| Topic: |
Science > Philosophy |
| User: |
"Phil Roberts, Jr." |
| Date: |
03 Apr 2004 04:28:42 PM |
| Object: |
Re: What is self-esteem |
AE wrote:
Sir Frederick wrote:
Often these "self" reflexive phrases and clichés (stories) are for
purposes of promoting subtle religious experiences (such as sense of
"control", "understanding",
"meaning", "atonement", "patronization", "intelligent questioning",
etc.) in the practitioner of the story.
You are expressing a view dominant in the "scientific" literature on
the human mind. Unless, of course, pop psychology and the average
guy on the street actually have their finger on something the
supposedly scientific (I would say scientistic) community has
somehow managed to delude themself into believing isn't all that
important. We've had two major paradigms in the last 30 years or
so, cognitive psychology and evolutionary psychology. The widely
accepted bible according to cognitive "science" is Gleitman's
'Psychology' and the widely accepted bible according to
evolutionary psychology is Cosmides and Tooby's 'The Adapted
Mind'.
With regard to the former, you will find 800 pages on
everything from acquisition curves to zygotes, but not a single
reference to self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, self-worth,
self-value, etc. With regard to the latter, you will find 650
pages on everything from abduction to wife sales but, again,
not find a single reference to self-esteem, feelings
of worthlessness, self-value, self worth, etc. I don't know
whose mind these guys think they have been studying over the
past several decades but its obviously not THE HUMAN MIND, not
unless I'm some sort of alien transplant:
One of the characteristics of the majority of modern psychological
theories, aside from the arbitrariness of so many of their claims,
is their frequently ponderous _irrelevance_. The cause, both of
the irrelevance and of the arbitrariness, is the evident belief of
their exponents that one can have a science of human nature while
consistently ignoring man's most significant and distinctive attributes.
(Nathaniel Branden -The Psychology of Self-Esteem).
Discussions of scientific method have tended to stress
problems of testability, while neglecting...those
aspects of the universe which in some sense are most central
and significant for the area of reality with which the
science deals." "It has been frequently assumed that only
those events which in principle can be simultaneously observed
by multiple observers ... are to be accepted as constituting a
legitimate observational basis for science." "I am suggesting
that the more general and, to me, acceptable, objective intended
by the criterion of interobserver agreement would be...the criterion
of repeatability....a more general trust in one's own experience"
...and the abandonment of "a corresponding uncritical acceptance
of the significance of verbal reports. (Karl Zener - 'The
Signifance of Experience of the Individual for the Science
of Psychology, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science)
As far as the phrases you mentioned are concerned you are surely right,
but isn't it the most natural and logic thing to love oneself?
It certainly should be, given that mother nature is probably
highly dependent upon a full and vital valuing of one's own
existence to assure that self-interest functions will be
properly conducted. Which leads us to the 64,000 dollar
question with which I began my own attempt to understand this
bizarre phenomenon some thirty years ago after having three
nervous breakdowns, i.e.:
'Why is their a species of naturally selected organism
expending huge quantities of effort and energy on the
survivalistically bizarre non-physical objective of
maximizing self-worth?'
I have sketched my own view of what I believe is the answer
to this question, and which is precisely the sort of question
I would think any truly scientifically minded individual
should be asking themselves, at least to the extent they
thing human nature can be an appropriate domain for science
to try to understand.
A Sketch of a Divergent Theory of Emotional Instability
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/dada/90/emostab.htm
PR
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