Hi Nick,
I went to the library today and picked up a standard textbook about psychology (Drew Westen, "Psychology", Wiley, 2002). Then I selected the most interesting questions from all the central questions I found. Which are already answered and which are largely unsolved? A) (neuroscience) The brain-behavior relationship To what extend can we understand psychological processes by events in the brain? To what extend can we understand them without references to events in the brain? B) (social psychology) The individual-group relationship To what extend does behavior depend on the groups of which people are a part? To what extend can we understand it in isolation? C) (philosophy) The mind-body relationship If thought and matter are fundamentally different, how can they have anything to do with one another, and how can they interact at all? D) (biology) The nature-nature relationship To what extend are perceptual processes born or learned? Is our knowledge of the world stamped into us or woven together by us? How does emotion guide behavior in adaptive ways? There is also the famous hard problem - can we understand subjective experience - and the other basic psychology questions like "what are the basic elements of personality" (how do we define personality, to what extend is it stable over time and across situations, etc.). What do you think is the most interesting unsolved problem or question? Which is perhaps best suited for new forms of modeling (say ABM or NKS models) ? Jochen Am 17.05.2012 02:37, schrieb Nicholas Thompson:
Here's a game we could play for a while, and see where we get: You state a problem in psychology, and I will try to tell you whether it has been solved or not.
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