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Article 3827 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Robotic Follies (was re: Strong AI and Panpsy
Message-ID: <13456@pitt.UUCP>
Date: 18 Feb 92 15:13:57 GMT
References: <1992Feb14.010922.8804@husc3.harvard.edu> <13430@pitt.UUCP> <1992Feb17.153034.8914@husc3.harvard.edu>
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In article <1992Feb17.153034.8914@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>GB:
>>His time with Charcot was time well spent.  Charcot was ten times the
>>scientist Freud ever was.  The cocaine snorting and ridiculous
>>generalizations from hysterics to the rest of the world came
>>later, as you well know.
>
>Freud, on the other hand, was ten times the thinker Charcot ever was.  As
>for "ridiculous generalizations from hysterics to the rest of the world",
>methinks I sense a whiff of ressentiment... are you suggesting that Freud's
>clinical practice doesn't entitle him to any meaningful insight into human
>nature? what about his education and self-analysis?  Perhaps, at the end of
>the day, a physician is obligated to treat each new patient as an entirely
>new phenomenon, having absolutely nothing in common with anything he may
>have encountered before?
>
The problem with Freud (and it is really more of a problem with his
slavish followers than him) is not that he had some insights into
human nature, which he did.  He was an imaginative genius.  The problem
was that he tried to create a complete system induced from too little
data.  Charcot had enough sense to know that brain and behavior were
too complex to construct such a system at the time (or at this time).
This led Freud to elaborate theories, such as his dream theory.  I don't
fault Freud for thinking, or even for his inductive flights of fantasy.
I do fault him for his low-down and dishonest way a claiming ideas he
took from others without crediting them, for his lying about his patients
and making claims of cures that don't hold up and for his dogmatism and ego,
but he shares that with many highly intelligent people.  What is the
worst about Freud, is not Freud himself, but the fact that his pseudo-
scientific system was held as gospel for so long, stunting the growth
of scientific psychiatry, and the fact that it still holds so many
humanists in thrall.  Much if not most of the literary criticism one
reads still acts as if Freud's ideas are basic axioms, long after they
have been discredited scientifically.

>
>If Freudian psychoanalysis has turned into an orthodox institution, it
>can't be blamed on its founder.  Freud himself was anything but an
>authoritarian thinker, at least if you don't interpret this term in a

I think Freud definitely had a large role in setting up the orthodoxy.
He very much approved and disapproved psychoanalysts as being competent
to analyze while he was still alive.  Those who had major disagreements
with his theories were anathemized.  This led to schools of analysis,
such as Jungian, Adlerian, and Freudian, all with contradictory theories.

He wasn't an orthodox thinker, no.  But he was an authoritarian one.
Just read about how he treated those who disagreed with him.


>observations about its subject matter.  Again, any attempt to consign an
>idea to ""the dustbin of history" strikes me as fundamentally
>anti-intellectual and reactionary.  As a prime example of such practice, I
>adduce Richard Pipes and his book "The Russian Revolution".
>

It isn't the idea that needs to go into the dustbin, but the system,
i.e. Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis.  Just because I'd like to stuff
Jerry Falwell into the same dustbin doesn't mean I want to trash the
ideas of Jesus Christ.


But alas, we've wandered away from robotics, unless you consider 
humans slavishly following "the great man" to be robots.
-- 
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Gordon Banks  N3JXP      | "I have given you an argument; I am not obliged
geb@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu   |  to supply you with an understanding." -S.Johnson
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