Michael Bartholomew's Archive

I’m noticing a trend as the semester goes on, and it’s probably not just limited to Humanism and Behaviorism.  Ever since the Empiricism (experience) versus Rationalism (reason) debate was brought up, it seems like it continues to show up in some form another throughout history. Even before Behaviorism was Mechanism, a precursor of sorts that assumed man was like a machine (something Behaviorism might agree with in how man is capable of “being programmed” through conditioning), both of which falling on the side of experience. When you breakdown the common Behaviorist’s position, it seems to suggest that man is kind of blank slate that is either operates or is operated on the environment. Nothing about this seems to imply there is anything to man prior to these “operations,” and seems to argue that whatever substance mankind has behind it is a result of consequences or the events that occurred through an individuals life, shaping them to behave the way in which they do.

The counter to this seems to be Humanism for the moment (though Pscyhoanalysis fits as well). The line that caught my attention the most was Abraham Maslow’s comment that “anyone who had a baby couldn’t be a behaviorist,” a comment that would stand in direct opposition to the Behaviorist/Empiricist position. It instead insists that people aren’t born with a blank slate just waiting to be filled with experience or be conditioned, that we are instead born with something already instilled within us. Psychoanalysis most certainly would be in line with this sort of thinking in its emphasis on the unconscious, a force that nigh constantly demands instant gratification (that doesn’t appear to be learned, but latent). Overall, the schools of thought, unlike Behaviorism, stress an emphasis on a sort of consciousness or reasoning to supersedes experience alone.

It would probably be less interesting if the theories were as ancient as the ideas they represent, but it provides only further evidence that the Experience/Rational debate is far from over, and continues to thrive even to this day. I can’t say if there will ever be an obvious answer to this question, but with all the technology and progress that has been made, I would expect to be closer to some sort of resolution. The fact that this argument continues to exists only makes me all the more skeptical.

As has been discussed in class, behaviorism is a school of psychology that involves the observation, study, and manipulation of behavior.  Pooling from previous classes, behaviorism has proven itself to be one of the more successful therapies in treating clients, with plenty of scientific research to back up its findings.  I was very curious about this latter portion, that treating people in gradually escalating therapy could be so successful, despite the concept coming off as more “reprogramming” than it is any real treatment method. But the results speak for themselves; there is something inherent about behavioralistic therapy that makes it very effective on clients within a range of disorders.

The more controversial application of behavioralistic therapy, however, was in its application to convicted criminals and child molesters. While most see no problem with the idea of “correcting” the deviant behavior of such depraved patients, the issue does fall under scrutiny on ethical grounds. I suppose the question is something along the lines of whether such radical treatment is permissible? Should psychology be allowed to be applied in this radical dimension, despite the duress the patient may experience? It does not help that the effectiveness of these therapies does fall under some scrutiny.

A similar issue arose in a previous class; should behavioralistic therapy be applied to sexual orientation? The Psychological Association is strongly against the radical application due to inconclusive results surrounding the therapy, but if the possibility existed to aid a patient seeking to alter his/her sexual orientation, is it right to deny it on the principles established by the governing association? Or does the principle appeal to something higher, some ethical standard that delineates such behaviorist application as immoral? Supposing some practicing clinician was confronted with a patient desperately unhappy because of their orientation, seeking some form of treatment to alleviate their discomfort, is it wrong to attempt to help them? Right to refuse, and insist that they best become comfortable with this “way of life?”  I suppose on reflection, this may be just another gray area that the field of psychology will have to further develop to arrive at any definite answer.

In our recent lectures that have focused extensively on the biological explanations of psychology (in addition to the illustrative videos) I’ve gotten the impression that it could (and might be inclined to)  explain just about every disorder of the mind through purely physiological explanations. This is definitely helpful in that the more accurate we in describing the problem, the more accurate our solutions might also become. Despite this benefit, it has a tendency to inadvertently to reduce what makes us human to a simplistic exchange of nervous signals (or the lack of this exchange in the case of disorders). In its own way, it kind of robs us of the human element.

As already explained it class, very little of the community are extremist enough to believe everything is biological, but it surprises me as more and more becomes readily explainable through mostly biological means. I wonder if the day will eventually arrive when most, if not all of our mental processes are explainable through physiological phenomenon, and just what that would imply should it ever come to pass. It brings to mind the thought that perhaps everything that makes us human, our experiences, memories and emotions might not be nearly as unique or personal as we thought. Could everything that makes up each one of us in some (maybe not so) distant future be recreated through the proper stimulation of certain parts of the brain (and the proper genetic sequence at birth)?

The implications of such a reality are a little jarring (should science actually get so far). What does this imply about us? Is the physical arrangement of matter really what makes each and every one of us? Or is it something deeper inside each mind that science has yet to discover? What does this imply about the soul, and if related, what role does it play in who we are and what makes us so differentiated? I guess it kind of ties back to that age old debate of empiricism vs. rationalism, in that it’s hard to say (at least for now) how much of ourselves we ought to attribute to the mental/rationalistic world and how much to the physical, material one. Part of me wouldn’t be disappointed if that was a question to which we never found a concrete answer.

As already mentioned, Evolutionary Psychology is crafted using a great deal of conjecture based on correlations (and less on tangible derivations). But what about the implications? Are we really just an increasingly complex version of lower animals, galvanized to our current state of success through centuries of adaptations brought about by our environment and random genetic shifts that offer either advantages or impediments? Can “the human being” really be debased all the way back to a primal ancestor?

It seems increasingly common to find people who have no problems with the idea, especially considering evolution’s increasing popularity. Obviously, depending on your views, this may vary considerably. Those that subscribe to Creationism may obviously feel drastically different about the situation. I personally feel we accept the idea far too readily. Are we really no more than the success of feral ancestors centuries ago, brought to success by random chance and good genes to boost our odds? Could it really have been so easy for some other dominant creature to take the reins of civilization, had events occurred in a slightly different fashion?

The video on the origin of human expressions had me wondering if the explanations for how we came to be are really that simple.  Can something as complex as social interactions and varying facial expressions be tied all the way back survival mechanisms back in a less sophisticated state? I’d like to think not, but in the same way evolutionary psychology offers more conjecture than evidence, I have nothing with which prove it wrong.

What about laughter (as brought up in class)? What survival mechanism did that serve? Is it possible that as time went on and people become the more “dominant” creature on this world, we were able to socially develop these behaviors in a time where security and time were not scarce resources (as in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), as a complex byproduct of increased social interaction?

It’s the implications that bother me the most, that our dominion on this world is more a product of chance and our claim to it even less tenuous than before, that at the core we have our primitive ancestors driving our race, that our behaviors can be traced back to behaviors that promoted survival, engineered by instrumental conditioning. Looking back, it’s kind of like comparing us to machines. As much like I’d like to take a stand and say no, that we’re something above all that, I have nothing with which to prove it. We could just be a bunch of over-glorified primates for all I could prove.

It was brought up in class (and believed by several philosophers in the Age of Reason) that man is perceived as a machine.  This view can range from flat-out criticism, to that of a “complex” machine (as did Descartes), all the way to Julien de la Mettrie on the opposite extreme, that man at every level behaves in a mechanistic manner.  But just how true or how extensive is the idea?

Behaviorialists most certainly would agree to varying extremes. The fact (as has been demonstrated in repeated experiments and therapies) that people can be “programmed” by pairing stimuli and responses over time doesn’t seem to contest this idea, and in fact supports it fairly heavily. The overwhelming effectiveness of behavioralist therapies for a majority of psychological disorders is another harrowing indication of some truth to the notion. There was even a study conducted (Benjamin Libet) that claimed the neural signal to “act” was actually sent before participants announced their intent to act (as they were asked) challenging the very concept of free will.

Are we just machines programmed from birth, and further engineered by the environment dictating how we develop and how we will respond? Is choice an illusion, with reasoning applied only after our actions as some sort of meek justification that provides us with some sense of autonomy? I find it kind of funny that these thoughts that we may have considered absurd during such earlier times turn out to be real quandaries even today.

I suppose that is what the field of psychology is all about. Asking the questions to which the answers are hardest to provide. What I find the most curious of all that is how universally everyone seems to revolt at the idea, how quickly we are to retaliate against the mere mention that our choices might not be our own, that we might not be in control of something so fundamental as our very thoughts and actions. I guess the most harrowing question of all is how would we ever know?

Kind of tying in to the Allegory of the Cave, more particularly about how those still in the cave were willing to kill the ones that had broken free and tried to show them the world outside, I feel that’s a concept that might apply to us, even today. In the same way that people still enslaved in the cave were so threatened by the idea of something so different or foreign from what they had become so accustomed to, you could say we as people tend to react when question on issues that are close to us, such as religion and politics. As far as I know, there isn’t much in competition when it comes to subjects that tend to rile people up, and for good reason when you consider how close to their identity those values usually lie. So when something that significant is questioned, it doesn’t really surprise us when people respond that aggressively, or when we respond in a similar manner ourselves.

I guess you could think of it as, we’re the ones in the cave with a fixed mind to what we believe is the reality, and when someone comes along to question them, while we don’t exactly jump to the idea of killing them, it seems there is some similarity in the intensity of the reaction.

If you wanted to draw this out to an extreme, you might even say terrorist extremist are providing an excellent example of killing people who challenge what you believe to be the indisputable truth. Though, again, that might be a rather extreme example, and the similarity lies in the reaction, not necessarily in the principle being questioned.