Michael Smith wrote: > > Hi Tim. > > Yes, I graduated from York. I even took a course from Chris (the > history guy). > I thought he (Chris) would have lambasted me already on the off the > cuff remark about history being nothing but personal experience > written down. :-). Oh well, he is after all a nice guy. > Thank you Michael. Nice as I might be, the sad truth is that I was mostly skipping "psychic kids" thread as being too silly to bother with. Leading a class discussion need not start with the discussion leader having (or feigning having) no idea where it should ultimately lead. If that were true, then one could just as easily have one of the students lead it as pay some "expert" tens of thousands of dollars a year to do so. As for history, it is nothing but "personal experience written down" exactly to the same degree as natural science is. Science is "just" observation after all, right? :-) > > Actually I don't think CPR is pass¨, but I don't have 65 years of the > history of psych at my command, not to mention 125 years of philosophy > of science! > Pass¨ isn't quite the same as irrelevant. I don't think there is anyone (of significance) who thinks that science works the way Kant said it did (as he attempted to salvage Newtonian physics from Humean ultra-empiricism on the one side, and Leibinzian idealism on the other) in the First Critique (calling it CPR confuses it with the 2nd Critique, the initials of which are also CPR). Nevertheless, Kant's philosophy could be argued to be the pivot point on which modern European thought turns. Without it, nothing else would have been the same. Don't believe me? Think scientists ignored it? Then its time to read some Helmholtz, who explicitly declared himself to be a Kantian. And what of psychology? Fechner and Wundt were, in important ways, followers of Herbart, whose main claim to fame rests on his having disagreed with Kant that psychology cannot be a "proper science" (a phrase in which much is buried) because mental phenomena cannot be quantified. (Don't feel bad psychologists. Kant felt the same way about chemistry, but then again, he never really got to take a look at the periodic table.)
Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ "Part of respecting another person is taking the time to criticise his or her views." - Melissa Lane, in a /Guardian/ obituary for philosopher Peter Lipton ================================= --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
