exploration of BPS’s outrageous comment
A possible, but very indirect explanation (since it addresses the subject of “human perceptions” which is not quite interchangeable with the subject of the “human experience”) for what might have lead BPS to believe that “the human experience is pretty universally identical.”
Gilbert and Malone (1995, page 26) write:
The second reason why observers may adopt the egocentric assumption is that people tend to philosophically toward naïve realism; that is, they consider their perceptions of the world to be the product of lower order, sensory processes that are informationally encapsulated (Fodor, 1983) and that operate in about the same manner for everyone who shares their biology (Griffin & Ross, 1991; Jacoby, Toth, Lindsay, & Debner, 1992; Jones & Nisbett, 1972). They do not seem to believe (as most psychologists and philosophers do) that perceptions are achieved by higher order, cognitive processes and are thus influenced by one’s idiosyncratic beliefs, attitudes, and expectations.I was going to write that I couldn’t be sure if BPS reads my emails, let alone this blog, and hence this might be a futile post, but thought perhaps if she does read it, it might serve as a potential threat to her ego (in that the above might serve to discredit her position among the “thinking” masses, and she might be compelled to offer a better explanation for her comment) and provoke her to actually respond...But coincidentally, she just called me...(She said that she meant to reply to my emails but...Yeah...I’m still skeptical of whether she actually reads my emails...)
Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21-38.
posted by Goldie @ 1:21 PM
5 Comments:
Just to defend the fam, I must say that it seems you're making a bigger deal out of her comment than she intended. What i think she meant was that at the end, we all go through similar struggles, if not in their form, then in their effects.
Realize that almost every person who read a great book, say, The Brothers Karamazov, felt that at least one of the characters was a perfect picture of themselves. In fact, most of us relate to more than one of the brothers. Does that mean that there are only 3 prototypes for human character? Absolutely not. But it does mean that on a deeper level we are pretty similar. The orders and forms of our lives are diverse. But the matter of our lives is not so diverse…
Dovid,
Hey, hey, I appreciate your devotion to maintaining the family reputation and all, but please, let the accused defend herself. (Let’s not start making assumptions as to what she meant...)
I completely agree with you that we can relate to others and to characters in literature, but BPS’s comment was far more extreme than saying we can relate to other people. She was essentially saying, that my experience, your exerience, and any other person’s experience in life is identical to the experierence of each of the three Karmazov brothers.
I think the matter of our life is quite different. And I think the human experience is especially different. Of course there are similarities. We all need to eat, sleep, and breathe to survive, and that's not where the similarities end, but that's where the differences begin. For instance, even if two people are put in exactly the same situation, it’s highly likely that they’ll each come away with a different experience…
And hey, I was under the impression that it’s contrary to your principles to comment on a girl’s blog...
This blog seems above gossip.
Wow. "Above gossip." I'm going to take that as a compliment even if it wasn’t intended to be one :).
In contrast to popular bloggers, I actually like it that this blog has largely exclusive readership, with only a couple handfuls of regular readers, cuz if too many people starting reading it, I would probably put an end to it.
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