From: "Phil Roberts, Jr."  
Date: Tue Feb 19, 2002 0:05pm 
Subject: Re: [evol-psych] Evolutionary psychology, dualism and ethics  



Michael Lamport Commons wrote:
> 
> What we need instead of a science that posits people are rational or
> irrational, or have will or do not, etc. is that people can be sensible,
> reasonable, and prudent to varying degrees.  All the above terms can be
> grounded in behavior.
> 

Perhaps, but why encumber ourselves with a philosophy of science
that's 50 years out of date?

   "Discussions of scientific method have tended to stress 
   problems of testability, while neglecting...those
   aspects of the universe which in some sense are most central
   and significant for the area of reality with which the
   science deals." "It has been frequently assumed that only 
   those events which in principle can be simultaneously observed
   by multiple observers ... are to be accepted as constituting a
   legitimate observational basis for science." "I am suggesting
   that the more general and, to me, acceptable, objective intended
   by the criterion of interobserver agreement would be...the criterion
   of repeatability....a more general trust in one's own experience" 
   ...and the abandonment of "a corresponding uncritical acceptance 
   of the significance of verbal reports."  (Karl Zener)


    [Psychology is unique] insofar as its institutionalization preceded 
    its content and its methods preceded its problem's....  
    [Psychology] still bases its understanding of  vital questions of method
    on an extrinsic philosophy of science which (in some areas) is [fifty]
    years or more out of date" (A History of A Science, p. 788).


    "In the new heuristic, scientific knowledge is much closer to that 
     knowledge which is more familiarly accessible, through common sense, 
     literature, and other modes of experience." (Manicas and Secord)

      Implications of the New Philosophy of Science: A Topology for Psychology,
      http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5476/N_T_abs.htm



Phil Roberts, Jr.