+Pavel This depends of how you define a law. Indeed, results from most studies are prone to bias and require skills in methodology to interprete them correctly. This is not specific to psychology but is also the case in biology and biomedical research. In biology, natural laws as you seem to define them can only predict events for more than a few milliseconds. Natural laws do not work the way you postulate them to and our behaviour remains dependant of underlying genetical and social conditions that make our responses predictable. Whether you want to call these conditions laws or not is a sementic problem rather than a scientific or philosophical issue.

The other conceptual flaw from your statement is that it requires us to considering consciousness as a cognitive process that is entirely independent of other underlying unconscious cerebral process. This is not how our brain works. Consciousness is also the emergence and result of a complex selection of signals that occur in the deep brain. It cannot be restricted to frontal neural activity and metacognition.

Neural responses therefore depend of the underlying state of the brain at the moment it is exposed to a given stimulus. This is dependent of genetic factors, chemical factors, and neural plasticity that determine underlying neural networks and their predisposition to synchronize neural activity. Defining laws in psychology is defining how natural selection has predisposed us to wire these networks in a certain way. This however does not implicate we all have a perfectly identical brain that is perfectly stable through time.

Welcome to the real world in all it's complexity!

Hello Fernando,

Indeed, I say about various levels without its clear definition. My classification of levels is based on the possibility of an individual intentionally to influence some elements of consciousness through other elements of consciousness because this is important in the context of my question. If such influence is possible then I relate such elements to the cognitive level. However, changes in some elements are too rapid as compared to alters in other elements and therefore such elements cannot be influenced by interactions with its counterparts ( these elements are the neural level). Finally, changes in certain elements of consciousness are the results of changes in the organism as a whole rather than the results of interactions with other elements. This is the biological level. This classification is, of course, arbitrary.

Regarding Thorndike’s law. Certainly, according to my definition of a psychological law this not a law because there are certain things that some people consider as positive other people consider as negative, etc.

P.P.

You seem to be defining the situation in a way that guarantees your expectation that there are no laws.

There is no such thing that "all people" do. People are in comas, people are infants, people are born missing parts of their brains, people are paralyzed from the neck down, people are only alive because artificial devices keep them breathing or keep their blood flowing, and so on.

So if your premise is that a law in cognitive science must be both under potential conscious control and something that all people do, then no, there are no such laws because there are millions of people who would not be considered to have voluntary conscious behavior, or would have it limited to varying degrees.

And that includes all of us. We have different levels of consciousness at different times. Across the lifespan and within a single second.

Then there's "potentially under conscious influence". What does that mean? If there's one person who can consciously influence something, does that mean it's within your classification? How many people? Where? What kinds of experience?

Consciousness is not a yes or no categorization. And if you consider other sciences and their laws, there is nothing that really is a yes or no categorization.

Is a photon a particle that can be located in space? Yes or no, depending on who is looking at it and when.

Can information travel faster than the speed of light? We don't know. Experimental observations have made us realize we don't have an understanding of what "information" means. Or "travel".

What does it mean to be "alive"? Are viruses alive? What about really big ones? Should the really big ones be considered viruses?

If most of the living cells and genetic matter within a human body are not human, then what exactly is a human? Especially if the human will die without the non-human cells and genetic matter being present within certain amounts?

You need to provide a better definition of "people" and "conscious" to even approach the question of laws of cognitive science. And you should expect that many people will not agree with your premise that anything not potentially subject to conscious control is not part of cognition. Most people who study cognitive science consider most of the subject matter to he generally not under conscious control. The study of language has been at the core of psychology since before the term psychology was coined. You might decide that automatic linguistic processes are not "cognitive" but virtually no one will agree with you.

As you say, your classification is arbitrary. So what's to prevent anyone from considering that a law of cognitive science has the property such that if the person has awareness of the process and can affect it as a consequence of awareness, then we are outside the boundaries of the proposed law of cognitive science?

Increasing should RG score can this only be a goal of the in debates but not be participation the goal own. The words in a sentence can be rearranged because the use of language is under conscious control.

aaaaaaaaaabccccdddddddeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeffgggghhhhiiilllmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnoooooopprrrrrrrrrrrrrssssttttttttuuwyy.

but if you think that's all it takes to prove that all forms of language use are under conscious control then you have a very limited understanding of language comprehension and production.

basically, you've made many assumptions and failed to define key terms, and what you have presented is contrary to a mountain of research.

then you claim that your system is arbitrary and lacks clear definition but argue with people who don't agree with your arbitrary system and attempt to provide some information that could lead to useful definitions.

what i'm getting here is that you've posted a rhetorical question, because you aren't going to agree with anything that doesn't reinforce your initial claims.

but if you are genuinely interested in the extent to which various aspects of language use are or are not under conscious control, there are many books and review articles that would be helpful to take a look at.

and i don't particularly care what my, yours, or anyone else's RG score is.

Are there real laws in science?

Certainly not. There is nothing like precise, real laws in science at all. Laws are always ideal and can concern abstract models only. In reality ideal objects don't exist.

In real world we can observe some irregularities. These irregularities are repetitive (mercifully). Therefore, they are regularities rather. We can describe these regularities with certain accuracy in the language of approximate models. We like to call this procedure the science.

Because the brain is definitely not an ideal object, than ideal, precise model of the brain is also not possible. Otherwise, we know that conscious process, thinking and understanding, base on calculation of similarity function (read here: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_understanding_Which_neural_process_is_responsible_for_understanding ). We can calculate the value of similarity with limited precision, therefore precise results, rules or laws are impossible.

The laws of nature are, of course, approximations to the infinite complex world. However, there is a difference between such laws in natural sciences and psychology. For example, it is known that planets gravitate to each other and cats give birth to kittens. It is hardly possible to present the absolutely unequivocal definition for a planet, a cat, or a kitten however it is clear that these processes occur regardless of our awareness of its mechanisms. On the other hand, if an individual is aware of the causes of her actions, she is able not to perform these actions.

Psychologists seem not to attempt to explain phenomena in physics perhaps because they understand that physics is a very complex domain and special education and training are necessary to be successful in physics. On the other hand , some physicists try to explain mental processes possibly because mental processes are very available for observation. However, the availability of mental phenomena does not mean its simplicity.

Hello Fernando

I have been just shocked by your words that "it (reading) became automatic and no longer is under our explicit control." Do these words mean that you are the only individual in the world who is reading something around the clock only pausing to sleep ? However, I’m inclined to think that such assumption is wrong. Like other people, you are able intentionally to start and stop reading a text. I consider you are also able to switch your attention from the display to your inner thoughts and in this case the words on the display may become meaningless patterns of pixels for you. You may answer that reading a text is, perhaps, under conscious control, however, reading a word is always automatic but I think that t h I s I s NO t t He c As E.

My position is that reading is under explicit control however for a skilled reader the awareness of the ongoing process of reading depends on the role of reading in the current goals of an individual. For instance, if the goal of an individual is to extract information from a text then reading this text is a subordinate goal. As a result, she is aware of the meaning of the text but she is not consciously aware of the process of reading the text. However, if the goal of an individual is, for example, to count the number of letters in a text then she is able to control the reading of each letter.

Some examples of cognitive science laws or effects that are satisfied no matter if you are aware of them: Gestalt laws, law of effect, Stroop effect, Simon effect.

Hi Marcos,

The functioning of the heart is one of the most automatic processes in the organism. However, some people are able to control heart rate. Why are you so sure that the phenomena described in your answer “are satisfied no matter if you are aware of them:”

Hi, Fernando,

I did not understand the connection between my words and your counterexample. I did not tell that we consciously control all actions. Everyday we perform a lot of things automatically because practically any action is a multilevel process. We are able consciously to control one of these levels and the other levels are performed routinely. For example, in order to write a text you should adjust your body to the display and the keyboard and maintain this state for a while. I suspect you usually don't think how to do this because your brain automatically activates appropriate schemes.

In the Stroop task the brain activates an inappropriate scheme. The activation of inappropriate schemes is a very standard situation. For example, every person who attempts to master yet another gadget, yet another car, etc faces this situation because such systems usually have similar but slightly different controls. As a result, to perform an action an individual automatically presses a key because this key was associated with the action in the old device although in the new device the key has another function. However, people are able effectively to correct their habits.

Regarding the prediction of behavior. Psychology is a remarkable discipline because in virtually any subfield of the discipline there are several incompatible models which, nevertheless, may coexist for decades. All such models are based on the proposition that in a certain situation all people should do similar things. In other words, each model suggests a “law”. The fact of the coexistence of these models probably favors the idea that there are no laws in cognitive science. :-)

Andrew, I appreciate your wish to respond to the question. However, it is very difficult to decipher your answer. For example you wrote “researchers could propose fundamental questions that operate as axioms”. An axiom is an obvious, taken for granted truth and therefore a question cannot be an axiom.

The answer to your question is that there are general principles for cognition.

I have described in this book. But, sorry, it is in Italian.

https://www.academia.edu/6783625

For a translation, I will need a few months.

My question is about the relation between the control function of the mind and other mental processes. Therefore if your "general principles for cognition" do not explain directly this relation then the answer "some general principles underlie the functioning of the mind" is correct but trivial.

I think you could start the promotion of your book among non-Italian readers by making an English précis. Practically all fundamental theories are based on a few main ideas. These ideas can be presented in several pages therefore the précis of your book can be sufficient to evaluate the novelty and validity of your approach.

As soon as a system becomes complex, the expression of the laws of nature are modulated by parallel phenomenons causing noise. The idea of science is to control the "cause" we are looking at and have all other phenomenon equally distributed between experimental and control groups. This random gaussian noise can then be modeled statistically and we can see if the controlled phenomenon leads to differences of distribution of this noise. In consequence, we are not looking for a constant response anymore, but a shift of the distribution of responses. The reproducibility of the phenomenon can be evaluated by running a new set of observations and observing a similar shift again. When running an entire set of experiences, the overall responses must be consistent with the gaussian distribution of unequal random noise distribution between both groups due to chance alone. This is why we need statistics and inference in biology and even more in psychology.

The higher you go up in complexity (e.i. mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, ecology), the more difficult it is to control and detect true effects and infer underlying laws.

Kistler provided a very good underlying philosophical grounding to understand causality at different levels called interlevel causation (1).

Kistler M: Mechanisms and downward causation. Philos Psychol 2009, 22(5):595-609.

Paul,

IMHO, there is no connection between your explanation “why we need statistics and inference in biology and even more in psychology” and the problem under discussion. Kistler’s article itself is interesting however the article does not deal with the problem.

P.S. In the context of your commentary it’s wrong to integrate mathematics with physics and chemistry. Unlike physics or biology, mathematics is not an experimental science.

+Pavel My post provides the missing link on why causality cannot be observed in psychology as it can be observed in physics. Given you cannot control all the factors in place, you need to infer the laws at a population level using a paradigm in which you control the factor of interest. Furthermore, if we define laws and causality as you do, indeed, mathematic does not have laws. However, by stating that laws are defined by observation alone, we have an entomological problem. Observations only reveal and prove the existence of an underlying law but they are not the law itself. Mathematic laws on the other hand are entomotologicaly solid and therefore serve as the basis of all sciences.

It is possible to derive from your posts you suggest that in psychology there is something like statistical laws. Your approach can be probably described as follows: let us consider some psychological regularity. Yes, such regularity can be affected consciously however we have demonstrated statistically that the actions of practically all people in the population meet this regularity. As a result, we can neglect the possible violations of the regularity at the level of one individual and consider the regularity as a "law".

The problem for such approach is that if even one individual starts violating a statistical law other people can follow him/her. This is an absolutely standard situation underlying the emergence of novel traditions, skills, habits, etc, etc. As a result, a statistical law can disappear at all. Thus, statistical laws are not causally "solid" and cannot be considered as real laws.

+Pavel This depends of how you define a law. Indeed, results from most studies are prone to bias and require skills in methodology to interprete them correctly. This is not specific to psychology but is also the case in biology and biomedical research. In biology, natural laws as you seem to define them can only predict events for more than a few milliseconds. Natural laws do not work the way you postulate them to and our behaviour remains dependant of underlying genetical and social conditions that make our responses predictable. Whether you want to call these conditions laws or not is a sementic problem rather than a scientific or philosophical issue.

The other conceptual flaw from your statement is that it requires us to considering consciousness as a cognitive process that is entirely independent of other underlying unconscious cerebral process. This is not how our brain works. Consciousness is also the emergence and result of a complex selection of signals that occur in the deep brain. It cannot be restricted to frontal neural activity and metacognition.

Neural responses therefore depend of the underlying state of the brain at the moment it is exposed to a given stimulus. This is dependent of genetic factors, chemical factors, and neural plasticity that determine underlying neural networks and their predisposition to synchronize neural activity. Defining laws in psychology is defining how natural selection has predisposed us to wire these networks in a certain way. This however does not implicate we all have a perfectly identical brain that is perfectly stable through time.

Welcome to the real world in all it's complexity!

Hi Pavel

Following your suggestion,  I wrote this, but I'm not very happy with the result. 

It is only a translation of the first part of the first chapter.

The problem is that I can not write English well enough ...

https://www.academia.edu/7502438

Hi Devis

Thank you for the information on your text. As I understand it you expect from me a commentary on your work. Because there is only " the first part of the first chapter" should I comment on this ? Or my commentary on the entire work would be more adequate?

Pavel thank you, but do not worry.

This article is still too preliminary because I can ask for a review.

I submitted the entire work to the Italian community for a first scientific evaluation.

However, I'm going to translate the whole work. Unfortunately my limited skills with the English language will cause delays.

My intent with this article is only to propose some initial ideas for those interested in the subject.

However, any questions are welcome.

Devis

Pavel,

With all due respect, your questions do not make any sense to me. Let me comment on that.

"Therefore, such processes [Weber-Fechner law or the changes associated with maturation and ageing] can be related to the neural and biological rather than cognitive level of the functioning of the organism." What exactly do you mean by this? Where do you draw the line that separates "cognitive level of the functioning of the organism" and "neural and biological functioning of the organism"? Furthermore,

"Are there cognitive mechanisms which are potentially under conscious influence but cannot be affected deliberately?" does not make much sense either to me, since if something is "potentially under conscious influence" it is necessarily deliberately affected. I suggest you read

Searle, J. R. (1990). Consciousness, explanatory inversion and cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (1):585-642.

Please let me know if I have missed something or misinterpreted your questions.

Cheers,

SCM