Music as an Analogy to my "Fourth Law" of The Behavioral Genetics Fallacy

 In a previous blog post, I laid a rationale for what I referred to as the Four Laws of the Behavioral Genetics Fallacy (In contrast to the Three Laws of Behavior Genetics of Eric Turkheimer). In reference to my fourth law, I briefly used music as an analogy. I wanted to expand on that analogy, a bit here. First, here is the fourth law:

Advancements in understanding human behavior and psychology require inner exploration from the scientist, the subject or both.

This idea will probably rub a lot of traditional scientists the wrong way. Generally, it is considered unscientific and too subjective to include the observer with the observed and psychology researchers try to maintain a passive detachment from what they are studying, otherwise it would give the impression of bias. The problem with this is that it assumes that psychology can be studied in an purely objective manner, whether that be by recording observations or analyzing genetic or neurological processes, with the expectation that that would somehow give us a better understanding of psychological processes. 

It might be uncomfortable to acknowledge this,

but this approach has been almost entirely unsuccessful in elucidating any insights into human psychology or behavior, dare I say, culminating in the unsuccessful gene hunting of behavior geneticists.  I think the reason for this is quite obvious: Psychology cannot be approached as a purely physical science. Objective observations make sense for physics, chemistry, or biochemistry (although, as physicists have discovered, things are not so simple), but psychology is not about particles interacting. It is more akin to philosophy, and few would think that objective scientific methodology could be used to study philosophy.

That said, where psychology differs from philosophy is in its experiential nature. This is generally given the dismissive label of "subjective" experience and therefore is disregarded, unless it can be quantified or objectified in some way. As an analogy, two people walking through a forest might have entirely different descriptions of what they see, even if they are seeing the same forest. The "scientific" approach might be to garner only objective facts from the two observers, say, how many trees did they count? What colors predominated by percentage? What are the overall dimensions of the forest, etc. Such facts are not without purpose, but are we really getting a better understanding of the forest using this kind of objective analysis, than we would get from the observers'  "unscientific," effusive descriptions? Aren't we quite literally missing the forest for the trees?

So using another analogy to highlight the state of the field of psychology, I will compare it to music. If a person was deaf, how would they be able to make "scientific" observations about music? Well, using the same approach as experimental psychologists, they could make all kinds of observations through descriptions from subjects who listen to the music. One could garner all kinds of facts about music from this, such as the type of music, lyrical content, the beat, the emotions it evokes like sadness, heartbreak, patriotism, anger, glee, etc. One could then make predictions about music based on some machine that might graph out certain quantifiable aspects of the music and perhaps even write an entire book on the subject that perhaps was even interesting to hearing people. Nevertheless, if you gave a copy of this book to another deaf person, what more have they learned about music after reading? in one sense, they've gained a certain amount of knowledge, but in another, they still don't really even know what music is.

It might be interesting as a novelty to have such a researcher, and even informative in some ways, but generally, does anyone think this would be a better approach to understanding music or that such a researcher would be in a better position to assess and theorize about music because they have never heard it (this is all an analogy, of course, with apologies to anyone who is hearing impaired and comes across this. I invite you to comment.)? Clearly, much will be missed and we will not be able to get a complete picture of music if we are limited in this way.

In much the same way, I think that the psychology researcher's hands are tied by what is considered acceptable science. Certainly, I am not suggesting that individual researchers are completely "deaf" to their own inner psychology or that of others, but it is almost as if they have deliberately covered their ears. Psychological states, like depression, anxiety, mania and even psychosis, are not easily elucidated by examining and quantifying a person's description of them in much the same way that a description of a song doesn't capture it's emotional context.

In the late 19th and early 20th Century, psychology (or psychiatry as the case may be) diverged from neurological-related fields, with names like William James, Freud and Jung (to name a few), who through their work with patients and their own self exploration, developed dynamic theories related to the human mind and while they still might have some influence among psychotherapists, they are rarely even considered by modern researchers in the field, who seemed to have reverted back to an 1850 mindset, save better equipment for experimentation. If you cut off the head, the tail dies, however, and what I see of late is a dead tail. The psychological ideas from a century ago are far advanced from the facile, nuts and bolts genetic determinism of today and I see no chance for the field to advance unless at least a portion of its adherents hit the reset button back to about 1920 and start anew. I suspect this would require a new crop of researchers, with a different mindset than what we see currently, but I see little chance of moving forward in any creative way without it.