You ask some interesting questions LM.

My approach has been to look for the social science equivalence on Newton's three laws. Definitions which are general and apply to many different orders of magnitude from atoms to objects to waves to galaxies.

However, to get back to the subject of the opening post, could we postulate that I had already done all that?

How can I improve my opening post to avoid all the skepticism and be more convincing?

I find it interesting that you are interested in both physics and psychology. I am interested in physics and sociology. I thought I would double major in physics and sociology but after a year of doing both I realized that it would take too long to do both and picked sociology because the subject matter (human interaction) is interesting and sociology has the most room to grow.

However, I was hoping to learn about human interaction the way I learn physics; as an interlocking whole. It turns out, sociology is in bits and quite disappointing for someone who expects science.

The fact that sociology is in bits means there is no need to try to destroy it. It has not yet been assembled. There is no logic holding the pieces together because there is no common language so I am not gunning for any part of social science. At this time I cannot say conclusively that anything in social science needs to be destroyed except complacency. What we have is not enough.

I like where you are going in the second post and I'll try to address that in the near future.

I normally don't like responding point by point but I'll try it this time.

[q]I am mistaken...and the world, I'm afraid.
I'm going by a few universities
and wikipedia.
[/q]

Yes, that is what I am saying.

[q]This is your personal take.[/q]

Yes, but based on the fact that these are the only two branches of social science which try to form anything resembling a general model of social reality. The rest of your list are disciplines which try to accomplish social goals.

[q]Another clue to highly personal epiistemics:
dismissal of something extremely high
in evidence as not mattering.
[/q]

I admit a degree of uncertainty. However, my reasoning is that the thing which is currently called "anthropology" will be absorbed into sociology and psychology someday. I do not think the effort of anyone is wasted. I do not think the efforts of sociologists, psychologists, or sociologists has been worthless. However, I think that these people have been accumulating observations which will be assembled into an actual useful model of social reality later once a unified set of definitions is formed.

[q]Interesting and highly personal...OK.[/q]

Does is matter if it is highly personal?

[q]Politics is always a mess. That is is its nature.
Most law (that isn't overturned) has roots
in common law and goes back many centuries.
Read some state judicial supreme court opinions.
[/q]

It is NOT the nature of politics to be messy. Politics has been messy in the past but that does not mean it must be messy in the future. It was the nature of childbirth to kill loads of mothers before science vastly improved the odds of mothers to survive it. Please do not say that because a think is poorly understood it will always be poorly understood.

Additionally, I got my bachelors degree in sociology. I have read many supreme court opinions. Much of the reasoning is deeply flawed. Current law is based on precedent (read: Tradition) because there is nothing better. The purpose of creating a unified set of definitions would be to create the possibility to obtain something better.

[q]There is a peculiar 'tail wags the dog' going on here.
Politics is people sloshing around, and being sloshed around.
Sociology mostly watches.
Psychology can be used to manipulate politics, but then,
that means it is effective, doesn't it?
Is a bullet evil, or the shooter?
[/q]

Here we start to see that you have forgotten my message. You say politics is garbage but I say that is only the case because there is no science on which to base politics. (By science I do not mean loads of statistics. I mean a model of social reality.)

You say sociology watches and psychology meddles. I say there is no psychology and there is no sociology. We must create a unified set of definitions before we can do either sociology or psychology. Those things currently called sociology and psychology are placeholders for true science.

[q]Ah....this is good.
for your core, you don't need to scope "social science" and
conflict with the world definitions.
[/q]

The world's definitions of social science, psychology, and sociology will be out of date as soon as someone creates a unified set of definitions for social science.

[q]I'm not completely sure...
that is, will a unified language of desription
advance applications?
[/q]

Did Isaac Newton advance applications? Isaac Newton laid the foundation for a unified model of physical reality.

[q]I like your scoping on the areas and causality.
There is something clear once we look under the hood.
What seems to be missing is universally (or nearly)
agreed-on ethical/value principles. We could describe
how someone feels, what that does, or how a group moves,
but how do we decided what the right thing to do is?
[/q]

Ethics is not missing. Ethics cannot begin until we create a unified system of definitions and use it to create a model of social reality. The thing currently called "Ethics" is another placeholder for social science.

Once we know what a healthy social model looks like, we can replace the question of "what should we do? with "what would be healthiest?" Do we need ethics to tell us not to eat arsenic or bathe in feces? I think not. Rather, medical scientists can show that both arsenic and feces disrupt the functioning of the body.

Similarly, a hard social science will tell us why fathers should not sleep with their sons and why people should not punch babies in the face in no uncertain terms. Ethics cannot do this. How many ethical theories can conclusively tell you never to punch a baby in the face? I have taken ethics in college and, while most will say, "generally, punching babies in the face is wrong" most will have counterexamples and other logical issues. This is why I hated ethics.

[q]Also, will a common language solve problems in
each field? Will it cure Schizophrenia? I think not.
Will it fix poverty, unemployment, abuse from above,
laziness from below? I can't see the language fixing
these things. If we use the one common link,
mathematics and statistics, it describes fuzzy collections,
but it can't account for individuals, or troublesome
groups.
[/q]

Give it a chance! Can science cause humans to stand on the moon? What is harder?

Please understand that I am not saying a common language will "fix" any social issue. The only thing it will do is MAKE SOCIAL SCIENCE POSSIBLE. I am hoping social technology based on social science CAN accomplish all these things.

[q]Still, you are fairly clear now.
That's unusual on these personal crusades.
If I were to venture some imagined breakthrough
it would be in the field of dynamically modeling
groups and the discrete states of personality of people.
Complexity is a problem in most sciences now.
Maybe common descriptive language would
allow some nice modeling and discovery
in psychology/sociology.
[/q]

This is not a personal crusade in the pejorative sense. Most crusades have, at their core, the message "thus-and-such must be changed or destroyed." My message is: something great CAN BE CREATED.

[q]As a first step, I would say that treating
people as averages should be the first thing to go.
Personalities have "quanta", very different stable
states someone can be in that answer a problem.
So do groups and societies. That's my theory.
[/q]

Sorry, but this is not the first step. The first step is to simply admit the need for a unified system of definitions. The second step is to begin to work on such a system.

The third step cannot be defined because we cannot know what we will discover in pursuit of step two. Who could have predicted the consequences of Newton's three laws?

I am afraid you are mistaken LM.

The social sciences are sociology and psychology. Anthropology seems to be redundant but if it mattered at all it would be a social science too.

The rest of the things on your list are the social equivalent of engineering. Engineers take physical science and apply it to technology.

I agree that Law has dire purpose. So does politics. It breaks my heart to see the things that are happening in both fields in the US and I blame shoddy social science.

Social science is the science behind social applications such as law and politics. However, social science is so bad that these two fields have had to stumble along using TRIAL AND ERROR rather than any actual understanding leaving a trail of broken lives. (This isn't hyperbole. Bad laws and bad systems of government have killed many and ruined many more.)

So that we are clear, I am not calling for everything on your list to be lumped together. I am calling for sociologists and psychologists to start using the same terms. I think the resulting social science will lead to advances in social technology such as law, politics, etc.

To: OP

Mr. socrat,

You seem to have an agenda with this vacuum stuff. Would you mind letting us know so we can speak to the issue at hand rather than these shadows you are posting?

I do not see much about "Bible stories" in this thread.

If you want to talk about Bible stories, how's this? God created plants before He created the Sun according to Genesis 1.

The term "vacuum" implies the absence of matter or energy as we know it. Am I wrong?

However, if our universe is on a surface (brane theory?) of an object with four or more dimensions, that surface would be a physical object and the physical properties of that surface would apply even in vacuum.

I suppose that was off topic but it seemed the only way to tie the concepts of physical and vacuum together in my mind.

Mr. Huber,

Your version of my statement seems a bit suspect.

First, frustration seems like a thing that gets built up over some time and my statement requires no build up.

Second, no awareness of the person committing an injustice seems necessary. This sort of anger/retaliation seems more instinctive/reflexive than conscious.

I do admit that my definition of anger as "an urge to destroy" was a little ad hoc. I don't have a complete definition of anger and my best attempt at a partial definition is: the appropriate response to injustice.

Thus, feel free to reject my previous definition as "an urge to destroy" but please do not throw out the idea that anger can happen without frustration.

There seem to be at least two completely separate paths to anger which which was my point all along.

As a generalization of my baby counter-example: People can get angry when they see or hear about an injustice done to someone they have never met.

As for the studies which use "studies, statistics, and tests," they are working on bricks. This might be valuable but we cannot know why the brick matter if they cannot be placed into a social science edifice because without that we have no real perspective on the pertinence of observations.

Current social science is so much rubble until we can use a unified system of definitions to assemble the parts into a whole.

I wrote this on a philosophy forum because I think this is more philosophy than anything else. I am not sure if I should call it philosophy of science or natural philosophy, but I am not doing science because I am not working on an edifice. Rather, I am arguing that such an edifice could be started if we started with the foundation.

Furthermore, because I think current social science has not begun to move in the direction of "science" I am utterly unconcerned with their practices. As far as I am concerned, if we got 15 "philosophers" to sit down together and begin working on a set of definitions for social reality, that group of 15 would be the first true social scientists in the world. The rest would be alchemists to our chemistry.

I do realize that the above statement translates to: "I am the only social scientist in the world." Please understand that I have no interest in this status. One person alone is weak. That is why I am trying to figure out a way to explain all this to the world.

I think philosophers and physical scientists more capable of helping than anyone else.

Thank you for your questions LM. I will start with your last paragraph.

I am not indicting a large, fuzzy edifice. If I were, we would be far better off. As the situation stands, there is no edifice and that is my problem. The parts do not connect.

Physics is an edifice. I think of it as a tower made of bricks. The bricks are observations. The set of definitions is the foundation. Logic is the mortar holding the observations in place.

Physics is not perfect. There are missing bricks and some bricks might be in the wrong place but there is something assembled at least.

Social science has no foundation. Furthermore, a unified set of definitions is a necessary component in the mortar (not just the foundation) so social science has no mortar to speak of either. It may have bricks but they are essentially scattered into individual structures rather than unified into one science.

I know that is a lot of metaphor, but my point is that I am not indicting a large edifice. Rather, I am saying that we cannot begin to truly build anything until we lay the foundation. What we currently call social science is a pointless exercise in futility until that is begun.

Feel free to comment people. Anything constructive would be helpful. The thing I posted is a rough draft and I could use some commentary.

Terminological Unification for a Hardened Social Science

The problem with social science is that social science does not have a unified set of definitions. Each theory in social science has its own set of definitions which are different from the definitions of the same terms found in other theories within social science. The lack of a unified system of definitions has kept social science in a pre-science (or ‘soft’ science) phase of development for as long as social science has been in existence.

Without a unified set of definitions which span all of social science, there is no social science as such. The term ‘social science’ implies that social science is to social reality what physical science is to physical reality. There is no problem with this implication. However, social scientists are not living up to the example set before them by physical science. Physical science has been exceedingly successful in recent centuries delivering knowledge and technology which has utterly reshaped the human experience.

Social science might be able to follow the success of physical science if social science is willing to follow the methods of physical science. The most fundamental element of physical science is its unified system of definitions.

Physical science has a unified system of definitions because a unified system of definitions is fundamental to what a science MEANS. Physical science is the act (verb) of studying physical reality and the product (noun) of the study of physical reality. Physical reality is the object and the focus of physical science. Here is a scientific perspective on physical reality.

It is an objective fact that physical reality exists. It may or may not exist exactly as we perceive it, but we can be certain that it exists. Imagine, if you will, that there is a perfect description of objective physical reality exactly as it is and explaining every interaction between every particle, field, and force. This description can only be imagined, but the purpose of physical science is to duplicate that description as close as we can with the tools at our disposal.

The purpose of physical science is to create one description of physical reality.

Physical reality must be described with words.

There is only one physical reality.

All physical scientists work together to create a model (description) of that physical reality. Each researcher adds to the whole or tests the quality of the parts of the description added by others. Physical science is something everyone in physical science creates together.

The unity involved in the success of physical science is only possible because each physical scientist can speak to the others in a common language.

Furthermore, each physical scientist can build into the one description of physical reality because of a unified system of definitions.

For example, a complete understanding of human anatomy involves an understanding of cell biology which involves an understanding of chemical interactions which involves, among other things an understanding of the electromagnetic force. The unified set of definitions employed by physical science allows chemistry to build off of physics and biology to build off of chemistry. The actions of a nerve cell would be a complete mystery if biologists couldn’t understand electrical principles.

Social science does not have a unified system of definitions. Nearly every aspect of social science is filled with mystery.

Social science is the study (verb) of social reality and the product (noun) of that study. Social reality is filled with social objects such as minds, relationships, and communities. Social reality is no less real than physical reality. Additionally, like with physical reality, there is a single potential perfect description of social reality that describes in extreme detail the parts and processes of social objects and their interactions.

The purpose of social science is to create an accurate model of the description of social reality. However, no one in social science seems aware that this is the goal of their discipline. If social scientists knew that the goal of the science they were a part of was to create a unified model of social reality, the first step they would take would be to start building the foundation of the science, namely, a unified system of definitions. Yet no unified system of definitions exists for social science.

Social science is a fragmented discipline. There are many different theories in psychology and many more in sociology and none of them rely on the others because they do not share a common vocabulary. Theories cannot connect without a common vocabulary. A model of social reality cannot be built without a common vocabulary.

If the goal of modern social scientists is not: To work together on a unified model of social reality, what is their goal? What are they doing? What do social scientists hope to accomplish? What are they building?

There is currently no way a social scientist can build into one description of social reality so the most one can hope for is to add one more theory to the many. Modern social science has no purpose.

The first step to change is admitting the problem.

If those who call themselves social scientists want that title to mean something they will first have to acknowledge that social science has no foundation. Once social scientists admit that there is currently no genuine social science, they can begin to build the foundation of a model of social reality. Until the social science community admits that there is currently no social science, the creation of social science cannot begin.

It will probably be difficult to create a unified system of definitions. It may take years to create and the efforts of thousands of people. However, even the choice to get together and work on a unified system of definitions brings the possibility of new discoveries.

One thing seems clear: Little else matters in the world of social science until a unified system of definitions is created.

Example:
"I saw someone punch a baby in the face and it made me angry so I broke his jaw."

I understand your point that anger can come from frustration. People punch walls while arguing with their wives out of extreme frustration illustrating both your point about frustration and my point about destruction.

However, any time there is anger associated with injustice it seems there is no frustration involved until the urge to destroy the injustice gets frustrated. In the case of injustice I think the anger comes before the frustration.

I do not think the urge to destroy is associated directly with hatred. Hatred seems to take many forms. Sometimes it seems to be an urge to destroy but other times it seems like the desire to cause suffering without destruction.

I would define hatred as the desire to cause (or simply see) negative experiences for the target of their hatred. The opposite would be love (the desire that the target of love experience positive experiences.)

I think both love and hate have empathy in common. Both are focused on the experiences of their target. The difference is that love desires positive and hate desires negative.

I suppose that depends on the definition of empathy. I define empathy as awareness of the experiential perspective of another. Using this definition I think love has two components: empathy and desire for positive experience (the urge to support). In other words, I think the definition of love is incomplete without both the components you were considering.

As for your thoughts on the term "dimension," there are loads of definitions of "dimension" corresponding to different uses for the term. Dimensional analysis, for example, has nothing to do with my use for the term. I with you much enjoyment in your use of the term.

You say anger is: Extreme frustration

This seems problematic to me for two reasons:

First is that there are times where anger exists without frustration.

Second, I think there is a much better definition of anger:

Anger is the urge to destroy.

In my opinion, anger is an appropriate response to injustice motivates those who experience anger to destroy the cause of injustice (leading to a healthier society and, from an evolutionary standpoint, better odds of survival.)

Furthermore, in my opinion anger is an inappropriate response to frustration which motivates those who experience anger to destroy that which keeps them from getting what they want. Often, this leads to self destruction and antisocial behavior.