Well Occum's Razor is about explaining anomolies in the data, that is finding reasons behind a discordant fact. I don't think he had in mind experiements designed to prove simple propositions apriori.
As for complicating things we are talking about human beings in social interaction, simplicity is not an option, indeed the simpliest observations assume a whole social universe. Afterall there a thousands of things which may or may not be taken into account, thousands of different measure that could be applied, and a myriad of ways of picking methods with subtle influences far beyond conscious understanding - out of all this the experiementer provides what? A specific method for proving an isolated proposition which is made to appear to stand on its own feet - should I not suspect that unconsciously, at least, the whole thing is an eloborate farce?
The charge of reductionism, is not about simplicity, abstracts can and should be quite simple but also also anchored into a complete understanding (by themselves they are misleading), reductionism is a matter of reifing a concept, making it into a pretend thing, or to put it another way treat the abstraction as the real. The common reductionism involved begins with a hypothesis (not that it necessarily comes first, the usual practice is to work out an experiement and find a hypothesis which fits), it is at this point that error exists, not in expereimental procedure, not in the derived statistics but in the apriori conclusion, all the rest is mere dressing.
In this case, my objection is that the origin that self-destructive and pointless violence is within a profoundly alienated social being. Philosophy has established this rationally, precisely to deal with simplistic cause and effect notions (ie the kid is bad because he has not been spanked enough, Jonny is rude because he has not been taught manners by his parents - nostrums that contain an element of truth perhaps but are pointless and comfortable conclusions which miss the point). The philosophical understanding derives precisely from an acknowledgement of how hard it is to become conscious of consciousness, to explain human behaviour and draw useful and true conclusions when we too stand in the midst of social values and ideas. On this quasi-science turns its back and hence time and agian its conclusions run counter to reality and usually for blatantly ideological reasons.
Miles: "Researchers have conducted experiments that support this hypothesis. Appreciate the distinction between a correlational study and an experiment here!"
The point is do they understand this at all? I am arguing this is precisely what they obscure. And as I have said above it is the hypothesis which is wrong in the first place, the proof is an illusion. Have not countless experiements proved ESP and have not countless counter-experiements disproved it. In this instance what is the common thread - bad experimental procedures, well obvioulsy, but only obvious once the problems are looked for. The common thread is an issue of primary belief - ESP runs counter to many other world views, hence its experiements are subjected to critical scrutiny, this is precisely what does not happen when the prejudice is widely shared, when the social assumptions are part of our common culture.
How often have you heard that violence causes wars. Or religion. It is a common-wisdom based on a parable-like approach not to war but to personal behaviour (beware your anger from such little things grow monstorous things). Common-wisdom has its place and has its purpose, unfortunately parables are not a suitable subject for scientific proof nor are they meant to be. Wars are not caused by violence nor religious feeling, nor intolerance or anyone of a galaxy of passions, yet no war could exist without violence, usually a good dose of intolerance and sometimes religious feeling.
Only an idiot would reduce the cause of any particular war or war in general to such stupidities ("idiot" used in its Greek sense of the apolitical person), why should personal behaviour be any less complex and prone to be encapsulated into isolated cause and effects then a mass phenomenon such as war? They are not the same things but scale does not translate into complexity vs simplicity, social life is not made up of isolated Robinson Crusoes which only gets complex because there are so many of us.
We are the point where social existence and biological existence meet, we have a social universe within us, just so we can function as human beings and to this you wish to fragment human existence into a series of cause and effects, a pavlovian being conditioned by discreet stimulii. Miles it just doesn't work like this, or as the Elephant Man said "I am not an animal!".
Greg
--- Message Received --- From: Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 08:47:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: TV & violence & studies
On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, Greg Schofield wrote:
> Miles, one of the fundemental problems with psychological studies of
> this kind is its inherent reductionism. What if there is no causual
> relationship whatsoever between TV and actual violence, yet the
> correlation exists?
Researchers have conducted experiments that support this hypothesis. Appreciate the distinction between a correlational study and an experiment here!
>
> By the nature of such studies this is irresolvable, at this point you
> can only fall back on common-sense and that on any complex problem will
> be misleading. Could not the relationship assumed by the study be
> reduced to a simple and rather stupid common-wisdom - "monkey see,
> monkey do".
>
What's wrong with simplicity? A simple explanation might be useful and appropriate! Complexity is not valuable in and of itself. If a simple explanation accounts for the data, why complicate things? (O's razor).
Miles
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Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all
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