Ecological Psychology and Everyday Conflicts

EP has given me a few thoughts about some issues I’ve had in philosophy. The first one being that of seeing the world in one’s subjective sense compared to an objective sense. This is often up for debate when discussing anything involving the question; what really happened? Because, as everyone will assure you of, their own subjective version of a story is the, at least more so, correct one. As many have found though, “truth” (considered using “truthiness” here… again… pass for now… again…), is often found somewhere in between the two accounts. So why is this important when involving EP and philosophy?

Well, roughly, social constructionism (SC) will tell you that both versions are correct and will, practically, end in some form of compromise (good) or further polarisation (not so good) of the two parties. There is no use in deciding which is more correct or delving deeper into the actual accounts, just that each version is correct in their own right because that was the experience of each of the two parties.

Critical realism (CR) will state that there was a reality to the situation but both accounts are skewed in each party’s own favour -so it would be necessary to try and extract an objective version out of the two subjective versions. Doing this, in my perspective, rather entails creating a third subjective perspective -more so than one being objective (however a side-note in my argument because it becomes important to define subjective and objective and what they entail and why I would define the third perspective as subjective rather than objective. However. As with much in philosophy, definitions aren’t clear cut and will most probably be a long and pointless discussion with exceptions to the rule).

Instead, what insight can EP give us into the practical application of philosophy in our lives? EP would focus on the perspective of each of the two accounts and validate both, like SC. However, with the addition of each perspective being unique, relying on the mechanisms of perception, there is some ground to actually state that they are both valid (unlike SC, which demands validity outright). The consequence here is that with EP one is allowed to reconcile the two perspectives on the same level as they are stated -CR here needs to abstract the two subjective versions to one objective version. I believe then, that due to the non-existence of an objective/subjective dichotomy -one is forced by EP to acknowledge the experience of both parties and look at cause and effect between the two accounts through the process of the situation as it unfolded. The to and fro, if you will. One is not forced to do this, if guided by either SC or CR. SC is too egalitarian and naive in its supposition and has a hard time consolidating two very different perspectives, especially when they are very specific. CR on the other hand entails the assumption that neither account holds the “correct” version as there is an objective version that is superior.

My conclusion then, is that EP doubles back into philosophy and gains us a fuller account of ‘what really happened’, gives more information about how a specific situation unfolded, and in turn, gives you more leads to use when attempting to resolve the dispute.

A first note; CR, I find, is used most often in everyday life and also most often works decently well. EP gives you an extra edge in all parts of the process however.

A secondary note; it is quite fun (and easy) to define, in any type of dispute in real life, what philosophical backdrop people use when resolving, maintaining or escalating a conflict. Every philosophical perspective has its merits and flaws and de-escalating a conflict can be quite an easy task if you can identify and practically use to your advantage the specific perspective taken by other parties. Add pedagogy and conflict de-escalation/resolution is within reach.

A last note; positivism is not brought up simply because at that level of abstraction (even further than CR), it is of even less help (than for example CR) -although, as has been written, each perspective has its merits and flaws, and are usable situationally.

A second last note; I miss teaching (and research, although I have available many journals), won’t this summer vacation ever end?

Psychology unite! 1.1 (decoder rings almost sold out)

Recently, PsyPost reports on ‘Universal’ personality traits not necessarily applying to isolated indigenous people (new window on click). They report that studying an isolated Bolivian society researchers found that the Tsimane culture not necessarily exhibited the five broad dimensions of personality, they also found more support for the “Big Two”.

Had personality been a concept belonging to the realm of positivism this is quite obviously not what one would find out observing the world. In a social constructionist realm though, this fits nicely with how SCism is defined. In a society with little to no contact with other more dominant societies, it is not necessarily so that you would find non-similar or other “personality-traits” than those belonging to the “Big Five”. There is just a higher probability, since the society has had the opportunity to ‘evolve’ under its own parameters that it has others. An obvious probability within this is that some or even all of the “personality-traits” found in larger or more dominant cultures actually will be found here too; we are all humans after all and over the earth we have a similar type of environmental demand on us as individuals -or perhaps rather, we have a finite number of demands on us. “Socially beneficial behaviour” and “industriousness”, as they claim have been found, well, look, we are most probably going to define any, one, behaviour as socially beneficial (odds are pretty high we will find at least one of these behaviours within a society, since there would be strange demands on a society to actually hold up if there are no socially beneficial behaviours). Finding that people actually behave beneficially towards one another within a cohesive group of people has very little utility.

An issue here is however that this may be used as a ‘universal’ claim from the side of personality. I claim the opposite. A behaviour, is going to be defined on a vastly grey scale, to be good, neutral or bad if we see to the consequences of that behaviour. The behaviour will first of all be placed on this scale wholly dependent on the situation it is in. Even killing another human being is sometimes considered appropriate in some cultures (and throughout history, we can see it has been appropriate in all cultures at one time or another). The issue is on the ‘beneficial’ part in this specific example, something being good or bad or neither is a value judgment that humans place on the world and that is not naturally existent. Another point being, it is not an inherent property of the behaviour to be ‘socially beneficial’ -and this argument can be extended to ‘industriousness’, not mixing in the good-bad grey scale argument. ‘Industriousness’ is a property we interpret a behaviour to have -it does not belong to the behaviour intrinsically -it depends on what socially constructed determinants define the behaviour to be.

In any case, I should also mention that supportive arguments and empirical observations do much less for a perspective or theory (like this post for my perspective) than does a non-falsified argument and empirical observation. It does however inform my previous post on (one of) the things I believe needs to be done in psychology to gain it the credibility it deserves. The previous post also has consequences for clinical psychology and psychiatry -something I am currently writing a post on and will publish soon on here.

Psychology unite! (decoder rings sold separately)

I’ve always had issues with personality as a scientific concept. Especially when it is taught by lecturers and professors as if it, and it’s subconcepts, are naturally existing. I should already clarify that “naturally existing” is a classification saved for concepts tied to things that would exist even without a conscious/independent mind (it will depend on your choice of favourite philosophy which you prefer, and it is unfortunately beyond this post to go too far into the philosophy on which it is based, which is a reason for me to stick to three main realms of knowledge, social constructionism, critical realism and positivism). I should also mention that I find it non-productive to discuss the point of view that all concepts tied to human activity as wholly socially constructed. The reason being that under that definition we ignore both vast amounts of unconscious processes, most often those shared with other animals, as well as our biological ancestry. If we developed from animals without (or lesser) capacity for conscious and lingual processing into animals with a greater capacity for those, then it would be foolish to ignore that those capacities developed on top of structures that, under a social construction definition, most likely would not pass its criteria for what exists and not. Personality is such a concept that I very much doubt to exist other than in the socially constructive realm. The correlations found in support of its existence are not smoke screens but are solely held up by virtue of social interaction itself. You can talk about behaviours belonging to a concept called extroversion, but, in my opinion, they are called upon by situational factors more so than an internally set characteristic. I base this opinion much so on the fact that I can behave very extrovertly in some situations and very introvertly in others and a better prediction of my behaviour is going to be based on the actual situational factors rather than what a personality test would say I am (disregard the fact that I am not convinced that the self actually exists or not.. yet.. see Bruce Hood, The Self Illusion for a thought-provoking perspective). At best, tests of personality tell the tester that this is the image/properties that the testee thinks he/she has and/or wishes to project to others. Even under this charitable definition there are considerable validity issues. For example, at its most general level, the image we wish to project to others and/or think we are is not equal to how we actually behave. One instance of this comes from that we are far less congruent in cognition and behaviour than we like to think. It is thus a real issue with personality that it only lives in the realm of social constructionism, it has no existence, necessarily, in a critical realist or positivist sense. In other words, there is no reflection in the part of reality existent without a conscious/independent mind. Because this concept has no reference point existentially, it will never be verified beyond its self-defined mechanism (which is inherent in anything denoted as a “concept”). So, why care about the ramblings of a mere master student of psychology in a country far far away? Because it has consequences beyond the war-torn concept of personality. It says something incredibly important about everything psychology has ever produced. “Is psychology a science?” and “Which departments within psychology are sciences and which are not?” are questions belonging to the infancy of the debate. It is futile and non-productive. All it does is to divide and create unnecessary conflict within a subject area that will hold the most important discoveries in the near future.

It is a foundational issue for psychology that it is rather easy to construct concepts from collections of behaviours, emotions and cognitions. You just need a pragmatic reason to do so, it need not reflect naturally occurring collected/related items. This type of critique is not usually limited to psychology but other subject areas have more rigorous checks and easier-to-spot red flags. In physics or chemistry, there is most often other ideas and knowledge that the new information needs to fit within. Because the objects of study are less ambiguous and more concretely defined, it is easier to understand if an idea is worth pursuing or not. In psychology, concepts are not as specifically defined because, among other reasons, the same behaviour (for example) in different contexts mean different things but can still be difficult to separate. Or, if looking at emotions it may sometimes be more useful to look at antecedents or consequences than the emotion itself (this specific example depends on your definition of emotion however, and I will refrain to delve deeper into it here). Also, the parts of reality psychological concepts are trying to cover usually contain yet other concepts and their definitions or parts of other concepts. Imagining circles partly covering eachother, even for distinctly defined concepts, there will be empty space covered or wanted information excluded). We, or perhaps you (since I don’t have a doctorate yet), need to be more careful, as scientists, when we posit things to exist. Because ultimately, coming from another discipline, even with the most rudimentary psychological knowledge, you are going to question the actual existence of some theories and concepts just by their face validity. Especially coming from disciplines where it is more natural to think of the concepts under study as naturally existing anyways. Psychology is the most difficult discipline to live within because it contains all the different types of existences that exists (ha!). At the moment, we don’t have this perspective on psychological concepts, we don’t have this perspective on everything psychological. I believe we will do ourselves and others a favour if  we begin defining (and accepting) the concepts as socially constructed or whatever else. Because here is another important point, noting something as belonging to social construction, critical realism and positivism says very little about the value these concepts have for our understanding of the world. Rather, we can be honest with what we are working with, come to terms with that it is not psychology or any subdiscipline within the subject which is at fault, rather, it is all the information that psychological researchers have as their pet theories and want to naturally exist. This just is not the case and we would do ourselves a grand gesture to be clear to everyone else not doing psychological research if we were clearer in what realm we posit something to exist. Because it doesn’t matter for the information’s value. Also, it doesn’t safeguard the more positivist or critical realist existing concepts from falsehood. Intellectual honesty is a virtue, in the sense that we should not pretend about how things exist in the world, and the more we all stand up together for it, the greater understanding will come from others too. So what about the practical aspects?

Well, unfortunately, @GrahamCLDavey reminds me of all the consequences that comes with that the word scientific carries with it an unfortunate amount of credit (read his post). It is important for gaining economic means if we define something as scientific or not, for practically anything we wish to research. Maybe we would do ourselves a disservice if we start calling things by their names, since the consequence could be that socially constructed theories get less funding than more critical realist or positivist ones. Here, however, we could unite the psychological discipline, stand strong together and argue the value information has does not depend on which realm it exists in, but rather, what the theories actually can predict and not, their pragmatic value, their functional value. Also, even if it has the unfortunate consequence mentioned above, it will in the long run give ourselves a more solid platform to stand on. To know that I am not positing something to actually exist naturally in the world, gives us a framework to put those ideas in, it gains us information and understanding about the concept we otherwise would be ignorant of and lastly we will know how this knowledge will be affected by newer information once that comes along. It may just safeguard us from making the mistake of seeing our knowledge and pet theories as something static and it may just gain psychology the honest credibility it deserves in everyone’s eyes -not just our own.

*Update 07:48 5/1-13, full name on author of The Self Illusion.

If a Realist tree falls in an Idealist forest…

This age old question has indeed puzzled me since I first heard it when I was around 10 years old. I found it fascinating to be stumped by such a simple question because it seemed to intuitively contain both a yes and no answer. 15 years later I understood why.

I have been mentoring Master students in Psychology over the past month in Philosophy of Science and Psychology. We have covered the basics of Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, Positivism, Social Constructivism and all there is and more to these and other concepts. The most important question they’ve asked of me so far is probably ‘Why do we have to know this?’. I give my explanation to this in a quite simple manner, we get better at research and in life in general. Then I realised something else.

Most people I have ever met, has heard the question ‘If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to witness it, does it still make a sound? And how?’. I have never heard a satisfying answer, until I stumbled upon one myself (and I sure do hope I haven’t read it somewhere, forgot, and now commit to the attribution error).

Just like Qualia, the answer depends on how you believe things exist.

If you believe that there does exist a world independent of your mind (roughly, Realism), you can define ‘sound’ as air compressing and decompressing, and, that this is the only necessary characteristic of ‘sound’ to allow its existence. Then yes. It does make a sound. We can ‘know’ this because the conclusion logically and necessarily follows both from the premise of our definition of sound as well as with the laws of physics.

If you however believe that there does not exist a world independent of your mind (roughly, Idealism), you can define ‘sound’ as sense data, and, that this is a necessary characteristic of ‘sound’ to allow its existence. Then no. It does not make a sound. We can ‘know’ this because the necessary condition following from our premise of our definition of sound is not met.

Or so I, amongst other examples, exemplify how philosophy can solve conundrums -let alone find and define logical and practical issues and weaknesses in our cognitive efforts in research and real life. Then I go on to say, but if the esteemed lecturers or the book says any different, then you should trust them (and not only for obvious reasons, but) -if philosophy teaches me anything, then it teaches me how little I can know (so if you are holding non-truths about the world -don’t blame me!).