> This led me to Betty Edward's Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain, a book whose title profoundly upsets me as someone that left psychology due to the field's horrendous epistemology.
I was hoping that the author revisited this at the end of the piece. We see this line of thinking on HN all the time. Perhaps judging an entire field solely on epistemic grounds is a form of all or nothing thinking?
I'm the author. I've been meaning to write something about this, but for context, I was a very strong psychology student, completed my degree, learned most of my early computer science/statistics from a clinical neuropsychologist, and can get a clinical license in about two years if I want to do that. I'm like, still deeply into psychology in many ways.
But the epistemology of the median practitioner and academic is ridiculously low. I'm now convinced that they're not actually that worse than other fields though, it's just that clinicians lead a feedback mechanism as obvious as an exception being raised so they never improve to some baseline floor.
Paul Meehl's influenced me deeply on this topic, as did Gregory Francis' critique of Paul Piff's (great name) terribly conducted yet ultra successful work.
Well, there's a couple of things going on, right? One is whether we it's a bad idea to judge an entire mass of literature because of its epistemology and the second is whether the OP's claim that psychology has horrendous epistemology is valid.
I'd say that judging an entire mass of literature because of its epistemology makes logical sense. However, in practice, it's not possible to make a judgment as to 'what the epistemology of an entire field is'. What would that even mean? Does OP think that every psychologist has an analogous enough epistemology that anyone can claim what the field's epistemology is? I think not.
Well that's a thorny question, now isn't it? I mean, if it was so clear what 'epistemologies' exist in any field, then there would be little need or interest in the study of philosophy and history of science, no? If it was clear, then I think one would simply state what the epistemology of the field is.
That philosophy and history of science are so successful seems to suggest that the way of the scientist is both multifarious and difficult to pin down. I'm skeptical about using either the conscious report of the practitioner of psychology or the labels we may ascribe to their behaviors to triangulate on what their epistemology could be.
Aren't positivism, anti-postitivism, post-positivism, experientialism, and critical realism among others we can rubric psychology or psychological thinkers or results against?
Well, my understanding is that we have not yet found any clear scientific method that will be consistently 'the one' to choose at any time. There are a few criteria that generally stand out, but a general method--no. And if there's no general method, then how can there be a general epistemology?
I mean, psychology isn't actually paradigmatic yet, is it? I don't think there actually is a general method throughout the field beyond surveys and null hypothesis significance testing--but those are too broad to be particularly symbolic of psychology imo.
In that sense, I'm not sure what value the list of perspectives you provided have i.r.t to what scientists actually do in practice and what kind of practice is successful.
Epistemology is beyond the realm of science. All I desire is for folks to be transparent and have some consistency surrounding the epistemological basis for their agreement or disagreement with particular facts.
Instead what I see, often here, is that folks switch epistemic frameworks in order to prove or rationalize their beliefs. RCT becomes the threshold for knowledge when we're discussing psychology and sociology and trust experts or "science" or vaguely "logic" becomes the basis when talking about "hard" sciences. They typically reinforce the writers preconceived validity of the topic rather than acting as the foundations of belief, and I hope we can agree that's the opposite of how it is supposed to work.
I was hoping that the author revisited this at the end of the piece. We see this line of thinking on HN all the time. Perhaps judging an entire field solely on epistemic grounds is a form of all or nothing thinking?