On Sat, 19 Feb 2005, Miles Jackson wrote:
>
> As the resident psychologist on the list (anybody else?), I completely
> agree with the idea that we should study human motivation. In
> addition, sociologists like Mills have done some interesting work on
> the social "vocabulary of motives" (what passes for a reasonable
> motive for specific behavior in a society?).
>
> The problem here is when people replace reasoned argument for or
> against a claim with imputations about the speaker's motives. In my
> view, this is a social problem (I'm serious): if somebody claims X, a
> very common response in our society is "X can't be true, because the
> speaker has motive Z". This is-- put bluntly--illogical reasoning,
> because the motive of the speaker cannot validate nor undermine the
> claim.
>
> Perhaps I'm sensitized to this because I hear it a lot in my courses:
> if an eyewitness is confident that he accurately remembers the details
> of a crime, and he is not motivated by hatred or racial prejudice,
> then, students typically assume, when can trust his testimony. This
> tends to happen even after we spend a week in class going over
> research that illustrates how easily memory is reconstructed, revised
> and unintentionally fabricated!
>
> In short: research on motives is a valid scientific research topic,
> but imputing motives to evaluate a claim is a waste of time.
>
> Miles ___________________________________
>