ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (05/16/86)
In article <457@gargoyle.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes: >Matt Wiener writes: > >>And Freud is still considered garbage by the scientific community.... >>[Freudian garbage] still fails every known test that the scientific >>community throws at it. > >This is an extremely uninformed statement. Blasphemy! How dare you question the Word of Wiener! Seriously, as one who, in the past, has held Freud's "distasteful" theories in low regard, I urge Matthew to reconsider his opinions about one of the most creative thinkers in history. In addition to the points made in Richard Carnes' excellent article, I'd like to add a few of my own.. Our notions of what science is have changed enormously in the wake of the spectacular advances in physics and chemistry since ~1600 such that many feel the methodologies of these `hard' sciences are the only ones which are `scientific'. Do you believe that modern physics and chemistry could have occurred without any basis whatsoever, such as the description, classification, and codification of folks like Aristotle, followed up by centuries of formula gathering by alchemists and astrologers? Wayne stated this point quite well a few months back: Current attempts to define understanding are like Aristotelean physics. We don't yet know the players in the game, but we are trying to assign names to them anyhow. Looking at the world, Aristotle "saw" the existence of certain "players" in physics. Some, he got mostly right (in some sense), such as "mass", and "time", and some he got drastically wrong, like "impetus". - Wayne Throope As I see things, Freud played a role in psychology similar to that of the Greek philosophers of science. By modern standards, perhaps you'd say Freud created the hermeneutics, rather than the science, of mind. Freud's tentative model of the mind was an attempt to perceive and assign names to the "players" in the psychological "game". No doubt, many of Freud's ideas were only valid for the community in which he practiced. However, it seems pretty obvious to me that many of his "players" will ultimately prove to be universal across all cultures and times; it will require decades (perhaps centuries) before the models of psychology have progressed to the power of those in the hard sciences. As to the verifiability of the fundamentals of psychology (eg: mind), consider that the fundamentals in the hard sciences are not verifiable either, and were at one time denied by Pythagoras and Plato. Can you prove that we have sensations? Can you prove that our sensations are sometimes observations of facts? How? By observing reports from other people which confirm our own observations??? Can we prove empirical induction???? Can we prove that physical things exist???? Are there really objects moving in space and time? And so on, ad nauseam.. We don't prove these things. We simply accept them as unquestioned requirements of physical science, and only properly concern ourselves with these issues when paradoxical contradictions seem to arise (which is why I feel QM is a proper topic in net.philosophy). Perhaps Hawking's speculation that all the basic laws of physics will be known in a few decades will prove to be as illfounded as it was at the turn of the century. My belief is that understanding of the mind itself will become the ultimate focus of scientific interest long after most other forms of knowledge have exhausted themselves. Since Freud, there have been a huge number a theories of mind by folks as diverse as Jung, Wertheimer, Skinner, Lashley, Chomsky, Von Neumann, Husserl, Putnam, Gibson, Pribram, Searle.., an explosion of thought comparable the fertile speculations of Heraclitus, Democritus, Parmenides, Zeno, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.. If Freud offends one's sense of what science ought to be, so much the worse for everybody. -michael If the world of sense does not fit mathematics, so much the worse for the world of sense. - attributed to Pythagoras by Bertrand Russell
tedrick@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Tedrick) (05/18/86)
>>Matt Wiener writes: >>>And Freud is still considered garbage by the scientific community.... >>>[Freudian garbage] still fails every known test that the scientific >>>community throws at it. >>This is an extremely uninformed statement. >Blasphemy! How dare you question the Word of Wiener! >Seriously, as one who, in the past, has held Freud's "distasteful" theories >in low regard, I urge Matthew to reconsider his opinions about one of >the most creative thinkers in history. I agree with Matthew on this one. I also agree Freud was "creative", in the mathematical sense of creating nonsense out of thin air. Having personally had to deal with many unthinking dupes of psychological brainwashing (there are LOTS of them in California), I believe psychology is in some respects no more valid than witchcraft, and that some psychologists are guilty of serious crimes against humanity, through misleading the public. Pop psychology in the form of mass cultism (EST for example) has misled millions of naive people, and is highly dangerous to society as well as to the individual.
cjh@petsd.UUCP (Chris Henrich) (05/21/86)
In article <13849@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> tedrick@ernie.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Tom Tedrick) writes: > >Pop psychology in the form of mass cultism (EST for example) has >misled millions of naive people, and is highly dangerous to society >as well as to the individual. Can this danger be demonstrated? A convincing demonstration would be an example of some clearly evil event which was caused by EST and would not have happened without EST. By "evil" I mean more than just "boring and obnoxious." Loss of life, long term hospitalization, jail sentences, and divorce are serious enough to qualify. Have I forgotten the growing crime rate, the breakup of "the" family, the national malaise (J. Carter, 1979)? No. I just do not see that pop psychology made these things (or any other unwelcome trends you care to mention) worse. Nor that if pop psychology were suppressed (how, pray tell?) these trends would have been alleviated. Regards, Chris -- Full-Name: Christopher J. Henrich UUCP: ...!hjuxa!petsd!cjh US Mail: MS 313; Concurrent Computer Corporation; 106 Apple St; Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 Phone: (201) 758-7288 Concurrent Computer Corporation is a Perkin-Elmer company.
ladkin@kestrel.UUCP (05/22/86)
(Ellis) > >Seriously, as one who, in the past, has held Freud's "distasteful" theories > >in low regard, I urge Matthew to reconsider his opinions about one of > >the most creative thinkers in history. (Tedrick) > Having personally had to deal with many unthinking dupes of > psychological brainwashing (there are LOTS of them in California), > I believe psychology is in some respects no more > valid than witchcraft Psychology is the study of human behaviour in general. I'm glad you hedged your statement. Just because you dislike some aspects of pop culture, you blast the field in general? Michael is entirely right about Freud. Whether or not we currently like or dislike consequences of his work is only partly to be attributed to the originator. > Pop psychology in the form of mass cultism (EST for example) has > misled millions of naive people, and is highly dangerous to society > as well as to the individual. I tend to dislike ESTish interactions, and avoid them. I have some friends who are the opposite. *Highly dangerous* is an extreme attribution, and one I cannot agree with. There are common behaviour patterns that I dislike far more than ESTishness. ESTishness in friends never hurt me. Other behaviour has caused me grief for months (usually, you guessed it, with regard to lovers). Why do you feel so strongly? Do you have an argument for this view, or is this another throwaway opinion? Peter Ladkin ladkin@kestrel.arpa
dhenson@islenet.UUCP (Donald D. Henson) (05/24/86)
> I believe psychology is in some respects no more > valid than witchcraft, and that some psychologists are guilty > of serious crimes against humanity, through misleading the public. Right on!!!!! Don Henson Infosys Consulting