Mr.Samsa wrote:I think your understanding of science, and especially philosophy of science, needs brushing up on a little bit. Firstly, the claim that "science aims to discover the truth" is a very debatable claim and requires a lot of argumentation to support it. Given that you have presented it as if it were an obvious 'fact', I assume you probably haven't thought too long or hard on the subject.

Is it possible you're presuming and demonising me just a bit too much? I haven't done the same to you.

Mr.Samsa wrote:The main problem is that science is a tool or methodology based on naturalistic explanations - this means that if it were to discover "truth", then this truth must necessarily be naturalistic. It then becomes a metaphysical argument, which cannot be supported by empirical evidence, and instead you need logical and philosophical arguments to explain why metaphysical naturalism is a better position than methodological naturalism to base science on.

Can you please explain why a metaphysical argument cannot be supported by empirical evidence?

Mr.Samsa wrote:Secondly, "whereby it becomes a theory (i.e. verified truth)", this is not what a theory is. A theory can be absolutely, completely and utterly wrong, and it is still a theory. This is because a theory is simply an explanation - a framework of knowledge that attempts to string together and account for multiple lines of evidences (facts, laws, equations, other theories, etc). Something being classed as a theory says nothing about its validity or truthiness. If you really want to blow your noodle, keep in mind that a "fact" is the lowest form of evidence in science. A fact is simply a data point or observation.

Again I musty protest at your rudeness and your insistence on emotionalism. That aside, verified 'truth' is when a hypothesis is proven by science, where it becomes a theory. An explanation of phenomena. It is obvious that theories can be wrong. I don't understand where you got the idea I did not understand this concept. What we know as true is not necessarily true. Given bounded rationality, our knowledge of the truth is probably only good enough for the immediate purpose and time in question, as there are many different ways to perceive the same truth.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Thirdly, "Otherwise, it remains an assumption (i.e. only a hypothesis)" - hypotheses do not get "promoted" into theories. Hypotheses are predictions or ways of testing claims (usually from theories). In other words, you generally need a theory before you have hypotheses.

This is a very common misunderstanding of the term and the word "theory" is a "false friend". A false friend is when there are two different words in two different lexicons that are spelt identically or very similiarly and are thought to have the same definition, but actually have two different definitions because they are two different things. "Theory" in the common English usage refers to a hypothesis, whereas "Theory" in the academic and scientific usage refers to a proven hypothesis.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Fourthly, "Reproduceable results is a basic requirement for the verification of [scientific] claims" - fixed that for you.

How is this different from the meaning of the previous sentence?

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Mathematics is not a science, at all.

Actually mathematics is a formal science. In the epistemological categorisation of different branches of science, there are four main groups: (1) Physical sciences; (2) Life sciences; (3) Social sciences (strictly speaking, it also includes sciences that are not actually 'sciences' in and of themselves, but make use of sciences); and (4) Formal sciences. In terms of formal logic, mathematics is the most formal and 'hard' of sciences.

The "formal sciences" are distinct from what we know as science in that they retained the moniker "science" from a time before the scientific method was developed, meaning that it shares nothing in common with what we commonly refer to as science these days. That is, it makes no empirical claims, is not falsifiable, does not have reproducible results, etc etc. At the very least, bringing it up in a discussion on whether psychology is a science is irrelevant, given that the kind of "science" that maths is, is not the kind that psychology (or biology, physics or chemistry) would or should strive towards.

I'm confused as to why you say mathematics makes no empirical claims, is not falsifiable and has no reproducible results when it clearly has. The logic doesn't suddenly change, otherwise the fundamental laws of the universe would change. Numbers are inherent in all nature, as are the relationships that bind the very atoms we are made of. Not to mention, mathematics is the foundation of all science and without it nothing would exist because there would be no logic to bind anything. In a very real sense, most sciences are offshoots of mathematics (e.g. physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, engineering).

Mr.Samsa wrote:It is a very old problem with not just psychology, but the social sciences in general. Economics is another discipline that suffers from this problem. The less scrupulous academics will confuse the correlation with causation—whether intentionally or unintentionally—which is usually looked down upon by the rest of the discpline's community, since it puts them into disrepute. Unfortunately, as much as you want to believe it, academics from the soft and hard sciences do often make statistical mistakes. It seems to be systemic in all parts of society.

I don't doubt that sloppy researchers make mistakes, across all scientific fields, what I am contending is that psychology (one of the branches of science that waves the motto "correlation does not equal causation" like it was a divine commandment) is a serious violator of such a rule. And, more specifically, I don't agree that even if it were a systematic problem within the field, that it would affect its scientific status.[/quote]

I believe you made a typographic error (highlighted in blue, above). Whilst the second part of the above text is technically true, that is only valid if the problem were merely widespread and not prevalent in their seminal and foundational works, from which subsequent theories are built upon.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:Non-parametric statistics cannot be generalised to the wider population. They only compute the relationships within the sample. This is one of the first things taught about non-parametric tests. It trade-off is that calculations have relaxed limits but usage of the results is quite restricted.

Of course they can, otherwise they wouldn't be as powerful as standard parametric tests.

Usually not. They cannot be generalised to parametric models (e.g. Gaussian, Poisson, Weibull). They can be generalised to non-parametric models. However, thiws is irrelevant as psychology deals with parametric models, not non-parametric models where there are infinite-dimensional parameter spaces (e.g. physics).

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:Strictly speaking, that is true. Not all psychology research is invalid. Some of its research is insightful and is built on a scientific basis. The danger comes in less quality research being systemic amongst even the higher tier journals, which becomes doubly risky when research with quality procedures use research with lesser quality procedures in the literature review.

Not only "strictly speaking", but just "factually speaking" what I said is true. The comments in the Discussion section that involve speculations about application to society have no effect at all on literature reviews or the quality of the research.

Yes, but you have ignored the other half of my comment, which is about when faulty research is built upon by procedurally correct research, a least in terms of the immediate study. Speculations are not an issue when they are merely presented as speculations, only when they are extrapolated beyond what is proven.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:Psychology is the study of behaviour, which includes a variety of organisms, of which humanity is one. Human psychology is by far the most important branch of psychology, perhaps due to the fact that we are humans and we are inherently biased towards advancing our own interests.

Says who? Arguably not even psychologists think humans are particularly important to study, given that I'd say the majority of psych research has nothing to do with humans.

That's quite an outlandish claim. It's commonly accepted that when referring to psychology, human psychology or any of its several dozen sub-branches is referred to. Human psychology is very popular as a research area compared to non-human areas such as evolutionary psychology.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:Probability is not a limitation of science, as I have said before, but an element of it. It comes down to a question of thresholds. The smaller the margin of error, the more useful the tool. If the margin of error for certain psychological research is too large, it effectively becomes useless in the practical sense. Human behaviour is predictable within a normal range, but that is less explained and more improtantly predicted by psychology than it is by microeconomics.

Fortunately, prediction of human behavior in psychology does not contain large margins of error, and prediction of human behavior (at least in some tasks) is near-perfect. As for it explaining and predicting less than microeconomics, are you serious? Microeconomics was revamped and saved by the behavioral psychologists. Most of the solid work in that area is now done by 'behavioral economicists', who are psychologists. Microeconomics was lagging far, far behind the psychologists in terms of explanation and prediction. In the 60s we had developed an equation that perfectly predicted choice behavior and the economicists were still wittering on about "rational agents".

Microeconomic theory—not to be confused with macroeconomic—is still a very good predictor of human behaviour, but only within certain bounds. As I'm sure every student of human behaviour will attest to, when people are pushed past their limits they act irrationally. It is true that interdiscplinary studies using microeconomics and psychology are creating new breakthroughs, but that's not exactly the same as 'saving a discpline'. Microeconomics at the time had many issues that still were puzzling; what is now humourously referred to as homo economicus, the mythical perfectly rational automaton. One of the missing breakthroughs in theory was the concept of bounded rationality, as well as the concept of emotional enjoyment as a form of utility. There's nothing wrong with interdisciplinary studies. I'm certain that there is an increasing trend of integrating psychology with microeconomics, and that's a good thing. Not all of psychology is unscientific. Then again, microeconomics is a social science.

Just out of curiosity, are you a psychologist (blue text, see above)? You sound like it's personal.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:In a sense, what you're saying is true, but in another sense it's very dubious. Scientific truth exists independent of whether or not we know it, but people investigate science. Without investigation, we would not be able to verify whether something was in fact true. We could presume any number of things were true, such as there being a large marshmallow orbiting the Earth, but until it can be verified it's reasonable to assume it's false.

And notice that you're defining what is true and real, and the possibility of what could exist, as that which is natural, repeatable, and observable, with no possibility of cognitive or perceptual errors affecting the "truth"?

Again, for the third time I will say that whatever we know as the truth is almost always only good enough for the immediate purpose and the present, since there are many ways to interpret the same truth and not all things are known. Cognition will always affect what we are capable of understanding. That much is obvious.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:Risking the dangers of reasoning by analogy, I would liken the logic you're putting forward is akin to a a game of sports. One team loses, with its players claiming they had failed the club, but the team didn't lose: the players lost. However, thea team is made of players.

False analogy. It would be like having a team of world cup champions that contains one or two players who have no idea how to play the game. You're trying to say that they're aren't real sports players, or world cup champions, because they contain a couple of players who don't understand the game. My point is that if the team as a whole is winning and succeeding, and following the rules of the game, then they are real sports players.

I'm afraid your analogy is the one that is false. In your analogy, they are following the rules (i.e. empircal standards for research), when in fact they are not. Your thesis is that there are only a few bad researchers in the minority out of a community of empirically sound researchers, whereas the real issue is not with the proportion of bad to good researchers, but the flawed methodology and reliance of good procedures built on bad research.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:This is true, but only on a technicality. Psychiatry is an applied science, large enough to be considered its own science, which uses different base sciences. For example, pharmacology is an applied science using the base sciences of chemistry and human biology.

The size of psychiatry doesn't affect whether it's a science or not. Every person on earth could be a psychiatrist, but it still wouldn't be a science. It's based on science, I agree, but it's as much a science as medicine or engineering is (i.e. not at all). Either way, psychology even 100 years ago was far more scientific that psychiatry will ever be, by necessity.

You've misunderstood what size means. The size of a science isn't the size of its adherents, but the size of its body of knowledge. Your last claim is very outlandish. Pyschiatry used to be pseudoscience, but that does not necessarily mean that it will always be less advanced than psychology. Due to its recent shift from Freudian and Jungian theories to empircal means such as drug therapy and psychotherapy, it has already advanced past psychology in terms of empirical soundness. However, psychiatry is very limited in its applications. It cannot treat most mental ills—only the most serious and aberrant ones.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:This is only half true. MBTI is unfortunately a rather popular psychometric test, but it was created by non-psychologists as an aid to conflict management. It has since been repurposed by the vast majority of Fortune 1000 companies for personality typing. MBTI has since undergone significant research from psychologists considered reputable by the psychological community supporting its claims. MBTI, like all psychometric tests (e.g. IQ Tests) remain highly controversial, even within the psychological community.

The MBTI is not accepted by psychology - at all. It's undergone a lot of research by psychologists, because it's been proposed as an explanation of human personality, but it has consistently been found wanting and consistently rejected. IQ tests are not at all controversial within psychology, because they are incredibly informative and highly predictive of behavior across a large spectrum of areas. The same goes for psychometric tests that are accepted by psychology, like the Big Five.

There are debates over specific aspects of the tests, but no one in psychology questions the validity of IQ tests and the Big Five. In other words, when you hear people saying "IQ tests only measure your ability to take IQ tests!", psychologists are the ones telling them to shut up because they're idiots (as obviously that's not what IQ tests do).

Unfortauntely, MBTI is accpeted by some psychologists, though I agree it should be scrapped as it has been found wanting.

The originator of IQ Tests, the famed Alfred Binet, warned against using intelligence tests because there is no such thing. IQ Tests measure your receptiveness towards certain types of learning and not your general intelligence. Theoretically, although this has yet to be proven, the more learning methods you are receptive to, the greater your advantage in learning, thus the more intelligent you have the potential to become. However, this gives weighting to all different modes of learning. An extreme talent can lead one to become more intelligent in a particular field that heavily utilises that mode of learning than one that is technically more receptive to learning by virtue of having a higher IQ, which is only an average of receptiveness to different learning modes but has lower receptiveness in the relevant mode of learning. Intelligence is not a single force and it does not necessarily intersect, not does it operate on a single line of measurement. You can theoretically test individual intelligences, though there is still the problem of sorting out what constitutes a single group of intelligence. For the definitive argument against the validity of IQ tests, which has yet to be disproved, look no further than The Mismeasure of Man by S.J. Gould (1981).

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:Why should an empirical test be "direct" and "conclusive"? I don't think they should. Indirect and inconclusive empirical tests are the usual practice in other sciences.

Because if it's not direct then the evidence is not necessarily accounting for that hypothesis, only for what is being measured, and that is behavior. Of course they might not be conclusive initially, the question would be, can they ever be? If they can't, on what basis are we saying one is more accurate or whatever than others?

If it is not direct, it still does not mean the test is not empirical. There are indirect ways of measuring and proving something. For example, the electron telescope can measure the outline of electronics, but isn't capable of measuring the electrons themselves. Sure, it's measuring it in a roundabout way, but they still know exactly where those electons are.

Asta666 wrote:Epistemic reductionism, if it is ever achieved, would vanish this problems, but it seems pretty sci-fi today. Meanwhile we are left with "parsimony", "fruitfulness for new research", brain correlations, lesion studies and the like, which may be something given or current capabilities, but I think they are given way more "truthfulness" status than they actually deserve.

Epistemic reductionism would be virtually mathematically and economically infeasible to achieve, but we can strive and dream.

SeriousCat wrote:If it is not direct, it still does not mean the test is not empirical. There are indirect ways of measuring and proving something. For example, the electron telescope can measure the outline of electronics, but isn't capable of measuring the electrons themselves. Sure, it's measuring it in a roundabout way, but they still know exactly where those electons are.

Yeah, I'm not saying they are not empirical. What we have to ask is ¿how much can the empirical data account for a given inferred construct, and how much can we distinguish among competing ones by that means?. For instance I can record lot's of observations of people's speech errors, and then postulate that their cause is an unconscious desire that failed to be repressed, but I doubt you would consider that as an empirically supported hypothesis. Prediction in this case would be meaningless, because there is no other independent way to measure the hypothesis, only behavior can be observed.
Anyway, as I said in my previous message, in some domains it seems more plausible and reliable than in others.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:I think your understanding of science, and especially philosophy of science, needs brushing up on a little bit. Firstly, the claim that "science aims to discover the truth" is a very debatable claim and requires a lot of argumentation to support it. Given that you have presented it as if it were an obvious 'fact', I assume you probably haven't thought too long or hard on the subject.

Is it possible you're presuming and demonising me just a bit too much? I haven't done the same to you.

I apologise if it seems like I'm "demonising" you or being "rude" to you, but I am simply responding to your posts. You have demonstrated grave misunderstandings of both science and the philosophy of science, and my only conclusion is that you have little or no education in the areas. This isn't a bad thing, and I don't mean it as an attack, but I'm just trying to correct some of your misconceptions.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:The main problem is that science is a tool or methodology based on naturalistic explanations - this means that if it were to discover "truth", then this truth must necessarily be naturalistic. It then becomes a metaphysical argument, which cannot be supported by empirical evidence, and instead you need logical and philosophical arguments to explain why metaphysical naturalism is a better position than methodological naturalism to base science on.

Can you please explain why a metaphysical argument cannot be supported by empirical evidence?

To use empirical evidence to justify a claim about reality, we have to first assume that what we observe and perceive is real, which is itself a metaphysical claim that requires justification. You have to first support the claim that it's reasonable to develop a system of metaphysics from empirical data, and then you can use empirical evidence as support but not as a base of your metaphysics.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Secondly, "whereby it becomes a theory (i.e. verified truth)", this is not what a theory is. A theory can be absolutely, completely and utterly wrong, and it is still a theory. This is because a theory is simply an explanation - a framework of knowledge that attempts to string together and account for multiple lines of evidences (facts, laws, equations, other theories, etc). Something being classed as a theory says nothing about its validity or truthiness. If you really want to blow your noodle, keep in mind that a "fact" is the lowest form of evidence in science. A fact is simply a data point or observation.

Again I musty protest at your rudeness and your insistence on emotionalism. That aside, verified 'truth' is when a hypothesis is proven by science, where it becomes a theory. An explanation of phenomena.

An hypothesis is not an explanation. It is a claim, a prediction, a testable statement. If the hypothesis is not disproved, then that is deemed to give support to the theory from which the hypothesis came.

SeriousCat wrote:It is obvious that theories can be wrong. I don't understand where you got the idea I did not understand this concept. What we know as true is not necessarily true. Given bounded rationality, our knowledge of the truth is probably only good enough for the immediate purpose and time in question, as there are many different ways to perceive the same truth.

This statement is inconsistent with the idea that a theory is "verified truth". If a theory is verified truth, then we cannot have two mutually incompatible theories both explaining the same phenomenon - surely only one could be "verified truth". But the fact remains that there are obviously competing theories all the time, and that theories can exist even without being verified.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Thirdly, "Otherwise, it remains an assumption (i.e. only a hypothesis)" - hypotheses do not get "promoted" into theories. Hypotheses are predictions or ways of testing claims (usually from theories). In other words, you generally need a theory before you have hypotheses.

This is a very common misunderstanding of the term and the word "theory" is a "false friend". A false friend is when there are two different words in two different lexicons that are spelt identically or very similiarly and are thought to have the same definition, but actually have two different definitions because they are two different things. "Theory" in the common English usage refers to a hypothesis, whereas "Theory" in the academic and scientific usage refers to a proven hypothesis.

No, that is not how I'm using the two terms. Theory in the academic and scientific usage refers to a framework of knowledge, an explanation that accounts for a vast range of data, hypotheses, laws, theories, etc. Never, in the history of science, has an hypothesis graduated into a theory. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of science, and is completely backwards.

I'm sorry if that sounds rude, but I simply cannot understand how you can attempt to correct people and speak with certainty, when you are so disturbingly mistaken. You don't have to answer this, but do you have any scientific training at all? If I were to guess, I'd say that you were either an engineer, or something like a computer science guy who has read a few pop-science books from people like Dawkins etc. Again, sorry if that sounds condescending, but I'm just trying to figure out why you're so badly misunderstanding how science operates so we can hopefully try to fix it.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Fourthly, "Reproduceable results is a basic requirement for the verification of [scientific] claims" - fixed that for you.

How is this different from the meaning of the previous sentence?

The previous statement suggested that all claims needed to be reproduceable to be verified, but reproducibility only applies to scientific claims. Other claims can be valid and verified without being reproduced (e.g. mathematical claims, logical claims, philosophical claims, etc). It may seem trivial to point it out, but it's important that we avoid falling into the trap of scientism by assuming that science is the only way of learning about reality, or the scientific method is the only valid approach.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:The "formal sciences" are distinct from what we know as science in that they retained the moniker "science" from a time before the scientific method was developed, meaning that it shares nothing in common with what we commonly refer to as science these days. That is, it makes no empirical claims, is not falsifiable, does not have reproducible results, etc etc. At the very least, bringing it up in a discussion on whether psychology is a science is irrelevant, given that the kind of "science" that maths is, is not the kind that psychology (or biology, physics or chemistry) would or should strive towards.

I'm confused as to why you say mathematics makes no empirical claims, is not falsifiable and has no reproducible results when it clearly has. The logic doesn't suddenly change, otherwise the fundamental laws of the universe would change. Numbers are inherent in all nature, as are the relationships that bind the very atoms we are made of. Not to mention, mathematics is the foundation of all science and without it nothing would exist because there would be no logic to bind anything. In a very real sense, most sciences are offshoots of mathematics (e.g. physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, engineering).

Mathematical theories and claims aren't empirical, in that people create and prove them by sitting in their bedroom. If they were empirical, we would need to perform experiments to demonstrate that "2+2=4", but instead we derive such truth from a series of axioms and agreed-upon rules of logic. These claims are unfalsifiable because they are tautologies; they are just extensions of unsupportable basic assumptions from which everything is derived. The fact that maths is important to science does not make it a science, any more so than the important of logic or language makes those two areas "science".

Also, computer science and engineering are not sciences.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:I don't doubt that sloppy researchers make mistakes, across all scientific fields, what I am contending is that psychology (one of the branches of science that waves the motto "correlation does not equal causation" like it was a divine commandment) is a serious violator of such a rule. And, more specifically, I don't agree that even if it were a systematic problem within the field, that it would affect its scientific status.

I believe you made a typographic error (highlighted in blue, above). Whilst the second part of the above text is technically true, that is only valid if the problem were merely widespread and not prevalent in their seminal and foundational works, from which subsequent theories are built upon.

Yes, sorry I meant "contesting" not "contending" - one of the hazards of writing out posts quickly and then not checking them.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Of course they can, otherwise they wouldn't be as powerful as standard parametric tests.

Usually not. They cannot be generalised to parametric models (e.g. Gaussian, Poisson, Weibull). They can be generalised to non-parametric models. However, thiws is irrelevant as psychology deals with parametric models, not non-parametric models where there are infinite-dimensional parameter spaces (e.g. physics).

They don't need to be generalised to parametric models in order to be generalised to the wider population. And psychology deals with both parametric and non-parametric models - all psych courses spend approximately 40% of the time discussing non-parametric statistics, and they're used prolifically in the field.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:Strictly speaking, that is true. Not all psychology research is invalid. Some of its research is insightful and is built on a scientific basis. The danger comes in less quality research being systemic amongst even the higher tier journals, which becomes doubly risky when research with quality procedures use research with lesser quality procedures in the literature review.

Not only "strictly speaking", but just "factually speaking" what I said is true. The comments in the Discussion section that involve speculations about application to society have no effect at all on literature reviews or the quality of the research.

Yes, but you have ignored the other half of my comment, which is about when faulty research is built upon by procedurally correct research, a least in terms of the immediate study. Speculations are not an issue when they are merely presented as speculations, only when they are extrapolated beyond what is proven.

But the point is that when someone builds on the results from another paper, or they build a theory using those results, or construct a literature review, etc, they don't use anything from the Discussion. What the authors mention in the Discussion is irrelevant. The Discussion section, as suggested by the very title of its section, is the author's interpretations and ideas and are not, ever, treated as anything more than speculation. If their ideas are valid, then they will be reflected in the Results section, and that is the information other researchers use.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Says who? Arguably not even psychologists think humans are particularly important to study, given that I'd say the majority of psych research has nothing to do with humans.

That's quite an outlandish claim. It's commonly accepted that when referring to psychology, human psychology or any of its several dozen sub-branches is referred to. Human psychology is very popular as a research area compared to non-human areas such as evolutionary psychology.

My point is that I'd estimate that the majority of psych experiments are done with animals, with no intention of generalising their results to humans. If not the majority, then at least a significant minority. Most areas of psychology are not "human psychology OR animal psychology", but are just general categories that can apply to both. The only real "human" areas of psychology are social and personality psychology, and I don't believe they represent the majority of psych, or even what people mean when they say "psychology". Areas like cognitive, behavioral, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, etc, are areas where researchers can choose to study either humans or animals, and a lot of them choose animals.

At the very least, we can with certainty that there is no dominance of human studies in psychology.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Fortunately, prediction of human behavior in psychology does not contain large margins of error, and prediction of human behavior (at least in some tasks) is near-perfect. As for it explaining and predicting less than microeconomics, are you serious? Microeconomics was revamped and saved by the behavioral psychologists. Most of the solid work in that area is now done by 'behavioral economicists', who are psychologists. Microeconomics was lagging far, far behind the psychologists in terms of explanation and prediction. In the 60s we had developed an equation that perfectly predicted choice behavior and the economicists were still wittering on about "rational agents".

Microeconomic theory—not to be confused with macroeconomic—is still a very good predictor of human behaviour, but only within certain bounds. As I'm sure every student of human behaviour will attest to, when people are pushed past their limits they act irrationally. It is true that interdiscplinary studies using microeconomics and psychology are creating new breakthroughs, but that's not exactly the same as 'saving a discpline'. Microeconomics at the time had many issues that still were puzzling; what is now humourously referred to as homo economicus, the mythical perfectly rational automaton. One of the missing breakthroughs in theory was the concept of bounded rationality, as well as the concept of emotional enjoyment as a form of utility. There's nothing wrong with interdisciplinary studies. I'm certain that there is an increasing trend of integrating psychology with microeconomics, and that's a good thing. Not all of psychology is unscientific. Then again, microeconomics is a social science.

Microeconomics had no quantifiable theories at the time that behavioral psychology came along to help it, and certainly none that could predict behavior to the incredible degree of accuracy that psychology could.

SeriousCat wrote:Just out of curiosity, are you a psychologist (blue text, see above)? You sound like it's personal.

Behavioral researcher with a background in psych. I'm not taking anything personally though, I'm just a science nerd and misconceptions about science, or psychology specifically, are very interesting to me.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:And notice that you're defining what is true and real, and the possibility of what could exist, as that which is natural, repeatable, and observable, with no possibility of cognitive or perceptual errors affecting the "truth"?

Again, for the third time I will say that whatever we know as the truth is almost always only good enough for the immediate purpose and the present, since there are many ways to interpret the same truth and not all things are known. Cognition will always affect what we are capable of understanding. That much is obvious.

Then I don't think using "truth" is that appropriate in this sense. If all you meant was that it was "tentatively accepted" then that form of "truth" I have no problem with, but obviously theories aren't automatically accepted.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:Risking the dangers of reasoning by analogy, I would liken the logic you're putting forward is akin to a a game of sports. One team loses, with its players claiming they had failed the club, but the team didn't lose: the players lost. However, thea team is made of players.

False analogy. It would be like having a team of world cup champions that contains one or two players who have no idea how to play the game. You're trying to say that they're aren't real sports players, or world cup champions, because they contain a couple of players who don't understand the game. My point is that if the team as a whole is winning and succeeding, and following the rules of the game, then they are real sports players.

I'm afraid your analogy is the one that is false. In your analogy, they are following the rules (i.e. empircal standards for research), when in fact they are not. Your thesis is that there are only a few bad researchers in the minority out of a community of empirically sound researchers, whereas the real issue is not with the proportion of bad to good researchers, but the flawed methodology and reliance of good procedures built on bad research.

Since the analogy was based on my argument, your comment above implicitly accepts that your analogy was false. Since it cannot be demonstrated that there is any flawed methodology or "good procedures built on bad research" in psych, or that they are prevalent or pervasive problems, I will simply refuse to accept such bald assertions.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:The size of psychiatry doesn't affect whether it's a science or not. Every person on earth could be a psychiatrist, but it still wouldn't be a science. It's based on science, I agree, but it's as much a science as medicine or engineering is (i.e. not at all). Either way, psychology even 100 years ago was far more scientific that psychiatry will ever be, by necessity.

You've misunderstood what size means. The size of a science isn't the size of its adherents, but the size of its body of knowledge. Your last claim is very outlandish. Pyschiatry used to be pseudoscience, but that does not necessarily mean that it will always be less advanced than psychology. Due to its recent shift from Freudian and Jungian theories to empircal means such as drug therapy and psychotherapy, it has already advanced past psychology in terms of empirical soundness. However, psychiatry is very limited in its applications. It cannot treat most mental ills—only the most serious and aberrant ones.

You're misunderstanding. I'm not saying that "psychology is better than psychiatry", or that it's less advanced, I'm saying that it is not a science and can never be a science. Psychology, on the other hand, is an experimental field that is a science. So if we're going to compare them, we will necessarily conclude that psychology always has been and always will be the "better science" - the purpose of which is to highlight the absurdity of using psychiatry as a yardstick of a "good science". That is, psychiatry is not a science, so even a shitty science (like primitive psychology) is necessarily going to be a "better science".

It makes no sense to say that psychiatry has "advanced past psychology in terms of empirical soundness", as the research behind it is also done by clinical psychology - as they both assume the biopsychosocial model of mental illness. It also makes no sense to say that it only treats the most serious and aberrant ones - it successes treats all kinds of mental illness, obviously to varying degrees but I've seen no evidence to suggest that psychiatry is only effective for "serious" illnesses.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

SeriousCat wrote:This is only half true. MBTI is unfortunately a rather popular psychometric test, but it was created by non-psychologists as an aid to conflict management. It has since been repurposed by the vast majority of Fortune 1000 companies for personality typing. MBTI has since undergone significant research from psychologists considered reputable by the psychological community supporting its claims. MBTI, like all psychometric tests (e.g. IQ Tests) remain highly controversial, even within the psychological community.

The MBTI is not accepted by psychology - at all. It's undergone a lot of research by psychologists, because it's been proposed as an explanation of human personality, but it has consistently been found wanting and consistently rejected. IQ tests are not at all controversial within psychology, because they are incredibly informative and highly predictive of behavior across a large spectrum of areas. The same goes for psychometric tests that are accepted by psychology, like the Big Five.

There are debates over specific aspects of the tests, but no one in psychology questions the validity of IQ tests and the Big Five. In other words, when you hear people saying "IQ tests only measure your ability to take IQ tests!", psychologists are the ones telling them to shut up because they're idiots (as obviously that's not what IQ tests do).

Unfortauntely, MBTI is accpeted by some psychologists, though I agree it should be scrapped as it has been found wanting.

Whether it's accepted by "some psychologists" is irrelevant. It's roundly and soundly rejected by psychology. That is, some psychologists accept the MBTI in the same way that some biologists accept intelligent design. The individuals may exist, but it doesn't change the fact that they are ridiculed and rejected by their peers.

SeriousCat wrote:The originator of IQ Tests, the famed Alfred Binet, warned against using intelligence tests because there is no such thing.

What do you mean "there is no such thing"? No such thing as an IQ, intelligence, or the g factor? IQ obviously exists, because it's simply a measurement. Intelligence obviously exists because we can talk about it meaningfully. The g factor is again simply a measurement which allows us to make predictions, so that exists as well. The question remains whether IQ is a measure of "intelligence", in an abstract and nebulous sense, but psychologists generally don't care whether it is or not as that question is irrelevant to their work. In other words, if we come up with a measure for "depression" and the "d factor" allows us to predict things like depressive episodes, suicides, or the effectiveness of certain therapies, then it doesn't matter if the "d factor" is not really measuring "depression".

With that said, the evidence does seem to suggest that IQ tests do measure intelligence.

SeriousCat wrote:IQ Tests measure your receptiveness towards certain types of learning and not your general intelligence. Theoretically, although this has yet to be proven, the more learning methods you are receptive to, the greater your advantage in learning, thus the more intelligent you have the potential to become. However, this gives weighting to all different modes of learning. An extreme talent can lead one to become more intelligent in a particular field that heavily utilises that mode of learning than one that is technically more receptive to learning by virtue of having a higher IQ, which is only an average of receptiveness to different learning modes but has lower receptiveness in the relevant mode of learning. Intelligence is not a single force and it does not necessarily intersect, not does it operate on a single line of measurement. You can theoretically test individual intelligences, though there is still the problem of sorting out what constitutes a single group of intelligence.

This isn't a valid criticism of IQ tests at all. The g factor was discovered because there was a corresponding variable between success in all those different tasks. Yes, getting better in one area can improve your performance in other areas, but this isn't a problem at all. There is no implication that IQ is static, or can't change, or anything like that. I think you may have accidentally confused Binet's arguments with Gardner's arguments used to support the concept of multiple intelligences - but we know now that multiple intelligences is not a valid model for intelligence.

SeriousCat wrote:For the definitive argument against the validity of IQ tests, which has yet to be disproved, look no further than The Mismeasure of Man by S.J. Gould (1981).

You make it sound like IQ tests are controversial and they need to defend themselves against the arguments of a biologist from the 80s? Ignoring the fact that his logic in that book has been heavily criticised (where he mismeasured the skulls of different races, thus reaching the wrong conclusion), his major complaints were against assuming that IQ has a genetic or hereditary component (which was what Binet argued we should be wary of), but since the 80s we have accumulated undeniable amounts of evidence which tells us for a fact that intelligence is partly inherited.

Mr.Samsa wrote:I apologise if it seems like I'm "demonising" you or being "rude" to you, but I am simply responding to your posts. You have demonstrated grave misunderstandings of both science and the philosophy of science, and my only conclusion is that you have little or no education in the areas. This isn't a bad thing, and I don't mean it as an attack, but I'm just trying to correct some of your misconceptions.

Your heavy use of emotive language indicates otherwise. I would just like to say for the record that I'm open to discussion on any topic and have often found my opinions to be changed by such discussions.

Mr.Samsa wrote:An hypothesis is not an explanation. It is a claim, a prediction, a testable statement. If the hypothesis is not disproved, then that is deemed to give support to the theory from which the hypothesis came.

I've given you the correct explanation (re: false friends and different usages), so I won't restate it. Even if you don't accept the lexicons, this is still a minor quibble, since it doesn't actually change the results. I suggest we just shelve this.

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:To use empirical evidence to justify a claim about reality, we have to first assume that what we observe and perceive is real, which is itself a metaphysical claim that requires justification. You have to first support the claim that it's reasonable to develop a system of metaphysics from empirical data, and then you can use empirical evidence as support but not as a base of your metaphysics.

Mr.Samsa wrote:This statement is inconsistent with the idea that a theory is "verified truth". If a theory is verified truth, then we cannot have two mutually incompatible theories both explaining the same phenomenon - surely only one could be "verified truth". But the fact remains that there are obviously competing theories all the time, and that theories can exist even without being verified.

Not so, since verification can be incorrect. As I have said repeatedly and you have not taken into account repeatedly, what we understand as the truth is almost always only sufficient for the immediate purpose aFor example, we may choose to believe subatomic particles don't exist because we cannot see them, but they are nevertheless there. Following that, denying their existence doesn't change them, for that would require personifying them into a being with feelings, rather than a mechical phenomena that simply is. You have continually implied that I do not understand that our minds perceive reality through a lense. Let me unambiguously say that I do understand this concept.

Mr.Samsa wrote:No, that is not how I'm using the two terms. Theory in the academic and scientific usage refers to a framework of knowledge, an explanation that accounts for a vast range of data, hypotheses, laws, theories, etc. Never, in the history of science, has an hypothesis graduated into a theory. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of science, and is completely backwards.

That is incorrect, but you persist in disbelieving. Perhaps someone else can pursuade you. Please see the following NPR article by Dr Ruth Levy Guyer of Johns Hopkins University and Haverford College.

Guyer, R.L. (2005). Theory vs. hypothesis in science. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org / templates / story / story.php?storyId=4671318 (Please remove the spaces)

Mr.Samsa wrote:I'm sorry if that sounds rude, but I simply cannot understand how you can attempt to correct people and speak with certainty, when you are so disturbingly mistaken. You don't have to answer this, but do you have any scientific training at all? If I were to guess, I'd say that you were either an engineer, or something like a computer science guy who has read a few pop-science books from people like Dawkins etc. Again, sorry if that sounds condescending, but I'm just trying to figure out why you're so badly misunderstanding how science operates so we can hopefully try to fix it.

You're resorting to an emotional argument and making claims without basis. Whilst I can understand if you are a proponent of psychology you feel this is personal, but please try to remain logical and keep things civil.

Mr.Samsa wrote:The previous statement suggested that all claims needed to be reproduceable to be verified, but reproducibility only applies to scientific claims. Other claims can be valid and verified without being reproduced (e.g. mathematical claims, logical claims, philosophical claims, etc). It may seem trivial to point it out, but it's important that we avoid falling into the trap of scientism by assuming that science is the only way of learning about reality, or the scientific method is the only valid approach.

Incorrect, since mathematical, logical and philosophical claims are by their nature reproducible. They do not exist in a compartmentalised vacuum and the logic does not change as soon as you move into a new subject. The same arguments in those disciplines can be used over many problems and come up with the same solutions. You've come very close to arguing against a straw man by invoking the risk of scientism. Obviously, the scientific method is only the most rigourous and reliable approach. It would be illogical to say that science is the only way to learn, as it would mean we would never learn. Science as a concept is perhaps 1,000 years old, yet people learned before then. Children don't follow the scientific method, yet they learn. Learning methods can be effective, even if they only take part of a fraction of the process of verification, so long as they are the important ones for the situation at hand.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Mathematical theories and claims aren't empirical, in that people create and prove them by sitting in their bedroom. If they were empirical, we would need to perform experiments to demonstrate that "2+2=4", but instead we derive such truth from a series of axioms and agreed-upon rules of logic. These claims are unfalsifiable because they are tautologies; they are just extensions of unsupportable basic assumptions from which everything is derived. The fact that maths is important to science does not make it a science, any more so than the important of logic or language makes those two areas "science".

Mathematical claims can be tested inside and outside of the bedroom you have described. Mathematics is a description of logic, or the study of numerical relationships between variables. The logic is not compartmentalised. If it were, mathematical descriptions of natural phenomena couldn't ever be correct, yet we see many of them are. It's not just a theoretical exercise on paper, but reflected in the physics of the universe. You can't separate mathematics from science or science from mathematics, as they are mutually dependent and overlap.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Also, computer science and engineering are not sciences.

Computer science is a formal science, which is really just a branch of logic, computation and mathematics, making it equally the most formal and hard of sciences along with mathematics. Engineering is an applied science, in that it is the application of several sciences, namely the natural sciences of physics, chemistry and biology. Whilst technically not a science, engineering is in fact three sciences.

Mr.Samsa wrote:They don't need to be generalised to parametric models in order to be generalised to the wider population. And psychology deals with both parametric and non-parametric models - all psych courses spend approximately 40% of the time discussing non-parametric statistics, and they're used prolifically in the field.

The wider population conforms to a parametric model, which requires a parametric test for it to be generalised to. A non-parametric test can describe both samples drawn from parametric and on-parametric model, but can only be generalised to a non-parametric model. The popularity of non-parametric tests being generalised to parametric models across the social sciences does not indicate its validity. It is a cardinal statistical sin that is committed by many people across all the sciences—even hard sciences. Generally speaking, a researcher struggling to find statistical significance or practical significance using parametric tests can turn to the lower requirements of non-parametric tests. These compute statistics that can very accurately describe the sample. Then, due to the limitation of a non-parametric test not being able to be generalised to a parametric model directly, the generalisation becomes indirect, or a mere suggestion. Thus, the findings are that this non-parametric test on the sample of a parametric model finds the following relationships in the sample, and although technically mathematically incorrect, it can strongly suggest—but not prove—the results are representative of the population.

Mr.Samsa wrote:But the point is that when someone builds on the results from another paper, or they build a theory using those results, or construct a literature review, etc, they don't use anything from the Discussion. What the authors mention in the Discussion is irrelevant. The Discussion section, as suggested by the very title of its section, is the author's interpretations and ideas and are not, ever, treated as anything more than speculation. If their ideas are valid, then they will be reflected in the Results section, and that is the information other researchers use.

You've clung to this for too long now, and I must call this straw man. Quality procedures using results from improper procedures do not yield verifiable results. Speculations are just directions for future research and possible implications for society—they are not research in and of themselves, but plans for future research.

Mr.Samsa wrote:At the very least, we can with certainty that there is no dominance of human studies in psychology.

I agree with that.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Microeconomics had no quantifiable theories at the time that behavioral psychology came along to help it, and certainly none that could predict behavior to the incredible degree of accuracy that psychology could.

That is given as more of a personal comment than an actual fact.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Behavioral researcher with a background in psych. I'm not taking anything personally though, I'm just a science nerd and misconceptions about science, or psychology specifically, are very interesting to me.

Greetings. I'm a supply chain engineering researcher, focusing on mathematics and process logic.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Then I don't think using "truth" is that appropriate in this sense. If all you meant was that it was "tentatively accepted" then that form of "truth" I have no problem with, but obviously theories aren't automatically accepted.

But you're ignoring your own point that reality is affected by cognition, as well as my previous several points that all truth can only be 'tentatively accepted'.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Since the analogy was based on my argument, your comment above implicitly accepts that your analogy was false. Since it cannot be demonstrated that there is any flawed methodology or "good procedures built on bad research" in psych, or that they are prevalent or pervasive problems, I will simply refuse to accept such bald assertions.

Not true, since the origin of this entire discussion is about the ability of psychology to produce scientifically valid results through the scientific method. This particular comment seems to have gone off the rails of the discussion.

Mr.Samsa wrote:You're misunderstanding. I'm not saying that "psychology is better than psychiatry", or that it's less advanced, I'm saying that it is not a science and can never be a science. Psychology, on the other hand, is an experimental field that is a science. So if we're going to compare them, we will necessarily conclude that psychology always has been and always will be the "better science" - the purpose of which is to highlight the absurdity of using psychiatry as a yardstick of a "good science". That is, psychiatry is not a science, so even a shitty science (like primitive psychology) is necessarily going to be a "better science".

This is a personal judgement, not a fact. Psychiatry happens to be a life science. However, even if it weren't, it's not pertinent to psychology's ability to produce scientifically valid results.

Mr.Samsa wrote:It makes no sense to say that psychiatry has "advanced past psychology in terms of empirical soundness", as the research behind it is also done by clinical psychology - as they both assume the biopsychosocial model of mental illness. It also makes no sense to say that it only treats the most serious and aberrant ones - it successes treats all kinds of mental illness, obviously to varying degrees but I've seen no evidence to suggest that psychiatry is only effective for "serious" illnesses.

Psychiatry is the study of mental disorders. Psychiatry is not about the study of bad feelings or the normal emotional turbulences of life.

Mr.Samsa wrote:Whether it's accepted by "some psychologists" is irrelevant. It's roundly and soundly rejected by psychology. That is, some psychologists accept the MBTI in the same way that some biologists accept intelligent design. The individuals may exist, but it doesn't change the fact that they are ridiculed and rejected by their peers.

I'm not saying that it is merely some psychologists, but many. Nevertheless, even if what you were saying is true, that is only one example of many (re: IQ Tests, see below).

Mr.Samsa wrote:What do you mean "there is no such thing"? No such thing as an IQ, intelligence, or the g factor? IQ obviously exists, because it's simply a measurement. Intelligence obviously exists because we can talk about it meaningfully. The g factor is again simply a measurement which allows us to make predictions, so that exists as well. The question remains whether IQ is a measure of "intelligence", in an abstract and nebulous sense, but psychologists generally don't care whether it is or not as that question is irrelevant to their work.

If you examine the underlying logic of IQ Tests, you'll see there's some gaps. IQ Testing is supposed to reveal underlying intelligence. However, the only way to measure that intelligence is to do a test. Intelligence can be the result of greater intellectual capacity, creativity or efficiency. Yet until it is used, intelligence is not identifiable and remains as potential. Thus we need a test, but that test cannot measure potential, only manifested performance. A more accurate indicator of intelligence would be achievement, such as obtaining a university degree. (Just to pre-empt an anticipated response, no, knowledge is not the same as intelligence.)

Mr.Samsa wrote:This isn't a valid criticism of IQ tests at all. The g factor was discovered because there was a corresponding variable between success in all those different tasks. Yes, getting better in one area can improve your performance in other areas, but this isn't a problem at all. There is no implication that IQ is static, or can't change, or anything like that. I think you may have accidentally confused Binet's arguments with Gardner's arguments used to support the concept of multiple intelligences - but we know now that multiple intelligences is not a valid model for intelligence.

No, that is a straw man. IQ Tests do not measure intelligence, they suggest intelligence, which is a subtle but crucial difference at the core of this discussion. I have not claimed that intelligence is static, otherwise education would be pointless, and there are other ways of categorising aplpications of intelligence that can be grouped into general categories not related to Gardner (e.g. Hand-eye coordination).

Mr.Samsa wrote:You make it sound like IQ tests are controversial and they need to defend themselves against the arguments of a biologist from the 80s? Ignoring the fact that his logic in that book has been heavily criticised (where he mismeasured the skulls of different races, thus reaching the wrong conclusion), his major complaints were against assuming that IQ has a genetic or hereditary component (which was what Binet argued we should be wary of), but since the 80s we have accumulated undeniable amounts of evidence which tells us for a fact that intelligence is partly inherited.

IQ Tests are still controversial, despite wanting to belief otherwise. An argument from the '80s doesn't necessarily become less valid simply because it is old, as you sentence implies. Then, your next sentence pre-empts the obvious follow up by saying that it was heavily criticised, particularly by psychologists, and some of those criticisms turned out to be true, but the overall argument remained in force. Research has continued to prove the nurture over nature argument, where there are measurable differences in physical characteristics, but for practical purposes the environment determines the vast majority of an individual's biological makeup (e.g. nutrition, access to education, sanitation).

Straw man again as well as a misdirection. Intelligence is commonly known to be heritable. The problem is that IQ Tests are suggestive, not indicative, of levels of intelligence.

Out of curiosity, what is the definition of intelligence IQ tests measure/suggest? And if they measure/suggest accurately can I say, for example: I am more intelligent than you are.?

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:I apologise if it seems like I'm "demonising" you or being "rude" to you, but I am simply responding to your posts. You have demonstrated grave misunderstandings of both science and the philosophy of science, and my only conclusion is that you have little or no education in the areas. This isn't a bad thing, and I don't mean it as an attack, but I'm just trying to correct some of your misconceptions.

Your heavy use of emotive language indicates otherwise. I would just like to say for the record that I'm open to discussion on any topic and have often found my opinions to be changed by such discussions.

Are you confusing my posts with someone else's? What "emotive language" have I used?

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:An hypothesis is not an explanation. It is a claim, a prediction, a testable statement. If the hypothesis is not disproved, then that is deemed to give support to the theory from which the hypothesis came.

I've given you the correct explanation (re: false friends and different usages), so I won't restate it. Even if you don't accept the lexicons, this is still a minor quibble, since it doesn't actually change the results. I suggest we just shelve this.

I think it's a hugely important point, given that your assertion is that psychology is not yet a science. If someone doesn't know the basic terminology in science, like "hypothesis" or "theory", then I find it hard to believe they would have a decent enough understanding of science to say what should and should not be included within that category.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:To use empirical evidence to justify a claim about reality, we have to first assume that what we observe and perceive is real, which is itself a metaphysical claim that requires justification. You have to first support the claim that it's reasonable to develop a system of metaphysics from empirical data, and then you can use empirical evidence as support but not as a base of your metaphysics.

Mr.Samsa wrote:This statement is inconsistent with the idea that a theory is "verified truth". If a theory is verified truth, then we cannot have two mutually incompatible theories both explaining the same phenomenon - surely only one could be "verified truth". But the fact remains that there are obviously competing theories all the time, and that theories can exist even without being verified.

Not so, since verification can be incorrect. As I have said repeatedly and you have not taken into account repeatedly, what we understand as the truth is almost always only sufficient for the immediate purpose aFor example, we may choose to believe subatomic particles don't exist because we cannot see them, but they are nevertheless there. Following that, denying their existence doesn't change them, for that would require personifying them into a being with feelings, rather than a mechical phenomena that simply is. You have continually implied that I do not understand that our minds perceive reality through a lense. Let me unambiguously say that I do understand this concept.

And I accepted in my post above that you are using "truth" in this atypical sense, and I argued that it is misleading to do so but that I have no issues with the underlying concept.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:No, that is not how I'm using the two terms. Theory in the academic and scientific usage refers to a framework of knowledge, an explanation that accounts for a vast range of data, hypotheses, laws, theories, etc. Never, in the history of science, has an hypothesis graduated into a theory. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of science, and is completely backwards.

That is incorrect, but you persist in disbelieving. Perhaps someone else can pursuade you. Please see the following NPR article by Dr Ruth Levy Guyer of Johns Hopkins University and Haverford College.

Guyer, R.L. (2005). Theory vs. hypothesis in science. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org / templates / story / story.php?storyId=4671318 (Please remove the spaces)

And her use of the terms are consistent with mine:

A theory explains a phenomenon, accounts for all available data, is supported by a huge body of evidence. Hypotheses are just guesses that need testing.

Hypotheses don't turn into theories. It's impossible for them to do so. Hypotheses can form the basis for theories, in that they might be the key idea that allows the scientist to expand further on a greater theory, but the hypothesis itself cannot become a theory. Think of it this way: an hypothesis is a prediction - it needs to be specific to the situation in order to falsify a possible position. For example, "if I drop this ball, it will hit the ground". If this prediction is confirmed, I can build the theory of gravity out of it, but the hypothesis "if I drop this ball, it will hit the ground" does not become the theory.

I can't explain it any simpler than that.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:I'm sorry if that sounds rude, but I simply cannot understand how you can attempt to correct people and speak with certainty, when you are so disturbingly mistaken. You don't have to answer this, but do you have any scientific training at all? If I were to guess, I'd say that you were either an engineer, or something like a computer science guy who has read a few pop-science books from people like Dawkins etc. Again, sorry if that sounds condescending, but I'm just trying to figure out why you're so badly misunderstanding how science operates so we can hopefully try to fix it.

You're resorting to an emotional argument and making claims without basis. Whilst I can understand if you are a proponent of psychology you feel this is personal, but please try to remain logical and keep things civil.

... I can only assume you're attempting to poison the well here. There is absolutely no hint of an emotional argument there, but your blatant attempt to smear me is disappointing. If you have no rebuttal to my arguments, then just don't respond, there's no need for childish games.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:The previous statement suggested that all claims needed to be reproduceable to be verified, but reproducibility only applies to scientific claims. Other claims can be valid and verified without being reproduced (e.g. mathematical claims, logical claims, philosophical claims, etc). It may seem trivial to point it out, but it's important that we avoid falling into the trap of scientism by assuming that science is the only way of learning about reality, or the scientific method is the only valid approach.

Incorrect, since mathematical, logical and philosophical claims are by their nature reproducible. They do not exist in a compartmentalised vacuum and the logic does not change as soon as you move into a new subject. The same arguments in those disciplines can be used over many problems and come up with the same solutions.

They aren't reproducible because they make no empirical claims and they are tautologies, so they can't be tested in any way. An unmarried man will always be a bachelor, but saying an unmarried man is a bachelor is not a scientific conclusion.

SeriousCat wrote:You've come very close to arguing against a straw man by invoking the risk of scientism. Obviously, the scientific method is only the most rigourous and reliable approach. It would be illogical to say that science is the only way to learn, as it would mean we would never learn. Science as a concept is perhaps 1,000 years old, yet people learned before then. Children don't follow the scientific method, yet they learn. Learning methods can be effective, even if they only take part of a fraction of the process of verification, so long as they are the important ones for the situation at hand.

There's no strawman as scientism was the only possible conclusion of your originally stated comment. I assumed you didn't mean it so I fixed it, and you suggested that my addition (which removed the scientism implication) made no overall difference to your claim.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Mathematical theories and claims aren't empirical, in that people create and prove them by sitting in their bedroom. If they were empirical, we would need to perform experiments to demonstrate that "2+2=4", but instead we derive such truth from a series of axioms and agreed-upon rules of logic. These claims are unfalsifiable because they are tautologies; they are just extensions of unsupportable basic assumptions from which everything is derived. The fact that maths is important to science does not make it a science, any more so than the important of logic or language makes those two areas "science".

Mathematical claims can be tested inside and outside of the bedroom you have described. Mathematics is a description of logic, or the study of numerical relationships between variables. The logic is not compartmentalised. If it were, mathematical descriptions of natural phenomena couldn't ever be correct, yet we see many of them are. It's not just a theoretical exercise on paper, but reflected in the physics of the universe. You can't separate mathematics from science or science from mathematics, as they are mutually dependent and overlap.

Mathematics is compartmentalised, because it is a self-contained system. It applies to the observable world and to science because that's how we build our concepts and scientific theories. If the rules of mathematics were different, we'd shift our observations and science accordingly, and all will continue on as usual.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Also, computer science and engineering are not sciences.

Computer science is a formal science, which is really just a branch of logic, computation and mathematics, making it equally the most formal and hard of sciences along with mathematics. Engineering is an applied science, in that it is the application of several sciences, namely the natural sciences of physics, chemistry and biology. Whilst technically not a science, engineering is in fact three sciences.

Computer science is not a science in the same way maths and logic are not science. Even computer "scientists" joke about the fact that they aren't a science, with the common joke being: "A good way to tell if a field is scientific or not is to see if it has "science" in its name; if it does, then it's probably not a science". And as for the claim that engineering is technically three sciences... It doesn't quite work that way. It derives its knowledge from 3 areas of science, but it is not itself a science. It does not follow any of the scientific method, therefore it cannot be a science.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:But the point is that when someone builds on the results from another paper, or they build a theory using those results, or construct a literature review, etc, they don't use anything from the Discussion. What the authors mention in the Discussion is irrelevant. The Discussion section, as suggested by the very title of its section, is the author's interpretations and ideas and are not, ever, treated as anything more than speculation. If their ideas are valid, then they will be reflected in the Results section, and that is the information other researchers use.

You've clung to this for too long now, and I must call this straw man.

I'm going to have to go out on a limb and assume that you've just learnt the phrase "Strawman", yet do not currently know what it means. A strawman is when your opponent presents a caricature of your position that is weaker than the actual position you proposed, in order to easily knock it down. In the quote of mine above, I don't even mention your argument, so it is impossible for it to be a strawman.

SeriousCat wrote:Quality procedures using results from improper procedures do not yield verifiable results. Speculations are just directions for future research and possible implications for society—they are not research in and of themselves, but plans for future research.

Obviously quality procedures from improper procedures are problematic, but we've already discussed above that this doesn't happen. The claim of yours that we're discussing here is that even when psychologists reach valid conclusions in their Results section, they sometimes ruin the paper by speculating beyond their data in the Discussion section and mistakenly trying to overapply their results to society as a whole. As you've accepted just now, these speculations are not research in and of themselves, so they are not flawed results that could mess up future studies in any way. At most, they would suggest a fruitless avenue of research, but that's not a bad thing - in science, finding negative results is a great thing.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Microeconomics had no quantifiable theories at the time that behavioral psychology came along to help it, and certainly none that could predict behavior to the incredible degree of accuracy that psychology could.

That is given as more of a personal comment than an actual fact.

What part do you disagree with? Find me a microeconomic equation that could predict human behavior as accurately as the matching law in the 60s then.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Behavioral researcher with a background in psych. I'm not taking anything personally though, I'm just a science nerd and misconceptions about science, or psychology specifically, are very interesting to me.

Greetings. I'm a supply chain engineering researcher, focusing on mathematics and process logic.

Engineer, I knew it

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:You're misunderstanding. I'm not saying that "psychology is better than psychiatry", or that it's less advanced, I'm saying that it is not a science and can never be a science. Psychology, on the other hand, is an experimental field that is a science. So if we're going to compare them, we will necessarily conclude that psychology always has been and always will be the "better science" - the purpose of which is to highlight the absurdity of using psychiatry as a yardstick of a "good science". That is, psychiatry is not a science, so even a shitty science (like primitive psychology) is necessarily going to be a "better science".

This is a personal judgement, not a fact. Psychiatry happens to be a life science. However, even if it weren't, it's not pertinent to psychology's ability to produce scientifically valid results.

Psychiatry is not a life science. It's not a science at all. Do you want me to invite a psychiatrist in here and ask him what experiments he runs? @Shrunk: Do you consider yourself a scientist?

The point is that since psychiatry is not a science, then even the most primitive and flawed of sciences would necessarily be a "better science".

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Whether it's accepted by "some psychologists" is irrelevant. It's roundly and soundly rejected by psychology. That is, some psychologists accept the MBTI in the same way that some biologists accept intelligent design. The individuals may exist, but it doesn't change the fact that they are ridiculed and rejected by their peers.

I'm not saying that it is merely some psychologists, but many. Nevertheless, even if what you were saying is true, that is only one example of many (re: IQ Tests, see below).

The MBTI is certainly not accepted by "many" psychologists. We can say for certain that such a claim is false.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:What do you mean "there is no such thing"? No such thing as an IQ, intelligence, or the g factor? IQ obviously exists, because it's simply a measurement. Intelligence obviously exists because we can talk about it meaningfully. The g factor is again simply a measurement which allows us to make predictions, so that exists as well. The question remains whether IQ is a measure of "intelligence", in an abstract and nebulous sense, but psychologists generally don't care whether it is or not as that question is irrelevant to their work.

If you examine the underlying logic of IQ Tests, you'll see there's some gaps. IQ Testing is supposed to reveal underlying intelligence. However, the only way to measure that intelligence is to do a test. Intelligence can be the result of greater intellectual capacity, creativity or efficiency. Yet until it is used, intelligence is not identifiable and remains as potential. Thus we need a test, but that test cannot measure potential, only manifested performance. A more accurate indicator of intelligence would be achievement, such as obtaining a university degree. (Just to pre-empt an anticipated response, no, knowledge is not the same as intelligence.)

But IQ predicts academic achievement. It also predicts future socioeconomic status. And success in your job. And happiness. And a large range of other things. There is nothing about IQ tests that suggests it is measuring "potential" - it is measuring ability and intelligence.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:This isn't a valid criticism of IQ tests at all. The g factor was discovered because there was a corresponding variable between success in all those different tasks. Yes, getting better in one area can improve your performance in other areas, but this isn't a problem at all. There is no implication that IQ is static, or can't change, or anything like that. I think you may have accidentally confused Binet's arguments with Gardner's arguments used to support the concept of multiple intelligences - but we know now that multiple intelligences is not a valid model for intelligence.

No, that is a straw man.

Again, I don't think that means what you think it means. I explained it above, but here's the wiki page if you were interested.

SeriousCat wrote:IQ Tests do not measure intelligence, they suggest intelligence, which is a subtle but crucial difference at the core of this discussion. I have not claimed that intelligence is static, otherwise education would be pointless, and there are other ways of categorising aplpications of intelligence that can be grouped into general categories not related to Gardner (e.g. Hand-eye coordination).

IQ tests do measure intelligence, they measure the operational definition of intelligence that we have come up with. Whether this corresponds to "real" intelligence, or what most people mean by intelligence, etc, is irrelevant.

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:You make it sound like IQ tests are controversial and they need to defend themselves against the arguments of a biologist from the 80s? Ignoring the fact that his logic in that book has been heavily criticised (where he mismeasured the skulls of different races, thus reaching the wrong conclusion), his major complaints were against assuming that IQ has a genetic or hereditary component (which was what Binet argued we should be wary of), but since the 80s we have accumulated undeniable amounts of evidence which tells us for a fact that intelligence is partly inherited.

IQ Tests are still controversial, despite wanting to belief otherwise. An argument from the '80s doesn't necessarily become less valid simply because it is old, as you sentence implies.

It's not that it becomes "less valid", but that it was never valid in the first place. If it were so damning of IQ tests, then don't you think someone, anyone, would have continued with Gould's arguments? Instead they were soundly refuted the moment he proposed them, and science continued on as usual, simply with one more example of why smart people are only smart when they restrict themselves to areas they understand.

SeriousCat wrote:Then, your next sentence pre-empts the obvious follow up by saying that it was heavily criticised, particularly by psychologists, and some of those criticisms turned out to be true, but the overall argument remained in force. Research has continued to prove the nurture over nature argument, where there are measurable differences in physical characteristics, but for practical purposes the environment determines the vast majority of an individual's biological makeup (e.g. nutrition, access to education, sanitation).

I agree that nurture plays a vital role - but importantly this has absolutely nothing to do with IQ tests (which require no assumption of genetics or environmental influences), and I think you are perhaps overplaying the extent of nurture there. Our environment is hugely important and can have profound effects on our development, but intelligence does happen to have a significant genetic component, with the scientific consensus being that our intelligence is predominantly determined by our genes.

tuco wrote:Out of curiosity, what is the definition of intelligence IQ tests measure/suggest? And if they measure/suggest accurately can I say, for example: I am more intelligent than you are.?

I think a fairly decent summary is given here:

A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.

Interestingly, IQ tests are based on the g factor which came about as a result of research, rather than an attempt to define intelligence. That is, it was discovered that a general ability or factor was found to be consistent across a number of cognitive and mental tests, and that it could be used to predict a wide range of results.

SeriousCat wrote:The wider population conforms to a parametric model, which requires a parametric test for it to be generalised to. A non-parametric test can describe both samples drawn from parametric and on-parametric model, but can only be generalised to a non-parametric model. The popularity of non-parametric tests being generalised to parametric models across the social sciences does not indicate its validity. It is a cardinal statistical sin that is committed by many people across all the sciences—even hard sciences. Generally speaking, a researcher struggling to find statistical significance or practical significance using parametric tests can turn to the lower requirements of non-parametric tests. These compute statistics that can very accurately describe the sample. Then, due to the limitation of a non-parametric test not being able to be generalised to a parametric model directly, the generalisation becomes indirect, or a mere suggestion. Thus, the findings are that this non-parametric test on the sample of a parametric model finds the following relationships in the sample, and although technically mathematically incorrect, it can strongly suggest—but not prove—the results are representative of the population.

I think that this is an important issue that has to be seriously taken into account.
I also think that Mr. Samsa is right in saying that for some constructs evidence is so robust that they can not be seriously challenged, like IQ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream ... telligence see the list of signatories) or the Five Factor personality model. The only problem might be leaving areas of "personality" or "intelligence" out of the tests, but that is an empirical problem and tests are improved and updated with time. Also some critics argue that tests don't explain the development process of a construct like intelligence, but that is beyond their purpose. A theory has to account for such a process (like Piaget's), involving also other kind of studies.
Regarding the classification of sciences I think that formal sciences like logic and mathematics are sciences, even if they don't have empirical means of being tested, they use other criteria like reductio ad absurdum and the like. Empirical science would be inconceivable without them (for instance the word deductive in the name "hypothetical-deductive method" already implies logic). But for a science to be formal it cannot be about empirical phenomena, only about "rules of procedure" (in Ryle's sense regarding logic) or ideal entities like numbers. On why this sciences can be used so well to describe the empirical world I think there are some interesting works also from Piaget and Popper, but we'd get more into an epistemological debate.
IMO applied disciplines like engineering, clinical psychology, psychiatry are not sciences themselves, they base their decisions on scientific principles under some circumstances but have different goals.

Thanks for the info, Mr.Samsa, it looks like what I was asking for. Though, it is just a foreword. Any way to get the full issue? Questions of my interests are described there, however, without detail.

tuco wrote:Thanks for the info, Mr.Samsa, it looks like what I was asking for. Though, it is just a foreword. Any way to get the full issue? Questions of my interests are described there, however, without detail.

It's a journal, so I guess you could go to Google Scholar and put in each of the titles, and sometimes they'll have free access to the articles. If you can't find any, then this is a decent summary of the field (although getting a little old now): Intelligence: Known and Unknowns.

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:Do you think that theological/literary critique can pass the criterion of empirical adequacy? (Remember that I said "besides" your proposed criteria, not "instead" them).

But what does it mean to achieve empirical adequacy given that what your are observing is behavior and not cognitive processes? The validity of this adequacy assumes behavior can account for cognitive processes, but that's exactly what I'm saying is not necessarily so. Even though I certainly accept that it's seems more plausible in some cognitive domains than others (for instance perception versus problem solving), the underlying problem remains.

I think it's better to analyse specific examples, instead of trying to make an all-encompasing claim. We can detect: (1) environmental conditions, (2) overt behavior (including verbal reports), (3) physiological activity, (4) functional relations between specific instances of any of the previous categories. IMO, "cognitive processes" is a generic label for a subset of the functional relations in (4), and I'd argue that they're observable.

Asta666 wrote:Let me quote Uttal on this:
"It is not well known, but there is a formal mathematical proof that there are many, if not infinite plausible solutions to any problem involving unobserved internal mechanisms, processes, and structures. [...] Moore (1956), an early automata theorist, wrote a paper that has all too long been overlooked in the mentalism-behaviorism controversy:
THEOREM 9: Given any machine S and any multiple experiments performed on S, there exist other machines experimentally indistinguishable from S for which the original experiment would have had the same outcome. (p. 140)
Moore went on to assert:
This result means that it will never be possible to perform experiments on a completely unknown machine which will suffice to identify it from among a class of all sequential machines. (p. 140)
The implications of Moore's theorem are particularly profound for psychology. It is not only that there are other possible explanations but, because there will always be more possibilities than there are experiments and endless experiments that could be done, the number of alternative possibilities is unlimited. In other words, imagination, not reality, is the only limit to the number of possible explanations of what is going on in a closed system. [...]
However, it may also be asked: Are there also many alternative descriptions of a given behavior just as there are many indistinguishable reductive models? Certainly there are. Although there are many possible models and formulae that can predict the same complex system behavior, the test in the case of a putative description (as opposed to reductive explanation) is only whether or not the predicted behavior is closely enough modeled. The best fitting prediction or reconstruction is without argument the best description. However, this is as far as it should go. No matter how good the description, even the best fitting model has nothing to contribute to the determination of the details of the underlying mechanism."

I don't see any problem here. First, because (unlike in Moore's situation) we can observe the internal mechanisms of the system (we can do physiological research). Second, what's wrong with having "infinite solutions"? I prefer having infinite solutions to having no solutions at all.

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:Why should an empirical test be "direct" and "conclusive"? I don't think they should. Indirect and inconclusive empirical tests are the usual practice in other sciences.

Because if it's not direct then the evidence is not necessarily accounting for that hypothesis, only for what is being measured, and that is behavior.

First, we can detect more than behavior (see my enumeration above). Second, a rejection of indirect measurement woud imply the rejection of telescopes, microscopes, thermometers, etc. I doubt that you're willing to do that, so it seems that there's something wrong with your proposal.

Asta666 wrote:Of course they might not be conclusive initially, the question would be, can they ever be? If they can't, on what basis are we saying one is more accurate or whatever than others?

Evidence is always "inconclusive" (because our theories are always fallible and they might require changes if new evidence is found), so I don't expect the evidence to be conclusive. We're saying that a theory is empirically adequate if the predictions of the theory are aproximatelly similar to the observed empirical data set. Different theories are compared according to (1) the degree of precision that is reached by each theory's predictions, (2) the amplitude of the empirical data set that is predicted by each theory.

Asta666 wrote:Epistemic reductionism, if it is ever achieved, would vanish this problems, but it seems pretty sci-fi today. Meanwhile we are left with "parsimony", "fruitfulness for new research", brain correlations, lesion studies and the like, which may be something given or current capabilities, but I think they are given way more "truthfulness" status than they actually deserve.

First, I don't think we should assess theories by their truth. Observational sentences might be assessed as true or false, but theories are approximate models, and as such, we assess them as more or less empirically adequate. Second, epistemic reductionism is not as necessary as you think it is. Epistemic reductionism only means that we can deduce a theory B from a theory A. Why would you need to deduce a psychological theory from a neural theory? If psychology can offer theories that are empirically adequate with increasing precision and scope, that's all it needs as a science.

Mr.Samsa, I think it's abundantly obvious now that all you are interested in is emotional argumentation. You post contradictions to yourself and ignore my comments. I have come into this discussion with an open mind, and you have pursuaded me of changing my opinion on several elements of psychology. This was from the force of the logic and evidence, not because of your rudeness. However, most of my queries have still been left unanswered by you. It is all too obvious that this is too personal an issue for you, and so to save us the trouble let's just say that we agree to disagree. Take it as a victory, stalemate, or whatever you'd like. I'm not here to get into a fight.

sekeer wrote:First, because (unlike in Moore's situation) we can observe the internal mechanisms of the system (we can do physiological research).

That'll be true when and if epistemic reductionism is accomplished, at least for some processes. For now we have controversial data like low amount of cases and not identical lesion studies and brain imaging correlations.

seeker wrote:Second, what's wrong with having "infinite solutions"? I prefer having infinite solutions to having no solutions at all.

If you can't choose among solutions or models by a given set of empirical data then "infinite solutions" is the same as no solution.

seeker wrote:a rejection of indirect measurement woud imply the rejection of telescopes, microscopes, thermometers, etc.

That's true but I don't think it's quite the same case. Those instruments measure certain properties of a physical object (although one in particular might not account for everything that there is to say about them). What you can measure in this case is overt behavior or physiological reactions and currently I don't think those measures follow to a construct like mental representation or an image demon so easily as a thermometer to a change in temperature or a microscope on a bacteria being oval instead of square shaped. I'd ask again "¿how much can the empirical data account for a given inferred construct, and how much can we distinguish among competing ones by that means?" I don't think it's same amount in this comparison, but it's true that degrees of plausibility vary from one cognitive domain to another.

seeker wrote:I don't think we should assess theories by their truth.

I use the term in Popper's sense, as adequacy to accepted empirical evidence. Even if tomorrow it changes, at this moment it wouldn't be improper to say that it is true, or truer than it's competitors.

seeker wrote:If psychology can offer theories that are empirically adequate with increasing precision and scope, that's all it needs as a science.

Yeah I'm not saying it needs anything else, although reductionism would help clear some controversies. I'm just stating some dangers that I see in taking in some cases hypothetical constructs in Meehl's sense as causes of behavior without solid neural evidence and without being able to choose among competing models by behavioral experiments.

SeriousCat wrote:I'm not here to get into a fight.

Don't be so serious about it.

SC - too bad your PM function is turned off.

SeriousCat wrote:Mr.Samsa, I think it's abundantly obvious now that all you are interested in is emotional argumentation. You post contradictions to yourself and ignore my comments. I have come into this discussion with an open mind, and you have pursuaded me of changing my opinion on several elements of psychology. This was from the force of the logic and evidence, not because of your rudeness. However, most of my queries have still been left unanswered by you. It is all too obvious that this is too personal an issue for you, and so to save us the trouble let's just say that we agree to disagree. Take it as a victory, stalemate, or whatever you'd like. I'm not here to get into a fight.

There is absolutely no trace of emotional arguments or rudeness from me, and I honestly have no idea what aspects of my posts you are misinterpreting so badly to reach that conclusion. If you think I've posted contradictions of my own points, then why don't you point them out? I have no way of knowing unless you tell me about them. And I've responded to every single point you've made - look at the size of my posts in reply to you. I hardly think I could be accused of dodging any issues. If you don't think I answered them adequately enough, then ask for a clarification. This is how a debate works - someone makes a claim, and you accept or reject it. You don't make up excuses about the other person being "rude" just because you don't know how to respond.

Your responses in this thread have simply been extremely confusing. I've been nothing but polite and courteous to you, so if you interpret me as being "rude" or "emotional", then I honestly wish you the best of luck in the real world.

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:First, because (unlike in Moore's situation) we can observe the internal mechanisms of the system (we can do physiological research).

That'll be true when and if epistemic reductionism is accomplished, at least for some processes. For now we have controversial data like low amount of cases and not identical lesion studies and brain imaging correlations.

You might say that our current measurements of neural activity have lots of limitations and difficulties, and I'd agree. But you cannot deny that physiological activity can be observed. Also, I have the impression (perhaps you can tell me if I'm right or not) that you're not understanding the term "epistemic reductionism" as I do. I've told you that I define "epistemic reductionism" as the possibility of deducing theory B from theory A. Given this definition, I think epistemic reductionism is not necessary for observing physiological mechanisms. If you disagree, please explain your thoughts.

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:Second, what's wrong with having "infinite solutions"? I prefer having infinite solutions to having no solutions at all.

If you can't choose among solutions or models by a given set of empirical data then "infinite solutions" is the same as no solution.

Think about some concrete examples of problems where you can have infinite solutions, and of problems where you have no solution at all. Do you really think they're exactly "the same"?
Perhaps you're looking for a "true" theory, and that's why you dislike the fact that different theories might solve the same problem. But if theories are not assessed as true or false, but as more or less empirically adequate, then there's nothing wrong with having more than one empirically adequate theory.

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:a rejection of indirect measurement woud imply the rejection of telescopes, microscopes, thermometers, etc.

That's true but I don't think it's quite the same case. Those instruments measure certain properties of a physical object (although one in particular might not account for everything that there is to say about them). What you can measure in this case is overt behavior or physiological reactions and currently I don't think those measures follow to a construct like mental representation or an image demon so easily as a thermometer to a change in temperature or a microscope on a bacteria being oval instead of square shaped.

I think the problem is not where you think it is. The problem is, IMO, that a construct like "representation" is polisemic (i.e., the same word means very different things in different theories). If you ask what is meant by this construct, you'll have a different answer within each theory: "representation is covert self-talk", "representation is non-verbal imagery", "representation is a neural correlate of a perceived stimulus property", "representation is a neural correlate of a response", "representation is the neural network that mediates between an input and an output", and so on. Once you understand this polisemy, you can see that we have several reliable instruments to detect those referents. The problem is that sometimes the term is used as a generic label without further specification, and some people might assume that we should find an instrument that can detect such undefined category in order to make it a legitimate object of study. But this is just an unjustified misinterpretation of an homonymy.

Asta666 wrote:I'd ask again "¿how much can the empirical data account for a given inferred construct, and how much can we distinguish among competing ones by that means?" I don't think it's same amount in this comparison, but it's true that degrees of plausibility vary from one cognitive domain to another.

I think once you avoid the "homonymy trap" that I've mentioned above, there's no significative difference between indirect measurements in psychology and in other sciences.

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:I don't think we should assess theories by their truth.

I use the term in Popper's sense, as adequacy to accepted empirical evidence. Even if tomorrow it changes, at this moment it wouldn't be improper to say that it is true, or truer than it's competitors.

Popper has proposed to assess a theory's ‘truthlikeness’ or ‘verisimilitude’ (which is not exactly the same as ‘truth’), but his proposal had severe problems (see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper): "in the 1970's a series of papers published by researchers such as Miller, Tichý, and Grünbaum in particular revealed fundamental defects in Popper's formal definitions of verisimilitude... the deficiencies discovered by the critics in Popper's formal definitions were seen by many as devastating..."
You might propose some changes and see if you can solve those problems. I prefer to adopt a more empiricist perspective that doesn't apply the concept of "truth" to theories.

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:If psychology can offer theories that are empirically adequate with increasing precision and scope, that's all it needs as a science.

Yeah I'm not saying it needs anything else, although reductionism would help clear some controversies. I'm just stating some dangers that I see in taking in some cases hypothetical constructs in Meehl's sense as causes of behavior without solid neural evidence and without being able to choose among competing models by behavioral experiments.

Yes, I agree about that.

seeker wrote:You might say that our current measurements of neural activity have lots of limitations and difficulties, and I'd agree. But you cannot deny that physiological activity can be observed. Also, I have the impression (perhaps you can tell me if I'm right or not) that you're not understanding the term "epistemic reductionism" as I do. I've told you that I define "epistemic reductionism" as the possibility of deducing theory B from theory A. Given this definition, I think epistemic reductionism is not necessary for observing physiological mechanisms. If you disagree, please explain your thoughts.

I agree with your definition, although I don't think the whole theory B needs to be deductible from A, only the basic elements of it. For instance, maybe one day we'll know the neural mechanism that enables certain memory processes like encoding. A model of memory B could start from there, and that would be a solid base. Complete reduction seems pretty far-fetched if not impossible. The problem is with out current knowledge for instance we know that if there is damage in the basal ganglia procedural memory is affected, but that's just a useful clinical model, we can't say that we have scientifically established how the basal ganglia enables that kind of memory. Then we read textbook statements that this area "controls" procedural memory, like there was a midget there pressing some switches. It's just a metaphor that's pretty useful in clinical work because we have to do the best we can in that area given what we know, but it's not a scientific theory.
I'm not saying is research that shouldn't be done or that it is not useful, the area of psychology that interests me the most is neuropsychology, which currently is pretty much all based on cognitive models, I'm just saying that we should be realistic about the state of our knowledge in areas such as these and don't go along with things like neuro myths that we have explained consciousness, political orientation and the like.

seeker wrote:Think about some concrete examples of problems where you can have infinite solutions, and of problems where you have no solution at all. Do you really think they're exactly "the same"?
Perhaps you're looking for a "true" theory, and that's why you dislike the fact that different theories might solve the same problem. But if theories are not assessed as true or false, but as more or less empirically adequate, then there's nothing wrong with having more than one empirically adequate theory.

Well, that depends on how we define "solve". For that I understood explain in some testable way. I think in some cases competing solutions might just be different forms of saying the same (for instance different mathematical descriptions of the distribution of behavior) but are all valid, or can ultimately be precised to the point where one "solution" accounts better for the data than the others. In other cases they are just myths where data is actually irrelevant. For instance positing unconscious conflict of desires to explain speech errors, there the empirical observations are just neutral facts taken to try to give some substance to a fantastical hypothetical construct.

seeker wrote:The problem is that sometimes the term is used as a generic label without further specification, and some people might assume that we should find an instrument that can detect such undefined category in order to make it a legitimate object of study. But this is just an unjustified misinterpretation of an homonymy.

Yeah that's a real issue. But I think in some cases even after giving a precise definition, results are extrapolated too far off from the actual data when and if measures are done (in part what SeriousCat was saying about statistics).

seeker wrote:Popper has proposed to assess a theory's ‘truthlikeness’ or ‘verisimilitude’ (which is not exactly the same as ‘truth’), but his proposal had severe problems (see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper): "in the 1970's a series of papers published by researchers such as Miller, Tichý, and Grünbaum in particular revealed fundamental defects in Popper's formal definitions of verisimilitude... the deficiencies discovered by the critics in Popper's formal definitions were seen by many as devastating..."
You might propose some changes and see if you can solve those problems. I prefer to adopt a more empiricist perspective that doesn't apply the concept of "truth" to theories.

Interesting, I didn't know about those studies, although I've never dug too deep into Popper's formal statements either. This: "arguing instead that the chief value of the concept is heuristic and intuitive, in which the absence of an adequate formal definition is not an insuperable impediment to its utilisation in the actual appraisal of theories relativised to problems in which we have an interest." would be more like the way is was using it.
Anyway, could you please expand a bit more in your criteria of empirical adequacy or provide some links?

PS: Out of curiosity, I read in another thread that you speak spanish, where are you from?

Asta666 wrote:Yeah, I'm not saying they are not empirical. What we have to ask is ¿how much can the empirical data account for a given inferred construct, and how much can we distinguish among competing ones by that means?

Are you trying to use empirical data to account for an inferred construct? If so, that's weird. Inferred constructs are proposed to account for empirical data, not the other way around.

Asta666 wrote:For instance I can record lot's of observations of people's speech errors, and then postulate that their cause is an unconscious desire that failed to be repressed, but I doubt you would consider that as an empirically supported hypothesis. Prediction in this case would be meaningless, because there is no other independent way to measure the hypothesis, only behavior can be observed.

In this example, there's no prediction at all.

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:You might say that our current measurements of neural activity have lots of limitations and difficulties, and I'd agree. But you cannot deny that physiological activity can be observed. Also, I have the impression (perhaps you can tell me if I'm right or not) that you're not understanding the term "epistemic reductionism" as I do. I've told you that I define "epistemic reductionism" as the possibility of deducing theory B from theory A. Given this definition, I think epistemic reductionism is not necessary for observing physiological mechanisms. If you disagree, please explain your thoughts.

I agree with your definition, although I don't think the whole theory B needs to be deductible from A, only the basic elements of it. For instance, maybe one day we'll know the neural mechanism that enables certain memory processes like encoding. A model of memory B could start from there, and that would be a solid base. Complete reduction seems pretty far-fetched if not impossible. The problem is with out current knowledge for instance we know that if there is damage in the basal ganglia procedural memory is affected, but that's just a useful clinical model, we can't say that we have scientifically established how the basal ganglia enables that kind of memory. Then we read textbook statements that this area "controls" procedural memory, like there was a midget there pressing some switches. It's just a metaphor that's pretty useful in clinical work because we have to do the best we can in that area given what we know, but it's not a scientific theory.

It's not just a "metaphor", it's a functional relation between physiological and behavioral classes of events, and it qualifies as a scientific theory, IMO.

Asta666 wrote:I'm not saying is research that shouldn't be done or that it is not useful, the area of psychology that interests me the most is neuropsychology, which currently is pretty much all based on cognitive models, I'm just saying that we should be realistic about the state of our knowledge in areas such as these and don't go along with things like neuro myths that we have explained consciousness, political orientation and the like.

I would agree about avoiding those exaggerations. But I don't think this issue is related with epistemic reductionism.

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:Think about some concrete examples of problems where you can have infinite solutions, and of problems where you have no solution at all. Do you really think they're exactly "the same"?
Perhaps you're looking for a "true" theory, and that's why you dislike the fact that different theories might solve the same problem. But if theories are not assessed as true or false, but as more or less empirically adequate, then there's nothing wrong with having more than one empirically adequate theory.

Well, that depends on how we define "solve". For that I understood explain in some testable way. I think in some cases competing solutions might just be different forms of saying the same (for instance different mathematical descriptions of the distribution of behavior) but are all valid, or can ultimately be precised to the point where one "solution" accounts better for the data than the others. In other cases they are just myths where data is actually irrelevant. For instance positing unconscious conflict of desires to explain speech errors, there the empirical observations are just neutral facts taken to try to give some substance to a fantastical hypothetical construct.

We were talking about cognitive theories, not about psychoanalytic speculations. Are you arguing that they're similar regarding these issues? If so, you'll need to offer concrete examples of this kind of problem in cognitive theories.

Asta666 wrote:

seeker wrote:Popper has proposed to assess a theory's ‘truthlikeness’ or ‘verisimilitude’ (which is not exactly the same as ‘truth’), but his proposal had severe problems (see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper): "in the 1970's a series of papers published by researchers such as Miller, Tichý, and Grünbaum in particular revealed fundamental defects in Popper's formal definitions of verisimilitude... the deficiencies discovered by the critics in Popper's formal definitions were seen by many as devastating..."
You might propose some changes and see if you can solve those problems. I prefer to adopt a more empiricist perspective that doesn't apply the concept of "truth" to theories.

Interesting, I didn't know about those studies, although I've never dug too deep into Popper's formal statements either. This: "arguing instead that the chief value of the concept is heuristic and intuitive, in which the absence of an adequate formal definition is not an insuperable impediment to its utilisation in the actual appraisal of theories relativised to problems in which we have an interest." would be more like the way is was using it.
Anyway, could you please expand a bit more in your criteria of empirical adequacy or provide some links?

See: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/constructive-empiricism/#1.5

SeriousCat wrote:

Mr.Samsa wrote:I apologise if it seems like I'm "demonising" you or being "rude" to you, but I am simply responding to your posts. You have demonstrated grave misunderstandings of both science and the philosophy of science, and my only conclusion is that you have little or no education in the areas. This isn't a bad thing, and I don't mean it as an attack, but I'm just trying to correct some of your misconceptions.

Your heavy use of emotive language indicates otherwise. I would just like to say for the record that I'm open to discussion on any topic and have often found my opinions to be changed by such discussions.

SeriousCat: I must say that I haven't seen high levels of emotiveness in Mr.Samsa's replies.
Mr.Samsa: Perhaps SeriousCat is perceiving your replies as question-begging. Is there any evidence (besides your personal experience) that your account of the scientific terminology is the more adequate? Isn't it possible that different scientists adopt different terminologies or philosophies?

seeker wrote:Mr.Samsa: Perhaps SeriousCat is perceiving your replies as question-begging. Is there any evidence (besides your personal experience) that your account of the scientific terminology is the more adequate? Isn't it possible that different scientists adopt different terminologies or philosophies?

It's true that there are some differences in the terminology used by scientists and philosophers of science, but the idea that hypotheses are essentially "untested theories" is necessarily oversimplistic and incorrect. For example, look at how hypotheses are framed in statistical tests - how could something like "There is no difference between the two groups" graduate into a theory? Using hypotheses as discrete predictions, to test theories, seems the most logical to me, as otherwise why would a "well-tested and accepted" theory continue to make hypotheses, which SeriousCat defines as untested explanations?

I can't find any reputable resources at the moment that give any definitive statements on how these terms are, or should be, used - are you aware of any? Either way, I'd happily change my position if SeriousCat presented a source that supported his definition, but the source he presented supported my interpretation.