One Section of Senior Paper

[trickykitty]

An early section of the paper will concern itself with the growth of psychology as a natural science, as proposed by Wolfgang Kohler in his book Gestalt Psychology (re: chapter 2 - psychology as a young science). The interesting concept brought up by Kohler is the idea that all scientific exploration started with some means of qualitative rather than quantitative measurements in order to discover which quantitative approaches would be appropriate. The overall purpose of this section will be to examine the growth of psychology within this growth framework, that of moving from qualitative (in this case, introspective) analysis into the more scientifically acceptable arena of quantitative measurements. A separate/adjoining section may be included to go a little more in depth with the ideas presented by Kohler regarding the objective versus subjective world and our categorization of our observations within these two, but that will most likely be beyond the scope of this paper as a whole.

Psychology has yet to establish itself as a natural, pure science on the basis that previous theories and experimentation hinged on introspections both of the observed and the observer. Varying descriptions of behavioral and emotional phenomena have been created to depict the terminology used during study and experimentation. These descriptions are vague themselves and further rely on the definitions of additionally vague terms in a continuous cycle of never truly defining a term in the first place, but instead merely "pointing in a certain direction" (Kohler, chapter 1). The example Kohler gives is that of trying to describe the "haziness" of peripheral vision exactly. There are varying degrees of haziness and different observers will give different accounts which may even contradict one another. As a final blow, these descriptions all rely on introspection and comparisons of introspections which can never be shown to be proved. I cannot prove that you are describing the same phenomenon of peripheral vision that I am attempting to describe*.

Enter the field of cognitive psychology which is gaining trust in the scientific community (locate a source for this assertion). Experimentation now relies on non-introspective response in as much as one can describe it as non-introspective. The best terminology for use in this case may be the measurement of judgments on the part of the participant. They are still completely grounded in introspective analysis, as the subject must search himself for the answer, the very definition of introspection. However, a judgment can be solidified in to a final answer (avoid Who Wants To Be A Millionaire jokes here). Either the subject determines that they did or did not hear a word, or they do or do not remember seeing a picture. The field has also added tests of congruence within a subject's judgments (see "How strongly do you believe you heard this word?"). The results of these tests are seen as highly scientific in nature, although still not completely without fault. As the field of psychology grows, specific areas, such as the testing within cognitive psychology, will become more finessed in their scientific methodologies.

Lastly is the field of neuroscience. This field is already based within the broader field of biology, which today is considered one of the pure sciences without question. Neuroscience is the study of all aspects of the nervous system, but our focus here is on the physical entities of the brain and their influences on each other. The study of the brain in this respect is seen to meet the general requirements of pure science. The outside observer does not affect that which he observes and his observations are considered to be objective (with the caveat of how objective and subjective are defined by Kohler, provided that is included as an adjoining section). It is already known that behavioral responses are rooted in changes in the nervous system, specifically the brain. It is safe to assume that given time, the brain can be mapped in such a way that behavioral responses will have a neuroscience equivalent. In this respect, the responses of subjects will be measurable in a quantitative and scientific manner.


*I do not envy my friend and colleague who studies computational linguistics. A large portion of his studies necessitate explaining when language is a good, focused means of sharing ideas and when it is a poor and vague means of sharing ideas.