As Neil DeGrasse Tyson and others have said, in the same way that chemistry replaced alchemy, neuroscience will replace psychology. But this isn't likely to happen soon -- the human brain is too complex for present-day efforts.
Its a piss poor article that was written to vent, but it didn't try very hard to find good psychological research. Episodic memory psychological literature is very strong, IMO, yet never gets brought up in these kinds of articles. Its always the fluffy puffy research that fuels tabloid headlines, not the research that shows, for example, differential patterns of memory strategies over child development, or the contributions of context to recognition memory, the differences between recollection and familiarity processes supporting recognition memory..you know, all the stuff that is not flashy for tabloids, but is real psychological science.
Dr. Charan Ranganath was a member of my dissertation committee who recently wrote a wonderful book about memory and gave some really fantastic interviews. For example, on Fresh Air: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1233900923
Now yes, some of this is informed by neuroimaging and neuroscience spanning human and animal models, but also lots and lots of behavioral memory research. And the findings that are discussed are pretty reliable, shown over and over again in different ways. So, no, this article is not great. It did not do diligent research. Its a rant that focuses on specific types of research that is a small majority of the REAL field.
> ... all the stuff that is not flashy for tabloids, but is real psychological science.
Real psychological science would produce falsifiable theories -- theories that in principle would be discarded after a conclusive failure in impartial empirical tests. Instead, landmark psychological theories that are discarded, result instead from public outcry, not falsification. Examples include Drapetomania, prefrontal lobotomy, recovered memory therapy, Asperger syndrome.
Trained therapists do no better than properly motivated laypeople. This is not meant to disparage either group, some of whom are very effective, but no one knows why a particular person becomes an effective therapist.
On leaving his position as NIMH director, psychiatrist Thomas Insel said, “I spent 13 years at NIMH really pushing on the neuroscience and genetics of mental disorders, and when I look back on that I realize that while I think I succeeded at getting lots of really cool papers published by cool scientists at fairly large costs—I think $20 billion—I don’t think we moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, improving recovery for the tens of millions of people who have mental illness.” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-of-knowledge/...)
All this will be swept away by a future neuroscience that will shape testable, falsifiable theories about human behavior. Today's psychological alchemy will be replaced by tomorrow's neuroscience chemistry. But as the above Insel quote shows, we're nowhere near that goal.
Why do you, just as the article, jump from one topic to another, acting like it is a logical progression and not a rant?
Drapetomania (1851), prefrontal lobotomy, recovered memory therapy, what the hell are you talking about? These are not scientific theories from the modern era.
Plenty of hypotheses have been left in the dust because they failed at explaining aspects of a phenomenon. Working memory research has some great, easy to understand progression of theories in the 70's and 80's.
Your quote from the NIMH director jumps to a new topic, and is the expression of regret that more didn't get achieved in a very hard field, and the relationship between genes and mental health is not straightforward at all, and just like cancer research, it turned out the problems were much much harder than once thought.
Your response is as bad as the article: a rant that ignores the good work, hangs it's hat on the fringe or flashy work. Try again. Show your work.
> Working memory research has some great, easy to understand progression of theories in the 70's and 80's.
Those are descriptions, not explanations. Science requires testable, falsifiable explanations -- theories, not anecdotes.
> Drapetomania (1851), prefrontal lobotomy, recovered memory therapy, what the hell are you talking about? These are not scientific theories from the modern era.
Yes, that's true. It's true because there are no scientific theories in psychology, past or present. Plenty of narratives, descriptions, but no explanations.
Psychology can describe behavior. Neuroscience will eventually explain behavior.
> Your response is as bad as the article ...
I suggest that you address the topic, not the participants.
> Popperism is not a universally accepted definition of science. Not even by scientists themselves.
Well, false, but you would already know this if you had scientific training. It's discouraging to see so many young people trying to dismantle the Enlightenment without a full awareness of its origins and rationale.
Calling the foundation of science "Popperism" is like calling Democracy "Athensism," as though it's a temporary fashion or fad, open to replacement by something easier to negotiate.
Scientists sometimes grant a field a temporary reprieve to allow it to evolve -- string theory comes to mind -- but no one with scientific training dismisses the critical role played by falsifiability.
In Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit" (https://centerforinquiry.org/learning-resources/carl-sagans-...), we find this: "Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much."
Guess how many scientists risk their professional standing by arguing against this self-evident principle?
That's bullshit. It's like if you tried to say classical physics and chemistry were not science because they provided a description e.g. given heat, on average particles increase in velocity, on average exerting more force/pressure, which on average, is along this formula. Bullshit.
Quote: "criterion of falsifiability, in the philosophy of science, a standard of evaluation of putatively scientific theories, according to which a theory is genuinely scientific only if it is possible in principle to establish that it is false." ... "According to Popper, some disciplines that have claimed scientific validity—e.g., astrology, metaphysics, Marxism, and psychoanalysis —are not empirical sciences, because their subject matter cannot be falsified in this manner."
* Psychology studies the mind.
* The mind is not part of nature.
* Science requires empirical evidence and empirical falsifiability, "empirical" meaning derived from nature.
* Q.E.D.
> Bullshit.
I believe you said that already, again without a supporting argument.
The mind is not part of nature? That is quite the dualist, non-scientific, claim.
I don't know what kind of mind you refer, but in today's psychology, there is no dualism, or claim that predictable psychological phemenom aren't based in interactions between matter. Just like early classical physics using idealized construct created theories to explain and predict changes in pressure and temperature, so do psychologists creat idealized models to predict changes in behavior.
An analogy, two balls on a pool table collide. You idealized the balls, make observations, then build a model on how the variables relate(speed, mass, etc). You form a hypothesis about "laws" that govern behavior, then apply it to a similar system and test if it generalizes. But those laws aren't reality, it's a model of reality. This is the process of science, and it's exactly what psychology research does. We try to form a hypothesis that describes a set of behaviors, often with mathematical models (in cognitive psych), then apply it to another set balls/people to see if it generalizes.
As to Popper, there is no singular definition of science, and Britannica is hardly an authority on this complex matter.
If I hypothesize that there is an age-related increase in false alarms to a specific type of memory cue, and I repeatedly see the opposite age related trajectory, then I have falsified the hypothesis, either requiring greater specialty (e.g. verbal probes but not visual probes) or dropped altogether for an alternative, more encompassing theory.
It is really difficult for me to comprehend your point of view as anything but one primarily driven by personal biases.
Nope. It's a theoretical construct with no empirically measurable properties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem : "The mind–body problem is a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind and body."
This is a problem because there's no obvious connection between the mind and everyday reality.
> As to Popper, there is no singular definition of science ...
This is not true. Falsifiability and empirical evidence are part of the universally accepted definition of science. This is why mathematics, as important as it is to science, is not itself accepted as a science -- like psychology, it doesn't address empirical reality.
Carl Sagan, quoted from "The baloney detection kit" (https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-...): "Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable, are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle—an electron, say—in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result."
> It is really difficult for me to comprehend your point of view as anything but one primarily driven by personal biases.
You do understand, don't you, that when you avoid the topic and digress to personal attacks, you acknowledge that you don't have a meaningful counterargument?
In the mid-1990s, during the repressed memory fad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory), about the time virgins began reporting imaginary rapes, the legal system realized they were being played and the falsely accused were released from prison. The reason? Psychology is not a science, consequently these bogus "repressed memories" weren't ever subjected to scientific standards of evidence.
You need to realize that psychology's scientific standing isn't just a philosophical tea party -- it has real-world consequences. The wrongly accused repressed memory victims were released because psychology is not a science. The earlier "refrigerator mother" fad fell apart because psychology is not a science. Pre-frontal lobotomy was outlawed because psychology is not a science.
More recently, Asperger syndrome was abandoned because anyone with some acting ability could get the diagnosis, and because Albert Einstein, Bill Gates and Isaac Newton were assigned the diagnosis it because the first popular fad diagnosis, attractive to young people. Consequently the diagnosis became an epidemic, after which psychologists abandoned it, explaining that it isn't "based in science".
>Nope. It's a theoretical construct with no empirically measurable properties. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem : "The mind–body problem is a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind and body."
This is a problem because there's no obvious connection between the mind and everyday reality.
Now, I finally understand where you are coming from, but I believe it is misconceived. While the mind is indeed a complex construct, cognitive psychology does not treat it as separate from empirical reality. Modern cognitive science and psychology link the mind's activities to physical processes in the brain, measurable through tools like neuroimaging (fMRI, PET scans), electroencephalograms (EEGs), and other methods that correlate mental states with brain activity. These techniques allow researchers to observe brain regions involved in memory, perception, and decision-making, offering empirical support for the study of mental processes. While the "mind-body problem" is a philosophical issue, cognitive psychology and neuroscience work from a materialist perspective that views the mind as arising from brain activity, making it empirically approachable.
I agree that early psychology was not scientific. Psychological research has evolved significantly since René Descartes' dualism separated the mind and body as distinct entities. Yes, this view dominated early thought, yes, Fuck Freud. Freud was not a scientist. The beginning of empirical psychology actually started in the early 20th century with 'Behaviorism', led by figures like John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner, focusing strictly on observable behaviors and rejecting the study of the mind, rooted in the desire to make psychology as rigorous and objective as the natural sciences. Behaviorists argued that psychology should limit itself to measurable, external actions, drawing on the idea that only behaviors that can be observed and quantified objectively should and can be studied scientifically. They argued that the mind could not be directly observed, and thus would lead to subjective and unscientific conclusions.
For Watson and Skinner, all behavior was the result of conditioning by the environment, either treating the mind as a black box that transforms inputs and outputs, or by denying a mind at all. But by the mid-20th century the limitations of behaviorism became extremely clear. For example, although Skinner tried to explain how children learn language through reinforcement, famously Chomsky showed that theory to the door [1]. Other fields also began to highlight the inadequacies of behaviorism. The rise of computers in the 1950s and 1960s offered a powerful analogy for human cognition. Scientists began to view the mind as an information-processing system, much like a computer, capable of storing, retrieving, and manipulating information. This shift led to the emergence of cognitive psychology, which treated the mind as a complex system with its own internal rules and processes, much of which could be scientifically studied through indirect methods like reaction times, error rates, and neuroimaging. For instance, studies in memory and perception revealed that people often reconstruct memories or interpret stimuli based on prior knowledge, something behaviorism could not explain since it denied the role of internal representations. Furthermore, cognitive psychologists like George Miller and Ulric Neisser demonstrated that mental processes could be objectively studied. Miller's work on the capacity of short-term memory (his famous "7±2" paper) and Neisser's Cognitive Psychology (1967), which consolidated the field, showed that cognition involved quantifiable processes like attention, memory, and problem-solving. Another example: While most cognitive psychology of memory (for example) based theorizing on objective measures of memory (hits misses, false alarms and correct rejections under different experimental conditions, others began probing subjective reports of their memory experience along with responding yes or no when asked if they seen a stimuli before in a memory experiment, asking questions like, "How sure are you on a Likert scale", or "how visual was the memory?". These kinds of questions rely on subjective reports, but contained information with empirical external validity, like objective memory accuracy, objective increases in BOLD response within regions which from lesion studies in rats and non-human primates (and in humans with damage to those regions. Indeed the brain of infamous amnesic HM was in the freezer behind my lab a decade ago.
>> As to Popper, there is no singular definition of science ...
>This is not true. Falsifiability and empirical evidence are part of the universally accepted definition of science. This is why mathematics, as important as it is to science, is not itself accepted as a science -- like psychology, it doesn't address empirical reality.
>Carl Sagan, quoted from "The baloney detection kit" (https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-...): "Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable, are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle—an electron, say—in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result."
Popper’s criterion of falsifiability has been a cornerstone of scientific philosophy and it is important because it helps distinguish science from pseudoscience. Popper's take down of Freud makes him legend in my book. As I said earlier, Fuck Freud. However, it is important to also recognize the falsifiability is not always straightforward. Complex systems like those in biology do not easily lend themselves to clean falsification, theories are often probabilistic and deal with multifactorial causes rather than strict one to one cause-and-effect relationships. Consider a theory about how stress affects memory: testing such a theory might involve controlled experiments, but it’s often difficult to fully falsify because human and animal behavior is influenced by many variables. Yet, the predictive accuracy of models can be assessed through statistical analysis, allowing for refinement and testing of these theories without outright falsification in a Popperian sense. Moreover, science is also about confirmation within paradigms [2], and Popper's notion of falsification is often idealized beyond what is actually achievable. Broader Definitions of Science today includes concepts like cumulative evidence and refinement, explanatory power and predictive utility.
Mathematics is indeed abstract, often dealing with logical structures rather than empirical data, but psychology, especially in its modern form, does address empirical reality. Unlike mathematics, psychology relies heavily on empirical evidence to validate or falsify its hypotheses. Psychology uses behavioral proxies and neurobiological measures to ground mental processes in the physical world.
Some valid empirical questions are not testable in the Popperian sense. Theories of evolution are not, for example, at least in any useful way. Instead, a model based conception of science is required.
> Some valid empirical questions are not testable in the Popperian sense.
If by "valid" you mean "scientific", no, not true. As long as such questions cannot be tested and potentially falsified, they aren't science.
> Instead, a model based conception of science is required.
Einstein had a model for General Relativity in 1915, but the scientific world reserved judgment until it could be tested and potentially falsified. In 1919 an opportunity for a falsifiable test appeared -- an eclipse of the sun that would show the effect of space-time curvature and either validate or falsify Einstein's theory. (https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/testing-general-relativity)
Einstein's model was interesting, but until a falsifiable test could be carried out, it was philosophical speculation. This is how science works.
I've been having this same conversation for decades -- psychologists want the status of science without the discipline of science. But that would require science to be redefined, which would dismantle the Enlightenment. Not happening.
>"Psychology is not a science, as demonstrated by examples like repressed memory."
The "repressed memory" was an embarrassing controversy, but does not negate the scientific validity of psychology as a whole. Firstly, its acceptance among psychological researchers was quite limited compared to its popularity among certain therapists and clinicians, and among "expert witnesses" in legal contexts. You attribute the dropping of repressed memory theory to external forces, but internal to the field of psychology, it was never a dominant paradigm, which indeed did not hold up to empirical scrutiny. Memory researchers like Elizabeth Loftus, a leading figure in the study of human memory, argued that memory is not a perfect recording of past events and that memories are highly malleable, subject to suggestion, and reconstruction over time. Loftus and others conducted research showing how false memories could be created, particularly through suggestive therapy techniques. For example, in controlled experiments, Loftus demonstrated that people could be made to "remember" events that never occurred, simply through suggestive questioning. Loftus's work was phenomenal[3]. Repressed memory was popular among Freudian psychoanalysts, which dominated the therapy field...but that's like blaming chemists for alchemists spreading bullshit. Again, Fuck Freud.
>"Psychology isn't a science, as shown by fads like 'refrigerator mothers' and prefrontal lobotomy."
There has been a lot that has been done wrong. These particular theories and practices were not empirically based and did not stand up to scientific scrutiny. In general the clinical psychology/psychiatry has lagged most in terms of scientific rigor, in part because they spend so much time working as a clinician and personally, I think they need to feel like they are helping their patients, and thus are prone to bias. However the autism research field is increasingly sophisticated employing neuroscientific and psychological methods. Moreover, and importantly, it is rapidly incorporating concepts of neurodiversity to temper purely medical-oriented ideology that tends to pathologize everything about autism.
>"Asperger's syndrome was abandoned because it became a popular fad, not based in science."
Look. I am a developmental psychologist at a major University who conducts autism research. I am telling you now: Asperger's syndrome was not abandoned because it was a "fad." Instead, it was reclassified under the umbrella of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the DSM-5 to better reflect the continuum of autism-related symptoms. The decision to merge these diagnoses came after extensive scientific debate and empirical research, which demonstrated that Asperger's syndrome and other autism-related diagnoses share overlapping characteristics. This reflects the refinement of psychological diagnostic criteria based on ongoing research, rather than an outright abandonment due to a lack of scientific basis.
>"Psychology has real-world consequences because it is not a science."
Psychology indeed has real-world consequences, as do all sciences.
> The "repressed memory" was an embarrassing controversy
It was not an "embarrassing controversy". Innocent people were thrown in jail based on the imaginary claims of witnesses -- then jurors, then judges -- who wrongly thought psychology -- and repressed memory therapy -- have the status of science. They do not.
After any number of cases, for example involving virgins reporting imaginary rapes, the legal system finally realized they were being played and the innocent were freed.
The problem was that people still granted psychology the status of science, as late as the mid-1990s, including the legal system. Not any more.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory) : "Repressed memory is a controversial, and largely scientifically discredited, psychiatric phenomenon which involves an inability to recall autobiographical information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature." [ ... ] "Subsequent accusations based on such "recovered memories" led to substantial harm of individuals implicated as perpetrators, sometimes resulting in false convictions and years of incarceration."
So, according to you, these were actually years of "embarrassing" incarceration of innocents. Suit yourself.
> Look. I am a developmental psychologist at a major University ...
> Asperger's syndrome was not abandoned because it was a "fad."
That is exactly what happened. In a nutshell:
* Hans Asperger identified it in 1944.
* Psychologists later identified Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein and Bill Gates (among others) as suffering from it.
* This roster of famous "sufferers" made the diagnosis popular among young people (sometimes also their parents), many of whom sought the diagnosis for themselves.
* Overdiagnosis resulted in what is now described as an epidemic (https://time.com/archive/6641066/the-end-of-an-epidemic/) of Asperger's diagnoses involving people with a modicum of acting ability and a desire to have the same mental illness as Albert Einstein and Bill Gates.
* In response, psychologists folded the diagnosis into a larger category with a much less desirable name, with the very desirable effect of dramatically reducing the rate of diagnosis. This happened due to public perceptions -- not science, not clinical presentation, but public perceptions.
>>"Psychology has real-world consequences because it is not a science."
> Psychology indeed has real-world consequences, as do all sciences.
With one critical distinction -- psychology is not a science. This is true because it lacks a foundation in testable, falsifiable theories. Astrology has theories, the theories fail any reasonable test, so Astrology is a failed science. Psychology has no such theories, so it can't be undermined by falsifiable tests of its claims.
> Now, I finally understand where you are coming from, but I believe it is misconceived. While the mind is indeed a complex construct, cognitive psychology does not treat it as separate from empirical reality.
It doesn't matter what psychologists believe, it is all about what can be proven scientifically.
The reason for the central role of the mind-body problem in philosophy is because scientists and thinkers know them to be distinct -- the mind and the body lie in separate, non-overlapping domains.
The mind is not a physical organ, it is a philosophical construct, therefore it cannot be studied scientifically. Were this not true, there would be no "mind-body problem." But there is, and it is central to psychology's problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem : "It is not obvious how the concept of the mind and the concept of the body relate." That's true, and this issue would need to be conclusively resolved to turn psychology into a science.
Every scientifically trained person, from Freud to the present, who has studied human psychology, has reluctantly come to the conclusion that psychology is not a science.
In his book "Entwurf einer Psychologie" (1895), Freud said, “Why I cannot fit it together [the organic and the psychological] I have not even begun to fathom.” Knowing that this book would ruin his relations with therapists, Freud ordered that the book not be published during his life.
The published views of many other scientists are available to you if you were curious, all of whom come to the same conclusion.
Under contract to the APA, Sigmund Koch created a six-volume tome (1963) meant to evaluate psychology's scientific standing. Koch concluded, "The hope of a psychological science became indistinguishable from the fact of psychological science. The entire subsequent history of psychology can be seen as a ritualistic endeavor to emulate the forms of science in order to sustain the delusion that it already is a science. The truth is that psychological statements which describe human behavior or which report results from tested research can be scientific. However, when there is a move from describing human behavior to explaining it there is also a move from science to opinion."
In case that quote was lost to you, Koch is saying that psychological measurements follow scientific standards, until it's time to craft a theory, then things fall apart. This is why so many psychologists think psychology is a science -- its has a superficial similarity to science, until it's time to try to explain, to craft a theory.
In a now-famous lecture (1974), Nobel Prizewinner Richard P. Feynman said, "I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call Cargo Cult Science. In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. *So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.*"
Feynman's point is that the appearance of science isn't enough, there must be testable, falsifiable theories, but that is not possible when the thing being studied is not part of nature.
Former APA president Ronald F. Levant (2005) began a campaign to move psychologists toward evidence-based practice, saying, "Some APA members have asked me why I have chosen to sponsor an APA Presidential Initiative on Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) in Psychology, expressing fears that the results might be used against psychologists by managed-care companies and malpractice lawyers." His proposal fell flat on the ground that psychology couldn't possibly adopt EBP -- no scientific evidence, because no science.
Theodore Insel, director of the NIMH for 13 years, regularly exhorted psychologists to adopt science-based standards, finally giving up and resigning in 2015. Insel later wrote an article for Psychology Today in which he explained how 20 billion dollars of science funds were wasted, because ... wait for it ... psychology is not a science. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sacramento-street-ps...)
All this information -- and much more -- would be available to you if you were willing to critically test your own views ... like a scientist.
You can't even prove the mind exists. So maybe it doesn't, and the foundation for all of your dualism collapses in on itself.
All you really have is the emergent behavior of all that brain matter, and the fact that such things can be given description at various levels of abstraction.
Popperian science is completely unequipped to deal with the brain, or complex, evolving, particularistic systems generally, including evolution. You need a model based science instead. You are completely incorrect that Popperian science is the universally accepted definition of science. It's not true in the philosophy of science, and its not even true among scientists. It's merely a first pass description of a broad mechanism of knowledge generation that is used in many fields of science.
> You are completely incorrect that Popperian science is the universally accepted definition of science.
Please do some research on this topic -- falsifiability is an essential cornerstone of modern science. Required are testability, empirical evidence, falsifiability -- and falsifiability is the most important.
From Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit" (https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-...) : "Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much."
-- Thousands of similar references from the world of science --
This is not a philosophical tea party -- there are the rules of science.
You have not ever specified how a model of memory, for example, cannot be falsified. You just state that it cannot be falsified.
If you are going to suggest "research" to me then provide research grade materials, not pop-sci. Your arguments constantly appeal to authority by either science fiction authors, pop science writers, or to a particular scientists making a declaration (e.g. a physicist) who I doubt know the least thing about modern psychological research. Its weak evidence, and its not in good faith.
You say neuroscience does not rely on the mind-problem, but your claim that psychological research does (and cannot escape it) is based on arguments like "its self-evident that the mind exists, therefore", without ever finishing that thought, constantly presuming your conclusion, constantly ignoring my arguments about modern psychological research.
I will try one more time.
The dualist mind body is irrelevant to psychology. Our theories are about behavior. Measurable behavior. We construct hypotheses about how those behaviors might arise via the body and brain, test whether it is a valid model, how much explanatory power it has, and in what situation it fails to explain behavioral data. We then revise our models.
We use measures more than surveys, we use neuroimaging, physiological measures, we record neuron spikes, to build out our understanding of the how cognition occurs. Moreover, there is no real division between neuroscience and psychology today. Psychologists work with individuals who work with neurons on a plate, with rodents, with molecular biologists. You may say that only individuals who work on cells are scientists, but that's bullshit because, for example, when you put a couple hundreds of neurons together in a network, they dynamics become incredibly complicated and emergent, and network level descriptions of the activity become important in understanding how each individual part works. But the whole is more than the sum of its parts. No really. It is. Its been shown over and over using information theory in synthetic networks. And, in any case, cells are incredibly complex, and so their behaviors get described with heuristics, with probabilities.
Moreover, you must consider the work at multiple levels of description together before you make a judgement about whether its science. Science is not what one lab does, but how the whole endeavor works. Psychologists work at a course level of description, but their work has repeatedly informed the work of scientists working at a lower level. There is literally a ton of two-way information flow between those working at a very low level and those working at a high level.
We have a concept that we scientists use in this field: converging evidence. Converging evidence is not one study, but whole bodies of work from across multiple levels of analysis. You may not think that purely behavioral psychologists would be part of this endeavor, but they really really are a huge part of neuroscience progress. We are not separate. Psychologists are neuroscientists, helping knowledge converge on understanding the brain.
You can think of it as forest for trees analogy. Or in gradient descent, how sometimes considering a larger breadth, or lower resolution, helps avoid getting stuck in a local minima. Sometimes the wide perspective helps you make sense of what you are seeing in local data. So please spend some time thinking about how psychology works, not as a separate field but as an integral part of a larger field that together is moving forward on understanding the brain.
Your current view of my field is archaic, confused, and frankly incredibly naive.
> You have not ever specified how a model of memory, for example, cannot be falsified.
Wait ... did I read that right? It's up to psychology's critics to identify unfalsifiable claims, as well as face the classic impossibility of a negative proof, which BTW is a classic logical error? I imagine that psychologists would want to use positive evidence to shore up the foundations of their own field, by for example demonstrating the connection between a memory model and its biological foundation.
On that topic, the recent drosophila study (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-unveil-...), in which this tiny creature's entire brain was mapped in detail, is likely to be at least as revolutionary as the researchers claim, for the reason that nothing is left out. No guesswork -- memory, function, sensory connections -- simple, yes, but complete.
It's noteworthy that this work relies entirely on biology, with no role for the idea of a mind. Eventually this approach will see psychology wither away, as did alchemy, once more scientific approaches became possible.
In fact, now that I think about it, this neuroscience disregard for drosophila's mind ought to inspire criticism from psychologists on the ground that, according to psychology, the mind is an essential component of any valid study of brain function.
> The dualist mind body is irrelevant to psychology.
Of course it is. Because if this were not so, the field would collapse. The connection between mind and body is an article of faith among psychologists -- faith, not evidence.
> Your current view of my field is archaic, confused, and frankly incredibly naive.
That's quite the argument. Medieval and heartfelt.
Now I have a question. Given the drosophila study -- a complete survey of a small creature's brain in which the function of all the elements is known -- how many years will be required for the nervous system of a larger creature, and eventually a human being, to be mapped and characterized in such a way that a falsifiable, biological basis for behavior is demonstrated, one that does away with the very idea of a mind as a temporary and unnecessary crutch?
Given that inevitability, what will happen to psychology?
I also wonder about this, a question having nothing really to do with our discussion -- will we fully map the human nervous system as to form and function, using increasing amounts of computer power, or will AI take over society beforehand, also relying on increased computer power? Which will happen first? Will we exhibit the wisdom required to curb AI, prevent it from overwhelming our lame biological processors?
This last really is an open question, unlike the abandonment of psychology, which seems a foregone conclusion.
Mutual Information can be decomposed into redundant and synergistic components, where here synergy means there is more information considering two parts together than just summing the information in each part. T
If we cannot agree that the mind is materialistic then there is no way forward for us, except to note that since you earlier stated that you think basic neuroscience has a chance, then the mind body problem is not that important after all.
> If we cannot agree that the mind is materialistic then there is no way forward for us, except to note that since you earlier stated that you think basic neuroscience has a chance, then the mind body problem is not that important after all.
On the contrary, aware of the importance of the mind-body problem, neuroscience disregards the concept of a mind, focusing instead on the brain and the nervous system. This doesn't address the mind-body problem, it ignores it as a pointless digression and a waste of time.
To the extent that neuroscience addresses the idea of a mind, it is as an obstacle to progress. When I first studied neuroscience, as a young student I would sometimes refer to the mind, at which point my professor would reply, "The what? Please explain." His goal was to address and dismiss the mind as soon and as conclusively as possible, so we could move on to more productive topics. You and I have exactly the same problem, for the same reason.
This is not to disparage the productive activities of psychological therapists -- I think I've made that clear in this conversation -- only to say it's not science.
Consider this example -- let's say I perform a study of astrology. I create a reliable survey quantifying the various astrological signs. My article accurately tells the reader how many Geminis and Tauruses there are in the population, with much interviewing and an impressive P-factor, sufficient to assure publication. It's a solid scientific result by any measure.
Now the question -- does my entirely valid, scientific, astrology survey make astrology itself science? The answer is no, because my astrology result doesn't test or potentially falsify astrology's foundational theories.
Astrologers will insist that this valid, fully scientific astrology study means astrology is itself scientific -- never mind that it doesn't test astrology's foundational theories and claims. But this is obviously false -- only successful tests of those foundational theories could raise astrology to the status of science.
Psychology has the same problem as astrology, with the important difference that, unlike astrology, psychology doesn't have testable, falsifiable foundational theories. There are plenty of valid, scientific psychology studies with impressive P-factors ... but they do not, and cannot, address testable, falsifiable foundational psychology theories, because the latter do not exist.
Its easy to show that astrology's basic claims -- that our lives are ruled by the positions of stars and planets -- fail any objective tests, and therefore astrology is pseudoscience. But this is not possible for psychology, only because psychologists know better than to make testable, falsifiable claims about how and why the mind affects the body.
There are any number of studies that show a mind stimulus and a body response -- reliable and repeatable -- but no explanation for the connection between the two. That would require falsifiable, empirical psychological theories that explain how the mind affects the body, and more important, why. Indeed, a psychologist who offered such a theory would be expelled from the profession.
Asserted without evidence. But, frankly, you can point to "the mind" like you can point to "the soul" or "the spirit". You can't.
* Science requires empirical evidence and empirical falsifiability, "empirical" meaning derived from nature
Yes, and no. Sometimes falsifiability is too blunt an instrument. Why? Because complex, aggregate phenomena are multi-causal, and often historically particular, and there is no practical means to collect enough data, or design experiments, that can untangle all the causal threads. Remember that the phenomenon being explained is already at a higher level of abstraction over a series of objects and events that have a family resemblance. I can tell you (because I've looked at a lot of them) that no two human brains are the same.
* Q.E.D.
QED belongs in the realm of logic, which is best applicable to abstract objects. Mathematical ones, you might say. There is a reason that classical, logic based, approaches to reasoning about the real world (e.g. in robotics failed). (:
Do avoid pointless contradictions. Psychology's goal is to scientifically study the mind -- whether they can actually do that remains an open question.
>> * The mind is not part of nature.
> Asserted without evidence.
That would require proof of a negative, the most common tactic of a pseudoscientist ("You cannot prove Bigfoot false? All right, then -- he exists.") This means the positive burden of evidence for the thesis that the mind is part of nature belongs to psychologists -- it is, after all, their claim.
> Sometimes falsifiability is too blunt an instrument.
That's right, and assertions that cannot be falsified, cannot become part of science. This is one reason string theory is in limbo -- no falsifiable experimental validation. This is actually a bad example in modern times, because string theory has pretty much been discarded for multiple reasons, its untestability being just one.
>> * Q.E.D.
> QED belongs in the realm of logic, which is best applicable to abstract objects.
Wait ... it's your argument that saying "which was to be demonstrated" has a strict domain of applicability?
I think neuroscience will not replace psychology for the same reasons physics doesn't replace chemistry. In theory it might encompass it, but in practice it's a difficult way to get there, and therefore not the effective path.
> ... for the same reasons physics doesn't replace chemistry.
It's true that physics didn't replace chemistry -- instead it explained it. Physics gave chemistry a theoretical foundation. In the same way, neuroscience will explain psychology. But not any time soon.
> That seems like say that hardware engineers should be the ones debugging software.
Perhaps at first glance, but neuroscience will eventually deal with "software" issues in much the same way that tested, reliable computer programs are committed to ROM chips as a safeguard against inadvertent erasure.
In the future biological case, it might become possible to modify human behavior by "reprogramming" neuronal patterns semi-permanently. This might sound like a panacea at first glance, but it could have a truly scary "big brother" dimension if it's used to control people's behavior in a way meant to enforce social conformity.
But one thing for sure -- it will be more effective than talk therapy. :)
As Neil DeGrasse Tyson and others have said, in the same way that chemistry replaced alchemy, neuroscience will replace psychology. But this isn't likely to happen soon -- the human brain is too complex for present-day efforts.
But there's some progress. In a recent breakthrough, we fully mapped the brain of a fruit fly (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03190-y).