Can we compare physics and psychology?

Forums: Philosophy, Psychology, Physics
Email this Topic • Print this Page

Can we compare physics and psychology?

Libido is an energy source"Heat is an energy source"there is potential and kinetic energy

Emotion aka instinct is an energy source"

Narcissism is a force"gravity is a force"electromagnetism is a force"within the atom there are the strong and weak forces"there are four physical forces within nature. Narcissism is a force that displays itself in--self-absorption"self-love"sense of immortality"self-esteem"cosmic significance"self-importance"feeds on symbols, on abstract ideas of my own worth

Guilt is a feeling caused by outside resistance

Feeling"the mental experience of an emotion after the body has reacted to the emotion

Neurosis is the control of anxiety by restricting experience"the humanization process is neurosis in action

Anxiety is a feeling, the penalty for becoming human, i.e. for becoming self-conscious; it is not based on instinct but is based upon individual sense of helplessness.

Ego controls responses by delaying action

Hero"the world is a stage for heroism"our main task on this earth"man’s natural yearning for organismic activity, the pleasure of incorporation and expansion, fed limitlessly in the domain of symbols"we compare one another symbolically"we are ignorant of what we want and need, we disguise it in consumption as our badges"desire to be hero is natural and to admit it is healthy"need to make me, man, nation, etc, meaningful"our need for freedom is our need to be a hero"it becomes a blind-drivenness that burns us up"we must feel that what we do is heroic"crises is when youth does not feel heroic, we have a crisis of heroism"religion is no longer a stage for heroism"heroics is a central theme of human action

Culture is a symbolic action system for heroism"to give death its due is perhaps a step back that will permit a step forward"death is reality, when we repress it what happens?"

This is how our brain works. We think with the aid of past experiences. We use linguistic metaphors to give others a direction for understanding. Our brain uses conceptual metaphors this same way; automatically using conceptual metaphors. LIFE IS A JOURNEY. Automatically our brain “copies” what we already know about journeys that help us to better comprehend the task of living.

Abstract ideas are largely metaphorical.

An infant is born and when embraced for the first time by its mother the infant experiences the sensation of warmth. In succeeding experiences the warmth is felt along with other sensations.

Empirical data verifies that there often happens a conflation of this sensation experience together with the development of a subjective (abstract) concept we can call affection. With each similar experience the infant fortifies both the sensation experience and the affection experience and a little later this conflation aspect ends and the child has these two concepts in different mental spaces.

This conflation leads us to readily recognize the metaphor ‘affection is warmth’.

Cognitive science uses metaphor in the standard usage as we are all accustomed to but it also uses a new concept that you are unfamiliar with unless you have been reading this book. This new concept is called ‘conceptual metaphor’. Conceptual metaphor is the heart of this new cognitive science and represents what will be in my opinion the new paradigm of cognitive science.

In my example I speak of two separate mental spaces; one being the experience of being held and the other is the subjective experience of affection. The theory behind the ‘conceptual metaphor’ is that the structure of the sense experience can and is often automatically without conscious intention mapped into a new mental space.

The experience structure can be mapped into a new mental space and thereby becomes part of the structure of that new mental space. In this fashion these conceptual metaphors can act somewhat like atoms that join together to make a molecule.

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) has developed new and revolutionary theories regarding how cognition works. One way that it works is through metaphor, not just linguistic but also through conceptual metaphor. You ought to give it a study. You might be surprised how many things will become clearer.

I am a retired engineer; that is why I think using physics as an aid in comprehending the world I live in.

Topic Stats
Top Replies
Link to this Topic

Type: Discussion • Score: 5 • Views: 7,673 • Replies: 45

No top replies

Are you saying that libido is conserved?

1 Reply

If "Guilt is a feeling caused by outside resistance"

then

Guilt = feellings ^2 x resistance

0 Replies

what about psychics and physiology

0 Replies

@ebrown p,

I don't understand the question. The libido is a constant force.

1 Reply

Psychology and physics are both cause and effect. The law of causality permeates all phenomenon.

1 Reply

@NickFun,

There is no scientific "law of causality" it's only a principle. It's negated by uncertainty / indeterminacy as per Quantum Physics.

0 Replies

@coberst,

Quote:

Can we compare physics and psychology?

The answer is no with respect to "scientific status". The behaviorists tried and failed.

There is a fundamental reason for the failure. In general physics a "standard observer "is assumed as axiomatic to the "scientific requirement of objectivity" . But in psychology "the observer" is itself the object of study making the assumption of "objectivity" vacuous.

When we consider the subcategory of particle physics, observer problems come to the fore even for physics. Ironically it is only here that a comparison can be made....a comparison of problems NOT scientific status.

In short the term "cognitive science" is a about as "scientific" as "scientology".

2 Replies

@fresco,

The purpose of my post was to illuminate how my past experiences provide the background for comprehending my new experiences.

I have for many months been studying the new theories of cognitive science detailed in the book “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson. I am convinced that these theories will change dramatically our comprehension of how human cognition functions.

We have in our Western philosophy a traditional theory of faculty psychology wherein our reasoning is a faculty completely separate from the body. “Reason is seen as independent of perception and bodily movement.” It is this capacity of autonomous reason that makes us different in kind from all other animals. I suspect that many fundamental aspects of philosophy and psychology are focused upon declaring, whenever possible, the separateness of our species from all other animals.

This tradition of an autonomous reason began long before evolutionary theory and has held strongly since then without consideration, it seems to me, of the theories of Darwin and of biological science. Cognitive science has in the last three decades developed considerable empirical evidence supporting Darwin and not supporting the traditional theories of philosophy and psychology regarding the autonomy of reason. Cognitive science has focused a great deal of empirical science toward discovering the nature of the embodied mind.

The three major findings of cognitive science are:
The mind is inherently embodied.
Thought is mostly unconscious.
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

“These findings of cognitive science are profoundly disquieting [for traditional thinking] in two respects. First, they tell us that human reason is a form of animal reason, a reason inextricably tied to our bodies and the peculiarities of our brains. Second, these results tell us that our bodies, brains, and interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real.”

All living creatures categorize. All creatures, as a minimum, separate eat from no eat and friend from foe. As neural creatures tadpole and wo/man categorize. There are trillions of synaptic connections taking place in the least sophisticated of creatures and this multiple synapses must be organized in some way to facilitate passage through a small number of interconnections and thus categorization takes place. Great numbers of different synapses take place in an experience and these are subsumed in some fashion to provide the category eat or foe perhaps.

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”.

1 Reply

@coberst,

I'm waiting for you to show some evidence of the "critical thinking" that you advocate for others. Regurgitation of your hobbyist reading, and writing ridiculously mundane self observations like.....

Quote:

The purpose of my post was to illuminate how my past experiences provide the background for comprehending my new experiences.

.....as though it were some profound piece of "epistemological insight", do not look promising in that respect.

1 Reply

@fresco,

I suspect that verbal combat is the only thing you are looking for.

1 Reply

@coberst,

No...You asked a question which I answered from the position of a critical elavuation of my own experience in psychological research. Such is the nature of this forum, where people with relevant experience are called on to give comments and answers. No psychology undergaduate would make the mistake of "being convinced" by particular theoretical positions in the subject. All exposition regarding such positions must be accompanied by examination of alternative positions if that student is to "pass" the course. This is very different to the natural sciences or engineering where a student must demonstrate skill in the application of an agreed corpus of knowledge. Despite the aspirations of so-called "cognitive scientists" to emulate the modus of "natural scientists" this has not come about, partly for the reasons I have stated. You do not appear to understand this simple point, or maybe you won't accept it because it would imply that much of your copious posting content would amount to waffle.

1 Reply

@fresco,

BTW Coberst, I note that on one of your dozens of forums (on which you cut and paste your questions and replies) you claim your pet topic SGCS is some sort of pedagogical watershed with respect to the deconstruction of the term "objectivity". The fact that SGCS is merely riding the bandwagon of a well subscribed philosophical paradigm seems to have escaped you, but that does not excuse you from your failure to follow up my "objectivity" point in the light of your previous postings on that topic.
(Handling those ears of corn did nothing for you after all ! Wink

)

0 Replies

@fresco,

Behaviorism hasn't failed, or died, or been defeated, although I see so many people ignorantly asserting as much.

Your brain is made of carbon. It works via electricity and chemicals. There is nothing mystical about the brain; nothing spiritual or magical. The brain is as subject to the law of determinism just as much as anything else in the universe.

If one objects to the science of the human mind then you must reject all science.

1 Reply

@empiricism,

Too simplistic to merit a detailed comment. You are merely stating a rather dated belief about what science "is". Read up on the philosophical problems of "causality" and its failure at sub-atomic levels.

1 Reply

@fresco,

Your neurons may be subatomic particles but mine sure aren't.

2 Replies

@empiricism,

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/consciousevents.html

0 Replies

@empiricism,

http://consc.net/online

1 Reply

@fresco,

Quantum mysticism, while comforting (like religion) is incoherent. Sure we'd like to believe that many-worlds makes us practically immortal and "quantum consciousness" means we have free will.

But you can't expect me to read that stuff with a straight face. It's pure conjecture and logically incoherent. Absurd conclusions drawn from incomplete quantum theories.

2 Replies

@empiricism,

I don't expect you to read anything which does not fit into your simplistic world view. You are almost certainly ignorant of the fact that QED (quantum electrodynamics) lies at the heart of the technology you are using to communicate with, and that theory completely transcends your layman's views of what "electricity" is. Indeed, no scientist actually knows what "an electron " is, despite the fact that they are happy to use the concept ( together with its "anti -particle", the "positron" defined as "an electron travelling backwards in time") as a functional node in the prediction of observations.

So work it out ! You are complaining about "mysticism" and at the same time established physicists are happy with "negative time" and "non-locality". You are complaining about lack of"logic" whils't celebrated logicians are developing alternatives to traditional logic in order to cope with the fact that the latter is an epiphenominon of adult human cognition.

What a shame you might miss all this by refusing to read !

0 Replies

Can we compare physics and psychology?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know