i woke up this morning and for some reason started thinking about when i spent a summer in england and hung out a couple times with these physics/computer geeks. they had some side interests besides math and science -- downloading tons of american media and projecting it onto a screen so as to have their own home movie theater, learning asian languages, studying religion, and smoking a ton of weed (they even had a poster on the wall that read something like, "i love the skunk!"). it was pretty apparent that they didn't have a formidable background in social science, but one night we were talking about philosophy or psychology, which lead to one of them uttering something along the lines of, "...which is why i think it's pointless to study psychology." i think i replied back by saying how psychology was now taking the path of a natural science instead of how they were probably perceiving it as something like psychoanalysis or possibly behaviorism. i don't think my response registered, and the conversation stopped briefly before switching topics. anyway, i was reading about a course on "philosophy of psychology" the other day, and perhaps that triggered something in me to do some of my own philosophizing about the topic. to start things off, i broke psychology down into having three major conceptual problems -- two from the first person perspective and one from the third person perspective.
first problem with psychology from the subject's perspective: the "depth" problem sort of like ryle's regress (i think that i think that i think...ad infinitum). you need motivation to think about something, but in trying to think (subscript 1) about your motivation to think (subscript 2), you have to have motivation to think (subscript 1) about your motivation to think (subscript 2). so ultimately, you have this endless chain of motivation until you reach a point where you can't explain where the source of your motivation to think (subscript n) comes from.
second problem with psychology from the subject's perspective: the "breadth" problem. your typical psychological terms attempting to qualitatively assess cognitive activity that can't be described as conventional "thinking" -- e.g., things having to do with feeling and emotion (fear, pain, anger, joy, etc.) -- are intertwined with thinking. but once you essentialize and make them abstract, two things occur: 1) there are no longer continuous shades of grey as things are categorized and thus things are assumed to exist as discrete entities, 2) the subject becomes self-aware so as to recognize his/her psychology, thus changing the nature of his/her psychology. so, for example, instead of being angry and feeling the anger from "within", he/she recognizes the feeling of anger and essentializes/categorizes it and views it from "without". the combination of #1 and #2 result in #3, which is that turning psychology into a science inherently changes the nature of the psychology it is studying -- thus by establishing a formal epistemology, the metaphysics are altered.
problem with psychology from the observer's perspective: the "external" problem. controlling/"helping" a person's psychology from outside to avoid a person studying his/her own psychology and running into the depth and breadth problems presents a new set of problems. for one, in theory the subject is at the mercy of another person, so there is a reversal of power in the roles between the two people. furthermore, this "other person" needs another person (it could be the other person in the subject-observer relationship with roles maintained but switching the people, or it could be a third person) to control his/her own psychology. so, it makes people responsible for other people's psychology but not for their own. thus, the depth problem is "outsourced" from one person to another, so floating around amongst people is the unsolved problem of motivation. (this is still all external psych in theory.) however, abdicating oneself of responsibility for thinking and allowing another person to attempt to control one's behavior does not necessarily mean that one stops having his/her own motivation, so problems associated with that continue as well. so instead of confining the depth problem to each individual, it is multiplied by having the personal depth problem continue for each person in addition to burdening each person with at least one other person's depth problem. also, the initial power reversal turns into a power struggle as a person's own motivations and another person's attempts to control that person's psychology lead to conflict. (the past three sentences have described external psych in practice.) in both theory and in practice, external psych avoids the trap of the "breadth" problem, although thinking about another person's psychology via behavior obviously also impacts the observer's own psychology, but not really more so than any other sort of academic training (this being an attempt to "quantify" the impact of different kinds of academic training -- studying psychology via behaviorism does qualitatively impact the observer's psychology in a unique way, but just because it is unique as a form of psychology does not mean that it suffers from all of the same problems of studying psychology from a subject's perspective, which is why it avoids the trap of the "breadth" problem).
now that i've completed the three problems with two different psychology approaches, it's time to analyze what i consider to be the three main approaches to psychology: "no psych", "self psych", and "external psych" (the first two problems dealt with self psych, and the "external" problem dealt with external psych; no psych was not previously addressed). no psych is simply a person who lacks real introspection and any formal training in psychology. no psych ultimately assumes a person to be responsible for actions that he/she cannot be held accountable for because he/she does not have any way of "double-checking" his/her own psychology. thus, no psych also lends itself to a person trying to exert power over others for his/her own benefit (this is an assumption that i believe is self-evident and will be explained later). self psych is ultimately pointless (it can't find ultimate source of motivation) and self-defeating (by attempting to empower a person to examine his/her own psychology, the person's psychology as an object of study becomes inherently changed, so a person hasn't gained anything from examining his/her own psychology but has just altered it (and likely made it more complicated) -- whether or not this alteration is beneficial to a person is highly debatable. in theory, external psych's goal is to make a person dependent, as they are under the control of another person, so a person can't be responsible for his/her actions. it also outsources problems of no psych and self psych to others, thus passing around the problem (and likely making it more complicated) instead of addressing it or admitting that it cannot be addressed. also, by "outsourcing" the power to another person, this person must outsource his/her power over his/her own psychology to another person, which when all is said and done makes people responsible for and have power over other people but not responsible for and have power over themselves under the assumption that other people know what is best for a person. however, in practice, people keep their own personal motivations, which leads to conflict between that person and the person who is attempting to control that person's behavior. ultimately, our society seems to be built on the basis that an acceptable compromise is reached when external psych occurs in practice (not external psych in theory).
the problem with communism, utopian socialism, and anarchism is that they assume two seemingly incompatible premises to be true in order to work: that a person knows what is best for himself/herself and that other people know what is best for this person, the first being an approach of "no psych" and the later being an approach of "external psych" (in theory). when external psych is used in practice (instead of in theory; it can't be implemented as it is in theory because it is exactly just that -- in theory), it also covers no psych (the subject retains his/her own motivations, etc.), but it is obvious based on history that the kind of compromise resulting from external psych in practice is not deemed acceptable to supporters of the aforementioned ideologies for the operation of society. so, we are left with "self psych", at least in a broad sense. what kind of a society would need to exist in order for this to occur? well, for one, a certain baseline of human needs and wants would have to be assumed to be produced by society without anyone needing to do the "dirty work" (this is a practical assumption based on inference, it is not an established fact of "self psych"). at present, this is not possible, but it is conceivable that in the future, technology could reach a point where grunt work could be virtually eliminated and the management of the machines doing the grunt work would be so minimal as to be virtually voluntary and a naturally occurring act in a communally-based society. second, this society would have to be extremely educated (this is from a practical perspective), and one that placed value on knowledge and on breadth and depth of experience without being dependent on extravagant expenses (without abundant material wealth, one is forced to use his/her mind to understand and appreciate things, and this comes with a certain amount of introspection which would be at least a broad form of "self psych"). third, one would have to assume that this love of knowledge and experience would completely negate tendencies for power imbalances beyond those deemed acceptable by the utopian society to exist. given the amount of corruptness in academia (trust me, i have familial connections in academia and people are always trying to steal grant money, and that's by no means the only form of attempted theft), let alone the "real world", how could one ever hope for a society in which no corruption occurred?
to answer this question, let's revisit the second point and compare it to the third. notice that i put in parentheses how "extremely educated" was from a "practical perspective". this was because i was leading up to using academia as an example and had things in mind such as that, for example, in the 04 election, the more educated a person was, the more likely they were to vote for kerry. so, being educated helps eliminate the real blatant stupidity and can help most people to come to agreement to a point (even though there are still some outliers on both ends of the political spectrum). however, when one examines intellectual and academic issues more closely -- past the basic issues of things like, "is it better to vote for kerry?" -- one finds that there is actually extreme disagreement on most things across the spectrum of all intellectuals and academics, although it might be more like a bell curve than an even distribution (assuming that these academics and intellectuals are actually well-informed all-around, and most are not outside their area of expertise). now, here is where the idea that knowledge and power are connected (although i'm not going as far as some people by reducing one to the other, i am simply acknowledging that there is a strong relationship between the two) backfires on itself. when one views the disagreement to be within the boundaries of healthy academic discourse and that objective knowledge still prevails by and large and the areas of intersubjectivity are rather negligible, then even a wide range of opinions can be accommodated within a socio-political system that is rather inflexible for the individual outside of the arena of engagement and discourse. the problem here is that the idea of objective knowledge really only exists in academia as a standard that peers hold each other to for their work, not in the "real world", and even in academia it doesn't flourish per se as there is opposition from postmodernists, leftists, "x studies" people, etc., and a certain degree of corruption even among those who are in favor of objective knowledge which ends up tainting the objectivity of knowledge. now, i stated earlier that, "one would have to assume that love of knowledge…would completely negate tendencies for power imbalances." the problem is that in the "real world", no matter how smart and educated the people are, their lifestyles are not governed by knowledge the way that their profession is supposed to be conducted -- the line between knowing and being becomes much more blurred outside of academia. thus, their knowledge is not simply for the love of knowledge or that which is used exclusively in the domain in which it is used professionally, but gets intertwined with their own personal beliefs, especially those with political ramifications (political being both formal and informal), and as such, knowledge affects their power relations. the wide range of knowledge and possible disagreements, when supported by power proportionately, would not result in a stable, utopian socio-political system, but in fact would be just the opposite -- beyond the basic human needs and rights requirements, there would be quite a lot of instability and conflict among the differing factions (although since the instability deals with things that are "superfluous" in the grand scheme of things, one might be tempted to consider the society as stable at heart despite its continuous flux, but for the sake of my argument, let's still retain the idea of instability). the result of this does not mean that there would be capitalism per se, particularly as we know it, but what it does mean is that beyond a basic level of established human needs and rights, there would be a degree of inequality and general fighting (not necessarily violence, but other forms of spiteful, contentious competition) that would be beyond those desired by communists and socialists, and an amount of instability that would be undesirable by utopian standards. so, one can conclude that "self psych" usually leads to enough of a collective understanding that allows for the addressing/elimination of society's most treacherous ills, but not enough for the achievement/fulfillment of a utopian society. why is this so? well, there is no concrete answer, but from what human behavior has displayed over the centuries (revisiting my earlier assumption that no psych lends itself to a person trying to exert power over others for his/her own benefit) is that people intuitively and instinctually crave power once their survival needs have been fulfilled, and the greatest of intellectual understanding (self psych replacing the various mixes of no psych/external psych over the course of human civilization) can only temper this to a certain degree. so ultimately, it is really just an inherent human tendency due to our innate biological functioning that we like to think we can rise above it using our consciousness, but which, for better or worse, we largely succumb to it even in the most intellectually, and hence consciousness-based constructed society.
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