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Eureka!The Roots of Philosophy
in PsychologyPSYC540
History and Systems of Psychology
The Physicists
• Thales of Miletus (620-546 BCE):– Water– Critical Tradition
• “Question Everything”
• Anaximander (610-546 BCE)– “Question Thales”– Boundless– Evolution and
Cannibalism• Don’t eat fish
More Physics• Empedocles (490-430 BCE)
– The four elements– Eidola perception theory
• Heraclitus (535-475 BCE)– The only constant is change– Fire– No man steps in the same
river twice– No stability = no knowlege
• Parmenides of Elea (early 5th century BCE) – All movement is an illusion
(Zeno’s paradox)• Democritus (460-370 BCE)
– Atoms
Hippocrates (Ca. 460BCE, Khios,
Greece)• Attacked the
conventional ideas of illness
• Empedocles'’ 4-element idea with humors in the body– Earth: Black bile– Air: Yellow bile– Water: Phlegm– Fire: Blood
• The body’s natural healing process– Rest, diet, exercise, fresh
air, baths, massages
Galen ( Ca. 140CE Rome)
• Hippocrates’ 4-humor idea extends to personalities– Blood: Sanguine– Phlegm:
Phlegmatic– Black bile:
Melancholic– Yellow bile:
Choleric
Sophists
• Truth is in the mind of the beholder• Rhetoric and logic teachers• Protagoras (481-411 BCE)
– No single truth exists– In order to understand a person’s actions
or beliefs, one must understand the person
• Changes focus of philosophy from what is it all made up, to what can we know and how can we know it.
Socrates(Ca. 469-399 BCE)
• Not really a sophist• There was an
actual truth in there somewhere
• The purpose of life is to gain knowledge– The unexamined life
is not worth living
• Inductive definition
In the Psyche Corner, Wearing Red Robes: PLATO! (Ca. 429–347
BCE)• Everything in the everyday world is a manifestation of a pure form
• Interact with imperfect matter to make poor shadow
• The allegory of the cave
• Nothing is learned from experience; only remembered
Levels of Knowledge
• Physicality is an impediment to true understanding
“All those who attempt to gain knowledge by examining the physical world are doomed to ignorance, or at best, opinion.”
Plato’s Tripartite Soul
• The Rational Soul (Reason) is immortal; all others are corruptible
• Must suppress bodily needs for the good of Reason
• Created a dualistic theory of the soul, which resulted in a very powerful religious dogma
And in the Soma corner, in blue robes and wielding a heavy book, ARISTOTLE!
(Ca. 384-322 BCE)• Rational thought is important
• Essences exist within nature, not apart from it
• In order to infer these essences, one must study their manifestations
• Therefore, the body is not a hindrance to enlightenment
Aristotle’s Tripartite Soul
• Vegetative (nutritive): Plants– Growth, reproduction, feeding
• Sensitive: Nonhuman animals– Above plus response to environment– Pleasure, pain, memory
• Rational: Human only– Above plus ability to engage in rational
thought
Motivation, Emotion, and Memory
• We are happiest when doing that which comes naturally– Rational thought for humans
• Emotion serves to amplify existing tendencies
• Remembering is a spontaneous recollection of something previously experienced– Differs from Plato in that it is the result of
sensory experience– Not nativisitic
Aristotle's Principles of Memory
• Contiguity• Frequency• Similarity• Contrast
Now, Let’s Jump to 17th Century Europe!
The Spirit of Mechanism
• The idea that natural processes are mechanically determined and capable of explanation by laws of physics and chemistry
• Julien de La Mettrie– Fever-induced
hallucination– People are “enlightened
machines”– Human body is “nothing
more than a watch that winds itself.”
– Died of an overdose of truffles and pheasant
Doctrines du Jour
• Determinism: Acts are determined by past events– Set a clock in motion, and it becomes
predictable
• Reductionism: Phenomena on one level (e.g., complex ideas) can be explained in terms of phenomena on another level (simple ideas)– A clock is explained in terms of gears and
springs
Renee Descartes(aka Cartius)
1596-1650• Born wealthy
enough to pursue intellectual pursuits and travel– “He who lives well,
lives well hidden.”
• Exceptional pupil at a Jesuit school– Mathematical
prodigy
It’s Good to be a Wealthy, Well-
Connected Student• Got special consideration from school
director to arrange classes so that he could sleep until noon– “Health reasons”– Kept this habit up for most of his life
• Parisian Playboy– Exceptional gambler– Heavy drinker– Expert swordsman– One lasting romantic affiliation
• 3-year affair with an unknown Dutch woman• Produced a daughter (?) who died at 5• “The greatest sorrow of my life”
One too many gambling debts,
hangovers, or jealous others later…• At around 21, served
as “gentleman volunteer”– Holland– Bavaria– Hungary
• Spirit of Truth– Fever-induced dream– Devote his life to
apply math to all of the sciences and produce certainty of knowledge
Application to Practical Concerns
• Returned to Paris, sold Dad’s property– Used the funds to live in comfort and solitude– Lived in 13 towns, 24 houses, kept his address
secret– Always near a Roman Catholic church
• Used geometry (Cartesian) to improve maneuverability of wheelchairs
• Experiments to find ways to keep hair from going grey
• Prolific writer and questionable experimenter– “I think therefore I lamb.”
Descartes and the Mind-Body Problem
• Dualism vs Monism– The puppet with
nothing to offer
• Versailles Gardens• The soul (mind) and
the pineal gland– Animal spirits– Hollow nerves
• Two-way interaction• Reflex action
– “no mind involvement”
Native Rene• Nativism vs Empiricism
– Plato vs Aristotle• Descartes: Derived and Innate ideas
– Break with plato• Derived: Ideas that arise from external stimulus• Innate: Ideas that develop of the mind alone
– God– Self– Perfection– Infinity
• Will be inlfuential in the development of other theories (e.g., Gestalt) and will provide a springboard against others to rebel– John Locke
Perhaps Sleeping In is Good for the
Health• Got attention from 20-
year-old Queen Christina of Sweden– Asked him to be personal
tutor of philosophy– Declined, but she
eventually won him over in 1649
• Needed tutoring at 5:00 am
• Drafty castle, cold environment
• Descartes of pneumonia died within a year
A Problem With Mind/Body Dualism
• Too tall to fit in a coffin• Cut off head to ship
separately• Ship with his body and
skull sank just before docking
• Took 17 years to restore his notes
• Skull disappeared and resurfaced in private collections for years afterward
John Locke(1632-1704)
• Will initiate “British Empiricism”
• Rejects any innate ideas• “Let us suppose the mind
to be, as we say, white paper.”
• Primary vs Secondary qualities– Primary: exist in an object
independent of perception (e.g., size)
– Secondary exist in perception (e.g., tickle of the feather)
• The Shaftesbury rebellion
Bishop George Berkeley
(1685-1753)• Initiated Mentalism
– Mental monist
• Taking Locke a step further– If there are two realities,
one on the world and one in the mind…what is the difference?
– We can only be sure of our perceptions
– How, then can there be stability in the universe?
• Also 3D vision theorist– Accommodation
Berkeley and the Permanent Perceiver
There was a young man who said "God, I find it exceedingly odd
That this very tree Should continue to be
When there is no one about in the quad.“
The Answer:
"Young man, your question is odd. I am always about in the quad.
And that's why this tree Continues to be"
Signed by, yours faithfully, God.
David Hume(1711-1776)
• Another Mental Monist
• Takes God from Berkeley
• If there is no permanent perceiver, we can only be sure of our own minds
• Solipsism– Nothing exists but the
mind
Hume Anticipating the Functionalists
• Impressions– Basic elements of mental life (similar to
perceptions)
• Ideas– Mental experiences in the absence of a
stimulating object• Very careful to leave out physiology or external stimuli
• Early associationism:– Similarity– Contiguity– Clear Aristotle influence!
David Hartley(1705-1757)
• Added repetition to Hume’s laws of association
• As kids grow, a variety of sensory experiences and trains of associations of increasing complexity are established
• Thus, higher levels of thought can be reduced to simpler sensations
• First to apply laws of association to all types of mental activity
• Doctrine of specific vibrations
James Mill(1775-1836)
• Ex-clergyman from Scotland
• No one could understand his sermons
• The Anti-Berkeley– Attempted to apply
mechanism and destroy subjectivity
• Machines are no longer a metaphor for the mind– The mind IS a machine– A passive entity that
automatically responds to stimuli
What If He Had a Son?
• Fill his head at an early age• 5-h daily drills:
– Classic languages– Mathematics– History– Politics
• Read Plato at 3• 1st scholarly paper at 11• Mastered standard
univeristy curriculum at 12• “Nervous Breakdown”
(Severe depression) at 21– So analytical, “I could not
feel.”– Poetry of Wordsworh
helped
John Stewart Mill(1806-1873)
• Mental chemistry• Based on the discovery
of H2O– Adding H and O to get
water, something completely new
– Mixing colored lights to get white, something completely new
• Creative synthesis– Complex ideas form from
simple ones– Takes on new qualities
not present in its pieces– The whole is greater
than the sum of the parts?
Mechanism and Reductionism in the
19th Century
Mary Shelly
Frankenstein (1818)
Tik Tok
Frank Baum (1914)
Charles Babbage
1791-1871
Babbage’s Brain
(Harvested 1871)
Analytical
Engine
(Babbage, 1833)