2. Why Study History?
• Why do we behave
as we do?
• Why do we feel?
• Why are we
conscious?
• Understand
• Predict
• Modify
3. History of Human Knowledge
1. Metaphysical Systems:
– Attributing behavior or
experiences to nonphysical
forces such as spirits or
deities
– Violates scientists’ established
physical laws
4. Examples of
Metaphysical Systems
A. Animism
• Belief that natural phenomena are alive
and influence behavior
• Possession of animal parts endows the
owner with psychological aspects of
the animal
• Wind, sun, and rain have temperaments
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
5. Metaphysical Systems (cont’d)
B. Mythology and religion
• Deities of spiritual rather than
physical existence
• More sophisticated explanations than
animism
• Non-physical forces influence
behavior
• Important: science can’t determine
whether right or wrong – just
different than science
• Difference set of assumptions
• Both attempt to explain behavior
6. Demonology
• during various periods
of history people
suffering from mental
illnesses were seen as
being possessed by evil
spirits
7. Early Beliefs
Psychological aspects
– Animism
– Anthropomorphism
– Superstitious behavior
– Confirmation bias
Religious Aspects
– Praying for rain
– Praying for Spring
– Tao
8. Features of Greek world
• Closeness of Western tradition to
Greek world
• Rationalism/intellectualism
(Greece birthplace of philosophy,
example of Athens in which people
lay off their arms in times of peace)
• Immersion into nature disappears
• Democracy (of participative type)
• Center is individual, not the family
(as it is in China)
• Polytheism
• Cult of the beautiful (aesthetical
moment)
9. Three main periods
• Establishment of Greek tradition
• Geographical expansion
• Degradation
• Victory against the Persians defining moment
of our European tradition
10. Greek philosophy
• How you acquire knowledge (perception)
• How you maintain knowledge (memory)
• Whether knowledge is innate or learned
11. Good questions!
• Answers were pretty bad
• Democritus: perception = small particles fly into your
eye.
• Aristotle agreed. Also thought women have fewer
teeth then men, mice die if they drink in the
summer.
• Socrates: all knowledge is innate.
• Plato: perception is unreliable, therefore only logic is
reliable and experiments are pointless.
13. Naturalistic
• Search for causation
in the physical world
• Observational trend
• Democritus: Atoms
(materialism)
• Heraclitus: Fire
• Parmenides: Motion
14. Greek philosophy
• Pre-Socratic period: in spite of polytheism,
attempts to find “first origin of things”
• Thales (Water)
• Anaximandres
• Anaxagoras
• Herakleitos “never step in the same river twice”
• Parmenides
• Democritos (atoms)
MONISTS
16. The Atomists
• Democritus of Adbera (~420 BC)
– Only “atoms and Void exist in reality”
– There is no free will since there is no will to direct
the atoms
– Nothing happens at random, it happens out of
reason and necessity
• This is essentially a philosophical position which
combines both Materialism and Determinism
• There is no soul, no will that can be free, there is
only material (atoms) that operates in lawful
ways. Finding those laws becomes essential in
understanding the universe and ourselves.
• This leads to hedonism – the pursuit of pleasure
and the avoidance of pain as the only good.
17. Basic Issues
• Mind vs. Body (Dualism?)
• Reductionism vs. Non-
reductionism
• Nature vs. Nurture
• Objective (Nomothetic) vs.
Subjective (idiographic)
• Free will vs. Determinism
Dualism is a set of
views about the
relationship between
mind and matter. It
begins with the claim
that mental
phenomena are, in
some respects, non-
physical
18. Democritos (Atomism)
• Atoms are lawful and cause both physical and mental
events
• Determinist?
• Reductionist?
• Dualism?
• Objective?
Not based on scientific inquiry
All events are determined
by prior causes
Universe is made of
elemental particles
Well, primary and secondary qualities(
(Sense information)
19. A Change in the Mind-Body Problem
Descartes and his predecessors saw rationality and
morality as the source of the mind-body problem…
…yet today we largely view the subjective quality of mental
existence to be the source of the mind-body problem.
Enlightenment era mind-body problem
Modern mind-body problem
The mind-body problem – Our inability to reach philosophical or scientific consensus on an explanatorily
transparent relation between the mind’s character and contents and the physical body, rooted in
subjectively apparent differences between the two.
How can
mechanical
processes
produce ideas
and reason?
Why would a
network of
information
processors
produce
subjective
feeling and
sensation?
What’s So Hard About It?
1676
2006
20. Dualism/Monism
• Materialism
• Idealism
• Matter is only reality
• empirical
• Ideas are Ultimate reality
• rational
Idealists maintain that the mind is
all that exists and that the external
world is either mental itself, or an
illusion created by the mind
21. Dualism
• The mind-body problem
concerns the explanation of
the relationship that exists
between minds, or mental
processes, and bodily states or
processes. The main aim of
psychogists working in this
area is to determine the
nature of the mind and mental
states/processes, and how--or
even if--minds are affected by
and can affect the body
• The main argument in favor of
dualism is that it appeals to
the common-sense intuition
that conscious experience is
distinct from inanimate matter
• Monist argue that only the
entities postulated by physical
theory exist, and that the mind
will eventually be explained in
terms of these entities as
physical theory continues to
evolve.
25. Basic Issues
• Mind vs. Body (Dualism?)
• Reductionism vs. Non-
reductionism
• Nature vs. Nurture
• Objective (Nomothetic) vs.
Subjective (idiographic)
• Free will vs. Determinism
27. Thales of Miletus (~ 585 BC)
• Prior to Thales critical
examination of the state of things
was hit and miss – dogma
dominated
– e.g. Pythagoras was both a
mathematician and a mystic
• “Abstain from beans”
– ‘favism’ or haemolytic anemia
28. Thales’ Physics and Mathematics
• Whilst the world is made up of many different substances
there is in reality only one element – water (phusis)
– Gas, Liquid, Solid.
• Followers of Thales searching for the single universal element
were called physicists
– Modern physicists are still searching.
• Thales claims were a radical step away from supernatural
explanations of the world and the stuff of which it is made to
a more naturalistic explanation.
– This kind of naturalism is fundamental to modern science which
eschews any claims to supernaturalism
– However, we still seem to have a dualism in Psychology between
mind and matter.
29. Basic Issues
• Mind vs. Body (Dualism?)
• Reductionism vs. Non-
reductionism
• Nature vs. Nurture
• Objective (Nomothetic) vs.
Subjective (idiographic)
• Free will vs. Determinism
30. Thales:
• Popper (1965) in his book Conjectures and
Refutations
– “I like to think that Thales was the first teacher
who said to his pupils: ‘This is how I see things –
how I believe that things are. Try to improve upon
my teaching’.
– “It was a momentous innovation… a tradition that
admits a plurality of doctrines in which all try to
approach the truth by means of critical
discussion”
31. The Polis
• Like many cultures the key to success in Greece was politics – the working
of the polis.
• The polis is a Greek city-state, a small, independent government
consisting of a single city and its immediate environs.
– Some were democracies in which every male citizen voted on every
government action.
– Some were oligarchies in which a few rich or aristocratic families cooperated
and shared powers.
– Some were dictatorships in which a single military leader came to power.
• The two most influential city-states were Athens and Sparta.
• Athens was famous for its culture and art and intellectual life. Sparta was
famous for its toughness and its martial lifestyle.
• The Peloponnesian War, a civil war between Sparta and Athens was
eventually won by Sparta but so weakened Greece that eventually its
conquests was achieved Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander (the
Great)
32. The Sophists
• Political power depended on successfully persuading
others to your point of view so that votes in the
assembly of the polis would go in your favour.
• Sophists (experts) operated in the Athenian polis to
teach and practice rhetoric (the art of persuasion).
• Whilst the sophists had no clear philosophical position
Leahey (2004) suggests that fundamentally they were
humanists.
– This can be seen to be the foundation of a relativist
empiricism
– Truth is that which we experience. The search for the
phusis (birth‘) is not truth in a practical way.
– Pragmatic truth is to be found not in some possible
external reality but rather truth lies in how things
appear to us humans.
– Different people make different sensory judgements,
perceive things differently. Each is “truthful” to the
perceiver and no hidden reality is required.
Sophistry = misleading
but cleave arguments
Skepticism = absolute
knowledge impossible
No ultimate truth
33. Eclectic
• Truth is what is
observed (no
objective truth)
• Only information we
have is are senses
• To understand
behavior, must
investigate human
beings
• Gorgias
• Protagoras
• Behavior depends on
experience
34. Basic Issues
• Mind vs. Body (Dualism?)
• Reductionism vs. Non-
reductionism
• Nature vs. Nurture
• Objective (Nomothetic) vs.
Subjective (idiographic)
• Free will vs. Determinism
35. Golden age of Greece
• Issues and methodological approaches
• Structured
• identified
• Basic questions/categories for Western
thought
• Knowledge of Nature = power over the
environment
• Supernatural?
36. Being and Becoming
• Parmenides (~475 BC) asserted that the underlying permanent reality of
the universe was an unchanging IT, pure Being.
• The existence of pure Being suggests that there are eternal Truths and
Values that exist beyond humanity and that we should search for these
Truths/Values to guide our lives
• Heraclitus (~500 BC) suggested that the only reality in the Universe is
change
– You can’t step in the same river twice.
– The odds are that over a 10 year period none of the molecules in our bodies
will be the same.
• Becoming or change was fundamental to the working of the Universe.
• At about this time this conflict in understanding made clear that
Appearance and Reality are not necessarily the same thing.
37. Assumptions Greeks Made
• The world can be understood & predicted
• Human are part of this world
• Explanations should be of this world
38. Happiness Therapies
• Epicureanism – happiness was to be found by avoiding the passions
and by living a simple life in the company of like minded other, but
avoiding dependence on others
• Cynicism – happiness can be found by living outside worldly
conventions but as naturally as possible. Diogenes “the dog” was
the most famous of the cynics
• Skepticism – If you do not belief anything strongly then you avoid
the upset of finding out that you are wrong. A thoughtful state of
aporia was recommended.
• Stoicism – a combination of absolute determinism and a complete
expulsion of an emotional life. Feeling unhappy about an
unavoidable fate is within our control and a little ridiculous.
39. • Don't forget that the big question here is,
"What is Man that Thou art mindful of him?“
• What is mind and body
(psychology)
41. Socrates (~470 BC)
• Though not a sophist, the humanism implicit in
sophist thinking lead Socrates to focus on the
nature of human truths.
– E.g. What are Justice, Courage, Beauty, Goodness,
etc?
• Importantly, if all such human values are all good,
which intuitively seems to the case, what do they
have in common.
• Socrates did not claim to know the answers to
these questions but rather lived in a state of
enlightened ignorance (aporia)
• However, Socrates believed that in essence
everyone possesses moral truth.
• Through dialogues Socrates attempted to show
people the virtues that they inherently know.
42. Socrates professed to know nothing!
What is piety?
(Euthyphro)
What is Justice?
(Republic)
What is virtue?
(Meno)
What is love?
(Symposuim)
43. Death of Socrates
• Socrates' superior intellect made the prominent Athenians he publicly
questioned look foolish, turning them against him and leading to
accusations of wrongdoing
– Offending the Gods (in particular, Athena) and corrupting the youth of Athens.
• Socrates insistence on knowledge being explicitly stated and defended led
to his downfall.
• In the end, Socrates was condemned to death by hemlock.
– Hemlock contains coniine which is a neurotoxin that disrupts the workings of
the central nervous system leading to respiratory failure.
44. Socratic Method
• Arguably an utterly new mode
of conversation.
• Often described in the context
of medical diagnosis --
Socrates a doctor of the mind?
• Aims at moving towards truth
by uncovering and eliminating
errors
• Requires “understanding,
good will, and willingness to
be perfectly frank”
• Uses Sophist methods:
BUT asks big questions!
Dialectic, logical
arguments
(SM)
45. Socratic Method
• A questioner probes the interlocutor’s beliefs on a
subject.
– All that matters is the interlocutor’s agreement, not what anyone else
may think
– Brings out inconsistencies between things a person believes (e.g.,
Socrates gets Gorgias to say both (a) that the orator does not need to
know the subject he is persuading others about, and (b) that he would
have to teach a student about moral matters in order to make him an
orator.)
– Explores consequences of their beliefs that may go beyond what
they’ve considered before, which may bring out unforeseen issues
46. Psychology and Induction
Scientific investigation can lead to important
conclusions based on a type of logic called
inductive reasoning
An inductive conclusion is a generalization
that summarizes many concurrent
observations
Observation General Principle
47. All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Therefore, Socrates is mortal
Or…
All organisms are composed of tiny cells
Socrates is an organism
Therefore, Socrates is composed of tiny cells
48. In the process of science, the deduction usually
takes the form of predictions about what the
outcomes of our experiments or observations
should be
We then test the hypothesis by performing an
experiment to see whether or not the results
are as predicted
General Premises Specific
Conclusion
Psychology uses both deductive and inductive elements:
Samples/Populations
49. Physical
Explanations
Math is the basic
unity of life and
transcends the
physical
Methodological
advance
Humans at
center of any
system with
“truth” as the
goal
50. Ancient Athens
• Athens was the largest Greek city state
• Athens was a pure democracy—all male
citizens could take part in the assembly and
vote on law and public policy.
• The everyday executive function of
Government was conducted by a council of
500. Chosen by lot.
51. Greek Philosophy
• Plato
– The world of the forms
– The allegory of the cave
FUN FACTS: Plato lived
into his Eighties
52.
53. Plato (~427 BC)
• If Socrates focussed on the virtues, Plato’s endeavour
knew no such bounds: what is a cat, a fish, a dog, apart
from the particular cat, fish, or dog?
– The inductive method common in science, that the same
observation can be made over and over again, falls prey
to Plato’s observation that what seems true today may
well seem false tomorrow.
– Knowledge is true if an only if it is true in all times and all
places
– Knowledge has to be rationally justifiable.
• Plato appealed to Forms, idealised, eternally existing
perfect exemplars.
55. The Cave
• Illustrates how the majority of people behave
and think with a veil over their eyes.
56. Forms:
The Particular
• A beautiful rose
(appearance)
Proximal
reductionism
The Universal
• Idea of Beauty
(reality)
Ultimate
Gestalt
Ideas are the sole reality
(pg26)
57. Plato’s Forms
a branch of philosophy
that investigates the
origin, nature, methods,
and limits of human
knowledge
the branch of
metaphysics that
studies the nature
of existence or
being as such.
58. Plato’s Psychology of Mind
•
Form
Object
This is a
triangle
Participation
Perception
Recollection
The Good
Physical world – Sensations – Formation of IDEAS
59. Ideal Forms
• Forms belong to the realm of Being
– The form of a cat is an idealised cat
• A particular cat is an ephemeral, temporary copy of its Form and thus
belongs to the realm of Becoming.
• True knowledge is knowledge of Forms and not of things themselves
– But how do we come to that knowledge?
• Plato’s answer is a clear, if odd, statement of nativism, arguing that our
character and knowledge are innate, being carried by the soul from its
vision of the Forms and its previous incarnations.
60. Plato: mind and behaviour:
• Reason
Spirit
Appetite
• Charioteer
Trained thoroughbred
Wild horse
Id
Ego
Superego
61. Basic Issues
• Mind vs. Body (Dualism?)
• Reductionism vs. Non-
reductionism
• Nature vs. Nurture
• Objective (Nomothetic) vs.
Subjective (idiographic)
• Free will vs. Determinism
Reason
Spirit
Appetite
Intelligence
Motivation
Emotion
62. Why do we do what we do?
• Plato believed that happiness and virtue (eudaemonia) are intrinsically features of
human motivation.
• Unlike Socrates, who believed that bad behaviour was a product of mistaken or
absent beliefs, Plato viewed it as the failure of the individual rational soul to
master the desiring soul.
• Reason, the rational, cognitive processes that direct our behaviour is divided from
irrational passions and desires.
– Stoics attempted to eradicate emotions and to live by logic alone.
– Freud, viewed the rational ego as attempting to control the passionate id.
Nurture or Nature
63. The first rationalist: Plato
• Theory of forms: ‘reality’ is a pale
reflection of the forms (simile of
the cave).
• Importance of mathematics and
geometry.
• Innate knowledge: the theory of
recollection.
• Philosophy is concerned with what
must be,
not ‘merely’ with what happens to
be.
64. Greek Philosophy
• Aristotle
– Role of observation
– Entelechy- The unmoved mover
FUN FACTS: Aristotles’ son
collected his lecture notes:
These are the 27 writings
66. Historical Context
• The “Golden Age” of Greece (500-300 BCE)
• Socrates > Plato > Aristotle > Alexander
• Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
– Born in Macedonia where father and grandfather
were personal physicians of the kings of
Macedonia, tutored Alexander, left Athens to
avoid persecution and “to prevent Athens from
sinning twice against philosophy”
– Studied under Plato, founded the Lyceum
– Wrote c. 27 “books” including works on
• science (10, including 2 on psychology)
• logic (6)
• philosophy (7)
67. Aristotle (~384 BC)
• Aristotle spent 20 years studying with
Plato in the latters Academy.
• Aristotle looked to the world to
define what is and not to Platonic
Forms.
• However, he did distinguish between
forms and matter.
– A bronze statue’s form is what it
actually is, e.g. a statue of Winston
Churchill
– A bronze statue’s matter is the
material it is made of, i.e. the bronze
itself.
• A form is defined by causes
– Essential – what it actually is
– Efficient – how it came to be
– Final – the purpose for which it exists
Principles of Association:
Similarity
Contrast
Contiguity
Learning Theory
68. Aristotle Causality
• The material = a external force us creating or
initiating a thing
• The Efficient = the process of creation
• The Formal = that certain something in its
natural state
• The Final = what is can become , potential
Psychology? First to recognize Catharsis
FUN FACTS: Aristotle
coined the term “psych”
69. The study of the Mind
• Aristotle rejected the separability of the soul and body.
– A body without a soul is dead, a soul without a body does not exist
• There are three forms of souls in Aristotle’s naturalism
– Nutritive (possessed by plants)
– Sensitive (possessed by animals)
– Rational (possessed by humans)
• Knowledge, which directs the rational soul, is acquired
through the perception of individual objects until a
generalised universal form is attained.
70. Divisions of the Mind
(The Main Divisions)
The two main divisions
of the soul are its
rational and irrational
faculties, which are
distinguished by their
governing principles,
namely Reason (upper
circle) and Pleasure
and Satiety (lower
circle).
71. Aristotle
Nutritive or Vegetative function - this is simply the ability to grow and
reproduce. It is possessed by plants, animals and humans.
Sensing and Perceiving function - this allows us to take on the
form of things without the matter. It includes the common sense
which is the ability to coordinate the five basic senses.
Motion function - this is the ability to move and to be self-
directed. It includes such things as appetite, wish, and imagination.
There is a
hierarchy of
functions
Separated from Nature (not monist)
FUN FACTS: Aristotle is the
basis of Sternberg’s theory
of intelligence:
Productive – creative
Practical
Theoretical - analytical
72. Teleology
Definitions:
Telos: Goal (from Gr. tele, for “far,” as in tele-vision)
Related terms: function, end, final cause (from Lat. finis)
Teleology: The study of goal-oriented behavior
Entelechy: A goal-oriented mechanism of self-
actualization
73. Example
Acorns strive to become oak trees.
The striving (the tendency and the process) is
unconscious.
Success is automatic, a natural process:
Acorns fail only because of bad luck (acorn falls
on pavement), never because of error (unlike
human goal-seeking).
74. Aristotle
• One world and we are in the middle of it
• Nature is teleological (Striving towards goals)
• i.e. Behavior is preformed for a purpose
• We seek happiness for its own sake (not the sake of
something else) ( but virtuous)
• However falling rocks accelerate because they are
happy to be getting home
• We are a part of the natural world---Dualistic?
75. How Behavior is Learned
• Action descriptions such as “Facing Danger” are very
general.
• Particular applications vary according to concrete
situations.
– Falstaff: “Discretion is the better part of valour.” (From
Shakespeare’s Henry IV, pt. 1)
• Therefore, Behavior is learned through experience.
– Here “experience” includes one’s observation of others
(parents, teachers, models).
77. Four Psychological Themes
Man as zoon politikon
(civic life as part of
human flourishing)
Logical and empirical
observation
Rational & irrational
faculties of the soul
(teleology)
Eudemonia
(human flourishing,
happiness, virtue)
Aris-
totle
…………
Etc.
Three parts of soul and
three classes of society
Conceptual analysis and
reminiscence
Four levels of
knowledge and four
levels of reality
Knowing the Good
(escaping from the
cave)
Plato
Self & SocietyMethod of InquiryModel of the MindHuman
Development
78. Aristotle’s Method of Inquiry
Plato points up to the
heavenly Forms, which
are known to us from
birth even though we
need “gadflies” such as
Socrates to help us
remember what we
know.
His method of inquiry is
to ask questions that
stimulate the memory.
Aristotle holds his hand
flat, to show that the
objects of human
knowledge are things in
this world, which can
only be known through
sense experience.
His method of inquiry is
to abstract ideas from
empirical observations.
79. Aristotle Plato
• Empirical
• Inductive
• Experience as
knowledge
God or Soul
• Rationalist
• Deductive
• Experience as opinion
God or Soul
80. Plato vs. Aristotle
• Plato – essences could be found in forms that existed
independently of nature by looking inward
(introspection).
• Aristotle – essences could be known only by
studying nature.
• Plato – primary principles come from pure thought;
all knowledge existed independently of nature.
• Aristotle – primary principles (premises) were
attained by examining nature; nature and knowledge
were inseparable.
81. Greeks and Scientific Method
• Define terms----
• Rationalist----
• True Knowledge
(vs. Opinion)
• Operationalize
• Innate knowledge
• Empirical?
Knowledge/reason not
exp.
Forms: concepts vs. physical reality: mind vs.
body
82. Decline of Greek Civilization
• New Philosophies
– Skepticism
• Pyrrho low 300’s BC
– Cynicism
• Antisthenes and Diogenes
upper 300’s BC
– Epicureanism
• Epicurus 300 BC
– Stoicism
• Zeno of Citum upper 200’s
BC
• SKEPTICISM - Pyrrho, low 300's BC,
don't believe in anything because
there are no universal truths. Any
thing you believe can turn out to be
false
•
• CYNICISM - Antisthenes and
Diogenes, upper to mid 300's,
everything is a crock. Social
conventions are unnatural, back-to-
nature is the only way to live. Cynic
means "doglike
83. Influence of Religious Philosophies
• Jesus
– Simple teacher, not
really a philosopher
• Paul
– Added philosophical
basis for Christianity
– Started with Judaism
and added Jesus and
Neo-Platonism
started with Judaism:
1) God is all powerful
2) Humans fell from grace and need atonement
And he added
3) Jesus was the Messiah, the sacrifice so that everyone
could start life with a clean slate
But, keeping with our theme, "how are we supposed to live?"
Paul added Neo-Platonist philosophy
1) True knowledge can only come from transcending the physical
2) The new wrinkle is that faith is the way we do that not reason
The good life is not a matter of rationality it is a matter of surrender
to the will of God.
84. Neo-Platonism
The soul’s job is:
• Perceiving the world
• Reflecting on what is known
• Pure contemplation transcending the physical
85. Influence of Religious Philosophies
• Augustine – 400’s AD
– Demoted reason by elevating introspection
• Concept of free will
• Internal sense of right and wrong
• Locus of control is internal
• Thomas Aquinas – 1200’s AD
– Scholasticism: Reconciling the works of Aristotle and
Christianity
• Reason shows us the greatness of God
• It can’t lead to any other conclusion
Plato (429-347BCE) was most definitely the father of rationalism. He proposed that reality as we perceive it is but a pale reflection of the true thing (he used the analogy of men bound inside a cave, who can only perceive the external world through the reflection of shadows). He then stressed the importance of mathematics and geometry to acquire truth, and disdained every sort of empirical inquiry (in agreement with his master, Socrates, and stark contrast with his disciple, Aristotle). Plato proposed a fanciful (and rather ineffective) theory for where our innate knowledge comes from: he thought that our immortal soul somehow acquires knowledge of things, and what we call knowledge is actually a partial recollection of what our souls knows. In the grand scheme of things, for Plato the whole point of philosophy is to come to know what truths must be (i.e., logical truths), not what happens to be the case in the world of the senses (one could think of the latter as the domain of science, though that is only partly true, and certainly not a distinction made by Plato).
That’s all I have to say today If you want special permission #...
