To: <s-acc@yahoogroups.com>
From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:24:00 -0800
Subject: [s-acc] Re: cognitive error
Abc:
What I mean by 'cognitive error' relates to the ideation that precedes the scientific method, specifically Francis Bacon's
theory of inductive reasoning. Bacon recognizes four kinds of "illusions" (he calls them 'idols') which typically go with the practice of induction ("seeking truth from facts"). Roughly they relate to what today we'd call "what you had for breakfast," "what people are currently talking about," "discriminatory attitudes (such as nationalism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and so forth)" and "philosophical fixations" ["Idols of the cave, the market, the nation, the theater"].When Descartes developed the scientific method, he made some obvious 'cognitive errors' (fell into "illusions"). Not just his notion that men are objective and women are subjective.
:-( Or his conception of "nature" v. "nurture." In order to do (actual) science, one needs to break through the "illusions" - he didn't. [The analogy is to the "philosopher's stone" which explains substances in alchemy, and how chemistry involves a breakthrough of that illusory way of thinking.]Giambattista Vico 1668-1744 was a Neapolitan professor of rhetoric who really pulled together this criticism. He actually developed an approach to "social science" based on his critique (The New Science, 1744). Folks like Shotter have come around to realize this; at Emory Univ. in Atlanta you can visit the
Vico Institute (I have).The main elements of this critique appear in various places and it's Foucault's "archaeology of knowledge," which involves much of this critique, that led him to analyze the "social relation of the clinic" in terms of the "gaze" question.
For us, practically, we can know what the general lines of the "illusion" or in Xzb's terms "Jericho tumble" are, but we can't readily build the "new science." What we can do is integrate with that critique as best we can, and move forward in coordination with it, in coordination with the slow process of the ripening of the authentic formulation of "social science."
Andrew Phelps
Abc wrote:
And what... is a 'cognitive error'...?
In my own professional activity, I teach statistics knowing that the assumptions underlying "hypothesis testing" go back to the cognitive errors that render the present practicum of 'social science' pre-scientific.