Hi TOK Folks,

  As I posted Andrea’s paper, another textbook on Psychology came across my feed. As I always do, I read through what it says, and once again the nature of the problem is crystal clear. The field is broken from the start. The reason has to do with how modern language systems define science, mind, and behavior. In other words, there is a problem with the fundamental grammar in how we have been trained by modern society to think about these words.

Let’s start with what is psychology. Here is the standard definition from the intro text (Psychology; Spielman, 2017). 

The word psychology was coined at a time when the concepts of soul and mind were not as clearly distinguished (Green, 2001). The root ology denotes scientific study of, and psychology refers to the scientific study of the mind. Since science studies only observable phenomena and the mind is not directly observable, we expand this definition to the scientific study of mind and behavior.

Right here we see the problem, which is that we do not know how to think about either the concept of the soul or the concept of mind. For clarity, soul has (at least) two very different meanings. One meaning is from Aristotle, which refers to the functional form of a person’s life at the vegetative, animal, and human levels of existence. The second general meaning comes from Christianity and refers to the supernatural essence given by God that exists after death. Modern science assumes a naturalistic stance, so it does not work well with the language game of Christian souls. Yet, there does seem to be some inner, subjective conscious force that is associated with people’s actions. So, whatever that is becomes “the mind”.

Now let’s move to science. Science is different from philosophy because it deals with empirical analysis of the world. It is about observing things, translating that into measurement, engaging in hypothesis and testing models of the world. Here is the very next paragraph in the Spielman book:

The scientific study of any aspect of the world uses the scientific method to acquire knowledge. To apply the scientific method, a researcher with a question about how or why something happens will propose

a tentative explanation, called a hypothesis, to explain the phenomenon. A hypothesis is not just any explanation; it should fit into the context of a scientific theory. A scientific theory is a broad explanation

or group of explanations for some aspect of the natural world that is consistently supported by evidence over time. A theory is the best understanding that we have of that part of the natural world. Armed with

the hypothesis, the researcher then makes observations or, better still, carries out an experiment to test the validity of the hypothesis. That test and its results are then published so that others can check the

results or build on them. It is necessary that any explanation in science be testable, which means that the phenomenon must be perceivable and measurable. For example, that a bird sings because it is happy is not a testable hypothesis, since we have no way to measure the happiness of a bird. We must ask a different question, perhaps about the brain state of the bird, since this can be measured. In general, science deals only with matter and energy, that is, those things that can be measured, and it cannot arrive at knowledge about values and morality. This is one reason why our scientific understanding of the mind is so limited, since thoughts, at least as we experience them, are neither matter nor energy. The scientific method is also a form of empiricism. An empirical method for acquiring knowledge is one based on observation, including experimentation, rather than a method based only on forms of logical argument or previous authorities.

 

What this is saying is that the language game or justification system of science is based on observation and measurement from a third person point of view. What is a third person point of view? Think of it as anything that can be seen via a camera or other measurement/observation device. Note a first-person point of view can only be seen by that person. You can never directly observe another person’s first-person experience of being.

We can call this distinction between the interior, subjective, first person and the exterior, objective, third person the EPISTEMOLOGICAL GAP associated with subjective phenomenological consciousness. This is the distinction that Ken Wilber makes very clear via his Quadrants.

It is because of the EPISTEMOLOGICAL GAP and its commitment to empirical science that scientific/academic psychology switches its subject matter from mind to behavior. Behavior is epistemologically accessible. What this means is that “behavior” became the epistemologically accessible dependent variable that is presumably caused by the epistemologically inaccessible “mind”.

I am going to stop there and see if anyone has any questions with this analysis.

Notice how we have now defined mind via the methods of science. Anyone have any ideas why this might be a problem?

And here is the kicker: This point is DEEPLY related to our problems in this century.

Why?   

I will let you chew on that…

Best,

Gregg