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Summary 2.3 History and Methods of Psychology: Problem 1
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Summary of the literature, videos, tutorials, and exercises for problem 1 of course 2.3.
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PROBLEM 1: Early Roots of PsychologyLearning Goals
• Who are these philosophers and what are their theories?
o What do they say about knowledge and the mind?
• What are the differences between the different views?
Terms
• Dualist: there is another reality (God, heaven, the world of ideas) we cannot see, in addition
to the reality we witness
• Empiricist: convinced knowledge is based on perception and the senses.
- Hardcore empiricist do not even think cognitive processing is necessary for acquiring
knowledge e
- Other empiricists think cognitive processing it is helpful in the acquisition of knowledge
• Idealist: thinks the truth consists of ideas and is not a physical thing. Idealist is also monist
• Monist: there is only one form of existence, material or ideal
• Materialist: believes everything is matter, even psychological processes. Also a reductionist
• Reductionist: knowledge happens through senses.
- Real hard core rationalists perception is unnecessary
- Other rationalists knowledge is acquired through reasoning about sensory
perception/perceptual observation
• Nativist: true knowledge is innate, present upon birth. Many nativists are hard-core rationalists.
• Rationalist:
THE GREAT CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHIES
Plato: The Quest For Perfect Knowledge
• Nativist: innate
• Rationalist
• Forms = idealist
• Some kind of dualism in his theory à not the classic dualist due to body mind problem
Cognition: What is knowledge
• Socrates tried to find general definition of virtue
, • According to Greeks: can set humans apart due to their capacity for abstract knowledge
compared to animals who respond only to the concrete here and now
• first thinker to enquire into how knowledge is possible and how it may be justified.
§ Created epistemology (study of knowledge) by citing observations
Truth:
• what seem true based on today’s data may be overturned by tomorrows
• Truth had to be permanent and knowable with certainty
• has two properties
o It has to be true in all times and places à unchangeably true (knowledge of it could
not derive from material sense reflecting the changing material world)
o It must be rationally justifiable
Mathematics and the theory of the forms:
§ to find truth is through logical reasoning à rationalism
§ inspired by the Pythagorean theorem: proof given by every right-angled triangle
§ helped reconcile being and becoming & provided a solution for Socrates questions about
virtue
§ logical but relies on things that may not be proven
§ built on what Socrates said à every just act resembles the form of justice, courage, beauty
and justice (resemble the form of the good)
o wanted to find out what virtue was and teach it to people, regardless of social opinion
so they could act upon their knowledge
§ e.g. the idea of beauty differs in different cultures
§ metaphysical realism: the forms really exist as nonphysical objects à
eternal, existing outside the physical realm of becoming
Imagining the forms:
Metaphors for the forms:
• The smile of the sun – (illumination by the good)
• the forms of the good is to the intelligible world of the forms what the sun is to the
physical world of objects.
• the sun stands for the good
• we need the form of the good to make it possible to see and know about the forms à
helps us see clearly
• The metaphor of the line – (Hierarchy of opinion and knowledge)
• The smile of the sun followed by a line divided into 4 unequal sections who’s length =
degree of truth
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