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