THE CONJECTURERS

• History and Systems9/11/08

History is a set of lies agreed upon.”

Napoleon Bonaparte

Why Study History?

• Why do we behave as we do?

• Why do we feel?• Why are we

conscious?

• Understand• Predict• Modify

History of Human Knowledge

1. Metaphysical Systems:– Attributing behavior or

experiences to nonphysical forces such as spirits or deities

– Violates scientists’ established physical laws

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

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

Demonology

• during various periods of history people suffering from mental illnesses were seen as being possessed by evil spirits

Early Beliefs

Psychological aspects– Animism– Anthropomorphism– Superstitious behavior– Confirmation bias

Religious Aspects– Praying for rain– Praying for Spring– Tao

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)

Three main periods

• Establishment of Greek tradition

• Geographical expansion

• Degradation

• Victory against the Persians defining moment of our European tradition

Greek philosophy

• How you acquire knowledge (perception)• How you maintain knowledge (memory)• Whether knowledge is innate or learned

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.

Features of Greek world

Naturalistic

• Search for causation in the physical world

• Observational trend

• Democritus: Atoms (materialism)

• Heraclitus: Fire

• Parmenides: Motion

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

Greek philosophy

• (arche): Thales (water), Anaximandres (apeiron), Anaxagoras (air), Herakleitos (fire), Parmenides (the One), Democritos (atoms)

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.

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

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)

A Change in the Mind-Body Problem

Descartes and his predecessors saw rationality andmorality as the source of the mind-body problem…

…yet today we largely view the subjective quality of mentalexistence to be the source of the mind-body problem.

Enlightenment era mind-body problemModern mind-body problem

The mind-body problem – Our inability to reach philosophical or scientific consensus on an explanatorilytransparent 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?

16762006

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

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.

Biological

• Physiological solutions

• Separated psychology from God

• Observational trend

• Alcmaeon: causation = the mechanisms of the body

• Hippocrates: Brain =

behavioral processes

Humeral theories

Blood

Phlegm

Black Bile

Yellow Bile

Sanguine: confident, optimistic

Phlegmatic: slow, stolid

Melancholic: sad

Choleric: irritable

Hippocratic Classification of Mental Disorders

EpilepsyMania

MelancholiaParanoiaHysteria Wondering Uterus

Basic Issues

• Mind vs. Body (Dualism?)• Reductionism vs. Non-

reductionism• Nature vs. Nurture• Objective (Nomothetic) vs.

Subjective (idiographic)• Free will vs. Determinism

Mathematical

• Sense and perception:

• Sense Knowledge- untrustworthy

• Causation- mathematical beauty and unity

• Pythagoras

• Thales of Miletus

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

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.

Basic Issues

• Mind vs. Body (Dualism?)• Reductionism vs. Non-

reductionism• Nature vs. Nurture• Objective (Nomothetic) vs.

Subjective (idiographic)• Free will vs. Determinism

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”

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)

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

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

Basic Issues

• Mind vs. Body (Dualism?)• Reductionism vs. Non-

reductionism• Nature vs. Nurture• Objective (Nomothetic) vs.

Subjective (idiographic)• Free will vs. Determinism

Golden age of Greece

• Issues and methodological approaches• Structured• identified• Basic questions/categories for Western

thought• Knowledge of Nature = power over the

environment• Supernatural?

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.

Assumptions Greeks Made

• The world can be understood & predicted• Human are part of this world• Explanations should be of this world

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.

• Don't forget that the big question here is, "What is Man that Thou art mindful of him?“

• What is mind and body (psychology)

Humanistic

• Humans “unique”• Higher plane

• Socrates

• Anaxagoras:Nous:

1. Fire

2. Water

3. Air

4. Earth

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.

Socrates professed to know nothing!

What is piety?(Euthyphro)What is Justice?(Republic) What is virtue? (Meno) What is love? (Symposuim)

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.

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Greek Philosophy

• Plato– The world of the forms– The allegory of the cave

FUN FACTS: Plato lived into his Eighties

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.

The Cave

• http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Platos+Cave&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv&oi=property_suggestions&resnum=0&ct=property-revision&cd=1#

The Cave

• Illustrates how the majority of people behave and think with a veil over their eyes.

Forms:

The Particular• A beautiful rose (appearance)

Proximal

reductionism

The Universal• Idea of Beauty(reality)

Ultimate

Gestalt

Ideas are the sole reality (pg26)

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.

Plato’s Psychology of Mind

•

Form

Object

This is a triangle

Participation

Perception

Recollection

The Good

Physical world – Sensations – Formation of IDEAS

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.

Plato: mind and behaviour:

• Reason

Spirit

Appetite

• Charioteer

Trained thoroughbred

Wild horse

IdEgoSuperego

Basic Issues

• Mind vs. Body (Dualism?)• Reductionism vs. Non-

reductionism• Nature vs. Nurture• Objective (Nomothetic) vs.

Subjective (idiographic)• Free will vs. Determinism

ReasonSpiritAppetite

IntelligenceMotivationEmotion

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

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.

Greek Philosophy

• Aristotle– Role of observation– Entelechy- The unmoved mover

FUN FACTS: Aristotles’ son collected his lecture notes: These are the 27 writings

Brain = cooling system

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)

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:

SimilarityContrastContiguity

Learning Theory

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”

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.

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).

AristotleNutritive 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 – creativePracticalTheoretical - analytical

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

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).

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?

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).

Example: Courage

ViceVirtueVice

Excessive Action

Moderate Action

Deficient Action

Foolhardiness

CourageCowardliness

Action Description: Facing Danger

The Golden Mean

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 Mind

Human Development

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.

Aristotle Plato

• Empirical• Inductive• Experience as

knowledge

God or Soul

• Rationalist• Deductive• Experience as opinion

God or Soul

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.

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

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

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 atonementAnd 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 physical2) 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.

Neo-Platonism

The soul’s job is:• Perceiving the world• Reflecting on what is known• Pure contemplation transcending the physical

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

Next Week: Chapter 4Quiz on Scholasticism