History of Psych Exam 1

• Pre-socratic philosophy

  • Sought to understand nature

  • Sought to understand perception, understanding

  • Stressed the importance of things not directly observed

• Plato derives the existence of a creator

  • The universe is a thing that has become

    • The universe is visible, tangible, and possesses a body, then it is perceptible.

    • If a thing is perceptible, then it has become

  • Anything that becomes is caused by something

  • The universe has been caused by something

  • The cause of the universe is a craftsman who fashioned the universe

The Death of Socrates

• Perceptible things

  • Are embodiments of ideals

  • Perceptible things have form and material substance (receptacle)

  • Changes in perceptible things (wood to statue, fire, smoke, and ash) have causes.

• Plato’s understating of the physical universe and social world is best described as IDEALISM.

  • Aristotle was a student of Plato who founded his school, the Lyceum.

    • Aristotle was an empiricist who approached the problem of casualty in four ways. (Material, efficient, formal, final)

    • Aristotle argued for hylomorphism.

      • All material objects are made of matter and form

      • The mind and the body are interdependent.

      • Aristotle attributes this to the soul’s nutritive function, sensitivity and movement functions, and, in humans, reason.

• What is Aristotle discussing in De Anima?

  • What does he mean by natural philosophy?

  • Affections of the soul?

  • What must the natural philosopher do in studying the soul?

• Aristotle’s view on psychological processes

  • Aristotle separated memory, a passive process, and recollection, which is active.

  • He provides an associationist view of memory.

  • Aristotle maintained that sense objects cause a sensation with a different medium for each sense (feel, hear, see, taste, and smell).

  • Thinking is rooted in perception, but thinking may be flawed. The imagination does not have the corrective influence of the external world and allows greater freedom of thought.

  • Aristotle advocated a naturalistic approach to dreams.

• Aristotle’s views on motivation and ethics

  • Aristotle recognized the importance of pleasure and pain in human motivation,

    • But he advocated a “golden mean” of action between the extremes.

  • He recognized four factors that affected the human ability to achieve the good.

    • Individual differences

    • Habit

    • Social supports

    • Freedom of choice

• After Aristotle

  • Psychological thought changed after Aristotle.

  • Though transitioned from a pursuit of knowledge to a pursuit of gratification and the good life. 

• The Roman Period and the Middle Ages

  • Medicine

  • Stoicism

  • Epicureanism

  • Neopoltianism 

• Roman Medicine

  • The Roman period was approximately the 7th century BCE to 476 CE

  • Galen was the most prominent Roman physician.

    • Galen accepted the Grek theory of four bodily humors.

      • He argued that four qualities (cold, warm, dry, and moist) were involved in the balance required for health.

    • An imbalance in the four humors also causes mental disorders.

    • He advocated an early form of psychotherapy to induce balance.

    • Galen was a vitalist.

• Roman Philosophy

  • Roman philosophy focused on the good life.

    • Stoicism advocated the calm acceptance of one’s fate and the removal of oneself from pursuits.

      • Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Cyprus

      • Epictetus influenced stoicism. 

• Roman Philosophy: Epicureanism

  • Emphasized the powers of pleasure and pain over human decisions and advocated a simple life in the middle ground.

    • Lucretius (dates uncertain 1st C BCE) wrote about several psychological topics.

• Scholasticism

  • The practical: many Greek works survived only in Latin, the “Old Testament” survived in Hebrew, Greek translation, and Latin translations; manuscripts existed in variant and often partial forms; the “New Testament” survived in Greek and Latin translations.

  • The philosophical: understanding the nature of God, the universe, the relation of the divine to the material

    • Reconciling free will and an all-knowing deity

  • Reconciling reason and acceptance of revelation

• Four individuals commonly recognized as founders of Scholasticism

  • Johannes Scotus Eriugena

  • Abelard

  • Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury

  • Archbishop Lefran of Canterbury

• Early Scholasticism: Johannes Scotus Eriugena (815 -877 CE)

  • Irish theologian, neo-Platonic philosopher (he is NOT John Duns Scotus)

  • Proficient in Greek; moved to Paris ~ 845, took over the Palatine Academy (palace academy)

  • Later moved to Oxford, and may have been stabbed to death by his student’s pens

• 11th Century: Early Scholasticism

  • Abelard ( 1079 - 1142) Monk critical of excesses of papal authority,

    • His books advocating the primacy of reason were burned,

    • Castrated for an affair with Heloise

• Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274)

  • Deeply committed to reconciling faith and reason

    • He extensively studied Aristotle.

• Thomas Aquinas: Prolific, influential writer and teacher

  • University of Paris, then Naples, then Paris, back to Naples

  • 1273 experienced a vision that disrupted his work

  • His work was condemned in 1270, 1277; ultimately canonized

  • For knowledge of truth, man needs divine help, but can know many things without revelation

  • Saw biological change as possible- “corruption of seed”, spontaneous generation

  • Very very anti-nonprocreative sex

• Thomas Aquinas: What is permissible

  • The study of scripture, reason, and the st are valid studies of God.

  • “Five Ways” statements for the existence of God; consideration of what God is not

• Roger Bacon (1229 – 1292, or maybe 1214 – 1294)

  • Entered Oxford at 13

  • Wrote an epistemology, ethics, optics, and language; lectured on Aristotle at Oxford, University of Paris

• BacoModern scholars debate Bacon’s rolenciscan monk around 1256 (monks were forbidden to publish)

  • Pope Clement IV requested work on the role of philosophy in theology; Bacon wrote Opus Majus (and the scientific Opus Minus)

• William of Ockham (1285 – 1349)

  • Franciscan monks continued the empirical tradition.

    • He argued for the principle of parsimony, sometimes called “Ockham’s Razor”.

    • Ultimately excommunicated

• The Middle Ages were not completely “Dark”

  • Progress was slow, but the stage for advances in the next centuries

  • Dominance of religious authority

  • Rise of universities

  • Attempts (usually branded as heretical) to reconcile faith and reason

• The Renaissance saw

  • The Inquisition expanded

  • The printing press

  • The rise of Protestantism

    • Religious wars

  • Witchcraft trials

  • Asylums, demonology

  • The rise of science and mathematics

    • The Copernican revolution

    • Advances in biology: microscopy, anatomy

    • Writing, thinking, (research?) on psychological topics

  • Resurgence of Skepticism – Montaigne

• What was the Inquisition?

  • Started in ~ 1134 in France to root out and eliminate heresy (Catharism) among Catholics

  • 1232 Pope Gregory IX gave responsibility to the Dominican order

  • 1252 Pope Innocent Iv authorized the use of torture

  • Also used against Jewish and Muslim converts

  • Often used for political as well as religious purposes

• The invention of printing had a widespread impact

  • Spread of printed material (1439/1445 printing press invented, but had been invented ~ 1000 years earlier in China)

    • Poems, grammars, and in 1455 the first complete Gutenberg Bible

    • The Protestant Reformation was aided by the availability of printing

      • Luther’s 97 Theses 1517; by 1522 over 300,000 copies had been printed and distributed across Germany and Europe

      • By 1521 reconciliation was impossible

• The Renaissance saw a rise in individualism, for many reasons

  • Humanism in art and literature

  • Advances in glass-making produced transparent glass that allowed the making of high-quality mirrors.

• Erasmus

  • Textual analysis of biblical literature; new translations; satire of church abuses;

  • Has a new translation of the New Testament printed in 1516, with Greek and Latin side-by-side

  • Critical of the church, but never left

  • Initially defended Luther against charges of heresy

  • Held to the doctrine of free will (versus predestination); argued for religious tolerance

  • Corresponded with over 500 individuals – nobility; clergy

• Savanarola (1452 – 1498)

  • Charismatic, persuasive speaker, teacher

  • Campaigned against clerical corruption, (particularly of the pop, Alexander VI) and called for renewal.

  • Established democratic republic (briefly) in Florence after the fall of the Medici in 1494

  • Predicted a new flood

• English Reformation

  • Henry VIII (1491 – 1547) Married Katherine of Aragon in 1509; 1519, son by a mistress; “Defender of the Faith” in 1521; wanted to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, who had produced only a daughter, Princess Mary; Affair with Mary Boleyn; wanted to marry Ann Boleyn; 1532 married A. Boyeln, who gave birth to Elizabeth; discord/miscarriage to Jane Seymour in 1536; Seymour gave birth to a son and died 12 days later. Ten years and three wives later (Anne of Cleves (annulled), Catherine Howard (beheaded), Catherine Parr) Henrey VIII died.

• Religious wars affected France as well.

• Religious wars consumed Europe.

  • Thirty Years War 1618 – 1648

    • Peace of Augsburg (1555) temporarily ended

• What develops in science?

  • Challenges to Thomas Aquinas’ synthesis of Christianity and Aristotle’s science

  • Cosmology: Ptolemaic system Claudius Ptolemmaus, (c. AD 90 – c. AD 168) Almagest

  • Copernican system 1543 challenged by Tycho Brahe’s system 1573

  • Galileo and Kepler challenged and overturned the notion of a geo-centric universe

    • Galileo (1564 – 1642)

• Changing Views of the World

  • Galileo Galilei refined the telescope and changed the assumptions of the church.

    • The conflict between Galileo and the church was not only a conflict of cosmology.

      • It was also a conflict over epistemology.

      • The church favored authority as a method of knowledge and forced Galileo to recant his views.

• The growth of empirical studies continued in many areas

  • anatomy: dissections of executed criminals beginning late 13th century

  • Botany: Islamic texts from the 9th & 13th centuries became more widely known, and new works in Europe in 16th-century zoology

  • Interest grew in quantification and mathematics.

    • Math was used for practical applications in business and navigational.

• Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) and others made important contributions to the knowledge of anatomy.

  • Da Vinci: drew the dissection of cadavers

    • Optic chiasm; other contributions to the understanding of vision

    • Musculature

• Vesalius (1514 - 1564)

  • Galen had dissected ape cadavers, not humans

  • Anatomy teachers, before Vesalius, directed barber surgeons in public dissections.

  • Vesalius dissected cadavers and checked and challenged Galen’s assertions (number of chambers of the heart, structure of the liver, origin of blood vessels)

  • Disproved the belief that men had one rib fewer than women

  • First described many features of the brain: corpus callosum, thalamus, and basal ganglia.

• Antecedents of psychology in the mid-millenium

  • Advances in medicine and biology

  • Advances in exploration, trade, rising wealth (for some)

  • Advances in literacy

• Advances in neuroanatomy

  • Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) injected hot wax into the ventricles of an ox’s brain; more accurately described the ventricles; more accurately described circulation in the brain; asserted the soul was in the ventricles; first scientist to pith a frog. The dissected brain of a lion, noting a large olfactory bulb; first to classify the olfactory nerve as a cranial nerve.

  • Andrea Vesalius (1514-1564) dissected cadavers publicly; physician to the Emperor.

    • Defined as nerves as the parts of the body transmitting sensation and movement

    • Nerves originate in the brain; nerves are not hollow; more accurately map optic projections.

• Advances in biology

  • William Harvey 1578 - 1657, British physician

    • Described pumping of blood from the heart to lungs and brain and throughout the body in Du Motu Cordis 1628

      • Arteries move blood away from the heart veins move blood to the heart; “pores” connect arteries and veins.

    • Skeptical of witchcraft charges; at the request of the king questioned four women and his testimony led to acquittals.

    • Embryology: Exercitationes de generation animalium published 1651

      • All life comes from the egg, described development of chick embryos

      • Disputed the hematogenous theory of Aristotle, based on dissections of hundreds of male and female deer.

• Robert Hooke 1635 - 1703, English Polymath

  • Physicist, astronomer, architect, biologist

  • 1665 published Micrographia, the first used term cell

  • Disputed biblical estimate of earth’s age; argued for extinction of species; identified fossils as extinct versions of existing species

  • Argued mountains had become elevated by geologic processes

  • Rivalry with Isaac Newton over the inverse square law of gravity

• Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, 1632 - 1723

  • Documented observations of the structure of muscle fibers, spermatozoa, red blood cells, and circulation in capillaries

• Thomas Willis (1621 - 1675) described brain anatomy in great detail

  • Discovered gray matter and white matter. He published the Anatomy of the Brain in 1664; the first accurate and detailed account of neuroanatomy, it was illustrated with plates by the architect Christopher Wren. Circle Willis named for him

• What did physicians of the 17th century understand?

  • Nerves terminated/originated in Brian.

  • Neurons were unknown

  • Nerves were seen as filled tubes, somewhat analogous to arteries and veins

  • Some diseases run in families

    • Bleeding disorder, described in Talmudic sources ~200 CE; in Islamic sources, ~1000 CE

    • Epilepsy

    • No understanding of infection; “bad air” or miasma

• Biological specimens were collected, classified

  • No uniform system of classification

  • Classification of humans into distinct groups, in the West, did not occur until the 17th and 18th centuries

  • Earlier thinking in Europe focused on religious questions: 

    • Are human qualities fixed or changeable?

    • Who is capable of reason and conversion to Christianity?

    • Are some people outside of humanity?

  • The development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade led to justifications of slavery in terms of a hierarchal classification of humans.

• Psychological thinking

  • Autobiography of Jerome Cardone, Geralamo Cardano 1501 - 1576

    • Noted mathematician, statistician, inventor, writer

    • Received a doctorate in medicine in Padua in 1525 but was not hired as a physician for many years

    • Accepted astrology, omens, extrasensory perceptions

    • Jailed by inquisition, released; books prohibited

    • Attributed his melancholy to events of his life, bad parenting

    • Describes being unwanted by his mother, illegitimate birth, maltreated by his father

    • Described multiple rational ways of dealing with distress: sleep, medication, healthy food

• Folk psychology and literature

  • William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) was a sophisticated psychology

    • Characters depict major depression, age-related dementia, and typical human conditions - jealousy, conformity, gossiping, dysfunctional families, rage, suicide

    • Hamlet feigns madness

    • Ophelia’s mad scene in Hamlet

• Folk Knowledge

  • Ordinary people had limited knowledge of advances in biology, physics, anatomy, medicine, mathematics

  • Views of psychology were often rooted in religion or superstition

    • Abnormal behavior

    • personality/character

• Demonology as a causal theory

  • The Witches’ Hammer, the Malleus Maleficarum (late 15th century) was commissioned to curb the spread of witchcraft.

    • The Malleus was divided into three parts:

    • The classification of devils witches and the reconciliation of witchcraft and God’s omnipotence,

    • The methods by which devils and witches influence the world the means of combating their influence, and

    • Judicial procedures for trying witches.

  • Augustine had written that the devil could be disguised as anything attractive and corrupt souls.

• Demonology placed blame on the mentally ill

  • Mental disorders were viewed as the result of voluntary collaboration with a devil or the curse of a witch.

    • Some treatments parallel these diagnoses - co-existed with rational naturalistic explanations

  • Witch hunts and witch trials were widespread throughout Europe.

    • Tens of hundreds of thousands of people were executed for witchcraft

    • Approximately 85% of victims were women.

  • The trial procedures were written to maximize the likelihood of a conviction.

    • Torture was often used to elicit a confession.

• “Psychology” appears

  • 1506 “psychology” reported to appear in a manuscript by Marco Marulic (Croatian), in his biography

  • German Protestant reformer Phillip Melanchhon ( may have used the term in the 1530s

  • Rudolf Goeckel 1590 published articles on human behavior and Psychology on the Improvements of Man

    • Rational powers of the anima: created, divinely inserted into the body; inherited biologically from the parents

• No public awareness of psychology in reading public 17th century

  • Reading public read the bible, religious tracts, broadsides, novels

  • Only two countries had literacy

• New/old approaches to philosophy

  • Religious conflicts continue

  • Secularism, scientific knowledge grow

  • Ostensibly religious and sincerely religious philosophers, scientists make contributions

  • The “new” rationalism and empiricism have clear roots in Platonic idealism and Aristotelian empiricism.

• Rationalism in the 17th through early 19th Centuries

  • Descartes (1596 - 1650), dualism

  • Spinoza (1632 - 1677), monism

  • Leibniz (1646 - 1716) monadology

  • Kant (1724 - 1804) Critique of Pure Reason 1781; Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone 1793 (grouped with empiricists in some texts)

  • Thomas Reid (1710 - 1796) common sense philosophy

• Rationalism in the 17th through early 19th Centuries

  • Rationalism may be differentiated from empiricism in three primary ways.

    • Emphasis on a priori knowledge.

    • Emphasis on an active mind that acts upon incoming sensory information.

    • Emphasis on deductive arguments, using logic to demonstrate that the premises of an argument provide definitive grounds for the conclusion. If argued (properly) from true premises, deductive conclusions are necessarily true.

• Empiricism, Associationism, and Utilitarianism competed with rationalism

  • Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

  • Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679) 

  • John Locke (1632 - 1704)

  • George Berkeley (1685 - 1753)

  • David Hume (1711 -1776)

  • David Hartley (1705 - 1757)

  • Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832)

  • John Stuart Mill

• Empiricism

  • Montaigne’s skepticism challenged Francis Bacon and René Descartes.

  • Bacon and others responded to Montaigne’s challenge with empiricism.

  • Empiricism is the closest to the term “experience”

  • Empiricists share some common ideas:

    • A posteriori knowledge,

    • A passive mind that responds to sensory input, and 

    • Induction as a method of knowledge

• Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

  • Francis Bacon focused on problems of knowledge

  • Bacon described four idols that are impediments to human knowledge.

    • Idols of the Tribe are the limits of the human intellectual apparatus.

    • Idols of the cave are the prejudices or preferred theories that blind us to alternative explanations.

    • Idols of the Marketplace are aspects of the nominal fallacy.

      • We often believe that we have explained a phenomenon by giving it a name.

    • Idols of the theatre are the tendencies of humans to accept the claims of authorities.

• Bacon emphasized a sense of experience in the search for knowledge.

  • He advocated the gathering of observations from a wide variety of sources.

  • He recommended the presentation of these observations to a community of researchers.

    • The community could draw tentative conclusions from a wide variety of sources.

  • Bacon advocated naturalistic approaches to several psychological topics including dreams, sleep, human development, thought, and emotion.

• Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679)

  • Political philosopher - influenced Locke

  • Influences by translation of Greek works, Euclid, F. Bacon, Galileo

  • Physics: nature is mechanical, understood through laws of motion

  • Leviathan political work addressing the need for a strong government, the right of kings

    • A state cannot be secure without an absolute ruler

    • State of nature: life is nasty brutish and short, war of all against all

• Hobbes on the state of nature

  • “In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

• John Locke (1632 - 1704)

  • Embroiled in religious and political controversies and conflicts

  • Two Treatises on Civil Government: denied the Devine Rights of Kings; ideas that inspired revolutions

  • Locke had a profound effect on two centuries of childhood education, particularly by encouraging hardening (toughening them up with privation).

• Essay on Human Understanding

  • Locke argued that the mind is a “blank slate” (tabula rasa) at birth.

    • All knowledge is learned through experience; knowledge is only about our ideas.

    • Sensation is one source of ideas; reflection is the only other source of ideas.

    • Criticized the concept of innate ideas except for the existence of self and God.

    • Recommendations for education.

  • Locke attempted to describe the validity of human knowledge, the correspondence between ideas and the objects they represent.

    • Locke defined primary qualities as those that reside in an object independently of perception.

    • He defined secondary qualities as those that are a function of the interaction between the object and the observer’s sensory system.

    • The mind puts together simple ideas to form complex ideas.

• Locke on retention of ideas

  • Contemplation - keeping an idea brought into mind actively in view

  • Memory - reviving in mind those ideas which have disappeared or “laid aside”; 

    • Memory is the storehouse of ideas

• Lock on operations of the mind

  • There is no knowledge without discernment 

  • Comparing

  • Compounding - the mind puts together ideas created from sensation and reflection and puts them together to form more complex ideas

  • Abstracting - language allows particulars to be combined as universals having the same label

• Locke on morality, identity, and consciousness

  • Faith and justice are not universal principles; there are no moral principles to which all agree (if we look at behavior rather than verbal assent)

  • Identity is the continued participation of constantly fleeting particles of matter in succession, in one body.

  • “Consciousness alone unites remote existences into one person. Nothing but consciousness can unite remote existences into the same person: the identity of substance will not do it; for whatever substance there is, however, framed, without consciousness there is no person.”

• Locke on government, state of nature, freedom, slavery

  • The First Treatise on Government attacked the divine right of kings

  • Second Treatise on Government: in a state of nature, people have a right to the means for survival (life, liberty, health, and property); may transfer some to a central government (social contract)

    • Locke owned stock in a company involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade

    • Chapter 4 of the second treatise on government concerns slavery; interpreters vary on its meaning

• …frequently cited…

  • “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and reason which is that law teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions…” (Treatises II.2.6)

• George Berkely (1685 - 1753)

  • Bacon and Locke applied empiricism to questions of epistemology.

  • George Berkeley took an empirical approach to ontology.

    • He challenged the materialism of Locke.

    • He advocated a return to spiritual interpretations of the world. 

  • Berkely noted that we experience secondary qualities with senses.

  • He also pointed out that we can only know primary qualities through the senses.

    • If we all know that the world comes through experience, how can we speak primary qualities outside of experiences?

• Berkeley’s radical empiricism

  • If all knowledge of the world comes through experiences, we cannot validate the existence of anything outside of experience.

    • The only real work is the world of experience.

    • Existence is defined as being perceived.

  • Berkeley’s critics asked how the world could be so consistent without a perceiver.

    • For Berkeley, consistency implies a continual perceiver, God.

    • Therefore, the consistency of the world demonstrates that God must exist.

  • If all I can know with certainty is my own experience, I may fall into solipsism. Berkeley believed that we could be confident about our experience, because of faith in a constant perceiver.

  • Berkeley addressed other psychological topics including vision and the relationship between vision and touch.

• David Hume (1711 - 1776)

  • Scottish empiricist

  • Numerous written works, only two commercially successful (History of England; Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding)

  • Nominally a member of the Anglican Church of Scotland, but a religious skeptic, charges of heresy were made but dropped.

• David Hume’s Essay “Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” is considered one of the most important philosophical works.

  • The origin of ideas

  • Association of ideas

  • Probability

  • The idea of a necessary connection

  • Liberty and necessity

  • The reasoning of animals

  • Miracles 

  • Providence and a future state

  • Skepticism

• For Hume, experience is the primary subject matter of philosophy

  • Hume, however, maintained that our experience is simply a chain of events.

    • Casualty, self, and other relationships are only functions of our mental habits.

  • Hume distinguished between impressions, mental phenomena that present themselves with force, and ideas, fainter images of impressions.

• The nature of the self, according to Hume

  • Hume argued that our selves and our experiences are not as consistent and continuous as we would like to believe.

    • The self is constructed and imposed on our memories; it is how we organize the story.

  • Hume studies the emotions extensively: all derived from pain and pleasure; approval and disapproval are calm forms of love and hate.

    • He advocated comparative studies in physical anatomy and “anatomy of the mind.”

• The nature of causality, according to Hume

  • We infer casualty from the constant repeated conjunction of two events (A occurs, then B; we infer that A causes B)

  • If we see one instance of A followed by B, we do not infer causation

  • This inductive inference is flawed, but a natural consequence of human reasoning

  • He doesn’t deny the existence of causality but denies that we can understand it

• What is the free will problem?

  • “...free will can be defined as the unique ability of persons to exercise control over their conduct in the fullest manner necessary for moral responsibility” SEP, 2009… So that the person has moral accountability (praise or punishment)

  • Determinism is the thesis that the facts of the past and the laws of nature specify future events.

• Hume’s understanding of free will is now termed “contingent compatibilism”

  • The world is physical and governed by deterministic physical laws

  • Morally accountable human behavior is caused by human will, which reflects character and sentiment.

  • If we can do what we want to do in a particular situation but could choose to act differently, then we can be said to have free will. Free will is compatible and determinism.

  • Hobbes expressed a similar compatibilism.

• Free will and human assumptions about the casual nature of free will are essential for society.

  • To be able to predict the behavior of others we must assume their character and sentiment cause them to will particular acts.

  • From people’s behavior, we need to be able to infer character and sentiment.

  • Predictions and inferences will not always be correct.

• Empiricism on the European continent

  • Empericisicm on the European continent thrived at the same time that the British empiricists were writing.

  • Etienne Bonnot de Condillac focused on how the mind works instead of what the mind is.

    • Condillac addressed the interaction of nature and learning in the formation of knowledge.

    • Condilac emphasized the importance of language in science.

  • Claude-Adrien Helvétius emphasized the motivational effects of pleasure and pain.

• Associationism and Utilitarianism

  • Associationism and Utilitarianism were motivated by practical problems in education and society.

    • David Hartley (1705 - 1757) is often regarded as the founder of modern associationism.

    • Hartley classified the varieties of pleasure and pain and their effects on human motivation.

• David Hartley (1705 - 1757)

  • Physicians focused on the connection between the physical and psychological, determinist.

  • Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and His Expectations was published in 1749

    • Neurology, moral psychology, spirituality

  • Consciousness derives from brain processes

  • Ideas, remote from sensation, come into being by contiguity, either simultaneous or successive.

• Hartely and neurology

  • Hartley also proposed a neurophysiological system of association.

    • Stimulus causes vibration in a matter of the body.

    • He argued that miniature vibrations (vibrantiuncles) remain after the initial stimulus has passed.

    • Vibrantiucnles become the basis of memory.

    • Though, associations are physical processes

    • Pleasure is associated with moderate vibration; pain with rapid vibration

  • Coined the adjective “automatic” in the discussion of movement, secondarily automatic movement

    • “All our voluntary powers are of the nature of memory”

• Hartley’s moral and spiritual ideas of “duty and expectation”

  • The various emotional states (“pleasures and pains”) are in “six classes”: imagination, ambition, self-interest, sympathy, theopathy, and the moral sense.

  • Expectation of union with the divine

  • His unitarian ideas meant his book was not taught at Cambridge or Oxford

• Early Utilitarianism

  • Morally right action is the action that produces the most good… impartially considered. No one’s good is more important than another’s.

    • Theological utilitarians believed that promoting human happiness was good because it was sanctioned by God.

  • “Moral sense” theorists believed that humans have an innate sensitivity to moral good and moral deformity… We have an innate sense of natural law, we judge the impact people have on the systems of which they are parts.

• Utilitarianism

  • Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 -1797) moral and political philosopher and; an early pioneer in the battle for the emancipation of women.

    • She suggested that the differences between the genders resulted from the lack of opportunities for women.

    • Wollstonecraft argued against essentialism.

      • Essentialism is the belief that the essential nature of men is qualitatively different from the essential nature of women.

    • Her book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, encouraged women to acquire strength.

      • It also encouraged men to seek fellowship with women as equals.

• Jeremy Bentham (1748 -1832)

  • Trained as a lawyer, Bentham argued for a utilitarian approach to law.

  • Interested in social and legal reform.

    • He emphasized the greatest good for the greatest number; equality for women; animal rights.

    • Bentham accepted psychological hedonism, the idea that humans seek pleasure and avoid pain. Liberalization of laws prohibiting homosexuality.

    • Panopticon described Bentham’s vision of an ideal prison

    • Bentham’s view was surprising to many at the time because he viewed the moral quality of an action to be determined instrumentally, by its effects… Stark contrasts to Kant’s approach to moral evaluation…

• Associationism and Utilitarianism

  • James Mill (1773 - 1836) argued for a mechanistic \approach to the mind based on association and conditioning, a close friend of Bentham’s from 1808 on, hoped to realize Bentham’s Utilitarian reforms.

    • He was an advocate for education for the masses.

  • John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873), the son of James Mill, was a product of his father’s mechanical approach to education.

    • On liberty, 1859 discusses standards for balancing the authority of the state with individual liberty.

    • He viewed the mind in probabilistic terms rather than mechanical terms.

    • He maintained that a science of psychology was possible.

    • He also suggested a science of the development of character, which he called etholog.

    • He advocated feminist views

    • He grounded these views in his empiricism and his utilitarianism.

    • There would be societal benefits from providing women with opportunities.

• How did utilitarianism affect psychology?

  • Focus on motivation and decision-making (utility theory)

  • Influenced the emergence of psychophysics

  • Influenced emergence of behavior with emphasis on outcomes

END OF EXAM 1 NOTES

The Rationalist Philosophers

• Rationalism in the 17th through early 19th Centuries

  • Descartes (1596 - 1650), dualism

  • Spinoza (1632 - 1677), monism

  • Leibniz (1646 - 1716) monadology

  • Kant (1742 - 1804) Critique of Pure Reason 1781; Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone 1793 (grouped with empiricists in some texts)

  • Herbart (1776 - 1841) apperceptive mass forms unconsciously

  • Thomas Reid (1710 - 1796) common sense philosophy

• British empiricism in contrast

  • Locke - tabula rasa

  • Hume - association, no basis for inference, causality, and self are habits of mind

  • Berkeley - experience agreement reflects the constant perceiver; understanding of the depth of the visual world develops through teaching experience.

  • Hartley - sensation produces vibrations in the nervous system

• René Descartes (1596 - 1650)

  • Polymath: mathematics, physics, philosophy, psychology

  • Descartes imported his mathematical method as he pushed the limits of his ability to doubt.

  • His method

    • Never accept anything as true unless it is clear, distinct, and immune from doubt.

    • Divide all difficulties into as many parts as possible.

    • Start with the easiest and simplest elements and then proceed to the complex

• Descartes did not publish his cosmological work, The World, for fear of the Inquisition

  • Completed in 1633, the year of Galileo’s imprisonment

  • Cosmological theories similar to those of Giulio Casare Vanini burned at the stake in 1619

  • 1635 Descartes fathered a child, a daughter, who died at age 5.

  • 1641, published Meditations on First Philosophy

• Descartes started with doubt.

  • He could not, however, doubt that he was doubting.

    • He maintained that because he was thinking he was existing

    • Therefore, he concluded, I think, therefore I am, or Cogito ergo sum - written in a response to objections to The Meditations

    • After establishing his existence, he accepted a clear and distinct sense of experience, and then he proceeded to rely on his experience in his research.

  • Descartes speculated a non-extended mind that is qualitatively different from the physical body.

• Descartes’ epistemology

  • Meditations on First Philosophy (1641):

  • Six Meditations; first published in Latin. Circulated for comments, then with written replies to objections. It expresses an internist epistemology: all Knowledge is founded on ideas

  • Knowledge is that which cannot be doubted

  • Most claims to knowledge should be analyzed methodically

  • Ideas are innate in the intellect, not the senses

  • Method of Doubt

• Descartes; epistemology: Meditations

  • Meditation I: method of doubt

    • Always Dreaming; Evil Genius Doubt

  • Meditation II: Concerning the Human Mind

    • “I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed.”

    • The mind is better known than the body than the external world

    • Clear distinct perception in some cases may be a mark of truth

  • Meditation III: On God

    • Logical arguments for the existence of an infinite, benevolent, non-deceiving perfect God, as first and necessary cause

  • Meditation IV: Concerning the True and False. The general truth of clear and distinct perceptions follows from the existence of a non-deceiving God.

    • Sensations are caused by external world objects; often involuntary; “nothing can be in the mind of which I am unaware” therefore external things exist.

    • Restatement of Anselm’s proof

  • Meditation VI: Concerning the Existence of Material Things, and the Real Distinction between Mind and Body

    • A non-deceiving God exists.

    • I have a strong propensity to believe in the external reality of objects when I have clear and distinct perceptions

    • God would not create me with a strong propensity to false beliefs

    • God could create a material world of objects

    • God probably did

• How did the immaterial mind and the material body interact?

  • Through the pineal gland. The mind caused animal spirits to flow to muscles. Sensory input affects the mind.

• Man was not purely mechanical

  • …but animals were, in Descartes’ view

    • Devoid of mind, consciousness, feelings, incapable even of experiencing pain

    • Animals were automata, behaving based on reflexes.

• Descartes and free will

  • The soul is exempt from the deterministic laws which govern the physical universe.

• Descartes valued both rational deduction and experience as contributors to knowledge.

  • Ordinary experience and observation – without theoretical basis – were seen as more valuable than experimentation.

  • Observation of nature followed by rational reflection as a proper scientific procedure.

• Descartes’ contribution to science and mathematics

  • The World (1633) – not published

  • Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)

  • Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and Seeking the Truth in the Sciences… (1637)

    • Metaphysical, teleological

  • Principles of Philosophy (1644):

    • Defined laws of motion, inertia, and conversation of energy that provided the foundation for Newton

  • Correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia

  • Passions of the Soul (1649)

• The purpose of philosophy is to increase wisdom

  • Wisdom will enable happiness

  • The pursuit of virtue is sufficient for happiness – of the soul. Virtue is a commitment to bring about what reason determines to be best.

• Descartes’ “provisional moral code”

  • “The first was to obey the laws and customs of my country, holding constantly to the religion in which by God’s grace I had been instructed from my childhood… The second maxim was to be as firm and decisive in my actions as I could, and to follow even the most doubtful opinions, once I had adopted them, with no less constancy than if they had been quite certain… My third maxim was to try always to master myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world… Finally, to conclude this moral code… I thought I could do no better than to continue with the [occuptation] I was engaged in, and to devote my whole life to cultivating my reason and advancing as far as I could in the knowledge of the truth, following the method I had prescribed for myself”.

• To direct the will toward virtuous ends… from correspondence with Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia

  • 1. Accept what happens as coming from God

  • 2. The soul is immortal; do not fear death 

  • 3. The universe is unknowably large; you are not the center of it

  • 4. Interests of the community must take precedence over individual interests

  • 5. Passions (emotions) distort the value of their objects

  • 6. When I doubt, follow the law and customs of the land.

• Passions of the Soul (1649)

  • Six primitive passions: wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness

  • Functions of emotions preserve the body; arise in the body and are communicated to the soul through the pineal gland

  • Passions are motivational states that cause the soul to will the actions of the body

  • Internal emotions such as contentment are immune to the effects of passions

• Baruch Spinoza (1632 - 1677)

  • Spinoza offered a monistic view of consciousness as the organism’s self-monitoring to maintain and restore balance/health.

    • Descartes had presented qualitative distinctions between mind and body, sacred and secular, and humans and animals.

    • Spinoza challenged Descartes’ distinctions - mind and body are the same.

• Descartes

  • The universe is a material thing, operation according to laws of physics, describable with mathematics.

  • Animals are animate machines, responding automatically with no consciousness, thought, emotion, feeling, or decision-making.

  • The human body is a material machine responding to the impulses, thoughts, emotions, and feelings, decisions of the immaterial soul which moves the body machine through vital spirits in nerves.

  • The soul receives sensation through the movement of vital spirit in nerves.

  • The soul receives sensation through the movement of vital spirit in the nerves.

  • The soul connects through the pineal gland.

• Brauch/Benedict Spinoza (1632 - 1677)

  • Spinoza offered a monistic view of consciousness as the organism’s self-monitoring to maintain and restore balance/health

    • Descartes had presented qualitative distinctions between mind and body, sacred and secular, and humans and animals.

    • Spinoza challenged Descartes’ distinctions - mind and body are the same.

• Spinoza’s psychology

  • If man is not confused/mad he strives for that which supports the continued existence

  • We desire what we believe will promote the continued existence

  • The experience of emotions is associated with what is positive or negative for existence

  • Ethics and social order develop out of what promotes continued existence.

• Spinoza’s naturlaism and monism

  • Spinoza advocated double-aspect monism.

    • Extension and thought are the primary attributes

    • Even if humans use different languages to discuss the mental and physical worlds, the mental and physical worlds are only two aspects of the same reality.

    • These two aspects of humans move in response to natural laws

    • The mind follows the laws of nature; therefore, it is subject to study, free will is not absolute or unconstrained

    • Spinoza’s monism excludes powers separate from God/nature.

• Spinoza’s Part III of Ethics, “On the Origin and Nature of the Affects”

  • Infinite modes -the laws of nature

  • Finite modes - anything or being

  • Humans are part of the natural order 

  • The essence of any human being (finite mode) is a striving to continue being (conatus)

  • Everything in nature is a mode of God’s immanence in a particular way

  • The ethical life involves control of strong emotions (Stoicism) and rational behavior

• Part IV of Ethics; “On Human Bondage, or The Powers of the Affects”

  • The person who is under the influence of strong effects is not free

  • Since man is part of nature, he cannot fully free himself from the casual series that link him to external things

  • Virtue consists of seeing things and events to the “eternal and infinite essence of God”... stoicism by another name/ also similar to Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds”.

• Spinoza’s view of free will is limited 

  • Humans are free to the extent that they can substitute ideas of action for other ideas of action. Only possible for moderate impulses, not passionate impulses

  • Our lack of free will, concerning thought, is evident in that we cannot choose to remember or forget some thoughts or experiences

• Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, 1670

  • Freedom to “philosophize” can be granted without danger to piety and peace; Suppression of thought endangers peace and piety

    • Disputes literal truth of Bible, miracles, prophecy; the message is to promote knowledge and love of God and others

  • Consent of the governed, and intellectual and religious freedom are essential to the stability of the state (Hobbes was a contemporary)

• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)

  • He was a brilliant mathematician and diplomat, and he also struggled with Descartes’s dualism and the requirement of mind-body interaction.

• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

  • Leibniz proposed a monadology.

    • This was a system in which indivisible units of existence (monads) moved in parallel in a preestablished harmony without interacting.

    • Though modads do not interact with one each other, they may combine in experience.

  • For Leibniz, the mind is an active force in manipulating sensory input.

  • Leibniz argued for uniformitarianism.

    • He claimed that changed is gradual and takes place over long periods of time.

  • Invented aspects of calculus (differential calculus) as did Newton, but Leibniz published first (Nova methodus, 1684)

• Christian von Wolff (1679 - 1754)

  • Extended the work of Leibniz

    • Used the term “psychology” in publications.

    • 1732 Empirical Psychology, concerning the “facts” about the powers of the soul, then Rational Psychology in 1734, a rational analysis of the metaphysics of the soul

• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

  • Immanuel Kant sought a middle ground between empiricism and rationalism.

    • Kant distinguished between analytic a priori statements that are tautologies (bachelors are unmarried) and synthetic a priori statements that contain new information about the world (bachelors are unhappy)

    • Kant believed that knowledge begins with sensory experience.

    • But the mind uses innate categories of understanding to make our experience intelligible.

    • Kant provides a basic social psychology.

    • He argued that humans are caught in the tension between heteronomy (government from the outside) and autonomy (self-government).

      • Self-government plays a role in our ability to act in a moral manner.

• Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

  • Knowledge depends on the cognitive capacity of the knower, not the object

  • The mind cannot go beyond experience to the “ultimate” truth

    • Space and time are aspects of perception; forms of intuition inherent in our senses.

    • Casualty is a form of knowledge

• Kants moral philosophy

  • Moral requirements are based on a standard of rationality, the “Categorical Imperative” (CI)

  • What is the fundamental moral principle? What is the nature and extent of ethical obligation to self and others? What is the purpose of human life and the relationship of this to morality, the moral life?

  • Moral philosophy must be conducted on an entirely a priori basis or it will be undermined by a posteriori considerations

  • The unlimited value of “a good will” – the disposition of a rational agent to make decisions about behavior only on the basis of moral considerations - not resulting advantage or happiness

    • An action performed motivated by emotional, family duty has moral worth only to the extent motivated by moral duty

    • True moral laws cannot be ignored in any circumstances: these have universal content, i,e. Are Categorical Imperatives

      • Moral evaluation is an evaluation of the will actions express

• Kant’s decision process for moral reasoning

  • “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” That is, state your reason for acting the way you propose as a maxim (expression of general truth)

  • Second, recasting that maxim as a universal law of nature governing all rational agents, and so as holding that all must, by natural law, act as you yourself propose to act in these circumstances

  • Third, consider whether your maxim is even conceivable in a world governed by this law of nature. (if you could, then your action is morally permissible. ‘One must never (or always) to the fullest extent possible in ‘C’

  • If not, you have an “imperfect duty” ‘One must sometimes and to some extent in C’

• Kant and the self

  • Self-consciousness is the determination of the self in time, presupposing the existence of real external objects in space

  • Challenges the arguments for the existence of an immortal immaterial soul

  • Logical certainty is different from moral certainty: prior logical proofs of existence of God, afterlife, soul were flawed but useful

• Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841)

  • Psychological approach to educational problems. Regarded as (German) founder of Social Psychology

  • He attempted to quantify phenomena in psychology.

    • Heartbeat studied apperception, mental operations more complex than sense perception

    • He claimed that the goal of education was to build the apperceptive mass. 

    • Education, for Herbart, must also be moral education

• Herbart recognized that students’ interests mattered

  • Boredom was the worst outcome

  • Information was more accessible if it related to information students already had or to interests they had

  • Mental calculus: weights for chunks of information and rules for combination

  • Teachers should relate new information to interests and existing knowledge

• Thomas Reid (1710-1796)

  • Advocated common sense philosophy

    • External reality, causation, the self as an agent

  • He rejected any philosophical positions that were counter-intuitive or did violence to human experience of the world.

  • He was frustrated with eh counter-intuitive claims of Berkely and Hume.

    • Reid argued for first principles, propositions that could not be doubted without violating common sense.

      • For example, one first principle requires belief in the external world.

• Reid (1729 - 1796) epistemology

  • An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764)

  • Essays on the intellectual Powers of Man (1785)

  • Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788)

• Reid’s (1720 - 1796) epistemology

  • The world is real, the senses are affected by the world, perception is a report on the world-and an understanding of the reality of objects, space, time is innate

  • Common sense is reflected in ordinary language

  • People may hold beliefs in conflict with common sense, but that is to be in deep conflict with one’s human nature

  • “Faculties” are native dispositions that ensure survival of the individual and the group

• Contributions of rationalism

  • Furthered the erosion of received doctrine as a source of knowledge

  • Formative intellectual beginnings of psychophysics, cognitive psychology, educational psychology, evolutionary psychology….

Review Before Exam 1

• The Hippocratics

  • Hippocrates (ca. 460-370 BCE?) – A physician who attracted a dedicated group of students and followers.

  • Hippocratic Corpus – Extensive medical writings produced by the followers of Hippocrates, in which diseases are regarded as natural phenomena.

  • Humoral theory – The theory that health and illness result from, respectively, a balance and an imbalance of the humors.

  • Humors – Four substances within the human body: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.

• Sophism or “wisdom” took a different approach

  • Protagorus – human experience should be the focus; relativism – there is no absolute truth

  • Famed orators, teachers of rhetoric, hated and condemned by Socrates

  • Some also taught mathematics, music

• We know the philosophy of Socrates primarily through the work of Plato

  • Socrates (ca. 470-399 B.C.) – Classical Greek philosopher who engaged his students in dialogues so they could arrive at the truth on their own.

  • Nativism – An approach to mental philosophy that emphasizes inborn, or “native,” properties of the mind.

  • Rationalism – An approach to mental philosophy that emphasizes the mind’s capacity for reason.

• Platonic Idealism

  • Appearance – Plato’s term for an individual’s actual conscious experience of something.

  • Idealism -  The notion that more fundamental and ideal forms, or essences, underlie our sensory experiences.

  • Allegory of the cave -  An example used by Plato to illustrate the difference between appearances and ideal forms.

• Aristotle’s empiricism was a sharp contrast to the rationalism, the idealism of Plato.

  • The Academy - An intellectual gathering place for scholars and a site of teaching and learning, established by Plato.

  • Aristotle (ca. 384-322 B.C.) – Classical Greek philosopher and student at the Academy who emphasized the importance of systematic observation of sensory experience.

  • Empiricism – The theory that true knowledge is arrived at through sensory experiences of the external world.

• On the Pysche – De Anima

  • Scale of nature – Aristotle’s hierarchical ordering of living organisms.

  • Vegetative soul – Possessed by organisms with only the most fundamental functions of psyches: nourishment and reproduction.

  • Sensitive soul – Possessed by organisms with locomotion, sensation, memory, and imagination.

  • Rational soul – Possessed by human beings, who uniquely have the capacity to reason. 

• Atomic theory, in primitive form, originated in Greece

  • Democritus (ca. 460-370 B.C.) – A somewhat younger contemporary of Socrates who developed an atomic theory.

  • The tiny invisible particles of which the visible world is made were termed atoms.

• Roman Medicine

  • The Roman period was approximately the 7th century BCE. to 476 C.E.

  • Galen (130 – 200 CE) was the most prominent Roman physician.

    • Galen accepted the Greek theory of four bodily humors.

      • He argued that four qualities (cold, warm, dry, and moist) were involved in the balance required for health.

    • Galen saw the brain as the seat of thought, origin of behavior

    • Mental disorders were also caused by imbalance in the four humors.

    • He advocated an early form of psychotherapy to induce balance.

    • Galen was a vitalist.

      • He accepted three types of pneuma (natural spirit, vital spirit, and animal spirit).

    • The Christian church assimilated Galen’s ideas a part of church dogma, but not his emphasis on research.

• Roman Philosophy

  • Roman Philosophy focused on the quality of life.

    • Stoicism advocated the calm acceptance of one’s fate and the removal of oneself from appetitive pursuits.

    • Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Cyprus

    • Stoicism was influenced by Epictetus.

• Epictetus (“Acquired”) (55 CE - 135 CE) was born a slave in what is now Turkey

  • Freed after Nero’s death; banished from Rome in ~ 93; settled in Greece.

  • External events are caused by fate and one should accept these calmly

  • Individuals are responsible for their own actions

• Epictetus’ ideas have had a lasting influence

  • It is not events, or things, that trouble the mind, but opinions about these

    • Ellis’ Rational Emotive Therapy, CBT\

• Roman Philosophy: Neoplatonism

  • Hypatia of Alexandria (350 – 415 CE) was a leader of the neo-platonic school and an expert in geometry and astronomy.

    • Third book of Ptolemy’s Almagest may have been her work.

  • Daughter of Theon, mathematician and philosopher

    • She advocated music therapy for mental disorders.

    • Politics (rather than music therapy) led to her murder by Christian Monks.

  • Her student Synesius (370 – 413) became a Christian bishop and incorporated Neoplatonic ideas into the idea of the of the Trinity; left dozens of letters giving insight into the era, Christianization of Roman Empire.

• The Medival Period: 400 CE – 1300 to 1400

  • The medieval period extends from approximately 400 C.E. through about 1400 C.E.

  • Many practical inventions and new forms of architecture (e.g. flying buttress)

  • Medical and psychological inquiry largely stagnated.

    • Knowledge was based almost exclusively in theological authority.

    • Tertullian (160 – 225) helped to set the stage for the medieval period by elevating revelation over reason.

• Aurelius Augustine (354 – 430 CE), Saint Augustine

  • Augustine combined Greek and Christian thought with other theological and philosophical systems

  • He described grief, habit-breaking, and his perceptions of infant motivation (selfish brutes).

  • Memory: images, influenced by emotion; a priori knowledge of some concepts; memory must be exercised to endure.

  • Augustine’s explorations of psychological topics reflect his theology.

  • He argued against value of curiosity doubt, and openness that would eventually lead to development of scientific inquiry.

• Islam in the Middle Ages

  • Islam Swept through Arab lands, after the death of the prophet Mohammed (571-632 CE), and into Europe Rhazes challenged demonology, raised doubts about traditional authorities, and advocated diversions for melancholia.

    • Avicenna wrote extensively on medical topics.

      • He struggled to reconcile faith and reason.

      • He accepted Galen’s description of four humors and believed that balance was essential.

      • He argued for a tripartite soul including the vegetative soul, the animal soul, and the human soul.

• Islamic philosophers in the Middle Ages

  • Alhazen (965 – 1039) studied optics and vision.

  • Al-Ghazali (1058-1111) believed that God, not nature or cause, explains everything in experience.

    • Argued against empiricism and rationalism

  • Averroës (1126-1198) wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle, and conducted research in vision and medicine.

• Islamic Physicians provided accurate descriptions of the visual system and treatment of mental illness

  • Visual anatomy

  • Visual tracts in the brain

  • First asylums in the Islamic world opened in Baghadad in 705 CE,

  • Rhazes (841-926 CE) (Muhamed ibn Zakariya Razi) wrote medical texts, directed the Baghdad institution which became in essence a hospital using “moral treatment”... diet, rest, occupation in meaningful tasks.

• The rise of European universities and scholasticism

  • Charlemagne, in 787 CE, established schools in every Abbey in his empire

  • Knowledge of Greek had disappeared, except in Ireland’s monasteries (and among Islamic scholars)

  • 13th and 14th Centuries saw development of true universities

• Thirteenth century: Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Saint Thomas Aquinas

  • Deeply committed to reconciling faith and reason

    • He extensively studied Aristotle.

    • He maintained that the church had nothing to fear from empiricism or rationalism.

    • Accused of being an “Averroist”; ultimately studying Aristotle was no longer banned

• Thirteenth Century: Roger Bacon (1220-1292, or maybe 1214-1294)

  • Entered Oxford at 13

  • Wrote on epistemology, ethics, optics, language; lectured on Aristotle at Oxford, University of Paris

  • Inspired by Aristotle, argued for the direct study of nature

  • Scientific method attributed to him, probably incorrectly; he plagiarized freely

  • May have had a combative personality 

• William of Ockham (1285-1349)

  • Franciscan monk continued the empirical tradition.

    • He argued for the principle of parsimony, sometimes called “Ockham’s Razor.”

    • Ultimately excommunicated

• The invention of printing had widespread impact

  • Spread of printed material (1439/1445 printing press invented, but had been invented ~1000 years earlier in China)

    • Poems, grammars, and in 1455 the first complete Gutenberg Bible

  • Protestant Reformation was aided by the availability of printing

    • Luther’s 97 theses 1517; by 1522 over 300,000 copies had been printed and distributed across Germany and Europe

    • By 1521 reconciliation was impossible

• Erasmus (1467 - 1536)

  • Textual analysis of biblical literature; new translations; satire of church abuses;

  • Had new translation of the New Testament printed in 1516, with Greel and Latin side by side

  • Critical of church, but never left

  • Initially defended Luther against charges of heresy

  • Helf to doctrine of free will (versus predestination); argued for religious tolerance

  • Corresponded with over 500 individuals – nobility, clergy

• What develops science?

  • Challenges to Thomas Aquina’s synthesis of Christianity and Aristotle’s science

  • Cosmology: Ptolemaic system Claudius Ptolemaeus; (c. AD 90-C AD 168) Almagest

  • Copernican system 1543 challenged by Tycho Brahe’s system 1573

  • Galileo and Kepler challenge and overturn the notion of a geo-centric universe

    • Galileo (1564 - 1642) is forced to recant

    • Kepler (1571 - 1630) gets away with it (far from Rome)

• Changing Views of the World

  • Galileo Galilei refined the telescope and challenged the assumptions of the church

    • The conflict between Galileo and the church was not only a conflict of cosmology.

      • It was also a conflict over epistemology.

      • The church favored authority as a method of knowledge and forced Galileo to recant his views.

• The Copernican revolution increased sphere in which natural causes could act.

  • Predictable, lawful, and quantifiable forces were at work in astronomy, and these forces threatened extrinsic teleology.

• Groth of empirical studies continued in many areas

  • Anatomy: dissections of executed criminals allowed beginning late 13th century

  • Botany: Islamic texts from 9th & 13th centuries became more widely known, new works in Europe in 16th century

  • Zoology

  • Interest grew in quantification and mathematics.

    • Math was used for practical applications in business and navigation.