Re: the science of psychology and the psychology of science 2 of 2

>"Mr Michael Bibby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>
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>> >Yes.  Perhaps you're right.  I might have been too quick on the draw
>> >to dismiss your approach because it doesn't correspond to my
>> >understanding of science.  I assumed that we understood the term
>> >"science" in the same way.  From what you've said, apparently I was
>> >mistaken.  I certainly agree with you that science should question
>> >itself.  But I am still a bit unclear as to what science, in your
>> >understanding of the term, should actually be trying to accomplish,
>> >beyond that.  That is, what should science be trying to discover
>> >(unless the term "discover" itself is inappropriate within
>> >constructivist terminology).  In other words, what is science supposed
>> >to do?
>> 
>> Science should be trying to 'discover' (construct) workable solutions to
>> problems that arise out of particular ways of constucting. Kuhn characterized
>> the role of the scientists as 'puzzle solvers' which is precisely what they are,
>> they solve puzzles which their paradigm presents them with. A constructivists
>> 'based' science is no different. the only different is that we do away with the
>> ideology of truth.
>
>Thanks for clarifying this.
>
>I guess the difference between the constructivist approach and my own
>is that, while I also take account of Kuhn's ideas, and the problems
>inherent in the subjectivity of paradigms (what you might call
>"particular ways of constructing"), I seek not to "do away with" the
>"ideology of truth," but to comprehend the workings of a human,
>subjective mind within an ontologically real universe, where our own
>subjective minds are a part of that ontologically real universe.


So, to paraphrase, you seem to agree with me that the cognitive organism is
'operationally closed', which is simply to say that only I can know 'what its
like' for me, and that I cannot transcend this 'first-person perspective', that
is, I am necessarily 'subjective'.  You also have it that both the organism, and
the environment in which the organism is embedded (and the medium in which it is
constituted), are 'real' in the ontic sense. 

The
>operations of our minds give rise to the "problem of subjectivity"
>(which, unlike in constructivism, is a real problem), and the aim of
>cognitive theory is to find the best approximation of reality
>possible, given our "particular ways of constructing" reality.  That
>is, our "ways of constructing reality" are themselves part of that
>ontologically real universe; a phenomenon to be understood, just like
>any other.

Yes. I would agree that our attempts to understand ourselves themselves need to
be addressed if we are ever to really 'understand' ourselves. This is why I say
that the observer must account for his or her own activity and enter into his or
her own domain.


>
>So there's a fundamental disconnect between the "subjective
>perspectivist" (SP) approach that I'm using (if one wants to call it
>that), and the radical constructivist (RC) approach that you are
>using.  My approach assumes that there *is* a fundamental, ontic
>reality, that our conceptual frameworks are part of that reality, but
>since we experience that reality through the "lens" of our conceptual
>frameworks, the phenomenon of subjectivity has to be taken into
>account in any workable theory of cognition. 

Yes, hence, we need to account for our own activity, that is, with no external
point of reference we refer only to ourselves. We seem to be in agreement here,
except for your pressuposition that reality 'exists' in some ontologically
objective sense. The problem with this view, I argue, is that we cannot even
conceive of just what it means to 'exist' without the notions of space and time.
This is why I am truly agnostic. 


RC, it seems, does not
>take the same view, seeing subjectivity as a problem only within
>realist perspectives such as mine.  Fair enough.

Yes and no (in defiance of aristotolian logic and the law of exclusive middle).
I know that I have repeatedly iterated that subjectivity is only problematic in
a realists framework, what I mean is that a realists framework makes problematic
subjectivity by not sufficiently accounting for it. RC adequetly accounts for
subjectivity, therefore, at least in this sense, subjectivity is not
'problematic' in RC. So, yes and no. 


The "framing" problem is a central problem within SP.  But
>unlike with RC, SP *does* attempt to solve this problem.  This problem
>is at the heart of cognitive theory, in my view, as I've outlined it
>above.  Framing is a manifestation of the conceptual frameworks, or
>paradigms, or "ways of constructing reality" which were discussed
>above.  And from my perspective, RC itself is involved in its own
>"framing," made up of the very principles of RC which you've been
>explaining to me.  So, in other words, RC, even as it denies
>subjectivity as a problem,


Again Yes and No, see above. 


is involved in creating its own subjective
>perspective, or "lens," through which it deals with this very issue of
>framing. It therefore doesn't really do away with the problem, it just
>convinces itself that it has.  That is, it builds itself a "frame"
>which includes the principle that "frames" are not a problem within
>RC.  But from my perspective, they still are.


Im not sure you have the same thing in mind when talking about the 'framing
problem'. I was referring to the problem in cognitive science concerning
‘relevance’. If an artifact, or cognitive agent for that matter, is situated in
a physical environment, how is the artifact to work out what aspects of its
environment are relevant and what’s irrelevant? When I leave this room to go to
the toilet, the colour of the walls will remain constant, the shape of the room
will be conserved, and President Bush will still be the president of the united
states; how am I to sift through all these irrelevant ‘facts’ and arrive at the
relevant ‘facts’? Obviously ‘relevance’ is situation specific, so, in a given
situation, in light of some goal or other, how am I to attend to the relevant
features of the situation and attenuate those that are irrelevant? This problem
is called ‘the framing problem’ and gives rise to catastrophic computational
overload in situated artifacts, that is, it is ‘transcomputational’. This is
only problematic in a realists framework where anthropomorphically defined
entities are given ontological status. That is, artefacts are ‘situated’ in a
‘pre-processed’ world, or, to be more precise, artefacts are made to interact
with anthropomorphically defined entities which only exist in a human cultural
space (if you are interesting in exploring this further I recommend reading Alex
Riegler). This has deep implications for comparative psychology where animals
are ‘situated’ in a human cultural space and their behaviour is explained in
terms provided by that interpretive framework.  I.e., to use Maturana’s example,
if a fly is walking on a Rembrandt then is it accurate to say that the fly is
walking on the Rembrandt? Obviously from an anthropocentric perspective it is
entirely accurate to say that the fly is walking on the Rembrandt, but from the
point of view of the fly it is entirely inaccurate and misleading as the
Rembrandt only exists in a human cultural space. This might sound trivial, but
it is far from being trivial. The ‘s’ and ‘r’ in the behaviourists SàR formula
are defined in the behaviourists framework and have no subsistence beyond that
construction.


>Does RC involve itself with any problems or models that are any closer
>to those kinds of problems or models which I'm mainly concerned with,
>that is, those which would have more practical utility in the "real
>world" which interests me (such as explaining why people act the way
>they do, or how their thoughts are structured within their minds,
>etc.)?  Or would these kinds of problems or models bring RC too close
>to the kind of "ontic reality" which its fundamental principles
>reject?

In short, YES. You can model these kinds of dynamics and processes in a
constructivists framework as many have done and continue to do, but to treat
these model as a description of an objective state of affairs runs contrary to
the intellectual program that constructivism sets out. 

Mickeyd