Hey guys, I know this is kind of a hard subject to teach (escpecially online) but I REALLY want to learn some psychology and physics. I took a class for psych in college but they kicked me out for missing too many classes (although I passed them all). Physics has always been an interesting thing to me, and honestly either one would be awesome to learn! PLEASE someone start a psych/physics class! (also if anyone knows of an online college/university I can go to to pay and learn this stuff to get a degree, lemme know!)
You'd be better off going to the library and getting a book you can hold in your hand. Both subjects are far too deep to explore in this kind of format. Here's some websites that can help you out: http://www.physorg.com/ http://www.physics.org/ http://vlib.org/Physics http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/index.pl http://www.psychology.org/ http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/psych/PsyWeb.html My own spiritual path actually started out as an interest in physics. (Unified field theory) My spiritual path, yoga, has given me great understanding of how the human mind works. The result was metaphysics. x
I'm an online psychologist, ask me anything. I was into physics but the lecturer was a nazi, so I decided to do psychology and philosophy instead. So you can ask me about physics too, but my physics is not as far developed as my psychology. But its good enough to write software about gravity (see my other thread in this forum).
i agree, its too indepth to disperse that amount of info on a forum. but it'd be good if someone would do that!!
Just a word of advice for anyone wishing to begin learning psychology: There are two main perspectives from which psychology is approached and knowing which perspective you are studying is important. The approach that most psychologists adhere to is the Standard Social Science Model or SSSM. The fundamental tenets of this approach are as follows: 1) People are born as blank slates with no prior knowledge of the world. 2) There are no biological limits to behavior and as a result behavior is infinitely malleable. 3) Learning occurs through socialization and indoctrination. 4) Culture is an autonomous force. 5) Learning processes are general, not specific, meaning that the processes that underlie mate selection, for example, are the same processes that underlie food selection. The opposing view, and the one to which I personally adhere, is the evolutionary perspective. Evolutionary psychologists reject all of the tenets of the SSSM. It is the belief of evolutionary psychologists that the human brain is composed of innate mental modules which were shaped by the process of natural selection to interpret domain specific information and to generate environmentally appropriate responses during our species evolutionary past. When you are learning the introductory aspects of psychology these distinctions are not so important, but as you progress into the overarching theories underlying psychology it will be necessary to understand what adherents of each approach are saying.
Well, It's not precisely that clear cut. Most of each recognize that the other has some affect. No one can hear about advances in neuropathy and not realize that brain structure and chemistry play a role in psychological make up. And most evo psych folks know that traits require a mix of genes and environment to express. Also, SSSM isn't exactly the base model anymore. Most low-level psych books lean pretty heavily toward the brain=chemical computer model. Some folks may use one or the other model at a particular point in time, or believe in an absolutist version of one or the other as an article of faith, but that's all. One has to ignore massive quantities of evidence to ignore the fact that -both- models are active, and interact with one another in a highly complex feedback loop. Brain structure/chemistry affects experience and shapes personality, but experience has a real and very physical capacity to alter brain structure/chemistry. Increasingly so the younger one is, in a logarithmic fashion. The most formative 9 months are spent in the womb... But brain structure affects how one responds to stimuli, which affects how that stimuli affects brain structure, which affects.... Hurray for homeostatic feedback loops. There is no mind/body division. But that cuts both ways, there is no body/mind division either. Alterations in mental state have real impact on the body, because they are real alterations -of- the body. Remember that the placebo affect is the most powerful medicine known to man, and has at least some percentage chance to cure -any- disease.
I believe you are discussing Integrative Theory but some of your jargon is going a little over my head. The part I bolded you are presenting as fact. There is no way you win an argument with someone who holds the view of solipsism with that claim. Alterations in mental states can be deduced to alterating brain chemistry, which some may view as body. some will maintain the mind is some separate 'entity' much like a soul.
Psychology doesn't care about solipsism or dualism as neither are scientifically valid concepts. The idea that the mind is separate from the body should not be taken seriously within psychology. As far as science is concerned it is a fact that the mind is the brain and the brain is a physical organ.
what are you smoking? You think psychoanalysis can be presented as scientifically valid? Just because physical psychology/ neuropsycholgy is en vogue at the moment doesn't mean that people can't hold those other views, and that even extends to those in psychology. Why even teach about Freud and Jung anymore then just for historical reference?
Psychology moves forward on the assumption that the mind is the brain. I've never met a psychologist who denies this, and I've never read a psychology textbook or journal article that suggests otherwise. Also, I didn't say anything about psychoanalysis. Psychology is the study of behavior, and as a scientific discipline supernatural concepts like mind body dualism have no place. Freud did not entertain supernatural beliefs about the mind. His views about the mind are rooted in biology in an extreme sense. Though much of his work is not useful to psychology it is still worthwhile to study him.
Psychology is the study of the mind. behaviorism is the study of behavior. You can include behavior into the definition of psychology but it literally means mind study. I know you didn't say anything about psychoanalsis I did. My point is that like the first type of psychology usually taught in the major is psychoanalysis and concepts like Oedipal complex and collective unconscious don't have a neurological basis. If you disagree please enlighten me.
Psychoanalysis is to psychology as engineering is to physics. Loosely. Only thing is, physics has, at the top(simplest) level, clearly definable phenomena. Psychology doesn't. Or really much of any other level actually. It's turtles all the way down man. However, psychoanalysis is technique. It's not generally concerned with where, biologically or metaphysically there mind resides. It's interested in what works. From a solipsistic POV, there may/may not be a mind/body division. It doesn't matter/is unprovable either way. From other spiritual perspectives, there is a solid division, that's true. There hasn't been any major schools of scientific study that have postulated a distinct mind/body division in over a hundred years, and there has been strong evidence that, at least on a Newtonian physics level, the division is a false one. Quantum physics, well... As I often say: Locality, Causality, Reality; choose 2. Btw, from a scientific perspective, the mind is not the brain. It is the part of the body that experiences, processes and responds. In other words, all of it. Most of that goes on in the nervous system, and much of the nervous system is in the head(there's actually no solid delineation between the 'brain' and the spinal cord). But processing goes on all throughout the body, and decisions are made throughout the body. The mind is a distributed processing network. Nerve clusters in your feet know how to keep your balance mostly on their own. And all body systems play a -direct- role in thought. Changes in hormone levels have an immediate impact on mood and cognitive capacity for instance.
MIT puts all their courses online for free. comes with video lectures, assignments, course outlines and lecture notes you could easily give yourself a physics degree but without the piece of paper saying you have one http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/
Why don't you just attend classes at a local university? I mean technically you should be paying for them but if you REALLY want to learn psychology or physics just attend a few lectures. In a room full of 300 students, no one notices you don't belong. It's not all that bad seeing as those that actually pay tuition (such as myself) will come out with a degree, and those that just attend classes will leave with knowledge.
