C82CHIP Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology - Notes PDF

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Lecture 1 – The Ancient Greeks  Understanding Reality –  Being and Becoming –  In search of knowledge Aristotle –  Rhetoric and persuasion Plato –  Material Determinism The Sophists –  Parmenides vs Heraclitus The Atomists –  What the early physicists did and said Potential and Actual Happine...

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Lecture 1 – The Ancient Greeks

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Understanding Reality – What the early physicists did and said

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Being and Becoming – Parmenides vs Heraclitus

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The Atomists – Material Determinism

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The Sophists – Rhetoric and persuasion

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Plato – In search of knowledge

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Aristotle – Potential and Actual

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Happiness – Looking for Ataraxia

Histories of Psychology  The underlying purpose of the written histories of Psychology seemed to be the establishment of Psychology as a scientific discipline. 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 anaemia, beans will kill you. – “Do not look in a mirror besides a light” – unnerve mind and soul.  Popper (1965) in his book Conjectures and Refutations – what it is to ‘do science’:  “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.”  Science has an inbuilt uncertainty in it. Thales’ Physics  Whilst the world is made up of many different substances there is in reality only one element – water (phusis), everything is made from one kind of stuff.  Gas, liquid, solid – what can change in those three states is water so everything is made from water.

 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 (‘God made it happen’) 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 (mental things) and matter (physical things).

Anaximander of Miletus (~560 BC)  Disputed that water was the phusis.  Suggested that “apeiron” which is not a recognizable element but was the basic building block of matter.  Studying something we can’t see is the key to understanding Psychology as we can’t see into people’s minds.  There is no evidence that this criticism of Thales caused any kind of schism in the “lonian” School of which Thales was considered one of the Seven Sages.  Interestingly Anaximander also predated Darwin in using fossil evidence to argue that the human primeval form must have been different to that which he saw around him. 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 modules in our bodies will be the same.  If the world is constant to change how are we meant to understand it?  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 – appearance is what we see, reality is what is out there. What we perceive is actually not what is really out there.  Need to understand the gap between appearance and reality. The Atomists  Democritus of Adbera (~420 BC)  Only “atoms and Void exist in reality”.  Particles which can’t see and gaps between the particles which also can’t see.  There is no free will since there is no will to direct the atoms.  We can’t determine how these atoms behave.  Nothing happens at random, it happens out of reason and necessity.  This is essentially a philosophical position which combines both Materialism (the particles with gaps between them) and Determinism (behaviour of particles determined by laws).  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.

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 were achieved by 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 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. - Psychology says that truth can’t just be about appearance otherwise we would all be lying to ourselves regularly. 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 be 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. 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. - Offending Athena was a bad move since Athens was in the middle of the Peloponnesian War and Gods don’t like to be insulted when you’re asking for their help.

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Encouraging the youth of Athens to question the morality of the war soon made their elders annoyed.  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. 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?  How do we know that something is a cat? All cats look different but we still know that they are all cats.  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, and 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. Ideal Forms  Forms belong to the realm of Being  The form of a cat is an idealised cat.  A particular cat is an ephemeral, temporal 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.  Claims that we know innately what things are, in some sense we can look inside the world to know how the world operates. Why do we do what we do?  Plato believed that happiness and virtue (eudaemonia) are intrinsically features of human motivation. We seek happiness through virtuous action.  Plato – we do bad in the world as we have misunderstood the world/someone and then act on that misunderstanding which results in a bad action.  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 (human) to master the emotional desiring soul (animal).  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. Aristotle (~384 BC)    

Aristotle spent 20 years studying with Plato in the latter’s Academy. Aristotle looked to the world to define what is and not to Platonic Forms. If we can work out how the external world operates we can apply that back to us. 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.  Things can change their form but they’ll be made of the same mater.

 A form is defined by causes  Essential – what it actually is  Efficient – how it came to be  Final – the purpose for which it exists The study of the soul  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. The structure of the human sensitive and rational soul (Leahey, 2004)

 Senses and memory operate together to import things into conscious experiences. Happiness  Following the conquest of the Hellene World by Alexander the Great and the later juggernaut, the Roman Empire, the democratic polis was destroyed.  Hellenistic men and women rejected public life and began to focus on private pleasures.  In a changing and chaotic world people sought a form of happiness called ataraxia, a lesser form a happiness then eudaemonia, and emphasised what was personally, rather than socially achievable. Happiness Therapies  Epicureanism – happiness was to be found by avoiding the passions and by living a simple life in the company of like-minded others, but avoiding dependence on others, no emotions, no attachments.  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, the rules we have to live by are constructed by whoever to do whatever they what to do and we should ignore that, act naturally in the world and ignore other people’s conventions.

 Skepticism – if you do not believe anything strongly then you avoid the upset of finding out that you are wrong. A thoughtful state of aporia was recommended, remain blissfully ignorant to avoid upset.  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, ‘life’s shit get on with it’. Summary  The pre-socratics (e.g. Thales, Anaximander, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Democritus) introduced naturalistic, biological and mathematical perspectives into Greek thought. Focus is understanding the external world independent of any supernatural interventions.  The nature of ‘being’ – what does it mean to be something?  The nature of ‘change’ – how do things change?  The nature of ‘constancy’ – how do things stay the same?  Socrates and post-socratics continued this line of thought and extended it to ask questions about the nature of ‘knowledge’  What can we know?  How can we come to know it?  Can we be certain of what we know?  The contribution to Psychology was mainly through Aristotle with “knowledge … proceeding from sensory impressions to the operation of active reason and (the) discernment of principles that underlie reality” (Walsh et al, p69. 2014).

Lecture 2 – Medievalists/The Middle Ages

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Early Christian Psychology & Science – St Augustine

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Islamic Psychology & Science – Ibn Sina

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Christian Psychology & Science – St Thomas Aquinas – Roger Bacon – William of Occam

 Not many people knew how to read and write – access to knowledge becomes reduced.  Islamic world – more people knew how to read and write compared to Christian world. St Augustine (354-430 AD)  Augustine was born in Thagaste (Souk Ahras, Algeria) to a Christian mother (St Monica) and pagan father (Patricius).  St Monica’s Patronage: abuse victims, alcoholics, alcoholism, difficult marriages, disappointing children, homemakers, housewives, married women, mothers, victims of adultery, victims of unfaithfulness, victims of verbal abuse, widows, wives.  He followed Manichaeism – a religion based on the writings of Mani, primarily known for its striking dualism between light (good) and dark (evil).  Led a somewhat debauched early adulthood (a son by a concubine).  Converted to Christianity in 386 AD under the influence of St Ambrose the bishop of Milan.  Two forces of good and evil that act directly upon us.  Sophisticated moral reasoning.  Finding balance between good and evil more complicated than simply being good. Original Sin  Original Sin  “Saint Augustine taught that Adam, before the Fall, had free will, and could have abstained from sin. But as he and Eve ate the apple, corruption entered into them, and descended to all their posterity, none of whom can, of their own power, abstain from sin. Only God's grace enables men to be virtuous.”  …by God's free grace certain people, among those who have been baptized, are chosen to go to heaven; these are the elect. They do not go to heaven because they are good; we are all totally depraved, except in so far as God's grace, which is only bestowed on the elect, enables us to be otherwise. No reason can be given why some are saved and the rest damned; this is due to God's unmotivated choice. Damnation proves God's justice; salvation

His mercy. Both equally display His goodness” {Bertrand Russell (1946) – A History of Western Philosophy}.  Socrates – we inherently within us know what is right/good. Why we don’t always do good is because we lack knowledge and insight into moral rules.  Plato – emotions are like animal instincts, they drive us to behave like animals, cognition/thinking/rationality allows us to overcome animal nature. We are not evil inherently but if we act like an animal acts we do things that are not acceptable for humans.  Christian – original sin, Adam before The Fall had free will. We are not naturally virtuous beings, we are naturally corrupted by sin. In the world we are more likely to do evil than good if we do not have support from God’s grace through the Church. In order to get to heaven, have to be good even if no guarantee we will get to heaven. On Lust (Desire)  Sexual intercourse in marriage is not sinful as long as the intention is to have children.  ‘This lawful act of nature is accompanied with penal shame’ - Augustine, The City of God, XIV.  The cynics believed that one should be without shame.  Lust is shameful because of its independence from our will.  If not for original sin, then sex might have been divorced from pleasure, which Augustine believed to be a virtuous state.  The reformation protestants, such as the Lutherans and Calvinists followed this line of reasoning.  There are things we can control and things we can’t control – similar to platonic view of cognition having control.  Have animalistic urges that we need to learn to control. On Plato  “Let Thales depart with his water, Anaximenes with the air, the Stoics with their fire, Epicurus with his atoms.” St Augustine, The City of God VIII.  For Augustine, Plato was correct in the following ways:  God is not anything material  All things have their being through God  God is immutable (unchanging)  Perception is not the source of truth  The sensible world is inferior to the eternal  There are things than can be discovered by reason alone  On the other hand, all other knowledge if it is to be true, should be based on religious scriptures, though not necessarily literally, subject to “science” and God given reason.  What we can see does not reflect what is really out there – gap between perceptions and reality.  The most important source of the truth is the Bible and writings of the Saints. St Augustine’s Contribution  St Augustine introduced Christian ideas of will (e.g. avoiding sin), justice (God’s rewards for just behaviour) and purpose (serving God) to the understanding of human motivation and behaviour.  He believed that reason should dominate our ‘baser urges’.  He believed that inner reason is more important than sensory impression for achieving an understanding of ‘God and his creation’.  The focus of developing new knowledge is limited by boundaries of the faith. Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037 AD)

 Born Afshana near Bukhara, now in Uzbekistan (then Persia), and died in Hamadan, Persia (Iran).  A child prodigy  Knew the Koran by heart at age 7  Also, vast tracts of Persian Poetry  Ibn Sina's two most important works (out of 450) are The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine.  The first is a scientific encyclopaedia covering logic, natural sciences, psychology, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic and music.  The second is the most famous single book in the history of medicine. Ibn Sina’s Psychology and Theory of Knowledge  He discussed reason and reality, claiming that God is pure intellect and that knowledge consists of the mind grasping the intelligible.  To grasp the intelligible both reason and logic are required - “... it is important to gain knowledge. Grasp of the intelligibles determines the fate of the rational soul in the hereafter, and therefore is crucial to human activity.” {Craig, E. (1998) – Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy}.  The psychology was essentially a synopsis and extension of Aristotle’s facultative psychology.  We’re not really interested in the reality out there (whatever it is).  Knowledge isn’t about the world, it is about thinking.  If we understand the nature of God, we will be successful.  Doing the right thing naturally falls out of knowing the stuff you need to know – if we do know stuff we will do the right thing.  Knowing stuff will direct your behaviour. Avicenna – Expanding Human Faculties

 Developed on Aristotle’s view of the wolrd.  Appetitive – what drives/motivates us.  W...