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The Edifice of Pinkerism
in response to reader comment: About this McCarthy-ism...

Submitted by Andrew McCarthy MD, Sep 16, 2007 04:32

You are right in one aspect in that I did not clarify my thoughts in a more detailed way. Dr. Drury in his treatise goes over this much better than I can. He spends most of the treatise going over why psychology must come to grips with the inexplicable. Dr Drury did not say that there is no science in psychology of any type. But he and Wittgenstein and many others including the famed Edith Hamilton defend quite vigorously why there are other methods of learning beyond simply a complete and absolute scientific approach. And we all know this in our day to day living. No mother just treats her child in a rational way unless you think caring and kindness are entirely a rational exercise to which I could never agree with. And anyone who treats patients finds out in a hurry that very little can be treated with just a purely scientific method.

You never come upon the same exact situation with the same exact patient and thus the practice of medicine or any type of healing art will never simply be a pure exercise in rationality. It is why medicine has been called an Art and a Science for eons. It has never had just the scientific approach as its only method of practice nor as its primary reason to be. As a neurologist I come up against the same emptiness that psychologists do. Even when I think I can concretely measure everything or define every variable I still can never know what it is like to be that patient in that situation. But how we want to call our fields entirely rational instead of simply being humbled by our inability to understand everything by some mechanistic process. And it is this humility that allows for empathy with humans under duress. And it is my opinion that we do ourselves and our patients a diservice when we think we can know what is going on entirely within their thoughts even if we have done every test imaginable. We just can't rationally define away their personhood as easily as we think we can. There are things that are always immeasurable in medicine and in science.

Take for example a young man who gets in an accident. We give him a Glasgow Coma Rating. We see his MRI. We give him a neurological exam. And we examine him with psychological methods when we he begins to come to. And we have a very rational as well as a very helpful method to treat this patient. Yet I still can never know much less control all the circumstances in that patient and in that situation. I cannot be the patient nor really know his situation or inner thoughts. Thus I cannot entirely know what he is going through. It is why we call medicine the practice of medicine in that it is always a humbling experience. This is what Keegan goes over in his book on WW I and why I use the comparison. Our rational plans whether in war or in a hospital are always going to have chaotic moments. And those moments are not just some kind of irrational behavior. It is human behavior and in some ways it will never be a measurable rational exercise.

It is this practice of medicine that makes me throw out all those who try to tell me that everything I do can be knowable, testable and verifiable. And it is why I think that the idea of a philosophical breakthrough via psychology or neurology is a dangerous thought to all of us. You all can decide on your own whether you believe in things that are immeasurable. I do believe in these things for I see them every day. I studied pi in school. It too is immeasurable and will always be thus. I learned the Heisenberg Principle where the idea of mass itself has uncertainty to it. Even every single solitary scientific experiment has elements that are immeasurable. What is always immeasurable is the instrument that does the examining. And the final instrument that does the perceiving is the human being. And that is something we will never figure out because it cannot be measured. And that is forever and ever under our current rational circumstances. It is just how it is and it is a very humbling thing. I have never ever had anyone on their death bed discuss their life in a purely rational way. Comme il faut...

So things do come down to a choice. Do you ignore everything

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Other reader comments on this article

Comment	By	Date
It has been about one year since we had our discussion on the 'mind'. And I suspect that Dr Y... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy	Sep 28, 2008 08:15
This is where 'facts' are really nonsense in disguise. If one has a hypothesis that cannot be proved or disproved... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy	Nov 12, 2007 06:42
The confusion of any philosophical science that has no heart What I find so alarming is that our most learned, our... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy MD	Sep 27, 2007 03:21
Pinker's postulations still resonates with the 'soft innatism' and "cast of basic concepts" of a Longinian (Longinus) prefiguration of thought.... [MORE]	obrian worrell	Sep 24, 2007 16:25
Latin is figurative speech, right? Well just look up any word of Latin or Greek origin and you will get... [MORE]	Jean-Philippe De Lasalle	Sep 19, 2007 21:07
I think what has me so dismayed by rational science in regards to human beings, as we want to practice... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy MD	Sep 19, 2007 05:38
We have heard of Evolution as "survival of the fittest," but I understand that studies of chaos and emergence give... [MORE]	John House	Sep 21, 2007 00:08
Pinker's verbal brilliance has been obscured by his inadequate theory and frequent misrepresentation of facts. I demonstrated this in an article... [MORE]	Bruce I. Kodish	Sep 18, 2007 12:59
adding "ism's" to authors (darwinism's, dawkinism's, pinkerism's) is lazy, sloppy and silly, please refrain. these authors have stated empirically verifiable... [MORE]	michael farr	Sep 14, 2007 19:49
I very much doubt that steven Pinker is the cognitive sicentist of our time. first and foremost he is a... [MORE]	charles leighton	Sep 14, 2007 06:18
I once attended a public lecture by Steven Pinker at my university. The event was so popular that I had... [MORE]	W. Dean	Sep 13, 2007 20:29
--- "But has any serious thinker actually held this form of innatism? No; it's at best a heuristic for actual... [MORE]	p. bourges-waldegg	Sep 16, 2007 02:56
Pinker's "sensitivity to subtle semantic distinctions" echoes Anatole France's maxim that "truth lies in the nuances." Basically, this is the... [MORE]	William Hoffman, Ph.D.	Sep 13, 2007 15:39
I haven't read the book, but from what examples are given here of the "cast of basic concepts," it seems... [MORE]	Marc Andre Belanger	Sep 13, 2007 10:27
I apologize for saying cognitive psychology has no merit. I don't mean that. But it does have issues that those... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy MD	Sep 13, 2007 07:34
A very gracious apology Dr McCarthy as well as several valid points that clarify your position. I agree completely with... [MORE]	Laurie	Sep 13, 2007 17:58
John Locke is an eighteenth-century philosopher by only a hair's breadth. Locke died in 1704; his most important works appeared... [MORE]	R. Franklin Carter	Sep 12, 2007 20:00
Logrolling much? But yeah, Pinker is probably more or less on the same level as Roughgarden, though maybe a little... [MORE]	Martin Browning	Sep 12, 2007 15:53
Pinker making diffenence between mind and brain, really speaking all our thinking ,feeling, sensation, language born from brain. We know... [MORE]	Ramesh Raghuvanshi	Sep 12, 2007 11:32
It may sound impressive to detail a fundamental relationship with language and mind but first one must determine what is... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy MD	Sep 12, 2007 06:48
A bit difficult to make out what Dr. McCarthy is going on about...over 500 words to express what seems to... [MORE]	Kyle	Sep 12, 2007 12:03
"Man is not measurable in words or in numbers and that is where the whole idea of cognitve psychology fails.... [MORE]	Laurie	Sep 12, 2007 18:47
Sorry, couldn't help it. First there's this comment, Dr. McCarthy:The problem is psychology is not a true science. It is not... [MORE]	Psychologist Y, PhD	Sep 14, 2007 22:01
I went to a university where psychology was in the school of Arts and Letters. I majored in psychology as... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy MD	Sep 15, 2007 07:22
You are right in one aspect in that I did not clarify my thoughts in a more detailed way. Dr....	Andrew McCarthy MD	Sep 16, 2007 04:32
First, don't take the McCarthyism thing too seriously - it was just a play on "Pinkerism" via a reference to... [MORE]	Psychologist Y, PhD	Sep 16, 2007 22:35
Dear Dr Y, I think you agree with me at one level yet do not realize it. You believe that science... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy MD	Sep 17, 2007 18:27
Perhaps we're just talking about different things here. First, I am not a clinical psychologist. Like Pinker, I am an... [MORE]	Psychologist Y, PhD	Sep 18, 2007 09:37
I understand that you are in experimental evolutionary psychology. And I understand that you believe that cognition, whatever on this... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy MD	Sep 18, 2007 18:25
This is why I say that what you will try to do 'scientifically' in regards to the self is never... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy MD	Sep 20, 2007 04:01
Well I've given the whole idea of the relation between the mind and reality some thought and this is part... [MORE]	Jean-Philippe de Lasalle	Sep 23, 2007 09:15
Remember to keep categories/fields straight and don't forget fundamentals. Mathematics is much more than idea. It gives one a sense... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy MD	Sep 30, 2007 22:58
I know what I have said here is a bit upsetting to psychologists/ neurologists, to physicists, to mathematicians, to biologists,... [MORE]	Andrew McCarthy MD	Oct 7, 2007 06:34
The reason Pinker is difficult to refute is because his ideas and evidence are those of a chameleon. He... [MORE]	esya	Nov 6, 2007 15:42
Jerry Fodor is a philosopher.Yiddish is inherently funny.Etc. [MORE]	Fitz	Sep 12, 2007 06:41

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Reader comment on:
The Edifice of Pinkerism
in response to reader comment: About this McCarthy-ism...