Yeah. I know it's dark in there, but feel around. You will find them. You will know you have a hold of one, when you can hear the pineal gland sloshing back and forth when you wiggle the handle. Or was it the pituitary. Darn.
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Carl Tollander Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2011 10:33 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Theory, and Why It's Time Psychology Got One Levers? There are levers? I was supposed to be pushing levers? Dang, that explains it. C. On 11/12/11 9:32 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: Stephen, I thought Lakoff's Moral politics was bloody awful - SHAMEFUL even, given his earlier stuff which I liked. A terrifying example of what happens when an Author's publisher gets him to write more books than he has in him. I have to admit, I am made nervous by the notion of "embodied cognition". I mean, where the hell else is it. It's the same kind of nervousness that overcomes me when people talk about "cognitive psychology." (What the hell other kind of psychology IS there?) Such expressions seem to be an attempt to slip dualism in by the back door. Cognition is just adaptive action of a body. I think most believers of embodied cognition are hoping to find the little door in the skull that opens into the room where the teensy little guy sits looking out through the windows of the eyes and pulling on the little levers that send the fluids up and down the nerve channels. Psychology has some wonderful theories. For instance, Skinner has a wonderful theory of learning. Unfortunately, it applies primarily to pigeons pressing levers. If only we could cram all humanity into Skinner boxes, the theory would work fine. Physics has the same problem, really. Billiard balls would glide along perfectly if it weren't for friction, but there is friction everywhere where billiard balls are. If only we had frictionless billiard balls. But the problem doesn't seem to bother physcists so much The artificial models of physics are more useful than those of psychology because, I guess, physicists have a lot better sense of what happens when the idealized circumstances of the model are violated. Poor psychologists: you take people out of those skinner boxes and all hell breaks loose. At the risk of putting you all through distasteful spectacle of having Doug and Peter yell at me again, let me remind you of our discussion of tornados, where Peter seemed to be saying that one really shouldn't talk about vortices until one had had sixty years of experience engineering wings and propellers. Sounds like whatever you learn about propellers in physics one won't get you off a runway. It won't even get water out of a washbasin. I think the problem is not that Psychologists don't have good theories; I think it's more that psychologists don't have good theories about the kind of questions that people want answers to. You folks want answers about tornadoes and washbasins, and all we have to offer is theories about behavior in skinner boxes. Nick From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stephen Thompson Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2011 8:54 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Theory, and Why It's Time Psychology Got One Eric: I just picked up three books in order to learn more about Embodied Cognition: 1. Embodied Cognition by Lawrence Shapiro 2. Where Mathematics Comes From by George Lakoff and Rafael E. Nunez 3. Philosophy In The Flesh by Lakoff and Mark Johnson I came to these via Dr Lakoff's Moral Politics, then perusing his Metaphors We Live By. Will the 3 books above provide a basic understanding of Embodied Cognition, even though they appear to be oriented to Philosophy as opposed to psychology? I read Dr Dennett's Consciousness Explained back in 1997 and came to accept the naturalistic world view - what you see is what there is; no mystical nor supernatural stuff. Of the two links you provided, I found your post to be more clear on the conflict in psychology than the PsychScientists' post. Thanks, Steph T On 11/12/2011 8:29 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote: Doug, don't fret. The answer to Jochen's question is "Yes, it is about friggin time we get a good theory", and Andrew and Sabrina's blog is an excellent source of ideas for improving psychology. Recently Andrew's blog has been getting attention from other excellent professionals, including a Scientific American author who is actively discussing Andrew's previous post: "Embodied cognition is not what you think <http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2011/11/embodied-cognition-is-not-wha t-you.html> ". (With more discussion here <http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2011/11/embodied-cognition.html> .) Roger, You are correct that it might seem like psychology should have other things to worry about, but frankly the problems you mention (rampant misuse of statistics and the rare forged data scandals) would be a lot easier to deal with if we had a more unified theoretical base. Eric On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 07:12 PM, Douglas Roberts <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> wrote: Oh, God. Here we go. On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Jochen Fromm <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected]> wrote: > Nick, Eric, what do you think, does Psychology need a theory? > > http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2011/11/theory-and-why-its-time-psycho logy-got.html?m=1 > -J. > > Sent from Android > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org Eric Charles Professional Student and Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
