| > Your position is still not 100% clear, although it appears that you are arguing that something called "the mind" exists outside the physical realm. Wait, hold on, I didn't invent the mind, psychologists did. I'm simply pointing out that the subject of psychological work doesn't have a physical existence. I'm certainly not arguing that the mind "exists outside the physical realm". I'm arguing that psychology needs to reconcile their insistence that psychology is a science, with the nonphysical, non-empirical subject of their investigations. > I am just confused as to your seeming insistence as to the existence of something non-physical. Wait, hold on. I'm not arguing that the mind exists on a non-physical plane, that's psychology's claim -- I'm objecting to it, as do most scientists. Title: "Why psychology isn't science" Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-... Quote: "Psychology isn't science. Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability." > Now it turns out it also managed to realize that if you poke and prod someone in a certain way that occasionally a positive change can take place. Yes, but without an explanation, that outcome can't rise to the level of science. Science requires explanations, mere descriptions won't do. If I say, "The night sky is filled with little points of light", that's a description, not very useful. But if I say, "Those points of light are actually distant thermonuclear furnaces like our own sun," that's an explanation, it's testable and falsifiable, and I've crossed the threshold of science. |
Ah OK, I was obviously confused.
All the psychologists I have known have admitted that they are just an inaccurate subset of neurology, none of them would follow the concept of "mind", I tend not to bother dealing with people who go for mind/body dualism!
Any psychologist who is an atheist and a skeptic pretty much has to come to the same conclusions. Meh.