Psychology is certainly a science that has produced tons of repeatable results and discovered lots of things that were not previously known. Like any science it has provided insights that make sense of the world and it has useful applications in treating mentally ill people, for example.
I'm not entirely certain what you are claiming or disputing here.
>It's not a question of it being real, it's a matter of science and objectivity. If we can't reliably measure it, it doesn't matter that it exists, because anyone can claim to have, or not have, the condition.
That's really misleading. Psychological symptoms are not that subjective. Behavior is directly observable. And even subjective measurements are still data points. Not to mention things like brain scans.
> Psychology is certainly a science that has produced tons of repeatable results ...
False, and false. Psychology is not science (defined as a discipline steered by empirical evidence) and has not produced any repeatable, testable, empirical, falsifiable evidence or theories. Why? Because psychology's topic is the mind, and the mind is not -- cannot be -- a source for empirical evidence.
For psychology to become a science, it would have to study an empirical organ like the brain. Instead, psychology relies on self-reporting by the owners of the minds under study. This has always been, and is now, an impenetrable barrier to entry into the world of science.
Quote: "But to claim it [psychology] is 'science' is inaccurate. Actually, it's worse than that. It's an attempt to redefine science. Science, redefined, is no longer the empirical analysis of the natural world; instead, it is any topic that sprinkles a few numbers around. This is dangerous because, under such a loose definition, anything can qualify as science. And when anything qualifies as science, science can no longer claim to have a unique grasp on secular truth."
> For psychology to become a science, it would have to study an empirical organ like the brain.
No, it could just study an empirical thing like behavior (which, incidentally, it does.)
> Instead, psychology relies on self-reporting by the owners of the minds under study.
Some branches of psychology study the relationship between other empirical facts and people's self-described experience of mental states, but both the other fact and the descriptions are empirical facts.
>> For psychology to become a science, it would have to study an empirical organ like the brain.
> >No, it could just study an empirical thing like behavior (which, incidentally, it does.)
Anthropologists study behavior. Psychologists study behavior, then come to unsupportable conclusions about the mental sources of that behavior. It is the second step that (a) distinguishes psychology from anthropology, and (b) prevents psychology from taking any claim on science.
In a nutshell, psychology studies the mind. The mind, not a physical organ, cannot provide empirical evidence, evidence gathered from reality in a way that forces agreement about its meaning between similarly equipped observers. Science requires empirical evidence. Therefore psychology is not a science.
> Some branches of psychology study the relationship between other empirical facts and people's self-described experience of mental states, but both the other fact and the descriptions are empirical facts.
So which part of "Psychology's topic is the mind" are you not getting? No mind, no psychology. Everything that psychology studies relates to the mind, the field's topic of study.
Quote: "But to claim it [psychology] is 'science' is inaccurate. Actually, it's worse than that. It's an attempt to redefine science. Science, redefined, is no longer the empirical analysis of the natural world; instead, it is any topic that sprinkles a few numbers around. This is dangerous because, under such a loose definition, anything can qualify as science. And when anything qualifies as science, science can no longer claim to have a unique grasp on secular truth."
> In a nutshell, psychology studies the mind. The mind, not a physical organ, cannot provide empirical evidence
The mind is a name given to a collection of epiphonemena of various physical sources, included, but not limited to, the brain and other physical organs. As such, it is no less a valid subject of empirical investigation as any other collection of physical phenomenon.
> Science requires empirical evidence.
And psychology gathers empirical evidence from environmental facts and their relation to physical behaviors.
I'm not entirely certain what you are claiming or disputing here.
>It's not a question of it being real, it's a matter of science and objectivity. If we can't reliably measure it, it doesn't matter that it exists, because anyone can claim to have, or not have, the condition.
That's really misleading. Psychological symptoms are not that subjective. Behavior is directly observable. And even subjective measurements are still data points. Not to mention things like brain scans.