To: <s-acc@yahoogroups.com>
From: "Andrew Phelps" <starfish@northcoast.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:34:01 -0800
Subject: Re: [s-acc] Re: cognitive error
Hi
Abc, I like your penetration of these matters.
On Wed, February 17, 2010 9:03 pm, Jln wrote:
Since we are attempting to build a new psychology, which is scientific rather than prescientific ..
This is false. We are not "playing Einstein." We are attempting to understand that a slow transition is being made from the present pre-scientific paradigm to a more scientific paradigm that will take over fully in the future. Thus the notion of "social accountability" which flows from the 'relational-responsive psychology' of Shotter helps us bring our "second wave" nurturing to effect. We are basically asking the psychologists and clinicians to "act more wisely" and we're providing argumentation for them to do so.
Since Bacon's view of reason is that it must be objective to be valid, it appears to be even more limited than Descartes'.
This is reading things out of context. Descartes was trying to develop "scientific method" (see the Discourse on Method); he was "moving ahead" towards the logic of modern society. Bacon spoke narrowly, of the nature of "inductive reason," or the approach of "seek truth from facts." He was speaking critically, towards the "scholastic web" of metaphysical explanations from the preceding centuries. He is not defining "objectivity" in the sense that Descartes does.
Abc wrote:
Matter and object becomes more important in contrast, and the ungainly gerrymandering of a system of knowledge based exclusively on 'cogito' is misleading, and not worthy to the genre if taken in isolation ..
Well said. And Descartes' point is to make his 'genre' what was happening.
In general, Jln, psychology is meant to be the "science of mind" and we need to start from [a] what should the "science of mind" look like and [b] how does thought in this direction reflect the social dynamics of its own time. If you want to write me off-list on further aspects of this topic, I'd be glad to engage. You are working on interesting lines of criticism, even if they stretch the boundaries of this list.
Andrew Phelps