To: no-list@yahoogroups.com
From: "northcoast_com" <phelps@cwnet.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 10:16:29 -0700
Subject: [no-list] Re: Exciting evening!
Hi
This is a theory-based response to a comment on the list:
Jjj wrote:
Isn't Buddhist psychology an oxymoron?
As President Clinton said, "It depends on what you mean by 'is'."
Eleanor Rosch taught seminars in the Psych Dept. in Berkeley on Buddhist Psychology. She did this because (I think) she felt that conventional psychology is .. unjustified, a pre-scientific paradigm akin to alchemy vis-à-vis chemistry. Which corresponds with a general intellectual conviction from the subcontinent, that our psychology is "deficient."
The difference with Lakoff here - and they differed - is that Lakoff is into the conventional approach to psychology while adhering to Chomsky's perspective on linguistics. Chomsky FWIW made the contribution to psychology that Skinner's theory of human development being done by conditioning is theoretically impossible. [Whence raising his child in a 'Skinner box' amounts to abuse.] That gives Chomsky a
challenging perspective on behavior management agendas, due to the linguistic impossibility of its being "good theory." Whereas Eleanor went further and saw that the Beauty Path of Psychology is related to linking up with traditional wisdom such as Vipassana.
Andrew Phelps