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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.ai
Subject: Re: Rational Psych
Message-ID: <518@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 30-Nov-83 17:45:09 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.518
Posted: Wed Nov 30 17:45:09 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Dec-83 11:56:10 EST
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Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
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Credentials first, then argument. I have been a research psychologist
for 25 years, having a first degree in Engineering Physics. I have been
involved with computers in one way or another for 30 years. As a psychologist
my interests have drifted from sensory psychology to cognitive
psych and psycholinguistics, but I have always taken something of
an engineering approach to theory (ie look at things functionally
and structurally, using numbers where suitable).

I agree with Gary Fostel that Psychology cannot be called a Science
in any classic sense of the word. Certain aspects of psychology can,
notably those areas that have to do with sensory processes. There are
several reasons why the central (pun) areas of psychology are not
scientific, but most notable is that the problems are intrinsically
too difficult for humans to handle. Too many things work together
in ways that we cannot consider all at once. (This is not a question
of parallel computation, nor a question of complex rule systems. If
you want an analogy, the best I can come up with is that everything
looks like bits of a hologram. As Ted Nelson said: Everything is
deeply intertwingled.)

Physics may be a Science as the philosophers see it. The problems of
physics may be within the grasp of the human mind (but maybe not).
Problems of difficulty just beyond what one can handle are the most
attractive, and there is a tendency for physics to attract the
brightest "scientists". Psychology tends to attract many people
whose credentials could do with a little polishing, because it is
a field in which sloppy questions can be answered sloppily but
relatively satisfactorily. The only problem is that those answers
often cannot be generalized to situations more interesting than
the ones actually tested. "Real world" application of laboratory
results is seldom successful unless carried out by someone with
good intuition. This is different from the situation in physics.
Real-world application of physics results can be done by engineers
with the appropriate manuals and handbooks.

I have no doubt that psychologists come up with magnificent insights,
based usually on data insufficient to justify them. But psychological
theories cannot be expected to have the beauty and precision of
physical theories yet, and by yet I may mean for as long as human
brains have to encompass them. In future, it may be possible to have
a computer-assisted science of human behaviour, but at present, we
have to make do with generalizations that are gross compared with
what we would really like to predict.

All of that doesn't make psychology any the less challenging; and one
can always redefine "Science" if one wants to think that psychology
should be one. Personally, I think it is fun trying to find out what
one can find out, and to use what one can use in the real world; and
that's what matters.
-- 

Martin Taylor
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