Psychology, having really only gained its roots in the late 1800s would have been very different from the “psychology” that Aquinas would have talked about. Nevertheless, psychology is a very rigorous science (as much so as biology and chemistry). It’s predictive capabilities are astonishing, but not yet nearing complete. So long as a disciplin employs strict controls. the scientific method, consideration for the constructive nature of social and psychological phenomenon, and does not generalize beyond it’s sample, we can take a lot from it as a intellectual orientation. Psychology rarely takes a position on the metaphysical (perhaps it does only sometimes to illustrate that metaphysical explanations of the mind are not necessary for explaining behaviour). Indeed, there are many Christian psychologists, though psychology sometimes poses a mild threat of determinism. If human behaviour can be more or less predicted, then free will may very well be an illusion. Unless one takes the position of inserting an immaterial soul which somehow acts on the mind to bring about predicatable behaviour (one wonders why a soul would need to intervene at all), psychology really has no need for religion.
I don’t see how psychology poses any sort of threat to free will. It is true that psychologists “try” to predict human behavior, but that is only in the aggregate after numerous studies are compiled and studied. They can’t tell you how you or I will act in any one situation, but they can have an idea of how people put in a certain situation given certain factors what kind of decisions they will make. We will continue to act that way until a conscious effort is made to change the patterns of behavior that lead to those actions.
I don’t understand why you would even ask such a question? What do you propose we do with the mentally ill? Condemn them to suffering? Why not question the validity of all medicine and let people suffer and die from physical illnesses as well?I have been contemplating this issue for a while now, and I was wondering what the people here thought about it: is psychology valid, both to the Catholic Church and as a science? This applies to the four main “types”, in my mind, of psychology: psychotherapy, research psychology, psychology of brain-specific disorders, and psychology of mind disorders (whether they have a brain relation or not); and the connections therein. All opinions are appreciated.
Psychology, being a fairly new disciplin among the great sciences, is still in its infancy. What it cannot yet predict, it has not yet had the chance to test or examine. The potential is there to predict as much social behaviour (how we make choices, how we are persuaded, who we’re attracted to, what types of people will subscribe to religious experiences, etc.) as brain-related cognitive behaviour (memory, attention, perception, language, problem solving, etc.). It’s not that psychology can predict all behaviour (it doesn’t have all the variables with which to do it), it’s that it shows just how predictable behaviour is within impressive confidence intervals. This is, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, a threat to the idea of free will. I never said that behaviour was just biological; it is, as you say, nurture (but I call this environment, not the soul). Psychologists that reference the soul in true Christian terms are few and far between. The interaction psychologists are often looking at is environment and biology, not biology and soul/mind. As I have suggested though, the threat is indirect - it’s really only there for whomever would like to raise the argument. Mostly, Psychology just doesn’t invest itself in the metaphysical.
I can’t really say that I don’t agree with you. I think what you’ve identified, and it’s something humanity has been wrestling with for ages, is the tension between the visible and invisible worlds. Scientists are trained to study and measure the visible world and they try to look for the best way to explain it. Psychologists are still largely perplexed about how and why the brain functions the way it does. I think therapists know a little more about how they can affect behavior, but even for them what works for one doesn’t work for another and they still don’t know why.
Nailed down, no, I think you’re right on that. Not because I think human nature isn’t perfectly mapped out by physical laws (both our biology and the environment that acts upon it; and we, who act upon the environment), but because if the brain were something simple enough to be nailed down, we wouldn’t have the intellect to do it. That paradox is what prevents behaviour from being completely predictable. I think, however, if I can put it in these terms, that if nature was the observer, it would say “of course he’s going to act in such and such away - I programmed him thus, and the world to act upon him such that he couldn’t have acted otherwise.”
Psychology a very rigorous science as much as chemistry?
Put another way, you can’t generalize the findings* beyond *the demographic characteristics of the sample. For example, you can’t apply a research study on depression in college-aged, low-income, female participants to middle-aged, high-income, male participants. My apologies; I might have been clearer.Psychology a very rigorous science as much as chemistry?
You really have to prove that. Just the statement that should not generalize beyond its sample is a contradiction of it as a science.
The only thing that denotes whether something is a science is if it employs the scientific method, which psychology does. Therefore, it is a science. That it isn’t quackery is a pretty striking understatement. You are probably under a stereotypical notion of the kinds of things psychology suggests. I would challenge you, even, to come up with one currently-held psychological finding that could be dubbed quackery.
I think that to be scientific (objective) one must stand outside one’s area of study at a minimum and preferably transcend it. If this is true then psychology and its relatives are more often suspect of bias than other experimental sciences.I have been contemplating this issue for a while now, and I was wondering what the people here thought about it: is psychology valid, both to the Catholic Church and as a science? This applies to the four main “types”, in my mind, of psychology: psychotherapy, research psychology, psychology of brain-specific disorders, and psychology of mind disorders (whether they have a brain relation or not); and the connections therein. All opinions are appreciated.
To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The scientific method can reproduce the same results when you recreate the same conditions in a controlled environment. Do you call it science because you look for falsifiable theories? Even Astrology has falsifiable theories. A lot of disciplines use some scientific methodologies but they are not science.
Yeah? Haven’t yet gotten to the part where psychology isn’t a science though. Did you have a comment on that?
Because the very difficult task of doing so gives extra weight to my assertion that psychology is both a science and very rigorous. You certainly don’t have to though…
How does psychology fail any of your tests? Psychologist especially when doing studies do indeed gather observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. Their studies are peer reviewed and monitored and they undertake blind and double-blind studies to rule out contamination of the results. Many psycologists, especially when working on research at universitys, are sometimes more akin to biologists and chemists in some of the things they do.
This is a logical fallacy. Just because something is not quackery, it does not imply that it is a science. Cooking is not quackery but it is not a science, even if it uses some scientific methods. I just want to reassure you that as I already stated in my previous post I would not call psychology quackery and I acknowledge it usefulness in a quite few situations. My point of view is that not being a science does not imply being a quackery. I know people that work in the field and while some are quacks (like in every field) some are outstanding people from the intellectual, professional, and ethical point of view and I would trust them to help me in case of need.
It’s not a logicl fallacy. I said it bolsters my case, not that it proves something. Now can you tell me why psychology is not a science or can’t you?
In post #12 you said:
I don’t see how you reply shows that psychology doesn’t qualify as a science. Every definition I could find on the web defines psychology as a science.
Can you get a patient in a controlled environment, separate the variables, reproduce some of the conditions that affect him and obtain the same result. Can you do that for all your experiments. After you have proven repeatability can you have a model, design the experiment and prove your model? There are a lot of aspects in psychology where you cannot do that because of the human complexity and because you cannot real go a time reversal to separate some of the variables. FYI as a physicist I do not consider some aspects of cosmology as science either.
So what! I have a book that calls cooking “the science in the kitchen”. Is cooking a science?
Most psychological constructs are amenable to the kind of manipulation and control that would deem them scientific. Clincial research is the only area where psychological studies are quasi-experimental. Controls are still implimented and variables isolated to the best of the researcher’s ability. It’s not the data that suffers as a result of demographic studies, it’s the generalizibility and perfect causality. I can’t proive that smoking lowers your life expectancy (because you can’t assign half your participants to smoke for 40 years), but the research shows results from which other figures can be predicted. Likewise, I can’t confirm the causality of the effects of frontal lobe damage (because, again, I can’t take a hammer to the heads of half my participants), but astonishing predictions can be made based on the research. You’re the first person I’ve encountered that said it’s not a science. I think that those physics credentials are going to your head a bit
Science has pretty structured characterstics that, for all intents and purposes, match the psychological paradigm. If you think that’s not the case, you’ll have to provide a reason for that. It’s not like I’m asking you to prove science exists; I’m asking you, based on the opperationalized definition of science, if psychology fits the bill. It’s simple deduction. I say that it does, but you can’t seem to come up with good reason why it doesn’t, so we’ll count this as a victory in my stead