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Psychology resembles other "soft" sciences in aspiring to, but rarely achieving, a hard science approach. Because of the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness and the complex nature of all things human, the barriers to the achievement of a pure psychological science seem at times insurmountable. What we do know is little enough to satisfy, but the boundary conditions of what we can know is perhaps an even greater frustration. In the past couple of decades some psychologists were swept away in the tides of postmodernism, while others steadfastly held on to the rocks of materialism. At present a sort of rough balance is being sought that will place cognitive research back on the front burner. Nonetheless, the methods of both the harder and less-hard sciences rely on empirical data and rational thinking, with intuition and common sense used only as heuristics (tools) to suggest the most important or interesting issues warranting investigation. This inability to defend (or even to fully secure) a materialist position is not altogether problematic for psychology. After all, much of human nature appears to derive from inherently probabilistic principles. The behaviors, decision-making processes, and mental activities of individual humans are generally unpredictable (although with enough practice we can get surprisingly good at anticipating the reactions or preferences of our spouses, children or parents), and our present ability to predict the behaviors even of large groups is very limited.
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