Tell me if this is an accurate way to look at what youve said:
In the fields of psychology, social sciences, thought, the brain etc, these fields serve as a purpose to better understand different things. So people studying specific topics will develop foundations abd concepts and build up. This could be brain biology, the big 5, mbti, the concept of intelligence and its different parts.
What i think youre saying is that these are separate things but they all interact and are used for different purposes. Part of what im curious about is if these fields contradict the other fields, are used as tools that could be better used to understand say, concepts like intelligence, or if they should be considered separate fields with boundaries to respect. Or all of the above.
Science in general, shouldn't stand in contradiction. So for example, if you have a physical theory of the universe and yet, mathematically it is unsound, then your theory is also likely unsound. The reverse is ... usually true. If for example your mathematical theory makes predictions that are generally contradictory to empirical data; then you likely are missing something (maybe).
Now you're referencing psychology and social sciences... and I think this concept of "hard" and "soft" science might be throwing you off a bit in that, while I agree social sciences, psychology, and various forms of medicine tend to be more difficult to study; that doesn't make them any less legitimate as areas of scientific research.
A sociologist is still going to follow the scientific method with respect to his or her research. That much is generally a given. If their results are not reproducible, then the question becomes "why," and we look at that -- rather than say, throwing the baby out with the bath water. However, with that said, if we can never reproduce the results of a sociological study, then it's next to impossible to assign any degree of validity to the conclusions of such a study.
Also, keep in mind, that more often than not, studies are cited out of context, with factoids ripped out without actually looking at the conclusions of the authors.
And lastly, no, I do not think that scientific fields act in a compartmentalized way. Medicine and physics and chemistry all reference the same objective reality; they all must be in total 100% congruence. Psychology and sociology should have similar congruence, the study of this would be "social psychology." Measurements of intelligence wouldn't really deal with sociology, but neuroscience, psychology, and other fields related to understanding and measuring cognition and problem solving.
So we use these various fields simultaneous, whether we realize it or not. This relates back to the point made earlier about their existing an objective scientific reality, an actual
truth, that science informs us about.
For instance: You have a patient with anger issues. Neuroscientist says its because their brain chemistry is off, they have an excess of seratonin. A psychiatrist says they are low in agreeableness. A psychiatrist says its because their childhood was tumultuous. A geneticist says their father was angry and it was passed down to them. A neurobiologist says the patients amygdala is small. A psychologist says they have been encouraged to use anger because of instances in the past, or have control issues because of an event that happened and they refuse to let themselves feel it again.
Etc.
Not all of these are possible at the same time. Some could be the independent variable. Some add layers of understanding of the situation. But none have ruled out any of the others? Is that because theyre all correct or is it just because you cant possibly rule any of them out? I know for certain that mbti has been found to be only useful for understanding different way we communicate with each other.
The neuroscientist likely cannot make informed decisions about the patient's psychology. He can, operating within his field, can describe the function of the brain compared to some baseline - but he's not necessarily qualified to make a psychiatric evaluation rather than a medical one.
The geneticist likely has very little basis for an individual diagnosis. That's not scientific whatsoever, unless there was some previous research done that informs this opinion.
The psychiatrists all have medical opinions. Here we are conflating the practice of medicine and pathology - which is not a pure science - with the study of the application of say, drugs on the human body, which is a pure science. Thus, these psychiatrists are essentially acting as psychopathologists; which, means they are diagnosis patients based on their opinions of their conditions largely around their own personal understanding of the situation and what has caused the disorder. This is reasoned, and empirical; but not necessarily what we would call pure science.
Thus, you can have 5 different psychiatrists with 5 different opinions. If their opinions closely overlap, then they could all be right; or conversely, they could also all be wrong.
Nonetheless, there is one objective truth here.
Ill try to find an example of something more concrete that is contradictory. Hm simon baren cohen has developed different parameters to understand thought and personality that are categorically distinct from the big 5 and leads to results that you wouldnt get from using the big 5. Which is right?
You seem to be describing two different methods of abstraction and asking, which abstraction is correct. Well, both can be correct. It's like saying, which is more accurate: centimeters or inches? They are both equally accurate and 'correct,' since they're both abstractions used as a means of conceptualizing length measurement. This is a natural logical conclusion to the question you're posing here.
Do they complement each other? If i learn big 5 and i read studies that are based on an understanding of them, and then i look at jon haidt studies, they are just.. Based on different axiom developed from these different concepts and you inherently must draw different conclusions than you would using the other, because the tools are so different.
The tools are likely just different abstractions of an underlying reality within the brain.
From a computer science standpoint, you're essentially talking about the differences between two programming languages...
Quick aside - why are some people interested in say math vs psychology? Theyre similar personalities and generally considered the most intelligent,
I think the bolded is tripping you up here.. You're placing far too much emphasis on these kinds of generalities I think. I don't think we presently know if either statement in the bolded sentence is actually true -- and furthermore, it seems that the premise of the statement makes a few demonstrably false assumptions about intelligence and the development of personality traits. That is to say, intelligence is not immutable, nor is it wholly or even mostly genetic; nor is one's personality. So there are likely not any concrete reasons other than environment and rearing.
but for example i could demolish my sister in debate, word crack, philosophical abstraction etc and she could build a robot to tear out my larynx. And she couldnt be less interested in politics and psychology and i couldnt be less interested in most math.
Again, you've made the assumption that your interests are predisposed; which they aren't. Your genetic code does not contain anywhere near that much information.
Information theory here, I think, is vitally important - in order to give you some limit on the scope of what your DNA both does and even can say about you. Dave, your entire DNA can be encoded in 750MB; the size of a standard CD. That's with literally no compression whatsoever. The entropy of this data allows for very high compressibility, meaning the unique information contained therein is rather redundant (i.e., you can reduce this 750MB down to less than 200MB with standard tools, some claiming even greater compression >100MB; conceptually, you could potentially get this down to a few megabytes).
When you further consider that 98.8% of human DNA is non-coding, then you have to look at this information, from a scientific (information theory) standpoint, and ask yourself -- how much data is really here as a starting point?
That should suggest to you that your future interests, desires, dreams, etc, are
not encoded in your DNA.
We used to think that this was not only possible, but perhaps even probable. But again, post-HGP, we know that's just not the case.
