Exam 1

Thales (early ontology)

Thales (early ontology)

ultimate reality is water

Anaximander (early ontology)

ultimate reality is an “indefinite”, “unlimited”, “primordial stuff”, which is unlike anything we can experience but gives rise to the things in the world

Anaximenes (early ontology)

ultimate reality is air

Heraclitus (early ontology)

ultimate reality is change or flux as represented by fire

Democritus (early ontology)

ultimate reality is composed of “bits” of stuff called atoms

Plato (early ontology)

ultimate reality is an immaterial realm of forms

Aristotle (early ontology)

ultimate reality is matter which is composed of the elements earth, water, air, and fire

Plato’s theory of forms

• ultimate reality is the world of forms

• forms are the ideal representation of something

• forms really exist (i.e. they have ontological status)

• forms are Plato’s substance

• forms are eternal and unchanging

• forms give things in the world of becoming their identity

Plato’s soul

he believed that humans have an immortal soul that could be separated from the body

nativism

knowledge about the truth of reality exists in the soul at its inception

Aristotle’s Substance

• ordinary objects of everyday experience - individual things referred to by a noun, e.g., my dog Buddy

• substance consists of matter and form

  • Matter - the stuff of which something is made

  • form - makes an object the kind of thing it is; form is that which realizes the potential of matter

    • Boat (the substance) is not just its matter; it is matter realized in a particular way by form

• unlike Plato, matter and form are inseparable

Aristotle on Soul

all living things- plants, animals, and humans - have souls

the Peripatetic Axiom

“there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses” (Thomas Aquinas)

A priori

rationalism - not dependent on experience

A posteriori

empiricism - dependent on experience

Arguments for why studying history is important:

The mistakes argument: A consequence of ignorance of history is repetition of the mistakes of history

Why is studying history important?

it informs our understanding of the present; knowledge of the history of such debates will shape your perception and understanding of modern psychology

Reasons for psychology’s interest in its history

1. psychology is still in its infancy

2. the field is still grappling with many of the same topics that occupied it a century ago

3. it can provide some unity for what had become a diverse and highly specialized field

4. an understanding of psychology;s history makes one a more critical thinker

Personalistic theory

• the “great man” theory

• emphasizes the contributions of individual people

• historical biographies and eponyms reflect this view

• the important events in history result from the heroic (or evil) actions of individuals, and without these individuals, history would be vastly different

Eponym

when historical periods are identified with reference to the individuals whose actions are believed to be critical in shaping events (Newtonian physics, Darwinism, Freudian psychology)

Naturalistic theory

• such determinants include social, moral, political, economic, and intellectual forces that characterize a time and place

• emphasizes the overall intellectual and cultural climate of a particular historical era -- what the German philosopher Hegel called the zeitgeist

Zeitgeist

determinants such as social, moral, political, economic, and intellectual forces that characterize a time and place

• used in naturalistic theory

Multiples (Naturalistic Theory)

evidence for influence of the Zeitgeist

• two or more individuals independently make the same discovery at about the same time

  • Darwin and Wallace codiscovering natural selection

Internalism

• focuses on events immediately and directly related to some historical developement

• tends to be more personalistic oriented

• focuses on the development of ideas or the progression of research to the exclusion of the larger world

Externalism

• consideres influences outside psychology that also influence the discipline

• focus is on events more remote to some historical development

• context is the essence of externalism

• tends to be more naturalistic oriented

• examine societal, economic, institutional, and extra-disciplinary influences

Diahcronic

• focuses on how an event evolved through time

• enables hypotheses of how antecedents influenced the event

• can be internal or external or both

• can be personalistic or naturalistic or both

Synchronic

• Concerned with something as it exists in a particular point in time (synchronic means “at the same time”)

• not concerned with how things develop to that point

• strives not to let knowledge of what happened before or after to intrude

• useful in avoiding bad forms of presentism

• tends to be strongly external and naturalistic

Presentism

• good form: use of historical knowledge to inform understanding of the present

• bad form: allowing present knowledge, values, and beliefs to bias interpretation of the past

• presentism produces anachronism

• particularly frowned upon when it involved ethical judgements about past actions

anachronism

something that is out of place in time (EX: cave men riding dinosaurs)

Historicism

• the antidote for presentism

• tries to understand the an event in terms to the knowledge and values in existence at the time (zeitgeist)of the event

• external and synchronic

original myths

• stories overemphasizing the importance of particular events in psychology’s history

• purpose: to highlight the contrast between what is said to be a prescientific approach to some psychological phenomenon and the mergence of a more scientific strategy

Naturalism

all that exists is in the natural world; nothing exists that is supernatural (no God or other supernatural beings; no eternal soul); mind is a natural phenomenon

materialism

matter is the only substance; psychological phenomena are material entities or properties of the material entities

physicalism

everything is wholly constituted of and completely determined by physical phenomena; entails" “causal closure of physics”; there is no such thing as a mental causation

Redutionism

• based on atomism - there is a base level of reality composed of fundamental particles; everything else is an aggregate of fundamental properties

• idea that complex phenomena (aggregates) can be wholly explained by (reduced to) the properties of their component parts; mental phenomena can be totally explained by biological phenomana

Holism

(the antonym of atomism/reductionism)

• aggregates have properties not possessed by components out of complexity, new things such as life and mind, come into existence (emergentism)

Determinism

• everything has a cause

• every thought, every feeling, every action is -- in principle -- completely predictable

• there is no free will

• the idea of personal responsibility is nonsense

Deductive reasoning

reasoning from general premises to particular conclusions

• If A then B (premise 1)

  • A (premise 2)

  • Therefore B (conclusion)

Inductive reasoning

reasoning from particular observations to a general conclusion

• Observations (premise): I have observed 1,000 dogs and every dog had fleas

• Conclusion: all dogs have fleas

  • Used to formulate general scientific laws

Problem of Inductive Reasoning

the conclusion exceeds the content of the premise; the truth of the premise does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion

• not genuinely universal; they always involve a leap of faith

Issue of Deductive Reasoning

a deductive argument can be valid and the conclusion also if one or more of the premises is false

Hypothetico-deductive Model

Step 1: Formulate hypothesis (by intuition or induction)

Step 2: Deduce a testable (potentially falsifiable) consequence of the hypothesis

Step 3: Gather data by observation or experimentation (empiricism) to test the hypothesis

Step 4: confirm or refute the hypothesis

Characteristics of Mature Science

• Normal Science and Scientific Revolution

• paradigms

Characteristics of immature science

• pre-paradigmatic; there is a lack of consensus on fundamental issues

• characterized by “schools” not paradigms - school: one of multiple competing visions of the nature, subject, and methodology of scientific discipline

• science progress is difficult to gauge bc knowledge changes qualitatively, “laterally”; growth by he addition of new schools

  • Psychology is pre-paradigmatic

Normal Science

• paradigm driven (set of shared beliefs)

• defines fundamental nature of the thing studied

• defines questions that are legitimate to ask

• defines methods

• aimed at confirming and extending paradigm

• progress is like “puzzle solving”

• cumulative growth of knowledge

• continuity of knowledge and concepts

• troublesome anomalies are ignored or explained away

Scientific Revolution

• Anomalies become so serious that scientists begin to question the paradigm

• paradigm shift

• discontinuous growth of knowledge

Boring’s famous book “A History of Experimental Psychology”

Boring was under the impression that Titchener basically imported Wundt’s brand of experimental psychology, structuralism, to America, when in fact, Wundt’s systemm was quite different from Titchner’s system. So in his book, the distinctions were lost and since most physchologists trained in the 50s-80s learned their history through this book, the mythological identification of Wundt’s and Titchner’s systems became conventional wisdom.

Winston Churchills interpretation problem

descisions about selection and about writing history both involve interpreting info, and those interpretations are influenced by the individual characteristics of the historian and by the features of the historical context in which the historian is writing.

• Historians will be influenced by their preconceptions, by the amount of knowledge they already have, as well as by the theories they hold about the nature of history (e.g. personalistic vs naturalistic emphasis)

Goddard and presentism

Goddard firmly believed that intelligence was an inherited trait and that it could be measured with a brand new technology - IQ test

• his work contributed to the deportation of untold numbers people

• to understand his behavior, it is necessary to study it from the vantage point of the historical period in which it occurred instead of that of today

  • although the past can help us understand the present, our knowledge about the present should not be used to judge the past

What are the branches of Philosophy

metaphysics, epistemology, logic and linguistics, and axiology

Rationalism

not dependent on experience; A priori

• rationalists uses intuition and deduction to determine what is true

Empiricism

Dependent on experience; A posteriori

Who were the rationalist philosophers?

Descartes, Leibnitz, and Kant

“The hard problem of consciousness”

conscious experience has a quality; it is like something to the person having the experience

• the hard problem is physical characterization of qualia; inability to do this, despite centuries of effort, is an argument against physicalism

Qualia

properties of experience; conscious experience has a quality; it is like something to the person having the experience

The Mary thought experiment

• Mary learns all of the physical truths about color perception in a black and white world

• mary sees a red object for the first time

• mary discovers something new about color perception: what it is like to have the experience red

Descartes, continuity of self

self=mind=soul

the self, is the mind, is the soul

• Self/Mind/Suul is an immortal substance that is created and maintained in existence by God

Descarte’s Views

rationalist, realist, mind/body dualist

Locke, core principle of empiricism

the peripatetic axiom: all knowledge comes from sensations; the mind in its original state is like “white paper void of all characters without any ideas”

Locke’s Views

empiricist, realist, mind/body dualist

Compatibilism (Locke)

• willing vs doing

• the will is a power possessed by the mind to order the motion or rest of one’s body and the power to order the consideration or non-consideration of an idea

• the will is determined by that which will produce pleasure and avoid pain

• the actual “doing” is volition

  • we are free to do or not to do what the will directs

• locke does not believe in free will, but he believes in freedom

British Empricism

the core principle of this is the peripatetic axiom: all knowledge comes from sensations; the mind in its original state is like “white paper void of all characters without any ideas”

Leibniz views

rationalist, idealist, monist

Leibnitz parallelism

pre-programming of monads (elemental (invisible) substances created by God) by God is responsible for harmony between the apparent material and mental world

Monads

elemental (invisible) substances created by God

• they have no extension

• they are mental entities capable of perception

• they are capable of change but not by natural forces

• Everything is made of compounds of monads; everything has a mental capacity

Leibniz is a panpsychist

he believes everything has a mental capacity since it is made of monads

Berkely views

empiricist, idealist, and monist

Monist

believed in a multiplicity of mental “substances”

Berkely - subjective idealism

there is no mind-independent external material reality

primary qualities of objects (locke)

mind-independent properties of the object, e.g., extension, solidity, figure, movement

produce ideas that resemble objects

secondary qualities of objects (locke)

mind-dependent properties

produced in the perceiver by the objects, but do not resemble objects, e.g., color, smell, taste

Berkely on primary qualities of objects vs secondary

primary qualities of objects such as extension, solidity, form, movement, are mere ideas, they are mind-dependent

we have no reason to believe that anything external to the mind exists

All reality exists in perception (secondary)

Solipsism

the doctrine that only one mind exists (God’s)

subjective idealism is instrisically this

Berkely on solipsism

he tried to avoid the problem of solipsism by arguing that everything, including other minds, is held in existence by the mind of God

David Hume + importance

empiricist + his account of mind and his epistemology

Hume’s liveliness hypothesis

impressions are “lively” or “vivid”, ideas are “faint”

Hume’s elements of mind

raw elements of mind are not ideas but impressions, which include sensations, passions, and emotions as they make their first appearance in the soul

Hume’s Fork

the only justifiable beliefs are:

1. Relation of ideas (a priori)

   1. discoverable by the mere operation of thought

   2. propositions of deductive logic or math

   3. propositions that are true in themselves, e.g., 2+2=4 or “All bachelors are unmarried”

2. Matters of fact (a posteriori)

   1. statements about the way the world is

   2. truth is based on experience (sense data)

      1. EX a man finding a watch on a deserted island concluded that there is or has been someone else on the island

   3. All matters of fact rest on other matters of fact

   4. All matters of fact rest on the notion of causation

David Hartley + contributions

empiricist, realist and a mind/body dualist

contributions:

1. psychophysical approach

2. elaboration of associationism

Hartley principles of associationism

Contiguity

1. synchronous (spatial)

2. Successive (temporal)

How did Hartley expand the concept of associationism

he used the idea to explain a learned reflex

• described how an infants grasping reflex to a finger placed in its palm becomes associated with and conditioned to a variety of stimuli, e.g., the word “grasp”

• modifiable association by contiguity becomes the core mechanism of learning in behavioral psychology

• he extended the concept of association to higher level mental constructs, e.g. beauty, honor, loyalty

John Stuart Mill

empiricist and associationist

Mill - Homeopathic causation

• two causes operating conjointly have a combined effect that is equal to the algebraic sum of their separate effects

• the laws that govern the effect of causes are the same when they are combines as when they are separate

  • each cause produces the exact same effect when in combination as when alone

• the effects produced by the combined causes are completely predictable and explainable from a knowledge of the propertied of the separate agents

• effects produced by homeopathic causation are called resultants

resultants

effects produced by homeopathic causation

Mill - Heteropathic causation

• the effects of 2 causes acting in combo are not the sum of their individual effects

• the laws that govern the effect of causes are different when they are combined (new laws emerge)

• the effects produced by the combines agents are not predictable a priori or explainable from a knowledge of the properties of the separate causes

• effects produced by heteropathic causation are called emergents

Emergents

effects produced by heteropathic causation

Emergentism

(AKA holism): life and mind are emergents

Immanuel Kant

materialism and idealism; and rationalism and empiricism

absolutist: there is one world, one science, one reality, one truth

Kant - Contingent Truth

• something is true that could have been false

• it is true, but it doesn’t have to be true

  • “all the coins in my pocket are silver colored”

    • there is no necessary requirement that coins in my pocket must be silver

    • not genuinely universal

      • coins in my pocket past and future and coins in other pockets need not be silver

Kant - Necessary Truth

• it must be true; it is inconceivable that it is false

• genuinely universal; it is true at all times and places

  • EX: all bachelors are unmarried, the sum of the interior angles of a triangle equals 180º

Kant - Analytic knowledge claim

propositions that are true because of the word meanings

“all bachelors are unmarried”

Kant - Synthetic knowledge claim

ampliative propositions

“all dogs have fleas”

Kant - A priori knowledge claim

Not empirical (independent of experience)

“all bachelors are unmarried”

Kant - A posteriori knowledge claim

Empirical (dependent on experience)

“all dogs have fleas”

Kant - phenomena

objects that exist in relation to mind

Kant - noumena

objects that exist independently of mind

Importance of Kant to psychology

• with kant, matter is real but our knowledge of it us a construction of mind by a priori ideas

• After kant, the question becomes: what are the rules that govern this construction?

• He had powerful influence on early psychologists (William James)

• Arguably, modern psych - particularly cognitive psych - is Kantian

Kant - a priori rules

• he wondered how experience itself was possible, and he concluded that it required the existence of a priori (prior to experience) knowledge that helps shape the experiences we have

• the a priori concepts are human universals; they are common to all people, in all places, at all times

• cause and effect were considered by Kant to be innate properties of the mind

Kant’s view of psychology (book)

Kant argued that psychology could never become a science like the physical sciences because mental phenomena could not be observed directly by an independent observer, nor could they be defined or measured with the precision of mathematics.

Epistemology

the study of human knowledge and its acquisition