If you’d deferred to the leading authorities over the past 100 years, you would have been an introspectionist, then a behaviourist, then a cognitive scientist and now you’d probably be a cognitive neuroscientist.
I think you are right, but is it so bad? If I were living at the time of the introspectionists, was there a better alternative for me? I suspect that unless I personally worked out some other theory (unlikely), I’d have to either take that one or something equally bad. Maybe it’s slightly different around boundaries of these paradigm shifts where I could possibly adopt the new ideas before the mainstream did, but most of the time it wouldn’t happen. I am far from being confident that I’d do a better job personally then the general consensus, even if that tends to be very conservative.
If I were living at the time of the introspectionists, was there a better alternative for me? I suspect that unless I personally worked out some other theory (unlikely), I’d have to either take that one or something equally bad.
Once, for a Wittgenstein course, I read through the entirety of William James’s 1890 Principles of Psychology. It was of course absurdly outdated, but I learned a lot from it. One of the things was surprise at how much time James felt he had to spend in the book attacking theories involving souls.
So yes, you could do much worse than being an introspectionist.
I’m not sure about introspectionism, but I’m sure you could find theories that have produced bad outcomes and had mainstream acceptance, particularly in medicine. I suppose the alternative is to remain noncommittal.
That’s very useful, actually. I think I have a tendency to just accept the latest medical theory/practice as being the best guess that the most qualified people made with the current state of evidence. Which may be really suboptimal if they don’t have a lot of evidence for it, and perhaps it should be independently examined if it concerns you personally. I am not sure what degree of belief to assign such things, though, because I have no experience with them.
Do you, or anyone, have an idea of how trustworthy such things generally are, in the modern age? Are there statistics about how often mainstream approaches are later proven to be harmful (and how often merely suboptimal)?
I think you are right, but is it so bad? If I were living at the time of the introspectionists, was there a better alternative for me? I suspect that unless I personally worked out some other theory (unlikely), I’d have to either take that one or something equally bad. Maybe it’s slightly different around boundaries of these paradigm shifts where I could possibly adopt the new ideas before the mainstream did, but most of the time it wouldn’t happen. I am far from being confident that I’d do a better job personally then the general consensus, even if that tends to be very conservative.
Once, for a Wittgenstein course, I read through the entirety of William James’s 1890 Principles of Psychology. It was of course absurdly outdated, but I learned a lot from it. One of the things was surprise at how much time James felt he had to spend in the book attacking theories involving souls.
So yes, you could do much worse than being an introspectionist.
I’m not sure about introspectionism, but I’m sure you could find theories that have produced bad outcomes and had mainstream acceptance, particularly in medicine. I suppose the alternative is to remain noncommittal.
That’s very useful, actually. I think I have a tendency to just accept the latest medical theory/practice as being the best guess that the most qualified people made with the current state of evidence. Which may be really suboptimal if they don’t have a lot of evidence for it, and perhaps it should be independently examined if it concerns you personally. I am not sure what degree of belief to assign such things, though, because I have no experience with them.
Do you, or anyone, have an idea of how trustworthy such things generally are, in the modern age? Are there statistics about how often mainstream approaches are later proven to be harmful (and how often merely suboptimal)?