History of Psychology 2007

Lecture 5

Professor Gerald C. Cupchik

Office: S634

Email: cupchik@utsc.utoronto.ca

Office Hours: Wednesdays 1-2 pm

Thursdays 12-1 pm

T.A: Michelle Hilscher

Office: S150

Email: hilscher@utsc.utoronto.ca

Office Hours: Thursdays 11-12; 3-4 pm

Course Website: www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~cupchik

Textbook:

Benjafield, J. History of Psychology.

Oxford University Press

Midterm:

October 25, 2007

The British Enlightenment

We find in all historical eras that psychological theories match models in the physical sciences.

What is the Newtonian model and how has it been manifested in psychology?

Sir Isaac Newton, FRS (4 Jan. 1643 - 31 Mar. 1727) [OS: 25 Dec 1642 - 20 Mar. 1727] [1] was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist, and natural philosopher who is regarded by many as the greatest scientist in history. Newton wrote the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, in which he described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics.By deriving Kepler’s laws of planetary motion from this system, he was the first to show that the motion of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws. The unifying and deterministic power of his laws was integral to the scientific revolution and the advancement of heliocentrism. He also was a devout Christian, studied the Bible daily, and wrote more on religion than on natural science.

Note on dates: During Newton’s lifetime, two calendars were in use in Europe: the ‘Julian’ or ‘Old Style’ in Britain and parts of Eastern Europe, and the more accurate ‘Gregorian’ or ‘New Style’ elsewhere. The difference between them lay in their attitude to leap years. At Newton’s birth, Gregorian dates were ten days ahead of Julian dates: thus Newton was born on Christmas day 1642 by the Julian calendar but on January 1643 by the Gregorian.

Among other scientific discoveries, Newton realized that the spectrum of colours observed when white light passes through a prism is inherent in the white light and not added by the prism (as Roger Bacon had claimed in the 13th century), and notably argued that light is composed of particles.

He also developed a law of cooling, describing the rate of cooling objects when exposed to air. He enunciated the principles of conservation of momentum and angular momentum. Finally, he studied the speed of sound in air, and voiced a theory of the origin of stars. Despite this renown in mainstream science, Newton spent much of his time working on alchemy rather than physics, writing considerably more papers on the former than the latter.

Newton played a major role in the development of calculus, famously sharing credit with Gottfried Leibniz. He also made contributions to other areas of mathematics, for example the generalised binomial theorem. The mathematician and mathematical physicist Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813), often said that Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed, and once added “and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.”

Newton offered a single theory that accounted, with mathematical precision, for all the phenomena of interest to physics at that time including planetary motion and ocean tides.

His was a materialistic theory. Comparison of Greek and Newtonian materialism:

1. Greeks: Matter included minute particles of certain shapes.

Newton: Refined this idea to infinitesimal mathematical points. So he dealt with ideal constructions and not physical entities.

2. Greeks: It had been assumed that motion could only be transmitted by physical contact.

Newton: Stressed forces of attraction and repulsion.

Galileo had also emphasized the all-pervasive presence of motion in the world.

These principles exerted a strong influence on the study of the process whereby we attain knowledge: cognition.

Can we attain true knowledge?

* The Greeks felt that knowledge could be obtained through Rationalism, logical thought.

* The Medieval Christians stressed revelation.

* The new science questioned the authority of reason and revelation.

The relativistic misgivings of Protagoras were revived.

How do we obtain knowledge about the world?

How are we deceived?

These questions are related to the problems of sense-perception, memory, imagination and thinking.

Today we are going to talk about empiricism, but what does it mean?

Two meanings. We distinguish between the empirical approach and empirical theory.

Empirical approach: Demand a scrutiny of the facts of experience before any theory is propounded. This reveals an interest in the conscious experiences which can be directly inspected and analyzed.

Empirical theory: The theory that all contents of the mind are derived from experience. This reflects an interest in the cumulative results of past experience.

The empiricist theory is a theory of knowledge - epistemological.

It challenged the authority of revealed religion and affirmed a faith in natural law.

Experience not revelation is the source of knowledge. But they were not anti-religious.

So they sought natural laws of knowing that fit with the natural laws of the physical sciences.

Two big questions:

1. Are there at birth ideas that are not furnished through experience? This is a reference to the innate ideas of Plato and Descartes.

2. Can we distinguish between ideas that correctly represent the “real” world from those generated by the perceiver?

The empiricist and associationist traditions have had the greatest impact on modern experimental psychology and made perception the primary problem in psychology.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, whose famous 1651 book Leviathan set the agenda for nearly all subsequent Western political philosophy.

Although Hobbes is today best remembered for his work on political philosophy, he contributed to a diverse array of fields, including history, geometry, ethics, general philosophy and what would now be called political science. Additionally, Hobbes’s account of human nature as self-interested cooperation has proved to be an enduring theory in the field of philosophical anthropology.

He was a contemporary of Descartes, a political philosopher and author of Leviathan. He addressed the issue of what was meant by “sense” knowledge. He referred the contents of the mind to sense-experience thereby doing away with the notion of innate ideas emphasized by Descartes.

Association depended on the coherence of past ideas.

He was impressed, after meeting Galileo, with the omnipresence of motion. If all is motion in the world outside then perhaps this can explain the mind.

He analyzed memory and imagination processes which are described as “decaying senses”.

This explains why we do not always have an awareness between its origins in the sense and reappearance in memory.

He assumes that the fainter elements of “decaying sense” are obscured by the brighter sensation, as the stars are dimmed by the brightness of the sun.

Laws of Association: Recognized the importance of connections between ideas and the original sensation in accounting for their reappearance.

He distinguished between two trains of thought:

1. Guided by the intent of the thinker

2. Unguided and without design

Social Philosophy:

What is the basis for cooperation?

Man was born in conditions of mutual warfare and enlightened selfishness alone brought them into agreement with their fellows.

John Locke (August 29, 1632 - October 28, 1704)Locke was an influential English philosopher. In epistemology, he has often been classified as a British Empiricist, along with David Hume and George Berkeley. He is equally important as a social contract theorist, as he developed an alternative to the Hobbesian state of nature andargued a government could only be legitimate if it received the consent of the governed through a social contract and protected the natural rights of life, liberty, and estate. If such consent was not given, argued Locke, citizens had a right of rebellion. Locke is one of the few major philosophers who became a minister of government.

Locke’s ideas had an enormous influence on the development of political philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to liberal theory. His writings, along with those of the writings of many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, influenced the American revolutionaries as reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.

He held fundamental ideas about the importance of liberty and tolerance that were formed early in this life. His basic concern was about the nature of human understanding.

Basic Principle: The mind can be broken down into ideas.

If we divide what we know consciously at any given time into components, we find that we have ideas.

This opposes the doctrine of innate ideas: Descartes’s idea of g-d, self, time, and space as innate.

* Ideas are the units of mind - the unit of mental contents - analogous to material elements. (e.g., whiteness, hardness, thinking, motion, man)

* Ideas are logical constructs or concepts or “meanings” or “items of knowledge”.

* They are simple or complex and bound by empirically determinable laws.

* There are no ideas in the mind that were not derived from sense perception.

* Learning principles will explain all of what we know and are.

Ideas come from:

1. Sensory Experience (tabula rasa)

- Sensible qualities are conveyed into the mind from external bodies and these produce perceptions.

2. Reflection on experience

- How does the mind attain knowledge of its own operations?

- Reflection is an “internal sense”. It is the source of ideas about ideas and the manner of their occurrence.

- It is a reaction of the mind upon the original experience.

Locke introduced the concept of connections or associations among ideas.

These associations are complex and can be simultaneous or successive.

Custom is the basis for the establishing of associations. This anticipates the Law of Frequency.

But how dependable is sense perception?

(e.g., Does the naked eye tell the truth when the microscope gives a different picture?)

The physicists were reducing the world in terms of space, time, mass, and motion.

But where do we find in the world of the physicist the colour, sound and smells of sensory experience?

Are sensory qualities in the realm of illusion?

Locke resolved the problem in this way.

He believed that the world exists independently of our knowing it and that it is faithfully represented in our experience of it: representative realism.

But how much of conscious experience comes from the real world and how much from the perceiver?

He resolved this with the distinction between primary and secondary qualities.

Primary qualities are inherent in nature - extension of space, enduring of time, substantiality, motion, or rest.

- These qualities are inseparable from the object regardless of what happens to it.

- These ideas are like the properties of the objects that produce them.

- These properties are perceived “directly as such”.

Secondary qualities are “sensory qualities” such as colours, sounds and smells which vary with the conditions of observation and the state of mind of the perceiver.

They are powers possessed by an object for producing ideas which do not exist within the object in the form in which they are perceived.

These ideas do not resemble the properties of the object at all but are produced indirectly by the action of other properties.

For example: Vibration frequency is a secondary quality because it arouses the experience of musical pitch which it does not resemble at all. So there is not an exact correspondence between the two.

So the contents of mind can be observed, analyzed and explained in accordance with natural principles. This would appear to be a kind of passive process.

Ideas are fixed by (1) attention and (2) by the pleasure or pain that are connected with them at the time of the original experience. They fade with time but, if repeated sufficiently often, need never be forgotten. The mind may even appear active in recall as if searching for a memory.

Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753)

George Berkeley, also known as Bishop Berkeley, was an influential Irish philosopher whose primary philosophical achievement is the advancement of what has come to be called subjective idealism, summed up in his dictum, “Esse est percipi” (“To be is to be perceived”). The theory states that individuals can only directly know sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as “matter”. He wrote a number of works, the most widely read of which

are his New Theory of Vision (1909), Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713) (Philonous, the “lover of the mind”, representing Berkeley himself and Hylas, named after the ancient Greek word for matter, representing the ideas of Locke). In 1734 he published The Analyst, a critique of the foundations of science, which was very influential in the subsequent development of mathematics.

The city of Berkeley, California is named after him, by virtue of it growing up around the university there that was named after him, but the pronunciation of its name has evolved to suit American English. A residential college in Yale University also bears his name, as does the copyright library at Trinity College Dublin.

He published his major works by the time he was 25 years old. Interestingly, he also sought to found a university for Indians and colonists in Bermuda.

He knew little about ancient philosophies but he knew Descartes and Locke thoroughly.

His major principle reflected the fact that he denied matter as such and affirmed mind as the immediate reality.

Locke denied the innate ideas of Descartes but did not transcend this dualism. There were still two worlds, the one knowing about the other through experience.

Berkeley cut the knot. The ideas themselves are the one thing of which we are aware.

Esse est Percipi (to be is to be perceived).

He argued that all qualities of perception, primary and secondary, are dependent on the observer thereby destroying the distinction.

So the problem is not (1) how mind relates to matter (Descartes) nor (2) how matter generates mind (Locke) but rather (3) how mind generates matter (Berkeley).

But this radical approach leads to solipsism, the belief that there is only one mind in which other minds exist only as ideas.

As a consequence, collective thought is abolished. This position is not capable of disproof. It is merely a reductio ad absurdum.

He felt that this approach would resolve problems in visual perception such as illusions.

Example 1: Distance

Consider the size of the moon and its distance from the earth. The idea that it is just so big and of such a distance from the earth cannot apply to the visible moon “which is only a round luminous plane of so many (30) visible points in diameter.”

If someone were taken closer to it, the moon would have changed and appeared larger. So perception is not an illusion when esse est percipi: it is the consistency of objects that is the illusion and that requires explanation.

Berkeley emphasizes the creation of perceptions by the mind.

Distance itself cannot be seen in the sense that a tape measure extends from the eye to the object. Rather, it is an act of judgment based on experience. The perception of distance is a matter of sensation or idea.

Continuing Example 1: Distance

Secondary criteria of distance perception, including interposition, aerial perspective, relative size, and light and shade, play a critical role. (Relative movement has recently been added).

Primary criteria include:

1. Converging distance between the pupils when objects approach.

2. Blurring when the object is too close to the eyes (but objects blur at a distance as well).

3. Straining of the eyes to keep them from getting confused.

Example 2: Magnitude

One might suppose that magnitude could be directly perceived from a true image on the retina. This would be according to Locke’s approach and the concept of primary properties but Berkeley did not believe in this.

1. Magnitude is not directly perceived because it depends on distance which is a matter of judgment.

2. Perceived magnitude does not correspond to the geometry of space. There is a minimum visible and tangible. This is the psychological principle of the limen (or threshold).

So mind generates matter and we substitute for a theory of knowledge about objects a psychological description of objects. These ideas or descriptions are formed through experience and so Berkeley is clearly an empiricist.

His theory of objects is associationist. The problem of meaning is resolved through the association of ideas.

Aristotle has made the primary division of 5 senses and had the common sense to integrate them.

Locke emphasized the sensory nature of ideas.

Berkeley insisted that ideas were the most important but separated them according to the different senses. Accordingly, vision and touch are prior to form. There are no abstract forms.

In terms of associationism: We hear the coach, then see it, then feel it. Since the sensations are observed to constantly go together, they are spoken of as relating to one and the same thing… in this case, the coach.

This anticipates Piaget’s concept of sensorimotor relations and the emergence of the schemas!

1. In relation to emotion judgment, we perceive the feelings of another person through changes in the colour of the person’s face.

2. In relation to language, meanings are attached to words through a process of learning or association.

David Hume (April 26, 1711 - August 25, 1776)

David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, economist, & historian, as well as an important figure of Western philosophy and of the Scottish Enlightenment. Although in recent years, interest in Hume’s works has centred on his philosophical writing, it was as an historian that he gained his initial fame and his History of Great Britain was the standard work on English history for sixty or seventy years until superseded by the History of England by T.B. Macaulay.

Historians most famously see Humean philosophy as a thoroughgoing form of skepticism, but many commentators have argued that the element of naturalism has no less importance in Hume’s philosophy. Hume scholarship has tended to oscillate over time between those who emphasize the skeptical side of Hume (such as the logical positivists) and those who emphasize the naturalist side (such as Don Garrett, Norman Kemp Smith, Mark Powell, Kerri Skinner, Barry Stroud, and Galen Strawson).

Hume was heavily influenced by empiricists John Locke and George Berkeley, along with various Francophone writers such as Pierre Bayle, and various figures on the Anglophone intellectual landscape such as Isaac Newton, Samuel Clarke, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Joseph Butler.

He was Berkeley’s successor. Like Berkeley, he was precocious and developed in relative isolation. He was extremely ambitious, a perfectionist with a restless and nervous personality.

At the age of 28 he published three volumes titled A Theory on Human Nature.

* He preserved the tradition that philosophy is basically psychological.* He re-emphasized Locke’s notion of the compounding of simple ideas into complex ideas.* He developed and made more explicit the notion of association.* He made an important direct contribution to modern psychology in his clear distinction between sensations and impressions, ideas or images.

The distinction between impressions and ideas was fundamental.

He sought to restore the word to its original meaning which was altered by Locke who used the term to include sensation.

Definition: - An idea is the experience we have in the absence of its object.- An impression is the experience we have in the presence of its object.

Both ideas and impressions are different kinds of experiences and were included by Locke under the term idea.

What is the difference between impressions and ideas?The difference lies in their relative vivacity.

The impressions (sensations, passions, and emotions) are more vigorous, lively, and violent compared with ideas. Ideas are relatively weak and faint and are used for reasoning and thinking.

But: The faintest impression may be weaker than the strongest idea. He was aware that ideas in dreams, madness and violent emotion may approach the intensity of impressions. But he said that generally they are different in intensity. He also saw them as qualitatively different. He said that ideas are faint copies of impressions.

In addition, both impressions and ideas may be simple or complex.

- A simple idea always resembles a simple impression.

- A complex idea, since it may be constituted of simple ideas in a novel manner, need not resemble an impression.

- He regarded impressions as causing their corresponding ideas.

So the world of real objects cannot be more tangible that the ideas which constitute man’s belief in it.

If we reject innate ideas and primary or secondary qualities, what is left? Nothing but an ordered array of mental contents.

What does he mean by causal relations?

Hume thought of association as an attraction or “gentle force” among ideas whereby they unite or cohere. This is a form of mental mechanics.

Two laws of association:

1. Resemblance

2. Contiguity in time or space

Cause and effect are always contiguous in time or space.

The perceived cause is always prior to the effect.

If all knowledge comes through the senses, through what sense is the notion of causality perceived? He did not want a subordinate rational faculty.

Necessary connection is a result of constant pairing of cause and effect… a “constant conjunction” of the two events.

The perception of cause and effect is therefore based on psychological experience. Causality is a mental habit!

Philosophically this is also related to a kind of skepticism. The world of real objects cannot be formally certified as anything more tangible than the ideas which constitute man’s belief in it. This led to doubt about the existence of g-d, the external world, or the personal ego.

There can be no experience of a continuous entity called the self.

The self is an abstraction from particular experiences. We have only data and not constructs. We, as empiricists, can only believe those constructs that represent sensory impression (perceptions of hot-cold, light-shade, pain-pleasure and each quality is experienced in isolation).

RECALL:

* Rationalism goes back to Plato and particularly to Aristotle’s doctrine of the rational “soul” as something above the nutritive and sensory functions of the individual.

Rationalists believe in a special mental substance with its own inherent properties and which cannot be reduced to matter.

* Christian theologians kept the idea alive during the Middle Ages. However, they emphasized destiny rather than nature and its attributes.

* Descartes also described a thinking substance, res cogitans, which was distinct from physical matter. I am speaking of a non-material rational principle that reveals itself in the facts of experience.

* The Empiricists had asserted that Aristotle’s five senses were the sole source of knowledge.