Thanks, Gib. For me an absolute is a concept that suggests final ends to our processes of growth and development, which offer a seemingly infinite continuum. Ideas from religion, philosophy or science that consider imagined disconnects from the continuum to be the key to human understanding are, IMHO, in error. e.g.s, Plato’s absolute qualities of which we see only shadows (parable of the cave), Paul’s "seeing through the dim glass darkly what we will see perfectly after we die, etc. The scientific paradigms we hear of now can be changed only when one can admit that change exists. (See Popper on this). And, according to Jaynes, science is not anti-religion, it is anti-Church–(in beliefs that the entire cosmological situation and the human place in it has been settled before time began.) That over and done business is what I mean by absolute. This is not a religion vs science or a religion vs philosophy problem. All three have both absolutist and progressive prophets.
I see. So would this apply to our epistemic development as well as the ontological development of anything in the universe? What I mean is, is our knowledge of the world, as it currently stands, also inevitably subject to change? And if so, is this change only a matter of coming closer to completion (so the basics will always be preserved and it’s just a matter of adding to our knowledge) or will everything we know, including the basics, eventually be overturned for what will be deemed “better” knowledge when the time comes?
Again, good questions. I see a striving toward epistemological clarification of ontology as being built on basics, not as replacing them. While our understanding does become progressively better, that does not necessarily have to imply some ultimate conclusion.
About this thread–apologies if I’m out of line, but I see the majority of posters here as reactionaries, not as espousers of personally thought out theoretical systems… Exceptions, of course, are Doug Bar, Magnet Man, Phenomenal-Graffiti and you. The newbies don’t want to do it, feeling somehow inadequate before the task, which is a lie against creativity. The oldbies, at least in the majority seen here, would rather debate than create. IMHO, sir, your good thread is doomed to extinction. There is a site here for expressing new theories. I don’t go there simply because I believe a democracy of ideas has the best chance of achieving good rigor. Many without academic credentials have come up with ideas that impress the hell out of me. I’m not an elitist.
Hi Ierrellus,
I do hope you’re wrong about the thread. You, having been invited to explain your opinions, have, without prejudice, risen to the challenge with good expression and consideration for the good readers of this venerable website. There are plenty of other, capable minds whose opinions I think the world would like to see explained - well, I would, for one.
Don’t be pessimistic - just let’s hope for other like-minded intellectuals will seize the opportunity you have seized so forthrightly. Whether you’re right or wrong - you’re there to be counted.
Best wishes to all who read this important and very interesting thread. Come on, guys - let philosophy thrive! AIn’t that the point of what’s going on here? Where’re are the good Cyrene and Ucci? Afraid??? 
Regards to all,
R
Thanks very much for your input, Ierrellus. It was much appreciated.
I’m not holding my breath on the reactionaries or the oldbies who want nothing but to debate, but there are some whom I’ve encountered here at ILP who have expressed their positions on a variety of topics in such a way that seem to cluster around a central view or theory, and I’ve created this thread as the arena in which I personally can pull them in and get down to the meat of their views just so I know where they’re coming from in future encounters. I could be wrong, of course. There could be nothing there behind the many retorts and objections, and their arguments may be fueled by nothing other than the desire to debate and react, but this thread is the place to find out for sure.
I’m about to PM Cyrene. If you want Ucci to join in, you’ll probably have to PM him (her?) as well.
I might as well clarify my views at least on some subjects. I am some-what anti-social sciences but only when those social sciences have divorced themselves from real science, and no longer rely on accurate and scientific methods of investigation into human psychology. I am not against statistics ‘pigeonholing’ human psychology into ‘uniform’ or ‘finite’ categories in the sense that I am comfortable with statements like ‘most males are less discerning about sexual partners than females’ that is somthing that seems statistically true and for good evolutionary reason, i think that pointing to any single person and making that kind of estimation may be massively inaccurate, but its a massively useful tool for all sorts of analysis. You can’t really make a comment on the maximum amount of human behavior or anything like that pigeon-holing though.
I wouldn’t say that every individual is unqiue only that applying statistical averages to individuals can definatly be inaccurate.
Other than that I am massively against a lot of ‘standard social science model’ science, things like Freud and scientists who accept Freud’s explanations bother me because they are simplistic and outdated in terms of modern science, they are not true characterizations of how the brain works.
I guess my main beliefs worth clarifying are this; I think the mind is made up of neural networks created by natural selection to solve specific tasks, mental adaptations, that all humans come equipped with a huge array of mental adaptations that produce certain types of behaviors in certain circumstances, some of these behaviors exist in almost all human groups, some of them only come about in some circumstances (like feeling fear at a bear) that a lot of these adaptations evolved in hunter-gatherer groups, like mate choice, facial recognition, incest-avoiding mechanisms and many many others.
Things like adaptations to feel certain emotions at certain times, say feeling anger when someone challenges you in an aggressive way.
besides this, I think that individual differences between humans, genetic differences, make some people more prone or less prone to certain say expressions of these adaptations or byproducts of adaptations. Say the genetic differences between two people, may make one person more likely to slap someone in the face when feeling that anger in the face of that challenge.
on top of that, what genes get expressed, turned on and off, in the person can change depending on circumstance, how they grew up, where they find themselves. a complex loop between genes, environment and the brain.
I guess the largest belief I should clarify, and this is for psychological or cognitive sciences is that these sciences cannot divorce themselves from other sciences, results from psychology, anthropology and sociology contradict each other inside out (standard social science versions of these anyway), while good psychology, anthropology, good brain science, is tightly conceptually integrated like a web.
my clarification is basically that I think those psychology sciences that think of the mind as some kind of general purpose machine, opposed to a highly specialized group of adaptations are just wrong and nonsensical. I’m not suggesting the brain has no general ‘intelligence’ just things like learning a language is an issue of an adaptation and not some vauge term of ‘learning’.
they do ‘learn’ but the input/output process of learning needs to be described, when it is you see a bunch of adaptations, complex neuro-machinery with pre-programming that helps get the job done.
Why do we need to clarify our views - so that we can be labelled and put in order?
All views are subject to change condition to season, month, year, and etc…
Could this potentially be a chicken or the egg type scenario? I mean, some interpretations of modern physics suggest consciousness plays an essential, potentially even causal role in the becoming of the “physical”
Are we certain of their causal relationship and respective positions in the chain?
This I agree with but I think we hold differing conceptions of representation… with the above in mind, perhaps the whole nature of the external world is a representation? – a representation that is shared by every conscious observer, a collective or universal representation if you will, each observer only differing in interpretation of that which is observed? Perhaps it is awareness that brings the ‘physical’ into existence, and not the other way around?
Perhaps awareness is not a property exclusive to humans or animals, but process much broader and more universal, even fundamental? To be is to be universally perceived?
It seems to me we can quite easily imagine and conceive of a universe void of anything “physical” as we’ve come to define this term, but I find it far more difficult to conceive of a physical universe entirely void of thought and awareness – the latter superficially seems almost as palpable as the first, but it can’t even question itself, it has no being, no apparent existence as such; thought itself would seem nonsensical and meaningless in its context.
I’d like to hear your thoughts
Thanks, Cyrene, for giving us your two cents.
So in what way do you see certain branches, models, and/or practitioners deviating from the standard scientific method - I gather it’s not in dealing with statistics as opposed to certainties as you’ve made clear your approval of statistical data when handled appropriately.
Yes, I fully agree about the Freud model. Any other examples?
How does the plasticity of neural nets fit into your view? It’s just that the way you described these ‘neural networks’ that have been ‘created by natural selection to solve specific tasks’ sounds very modularized, but there’s a lot of evidence supporting a model of neural networks (at least in the human brain) such that where ever they’re found in the brain, they can be adapted to take on any information processing task (actually, that’s a major exaggeration, but you get the point). Does your view take this into account?
Can you give a few examples of these contradictions?
Cyrene’s considerations are especially good. I think he and I might be more often on the same page than not.
Magsj.
Then why post here?
Remark,
I hope you’re right.
Amor fati,
I’ll have to think about your responses. On first sniff, they don’t appear relevant. I’ll read them several times.
While I broadly agree that fields like psychology ought be rooted in good science, I fear that too great an emphasis on that particular path leads to drugs being used as the solution to every problem. After all, the human mind is a chemical thing, so using chemicals can and does change it quite dramatically. The problem, of course, is that such an approach often doesn’t address the actual problem at hand. If a person is sad because they are socially isolated, for example, giving them antidepressants that will make them feel less sad about being isolated, while keeping them in an isolated state, can lead to additional problems down the road. Sad people usually lack the will to perform great tasks, whereas happier people do have that will. Sadly, the great task that many of these people decide to pursue is suicide, I do believe that is why there is such a dramatic spike in suicide rate after depression patients begin taking antidepressants. To say nothing of the problem of the pharma industry, where certain deviations from the norm are defined as new ‘psychological diseases’ and then treated, often with drugs that were designed for a different purpose but didn’t sell well.
So I think a pragmatic approach is to recognize that our knowledge of individual humans is very limited, as Cyrene pointed out. Even after we can sequence individual genomes on the cheap, we will still need to explore what various genetic markers mean, to say nothing of the epigenetics of the situation. Sometimes that means doing hokey talk therapy. While I think that Freudian psychology is intellectually bankrupt, it does seem to work for some psychologists and for some patients. I’m not arguing for widespread application, but I do think that a Freudian approach is in many ways a healthier one than a chemical one, even though the chemical one is far more grounded in proper science. The trick of going from generals to particulars, as Cyrene pointed out, is difficult and I think that we do have inherited traditions that do seem to work. I think that the best scientific approach to these disciplines is to look at those techniques which do seem effective and both refining them in a functional sense while exploring them in a theoretical one, as opposed to trying to create a new path based off of theory that is bound to be incomplete.
Think of it like magnetism and electricity. It took us a long time to figure out that these are the same phenomena, but by developing our understanding of both they eventually crashed into each other. I think that fields like psychology and sociology are much the same when it comes to evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience. The question is to what degree we think these fields have crashed and melded into each other. I, personally, think both need some more independent development before they can be said to be properly unified.
…to share my opinion, be it wanted or otherwise - I am glad it has been noted. 
Amor fati,
My apologies, sir or madame. “Ierrelevant” was not the proper word to use. I should have said “inappropriate” since my concern was this-- I had my hour on the stage of clarification, a great privilege. Now it’s Cyrene’s turn.
Amor fati,
My apologies, sir or madam. “Irrelevant” was not the proper word to use. I should have said “inappropriate” since my concern was this-- I had my hour on the stage of clarification, a great privilege. Now it’s Cyrene’s turn.
Well, I hope Cyrene hasn’t abandoned us prematurely. If amor fati or Xunzian feel overly eager to express their views in the mean time, it would prevent this thread from succumbing to an early death - the choice is theirs of course.
I’ll wait my turn. I’m interested in what more Cyrene has to say. Plus I’m still chewing on Ierr’s position, one that I’ve always enjoyed.
I’ll do a quick reply before a longer more detailed posts. As to what Xun said, about perhaps a scientific approach creating only* drug therapies to treat depression. I think that is a risk but maybe not because of the reasons some people may think.
meta-analysis have been done showing that most therapies work the same in most cases, regardless of whether it was done by a professional or not. Now, by scientific treatment I mean a treatment that works and can be shown to work statistically in a group of people compared to say, another treatment or placebo.
Theres no sane reason why all therapy should work the same, whether performed by a professional or not, unless it really doesn’t work. (well it does work, but the point is theres no differences in how well it works)
I think that psychological treatments outside of drug therapy (as in normal psychological approaches with therapy) can be developed, and I think once more, that these approaches when done properly, should be able to actually help people to some extent more than just say, any other therapy in the world.
There should be a method to creating a type of therapy that actually makes people feel better, better than say, the other 100 therapies would. I’m not saying therapy doesn’t work, only that it doesn’t have a scientific basis, its the ‘talk’ that helps, regardless if that talk is filled with psychobable in X discipline or Z. there should be a better way.
if there is no better way, we should admit that this ‘talk therapy’ does work, but ignore the so called ‘scientific basis’ to it. Like a lot of psychotherapy has explanations about why their particular branch works or gets better insights into the human brain, these underlying ‘scientific’ ideas to these talk therapies, need to be discarded unless theres massive evidence that they exist.
for example, say, and I really don’t put like ANY trust behind this science is evolutionary psychiatry; I read an article about this psychaitrist, he had a patient that was essentially at the end of her rope, she took pills, she cut herself, her life was spiraling out of control and nothing really seemed to help.
Well the person had a lot of situations in their life that they should have been depressed about, insanely controlling parents (or some such) questioning the decisions she made which were really made for them, just a depressive lifestyle in general.
gave her some advice on doing things like eating correctly, exercising and told her she should be living life for herself, probably discussed at length why she was making the decisions she was.
Anyway the girl ended up moving out of the school she was in, entering somthing she actually wanted to do, fixed up some other shit in her life, exercised more, ate right, dropped the anti-depressants. Apparently she went from like bottom of the barrel towards a very happy life.
Now, evolutionary psychiatry might just be another nonscience like freudian psycho-babble, it might work regardless of the science behind it, but until we find some talk-therapies that we can show work better than other talk therapies, we should keep looking.
I don’t think its fair the way psychologist/psychiatrists seem to pretend that their ideas will help because they are based on real science. Maybe the only reason they help their patients is because the patients THINK that their in a position to do so, if they’re actually not, that kind of lying to patients should be supported because it ‘makes them better’ its an issue of proffessional malpractice if you ask me.
there is also evidence that exercise/changes to diets can help treat A LOT of mental problems, including to some extent depression and some other disorders.
I mean, I know depression can come from all sorts of places and be like crippling in the extreme, but a lot of these people get into bad eating habits and bad exercise habits in conjuncture with that, and any attempt to put effort into changing ones outlook or even getting better, has got to be complicated by the fact that a lot of depressed people are running on very little nutritional value.
I’m not saying that can cure all depressions or anything like that, just that it can fix some people, and that it can help even more.
No, there is great statistical work done by a lot of sciences. When you ask me what models/branches I see deviating from the standard social science model (its not the standard scientific model anymore, if it is, its certainly on its way out) theres actually a lot and probably a lot that i’m ignorant of.
cognitive science often-times is outside of the standard social science, neuro-science (some of it) cognitive neuroscience (a lot of that) a lot of anthropology and evolutionary psychology studies/research (which has a lot of statistics) work in linguistics, work in watching developing infants, behavorial genetics, evolutionary cognitive-neuroscience, the list is actually quite large and i’m sure i’m ignorant of many sciences that aren’t part of the standard model. A lot of the time its often-times research that spans many fields of ‘mind science’ a lot of the different diciplines in the standard social science model, are artificial seperations. As in say, theres child psychology and developmental psychology and other psychologies, well often-times how the mind works is an issue that goes across many of these fields.
Its not just the freud model, its any model that suggests the brain is some kind of general purpose thing that gains structure from the outside. A lot of social sciences deny a very rich cognitive architecture that humans come equipped with. For example, any explanation of how baby’s learn language, that deny the existence of an adaptation specifically for learning language is nonsense. A lot such theories exist.
Yes I do take this into account in my view, I realize that brains are largely flexible and have a lot of plasticity. I’m not sure the extent of this plasticity (I know that people who lose arms or whatever, that the neurons envolved in that can be co-opted for other tasks, that an audio-cortex can be re-wired to function like a visual cortex (or largely anyway) that many areas of the brain can be used to ‘re-learn’ how to walk, say after a stroke.
But in a lot of ways, that flexibility/plasticity is limited, and somtimes limited in the extreme. Like, we see in plenty of brain damage cases exactly how flexible the brain can be somtimes, somtimes its amazing flexible, other-times its horrifyingly not so flexible.
If the brain was infinitely flexible, people wouldn’t have an easier time walking than on pre-cal, there would be no difference in learning a language (spoken) and a written language, or basic concepts of 1/2 but hard hard work to develope a basic number system.
psychological or cognitive sciences is that these sciences cannot divorce themselves from other sciences, results from psychology, anthropology and sociology contradict each other inside out
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Yeah, I suppose I can. I’ll get back to it though.