Sociology, psychology - or individual experience?

[floppit]

People leave evidence, as I said in another thread, we are loud, consumerist, we get signed in at birth and out at death, we leave trails behind us in almost everything we do - so are so not the 'snow leopard' of the natural world! These are not 'soft' forms of evidence, they are wholly observable, often calculable and calculations can be repeated in replicable studies.

So my first premise is that the above makes a science of human behaviour possible, complex and difficult as it is there's no reason to even hesitate to apply scientific methodology.

Secondly, we, as individuals, build pictures and theorise about sociology - we might like to laugh at the sociologist but we still indulge. How many house purchases and sales ride on the back of predicting mass behaviour? I would suggest that the evidence of stagnation in housing markets once word has got out that prices will drop is indicative of investment potential trumping the need for somewhere to live. Then there's voting, or even spreading a political viewpoint, to attempt to do so rationally requires some degree of enquiry, for those who have never thought of reason, have never looked at rationality as an objective, perhaps individual experience is enough but, I think, for most of us we want to know things like how kids are doing in schools or whether an initiative has any evidence that it works before we vote for it again.

Thirdly, but perhaps most importantly - most of us here (all?) are secularists, we want a world that responds to it's challenges via reasoning and that entails gathering evidence. Unless we embrace a double standard we must exclude our own emotive states as being evidence enough, if we allow such to be counted as evidence then the only way to avoid a double standard is to equally accept each and every adherent to religion who proclaims and believes it has been a completely positive and life enhancing experience. If we accept an ex muslim's story about how religion damaged her psychologically, then we must equally accept a muslim who tells how her faith gives peace, maybe even ecstasy. I believe that any champion of reasoning who will only attend to stories that support their stance, who argue a story is not enough when it opposes but lauds it as gold standard evidence when it agrees makes a mockery out of anything that we would seek to achieve. It does not make a mockery out of reasoning, just those who claim it under such a precarious and flawed premise.

What I'm NOT attempting here is a wholehearted support for the way sociology and psychology have been undertaken so far - that is not my position. Both subjects have a broad range in terms of the quality of their research and I'm only interested in research with strong ties to the real world, not the ethnographic twaddle, not the dire evolutionary psychology, certainly not the psycho analysis, where ideas attach only to other ideas they are likely man made, but where they tie to the material world I get interested.

One example of a good move forward is the notion of 'life chances' this encompasses a few measurable features of human life on which most (not all) would agree are positive. Health, standard of education, longevity, stable relationships, employment, avoiding prison, avoiding being the victim of violence, these are quantifiable and usable.

So I'm saying that to avoid double standards and retain an objective of rational secularisation requires absolutely to engage with social study, maybe even to drive it and there are foundations with funds enough to do so.