Psyco

INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

CLASS #2

Dr. Charles-Etienne Benoit

Last class look through time

 Ancient Egypt

 Ancient Greece

 Roman Empire

 Rise of Christianity

 Islamic Golden Age

 Renaissance

Importance of Greek philosophers

 The Greeks were important because they broke loose from the accepted religious traditions and produced what they considered to be better stories about the origin of the world.

 They engaged in open, critical discussions of one another’s ideas and speculated.

The rise of Monotheism

 The Christian church became increasingly powerful. Europe was dominated by mysticism, superstition, and anti-intellectualism.

 Church dogma was no longer challengeable, it wielded tremendous power. People were either believers or heretics, and heretics were dealt with harshly.

Islamic Golden Age

 The end of the 7th century is marked the inauguration of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.

 Scholars from various parts of the world were mandated to gather and translate all of the world's classical knowledge into the Arabic language.

Renaissance

 During this period, the tendency was to go back to the more open-minded method of inquiry.

 It was a time when Europe gradually switched from being God-centered to being human- centered.

 If God existed, he existed in nature; therefore, to study nature was to study God.

Today’s Lecture

 Empiricism, sensationalism and positivism

 Rationalism

 Romantism and existentialism

 Rise of experimental psychology

 Voluntarism, structuralism

 Early appaches to psychology

Descartes legacy

He was so influential that most of the philosophies that developed after him were reactions to aspect of his philosophy, this happened in several regions of Europe.

British Empiricism

French Sensationalism

German Rationalism

Return on Descartes

 He made subjective experience respectable again, Descartes paved the way for the scientific study of consciousness.

 Descartes attempted a completely mechanistic explanation of many bodily functions and of much behavior.

 He laid the foundation for 17th-century rationalism and opposed by the empiricist.

 Despite efforts to appease the church, Descartes’s books were placed on the Catholic index of forbidden books in the belief that they led to atheism.

A period during which Western philosophy embraced the belief that unbiased reason or the objective methods of science could reveal the principles governing the universe.

Once discovered, these principles could be used for the betterment of humankind.

The Enlightenment

 Contrast the period with the darkness of irrationality and superstition that was thought to characterize the Dark Ages.

 Increasing skepticism concerning religious dogma and the Enlightenment were closely related.

 The Enlightenment thinkers the most important human attribute was rationality.

British Empiricism

 Empiricism: The belief that all knowledge is derived from experience, especially sensory experience.

 The term experience, in the definition of empiricism, complicates matters because there are many types of experience:

 Inner experiences (dream, imagining, fantasies, etc.)

 Logical (mathematical deduction)

 It has become general practice, however, to exclude inner experience from a definition of empiricism and to refer exclusively to sensory experience.

John Locke (1632 – 1704)

 Opposition to Innate Ideas.

 He protested Descartes’s notion of innate ideas (God had instilled in humans innate ideas of morality).

 Since mainly clergymen accepted the innateness of morality, he was attacking the church.

 Locke observed that if the mind contained innate ideas, then all humans should be similar, which they are not.

 An idea was simply a mental image that could be employed while thinking. He believed that all knowledge is ultimately derived from sensory experience that allows him to be properly labeled an empiricist.

 Was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate (tabula rasa).

French Sensationalism

 We refer to the French philosophers as sensationalists because some of them intentionally stressed the importance of sensations in explaining all conscious experiences.

 In general, however, the French and the British philosophers of that time were more similar than they were different.

 The question asked by both the British empiricists and the French sensationalists was, If everything else in the universe can be explained in terms of mechanical laws, why should not humans, too, obey those laws?

 French sensationalists pursued their metaphor of man as a machine with courage and boldness despite intense opposition from the church.

The man machine

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

1709 – 1751

Brittany, France

 Mettrie stressed that the mind is much more intimately related to the body than Descartes had assumed.

 If the mind is completely separate from the body and influences the body only when it chooses to do so, how can the effects of such things as wine, coffee, opium, or even a good meal on one’s thoughts be explained?

 In fact, La Mettrie was among the first modern philosophers to suggest that “you are what you eat.”

 “Let us then conclude boldly that man is a machine, and that in the whole universe there is but a single substance differently modified”.

Positivism

 The British empiricists and the French sensationalists had in common the belief that all knowledge comes from experience; that is, that there are no innate ideas.

 Positivism: The contention that science should study only that which can be directly experienced.

 Scientism: The almost religious belief that science can answer all questions and solve all problems.

Publicly observed events or overt behavior.

Was the sensations of the scientist.

Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857)

 The only thing we can be sure of is that which is publicly observable, that is, sense experiences that can be shared with other individuals.

 The data of science are publicly observable and therefore can be trusted.

 Comte was a social reformer and was interested in science only as a means of improving society.

 For him, introspection was out because it examined only private experiences.Hérault, France

The law of Three stages

 According to Comte, societies pass through stages that are defined in terms of the way its members explain natural events.

 The first stage, and the most primitive, is theological, and explanations are based on superstition and mysticism.

 In the second stage, which is metaphysical, explanations are based on unseen essences, principles, causes, or laws to rule over the world.

 During the third and highest stage of development, the scientific (positive) description is emphasized over explanation, and the prediction and control of natural phenomena becomes all important.

Religion of Humanity

 By the late 1840s, Comte was discussing positivism as if it were religion.

 To him, science was all that one needed to believe in and all that one should believe in.

 He described a utopian society based on scientific principles and beliefs and whose organization was remarkably similar to the Roman Catholic Church. However, humanity replaced God, and scientists and philosophers replaced priests.

 Disciples of the new religion would be drawn from the working classes and especially from among women.

 Religion to him gave structure

Ernst Mach (1838 – 1916)

 The two men differed radically, however, in what they thought scientists could be certain about.

 For Mach, the job of the scientist was to note which sensations typically cluster together and to describe in precise mathematical terms the relationships among them.

 He also agreed that we experience only sensations or mental phenomena.

Moravia, Austrian

German Rationalism

 Rationalism: The philosophical position postulating an active mind that transforms sensory information and is capable of understanding abstract principles or concepts not attainable from sensory information alone.

 The empiricists tended to describe a passive mind, that is, a mind that acts on sensations and ideas in an automatic, mechanical way. The rationalist tended to postulate a much more active mind, a mind that acts on information from the senses and gives it meaning that it otherwise would not have.

 For the rationalist, the mind added something to sensory data rather than simply passively organizing and storing it in memory. That truths must be arrived at by such processes as logical deduction, analysis, argument, and intuition.

 In most cases, the difference between an empiricist and a rationalist was a matter of emphasis.

Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677)

 Descartes was severely criticized for conceptualizing God as a power that set the world in motion and then was no longer involved with it (deism).

 For Spinoza, God was nature. It follows that he embraced pantheism, or the belief that God is present everywhere and in everything.

 Spinoza combined physiology and psychology into one unified system, double aspectism, or the contention that material substance and consciousness are two inseparable aspects of everything in the universe, including humans.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Spinoza influence

 Descartes’s philosophy is usually cited as the beginning of modern psychology, yet most of his ideas have not been amenable to scientific analysis (mind body dualism, innate ideas, from theological influence).

 Considering just the broad general scientific principles that are at the basis of modern scientific psychology, we find them in abondance in Spinozistic but lacking in Cartesian thought.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646 - 1716)

 Leibniz combined physics, biology, introspection, and theology into a worldview that was both strange and complex.

 One of Leibniz’s goals was to reconcile the many new, dramatic scientific discoveries with a traditional belief in God.

 He believed in that bodily and mental events are correlated but that there is no interaction between them. Since, in his view, the universe is composed in such a way that it is in a continuous harmony, this explained why mental and bodily events were coordinated.

 Famous for his accomplishment in the field of mathematics.

Saxony, Germany

 Kant never traveled more than 40 miles from his birthplace in the 80 years of his life. Kant’s thoughts were to him the center of his universe.

 His rationalism relied heavily on both sensory experience and innate faculties.

 He postulated a single, unified mind that possessed various attributes or abilities. The attributes always interacted and were not housed in any specific location in the mind and certainly not in the brain.

 He had a considerable influence on psychology leading to a lively debate concerning the importance of innate factors in such areas as perception, language, cognitive development, and problem solving.

Königsberg, Germany

now Kallingrad

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)

Criticism of the Enlightment

 Some philosophers began to argue that humans consist of more than an intellect and ideas derived from experience. Humans, they said, also posses a wide variety of irrational feelings (emotions), intuitions, and instincts. Those philosophers emphasizing the importance of these irrational components.

 Another philosophy also emphasized the importance of meaning in one’s life and one’s ability to freely choose that meaning.

Romantism

Existentialism

Romantism

 The romantics sought to elevate human emotions, intuitions, and instincts from the inferior philosophical position they had occupied to one of being the primary guides for human conduct.

 Romanticism: The philosophy that stresses the uniqueness of each person and that values irrationality much more than rationality. According to the romantic, people can and should trust their own natural impulses as guides for living.

 They believed that rational thought had often led humans astray in their search for valid information and that empiricism reduced people to unfeeling machines.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)

 Know mostly for his writing, but also as a philosopher.

 He stated that as an incontrovertible rule that the first impulses of human nature are always right; there is no original sin in the human heart.

 Rousseau claimed that if a noble savage could be found (a human not contaminated by society), we would have a human whose behavior was governed by feelings but who would not be selfish.

 According to Rousseau, education should take advantage of natural impulses rather than distort them. It should create a situation in which a child’s natural abilities and interests can be nurtured.

Genève, Switzerland

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

 He was one of the most revered individuals in the intellectual life of Germany.

 He believed life consisted of opposing forces such as love and hate, life and death, and good and evil. The goal of life should be to embrace these forces rather than to deny or overcome them.

 To him goes much of the credit for awakening scholars to the problem of esthetics and for infusing philosophical writing with a regard for what is creative and dynamic in the human psyche.

Frankfurt, Germany

Faust from Goethe

 Old Dr. Faust is filled with despair and is contemplating suicide. Satan appears and makes a deal with him.

 He could take his soul if Faust had an experience he wished would continue eternally.

 With that bargain sealed, Satan turn him into a wise and handsome youth. The young Faust then begins his search for a source of happiness so great that he would choose to experience it forever.

 Faust finally bids time to stand still when he encounters people allowed to express their individual freedom.

 He views human liberty as the ultimate source of happiness.

Existentialism

 Existentialism: The philosophy that examines the meaning in life and stresses the freedom that humans have to choose their own destiny. Like romanticism, existentialism stresses subjective experience and the uniqueness of each individual.

 For the existentialists the most important aspects of humans are their personal, subjective interpretations of life and the choices they make in light of those interpretations.

 We can trace the origins of existential philosophy at least as far back as Socrates, who embraced the notion of “Know thyself” and said, “An unexamined life is not worth living”.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855)

 For him, truth is always what a person believes privately and emotionally. Truth cannot be taught by logical argument; truth must be experienced.

 Kierkegaard was melancholic and withdrawn. Many entries in his diary referred to the fact that even when others saw him as happy, he was actually crying inside.

 He was ridiculed by other philosophers, the public press, and his fellow townspeople, who considered him eccentric.

 Kierkegaard was deeply concerned that too many Christians, rather than having a true relationship with God, were praying reflexively and accepting religious dogma rationally instead of allowing it to touch them emotionally.Copenhagen, Denmark

Either / Or

 Kierkegaard said that the approximation of full personal freedom occurs in stages.

 First is the aesthetic stage. People are open to experience and seek out many forms of pleasure and excitement, but they do not recognize their ability to choose. People operating at this level are hedonistic, and such an existence ultimately leads to boredom and despair.

 Second is the ethical stage. People operating at this level accept the responsibility of making choices but use as their guide ethical principles established by others (for example, church dogma). People operating on the level are still not recognizing and acting on their full personal freedom.

 Third is the religious stage. People recognize and accept their freedom and enter into a personal relationship with God. The nature of this relationship is not determined by convention but by the nature of God and by one’s self-awareness. People existing on this level see possibilities in life that often run contrary to what is generally accepted, and therefore they tend to be nonconformists.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900)

 Nietzsche believed that there are two major aspects of human nature, the Apollonian aspect of human nature represents our rational side, our desire for tranquility, predictability, and orderliness and the Dionysian aspect of human nature represents our irrational side, our attraction to creative chaos and to passionate, dynamic experiences.

 Perspectivism: He argued that there are no universal truths, only individual perspectives.

 The death of God: Nietzsche has a madman proclaim that “God is dead” and hail this as one of the most significant events in human history. When people ignore him, the madman concludes, “I come too early… My time is not yet.” He continues, “This deed is still more remote to them than the remotest stars, and yet they done it themselves.”

Saxony, Germany

Nietzche’s superman

 Will to Power: The answer to our predicament can be found only within ourselves. Humans need to acquire knowledge of themselves and then act on that knowledge. Meaning and morality cannot (or should not) be imposed from the outside.

 The will to power causes a person to seek new experiences and to ultimately reach his full potential. Such individual growth cannot (or should not) be inhibited by conventional morality and thus must go “beyond good and evil.” People approaching their full potential are supermen because standard morality does not govern their lives. Instead, they rise above such morality and live independent, creative lives.

 Nietzsche declared that “All gods are dead: now we want the Superman to live”.

Rise of experimental psychology

Franz Jospeh Gall Phrenology

Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz

Nerve bio-electricity

Closer look to phrenology

Rise of experimental psychology

John Hughlings Jackson

Localizationist view

Jean-Pierre Flourens

Aggregate field view

VS

Rise of experimental psychology

A = Wernicke’s sensory speech center

B = Broca’s area for speech

Pc = Wernicke’s area concerned with language comprehension and meaning

Psychology as a science?

By now it was widely believed that conscious sensations were triggered by brain processes, which themselves were initiated by sense reception. But the question remained: Are mental sensations and sensory processes related?

Ernst Heinrich Weber

1795–1878

Saxony, Germany

 It was assumed that a science of psychology was impossible unless consciousness could be measured as objectively as the physical world.

 Weber’s research consisted largely in exploring new fields, most notably skin and muscle sensations.

 He was among the first to demonstrate that the sense of touch is not one but several senses.

 His work provided the first statement of a systematic relationship between physical and mental events.

The father of psychology

 As early as 1862, Wundt performed an experiment that led him to believe that a full-fledged discipline of experimental psychology was possible.

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt 1832–1920

Baden, Germany

 Wundt concluded that one could either attend to the position of the pendulum or to the bell, but not both at the same time.

 He worked as an assistant to Hermann von Helmholtz.

Voluntarism

 Voluntarism: The name given to Wundt’s school of psychology because of his belief that, through the process of apperception, individuals could direct their attention toward whatever they wished.

 Wundt’s goal was not only to understand consciousness as it is experienced but also to understand the mental laws that govern the dynamics of consciousness.

Voluntarism was the first psychology school of thoughts where the study of the mind should have the same standard as chemistry or physic.

Wundt’s experiments

 His scope was vast, his output incredible.

 His writings, totaling an estimated 53,000 pages, include: articles on animal and human physiology, poisons, vision, spiritualism, hypnotism, history, and politics; text- and handbooks of “medical physics” and human physiology; encyclopedic tomes on linguistics, logic, ethics, religion, a “system of philosophy;” not to mention his magna opera, the Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie and the Völkerpsychologie (in ten volumes).

 Look at this reference :

 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/#Aca

 Homework and a questions at the exam.

Wundt’s experiments

Try to understand what he aimed with his life work.

Edward Bradford Titchener (1867 - 1927)

Sussex, England

 He then went to Oxford where he developed an interest in experimental and translated Wundt’s Principles of Physiological Psychology into English.

 Following his graduation, he went to Leipzig and studied for two years with Wundt.

 In 1892 he accepted the offer from Cornell University and soon developed the largest doctoral program in psychology in the United States.

Structuralism

 Titchener set as goals for psychology the determination of the what, how, and why of mental life.

 The what was to be learned through careful introspection. The goal here was a cataloging of the basic mental elements that account for all conscious experience.

 The how was to be an answer to the question of how the elements combine.

 The why was to involve a search for the neurological correlates of mental events.

 It was the structure of the mind that he wanted to describe, and thus he named his version of psychology structuralism.

The decline of structuralism

 Structuralism was essentially an attempt to study scientifically what had been the philosophical concerns of the past.

 It tried to analyze sensations, images and feelings into their most basic elements.

 By having a subjective study of the mind which is unreliable, it was meant to fail.

 The need of objective evaluations

Theory of evolution

 The reproductive capacity of all living organisms allows for many more offspring than can survive in a given environment; therefore, there is a struggle for survival.

 Among the offspring of any species, there are vast individual differences, some of which are more conducive to survival than others. This results in the survival of the fittest.

 Thus, a natural selection occurs among the offspring of a species. This natural selection of adaptive characteristics from the individual differences occurring among offspring accounts for the slow transmutation of a species over the eons.

 Evolution, then, results from the natural selection of those accidental variations among members of a species that prove to have survival value.

 Darwin defined fitness as an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce

Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

Shropshire, England

 Devised a theory of evolution that emphasized a struggle for survival that results in the natural selection of the most fit organisms.

 By showing the continuity between human and nonhuman animals, the importance of individual differences, and the importance of adaptive behavior, Darwin strongly influenced subsequent psychology.

 He signed on as an unpaid naturalist aboard the Beagle, which the British government was sending on a five-year scientific expedition (1831 - 1836).

Journey around the world

The Galapagos Islands

Influence on Darwin

 Although he was only in the Galapagos for five weeks in 1835, it was the wildlife that he saw there that inspired him to develop his Theory of Evolution.

 “Many years ago, when comparing, and seeing others compare, the birds from the separate islands of the Galapagos Archipelago, both one with another, and with those from the American mainland, I was much struck how entirely vague and arbitrary is the distinction between species and varieties.”

From theory to fact

 To say the least, Darwin’s theory was revolutionary. He changed the traditional view of human nature and with it changed the history of philosophy and psychology.

 In general, Darwin stimulated interest in the study of individual differences and showed that studying behavior is at least as important as studying the mind.

Darwin’s tree of life, 1859

 His direct comparison of humans with other animals, along with his forceful assertion that humans differ from other animals only in degree, launched modern comparative and animal psychology.

 It became clear that much could be learned about humans by studying nonhuman animals.

Evolution of the nervous system

Cisek et al. 2018

 The comparison of the nervous systems of those species allows us to determine when in evolution specific circuits appeared and make inferences about the behavioral innovations they conferred.

The nervous system

 The nervous system is generally divided into two main parts.

 The central nervous system includes the brain and spinal cord.

 The peripheral nervous system, comprising the sensory and motor nerves and associated nerve cell ganglia (groups of neuronal cell bodies), is located outside the central nervous system.

Thalamus

 The thalamus is a large mass of gray matter in the dorsal part of the diencephalon of the brain with several functions such as relaying of sensory signals to the cerebral cortex, but also the regulation of consciousness, sleep, and alertness.

Primary sensory cortices

 From the thalamus, neural connections these pathways travel first to primary sensory cortex.

Approximate location of the five primary sensory areas and motor cortex

Next class

 Functionalism

 Behaviorism

 Neobehaviorism

 Early diagnosis

 Psychoanalysis