Category Archives: Psychology

The Circles of Friendship

As noted last week, Robin Dunbar, who has done amazing research into close personal relationships, is best known for “Dunbar’s Number” – his finding that the typical friends network contains about 150 people (as discussed in a recent post by Arnold Kling). Yet as I also noted long ago in my blog post “Joining theContinue reading “The Circles of Friendship”

The Seven Pillars of Friendship

Love, friendship, and other close personal relationships have been ill-served in the philosophical literature. Aside from Aristotle’s foundational discussion and the occasional essay by the likes of Montaigne, Bacon, and Emerson, few philosophers have contributed deep insights to human relationships. This is disappointing, because as Aristotle observed 2400 years ago we are social creatures forContinue reading “The Seven Pillars of Friendship”

Best Self vs. True Self

As previously mentioned, I am skeptical about the notion of the true self. Recently I’ve done some reading that has reinforced this skepticism. In particular, research by the likes of Roy Baumeister shows that human beings tend to identify with the activities and desires that they think are best (either individually or socially) and toContinue reading “Best Self vs. True Self”

Growing into One’s Nature

Existentialist philosophers insist on the ability – indeed, the responsibility – for human beings to create themselves. This is the import of Sartre’s famous formulation “existence precedes essence”: there is no human essence, and if you believe so then you are engaging in “bad faith” and living inauthentically. Given all that we have discovered soContinue reading “Growing into One’s Nature”

Goodness Trumps Uniqueness

Advocates of modern eudaimonism and the “true self” place great value on individual uniqueness. Consider David L. Norton in his 1976 book Personal Destinies (p. 16): According to self-actualization ethics it is every person’s primary responsibility first to discover the daimon [on p. 5 equated with the “true self”] within him and thereafter to live in accordanceContinue reading “Goodness Trumps Uniqueness”

Thoughts, Actions, Values

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics famously begins with the following sentence (as translated by W.D. Ross): Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. We can see here a point ofContinue reading “Thoughts, Actions, Values”

It’s Values All the Way Down

One often hears the claim that science must be value-neutral, especially in social sciences like economics, psychology, and sociology. This claim is one instance of fact-value dualism: the doctrine that facts are facts, values are values, and never the twain shall meet. Another instance of this dualism is the assertion (traceable to British empiricist DavidContinue reading “It’s Values All the Way Down”