14 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Inferiority Complex Fad
But nowhere was the need to appear self-assured more apparent than in a new concept in psychology called the inferiority complex. The IC, as it became known in the popular press, was developed in the 1920s by a Viennese psychologist named Alfred Adler to describe feelings of inadequacy and their consequences. “Do you feel insecure?” inquired the cover of Adler’s best-selling book, Understanding Human Nature. “Are you fainthearted? Are you submissive?” Adler explained that all infant... 1 
notes
notesAnother fashionable mental disorder from the past.
10 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Questioning the Milgram Experiment
It appeared that sixty-five percent of people would torture someone to death, if pressured to do so. The results made their way into both psychology and cocktail party conversation. But were they correct? At least one woman doesn't think so. Gina Perry, for her book, Behind the Shock Machine, traced as many participants in the Milgram experiment as she could, and re-examined the notes of the experiment. Milgram claimed that seventy-five percent of the participants believed in the reality of t...Folksonomies: psychology ethics
Folksonomies: psychology ethics
1 notes
notesThese questions raise an even greater objection to the validity of the experiment. If the results cannot be reproduced, because the experiment was unethical, then we shouldn't cite it a evidence of anything every. Science demands reproducible results, and without replication we do not have evidence.
31 OCT 2012 by ideonexus
The Difference Between Pretend and Simulation
To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have
what one doesn't have. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But it is more
complicated than that because simulating is not pretending: "Whoever fakes an illness can
simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an illness
produces in himself some of the symptoms" (Littré). Therefore, pretending, or
dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is...Folksonomies: post modernism hyperreality
Folksonomies: post modernism hyperreality
1 notes
notesWhen a person pretends to be ill, they just lie in bed; but when they simulate illness, they produce actual symptoms, thus blurring the lines of reality.
20 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Study Children to Understand the Primitive Mind
The fundamental hypothesis of genetic epistemology is that there is a parallelism between the progress made in the logical and rational organization of knowledge and the corresponding formative psychological processes. With that hypothesis, the most fruitful, most obvious field of study would be the reconstituting of human history—the history of human thinking in prehistoric man. Unfortunately, we are not very well informed in the psychology of primitive man, but there are children all arou... 1 notes
notesMakes sense when you think about how evolution adds layers onto what exists.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Cartesian Duality Broke Philosophy
As modern physics started with the Newtonian revolution, so modern philosophy starts with what one might call the Cartesian Catastrophe. The catastrophe consisted in the splitting up of the world into the realms of matter and mind, and the identification of 'mind' with conscious thinking. The result of this identification was the shallow rationalism of l' esprit Cartesien, and an impoverishment of psychology which it took three centuries to remedy even in part. 
1 And set back cognitive science.
01 FEB 2012 by ideonexus
Psychology Cannot Establish Laws of Human Nature
To regard such a positive mental science [psychology] as rising above the sphere of history, and establishing the permanent and unchanging laws of human nature, is therefore possible only to a person who mistakes the transient conditions of a certain historical age for the permanent conditions of human life. Folksonomies: history psychology
Folksonomies: history psychology
1 notes
notesBecause, like history, it is a transient thing.
30 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Philosophy Without Empiricism is Nonsense
Logic is not concerned with human behavior in the same sense that physiology, psychology, and social sciences are concerned with it. These sciences formulate laws or universal statements which have as their subject matter human activities as processes in time. Logic, on the contrary, is concerned with relations between factual sentences (or thoughts). If logic ever discusses the truth of factual sentences it does so only conditionally, somewhat as follows: if such-and-such a sentence is true,...Folksonomies: empiricism
Folksonomies: empiricism
1 notes
notesEmpirical science is the only thing capable of determining if a sentence is true.
01 OCT 2011 by ideonexus
Psychology Thought Love Was Bad for Children
Ira Glass: Harry Harlow, was trying to prove-- and I know this is going to sound crazy. He was trying to prove that love is an important thing that happens between parents and children.
And the reason why he felt the need to prove this point was at the time-- and again, I know this is going to sound kind of out there. The psychological establishment, pediatricians, even the federal government were all saying exactly the opposite of that to parents.
Deborah Blum: It's actually one of those t... 1 notes
notesDeborah Blum, biographer of the researcher Harry Harlow who worked to prove the importance of love in raising children, on the history of psychology ignoring love as something to be given to children.
06 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Skinner and Freud's View of Child Learning
The theories that did dominate psychology, especially in America, were Freudianism and the behaviorism of psychologists like B. F. Skinner. Both theories had lots of things to say about young children. But like Aristotle with the teeth, neither Freud nor Skinner took the step of doing systematic experiments with children or babies. Freud largely relied on inferences from the behavior of neurotic adults, and Skinner on inferences from the behavior of only slightly less neurotic rats. And like ...Folksonomies: psychology inference
Folksonomies: psychology inference
1 notes
notesThey got it mostly wrong because they relied on a philosophical inference method of science.
02 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Concept of Supervenience and the Web
One view is reminiscent of the philosophical idea of supervenience [168, 169]). One discourse or set of expressions A supervenes on another set B when a change in A entails a change in B but not vice versa. So, on a supervenience theory of the mind/brain, any change in mental state entails some change in brain state, but a change in brain state need not necessarily result in a change in mental state. Supervenience is a less strong concept than reduction (a reductionist theory of the mind/brai... 1 notes
notesWhere changes in one concept cascade into changes on another, but not vice versa.
