2018. October 2., Tuesday
Pioneers of Psychology
Chapter 1: Foundational Ideas from Antiquity
Plato
- sophists: highly regarded teachers
- nativist view on mind —> what is innate?
- established the Academy
- phenomena (appearance) and ideal forms ( representing the essence of all)—>
idealism
- the Cave: What is the relation between?
- mind with 3 components: appetites, courage, reason
Socrates
- dialogues between him & Plato: known as nativism —> emphasising inborn as opposed
to acquired properties rationalism —> emphasising reason
- where does knowledge come from?
- Dialoge Meno: fully formed but forgotten knowledge lies within the psyche
- mind contains capacities for interpretation that go further than passive experience of the
stimulus
Aristotle
- how do we get knowledge?
- first great proponent of empiricism: true knowledge comes first and only through the
processing of sensory exp of the external world
- Observation, classification, taxonomy
- active organisation of observations
- Peri psyche ( On the psyche)
- fundamental functions: Reason (humans), Imagination, memory (complex animals),
sensation, movement (simple animals), reproduction, nourishment (plants)
- categorisations of human rational soul: substance, quantity, quality, location, time,
realtion, activity
- scale of nature: simple plants at the bottom and human beings at the top
- nourishment & reproduction: vegetative soul (most fundamental functions)
- movement, sensation, memory & imagination: sensitive soul (higher beings)
- reason: rational soul (“highest” function)
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Lucretius
- atomic theory: the universe including the mind, consists of atoms that influence each
other according to laws of nature
Al-Kindi
- Indo-Arabic numerals
Alhazen
- Book of Optics: vision involves rays going into the eye
Avicenna
- external senses (receive exp)
- internal senses (modify exp): combine, copy, evaluate, rememeber
- floating man thought experiment: self-awareness
- think of a man floating in space, with senses covered, and limbs tied down. Is this man
conscious of himself?
- Yes. Mind exists independent of the body
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Chapter 2: Pioneering Philosophers of Mind
René Descartes - interactive dualism, doubt everything
- simple natures: existence which could not be doubted or analyzed
- two physical properties
- extension: space occupied by body or a physical particle
- motion: movement throughout space of a body or physical particle
- all physical phenomena could be explained by these two properties
- 1st treatise: Le Monde; basic conception of the physical makeup of the universe,
before subjects of vision and light get attention
- Hypothesis: 3 kinds of material particles corresponding to to the classical
elements: fire, earth, air
- Fire: unimaginable tiny, aggregated they form a ‘virtually perfect fluid’ capable
of filling up space of any shape or size
- Air: larger particles, still too small to individually perceive; completely fill spaces
between objects and instantly move into spaces vacated by moving objects
( like water in a fish pond)
- Earth: all solid objects, planets, comets composed of accretions of earth
particles
- Light & Vision: between any two points —> a perfectly straight column of air
particles, which form the material basis of light rays
- Vibrations of the looked-at object are transmitted along the columns of air
particles extending between it and the eye (like a blind person’s stick)
- Conclusion: eye and the nervous system are connected as physical
mechanisms operating according to normal physical laws ( this became
important for his work L’Homme)
- 2nd treatise: L’Homme; momentously for future biology and psych.; applied his
physical principles to an analysis of living bodies
- human body is a mechanism
- animal spirits (yellowish liquid found in the brain of animals) —> cerebrospinal fluid
- falsely thought: long nerves are hollow. containing extremely fine fibres or filaments
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A: fire sends vibrations to
B: foot, pulling a fiber in the long nerve CC which
tugs open a valve in the brain DE.
Animal spirits contained in the brain cavity F
enter long nerve, travel back down resulting in
withdrawal of the foot.
His general point of emphasising the centrality of
the brain and nervous system in the ignition and
control of behaviour —> modern origin for the
field of neuropsychology
He discovered:
- reflex: sequence in which a specific stimulus
from the external world automatically elicits a specific response; ( automatic, learned)
- behavioural responses may also be influenced by internal emotional factors—>
localised ‘commotions’ —> e.g. anger spirits become highly agitated, flow with a
particular force toward the nerve opening to result in violent responses. anxiety or fear,
the currents are weak and so are the responses
- body is functioning like a machine: automata but with additional capacities for rationality,
consciousness and free will ( functions of the trad. Aristotelian soul, qualitatively different
and immaterial mind—> interacting with the ‘machine’)
- rational mind interacting with the mechanistic body
- “ I think therefore I am”, Cogito ergo sum
- innate ideas: ideas, independent of specific sensory experience (mind without body)
- automaton: body without mind/soul
- completely under the mechanistic control of external stimuli and its internal hydraulic
condition
- without consciousness
- pineal gland: small, pinecone-shaped structure near the center of the brain
- it seemed to be undivided so he thought here is the soul
- ‘cause the image has to be unified by the divided body to present it to the soul
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