Integral Astrology: Powerful Proof Via Scientific Method!

Great clip!
As the young woman stated toward the end it seems many of us feel similar insecurities. Does society create it? 3 different parts of the world, all participants of similar age range.
Interesting…

That was quite a bait and switch, Julian! Effective, though. I take the planetary archetypes as metaphorical maps for human personality in general, not any specific personality. I think the experiment performed in the video is evidence not just that astrology is a poor measure of personality, but that personality in general is far more transactional in nature than we usually realize. In other words, I think even APA approved personality diagnostics are misleading, because each of us is constantly playing new roles depending on the company we are in. We are indeed all far more alike than we often like to admit.

Good illustration of the Forer effect at work. I think I'll link to the video myself.

So … just out of curiosity, do you believe that the Forer effect is a knock-em-dead critique of all personality type analysis? Or even a debunking of all astrology?

It seems like a great way to debunk certain crude fortune tellers and certain crude personality tests, but certainly not all. The wikipedia article you linked to shows that the effect can be controlled by eliminating the “Variables influencing the effect”.

Personally, I don't think astrology is good at all for “predicting” personality types. Thomas Moore, an author who has written an entire book (and a pretty good book) on the Zodiac, says that he would be just about as likely to recommend a good birthchart reading to a client as he would a personality type test (both would probably produce about the same level of accuracy).

I don't think the value of astrology is in predicting types at all. I think the Zodiac's value is in conceiving an entire holistic system of archetypal symbols, each of which can aid a careful student in understanding human nature. But then again, anyone whose interest in astrology is limited to that which can be “debunked” probably isn't seriously interested in archetypes at all.

I'm aware of the forer effect, and any researcher into fields such as this would know about it.  Astrology is an interesting example to play with because little research has been done on it that I'm aware of.  Most astrologers probably do fall into the forer effect.

The forer effect applies widely.  We tend to read into all of our experience.  Serious-looking papers have been accepted in peer-reviewed journals even though they were parodies.  The forer effect can be controlled to an extent within a scientific experiment, but how do we control for it in our normal lives?  We all are biased.  We all have expectations for what we look for.  We all have models we interpret our experience by.

Personality types is a more balanced example in which to consider the forer effect.  Personality bridges betweeen pop psychology and academic research.  There is plenty of research that shows that personality traits exist and that some of them don't change much.  However, outside of that research, a person is hard put to avoid the forer effect.  How do we objectively understand our own subjective experience?

James Randi does this experiment too, but what does it have to say about astrology itself? Not very much, it seems, since this experiment's real target is subjectivity. It says that you don't really know your own personality, and perhaps wants to suggest that, in principle, epistemology of subjectivity is invalid and produces no reliable knowledge.

I want to say that this is similar to a line-level fallacy, because it places objective knowledge as level above subjective knowledge, when in reality they are separate quadrants, and in principle, it is possible to develop a subjective methodology as reliable as objective, scientific methodology. But this is unrelated to astrology.

On topic, I want to make the poinst that astrology does actually make testable, falsifiable predictions. First, it says that personality types are distributed in the population in a cyclical way, and second, that those cycles have correlations in the motions of the planets and stars. There doesn't have to be a causal link from the planets to an individual's personality for which we have to posit mysterious undetectable energies that emanate from them.

The main issue for testing these hypotheses is subjective science. The way many studies of astrology are set up, its like testing the laws of gravity by surveying the population on whether they think heavy objects fall faster than light objects. People are probably about as well-informed about basic physics as they are about their own personality (meaning: not very). On top of that, the testers probably have very little skill in intersubjective science to determine how accurately a personality profile or system describes another person, which is something like testing the the law of gravity by dropping two balls off a tower and then surveying the balls to assess whether they landed at the same time or not.

With these two methods, we produce wildly unreliable data, and then conclude that subjectivity has no legitimacy whatsoever.

When I saw it was all kids my antenna went up!

The thought that occured to me, which MrTeacup pointed at, but I want to elaborate on tangentially is this: that we do not need to refute things because there is no objective basis to prove its existance. All we need to confront is that we do not know, which means usually that the other person doesn't either, and that is good enough. Competing theories seem to entrench and extend opposition, as opposed to transcend and include 'the unknown as unknown'.
I like the idea of astrology, but I know nothing of its system. I like to wonder though, but belief is another thing altogether.

“marmalade its all a mattter of degree - just because on can never be completely objective doesnt mean that one cannot strive to be MORE objective - to think more critically, to be less gullible, less prone to believing because it sounds good or feels nice and more interested in whether or not something is actually true..”

Yeah, I'd like to believe that.  I've been to therapists, I've done spiritual practices, and I've studied many different things with some focus on personality issues.  I'd hope that gives me some amount of 'objectivity'.  But how would I know if I haven't been scientifically tested?  :)

I think its actually quite difficult to debunk astrology's objective claims, which is why these types of experiments actually debunk the belief that my innate sense of the accuracy of a astrological personality description can be used to verify its claims.

The difficultly in disproving astrology's claims is that we don't really have a good way of verifying the proposition “Mike has personality trait X.” The transactional issues of personality have been mentioned, and we also have no way of determining who can accurately and reliably report their interior state of mind.

Julian,

Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that the usefulness of planetary archetypes comes from the predictive power of planetary alignments. The archetypes are useful because they are meaningful, regardless of whether or not (presumably not) any causal/mechanical relationship exists between said archetypes and the astronomical objects they happen to share their names with. As a form of mechanics (ie, a predictive science based on efficient causation, aka energy exchange between physical bodies), astrology is completely erroneous. But as a form of psychologically significant communication between people who share an intuitive understanding of the meaning of a Saturn-Uranus opposition (or whatever), I think astrology remains a legitimate mode of discourse. Again, as a mechanics, astrology is about as awkward as trying to scientifically derive the legacy of the deceased's character during a funeral oration commemorating their death. It is only as a map used to navigate the inner structure of the psyche and its relationships that I find astrological symbols appropriate.

Oh, and the Forer effect I am familiar with. I think the effect speaks to what I was saying about the transactional way personality traits are manifested between people. It is difficult to get anything close to an objective reading of another's personality, for the simple reason that collecting such data necessarily requires that we engage them with our own personalties. Even standardized typology tests don't get around this problem, though I'd agree that certain very general tendencies are somewhat attributable to individuals (like introversion and extroversion). But even so, these tendencies are always evolving…

Julian, that study has the same problem I referred to earlier - it takes the California Personality Inventory as a true measure of the client's personality.

French statistician Michel Gauquelin showed a significant correlation between people's time of birth and their personalities, escpecially their chosen profession. The results are irrefutable. Now there's a challenge for the rational mind.

Wonderer,

I just read the wiki page about Gauquelin's research. The “Mars effect” (Mars/Ares is the Roman/Greek god of war) relating the rising and culmination of the planet to famous athlete's births is interesting, and astrology can only benefit from taking modern statistical methods into account. But nonetheless, I wonder if the ancient saying: “as above, so below,” even if valid, should be taken so literally that we supposed planetary motions are responsible for our terrestrial proclivities. Alan Watts said something to this effect, that while the idea itself may indeed be true (that the cosmos functions as a whole, such that above truly is as below), it is nonetheless naive of us to assume our measly statistical methods might be capable of distilling the precise astrological significance of the infinite complexity of the sky.

Julian,

Re: your response to my comment. But if you take your 3rd point seriously, your attitude towards astrology changes remarkably. Far from seeming a rudimentary logical error, astrology appears as the cumulative psychological wisdom of the ancient world. The fact that your predominant attitude towards astrology is ridicule, I wonder how much you are really taking its archetypal value seriously. But at least you are paying good lip service, and that's something.

Looking forward to your upcoming rebuttal of mythic-level astrology! especially the part where you will employ the services of several professional astrologers to perform birthchart analysis on you, and then illustrate how – empirically – they are most definitely wrong or even harmful in their analysis and counsel.

julian,

hmmmm… not sure how what you said at all replies to my comment above. i was simply pointing out that the tone of ridicule of astrology is not the best, though a thoroughgoing critique of magenta astrology is naturally quite appropriate. viewing astrology as merely magenta is symptomatic of pre-vision logic thinking (i.e., orange), not genuine, healthy green (which opens its eyes and lovely heart and falls in love with astrology's “archetypal value”).

a more integral tone on astrology is not ridicule, nor unquestioning appreciation, but  reflective criticism, healthy skepticism, and bona fide accepance of the genuine “archetypal value”.

as for ken wilber, correct me if i'm wrong, but his view in One Taste is that he is agnostic. And in SES, he acknowledges that Jungian archetypes (e.g., the Zodiac) may be either prerational or transrational.

i think your position is different than KW's, not mine

  I have found that there can be very talented people who work with symbols and images in very creative and dynamic ways. It's very entertaining and sometimes packs an emotional wallop of recognition. I'm thinking here of dreamwork, the mandalas created after holotropic breathwork sessions and occasionally a Tarot reader and  yes, an astrologer. It seems the talent of the reader is of more importance than the instrument of the reading. It is not now or ever a science. It is folk psychology but it can have value.
  I have worked with mandala images. There have been times when I fall into an altered state and associations and intuitions flow easily. I cannot make it happen every time. It has frightened some of  the people in the circle and delighted others. It's not something I do regularly. It does give me a healthy respect for the power of archtypes and the depths of unconscious material.
  I did have the experience recently of going to a dinner party where two of the guests were well known and from out of town. One of the other guests was a local astrologer and she had asked for the special guests birthdays in advance so she could prepare their charts. After dinner she gave the reading for each. There was some resonance but never the big 'kapow' of an intuitive hit. After the readings were nearly over  they reviewed the charts. The couple were from Europe. The astrologer had done charts for May 12, 1951 but the actual birthday was December 5th because in europe the convention is day/month/year not month/day/year as in the US.  It was a thoroughly embarrassing moment for the astrologer (whom I like and respect). It did reveal the forer effect, the “cold reading” effect and the basic desire of guests to be polite and courteous. I don't think it debunked all astrology readings for all time.
  People who do dream work and dream interpretation such as Jeremy Taylor, Richard Moss or even Robert Moss know that there is a felt response in the body when someone 'nails' a dream symbol. I think Taylor calls it a 'ping' of recognition. Someone with interpretative skills can really bring a dream to life and the dreamer can get a real sense that what had been obscured and unfathomable is now clear and meaningful. The dream develops resonance and the images endure in memory. The same is true for a good chart reader.
  The best astrologers out there are as much story tellers as scientists. My favorite is Carolyn Casey . She has a CD series of talks about the zodiac that is delightful. I've found it useful in my own understanding of emotions and moods_ e. g. feeling “erotic”, “martial”, “jovial”, “saturnine” etc. If you get a chance to hear her in person she is worth the ticket price. I've never had a reading from her although she has hinted that her client list includes the rich and powerful. In her words she “lives in Mordor” (Washington DC).
  I don't think astrology is worth much objection or noise and resistance. It's entertainment. I suspect that very, very few people ever initiate and follow through on lasting changes as a consequence of getting their charts read. It's just another mirror. I think of it as entertainment for the soul. To paraphrase Madonna “Psyche just wants to have fun.”  I am quite certain that is true for this Pisces…

I love that “entertainment for the soul” line. Great one, coyoteyoga.

p.s.: wasn't that cyndi lauper, not madonna?

Wolfspirit,
  Yup it's Cyndi. My bad.

Very interesting discussion.

I am curious if any of you have read Richard Tarnas book Cosmos and Psyche, a  correlative study of cultural events and astrological relationships, specifically among those that are commonly referred to astrologically as transpersonal planets: Uranus and Neptune?  It offers a fairly convincing correlative narrative.  Tarnas is an “integral” thinker, though not always in alignment with Wilber's integral view.

I've read parts of Cosmos and Psyche.  It intrigued me, but I didn't know what to make of it.  Along with Goddard, reading Tarnas helped me to see a different view of astrology.  I'm sure there are all kinds of patterns within history.  Of course, it will take a long time for science to catch up because I doubt there would be much funding to study this.