Re:associations?

I appreciate your follow-up post. I somewhat regretted the tone of my earlier reply to you. On reflection it was perhaps unecessarily kurt. That said, I think there is a fundamental difference in our views.

One common description of science involves the distinction between the context of discovery vs. the context of justification. In the context of discovery, just about everything is game. This is the context in which speculation, casual observations, and just sort "free associating" can be very helpful in generating ideas for theory and empirical research.

However, in the context of justification, the only tools are data and logic. This is where the real work of science gets done. As fun as all the speculation that goes on in the context of discovery, it doesn't mean diddly squat until those ideas and casual observations have survived intense scruitiny and replicated under controlled conditions.

Now, with regard to the role of eye movments or free association in EMDR, there is no data to support it's utility. Thus, all of the speculation that is going on (context of discovery) is about something that may not even exist. Doesn't it make far more sense to hold on the speculation until there is a phenomenon to be explained? Then, once we know that there is something of substance to explain, it makes sense to shift to thinking in terms of the context of discovery. Once people have identified various hypotheses, they shift back to the context of justification and set about the work of testing those ideas, revising them in light of the data, or discarding those ideas.

In short, I think the ratio of speculation to data is already way too much in favor of speculation.

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Re:associations?, by , 11/03/02

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