Atheist or Not?

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blackelk
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04 Feb 2009, 11:01 pm

More Jung:

Quote:

There is, however, a strong empirical reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proved. It is that they are known to be useful. Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is convinced that they make sense; he is crushed when, on top of all his misfortunes, he has to admit that he is taking part in a "tale told by an idiot." It is the role of religious symbols to give a meaning to the life of man. The Pueblo Indians believe that they are the sons of Father Sun, and this belief endows their life with a perspective (and a goal) that goes far beyond their limited existence. It gives them ample space for the unfolding of personality and permits them a full life as complete persons. Their plight is infinitely more satisfactory than
that of a man in our own civilization who knows that he is (and will remain) nothing more than an underdog with no inner meaning to his life.

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Hector
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04 Feb 2009, 11:13 pm

As far as I'm aware, psychology as a science has come a long way from its dubious beginnings in Freud and Jung.

blackelk
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04 Feb 2009, 11:27 pm

Hector wrote:

As far as I'm aware, psychology as a science has come a long way from its dubious beginnings in Freud and Jung.

Dubious? What is dubious about it? Everyone in psychology has taken their lumps. From Skinner to Freud. Freud has actually made a comeback in the recent years. Saying Jung and Freud are irrelevant is just something people with a generic view of the field say at cocktail parties in order to look informed on the subject. Probably parroting it from someone else on top of it.

Quote:

Academic clinical psychology left Freud and the unconscious for dead 20 or 30 years ago. Social and cognitive psychology and neuroscience rediscovered the unconscious and determined that Freud and Skinner's views can be partially reconciled.

Quote:

Thus, it appears that Freud and Skinner both had part of the truth.

Robert Gore, Ph.D.
Psychologist and Statistical Consultant
Beverly Hills, CA
Instructor, Ph.D. Program in Clinical Psychology
University of Southern California

http://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_qu ... stID=12574

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"Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable ? perhaps everything.?

twoshots
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04 Feb 2009, 11:33 pm

I read Freud once. If the man ever got anything right it was the equivalent of of Christopher Columbus discovering the Americas.

Not. Science. Period.

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Hector
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04 Feb 2009, 11:34 pm

The point is that Freud and Jung's methods were often not scientific. I'm not sure about Skinner's, all I know is that Chomsky complimented him on the relative clarity of his writing (making it easy for Chomsky to construct a powerful argument against his behavioural theory of language).

If Freud is right about something, that doesn't necessarily make him more relevant. Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

blackelk
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04 Feb 2009, 11:43 pm

Hector wrote:

So? Skinner took psychology to the extreme empirical view and still got a bunch of s**t wrong. Including language. There are psychological questions that can't be answered empirically. Only a few parts of psychology are a hard science, and they are usually the most recent. How does one do a scientific experiment of dreams and other subjective experiences? Freud found out about the unconscious before brain imaging or any empirical proof. He was right about a lot of things.

Quote:

"It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand only made by those who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to replace the religious catechism by something else, even if it be a scientific one. Science in its catechism has but few apodictic precepts; it consists mainly of statements which it has developed to varying degrees of probability. The capacity to be content with these approximations to certainty and the ability to carry on constructive work despite the lack of final confirmation are actually a mark of the scientific habit of mind."

-Freud.

Who are you? Do you even know any of their theories or are you just talking out your ass?

"Freud had the best theories so far, next to mine, of what it takes to make a mind"- Marvin Minsky

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Hector
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04 Feb 2009, 11:48 pm

blackelk wrote:

Only a few parts of psychology are a hard science, and they are usually the most recent. How does one do a scientific experiment of dreams and other subjective experiences?

Interestingly, one of the lecturers in my department tried to publish a paper on dreams and more specifically their usefulness. He never got it published in any of the relevant journals, though, because even though his claims were falsifiable they could only be verified through unethical means, e.g. depriving someone of the ability to sleep and watching how they fall apart.

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04 Feb 2009, 11:50 pm

blackelk wrote:

Methodologically it is pretty dubious, and it is undeniable that Freud and Jung at times have generally completely made stuff up. I mean, the collective unconscious in Jung's thought? Mysticism, and little more can be said on the matter. Freud and Jung's thoughts were themselves very difficult to ever falsify, and thus were problematic from that standpoint. And dream analysis? No. No dream analysis.

I mean, yes Skinner was full of crap, nobody holds to his notion of behavioralism to the same extremist depth as it was originally promoted, and behavioral theories have moved closer to cognitivist theories and so on, but to say that Freud and Jung are irrelevant? Sure, they seem pretty irrelevant, the field has mostly moved onto more empirically based studies perhaps even neurologically based studies, and psychoanalysis has moved onto continental philosophy with folks like Zizek and such.

Hector
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04 Feb 2009, 11:55 pm

I'm careful of course to say psychology as a science. I'm aware that people still read Freud and Jung, the former still being one of the ten most cited sources in academia.

twoshots
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04 Feb 2009, 11:58 pm

I think we all just need to accept that psychology is by and large a joke and move on. :salut:

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Awesomelyglorious
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04 Feb 2009, 11:59 pm

blackelk wrote:

So? Skinner took psychology to the extreme empirical view and still got a bunch of sh** wrong. Including language. There are psychological questions that can't be answered empirically. Only a few parts of psychology are a hard science, and they are usually the most recent. How does one do a scientific experiment of dreams and other subjective experiences? Freud found out about the unconscious before brain imaging or any empirical proof. He was right about a lot of things.

Well, no, he got a lot wrong by taking the extreme empirical view. A lot of psychology is studied empirically or through related means, and some empirical basis is usually considered necessary for a science based upon the workings of an unknown organ. Otherwise one is just making stuff up, which is the claim against Freud.

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05 Feb 2009, 12:01 am

twoshots wrote:

I think we all just need to accept that psychology is by and large a joke and move on. :salut:

No just that a lot of it's history is questionable. Same with a number of social sciences. If we said that they were all jokes, then we know nothing about people, but obviously some knowledge appears to exist.

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05 Feb 2009, 12:08 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

twoshots wrote:

I think we all just need to accept that psychology is by and large a joke and move on. :salut:

I'm exaggerating of course, but I think the sheer quantity of complete and utter BS that has come out of e.g. psychology has had a deleterious effect on the quality of thought of many people who have taken it seriously. I've seen much progress, but it still seems like as a science its lower echelons are full of people who perpetuate the stupidities of Freud and Skinner.

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blackelk
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05 Feb 2009, 12:11 am

twoshots wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

twoshots wrote:

I think we all just need to accept that psychology is by and large a joke and move on. :salut:

Skinner and Freud were both brilliant men who contributed more to the field than anybody. That is a fact. Hell, Skinner is one of the best scientists of the last 50 years. The guy is f*****g huge.

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Awesomelyglorious
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05 Feb 2009, 12:15 am

blackelk wrote:

Skinner and Freud were both brilliant men who contributed more to the field than anybody. That is a fact. Hell, Skinner is one of the best scientists of the last 50 years. The guy is f***ing huge.

Skinner is a good psychologist, but that does not mean that some elements of behavioralism weren't boneheaded, it just means that the research program of behavioralism was reasonably solid. Nobody would disagree with this.

The major point of contention is against Freud more than Skinner though, as Skinner just had a methodology with problems, but Freud's methodology could be considered unworkable by some.

blackelk
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05 Feb 2009, 12:23 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

blackelk wrote:

Skinner and Freud were both brilliant men who contributed more to the field than anybody. That is a fact. Hell, Skinner is one of the best scientists of the last 50 years. The guy is f***ing huge.

My point is that they have both taken their lumps. They have both been famously wrong. I don't even like Skinner. I think he was a dangerous man. I can still respect his brilliance. I do like Freud. Freud was the first evolutionary psychologist. How could Freud prove the unconscious in his day? Skinner said that consciouness didnt even exist because there was no proof it. Brain imaging eventually proved him wrong, and Freud right. For 60 years the idea of "consciouness" was erased from psychology. It was unscientific and didnt exist. Only within the last 20 or so has it come back. Not all psychic phenomenon can be reduced to the scientific method. It would be stupid to disregard them totally just because of this.

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