DESCRIPTIVE
PSYCHOLOGY
Overview: By a net, I mean a network of concepts and conceptual relationships. Over a period of years, Peter Ossorio developed a net called Descriptive Psychology. Since this net has been adopted by a number of persons, I refer to it as PNDP (Public Net for Descriptive Psychology). A major resource that I would recommend for a detailed introduction PNDP concepts is Mary Shideler’s book Persons, Behavior and the World. The website sdp.org indicates how to obtain this book and other materials about Descriptive Psychology. To appreciate PNDP, a general perspective may be helpful, but it needs to be augmented by an understanding of some of important specific concepts. I begin below with a simple perspective that uses some crucial concepts. Immediately after this is a link to a file entitled Concept Encyclopedia. I then make some comments on to indicate a more general perspective. I indicate that PNDP started with a deliberate attempt to begin with a net rather than with paraceptual theories and research. This is supported by two excerpts, one from Shideler and one from Ossorio. Finally I give a variety of links, including a link to my paper entitled The Potential Impact of PNDP and to some papers which use PNDP.
A Perspective: PNDP focuses on a net whose realm of interest is the actions by persons. This involves the person concept and the closely related concepts of a characteristic and a behavior description. These and other PNDP concepts are versions of what the ordinary connotations of these terms suggest. However, they are much more refined and systematically organized, and we could at least initially characterize PNDP as a refined and systematically organized net for thinking about what persons do. Some of the papers at the end of this section illustrate how this a more systematic net for thinking about what persons could be useful to almost anyone.
The Person Concept: Clearly the concept of a person is crucial for a net for thinking about what persons do. Below are features of a paradigm case of a person. The paper entitled Person Concepts gives a fuller formulation, with allowable transformations to cover additional cases. For instance, in order to include a newborn child as a person, these features are modified by allowing them to be future expectations. That paper also indicates how to make this behavioral person concept blend with a widely used person concept that is not behavioral.
A person has a
history in which deliberate action in a dramaturgical pattern is ubiquitous;
where acting in a dramaturgical pattern means that a person assigns objects and
events into positions in a drama of that person’s ongoing life. A person has
sufficiently mastered a person concept to distinguish between persons and
non-persons, at least most of the time. A person acquired the concept of a
person by learning to act as a person in interaction with other persons.
Moreover, a person knows how to act as a person in interaction with other
persons. A person uses the person
concept primarily to guide its behavior with respect to other persons and to
consider the behavior of persons with respect to other persons.
Characteristics: PNDP focuses on a number of characteristics persons ordinarily use in thinking about persons and their behavior. Most of these are indicated in the following list.
{Traits, Attitudes, Interests, Styles, Abilities, Knowledge, Values, Embodiment, Capacities}
These characteristic concepts are formulated in relation
to behavior in ways that are compatible with the ordinary usage suggested by
these terms. For instance, to support the claim that Rick has a strong interest
in professional football, you could indicate the number of games he watches and
the conversations he has about it. Likewise, in claiming that a dog has a
friendly attitude towards strangers, just indicate the number of times he has
welcomed them. Altho there are alternative ways to organize and specify
characteristics, everyone uses some version of characteristics in thinking
about what persons do. In this sense, some version of a characteristic concept
is crucial for any person. A similar remark applies to a behavior description
concept.
Ordinary Behavior Descriptions: A simple ordinary description might say that Dan wanted firewood and so he split 4 large logs obtaining firewood which he intended to use in his wood burning stove. This description indicates five considerations involved in this description. The letters labeling these and the bold face fonts are there to focus on the fact that they are instance of certain general types of considerations often used in describing behavior.
(I) Dan is identified as the one engaged in the behavior.
(W) What he wanted was firewood
(P) His performance involves splitting logs,
(A) His main achievement was to obtain firewood,
(S) This was a significant to him because it provided wood for burning in his stove.
An observer might have noticed a number of other things. Suppose the observer was asked why Dan selected those logs and split them in the order he did. The observer might say that Dan knows that 3 of these logs will be easy to split and that altho Dan is good at splitting the difficult log, he likes to get some easy work done and save a challenging task for last. This mentions some other types of consideration we use in describing behavior. He knows which logs will be easy to split. He knows how to split them. Moreover, to like leaving a challenge to last is an attitude towards that activity, and hence one of Dan’s many characteristics that could be mentioned in explaining why Dan split logs in the order he chose. A multitude of considerations could be mentioned if the observer (or Dan) was further questioned. In getting firewood, Dan was saving money on his heating bill, indicating another significance consideration. Noting this, the observer might remark on characteristic, namely that Dan has the trait of being thrifty. Clearly, any and all of this can be said without any systematic knowledge of the types of considerations PNDP uses for their behavior description concept. We all know how to describe behavior in terms of a variety of considerations. The statement below could be said about almost any concept in PNDP.
Formulating a
behavior description concept encapsulates our understanding of what it means to
describe behavior, which we already knew but might not know we knew - and “knowing that we know” makes a significant
difference, both in understanding and in giving descriptions.
The PNDP behavior description concept provides a tool for bringing various aspect of behavior into focus. The parameters used and the detail to which they are developed will depend on the observer’s purposes in giving the description. One major reason for formulating a more systematic version of our ordinary person concepts net is to provide a pre-empirical basis for empirical study. What may be even more important are the ordinary purposes PNDP could serve. Understanding the PNDP refined versions of concepts in our ordinary net for understanding persons can provide tools anyone can use to enhance their behavior potential (as discussed in The Potential Impact of Descriptive Psychology). PNDP has refined and systematized concepts from our public ordinary net. In doing so, it uses and refines other concepts from that net. To adequately understand PNDP, a person must already have competence in working with a number of ordinary concepts in addition to ordinary versions of person concepts. For example, the reality concepts of PNDP would make no sense without an understanding of many specific objects, events, processes, states of affairs, relationships.
Systematic Behavior Descriptions: The parameters for a behavior description as used in PNDP are taken from things we might ordinarily say in talking about something an individual did, as was illustrated earlier. Of course, our ordinary descriptions are likely to be less systematic and indicate only those features of interest for the purposes at hand. The paradigm case of a behavior description uses all of the parameters below to describe an action or a course of action X by a person called the actor. The person giving the description is called the observer. The observer and actor can be the same person.
¨ Identity (I) specifies the actor A for X.
¨ Wanting (W) indicates what A intends to achieve by X.
¨ Knowledge (K) has to do with what A knows and uses in relation to X.
¨ Know-How (KH) has to do with the competencies A displays relation to X.
¨ Performance (P) encompasses the processes that A is implementing.
¨ Achievement (A) is what X accomplishes, what difference it makes.
¨ Characteristics (C) includes some of A’s characteristics that are being expressed by doing X.
¨ Significance (S) includes what else is being done by doing X, what importance X has for A.
Example: It is Meg’s turn in a game of Gin Rummy. Meg wants the face up card, but also wants to see if the card on top of the deck might be more useful. Meg knows that both are allowed in the game, and Meg is competent to act on the distinction between such actions. Either action Meg takes, for whatever reasons, would be an instance of deliberate action. This partially illustrates (W) and (K) and (KH). To even have the wants and understanding described Meg must also understand an adequate conceptual net for Gin Rummy. (K) could be described in more detail, but for most purposes we merely presuppose those that seem most relevant. The other behavior parameters can also be illustrated by this example. Suppose Meg draws a useless card from the deck. (I) is Meg. (P) is drawing a card from the deck. (A) is the negative achievement of failing to enhance the hand to the extent the face up card would have done. One relevant instance of (C) is her trait of taking a chance on big gain rather than accepting a sure small gain. To see this as part of the behavior description, consider a person with the same value for all the other parameters, but taking the opposite attitude towards gains. Such a person might take the card that is face up. One aspect of (S) is that Meg is trying to significantly improve her hand.
Allowable Transformations: There are various types of behavior descriptions in which some of the parameters may be omitted. A behavior description that uses at least the first five of these parameters is an intentional action description. A deliberate action description is an intentional action description in which the KF parameter that is used indicates that the actor has distinguished at least two options. An observer can give a behavior description in which there is more than one actor. Furthermore, an actor need not be a person. For instance, an actor could be an animal or a robot. The observer can be a team working together to give a behavior description.
The behavior concept is broad. It includes everything all intentional action, even when the actor is not aware of these intentions. It does not include all activity, since there must at least be a recognizable value for the W-parameter. For instance, it does not include things done automatically like ordinary breathing, altho the way we breathe can be intentional. Nor does it include things done accidentally like falling out of a tree, altho getting to the position from which a fall is likely to occur would normally be intentional action.
Course of Action: The concept of a course of action includes not only a sequence of actions but also what we would usually think of as a single action, such as turning on a light. In fact, the distinction between what we think of as single action and a sequence is a matter of perspective. For instance, we could think about cutting down a tree as a single action or as a sequence of actions. The sequence might include obtaining the tools, taking them to the tree, looking for obstructions, notching the tree, sawing the tree, testing to see if it was ready to fall, etc.
Deliberate Action: The PNDP person concept involves the concept of deliberate action. Ossorio briefly characterizes deliberate action as intentional action in which the actor knows what he is doing and is doing it on purpose. This means that deliberate action is usually behavior in which the K-parameter involves the actor knowing two or more alternatives on which to act. Moreover, the W-parameter involves the actor having varying degrees of wants in relation to these actions. This concept also includes having the competence to engage in and to distinguish between the various options.
Behavior: I am unsure of the stance of PNDP on distinguishing between the concept of behavior and the concept of a behavior description. From my perspective, the conceptualization of a behavior description is not a conceptualization of the concept of behavior. Instead the concept of behavior is presupposed. What I would say is that a behavior is an event or process that can be at least partially understood by using a faithful behavior description. Thus the behavior description concept merely provides a tool for bringing various aspect of behavior into focus. Which parameters to use and the detail to which they are developed will depend on the observer’s purposes in giving the description.
I want to stress that the behavior description concept is a tool, much as Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives is a tool. I was once asked how the behavior description concept explains why persons do what they do. The answer I gave was simple. It doesn’t, because it is a conceptual tool rather than a theory. If the observer wants an explanation, then the observer must decide what counts as an explanation for the purpose at hand. The observer can then use a behavior description to help construct such an explanation. As an analogy, if asked how my ax and saw cut down a tree, I would say they don’t, and I do not expect them to. Cutting the tree down is what I do, and these tools help me implement this. The way we use a behavior description concept also depends on the purposes at hand. It is a useful tool for various purposes primarily because it has enough parameters to help focus attention more clearly than we could with a less systematic tool. This also helps us focus on and organize relevant observations. However, as with any tool, results depend on the skill with which it is used. Even a magic wand could be used badly.
CED: Below I give an introductory sketch of the PNDP person concept and concepts that are crucial to this concept. For more about these concepts and for largely faithful versions of many of the other PNDP concepts that I have found most useful in my own work you can use the link below. Many more PNDP concepts could be included, and I solicit contributions from any who are qualified to explain or illustrate them. Just email potential contributions to me. I would also welcome alternate presentations of concept, suggested revisions, further illustrations, etc. This dictionary-encyclopedia also contains concepts from my own work that I consider related to PNDP concepts, and I would be happy to include concepts from the work of others that are related to PNDP concepts.
Use Concept Encyclopedia.doc to downloaded this as an a MS-Word file.
A More General Perspective on PNDP: Beyond its routine use, PNDP is a challenge to certain a certain perspective on science. I elaborate on this in the potential impact papers, mentioned above. The remark below from Shideler gives an overview indicating that Ossorio’s perspective is so radical that it may be difficult for most people to realize what he has accomplished. In spite of its name, the concepts developed in PNDP go far beyond those usually associated with psychology.
Descriptive Psychology is a conceptual system. Its central concept is the person concept. This is a set of systematically related distinctions designed to provide access to all facts about persons and behavior; and therefore to everything else as well. A set of distinctions cannot have truth value. Making distinctions and making statements are not the same, and a creature that has no verbal language can yet act on distinctions. Distinctions can be more or less useful for a given purpose, may be used skillfully or clumsily, but the distinctions themselves, the concepts, cannot be true or false. The concepts of Descriptive Psychology are designed to systematize possible answers and the possibilities of answering, but not to provide answers. This is a way of looking at the world, rather than a specification of what to see.
As just indicated, PNDP does not constitute a psychological theory or a theory of any type. It is theory neutral. In this it resembles the only other extensive theory neutral conceptual net, namely the public net for contemporary mathematics). Since an understanding of the perspective underlying this net is not widespread outside of the community of mathematicians, the value of purely conceptual nets is not widely appreciated, even in the academic world. However it is recognized that contemporary mathematics provides a net that can be used by any theory in physics. Likewise PNDP could provide a conceptual net that can be used by any theory in the behavioral sciences. Altho this may seem like an extravagant conjecture, I suspect that Ossorio could be to behavioral science what Galileo was to Physics. By this, I mean that PNDP has the potential to revolutionize the behavioral sciences to the same extent that mathematics was used to revolutionize the physical sciences. As with any net, PNDP can be used to formulate paraceptual theories or to think about research and applications.
Altho convinced of the potential of PNDP to revolutionize the behavioral sciences, this is not what I consider its greatest potential. The use of mathematics is much broader than its use in the sciences, and PNDP could be used even as widely. It could be used by anyone to think about anything they do. I believe that the use of this net as the core of a person's ordinary conceptual net can be extremely empowering, and I hope that PNDP will someday become a central part of everyone’s general education. However the potential of PNDP has not been widely recognized. The interest in PNDP seems to be confined primarily to the group of people belonging to The Society for Descriptive Psychology. An article on sdp.org by Joel Jeffrey provides an excellent introduction to the spirit and purpose of Descriptive Psychology. However the site does not contain an introduction to the main concepts of Descriptive Psychology, such as those indicated earlier. Altho my website does introduce some of these concepts, it focuses only on those used in my nets for conceptual philosophy. I hope to later expand this, especially as I include more papers on concepts from ordinary nets that used concepts from PNDP.
To indicate more about a general perspective I have included two additional the excerpts, one from Shideler and one from Ossorio.
From Shideler page 179: Here ends the first part of the book, in which we considered the basic structures of the Descriptive Psychology conceptual system and one particularly important application. To a considerable extent, it is a codification of what we commonly do, and what people have been doing for millennia even though they did not describe what they were doing in these terms.
The value of this codification is demonstrated not in a recondite laboratory, or in experiments hemmed in with artificial stipulations, but in the rough-and-tumble and nuances of actual living. Indeed, it belongs to the wisdom of the ages that to understand a person’s behavior, another’s or our own, we look not only to the movements that he makes, but also to what he wants, the range of his knowledge, his values, whether he acted cold-bloodedly or feelingly. We have recognized all along, as well, that we need to take account of where we stand in relation to him. These considerations have been exhibited from time immemorial in our laws, our ethical systems, and our customs. Such ancient wisdom about persons, and about what needs to be accounted for in understanding them, has perhaps been best portrayed by artists: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and their like. And descriptions of the world-more or less extensive world-views-are reflected not only in philosophies but also in religions.
As a pre-empirical conceptual system, Descriptive Psychology provides us with the resources to bring together science and art, religion and the behavioral sciences, history and law, fairy tales and everyday living, in a way that preserves the uniqueness of every domain and individual yet does not leave them isolated from one another. Because it is reflexive and recursive, it is unlimited in its scope and precision. Because it is content-free, it is not culture-bound in the usual sense, and is non-committal with respect to anything empirical: to repeat, it does not "preempt the answers to any questions that could be settled empirically". It is a resource designed to increase our behavior potential, not a way to limit it by imposing a set of theories or a sequence of behaviors, like answers at the back of the book.
From Ossorio: Sometimes it is better to make a fresh start. Just as a building may be so ram-shackled that it can neither bear the weight it must nor be refurbished or enlarged effectively, so also may a social or intellectual structure be so deficient and self-defeating that any procedure which involved accepting it in general in order to correct some deficiencies in particular would be as hopeful and productive as slapping Uncle Remus’s Tar Baby around. In such circumstances one naturally tries to salvage what one can, but a fresh start is indicated.
I take this to be evidently the case with the social and intellectual institutions which have come to be self-characterized as "behavioral science" and further, with the more general social-intellectual structure within which "behavioral science" is carried on. Under the former heading I include at least (1) a miscellaneous collection of behavioral theories and models, including the psychoanalytic, phenomenological, cognitive-developmental, S-R, physiological, "systems" and "miniature theory" genres, and (2) a miscellaneous body of customs and practices, one among which is to give some of the others such honorific designations as "methodology," "metatheory," "experimental design," and so on. Under the latter heading I would include at least the disciplines of philosophy of science, semantic theory, moral philosophy, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of mind.
I report these as observations, not as a bill of particulars, for I do not intend to come to cuffs with that Tar Baby. Part of what is involved in making a fresh start is that I shall not survey or critically examine the most nearly related work in behavioral science or philosophy as it now exists, except occasionally, and then for heuristic purposes, not scholarly ones. The work of introducing an alternative intellectual climate and conceptual idiom must precede any work of comparison and appraisal. Moreover, it may be advisable to leave these later tasks to others.
The Tar Baby problem may be put in this form: Any present critical survey or critical analysis of theories or theses within the traditional intellectual structure could be accomplished only by recourse to theories, disciplines, vocabularies, customs, or norms within the same general structure and would therefore be vitiated by the deficiencies of the structure as a whole and at these points. And any attempt to clear up these difficulties would face the same problem. And so on. The more we struggle with the deformities and deficiencies of our traditional intellectual framework, the more we are stuck with it. Since there appears to be no way out, the prudential course is not to get in. If there is an alternative, we do not have to get in.
It is a general feature of traditions and ways of thinking that in-house technical criticism will be provided for, and even encouraged, whereas fundamental criticism will appear to be wrongheaded, incomprehensible, naive, or blindly antagonistic, except within an alternative outlook. It is not merely that to a tic-tac-toe player the world consists of noughts and crosses. It is also that his ultimate standard of criticism and the ultimate form of his reality testing is "But will it get me three in a row?" The way to avoid this particular form of self-validation is to do something else instead.
By a "fresh start" I do not mean anything very dramatic or exotic. The reference is essentially to a procedure and only consequently to a product. The procedure is simply to be directly responsive to the fact of persons and behavior and to our intellectual, practical, and scientific needs in respect to them and to give these concerns complete priority over any concern for preserving traditional or current scientific or philosophical theories, methodologies, vocabularies, customs, practices, or social norms. I do not, therefore, in any way wish to suggest that the alternative outlook I shall present has no connection and no resemblance to anything at all in our intellectual and scientific history or that it could not be categorized within any of the traditional taxonomies. At most, I should want to suggest that to understand it primarily in such terms is to miss the point entirely.
I shall be concerned primarily with the presentation of an alternative outlook. I take it that most of those who can see or sense that there is something fundamentally defective in the way we have gone about our efforts at a behavioral science are properly more concerned with an alternative that is not hopeless than they are with an impeccable demonstration of what it is that has gone wrong. And since understanding the alternative involves not only mastering some explicit formulations but also acquiring some level of implicit formulations but also acquiring some level of implicit competence ("tacit knowledge," "apperceptive mass," "know-how," etc.), I have chosen for this presentation the relatively free form of a monograph, or extended essay, rather than a more mannered academic form such as would be appropriate for an introductory textbook, a theoretical presentation, a philosophical argument, a critical review, or a technical exposition.
Formally, the alternative is a single complex concept, or conceptual system, in which we can distinguish four major, logically interrelated components. The overall concept is currently designated as the "Human Model" or "Person Concept." (At various times I have referred to it as the "Behavioral Model," "Intentional Action System," "Reality System," and "Three-system System." (There does not seem to be a really satisfactory term to use here.) The four major components are the concepts of Reality, Person, Behavior, and Language. The social enterprise of generating and using these and related formulations as technical resources in a behavioral science has been consistently designated as "Descriptive Psychology."
One of the novel features of the presentation of the Person Concept is that, altho it involves many declarative sentences, it does not involve making statements or assertions. Instead, what I shall be doing with those verbal performances is (a) delineating concepts, i.e., constructing or exhibiting forms of representation (corresponding to articulated concepts), or else (b) illustrating the use of these concepts in behavioral science both as pre-empirical foundations and workaday technical resources for empirical and explanatory efforts. (Note that doing the first of these is a way of doing the latter and that frequently the reverse is the case.) Thus, unlike the usual technical exposition, the presentation is one for which questions of truth cannot arise (logically cannot arise, since concepts cannot be true or false and neither can behaviors). Rather, questions about the truth of any statement presuppose the Person Concept or some equivalent thereof, since it is only within such a framework that any such question can be formulated, understood, reacted to, or acted upon.
Potential Impact Links: The links below are to papers giving additional information. The potential impact paper has two interwoven themes that are available as the separate papers. These papers involve revisions that have not been incorporated into the earlier paper, but they also omit some details that were included in that paper. Both papers are written for those already familiar with PNDP. The links near the end of this page indicate some of my papers that use concepts from PNDP. Links to other sites using PNDP are given at the end of this page.
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The first paper presents some epistemic concepts from conceptual philosophy, indicating how this provided me with a perspective on PNDP and its relationship to conceptual philosophy. Various types of study are conceptualized, primarily by indicating conditions on parameters for describing the behavior involved in these types of study. Conceptual study is characterized by conditions on the want and performance parameters. Conceptual study is classified as pre-paraceptual or as purely conceptual, depending on conditions placed on the significance parameter. Other conditions on these parameters are used to characterize other types of study.
The second paper first presents a discussion of some barriers to the wider recognition of PNDP. It then focuses on undermining or overcoming some of these barriers. It is an open-ended paper inviting contributions from anyone who is interested. Merely send me your ideas. All ideas are welcome, no matter how tentative or impractical. I will add them to this paper.
The paper below compares Contemporary Mathematics and Descriptive Psychology.
Papers Using PNDP: Below are links to these paper. After this there are links with descriptions. Some other paper are also described in the Conceptual Papers Section of the website. Some of these other papers were also influenced by PNDP.
Church and
State as Semicultures
Concepts
for Understanding Education
Constructivist
Learning Resources
Maxims & Axioms for Conceptual Nets
Maxims for Behavior Descriptions
Natural and
Paranatural and Supernatural Action
Ordinary
Uses for Descriptive Psychology
Rapprochement
of Religion & Science
AOC & Observer Intrusion Any behavior role can malfunction at times. One type of observer malfunction can be characterized as excessive use of the observer role. This paper briefly examines a form of excessive self-observation that I call observer intrusion. This involves the observer being so preoccupied with self-observation as to interfere with being an actor and with being a critic.
Church and State as Semicultures A complete culture IS a community whose members have an interdependent way of living and whose institutions provide the opportunity for these members to at least minimally satisfy all of their vital human needs and enhance their behavior potential in a multitude of realms of interest. Furthermore, a culture is self-contained in the sense that its institutions can do so without support from any external communities. The adjective ‘complete’ is used because this paper augments the concept of a culture with the concepts of an identity-culture and a semiculture. These include cultures but also include communities too limited in their social practices to be complete cultures. The paper then introduces the concept of a comprehensive paradigm to conceptualize two types of basic human needs, called spiritual and temporal. These are used to conceptualize two types of semicultures referred to as global churches and sovereign states. Although these two types of semiculture are neither conceptually exclusive nor exhaustive, they appear to have a long history and varied relationships in a multitude of cultures. Parameters for thinking about these two types of semicultures are then formulated in Sections 1 and 2. Section 3 makes some suggestions about how these parameters might be used to provide a perspective on the relationship between church and state. Section 4 is a panel discussion in which several imaginary characters consider some church-state issues. These characters have not reflected on a conceptual analysis of church and state. Section 5 uses the conceptual analysis from earlier sections along with concepts from PNDP to reflect on the panel discussion.
Competence & Know-with This paper was motivated by some comments by Paul Zeiger about the relationship between the concepts of competence and know-with. He saw them as more closely related than I did. He is using concepts from DP (Descriptive Psychology), and since I am unclear about how the concept of competence is used in DP, I may be using the term ‘competence’ more broadly. Altho I use the same three main parameters as those used in DP, I conceptualize the power parameter differently. Instead of using informational knowledge as one of the power types, I use a broader power type called understanding. This type includes relational comprehensions and knowledge. Knowledge includes know-with and know-how, as well as informational knowledge. Furthermore, I am not clear about the DP concept know-how or its role as a characteristic. I am using a competence concept in a way that allows a competence to include both cognitive and non-cognitive components. The purpose of this paper is to bring these concepts into clearer focus and to relate them to other concepts within my master net.
Comprehensive Paradigms Thomas Kuhn coined the term ‘paradigm’ in relation to the endeavors a scientific community makes in regards to some realm of interest. His concept could be extended in an obvious manner to other types of communities having any other limited realm of interest. I want to focus on extensions that go beyond any limited realms. To stress this I call them comprehensive paradigms. The main purpose of this paper is to develop the concept of a comprehensive paradigm. It also briefly speculates on the future of such paradigms.
Concepts for Understanding Education
Constructivist Learning Resources This paper has two equally important parts, the main text and the appendices. They are related and can be read in either order. The main text in this paper makes a distinction between various resource types that apply both to the design and use of constructivist learning resources. We use four parameters for thinking about concepts. We also use the significance and achievement parameters from the Descriptive Psychology behavior description concept. Supplements are included with the main text, in order to develop some off the ideas in more detail. The appendices illustrate three of these resource types in terms of some mathematical activities. These activities are directed towards some favorite problems of mathematical hobbyists, namely finding magic squares. These problems are easy to understand, but many related questions are not easy to answer. The activities will provide ideas for exploring such questions. More significant, these activities may help the learner construct an expanded concept of a mathematical function that will seem manifest rather than remote.
Fearfulness Concepts Just prior to dawn on March 11, 1889 I experienced a sense of spiritual isolation so deep that I felt it would persist thruout eternity. For 4 years my feeling of isolation manifested itself as extreme pathological anxiety. It was not until I was able to convert a major part of my anxiety into a fear, that I was able to lift myself from this pathology and regain some stable power of will. Once this fear was recognized, I was able to see that each time my will reemerged and my helplessness begin to fade. Fearfulness IS of 2 main types, fear and anxiety. Both are related to feeling endangered but they differ in terms of how the threat is identified. Fear IS an emotional state in which P feels like some specific state is a threat and P could describe the threat if asked to do so. Anxiety IS an emotional state in which P feels threatened but is unable to bring the harm implicit in the threat into sharp focus, either because the threat is not immediately present or because when it is no harm stands out.
Historical Novels Historical
fiction is set in the author’s version of some past for which the author could
consult some well established historical information and where at least part of
this comes from materials written during or shortly after this period. This
paper develops five parameters for thinking about the role historical fiction
can play, namely {authenticity,
richness, integration, unfolding, relevance}.
Maxims & Axioms for Conceptual Nets The term ‘conceptual net’, or more briefly ‘net’, denotes a network of conceptual distinctions and conceptual relationships that is used to think about some realm of interest; perhaps to obtain or organize information about it, to propose conjectures about it, to suggest questions about it, etc. An analytic net is one whose concepts are developed from a few concepts taken as primitive and whose conceptual propositions can be deductively organized. A synthetic net has many concepts that cannot be analytically reduced to ones that are more fundamental. This paper focuses on the utility of maxims for bringing synthetics nets into focus. Altho this paper is on the role that maxims can play in understanding and formulating almost any synthetic net, it focuses on using them to think about the realm of actions by persons. Since a net called Descriptive Psychology was designed by Peter Ossorio for that realm of interest, most of the discussion centers on maxims from his book Place (Ossorio 1998). Since this paper is as much for those who are not familiar with Descriptive Psychology as for those who are, its concepts are not presupposed, but sketched as needed. Before turning to general considerations, how maxims can be used as reminders for thinking about the behavior of persons is briefly illustrate. This is followed by some considerations that Ossorio uses for giving a behavior description. A variety of illustrations of how the use of maxims as reminders could help almost anyone in giving more faithful and more useful behavior descriptions are then given. Finally, the use of maxims as reminders is the related to their more general use as conceptual tools. Maxims are compared and contrasted to axioms, indicating why maxims are more useful in synthetic net. The advantage of using maxims to supplement other conceptual tools such as paradigm cases and the use of parameters is also considered.
Maxims for Behavior Descriptions The term ‘net’ denotes a network of concepts that is used to think about some realm of interest; perhaps to obtain or organize information about it, to propose conjectures about it, to suggest questions about it, etc. Descriptive Psychology was designed by Peter Ossorio for the realm of action by persons. Descriptive Psychology is a net rather than a theory, altho it can be used to clarify psychological theories. However the focus of this paper is on ordinary uses of this net. Many of the concepts in Descriptive Psychology should be easy to understand, as they are more refined versions of concepts routinely used by most people. Some of these concepts will be presented in a way that provides an elementary introduction to a central portion of Descriptive Psychology. Since this paper introduces this net by considering the role that maxims can play in thinking about the realm of actions by persons, most of the discussion centers on maxims from Ossorio’s book Place (Ossorio 1998). We begin by briefly illustrating how a maxim can be used as a reminder for thinking about the behavior of persons. This is followed by a sketch of a behavioral version of the person concept and the closely related concepts of a characteristic and a behavior description. Since these and other concepts from Descriptive Psychology are refined versions of what the ordinary connotations of these terms suggest, some reasons for having a refined net for understanding what persons do are indicated. This is followed by a more elaborate set of illustrations of how the use of maxims as reminders could help almost anyone in giving more faithful and more useful descriptions, both of their own behavior and the behavior of others. There are some minor changes in the language used in some maxims, partially because of what Ossorio said in his commentary. Moreover, these changes make them easier to illustrate. Altho this paper is written as an introduction to Descriptive Psychology, it may be of interest to anyone who has other ideas about how Descriptive Psychology might be introduced to a general audience.
My Use of PNDP This file gives a general idea of my use of PNDP in my own work.
Natural and Paranatural and Supernatural Action This paper formulates a conceptual distinction between several type of activity. The kind of activity that is most manifest to a human is the kind of action that the person deliberately initiates and personally implements. For a human, the implementation normally involves that person’s physical capabilities, including the capability to utilizes his/her vocal chords. The concept of natural activity is presented by a paradigm case formulation, taking the way in which human actions is routinely implemented and the resulting activities as the paradigm case. The concept of paranatural is also presented by a paradigm case formulation, taking subjectively conscious actions by normal human adults as the paradigm case. The concept of supernatural is taken to be action that is not natural or paranatural.
Person Concepts This paper considers the PNDP person concept and develops some related concepts. I begin with some discussion about why I would like to see a paradigm case formulation of this person concept, followed later by what I hope is an adequate one. Since this uses the concept of a dramaturgical pattern, that concept will also be discussed using Julian Jaynes’ concept of consciousness. The related concepts could be used to think about some types of individuals that might be like paradigm case persons, but that would not be paradigm case examples of persons. One such type involves weakening or eliminating the socio features of the paradigm case. I coin the term ‘asocio person’ for such types of persons. I make no paraceptual claims about the existence of asocio persons. However some of them, such as supernatural persons, have at least been imagined? I coin the term ‘quasi-person’ for types of individuals whose behavior potential is far too limited for them to be classified as persons even using the allowable transformations. Some of these, such as domestic dogs clearly exist, and I suspect that thinking of them as quasi-persons could be of interest to some people. My main interest in having the quasi‑person concept is to consider the relationship of their behavior to the behavior of persons. In particular, I am interested in the type of quasi‑persons I designate as semi-persons. I find these of interest in considering how and why Homo sapiens became persons. Terms like ‘asocio person’ or ‘quasi‑person’ are used primarily for developing concepts.
Person Concepts This paper considers the PNDP person concept and develops some related concepts. I begin with some discussion about why I would like to see a paradigm case formulation of this person concept, followed later by what I hope is an adequate one. Since this uses the concept of a dramaturgical pattern, that concept will also be discussed using Julian Jaynes’ concept of consciousness. The related concepts could be used to think about some types of individuals that might be like paradigm case persons, but that would not be paradigm case examples of persons. One such type involves weakening or eliminating the socio features of the paradigm case. I coin the term ‘asocio person’ for such types of persons. I make no paraceptual claims about the existence of asocio persons. However some of them, such as supernatural persons, have at least been imagined. I coin the term ‘quasi-person’ for types of individuals whose behavior potential is far too limited for them to be classified as persons even using the allowable transformations. Some of these, such as domestic dogs clearly exist, and I suspect that thinking of them as quasi-persons could be of interest to some people. My main interest in having the quasi‑person concept is to consider the relationship of their behavior to the behavior of persons. In particular, I am interested in the type of quasi‑persons I designate as semi-persons. I find these of interest in considering how and why Homo sapiens became persons. Terms like ‘asocio person’ or ‘quasi‑person’ are used primarily for developing concepts.
Plausibility Concepts This paper conceptualizes a plausibility attitude as a relation between a person and a proposition rather that as an attribute of a proposition. It formulates a heuristic device called plausibility intervals in terms of betting choices which allows for various plausibility attitudes. It indicates ways in which thinking in terms of plausibility might serve purposes that would be obscured by thinking in terms of either truth or probability.
Rapprochement
of Religion & Science This paper explores the domains of religion and
science as areas of human activity and understanding. Where are they independent of each
other? Where do they overlap, with the
resulting opportunity for conflict? How
might this conflict, when it occurs, be most productively dealt with, e.g. in
ways that benefit both religion and science?
The article begins with several currently popular viewpoints on the
relationship between religion and science, all mutually inconsistent. The next major goal will be to make it
comprehensible that people living on the same planet could hold all these
views, and to do it without putting down the holders of any of those
views. Reaching this goal is facilitated
by the resources of Descriptive Psychology. The limits of religious pluralism
and the overlaps between religion and science are explored. The hope is to convince the reader that (a)
the apparent conflict between religion and science, as represented in the
popular press, is less serious than might be imagined at first glance, and (b)
some of the perceived problems boil down to finding the protocols necessary for
co-existing in an atmosphere of religious pluralism -- a problem that stands
before us independent of any collisions between religion and science. The
article ends with what seems to be the bottom lines for what scientists and
religious people must throw away in order for productive dialog to occur, and
what they must keep to maintain their integrity .
Self-esteem &Worth Concepts For anyone with automatic self esteem the idea of self-esteem might easily be misunderstood. It might seem that that lack of self-esteem was some vague belief that a person had about being inferior. It might not have occurred to them that self-esteem was more a way of acting than a kind of belief. This paper conceptualizes self-esteem as an attitude rather than as a belief. It also introduces and uses various concepts of personal worth, relating them to self-esteem.
Links
To Websites Using Descriptive Psychology:
The Society for Descriptive Psychology official website: http://www.sdp.org/
Raymond Bergner: Ray is a Professor of Psychology at
http://www.psychology.ilstu.edu/rmbergn/
Below is a direct link to a paper by Ray Bergner that is on sdp.org.
Self-concepts and Self-concept Change: A Status Dynamic Approach
MORE
LINKS TO BE ADDED
