G
Gerwyn
Guest
Gerwyn,
"No Angela the modern work in neurocognitive psychology does explain why humans interpret their social and environmental encounters via a system of interrelated self biasing mental representations or schema ..This is neccessarily so because our minds are not in direct contact with the environment"
Explanations may be given, it doesn't mean they are accurate - they need testing. What is meant by 'mind' in your discussion here? That's a crucial and problematic issue. Also - 'WHY' claims - always a problem. HOW I can live with- but WHY can easily become a just-so story (evolutionary psychology being a particular culprit here).
"All labels are constructed.What matters is whether their meaning is consistant and invariate.So in terms of research everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet so that progress can be made."
Right. So if 100 people construct black people as sexually voracious and less intelligent than whites, because everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet, it must be progress and fact? No, of course not, yet this sort of assumption is often what happens in much psychological and psychiatric claims. My problem is about how much (or not) is meaning consistent and invariate. 'Catatrophisation' is confused in the way its used. But -also, when it's claimed to CAUSE illness for example (and psychologists are involved in that problem), it's not just the unstable use of language that's the problem, it's the circular reasoning ("You're in worse pain BECAUSE you believe the pain is bad" etc.)
"The point with using the scientific method Angela is that you can tell if the method is used is incorrectly applied.with other methods you would not have a clue"
Yes I get that. That's a problem with some - a lot - of 'psychology' as well though. Of course, you can only tell if the scientific method is correct/incorrect if you know about scientific method and reasoning, for which you have to know a bit about logic!
"Social constuctionists create the problems in psychology whether existing or not They would point to problems real or otherwise that suits their agenda"
I'm beginning to think you are defining 'social construction' differently to me. I (like many sociologists) am using 'social construction' to explain the way people define others according to BELIEFS that are socially constructed. So, the female SEX is biological, but GENDER is how others construct women in a social system. A gendered construction of women being irrational and intuitive per se, for example, sociologists would argue is a social construction. Biologists sometimes linguistically construct female animal sexuality in terms of 'submission to the male', for example. But the term 'submission' may not be accurate at all. Female animals might invite the male, but it was often written as 'submission'. But it was a social construction of female sexuality as 'submissive' that led to this unsafe linguistic construction.
'Personality traits' are often social constructs - 'neuroticism' is a big one. People are made to answer a closed set of questions structured according to the personal agenda (theory) of the researcher. They might not want to answer in the way they've been instructed, the 'agree/disagree' may be too simplistic, yet because they've done it- 'reliability' is assumed, and construct validity is also (wrongly) assumed. There's a paper I must dig out about how old people had trouble understanding personality trait testing questions, and how this confounded their answers, not because the old people were stupid, but because their reasoning was different to the researcher's paradigm.
As regards the 'going around in circles' - I think it is because we disagree about the value of sociology in understanding science, not because I or others (including you) are using particularly ill-defined terminology in this thread. But anyway- most language is problematic in communication. There's a whole field in sociology (linguistics) studying how language is used, mis-used, its instabilities etc. It's valuable work.
I hope that it might be clear by now that I'm arguing for MORE sober scientific method in disciplines such as psychology, sociology, biology, psychiatry, medicine, epidemiology etc. and more careful attention to confounding factors like social construction of certain claims as 'fact', NOT for the abandonment of the scientific method!
Explanations may be given, it doesn't mean they are accurate - they need testing. What is meant by 'mind' in your discussion here? That's a crucial and problematic issue. Also - 'WHY' claims - always a problem. HOW I can live with- but WHY can easily become a just-so story (evolutionary psychology being a particular culprit here).
The explanations are consistent with the observed data and thus far have not been disproved, The explanatoty model has been repeatedly evaluated by testing its predictive power.it has now reached the status of theory which in scientific terminology means the closest approximation of the truth based on the information currently available.That does not mean that the model will never be adjusted or even abandoned altogether.The cumulative weight of evidence makes it unlikely but never say never in this game. I am happy to use brain if that is clearer and you are right perhaps i should have
Right. So if 100 people construct black people as sexually voracious and less intelligent than whites, because everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet, it must be progress and fact? No, of course not, yet this sort of assumption is often what happens in much psychological and psychiatric claims. My problem is about how much (or not) is meaning consistent and invariate. 'Catatrophisation' is confused in the way its used. But -also, when it's claimed to CAUSE illness for example (and psychologists are involved in that problem), it's not just the unstable use of language that's the problem, it's the circular reasoning ("You're in worse pain BECAUSE you believe the pain is bad" etc.)
The first problem here is the use of the word construct.it is not defined.
If it was everyone would know what the term actually meant.
The scientific method begins with observations.in this case sexually voracious would have to be defined.As would intelligence.Some consistent method of measuring intelligence would have to be developed that produced consistent reliable results.This would have to be tested and measured against a number of factors that could be objectively measured.intelligence its self would need to be defined with relation to the ability to perform a range of cognitive tasks such as non verbal pattern recognition.Then you would have to find some objective measurement of sexual voracity .then assess the probabliity of truth of the observations level of chance generalisability etc.Of course just defining terms and working from the same hymn sheet is not the total answer but research of this kind has no meaning whatsoever without doing so.Science constructs theories based on observations precisely made using terms precisely defined.Otherwise you end up with the rediculous claims you describe. If the meaning of the word pain was defined then the circularity you described could not ensue
Of course, you can only tell if the scientific method is correct/incorrect if you know about scientific method and reasoning, for which you have to know a bit about logic!
You cant tell if any other method is correctly or incorrectly applied however much logic you have,Another term with multiple meanings of course
I'm beginning to think you are defining 'social construction' differently to me. I (like many sociologists) am using 'social construction' to explain the way people define others according to BELIEFS that are socially constructed.
My problem with the social constuctionist approach in psychology is as follows
repeated experimental evidence suppots the theory that social schema are used to form judgements about and guide behaviour in different social settings without concious awareness.Internalised cultural beliefs form at least part of the symbolic information contained in this schema and are used at least in part in the construction of social stereotypes.
social constructionists observe people behaving differently in different situations and conclude that people must have different identities.They then treat this highly questionable and subjective interpretation as fact.
in similar vein they see different degrees of emotionality in different cultures then emotions must be culturally constructed.
I could go on but essentially the thought process is that if it appears to be then it must be.
In essence it is a return to skinner--the cultural environment is the sole cause of behaviour they are silent on the how of course.
According to them the focus of psychological investigation should be cultural entities of one kind or another They then call social constuctionism a meta theory that explains everything
Of course scientific methodology is innapropiate
Biologists sometimes linguistically construct female animal sexuality in terms of 'submission to the male', I think they would DESCRIBE the behaviour as appearing to be submissive.What readers interpret by that is a product of their cognitive apparatus
systemSo, the female SEX is biological, but GENDER is how others construct women in a social.
Female behaviour is a compex interplay of genetic and environmental factors(as is the behaviour of Males).This pattern of behaviour in itself produces a weighted average or stereotype contributing to cultural beliefs about gender issues.Gender itself is a subjectively constructed label with no objective relationship to the labelled phenomena under consideration
Female animals might invite the male, but it was often written as 'submission'. But it was a social construction of female sexuality as 'submissive' that led to this unsafe linguistic construction.
We dont know whether this is an objectively correct description or not.It is a description calling it a linguistic construct is an example of the sort of problem we are talking about we dont know whether this is an unsafe linguistic construction or not.It is totally open to interpretation.
Personality traits' are often social constructs
The label personality trait is a social construct what it labells is not(the contents of mental models predispose to certain attitudes behaviours and so on)
'neuroticism' is a big one. People are made to answer a closed set of questions structured according to the personal agenda (theory) of the researcher. They might not want to answer in the way they've been instructed, the 'agree/disagree' may be too simplistic, yet because they've done it- 'reliability' is assumed, and
This method is common to all diagnostic proceedures in medicine.It is possible, but very rare, that an individualy constructed questionaire is used to diagnose a condition .The validity of diagnostic criterea are rigerously validated and calibrated against objective measurements such as blood tests neural scans and so on.To an outside observer the validity of the test might seem to be assumed
As regards the 'going around in circles' - I think it is because we disagree about the value of sociology in understanding science,
It really means what you mean by understanding.This obviously once again has different meanings.The majority of sociologists lack the scientific knowledge to understand the specific scientific protocols used in different fields of science. I have yet to hear an objective analysis of this kind from a sociologist.The techniques used by many sociologists involve interpretations made on the basis of their preconceptions,cognitive biases and beliefs. These techniques make any kind of objective analysis impossible.
If on the other hand the subjects of investigation concerned the, misuse of peer review, the effects of publishing bias on propagating popular or controversial theories,misuse of language, effects of sponsorship power issues then absolutely.these are the sorts of issues that sociology deals with exceedingly well.It certainly does not need any help from psychology
I totally agree that work investigating the misuse of language in research is important- a lot of research evidence is nothing but a product of such misuse
I am arguing for more objectivity and stricter adherence to the scientific method in all forms of research. Research that does not employ the scientific method should be labelled as unscientific or anecdotal