15 December 2013 23 2K Report

The goal of any science is to establish natural laws. A natural law can be defined as follows: if certain conditions are present a particular phenomenon always occurs. Following this defimition, a law in psychology (cognitive science) obviously can be formulated so: under certain circumstances all people always do one thing (the term “do one thing” includes not only behavior but also cognition). However, if an individual is aware of such a law, he/she is able not do this. Hence, there are no laws in psychology. One may argue that there are certain laws in psychology such as the Weber-Fechner law or the changes associated with maturation and ageing. However, these examples describe processes which are beyond conscious influence. Therefore, such processes can be related to the neural and biological rather than cognitive level of the functioning of the organism. Are there cognitive mechanisms which are potentially under conscious influence but cannot be affected deliberately?

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