Cognition/Neuroscience to replace Psychology?

[Aetherius Rimor]

A discussion I had with a friend the other night helped me come to an easy way to describe this. It appears as though the study of Cognition/Neuroscience are posed to displace Psychology in the realms of academic discipline. Using evidence of previous academic disciplines being displaced by hard science, it seems pretty obvious that we're almost at that turning point.

At one point in medical history, we had theories, or what I call abstract metaphors for the underlying constructs being analyzed. In herbalism/medicine you at one point had "Hot" medicines, "Cold" medicines, etc. Or you had Bile systems, or whatever metaphor for the human anatomy was prevalent at the time. Those theories were replaced by pharmacology, anatomy, etc.

In chemistry, at one point the theory of matter in the universe was composed of 5 elements, Air/Earth/Fire/Water/Aether, giving rise to the various properties of matter. Alchemy and those views of the universe were displaced by the hard science of chemistry, physics, etc.

I believe we're now coming to a similar point with the field of Psychology. We are still in the primitive mode of understanding cognition/behavior/neuroscience, and rely on psychology and it's abstract metaphors of the brains operations. Freud's Id/Ego/Super Ego, or Leary's Circuits, or any other model for human consciousness are simply abstract metaphors for how it truly operates. Useful only in that it helps us understand how it all works at a vague and very high level way.

Over the next few centuries, I believe Psychology will be replaced by Neuroscience. Behavioral Psychology, or Psycho Therapy will be replaced by Applied Neuroscience/Psychopharmacology/Cognitive Rehabilitation.

I believe the term Cognitive Rehabilitation would be more appropriate compared to Psychotherapy, as we would have come to the point where we understand completely the cause/effect simuli/response patterns that will obtain the results we want. Using proven formula's with predictable results, we will be able to treat/cure illnesses with precision.

Any thoughts on this? It was just interesting for me to see such similar examples of theories in Psychology as previous disposed of academic fields in our history.

I have a feeling this view might be a bit controversial though.

 

[ParappaTheRapper]

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[TheAppleCore]

Very interesting thoughts, Aetherius! Thanks for sharing.

My first impression, upon considering this idea, is that the so-called "hard sciences" represent bodies of knowledge that describe the behavior and characteristics of things that we can easily measure: namely, physical objects of the material world.

Psychology, however, deals with a very different type of "thing". Rather than things like stars, kidneys, atoms, and neurons, psychology is attempting to understand things like feelings, thoughts, intentions, and consciousness. These are things that we can barely even define, let alone measure. Which is why I think the hard sciences might have a bit of a difficult time tackling psychology.

 

[Aetherius Rimor]

Which is why I think the hard sciences might have a bit of a difficult time tackling psychology.

The reason it's been so hard is the difficulty in measuring the things that affect behavior, thoughts and emotions. Any science that affects human life in greatly hindered by ethics. I don't consider this a bad thing, but it does greatly slow discovery or practical use of any knowledge that has the potential to harm human life. A couple non-medical examples are technologies like electricity (back when AC vs DC was a question) and nuclear power.

The only other hindrance to scientific advances is lack of funding, but that is far less problematic as long as practical use can be foreseen or those with interest and money to donate exist.

Astronomy and space exploration currently has a very small amount practical uses, but a huge financial hindrance.

Medicine on the other hand, without ethics, wouldn't have much of a financial hindrance. Hypothetically if we didn't value human life, it would be really cheap and easy to manufacture random chemicals for testing, and perform exploratory surgeries to learn about the human body.

However, due to ethics, not only are some things completely forbidden, the things that are allowed are extremely regulated which greatly increases the financial hindrance in medical research.

So to determine how our brain works, and how our behaviors/emotions/thoughts are generated, not only do we have to face an extremely high financial burden just to pursue the research, we also are attempting to learn how a highly complex organ works at a very detailed level.

We have to learn how all the systems in the brain interact, their purposes, and how to manipulate them in the ways we desire.

Some tools exist for learning those things, but we still lack the ability to measure/interact with everything in a way we can learn it's function. In 2008, a paper was published about 25I-NBOME being the first molecule that can be radio labeled with a highly selective affinity for 5HT2 as an agonist. Antagonists were known of before.

Link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2719953/?tool=pmcentrez

Psychology, however, deals with a very different type of "thing". Rather than things like stars, kidneys, atoms, and neurons, psychology is attempting to understand things like feelings, thoughts, intentions, and consciousness.

I believe Psychology will fall into the same academic realm as (medicinal) herbalism and alchemy for this reason. Herbalism is essentially an antiquated version of the current science of pharmacology because they could not measure or determine why the plants worked the way the did. Practical alchemy likewise is an antiquated chemistry, and existed due to the inability to measure/understand why substances interacted the way they did.

I suppose Psychiatry may actually evolve into the concept I'm referring to, sense by definition it's "medical treatment of the mind". However currently it's still appears to be focused on relatively ambiguous or vague disorders rather than hard science.

Perhaps the two fields will eventually merge into the one field of say "Cognitive Therapy", where illnesses can be tested and confirmed, and results of treatment whether behavioral or medicinal therapies are used can be reliably predicted.

Currently psychiatric treatment involves determining a disorder which can be treated with medicines from a list. Which ones work and don't work are determined by trial and error since while one SSRI may work for one person, it might not work for someone else. Despite similar modes of action, the low level details are not yet understood and the differences can be huge. When we get to the point we fully understand the brain, we will be able to pick exactly which medication to do with precision. That's the end goal I'm thinking about.

Thanks for reading/commenting on my ramblings!

 

[Lost Ego]

I would have to agree to an extent as well. I took intro to neuroscience and loved it. I wanna take cognitive processing next and so this thread is very relevant to my interests. As far as i understand, neuroscience and cognition are both currently a branch of psychology. And so you can't remove psychology entirely, freud's theories on psychoanlysis are far too valuable. Also I dont believe we'll ever figure out how it works completely. I think we'll go extinct just before we uncover the truth lol. A black hole will end us all xD or just disease o.o

 

[ParappaTheRapper]

^Lol

 

[-=SS=-]

I see the brain and mind as two different things, so no, I do not agree neuroscience will replace psychology.

 

[PORB]

Psychology, however, deals with a very different type of "thing". Rather than things like stars, kidneys, atoms, and neurons, psychology is attempting to understand things like feelings, thoughts, intentions, and consciousness. These are things that we can barely even define, let alone measure. Which is why I think the hard sciences might have a bit of a difficult time tackling psychology.

i agree with this, and with you, in that where psychology is integrating new understandings of neuroscience and utilizing them in understanding how the "brain" thinks, none of that necessarily leads to therapeutic change in a person, as in the therapist does not need to know how the brain is working in a neurosis to rectify it, and even if they did know, ultimately its up to the patient to heal them self, knowing the obstacle in a person is great in all but that person needs to know it, and usually neuroscienfic terms are not the way to know it. true therapeutic therapy will never leave the realms of myth making, imo. humans are much more than the sum of their parts.

 

[McTavish]

Yeah i'm sure they'll probably merge together into one. Most findings in Neuroscience aren't very useful if they don't also come with a psychological explanation. But psychology itself as something that will find anything new or useful on it's own about the mind in the future is probably not going to happen. It's all about the hard facts now with the brain. I definitely do not see the mind and brain as being seperate.

One of the most controversal things in psychology that's been talked about for a long time now and been dismissed by scientists is Freud's psychoanalysis, which has now been proven to have weight to it. Where they found that when we fall asleep and dream the prefrontal cortex in our brain, which is where our identity is located (ego), and which controls our cultural boundaries and norms we tend to follow shuts off. So when we dream our ego is no longer with us we are able to confront our fears and repressions that we mask every day in society so that we don't disobey our particular culture's system.