean that psychologists are in any way inferior to chemists or to REAL scientists like those who study physics. But I do think there is a difference IN KIND between these fields and psychology. Very few of us have any close intimate relationships with carbon compounds or inter- stellar gas clouds. (At least not since the waning of the LSD era.) But with psychology, anyone NOT in this catagory has no business in the field. (I presume we are talking Human psychology.) The way this difference might exert itself is quite hard to predict, tho in my brief foray into psychology it was not so hard to spot. The great danger is a highly amplified form of anthropomorphism which leads one to form technical opinions quite possibly unrelated to technical or theoretical analysis. In physics, there is a superficially similar process in which the scientist develops a theory which seems to be a "pet theory" and then sets about trying to show it true or false. The difference is that the physicist developed his pet theory from technical origins rather than from personal experience. There is no other origin for his ideas unless you speculate that people have a inborn understanding of psi-mesons or spin orbitals. Such theories MUST have developed from these ideas. In psychology, the theory may well have been developed from a big scary dog when the psychologist was two. THAT is a difference in kind, and I think that is why I will always be suspicious of psychologists. ----GaryFostel---- [I think that is precisely the point of the call for rational psychology. It is an attempt to provide a solid theoretical underpinning based on the nature of mind, intelligence, emotions, etc., without regard to carbon-based implementations or the necessity of explaining human psychoses. As such, rational psychology is clearly an appropriate subject for AIList and net.ai. Traditional psychology, and subjective attacks or defenses of it, are less appropriate for this forum. -- KIL]
Montalvo%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA (11/14/83)
puter Scientists lack. Just because Psychologist, by and large, cannot defend themselves on this list is no reason to make idle attacks with only very superficial knowledge on the subject. Fanya Montalvo