[lbo-talk] Philip Mirowski - Social Physicist

Vincent Clarke pclarkepvincent at gmail.com
Fri Mar 5 10:52:35 PST 2010



>
> DSM certtainly has its limitations, but this is bullshit. You mean, I
> take it, that we should ignore Einstein and go back to reading
> pre-Newtonian pysices.
>
>
So you think the DSM is more advanced than phenomenological analysis? You think that arbitrary nosology is superior to open-ended interpretive schemas? You think that a system the inventor of which has publicly questioned its validity, which is put to use by amateur doctors and idiot social workers, is superior to the work of men highly trained in philosophical and psychological analysis?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, I guess. The problem is that not everyone's opinion is very well founded - some people just sort of form opinions based on whatever they come into contact with...

No, something tells me you haven't really thought through any of this in any detail and you just sort of heard somewhere that psychology used to be "oppressive" but then the lefties saved the day and "liberated" the patients (even though it was often neo-liberal policy which "liberated" these patients) - now we have a soft psychology which is democratic and doesn't rely on the value judgements of psychiatrists. Or perhaps you heard that the new DSM employs "scientific" and "empirically tested" methods of diagnosis.

Well, that's all myth, my friend. And trying to compare this to physics only shows how little you know about psychological epistemology - actually, it also shows that you haven't been paying attention to me talking about the difference between the social sciences and the hard sciences for, I don't know, two days now...



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