PSYC 451: History of Psychology (Lecture #1-#4)

1. Psychology

It is the science of mental processes and behavior.

• “Psych” = Greek word for mind, soul, spirit, or life

• “Psychology has a long past, but only a short history” -Herman Ebbinghaus

1. Great Persons

“Great persons change history”

1. Zeitgeist

This says that “the spirit of the times” creates circumstances and contexts for historical changes.

1. Science works in three ways. What are these three ways?

These ways include:

1. Paradigms (theories that explain)

2. Falsification (i.e., hypothesis testing)

3. Research program

1. Paradigms

According to Thomas Kuhn, it is the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given community.

• He said it goes on like this: Model crisis → Revolution → Paradigm Shift → Normal Science → Model drift and back around again.

1. Stages of Paradigms

These are:

1. Pre-paradigms: “Schools” complete for preeminence or superiority

2. Paradigms: “Normal Science” seeks to match facts with theory

3. Revolution: “Anomaly” leads to crisis and new paradigm

1. A methodological view of psychology is “falsification”. What is this?

This was “created” by Sir Karl Popper. He said that a good scientific statement is “falsifiable” (i.e., hypothesis testing) (Demarcation Criterion)

• Test statement by looking for contrary instances

• A statement that no observation would falsify cannot be tested and therefore is considered scientific.

1. Psychology is defining and studying the social construction of labels. What is a good example of this?

Testing introversion or extraverison.

2. When it comes to psychology, what are the two philosophical branches?

Ontology and Epistemology

2. Ontology

This means that they are questions of existence.

• This consists of Dualism and Monoism

2. Dualism

This means that the mind and body exist separately; Self divided

2. Monoism

This means that the mind and body exist as one; The self is unified as a whole.

2. Epistemology

They are questions of truth. These consist of Rationalism (through reasoning) and Empiricism (through experience via senses).

2. Syncretism

It is the blending religious traditions to create new, unique belief systems.

2. Egypt’s emergence as an ancient world power benefited from-

-a centralized government.

• Deified Pharoah: Including Hellenistic Egypt (Ptolemaic – influenced by Greeks)

• Polytheistic devotion to vast array of gods that guided and controlled human lives

• Priests performed elaborate religious rituals, particularly for burial

• Belief in immortality and preparation for the afterlife

2. Abrahamic Tradition

This is the Monotheistic belief in one God.

• Believe Hebrew people chosen to participate in covenant with God: Old Testament, Torah.

• Mosaic Code of the Ten Commandments as guidelines for living a good and virtuous life.

• Worship in temple at Jerusalem

  • Sacrificial atonement for sin, and belief in eventual deliverance by a Messiah sent from God.

• Ex.) Judaism, Christanity, and Islam

2. Abrahamic Traditions’ and it’s contemporary impact

Abraham’s historical impact has left contemporary human societies with three great monotheistic religions.

• Currently, distinctions in psychological views between the East and the West have become blurred.

2. India and Buddhism

This religion consists of four noble truths:

1. Life is suffering (Dukkha)

2. Suffering has causes and can be eliminated (known and concealed states (e.g., birth and death; one’s pleasure can cause another’s pain))

3. Prescriptions for virtuous living detailed by simple rules of behavior leading to a sense of subjective well-being (Eightfold Path- last Noble Truth)

2. China and their early philosophies

• I-Ching (Book of changes; c. 1120 BC)

  • Attributed to Wen Wang (1152-1056 BC)

  • Principles of Yin and Yang – “dualism in the East”

    • Yin (female principle): the moon, negative direction, passivity

      • Earthly symbols: darkness, cold, death

    • Yang (male principle): the sun, positive direction, activity, productivity

      • Heavenly symbols: light, heat, life

    • Truth is uncertain; morality is relative

2. China Taoism

Tao-Te-Ching (Book of the Ways and of Virtue)

• Written by Lao-tze (604-531 BC)

• “The way”

  • An idyllic path to wise living

  • Call to living in harmony with the laws and order of nature

  • Quest for wisdom begins in silence

  • Intellect is uncertain; knowledge is relative

2. Confucius (Kongzi)

He was the teacher of poetry, history, and moral deportment; Government leader and reformer

• Writings: Five volumes on laws of propriety, commentary on I-Ching, principles of morality, and history of China; Four volumes of philosophical treatises

• Moral teachings: Individual commitment to sincerity, honesty, thoughtfulness, and personal harmony.

  • Family loyalty as critical social structure

  • Psychology of social conformity and personal deportment

  • Guided by relative values and family organization

3. Morality

It is the distinction between right and wrong.

• This is the Socratic method – picking apart our assumptions, biases about what is right and what is wrong, coming to grips with our ignorance

  • “GNOTHI SEUTON, MEDEN AGAN”

  • KNOW THYSELF, NOTHING IN EXCESS

    • Temple of Apollo inscription

3. Ancient Greek Virtue in the Bronze Age

When it comes virtue during this time period, there was an emphasis on what we would call bravery.

• E.g., Warrior that dies honorably in battle can have an afterlife

  • Virtue (arête) is an achievement, not a state of being, thus available to only male warriors

    • VERY SPECIFIC idea of virtue

• Kings & tribal rule – varied from city state to city state

• Emphasis on trade – naval development

3. 5th Century BCE: Gorgias and other Pre-Socratics

During this era, there was the Early “talking cure.”

• Addressing the sickness of the soul

• Socrates would discuss the avoidance of athumia (Ustinova, 2021) -- helplessness

• Cultivation of eudaimonia -- flourishing

3. What was important about the 5th Century BCE: Hippocratic Medicine?

The importance of this:

• Relying on a natural rather than supernatural explanation

• General rule: sickness of the body is the domain of medicine; the “sickness of the soul” is the domain of philosophy

• Tx is therefore limited

  • General view that the body’s ailments are independent of social context

    • Issues of strict rationalism versus empiricism

3. What are the four humors of the medical model from Ancient Egypt to Ancient Greece?

They are:

1. Hot

2. Moist

3. Cold

4. Dry

3. T/F: The idea of eudaimonia is equivalent to modern-day sickness. 

False

3. T/F: The Bronze Age conceptualization of virtuous behavior centered on bravery. 

True

3. T/F: One of the important contributions of Socrates was to challenge the long-held views about virtue.

True

3. T/F: An early Western medical model was based on the four humors. 

True

3. T/F: Socrates argued virtue is essentially bravery. 

False

3. Pre-Socratic Concerns in Athens (Citizenship and Democracy)

“All people (warriors) are the same.”

• “If we are all equal on the battlefield, we should be equal as citizens.”

• Granted citizenship to all hoplites (soldiers)

• Democracy

3. Greek Democracy: Critical Tradition

There is an Open vs. Closed System of Thought

• How does a system treat critics? The answer determines whether a system is closed or open

  • NOTE: Greek democracy worked differently from our conceptualization

  • Direct democracy using tribes and leagues

3. Open System

This system was created on Karl Popper

• Separate character of speaker from argument of speaker (no ad hominem attacks)

• This allows us to ask questions

• Concept of law is to:

  • Eliminate arbitrary ruling of an authority (because back then, rules cut off people’s heads if they didn’t like what they said or believed or did)

  • Law governs the universe

3. Pre-Socratics (around 600 BCE)

This time period consists of these thinkers:

• Thales – early cosmologist

  • Nature can be known and predicted – early scientific method

  • Origin substance: water

• Democritus – early conceptualization of the atom (eidola); The “laughing” philospohy

  • Atheist, also a cosmologist

  • Hedonist – this means to find pleasure in life

• Heraclitus – nature is in a state of constant flux

  • Core feature of nature is change and regeneration (Becoming)

• Parmenides – nature “is”

  • change is just a function of human perception (Being)

3. Center Stage for the Western Tradition: Socrates

Wanted to understand the nature of virtue

• Important shift – virtue is now a state of being, not something earned

• Eudaimonia – flourishing but mainly learning more about yourself and challenging yourself

  • Modern concepts → flow states (when you are getting into the zone (Ex. Runners high “Sometimes I can write for 6 hours!”); comes from a lot of practice (this is when you lose the sense of time) and self-efficacy (you have the power to change things or affect things “I can do this”)?

3. Socrates

Knowledge of what is good leads to good behavior

• In social psychological terms, attitudes and behavior should match

  • Attitude-behavior consistency

• More importantly, one must know what one does not know – admission of “enlightened ignorance” (aporia)

  • akin to Buddhist philosophy

    • Stoics and Cynics also hold this position, possibly influenced by Socratic teachings

• How does one learn about virtue?

  • Elenchus – “midwife to knowledge of virtue” (Leahey, 2004)

  • Early psychotherapy/People have false beliefs about virtue, but this can be corrected through persistent questioning

  • The Socratic Method

• Conflicting position about democracy

  • Not a huge fan of democracy becuase people are selfish and will only vote for things that only benefit themselves; Because the quest for endless freedom with little regard for self-control

• He ends up being put to death by hemlock for “corrupting the youth” with his ideas

3. Plato believed in knowledge. What did he mean by this?

He believed that knowledge is justifiably true (everytime), whereas opinion may be true but uncertain

• He believed in rationalism

3. Plato created the Theory of Forms (Form of the Right-Angled Triangle)? What does this mean?

This means that “Forms are the objects of knowledge” or “perfect form of nonphysical objects”

• What we empirically see are just copies of the Forms; Says that the empiricial world can decieve us (Allegory of the Cave or of the human condition).

• Reconciles Parmenides and Heraclitus (Leahey, 2004)

  • Being vs. Becoming (“It is” vs “the only constant is change”)

  • Logos = Reason (rules by which things can change or stay the same)

4. Aristotle

The Quest for Nature

• Empirically – minded

• He was a Scientist who was the first professor. He wrote the first psychology book.

  • “De Anima” (“About the Mind”)

• He Rejected Plato’s Forms; Believed that the “truth is here”

  • Positing “ideal, perfect” objects does not explain them

  • He believed that everything has potentiality and actuality except “Pure matter (full potential, actually nothing)” and “The unmoved mover (fully actual, not changing...so no potential”

  • Created a Teleological explanation of life and the universe

    • A design and designer of the universe

4. What is Aristotle’s Hierarchy of Souls?

Vegetative, sensitive, rational, nutrition growth, sensation simple intelligence, and intellect will (active and passive)

4. What are Aristotle’s Ten Categories?

They are:

1. Substance: Universal category (e.g., man, woman, cat, flower, chemical, mineral)

2. Quantity: Category of order of parts (e.g., discrete or continuous)

3. Quality: Abilities or functions of a substance (e.g., habits, dispositions; capacities, incapacities; sense qualities, shape)

4. Relation: Reference of one thing to another (e.g., motherhood, superiority, equality, greatness)

5. Activity: Initiating action or acting on another agent or substance (e.g., running, jumping, fighting)

6. Passivity: Receiving action or being acted on by another agent or substance (e.g., being hit, being kicked, receiving warmth)

7. When: Places a substance in time (e.g., now, last week, 20th century)

8. Where: Reference to place (e.g., in school, in room, here or there)

9. Position: Assumption of a specific posture (e.g., sitting, standing)

10. Dress: Attire or garb (e.g., wearing a suit, being armed)

4. What are Aristotle’s Four Types of Causality?

These are:

• Material Cause: That out of which something is made (e.g., the wood of a table)

• Formal Cause: That which distinguishes a thing from all other things (e.g., four legs and top of a table)

• Efficient Cause: That by whose action something is done or made (e.g., the carpenter who constructed the table)

• Final Cause: That on account of which something is done or made (e.g., a piece of furniture on which to place objects)

4. Aristotle’s concern for well-being include idea of “Nicomachean Ethics.” What was this?

This asked the question: “How should one live?”

• Erase divide between phusis (nature) and nomos (order)

• Eudaemonia – Socrates’ happiness

• The Golden Mean

  • Virtue lies between two extremes

  • Not necessarily advocating moderation in all decisions

5. Motivational Change during and after Aristotle

Virtue is something that we can all pursue

• Happiness that is within one’s control

  • ataraxia – each philosophy seeks this, just means are different

    • “tranquility, without suffering”

• Emphasis on religious development

  • Paved way for Christianity

    • Originally but one cult in the Ancient Roman empire

5. The four different “lifestyles” are what?

1. Cynicism

2. Skepticism

3. Epicureanism

4. Stoicism

5. Cynicism

Diogenes (400-325 BCE) said that this word means to “do what comes naturally to you; Live like a dog”

• Live naturally as possible

• Rejects social convention; Says that people created rules and laws and norms that strip people of their natural tendencies and to control people.

• He says to “avoid pleasure”

• Cosmopolitan = “I am a citizen of the world”; He said that “citizen” is a “violation of human rights;” Overs benefits to citizens and none to non-citizens

• Very anti-establishment

5. Skepticism

This is good for “good science” good for forming hypotheses

• Pyrrho (360 – 270 BCE) was a soldier who served with Alexander

• Very doubtful

• Says to not make assumptions about things all the time; Unbiased mind is the way to ataraxia

  • Not dogmatic in thinking

• Truth or knowledge is unknown

• Pyrrhoism: Acceptance of suffering – possible influences through the East?

  • Life is suffering

5. Epicureanism

The least popular at the time. Very cult like.

• Epicurus (341 – 270 BCE) is the leader

• Philosophy of the garden; Don’t have extreme reactions to things because that “Destroys the peace”

• Avoidance of strong passions

• Seeking hedone (pleasure):

  • Aponia is pleasure of the body

  • Ataraxia pleasure/peace of the mind (preferred); Simple life

• “Momento Mori” = “remember you will die”

5. Stoicism

This means being neutral or having a neutral face even when experiencing pain or hardship; Not displaying feelings or emotion.

• The most popular lifestyle at the time; From the rich to poor

• The leader of this lifestyle was Zeno of Citium (333 – 262 BCE)

  • Universal, rather than elitist

• Main ideas:

  • Determinism – we have a fate

  • Control of strong emotions

  • Syneidesis (personal conscience and capacity for moral judgment)

    • We know what is right and what is wrong – I can reflect on my behavior

      • Sense of sin

      • Be self-aware

6. Patricians

In early Rome, they were part of the wealthy class, able to hold public offices, command armies.

6. Plebeians

In early Rome, this was any citizen that was not part of the patrician class

• Could still hold wealth!

• Also, half-citizens, slaves, etc.

6. Roman “matron”

This meant that women had a bit more freedom dependent upon class, etc.

• Different belief systems held different ideas (Cynics – more freedom; Stoics – less freedom)

6. Augustus –first Emperor of Rome (27 BC to 14 AD)

• Romans

  • Roads, common language & government

  • Knowledge as technology

• People turned from public life to private

  • Marriage more than just a contract to bear children

6. What are the “Five Good Emperors” (96 AD to 180 AD)

They were:

1. Nerva

2. Trajan

3. Hadrian

4. Antonius Pius

5. Marcus Aurelius

6. Revival: Neoplatonism

This revival consisted of:

• Pagan philosopher Plotinus (c. 203-270 AD): Also, Hypatia (who was cruelly murdered for her teachings)

• Revival of Plato’s philosophy: at the expense of Aristotle’s

• The soul is entombed in the body and limited by it

  • Sensory knowledge is unreliable and inferior.

  • The body is the agent and prison of the soul.

• Philosophy & Early Christianity: Particularly in gnostic sect of Manichaeism, which viewed spiritual soul as good and material body as evil – Augustine was originally a follower of Mani!

6. Christianity

The timeline of this consists of:

• The message of Jesus: religious and political significance

• Importance of the soul:

  • Jewish holistic tradition to love God with one’s entire being (soul and body)

  • Within context of Greek body-soul dualism exalted dignity and value of spiritual, immortal soul

• Destruction of Jerusalem (70 AD): Spread of Christianity throughout Roman empire

6. St. Paul (c.10-c.64)

In this:

• Paul’s Hebrew tradition and incorporation of Greek philosophy

  • Stoic self-discipline and spiritual faith

  • Neoplatonic tension between flesh and spirit

  • Semitic unity of person as body, soul, and spirit (Holy Trinity)

• Paul’s conversion and challenge of Jewish Law

  • Council of Jerusalem

• Spread of Christianity

  • Paul preached the message of Jesus in a form that could be understood by people within the Roman Empire

6. Christian Churchristian Church

This consists of

• Intellectual Centers: Alexandria (Greek) and Antioch (Semitic)

• Adaptation/extension of Greek philosophy: e.g., doctrine of the Trinity

  • God as three subjects/hypostasis

• Legalization of Christianity:

  • Edict of Milan (313 AD)

• Challenges to Christianity

  • Internal heresies

  • External collapse of Roman order

6. Church Abbots (Fathers)

This consists of:

• Church leaders and the Councils

  • Council of Nicea (325 AD): Nicene creed

• Deterioration of Roman Civil Authority

  • Church becomes sole institution of social structure

• Emergence of the Papacy

  • Papal primacy

  • First among quals (primus inter pares)

6. St. Augustine (354-430)

Influence of Neoplatonism

• Plato and Plotinus

• Christianization of Platonic dualism

  • Transcended the Platonic relationship between body and soul

  • Recognized interiority of personal consciousness and self-reflection

    • Conceptualization of sin

      • Method of introspection

        • Personal consciousness, endowed with God’s grace, determines life’s direction.

• City of God (413-426)

  • The earthly city vs. the city of God

• Warned against the dangers of materialism in the earthly city

• Defended the Church from blame after the Barbarian sacking of Rome

• The new will, which was beginning to be within me…was not yet strong enough to conquer my older will, which had the strength of old habit. So my two wills, one old, the other new, one carnal, the other spiritual, were in conflict with one another, and their discord robbed my soul of all concentration.” (Augustine, Confessions, VIII.v.10)

7. What was the division of “The Two Europes”

They are:

1. Western Empire

2. Eastern Empire: Literacy rates where higher here

• Byzantium and the flowering of Eastern Christianity of culture

  • Great centers of learning (Schism in 1054)

• Justinian (483-565): Rebuilt the glory of the Roman empire in the East

7. Western Europe: Post “Classical” Roman Period (Aka the Dark Ages)

This period consisted of:

• Poverty

  • Dependence on agriculture

  • Short life spans

  • No specialized labor

  • Few people to know

  • Everyday violence

  • Only a few people control their own lives

• Undeveloped State

  • Central function of state is war

• Disdain for the practical

  • Limited business activity

7. Feudalism

This means that Taxes/services flow up the chain

• Various periods of what we’d now call inflation, along with a flux of wage increase/decrease

7. Norman Invasion of England

William the Conqueror (1028 – 1087)

• Political and social structure of Europe forever changed

• England tied to mainland Europe instead of Scandinavia

7. Islam

This rise of this religion consists of:

• Mohammed (570-632)

• Preservation of Greek Culture; Islamic Golden Age

• The spread of Islam and culture to Mediterranean world as far as Iberia

  • Artistotelian revival

7. Avicenna (980-1037)

Islamic Naturalistic Psychology (Influenced Thomas Aquinas)

• Polymath

• Elaboration on Aristotle in a Neo-platonic framework

  • Human senses – tied to the body

  • Intellect (pure reason) – tied to God

  • Using logic rather than occasionalism

  • “Floating man” experiment

7. Averroes (1126-1198)

He was the pinnacle of Islamic Scientific thinking.

• Lawyer and physician

• Discovered the nature of smallpox immunity

• Purpose of the retina (sensing light)

• Wrote medical texts

• God is the order of the universe

  • but creation stories are just myths

7. Islamic Psychology

Open system did not last → Islamic world becomes dominated by religious order → Books of Averroes burned → However, Islamic thought influences scholars at European universities (led to scholasticism)

8. Peter Abelard (1079-1142)

The introduced these two concepts:

• Universal

  • Every member of a class must possess a certain quality to belong to that class

    • Refinement of Plato’s “form”

• Early theory of cognition

  • Introduced the insanity defense

    • Some people are unable to reason (also children) thus they know not what they do

8. Hildegard of Bingen

She was a polymath who wrote a cook book based on the “4 humors of the medical models.” (“If you are this humor dominance, eat this product food!”)

• Healer – understood the contribution of women to reproduction

  • Applied Hippocratic medicine to ailments

• She challenged the idea that the baby is mainly the product of the man

8. The importance influence of Saint Francis of Assisi

They took seriously the vow of poverty

• Francis is the patron saint of ecology, the sick, and animals

• He said the the church has “lost itself” Said that they have become resource heavy, forbidden things like adultery

• Said that the more needed people are, the more we should help them

• Preached the gospel to animals

8. Roger Bacon

• Ideas were related to the scientific method

• Franciscan teacher of “natural philosophy” (science) at Oxford University

  • Method of inquiry: empirical demonstration based upon observation

8. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

• Scholasticism

• Believed that we can both believe in scientific and religion

• Reconciled Aristotle’s rationalism and Christian faith

  • Used Aristotelian logic to prove the existence of

  • God: The Five Proofs

• Summa Theologica

  • Faculties of the soul

    • Soul holds five faculties or powers:

      • vegetative, sensitive, appetitive, locomotive, and rational (intellect and will)

    • Soul is predisposed to acquire knowledge

      • active vs. passive

8. Faculties of the soul

• Vegetative: Nutrition, growth, generation

• Sensitive:

  • Sensation (exterior) sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch

  • Sensation (interior) common sense, imagination, memory, estimation

  • Appetite (sensitive) concupiscible (desire), irascible (defense)

  • Locomotion

• Rational: Intellect (passive) (Understanding), Intellect (active) (Abstraction), and Will (rational appetite)

8. William of Ockham (1287-1347)

English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher

– Studied natural philosophy (science)

– Sought to reconcile faith and reason

– “Ockham’s razor”

• Principle of parsimony should guide science

• Simplest explanation is preferable

• First step of empiricism

8. Middle Renaissance

Bubonic Plague (1300s)

– Killed 1/3 of Europe’s population

– People obsessed with death

• Tension between secular and religious leaders

• Martin Luther’s Reformation

– 95/99 Theses – challenging the Pope and the Church

– Not only theological, but a political criticism

– Schism: Roman Catholic and Protestantism

8. The Reappearance of humanism

This says that:

• Individual lives are important

• This world is important

8. The “Party of the Ancients”

It is the imitation of Greece and Rome.

8. Early Psychology as politics

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527 AD)

– The Prince

• How to gain power and keep it

  • “We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.” – Francis Bacon

– Humans are made for sin, not salvation

– Use this knowledge to gain favor over the masses

• Political power

8. New view of the Universe

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543 AD)

– Debunks Ptolemaic system

– Often cited as a main “trigger” for the Scientific Revolution

– The Earth is not the center of the universe, the Sun is

– Outrages Catholics and Protestants alike

– Psalm 93 “Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm”

8. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)

On the Motion of Mars (1609)

– Believed in the fundamental mathematical basis of the universe

• Laws of planetary motion

– Distinguished between primary and secondary qualities

• Implied need for a discipline of psychology separate from the natural sciences

8. Set up for the Scientific Revolution

– Copernicus

• Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs

  • Heliocentric, not geocentric, universe

• Kepler improved on the Copernican model

  • Orbits are elliptical, not round

– Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642)

• Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

  • Physics of why the world looks the way it does

    • Earth moves along in the atmosphere

      • Represents a conceptual shift

8. The Divided World: The set up of a problem

• Primary & Secondary Qualities

  • Primary

  • Independent of the observer (motion, figure)

  • E.g., physics

  • Secondary

  • Dependent on an observer (smell, color)

  • E.g., psychology

• Implications for Psychology

  • Inner vs. Outer world

9. Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

He was known as the “Godfather of Science”

• Novum Organum (1620) “New Instrument”

• Bacon’s empiricism

  • Questioned use of a priori assumptions

    • We shouldn’t have preconceived notions of the world

• Accepted validity of scientific observations if a consensus of scientists agreed about the observations

9. The Learned Societies

• Formation of learned societies of scientists

  • Académie des Sciences (Paris, 1666)

  • The Royal Society (London, 1662)

  • Secret Societies in Itay

• Universities sponsored by government and Church did not readily accept empirical study

• Traditions of the learned societies provided criteria for scientific value by a community of scientists

9. Issac Newton (1642-1727)

Principia Mathematica (1687)

• Mechanical conceptualization of the universe

  • Accepted possibility of orderly, mechanical relations governing all of nature

• Empirical reasoning

  • Suggested same causes responsible for same observations

9. Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza

• Only one substance, which s self-caused, free, and infinite, and that substance is God.

  • God is impersonal and synonymous with nature.

  • God = nature (pantheism)

• Everything that exists is in God and cannot be conceived of apart from God.Human activity is determined by natural laws

• Only one substance, which is self-caused, free, and infinite, and that substance is God.

  • God is impersonal and synonymous with nature.

  • God = nature (pantheism)

• Everything that exists is in God and cannot be conceived of apart from God.

  • Human activity is determined by natural laws

• Mind-body relationship: Double aspectism

  • Mind and body are different aspects of the same unified substance.

  • For psychology, the mind and its activities are identical.

• Motivation: Self-preservation

  • Biological predisposition toward self-preservation (guided by desire) – emotions are important!

9. René (1596-1950)

• Influence: French and British Traditions

• “Cogito Ergo Sum”

• “I think therefore I am”

  • The first principle of life is…

    • Self-awareness

      • We have knowledge of ourselves. All other knowledge preoeeds from this.

• Mind-body relationship: Cartesian dualism:

• Human experience derived from both

  • a physical level

  • a psychological level

  • Mind-body dualism characterized by psychophysical interaction

• Existing things fall into two categories:

  • Things though (mind)

  • things occupying space (body)

• The body as a physical entity

  • occupying space

  • shared with other animals, but acts upon the mind

  • the province of physiology

• The mind as a spiritual, immaterial entity

  • embodying thought, emotion, and the will

  • the province of psychology

• Psychology is the study of the mind.

  • Psychology is distinct from physiology.

  • Human experience is derived from both a physical level and a spiritual level.

10. What was the enlightenment?

• Consists of time period: mid to the late 17th century

• Application of reason and scientific knowledge to human life; Especially important for psychology

• Replacing traditional beliefs and social philosophies with a more progressive vision; E.g., how do we construct a better society?

10. The Enlightenment in different various countries

• Britain:

  • Moderate Enlightenment

  • Did not denounce religion

• Germany (Prussia):

  • Enlightenment from “Above”

  • Emphasis on efficiency and logic, rational rules

• North American colonies:

  • Like the British Enlightenment, but with tabula rasa

• Russia:

  • Failed Enlightenment? – Science develops but…

• France:

  • Radical Enlightenment

  • Emphasis placed on the physical world

10. French Sensationalism

Reductionism

• Movement away from Cartesian dualism

• Studied sensation (body) at the expense of mental activities (mind)

• Beginnings of psychophysics

10. Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714-1780)

• French philosopher

• Traité des sensations (1754)

• Reductionism and parsimony

  • Sensations derived from a single sensory capacity attention

• Statue analogy

  • Derive complexity of life in experience from sensation alone

    • Start with one sense (e.g., smell), and add the others for contrast/comparison capacitie

10. Julien Offroy de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

• French materialist philosopher

• L’homme machine (1747) “Man a machine”

  • Humans are like other animals but we have more complex brains

• “Soul” explained solely in terms of matter

• Motivation = hedonism

• humans seek reward, avoid punishment/pain

10. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)

• German statesman, mathematician, philosopher

• Petite Perception

  • an event that is so weak it isn’t even perceived

    • unconscious

• Mind is the active transformer of sensory data

  • Nativism: the mind acting upon environmental stimuli and upon itself

  • Thought is an ongoing, continuous activity of the mind

10. Immanuel Kant

• There is empirical knowledge and transcendent knowledge

  • Space time – empirical, things as they are (empirical)

  • Perceptual – idealistic, things as we experience them – this is imposed by us

• We need both sensory experience and a conceptual framework of a perceiver to gain knowledge

• Perceiving involves more than just receiving data

  • We sense and understand things

  • Our mind is a “preconceived” condition that allows us to rationalize the world

• HOWEVER

  • The mind cannot objective observe itself in an objective way

  • Psychology is not a quantitative science like physics

10. British Influence summary

• Many of these thinkers influenced American intellectuals, and in a large part, the development of psychology as a discipline in the United States

• Beginnings of applied and behavioral psychology

10. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

He said that mental events, like the universe, follow laws of motion and are reacting to the external world.

• He said that we need a string authority like a king impose rules because humans can’t be trusted ourselves and others; To make us safe.

• Leviathan

  • What would people be like without government?

  • pessimism

10. John Locke (1632-1704)

• First British Empiricist

  • Essay Concerning Human Understanding

• Locke’s Modest Empiricism

  • Tabula rasa – blank slate

    • The mind is a blank slate

      • Ideas come from experience

        • Sensation: observing the world

        • Reflection: observing our minds

10. Hume (1711-1776)

The associative Empiricist:

• Skeptic

  • Search for a practical philosophy that acknowledges that absolute certainty is not available to us

    • We do not see causation (‘habits of mind”)

• Empiricist

  • One should not believe in things that one cannot observe

    • Bundle hypothesis

  • Impressions (via reality) over ideas

• Role in reasoning in human life is very limited

  • “Reason is....the slave of passions”

    • Reason ends up relying on experience to generalize the world