The Black Box Idea and Philosophical Discourse

The human mind is currently a mystery in many ways. There are many theories about it's inner working, all of which are both correct and incorrect or at least incomplete. I think it's impossible to get a holistic notion of the human mind without taking a holistic approach. Currently, our theories will at best describe and explain only a specific set of attributes and interactions. I suggest taking a new look at the whole field from a different point of view.

In this new point of view, we can treat the human mind as a black box. It receives input from various sources including genetics and sensory signals. The input is not only processed by a currently unknown mechanism, but also stored in the mechanism itself, changing the process. Think back to grade school. Most of us have had the experience of "finding the rule" games in math. There's a list of numbers on one side of a black box, and another list on the other side. Each number on the input side is paired with another number on the output side. At the bottom of both lists is usually a space for the student to write the rule that produces the output from a given input. The goal for the field of psychology then becomes to figure out what the basic rule is that governs the process of assimilation and the behavior that results from it.

This goal may seem completely unattainable, but isn't it the same goal psychology has been pursuing since the beginning? The only real difference is that I take into account the fact that every individual is different, and has different experiences. My POV would encourage isolating the genetic components in specific, while recognizing that some genetic patterns are not universal. It is, of course, the universal genetic roots we are looking for in the long run -- the parts that are common to all people. Really, this is no different from any other approach to studying psychology. Mainly, I wish to emphasize creating unity in the field.
Each of the different theories within psychology seem to be better at some things than others. This has been a simple fact of life for a long time, especially apparent to the counseling profession. Counselors have been playing mix and match with their techniques and therapies in order to provide the best service to their clients. Cognitive for depression, behavioral for addiction, psychodynamic for dissociation disorders and so on. Why would the predictions of one theory work for some things and not others if it weren't incomplete? Why do we keep old theories around if they don't work for everything? Why haven't we integrated the different approaches yet? I could be wrong, but I suspect it's because researchers enter the field with a "pet" theory that makes the most sense to them, and they ignore the other approaches in their research. It's time for that to end. We need to trim off the ideas that don't work or don't explain anything and fill the gap with information that does the job. The field of psychology is less the mountain of knowledge that is physics and more like a slice of swiss cheese. We don't know much and what we do know has holes.

If we can accurately identify and categorize the inputs and outputs possible in a human life, we may be able to get a glimpse of the underlying rules that govern our species. Not only that, but, given a certain set of inputs, gained from a study of an individual's life, we can begin to predict behavior patterns more accurately and consistently. We may even gain a fundamental knowledge of the ailments and antisocial behaviors and so on that plague our existence. By looking at a life as an accumulation of inputs to an individual, we can see more clearly what is really going on in the brain. This approach will not destroy older research, but place it in a new light. We'll consider the events outside of the experiments themselves to account for anomalies in the data and learn more thoroughly why one person will express a certain behavior and another will not. We won't only gain insights into personalities, but into all the ways we group particular behaviors and interactions. I look forward to applying in parallel the different theories.

Perhaps we will even be able to create a system by which we can make some careful generalizations by which we can treat the most common of ailments. Whether or not this point of view becomes a popular one, I will look at all the research I am involved with and all the people I meet with this idea in mind. I will remember that one's past influences one's future, that we all think differently and sometimes incorrectly. I will remember that all our interactions are influential, that we can be conditioned to many different things, and that I may be more heavily influenced by the chemical processes in my brain than I might like. I will also remember that I cannot always remember to think of these things all the time, for while I have the wisdom and the will to look at things objectively, I remain basically human and fallible. I may react negatively to stimulus by getting angry and irrational. I must also remember that I must be able to understand myself before I can understand others. I must be able to forgive myself before I can forgive others.

I apologize that my psychology oriented blog has become a philosophical monologue. That in itself indicated how new the field of psychology is and how much further it has to go. I wonder if we, being human, can ever fully understand ourselves. I wonder if it is an unsolvable paradox or even a paradox at all. I wonder if we humans can even appreciate the full meaning of the question, "What are we?"