Video lecture: Why Is Psychology Silent on Atheism?

[Underseer]

We hear so much about research being done on atheists and atheism that it never occurred to me that it might be a taboo subject in some of the disciplines that can answer some of these questions.

 

[Perspicuo]

I don't see the point the dizzy valley girl in the video is, like, trying to make, although she seems very excited.

Atheism is specifically studied in sociological studies. Psychologists have endeavored to study belief and disbelief. In any case, Google Scholar returns many studies with the keywords atheist, atheists and disbelief. In my experience, psychologists tend not to be in general high on conservative faith, although they tend to hide it.

She mentions she received no training on how to work with atheists but instead a lot of how to work with religionists. It must be a fad in the US, because psychology has always tended to be extremely secular and most big names of it have been downright atheistic. Say, Rogers, Skinner, Perls, Ellis, Freud himself. In fact if you skim through a psychotherapy manual, the strategies seems pricisely customized for disbelievers and/or viewing things from a realistic, non-mythological point of view. Jung is a notorious exception, having thus a large following from religionists, especially those with New Age leanings.

And, now that I'm talking about traditional psychology, this situation reminds me of figure-ground phenomena. Atheism is big in psychology, but it's completely background. So much that it inspires a large amount of distrust from the more conservative clergy... and I must say, their instincts serve them well.

 

[ronburgundy]

I don't see the point the dizzy valley girl in the video is, like, trying to make, although she seems very excited.

Atheism is specifically studied in sociological studies. Psychologists have endeavored to study belief and disbelief. In any case, Google Scholar returns many studies with the keywords atheist, atheists and disbelief. In my experience, psychologists tend not to be in general high on conservative faith, although they tend to hide it.

She mentions she received no training on how to work with atheists but instead a lot of how to work with religionists. It must be a fad in the US, because psychology has always tended to be extremely secular and most big names of it have been downright atheistic. Say, Rogers, Skinner, Perls, Ellis, Freud himself. In fact if you skim through a psychotherapy manual, the strategies seems pricisely customized for disbelievers and/or viewing things from a realistic, non-mythological point of view. Jung is a notorious exception, having thus a large following from religionists, especially those with New Age leanings.

And, now that I'm talking about traditional psychology, this situation reminds me of figure-ground phenomena. Atheism is big in psychology, but it's completely background. So much that it inspires a large amount of distrust from the more conservative clergy... and I must say, their instincts serve them well.

A few reasons why "atheism" is studied much less often than being "religious":

1. In the U.S. self-identified atheists are such a small % of the population (even college pop) that it is hard to get big enough samples of them to say anything meaningful about them.
2. Atheist themselves promote the idea that their is nothing to study because they do not actually exist as a meaningful category any more than "things that are not my shoe" is a meaningful category. This is largely b.s. because contrary to such rhetoric, nearly every self-labeled atheist is surrounded mostly by theists and a largely pro-theism culture, and their atheism in fact represents a very deliberate rejection of the theist ideas as unworthy of acceptance. IOW, there are plenty of ways in which atheists share qualities with each other that are different from theists. In fact, atheists are probably a more coherent and studiable group than Catholics.
3. Most people in Psychology who study religion have a bias toward seeking out positive manifestations of religious belief. Psychology, like social science in general, is hyper P.C., and wary of anything that smacks of elitism, racism, etc.. Theism is especially touchy because white, middle class, educated males are the least religious and most atheistic. Saying anything that implies this group is better off psychologically, even for reasons not directly related to race and gender, is a mine-field of egg shells.
4. Related to #3, you rarely see studies comparing different religious groups on variables likely to be judged as good or bad, even if the variable itself is objective and all the evaluation is in the mind of the audience. As a result, you don't see atheists compared to theists directly. The kinds of research that dominates is when they ignore religion type and look at things like "degree of religiosity" or fundamentalists versus moderates, etc.. However, the fact is that different religions and sects differ on the average religiosity and fundamentalism of its members, so often what is attributed to religiosity and fundamentalism can really be due to the differences in the religious sects themselves and the content of their ideas an values. In particular, atheists score the lowest on religiosity, so almost anytime you hear about religiosity being correlated with something it means that atheists and theist differ on that something, such as racism, sexism, authoritarianism, acceptance of consensus science, etc..

 

[Keith&Co.]

She mentions she received no training on how to work with atheists but instead a lot of how to work with religionists.

When i worked on the Suicide Hotline, we had training on how to deal with people who were having problems with their religion.
When the authorities say 'gay is evil,' for example and the caller, well, took it personally.
Or if their religious authorities were calling something they'd done an unforgivable sin.
Or if their spouse was abusive but they weren't allowed to divorce.

I just never questioned that this never applied to the atheists that called the hotline.

But how could it?


"Maybe you could shift to a different sect of atheism? You could still not believe in a deity, but maybe you'd be more comfortable not dealing with Odin than not dealing with Jehovah?"
"Well, i'm sorry your atheist authority figure's a shithead. Have you maybe thought about asking the abyss directly if it could ignore you more than it ignored you before?"
"You know, the reformed atheists are more welcoming to a questioning attitude than the orthodox, maybe you could visit one of their non-meeting places?"

 

[bilby]

Psychologists and psychiatrists need to learn how to deal with many forms of mental illness, including (but not limited to) religion.

Obviously they don't spend a huge amount of time explicitly learning how to deal with people who are not depressed; or not psychotic; or not religious.

Motor mechanics don;t learn how to deal with cars that don't have problems with their timing belts either. Not because cars without timing belt problems don't turn up at the garage; but because it is more useful to think in terms of the problem the car does have, rather than the absence of a problem it does not have.

 

[Togo]

There has been some work on where the boundary is between beliefs and opinions on the one hand, and mental disorder on the other. The result tend to upset almost everyone. The basic problem is that it's almost impossible to come up with a standard for guaging the 'unhealthiness' of thought that doesn't include the beliefs of most people. Fairly basic things, like trust in others, the belief that a co-worker isn't going to murder you today, and optimism in general, tend to have no solid foundations. This has to led to some controvertial suggestions, such as labelling happiness as 'nervous affective disorder, pleasant type', and suggesting that depresssion is triggered in part by having a more accurate and realistic view of the world than most people.

Certainly if you want to identify potentially dangerous power fantasies or wish-fulfilment fantasties, the idea that there will be a scientific test to identify that on matters of religion, you are right and that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong, is fairly high up on that list. It's just the atheist version of the day of judgement fantasy, and some even take it as far as looking forward to the day that infinitely wise aliens will descend to the earth in beams of light, and tell everyone that atheists were right all along...

 

[ronburgundy]

She mentions she received no training on how to work with atheists but instead a lot of how to work with religionists.

When i worked on the Suicide Hotline, we had training on how to deal with people who were having problems with their religion.
When the authorities say 'gay is evil,' for example and the caller, well, took it personally.
Or if their religious authorities were calling something they'd done an unforgivable sin.
Or if their spouse was abusive but they weren't allowed to divorce.

I just never questioned that this never applied to the atheists that called the hotline.

But how could it?


"Maybe you could shift to a different sect of atheism? You could still not believe in a deity, but maybe you'd be more comfortable not dealing with Odin than not dealing with Jehovah?"
"Well, i'm sorry your atheist authority figure's a shithead. Have you maybe thought about asking the abyss directly if it could ignore you more than it ignored you before?"
"You know, the reformed atheists are more welcoming to a questioning attitude than the orthodox, maybe you could visit one of their non-meeting places?"

Yeah, studying atheism as it relates to mental disorders and clinical psych makes less sense. But it does make sense to study it as a part of and predictor of non-clinical "normal" thought and action. I think it makes most sense to study atheists as a comparison group to theists in the study of the psychological and sociological causes and effects of theistic belief. However, that is likely to often make theism in general look bad by comparison, which for unscientific political reasons most psychologists are afraid to do, even if they themselves are non-theist. They don't mind making "fundamentalist" or conservative forms of religion look bad relative to "moderate" or liberal religion, but they don't want to say anything negative about religion or theism in general.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Yeah, studying atheism as it relates to mental disorders and clinical psych makes less sense. But it does make sense to study it as a part of and predictor of non-clinical "normal" thought and action.

Well, yeah, but i was saying it's hard to really anticipate what any given 'grouping' of atheists is going to think about any subject. it's just too informal and individual to make very many useful generalizations. As opposed to groups like Mormons who you can often recognize on sight...

 

[ronburgundy]

Yeah, studying atheism as it relates to mental disorders and clinical psych makes less sense. But it does make sense to study it as a part of and predictor of non-clinical "normal" thought and action.

Well, yeah, but i was saying it's hard to really anticipate what any given 'grouping' of atheists is going to think about any subject. it's just too informal and individual to make very many useful generalizations. As opposed to groups like Mormons who you can often recognize on sight...

To a degree, but I bet in many ways Atheists are more coherent than groups like "Christians", "Catholics", "Jews", "Protestants", etc..
Given the small % of open self-labeled "atheists", there can't be too many paths that lead there or there would be more of them.
Atheists in the US are rarely people who never thought about religion much and just "lack belief". They live in culture where 90% at least appear to endorse theism and where culture is generally very pro-religion, equates morality with religion, and harshly attacks anything that resembles an honest questioning of religion. I think it does take a somewhat identifiable set of characteristics to pull that off, even when one's own parents are not religious.

Atheists can sometimes vary more than many groups on issues unrelated to religion and theism and especially on issues on which reasonable people can disagree. These might include economic issues and even some social issues. But atheists are often clustered toward one extreme end of the spectrum on many issues relative to theists whose strength of theism often predicts how far away they are from the end that atheists are clustered at. Examples are authoritarianism, gay rights, drug legality, education, almost any scientific issue, racism, and equal rights in general. On all of these atheists vary, but less so than the population and tend to have the highest or lowest scores (depending on type of variable) compared to all religious groups.
You can always find exceptions and discussion boards inflate the frequency of disagreement, but what systematic research there are on these things regularly shows that atheists tend to cluster at the opposite extreme of strong religionists, with "weak" religionists in the middle. BTW, (and I don't think you personally would fall for this) but the notion that extreme positions are bad or the moderate position is the most reasonable one is nonsense is more often wrong than right. So, the atheist extreme-end on these variables usually corresponds to being educated, tolerant, pro-liberty, and other variables where more is better.

 

[bilby]

Well, yeah, but i was saying it's hard to really anticipate what any given 'grouping' of atheists is going to think about any subject. it's just too informal and individual to make very many useful generalizations. As opposed to groups like Mormons who you can often recognize on sight...

To a degree, but I bet in many ways Atheists are more coherent than groups like "Christians", "Catholics", "Jews", "Protestants", etc..
Given the small % of open self-labeled "atheists", there can't be too many paths that lead there or there would be more of them.

The US is a tiny fraction of the world. 95% of humanity is not in the US. There are huge numbers of atheists - in the OECD they are the norm.

 

[fromderinside]

Psychologists and psychiatrists need to learn how to deal with many forms of mental illness, including (but not limited to) religion.

Obviously they don't spend a huge amount of time explicitly learning how to deal with people who are not depressed; or not psychotic; or not religious.

Motor mechanics don;t learn how to deal with cars that don't have problems with their timing belts either. Not because cars without timing belt problems don't turn up at the garage; but because it is more useful to think in terms of the problem the car does have, rather than the absence of a problem it does not have.

When I was in school the main reason people went into psychology was they had problems. Unfortunately out of that cohort most haven't really understood themselves. I'm talking about the touchy feelie segment, about 70% of all psychologists, of the other thirty percent about half are in advertising or education and a large part of the remainder are dealing with drugs, cars and airplanes. Needless to say there isn't much money in the study of atheism.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Atheists are more coherent than groups like "Christians", "Catholics", "Jews", "Protestants", etc..

I doubt they're 'coherent' as i understand the term.
Maybe more 'consistent,' if i understand your post.

But we tend not to organize well. We don't share authoritarian leaders. When a Catholic says 'Catholics believe' he's probably far more correct than anyone saying 'atheists believe that...' If nothing else, because far too many atheists will reject sweeping statements just because they want to be on record that they reject sweeping statements.

 

[ronburgundy]

Atheists are more coherent than groups like "Christians", "Catholics", "Jews", "Protestants", etc..

I doubt they're 'coherent' as i understand the term.
Maybe more 'consistent,' if i understand your post.

Consistent works too, but I think coherent works too. I meant it in the sense that atheist share a more logically coherent set of views with each other, than do these other broad groups of theists whose views are both less internally coherent within themselves and more "all over the map" relative to each other on many many issues. This is in large part because those groups include people whose theism is as entrenched and certain as a belief can be and those that are defacto agnostic or even atheist but for whom the label means nothing other than "I don't have the guts to give up this social label."

But we tend not to organize well. We don't share authoritarian leaders.

This is very true, but political/social organizational coherence is separate from coherence of beliefs, ideas, values, etc..

When a Catholic says 'Catholics believe' he's probably far more correct than anyone saying 'atheists believe that...'


No, very often not. For example, "Catholics believe in evolution" or "Catholics reject evolution" are both less correct than "Atheists accept evolution".
The actual % of group members to which these generalization apply are about 65%, 35%, and 95%, respectively. The same applies to many positions in the various categories I mentioned earlier from gay marriage to drug legalization to climate change, to authoritarianism. Catholics are more evenly dispersed across the spectrum on such issues than are atheists who vary, but whose statistical mean is a better estimate of more of them and is the case for the other groups.

If nothing else, because far too many atheists will reject sweeping statements just because they want to be on record that they reject sweeping statements.

Yeah, that is too true, and exemplified by mindless mantras like "in general I try not to generalize", which is as false a claim as can be made since every idea and ever word people speak is a form of generalization. Thought is generalization, so if one doesn't generalize, they don't think.
Ironically, you point to something about atheists in general (that they don't like to be grouped into "atheists") that is in fact a common psychological feature of atheists that differentiates them from theists. Theists love to be a part of a group. It is a driving force behind the success of religion.
It is quite likely that a psychological resistance to a group identity (or at least being low in wanting one) is among the psychological factors that promote atheism, which is why it is a common attitude among them.

 

[ronburgundy]

Psychologists and psychiatrists need to learn how to deal with many forms of mental illness, including (but not limited to) religion.

Obviously they don't spend a huge amount of time explicitly learning how to deal with people who are not depressed; or not psychotic; or not religious.

Motor mechanics don;t learn how to deal with cars that don't have problems with their timing belts either. Not because cars without timing belt problems don't turn up at the garage; but because it is more useful to think in terms of the problem the car does have, rather than the absence of a problem it does not have.

When I was in school the main reason people went into psychology was they had problems. Unfortunately out of that cohort most haven't really understood themselves. I'm talking about the touchy feelie segment, about 70% of all psychologists, of the other thirty percent about half are in advertising or education and a large part of the remainder are dealing with drugs, cars and airplanes. Needless to say there isn't much money in the study of atheism.

Your comments suggest you are referring to "Clinical" Psychologists" / Therapists who deal with "abnormal" or disfunctional thought and behavior.
You are right that people with their own psychological problems are drawn to this field.
However, Clincial Psychologists comprise only 50% of the people who get Ph.D.s in psychology, with the rest being "Experimental" psychologists of which the sub-disciplines are Cognitive, Social, Developmental, Biological, and Educational Psychology. They study normal everyday human learning, thought, emotion, action, and brain function.
90% of undergrads who think they are interested in psychology are interested in Clinical and therapy, but few of these make it to grad school. At the grad school and Ph.D levels there is about an even split between Clinical programs and Experimental programs. BTW, the "experimental" refers to the fact that there focus and training is upon conducting empirical experiments to test hypotheses and theories, mostly about the normal and fundamental aspects of human (and non-human for some bio-psych) psychology. This is the more scientifically grounded side of psychology (sadly many Therapists are borderline scientically illiterate). They are the people who splintered off from the Clinical dominated APA 27 years ago because it was too political, ideological and unscientific to form the APS (Association for Psychological Science). Some abnormal and disfunctional psychology is included in this, but it about conducting controlled experiments.
Most experimental psychologist are drawn to the field for the similar intellectual curiosity that people are drawn to other scientific fields. Atheism and its causes and effects would be something most effectively studied non these non-clinicial experimental psychologists.

 

[fromderinside]

When I was in school the main reason people went into psychology was they had problems. Unfortunately out of that cohort most haven't really understood themselves. I'm talking about the touchy feelie segment, about 70% of all psychologists, of the other thirty percent about half are in advertising or education and a large part of the remainder are dealing with drugs, cars and airplanes. Needless to say there isn't much money in the study of atheism.

Your comments suggest you are referring to "Clinical" Psychologists" / Therapists who deal with "abnormal" or disfunctional thought and behavior.
You are right that people with their own psychological problems are drawn to this field.
However, Clincial Psychologists comprise only 50% of the people who get Ph.D.s in psychology, with the rest being "Experimental" psychologists of which the sub-disciplines are Cognitive, Social, Developmental, Biological, and Educational Psychology. They study normal everyday human learning, thought, emotion, action, and brain function.
90% of undergrads who think they are interested in psychology are interested in Clinical and therapy, but few of these make it to grad school. At the grad school and Ph.D levels there is about an even split between Clinical programs and Experimental programs. BTW, the "experimental" refers to the fact that there focus and training is upon conducting empirical experiments to test hypotheses and theories, mostly about the normal and fundamental aspects of human (and non-human for some bio-psych) psychology. This is the more scientifically grounded side of psychology (sadly many Therapists are borderline scientically illiterate). They are the people who splintered off from the Clinical dominated APA 27 years ago because it was too political, ideological and unscientific to form the APS (Association for Psychological Science). Some abnormal and disfunctional psychology is included in this, but it about conducting controlled experiments.
Most experimental psychologist are drawn to the field for the similar intellectual curiosity that people are drawn to other scientific fields. Atheism and its causes and effects would be something most effectively studied non these non-clinicial experimental psychologists.

Your description of of those in experimental psychology miss me, a person with a PhD in experimental psychology almost completely. My specializations are motivation and emotion, learning, human engineering, psychophysics, and biological (publications in memory, learning, behavior genetics, and neuronal chemical characterization). I also have publications in psychometics. I just checked and the number of divisions in APA is 56 http://www.apa.org/about/division/index.aspx

I agree that many clinical psychologists who author studies on their own in clinical psychology journals are probably not that up to it. However those who really try do so usually under the guidance of both experimental psychologists and clinical psychiatrists and these studies are usually first rate.

APS has 26 k members and APA has 137k members. I just published just a few articles in psychological journals. I published mainly in Institute of Physic journals (JASA), engineering journals and physiological society journals. Since I don't like schmoozing nor was I political I generally avoided such as regional and national meetings and politics. I'm quite sure conjoint measurement could be used in such endeavors as discriminating attributes of those who are atheists.

So we don't write that well. So what. I enjoyed your post. Obviously.

 

[ronburgundy]

Your comments suggest you are referring to "Clinical" Psychologists" / Therapists who deal with "abnormal" or disfunctional thought and behavior.
You are right that people with their own psychological problems are drawn to this field.
However, Clincial Psychologists comprise only 50% of the people who get Ph.D.s in psychology, with the rest being "Experimental" psychologists of which the sub-disciplines are Cognitive, Social, Developmental, Biological, and Educational Psychology. They study normal everyday human learning, thought, emotion, action, and brain function.
90% of undergrads who think they are interested in psychology are interested in Clinical and therapy, but few of these make it to grad school. At the grad school and Ph.D levels there is about an even split between Clinical programs and Experimental programs. BTW, the "experimental" refers to the fact that there focus and training is upon conducting empirical experiments to test hypotheses and theories, mostly about the normal and fundamental aspects of human (and non-human for some bio-psych) psychology. This is the more scientifically grounded side of psychology (sadly many Therapists are borderline scientically illiterate). They are the people who splintered off from the Clinical dominated APA 27 years ago because it was too political, ideological and unscientific to form the APS (Association for Psychological Science). Some abnormal and disfunctional psychology is included in this, but it about conducting controlled experiments.
Most experimental psychologist are drawn to the field for the similar intellectual curiosity that people are drawn to other scientific fields. Atheism and its causes and effects would be something most effectively studied non these non-clinicial experimental psychologists.

Your description of of those in experimental psychology miss me, a person with a PhD in experimental psychology almost completely. My specializations are motivation and emotion, learning, human engineering, psychophysics, and biological (publications in memory, learning, behavior genetics, and neuronal chemical characterization). I also have publications in psychometics.

How does my description miss you? All of those things you study are studied by people in the broader sub-fields of cognitive, social, and biological/neuro psych. Those along with Developments are the major -divisions of experimental psych within the vast majority of Psychology departments.

I just checked and the number of divisions in APA is 56 http://www.apa.org/about/division/index.aspx

Correct, but how many graduate Ph.D programs in Psychology do most major Universities have? About 4-6 typically corresponding to the subdivisions I mentioned. Of those 56 "divisions" there are less than 10 that correspond to any actual graduate program, and they are the broader categories corresponding closely to the one's I listed. For example, one of those "divisions' is "International Psychology". That is not an area or topic of study within psychology. Other divisions are specific to a very narrow topic for which you cannot get a doctorate, but which is just one of many things one studies within a broader sub-field, such the APA division of "Trauma Psychology" which is just a topic within Clinical Psychology, and nearly all the psychologist in the "Trauma" division of APA got their doctorate from a Clinical Psychology graduate program, as is the case for most of those 56 "divisions".

I agree that many clinical psychologists who author studies on their own in clinical psychology journals are probably not that up to it. However those who really try do so usually under the guidance of both experimental psychologists and clinical psychiatrists and these studies are usually first rate.

There are quality clinical psychology journals that publish sound research, mostly by academic clinical researchers who are not practicing therapists. The problem is that most therapists do not actually read or apply that sound science in their practice, plus the mountain of pseudo-science journals that cater to the therapy and counseling community.

APS has 26 k members and APA has 137k members.

But what do you think that means?
Nearly every clinical / therapist psychologist maintains a membership in APA, which is who controls their license to practice. In contrast, experimental psychologists do not need to be a member of any organization, and increasing specialization has meant that they tend to only become members for societies whose conference they are going to attend, and they mostly attend specialized conferences for their sub-field. APS is the most broad of the scientifically grounded psychological societies, but most experimentalists do not regularly attend (nor do they attend APA).

 

[fromderinside]

There are quality clinical psychology journals that publish sound research, mostly by academic clinical researchers who are not practicing therapists. The problem is that most therapists do not actually read or apply that sound science in their practice, plus the mountain of pseudo-science journals that cater to the therapy and counseling community.

Here is the nut. There are many articles publishing ordinal data results using methods designed for interval level data. I never published in any journal that permitted that. All my data was firmly tied to physical data for which there are standards in Paris. All my measurements included zero or a ratio between scales which have a zero. I'm very particular that way.

Sure ordinal stuff is interesting, but, if one can't find a way to tie what one is doing to some physical anchor that is scaled and includes zero its not scientific data. Its whatever and it can't be employed to generate the basis for physical theory which is what a successful psychological theory will be. Calling your stuff psychological does not include a get out of material jail free.

Its the major problem with most psychological data done by those outside the realm where there is a parent suite of material scales upon which one can relate with what one is dealing . It is not permitted for one to invent new relationships and call them scales without connecting them to sound physical bases.

In simple terms ordinal data is not suitable for building physical theory. If I want to measure psychological workload I have to relate it or effort to caloric or physiological measures that can be stated in time and magnitude. I'm sure one, with time and patience construct various mental abilities related to such as rates of oxygen uptake in very particular areas such as ventral lateral frontal cortex which is related to such as arousal, sensory and other attributes that gives one confidence one is working with a particular kind of mental attribute. Very few psychologists even try.

Now why don't psychologists study atheism. Well they do in droves. The problem is the data they consider cannot be held to controlled conditions nor addressed via material references. So Psychologists nor anyone else has ever done a scientific paper on atheism.

I am a psychologist and I learned from many who never published a scientific paper in their careers. Sure they've published at rates up to 10 to 20 papers per year, but none of it will ever be part of any scientific psychological theory. There is some psychological theory that doesn't rewind or recycle every 20 years or so. All of it includes scientific papers meeting the criteria I outlined above.

To tough? Sorry. that's the way things are.

 

[Underseer]

I don't see the point the dizzy valley girl in the video is, like, trying to make, although she seems very excited.

Atheism is specifically studied in sociological studies. Psychologists have endeavored to study belief and disbelief. In any case, Google Scholar returns many studies with the keywords atheist, atheists and disbelief. In my experience, psychologists tend not to be in general high on conservative faith, although they tend to hide it.

She mentions she received no training on how to work with atheists but instead a lot of how to work with religionists. It must be a fad in the US, because psychology has always tended to be extremely secular and most big names of it have been downright atheistic. Say, Rogers, Skinner, Perls, Ellis, Freud himself. In fact if you skim through a psychotherapy manual, the strategies seems pricisely customized for disbelievers and/or viewing things from a realistic, non-mythological point of view. Jung is a notorious exception, having thus a large following from religionists, especially those with New Age leanings.

And, now that I'm talking about traditional psychology, this situation reminds me of figure-ground phenomena. Atheism is big in psychology, but it's completely background. So much that it inspires a large amount of distrust from the more conservative clergy... and I must say, their instincts serve them well.

She mentions that most of the researchers are themselves atheist.

She also cites numbers showing that the researchers are virtually ignoring atheist issues, including the one she wants to study. Do you think her numbers are wrong? It's not as if I have any way of fact checking her claims.

 

[ronburgundy]

There are quality clinical psychology journals that publish sound research, mostly by academic clinical researchers who are not practicing therapists. The problem is that most therapists do not actually read or apply that sound science in their practice, plus the mountain of pseudo-science journals that cater to the therapy and counseling community.

Here is the nut. There are many articles publishing ordinal data results using methods designed for interval level data. I never published in any journal that permitted that. All my data was firmly tied to physical data for which there are standards in Paris. All my measurements included zero or a ratio between scales which have a zero. I'm very particular that way.

Sure ordinal stuff is interesting, but, if one can't find a way to tie what one is doing to some physical anchor that is scaled and includes zero its not scientific data. Its whatever and it can't be employed to generate the basis for physical theory which is what a successful psychological theory will be. Calling your stuff psychological does not include a get out of material jail free.

Its the major problem with most psychological data done by those outside the realm where there is a parent suite of material scales upon which one can relate with what one is dealing . It is not permitted for one to invent new relationships and call them scales without connecting them to sound physical bases.

In simple terms ordinal data is not suitable for building physical theory. If I want to measure psychological workload I have to relate it or effort to caloric or physiological measures that can be stated in time and magnitude. I'm sure one, with time and patience construct various mental abilities related to such as rates of oxygen uptake in very particular areas such as ventral lateral frontal cortex which is related to such as arousal, sensory and other attributes that gives one confidence one is working with a particular kind of mental attribute. Very few psychologists even try.

Now why don't psychologists study atheism. Well they do in droves. The problem is the data they consider cannot be held to controlled conditions nor addressed via material references. So Psychologists nor anyone else has ever done a scientific paper on atheism.

I am a psychologist and I learned from many who never published a scientific paper in their careers. Sure they've published at rates up to 10 to 20 papers per year, but none of it will ever be part of any scientific psychological theory. There is some psychological theory that doesn't rewind or recycle every 20 years or so. All of it includes scientific papers meeting the criteria I outlined above.

To tough? Sorry. that's the way things are.

What you are advancing is extremist methodological physicalism (going well beyond methodological naturalism), which itself is not a scientifically defensible position, and more akin to a dogmatic religion than an intellectually sound philosophy of science. It is a highly contested notion in philosophy of science, and to assert that it is "the way things are" is unscientifically dogmatic.

It is the same argument used by some physicist to strip scientific status from chemistry, biology, and all sciences outside of physics (and not all of physics).

In addition, scales with a true zero point, representing the total absence of something are ratio scales, not interval scales. There is nothing resembling a defensible definition of "science" that says all variables must be measured on a ratio scale. Ratio scales are only required for knowing the absolute value of something, not for observing relative variability in the state of something (and covariance among somethings), which is what 99% of science is about.
Third, there is nothing that says that science cannot measure variability in the the observable (and material) manifestations of the underlying material mechanisms, and thus serve as a model of variance and covariance, especially when the observable manifestations are what we actually care about predicting and impacting (such violent behavior, whose variance cannot currently be mapped onto variance in a specific material state). The entire reason why the concept of "operational definition" exists in science is because what and how empirical measurements are made (the operational definition) is only one manifestation of theoretical constructs of interest, and the mapping between the operational definition and the theoretical construct varies both between and within scientific disciplines.
If the events of actual interest, human behavior and subjective mental states could all be measured in terms specific material states, then the work of psychology would be over and they could all go home, because then everything else to be done would physics. Again, your argument presumes that if it isn't physics, it isn't science.

In fact, measurement of the physical brain states in neuroscience is only useful for understanding human thought and behavior because of the the kind of behavioral science you claim is unscientific, but without with no FMRI study could ever say anything about human thought and behavior beyond, gee, there is more blood flow to region X during task A than B. And task A and B would have to be describe in purely numerical terms, since your view rejects all conceptual categories as meaningless, and things only exist in terms of the quantities they represent on ratio variables.

The problematic lack of scientific foundation in much of therapeutic practice is not due to using ordinal rather than ratio scales or failing to directly measure the material system giving rise to thought and behavior. The problem is that many therapeutic practices are based in emotional/ideological preferences of practitioners and lack of any form of systematic observation and measurement and sensitivity to the constraints they impose. It isn't empirically grounded at all, whether you want to call that empirically grounding "science" or some other term.

 

[fromderinside]

Here is the nut. There are many articles publishing ordinal data results using methods designed for interval level data. I never published in any journal that permitted that. All my data was firmly tied to physical data for which there are standards in Paris. All my measurements included zero or a ratio between scales which have a zero. I'm very particular that way.

Sure ordinal stuff is interesting, but, if one can't find a way to tie what one is doing to some physical anchor that is scaled and includes zero its not scientific data. Its whatever and it can't be employed to generate the basis for physical theory which is what a successful psychological theory will be. Calling your stuff psychological does not include a get out of material jail free.

Its the major problem with most psychological data done by those outside the realm where there is a parent suite of material scales upon which one can relate with what one is dealing . It is not permitted for one to invent new relationships and call them scales without connecting them to sound physical bases.

In simple terms ordinal data is not suitable for building physical theory. If I want to measure psychological workload I have to relate it or effort to caloric or physiological measures that can be stated in time and magnitude. I'm sure one, with time and patience construct various mental abilities related to such as rates of oxygen uptake in very particular areas such as ventral lateral frontal cortex which is related to such as arousal, sensory and other attributes that gives one confidence one is working with a particular kind of mental attribute. Very few psychologists even try.

Now why don't psychologists study atheism. Well they do in droves. The problem is the data they consider cannot be held to controlled conditions nor addressed via material references. So Psychologists nor anyone else has ever done a scientific paper on atheism.

I am a psychologist and I learned from many who never published a scientific paper in their careers. Sure they've published at rates up to 10 to 20 papers per year, but none of it will ever be part of any scientific psychological theory. There is some psychological theory that doesn't rewind or recycle every 20 years or so. All of it includes scientific papers meeting the criteria I outlined above.

To tough? Sorry. that's the way things are.

What you are advancing is extremist methodological physicalism (going well beyond methodological naturalism), which itself is not a scientifically defensible position, and more akin to a dogmatic religion than an intellectually sound philosophy of science. It is a highly contested notion in philosophy of science, and to assert that it is "the way things are" is unscientifically dogmatic.

It is the same argument used by some physicist to strip scientific status from chemistry, biology, and all sciences outside of physics (and not all of physics).

In addition, scales with a true zero point, representing the total absence of something are ratio scales, not interval scales. There is nothing resembling a defensible definition of "science" that says all variables must be measured on a ratio scale. Ratio scales are only required for knowing the absolute value of something, not for observing relative variability in the state of something (and covariance among somethings), which is what 99% of science is about.
Third, there is nothing that says that science cannot measure variability in the the observable (and material) manifestations of the underlying material mechanisms, and thus serve as a model of variance and covariance, especially when the observable manifestations are what we actually care about predicting and impacting (such violent behavior, whose variance cannot currently be mapped onto variance in a specific material state). The entire reason why the concept of "operational definition" exists in science is because what and how empirical measurements are made (the operational definition) is only one manifestation of theoretical constructs of interest, and the mapping between the operational definition and the theoretical construct varies both between and within scientific disciplines.
If the events of actual interest, human behavior and subjective mental states could all be measured in terms specific material states, then the work of psychology would be over and they could all go home, because then everything else to be done would physics. Again, your argument presumes that if it isn't physics, it isn't science.

In fact, measurement of the physical brain states in neuroscience is only useful for understanding human thought and behavior because of the the kind of behavioral science you claim is unscientific, but without with no FMRI study could ever say anything about human thought and behavior beyond, gee, there is more blood flow to region X during task A than B. And task A and B would have to be describe in purely numerical terms, since your view rejects all conceptual categories as meaningless, and things only exist in terms of the quantities they represent on ratio variables.

The problematic lack of scientific foundation in much of therapeutic practice is not due to using ordinal rather than ratio scales or failing to directly measure the material system giving rise to thought and behavior. The problem is that many therapeutic practices are based in emotional/ideological preferences of practitioners and lack of any form of systematic observation and measurement and sensitivity to the constraints they impose. It isn't empirically grounded at all, whether you want to call that empirically grounding "science" or some other term.

I admit to making an unscientifically dogmatic statement at the end of my little presentation. The statement isn't the presentation. Wow, where have I heard that sort of thing before. I don't argue that ratio measure are required. What I intended to say is that neither ordinal nor correlations among ordinal statistics are really going to get us anywhere in psychology.

Still what you write needs addressing. Our disagreements are not so much about scale rather than they are about whether much psychological data which is at root an ordering devoid of connections to material measure aggregated among the other sciences is science. We could go through the range of discussions about conjoint measurement, the importance of psychological operations be referred to physical measure, or is it correct to say psychology needs its own base of measurement perhaps independent from that of other physical science.

We're probably on opposite sides of this discussion as we seem to be on whether operational analysis in the spirit of  Percy Williams Bridgman (Operationalism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/#OpeUniAnaSciPra ) is actually central to scientific method especially with respect to Psychology.

Another theme arising from your post is the notion of anti-reductionism, the idea that neurophysiological measures cannot be used as meaningful data about brain function.

Psychology, it is my firm belief, is a physical science subject to only that which is found in the physical world. It is from that perspective that I come to the belief that only when I connect psychological measures to ordinary physical measures is there hope for that psychological measure to become part of science.

I admit that at this level there is still very much to criticize of what I wrote on psychological science

I enjoyed your presentation very much since it sent me back to my roots in search of questions one should ask about measurement and psychology rather to back to my dogma.