Talk:Black box theory

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Example Talk

I know the 'example' does not fit with the way Wikipedia normally describes things but it was the only way I could think of to express what Black Box theory is. The story told in the "Example" section is a paraphrase of what my College teacher Dr. Beyres (Doctorate in law) told us in his Public Speaking class. There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance. - Ali ibn Abi-Talib (talk) 07:19, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I'd agree that it's a "fairly popular" explanation of psychology and this article makes it sound a lot broader than it really is. It is a description of the behaviourist approach, but I don't know of any well-known psych researchers who believe that a behavioural explanation offers anything like a complete or satisfying map of the territory. The main premise of the black box theory, that you cannot open a human mind, is almost certainly not valid due to the increasing precision and detail of measurements of brain activity. A recent example getting popular press was an experiment where researchers were able to predict from subconscious brain activity which button participants would press, several seconds before they were aware of having made a choice. Unless you subscribe to Cartesian dualism or something similar, you must have a theory of mind that relies on real physical processes and by definition these must be knowable, even if our knowledge is currently imperfect / limited. 203.217.150.68 (talk) 05:09, 17 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]