One last follow-up to my reply. The exercise I just went through makes a lot of people in the psychiatric/psychological fields quite uncomfortable. And very predictably, the arguments to my assertions are made based wholly on a foundation of empirical science. It's an argument that goes nowhere, because we're arguing in different languages. If you ever want to see a super hard-core human "scientist" (sorry, I just have to put that in quotes) get real dogmatic and quite uncomfortable, press them on the underyling theoretical underpinnings of their positions and ask them to provide philosophically elegant bases for their views about people and the world.
Okay, I'm not being completely fair--there are plenty who adeptly combine science and philosophy/theory. I admire these. But there are just as many, if not more, who worship solely at the altar of logical positivism and hold empirical observation out as big T Truth, if you get my meaning.
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On the other hand, you have different fingers. -- Steven Wright
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