In-depth summary of all the material for 2.2.1C History and Methods of Psychology. My summaries are really thorough, they are also colour-coded and come with checklists based on the learning goals provided by the course coordinator.
I hope this helps and good luck with your exam!
Socrates’s students – Socrates was the first moral philosopher, so Plato built on his moral philosophy
He was in the pursuit of justice both in state and individual. He defined justice as doing good for its own sake
and not to help yourself.
o Rationalists – believe in finding truth/knowledge is through logical reasoning. Didn’t trust the passive
senses
o Nativist – believed in reincarnation. We are born with the innate knowledge of forms.
o Idealist – thinks the truth consists of ideas, not a physical thing, truth is abstract. The things we see,
and experience are just shadows of the actual truth.
Defining knowledge: to the Greeks, humans are different from animals because they have abstract knowledge. But
Plato was the first to ask how knowledge is possible and how it can be justified, developing epistemology – the study
of knowledge, which eventually led to cognitive psychology. According to Plato truth must permanent and knowable
with certainty. Characteristics of truth:
Truth is knowledge – only true if it is true in all times and places absolutely.
It must be rationally justifiable – you have to be able to convince people with rationality that its true.
Plato believed that there is TRUTH - like an undeniable truth that can be found if you look hard enough. He agreed
with the theory of cognition – which says that the world seems different to each person, based on individual and
cultural differences. BUT this is contracting to the eternal TRUTH, so perception is not the path to true knowledge, so
he rejected psychology and focused on idealistic metaphysics.
After studying geometry and finding universal truths there, Plato concluded that the Way of Truth was real – there is
a path of logical reasoning about ideas that leads to the truth – logic is the Way of Truth. This is a rationalist claim.
Additional, Beauty and Virtue are not subjective judgements of peoples and cultures, they are fixed properties that
are the universal truth, represent by the Form – the Forms really exist as nonphysical objects – they are eternal and
exist outside of the physical realm of Becoming, and outside the human minds as fixed, universal objects of thought.
Forms were referred to as Idea, which was later kind of taken out of context.
The forms - Plato described them as the child of goddess. They are not based on subjective judgements, but on real
properties the object possess. He used 4 metaphors to describe them:
1. The Simile of the Sun – illumination by the Good: the intelligible realm is necessary to illuminate the Forms,
for us to know them (like you need the Sun to see). We need the help of divine illumination which is the
Form of the Good. The way we need light to see, we need the Form of Good to see.
2. Metaphor of the line – hierarchy of opinion and knowledge – apprehension of images is the most imperfect
way of knowing; an image is not what it represents.
a. Intelligible world – a longer section of the line that
represents the world that arises from real knowledge
b. Worlds of appearances – a shorter section of line that
represents the mock world. This world emerges from
opinions.
i. The lines divide into 4 sections – imaginary
world segment; segment for the world of beliefs;
segment for world of thoughts; segment for
world of knowledge.
3. The Allegory of the Cave – Prison of Culture, people don’t like enlightened people– the cave allegory is that
we are all in a dark cave (culture) and if we find knowledge is the light, but coming back to cave after seeing
the light doesn’t look good to the people in cave, you look torture by what you found, so the people in the
cave won’t want to leave. It’s an allegory for human condition – each soul is imprisoned in the body, forced
, to look through imperfect eyes at imperfect copies of the forms. But with effort we can be liberated from
ignorance and illusion – optimism.
4. The ladder of love – this metaphor describes the love of Beauty, which he said is the easiest path from this
world to the Forms.
Through philosophy the Guardian elite (philosophers) is led out of the Cave of Opinion to knowledge of the Forms,
but they must go back to the cave and get the other ones.
Plato was also into reincarnation – souls are born in heaven and see the Forms there. He is a nativist (nature vs
nurture) saying that our character and knowledge is innate, carried in the soul and coming previous incarnations.
Learning is trying to recruit this knowledge.
Plato’s hierarchy: three forms of soul are in every humans – parallel of 3 class of citizens.
1. Rational soul – highest soul, immortal one. Li ves in the head – the guardians. This soul seeks knowledge, its
driven by its one of the Good and the Beautiful themselves, so it’s motivated by justice.
2. Spirited soul – in the chest, motivated by glory, fame and honour.
3. Desiring soul – located in the belly and genitals. It represents irrational need and peruses self-interest.
basically, animal need, about self-interest – money, food, sex…
The guardians feared the rebellion of the desiring soul. According to Plato, bad behaviour stems from ignorance and
the inability of the rational soul to control the speed and the desiring soul.
Conclusion – Plato believes that reason should always rule emotion
Legacy of the 3 souls – in the Age of Reason, Hume said that reason can only be a slave to the passions; Freud
described the go as the struggling ridder of the id; Pascal said that the heart has its own reasons that reason can’t
understand; the Romantics hated reason and though emotion was the most important soul. Today’s psychologists
agree with pascal – manly because of the AI debate. AI has reason but it needs emotion to not be scary.
Aristotle
Studied with Plato was empirically inclined, scientific. He was focused on understanding what a thing is, rather than
why it is (the focus of modern science). He was the first to come with the philosophy of the science.
o Empiricist – he said knowledge comes from the senses, there is no innate knowledge. Believed in natural
observation. He wanted to understand how nature, without human interference or disturbance would
involve
The first concept of Aristotle was the division between form and matter:
- matter: is the not changeable physical existence (like the bronze material of a statute). For matter to be
perceived it must be joined to form
- form: different from Plato’s Forms. The form is the shape of the state that makes it what it is. We perceive
always the form and not the matter to understand what something is (the form of the statue are the features
of whatever King). He rejects Plato’s perfect Forms, saying that the existence of a «perfect cat Form» doesn’t
explain anything about the cat’s nature. Aristotle’s forms don’t exist without being physically embodied in
matter. 3 causes for the concept of form:
o essential cause – forms define what is something in its essence
o efficient cause – form includes how the thing was made, like the statue has to sculpted. (but he did
not investigate this much as it would require experiments that changes nature’s natural course)
o final cause – the form includes the purpose of the thing. – ALL THINGS HAVE A PURPOSE, and that
why a tree grows, or an apple fall, or anything happens, because it’s fulfilling its purpose (rejected by
modern science)
Everything in the universe has potentiality and actuality: a lump of bronze is not only bronze but a potential statue.
In his logic, there must be a level of potentially that can’t be surpassed, when the being has reached its purpose, it
has actualized (perfected). Because it is perfect the being cannot move as it has nowhere/nothing to grow for/too.
,Hence, other thing naturally moves towards it, as their potential also becomes actualized. This creates a hierarchy
among all things – called the natural scale (or the Great Chain of Being)
o Aristotle’s form’s are dynamic, develop and control life process
o Today we know that what drives something to «actualize», like a tree to grow, is DNA. For Aristotle it
was form.
Aristotle’s Soul:
That which differentiates animate from inanimate
It defines the living organism. It drives its development and activity.
Soul is the actuality and the actualizing, fulfilling the body’s potential having of life
Without the soul the body is not actualized and is dead, mere matter.
An organism is a unity, so the soul is NOT separated from the body.
There are different types of souls for different types of animate things:
o Nutritive soul – plants – responsible for nutrition, reproduction, and growth
o Sensitive soul – animals – has the same function as the nutritive soul while also being able to have
sensation - pleasure and pain- seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. +, they have imagination and
memory.
o Rational soul – humans – adds to sensitive souls the mind which comes with the capacity to think
and have general knowledge.
All the componets of the human soul:
1. The senses – Sense Perception: perception is the starting point of knowledge. He was a perceptual reality,
rejecting the Forms saying that perception it was our minds find
the form of an object. It’s accomplished by the senses:
a. Special (specialized) senses – each is dedicated to on
type of perception. (hearing, seeing, etc). accompanied
by the common sensible – the conscious object of
perception. How we interpret what we perceive.
b. Interior senses – 1. Common sense – its Aristotle’s
answer to the biding problem (how we integrated all the
info we perceive in the world). He said this job is done by
the common sense, which is located in the heart, where
the inputs from the special sense unite to make a single
picture of the world.
2. imagination – also important to judge what an object is. Imagination can represent the form of an
object in its absence, being able to retrieve it from memory. It also violates an object and decides if
its good or bad for you, causing a behvaioural response.
3. memory – record of an animal/human’s life, available for recall through imagination. (known as
episodic memory). The organization of memory is based on association. He said the association is has
3 laws – similarity, contiguity, and control, (late
also casualty).
2. Mind – the rational part of the human soul. Its function is
acquiring knowledge of abstract universal (instead of
knowledge of things given by perception). Within the
mind there must be a difference between potentiality and
actuality:
a. Passive mind is potentiality – it has no character
of its own, knowledge of the universal in the
passive mind is actualized by the active mind. It realises knowledge, and it dies with its human
owner.
, b. Active mind is pure thought, acting on the contents of the passive mind to achieve rational
knowledge. hence the active mind is unchangeable and thus immortal, its separate from the body
and the same for all humans. Its pure thought. Knowledge is realised only by the passive mind.
3. Motivation – (both human and animals have it). All action is motivated by some desire, which derives from
imagination. Types of motivations:
a. Appetite – classic in animals – only goes aways from pain and towards pleasure. Animals only
experience motivational conflicts between opposing appetites.
b. Wish – for humans -being motivated by long-term future benefits or what is good. Humans, than,
have the problem of the moral choice
Goal of human life – as with every being, human life has a possible actualization. Aristotle gave a philosophical
background for the Greek idea that there is 1 best way of life. He urged people to live well and be good, not only
follow the rules. He said man is a social being, that can only flourish in society. But this society should only be ruled
the virtuous, with no personal interest. citizens participate in the ruling, but most members of his society are not
citizens.
Descartes (1596 – 1650) - Psychology’s Daddy.
Descartes’ Science (1st phase of his life)
He lived in the Renaissance when church’s beliefs were question by science. He was a reforming catholic and
throughout his life refused to go against the church’s ideals. The Catholics were worried with the ideas of
Renaissance naturalism and occultism, which sort of explained the world with references to the supernatural. They
wanted to attribute knowledge and thought to the brain, but if so then all functions are bodily, and the Christian soul
has no place. To counter say this, Descartes & company defended that matter had no power of its own – no gravity,
magnetism, earth pumping on its own, etc. active power is reserved for God and matter only changed when ushed by
other matter. (Newton won at end).
He wrote theory based on the ideas of Galileu, but when Galileu was imprisoned by the church we stopped working
on this has he didn’t want to go against the church in any way. Thus, he turned to philosophy.
o Rationalist – didn’t believe in empirical evidence – the way to find truth was through thinking and doubt.
Ideas are innate but you use reason to acquire the knowledge.
o Nativist – some ideas are innate. They must be innate because they can’t be traced back to sensations, like
mathematical, God.
o Dualist -soul and body are separated.
Descartes’ Phyllo/Psychology
Aristotle attributed most psychological function to the animal soul, and thus to the body. But in the catholic
framework this is unacceptable because matter can’t have soul-like powers. Descartes described humans as statues
or machines whose inner operation can be described in detail, which makes us think that the body is us but they lack
a soul. He had to avoid 2 heretical temptations, to maintain the theory catholic:
1. Averroism – derives from Aristotle’s mind that contained general knowledge and not the essence of one’s
personality. In religion, mind was thought as inner light from God that illuminates knowledge, but this
concept means that the mind is immortal or reserved. This contradicts the afterlife (heaven and hell) – if the
soul is impersonal the rewards/punishments of the afterlife are mute. Thus, the soul must have a personal
essence.
2. Alexandrism – attributing to the brain the power to think and have knowledge. It denies the immortality of a
person and was becoming gradually appealing for the Renaissance naturalism.
Descartes said that the unique function of the human soul was thinking. He studied how the human soul is different
from the animal soul and pointed out 3 characteristics (that are innate):
Experience – he distinguished simple awareness and self-awareness. Animals lack reflective, thoughtful
awareness of their own awareness.
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