I thought I'd add to my blog thing (post?) on the subject of procrastination rather than adding another blog thing (post?)...
Okay, so I'm STILL procrastinating, though have been able to do a little more. I thought up a strategy... have a good old whinge here about it. go to bed, get up early, and go for a walk, and study from then until 4pm when I have a friend visiting. I've told him if I haven't done that I'm not allowed to answer the door, LOL. So if I don't do my work tomorrow, he'll turn up to be ignored. That should make me do it. And I haven't been out of my room for days aso I feel rather cut off from society right now. Getting out in the morning will help.
I feel better having made a plan, at least.
Now for the whinge... it's an assignment on the philosophy of psychology as a science. Though every fellow student complains about it, I actually enjoy philosophy. But for some reason, this assignment is just not wanting to be done. I thought writing about something I like would help. Turns out I only like talking about my view and I can't be bothered to write about what someone else thinks LOL. The assignment actually specifies I take a stance so that's good. It's just well, all the different theorists have a really long way of explaining their view.
Is psychology a science? Well, it depends on what your definitions are and what approach. For me, Psychoanalytic? No. Neuro or clinical? Yes. The philosophy problem between theorists is definition. Define something differently, and the answer is different. So really... it depends what a person defines science as on whether they think psychology or a particular approach operates scientifically, or produces scientific outcomes.
But science is a term given from society, and so a significant proportion of the norm should think similiarly. So the answer to if psychology is a science, is: whatever a significant of proporition of people think similarly.
What seems to have happened in psychology is that a few approaches have gained similarly equal proportions of support. Some a little more than others, but generally there is a lot of support for approaches that appear in textbooks and medical use. Eventually, a new approach that answers the problems the older approaches had (in terms of definitive criticisms), will come in and be the biggest influence defining psychology as psychology, and also psychology as a science or not. Then maybe, or maybe not, someone will eventually pop up and blow the whole thing out of the water...
So for me, the bigger question that needs fully answering is about the philosophy of science. When people can make their minds up and define science with unanimous agreement, we can answer if psychology is a science in unanimous agreement too.
The book I have to read basically says this anyway, from what I can tell. Except it has every theorist who argues their veiw, making it a lot longer than what I wrote above. About 300 pages longer in fact. Maybe I could just submite what I wrote above... I mean it answers the question.
Well... I could submit just what I written above... but that would get me a fail probably because I'm not writing in a scientific manner by including references and theories... and as I'm doing a Bachelor of Science in psychology they probably want me to do that.
Okay. I can do this.