Hey, Howard--I think you just re-validated my point. But that's OK.

Well, I've only thumbed through the book at this point. First off, I completely disagree with the author's basic premise! Blind readings can be entertaining and an interesting study into one's own technique and internal logic regarding chart reading, but it is absolutely not the best judge of whether astrology works.

Also think some people were being a bit coy about their readings, but then I can't blame them.

Looking at these things with an 'empirical' view in mind is looking for parlor tricks, IMO. Time would be better served elsewhere.

Gabe

The book [i]Under One Sky[/i] was edited by Rafael Nasser, not by Jodie Forrest. A review of the book by Ken Gillman that appeared in [i]Considerations XIX: 3[/i], pp 94-96 can be read at www.freeconsiderations.com.

Gillman's review is a little brief, selective and questionable, however his conclusion strikes me as a rational one. Someone who seems to think more astrologers should be able to demonstrate more evidential validity.

Hi Howard,

Depends what you mean by "evidential validity".

HOWARD B SAYER wrote:Gillman's review is a little brief, selective and questionable, however his conclusion strikes me as a rational one. Someone who seems to think more astrologers should be able to demonstrate more evidential validity.

Howard, you thoughtful posts also make me think there's a bigger underlying question at work, which is whether we can develop an objective measure of "hits" and "misses" to determine the "grade" (or "marks" as we say in Canada) to be assigned to an astrological chart reading.

If someone knows of such an instrument now, please help me out.

But we might agree that objective events in the person's life could be tallied as hits, misses, N/As, or partials. Married/unmarried, career/s, any serious illnesses, and so on.

Possibly personality traits. Jealous, affectionate, outgoing, aloof. Behavioural scientists have different quantitative instruments used to assess personality, such as (but not restricted to) the Myers-Briggs test. Some of their characterizations could match up with astrologers' personality delineations, but some don't. But this does begin to edge into subjectivity already. What appears to be jealous behaviour to someone with a strong emphasis in Aquarius might seem like a perfectly justifiable response to triple Scorpio. I got different results when I did the Myers Briggs test on two different occasions: the subjects themselves may not be consistent.

But then we would also have to consider the different goals of the different schools of thought, because these lead to different emphases in a chart reading; and some of them are not amenable to objective frequency counts. For example, evolutionary astrologers are interested in past lives, whereas an astrologer steeped in myth and archetypes might be seen as successful if her use of this lore particularly resonates with client's inner life.

And this gets pretty subjective on the part of the score-keeper. Sure Demetra George made some boo-boos, but I also thought she had a better qualitative grasp of Joyce as a person than most of the others did. So are life events or core personality traits more important in grading the astrologer? And on what basis?

This leads to the problem of weighting the results of a chart reading. Which life events or personality traits are highly important? Which ones might an astrologer get correct, but that are relatively trivial in terms of the overall chart reading? For example, if a native had a traumatic accident at age 8 and an astrologer got that correct, do we weight this as heavily as the astrologer missing that the native had a long and distinguished career in public life?

As I mentioned above, an astrologer might play it very safe by writing only in gross over-generalizations. These wouldn't be "wrong" in the sense of goofing on somebody's career [as in "you need a lot of autonomy in your career" vs. "you should be a proctologist."] So a panel of astrologers would have to be given the identical set of conclusions to produce; but for reasons mentioned above, they are likely to balk at this.

So all of these decisions can be surficially objective but fundamentally subjective, in that we have to make some judgement calls about which measures to use and how to weight their significance.

Hi waybread,

You said it better than I could.

GR wrote:Hi Howard,

Depends what you mean by "evidential validity".

Along the lines of you hit submit at 8.32pm. Common sense.

waybread wrote:Howard, you thoughtful posts also make me think there's a bigger underlying question at work, which is whether we can develop an objective measure of "hits" and "misses" to determine the "grade" (or "marks" as we say in Canada) to be assigned to an astrological chart reading.

As the readings had this qualitative aspect, and some astrologers were more orientated towards what might be described as Joyce's inner world, a marking won't be exact. However if we asked 3 people with a good grasp of how to critically analyse text, with sufficient psychological nous, I doubt there grading would vary much. I suspect that if I revisited the text my scores would shift here and there but only marginally.

I wonder if you are overcomplicating the evaluation process. Although I agree some hits may be more 'weighty' than others.

It was a shame Joyce was not asked to give some feedback. If I recall correctly George provided a more generous account of her than others and I wouldn't be surprised if this more, in my view superficial probing of her psyche, might have meant she perceived it as more resonant.

Incidentally the Myers - Briggs Type Indicator wasn't developed by Behavioural Psychologists, far from it, its origins have a Jungian and arguably Astrological genesis. However the outcomes should be reasonably consistent. Most personality theorists imagine 'personality' as being a relatively constant variable, as do astrologers it seems to me!

I am not "overcomplicating the evaluation process!" If we are serious about it. If this is water-cooler conversation, well then, maybe. And we've already established that if you get the several astrologers in the same [virtual] room, you will get that number of different opinions. One man's taken-for-granted common sense is another man's unsupported hypothesis.

And never mind post-modernism and the other "posts", in which personality is highly fluid and situational. [Possibly a first house thing.] Supposedly Jung kicked off the Myers-Briggs type test over a fascination with astrology. But it is by no means the only instrument.

4:32 PM actually. See what I mean?

Gabe

HOWARD B SAYER wrote:

GR wrote:Hi Howard,

Depends what you mean by "evidential validity".

Along the lines of you hit submit at 8.32pm. Common sense.

GR wrote:4:32 PM actually. See what I mean?

Gabe

If you're making the point common sense undergoes cross cultural variations then I do. However I'd have thought if you sent the book to a few noted thinkers spaced out around the globe they would agree that Time Zones are real enough.