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Unit 4B: Chapter 8 Notes

Adapted from History of Psychology: The Making of a Science (Edward P. Kardas, 2014)

Susanne Nishino, Ph.D. 2013

Chapter 8: The Rise of the New Philosophy

Marin Mersenne (1588 – 1648)

• French friar, theologian, & mathematician who played critical role in development of modern psychology

• Mersenne’s cell at monastery in Paris played role like the “invisible college” informal meetings of early scientists in England before chartering of Royal Society

• Followed Francis Bacon’s recommendations that scientists should work collaboratively

• Rationalist who helped nurture early days of Enlightenment

Enlightenment

• Enlightenment = the period spanning the midpoints of the 17th and 18th centuries characterized by radical changes in thinking about science, politics, and the arts

• Enlightenment = historical period between Renaissance and Modernism

• Thinkers skeptical about early claims of knowledge from religion & metaphysics

• Astronomical discoveries that led to heliocentric model of universe early stimuli for change in worldview

• Eventually Enlightenment broadened from astronomy to include all science and gave rise to new disciplines, including psychology

• Enlightenment thinkers believed human mind capable of understanding nature in any of its guises

Rationalism & Empiricism: New Philosophy

• Philosophy’s responses to empirical research of the early scientists, new intellectual process, science, inspired by Copernicus and pioneered by Kepler & Newton soon served as example for variety of disciplines

• Two new and competing forms of philosophy arose

– Empiricism

– Rationalism

• Both important in issues and creation of the psychology disciple itself

• Rationalism & Empiricism new philosophy from which psychology emerged in 19th century

• Rationalism = the universe, including physical events, can only be explained through the action of human thought

• Empiricism - the view that holds that all knowledge comes from experience, especially from sensory experience

• Rene Descartes founder of rationalism, 1st of new philosophers, writings in mathematics, physics, & metaphysics influenced generations of philosophers, led to creation of rationalism, and later to its oppositional counterpart, empiricism

• Descartes inspired supporters and opposition

• Majority of rationalist philosophers = Continental philosophers

• Majority of empiricist philosophers = British empiricists

Rene Descartes & Roger Bacon

• Descartes & Francis Bacon in England among first to break away from Scholasticism & its methods

• Descartes searched for universal knowledge independent of sensory observations

• Bacon promoted role of sensory observations in his philosophy, proposed radical form of empiricism called induction

• Modern philosophy, and by extension, psychology, is still affected by competing visions

Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650): Rationalism

• Elucidation of basic principles of analytic geometry, showed problems in geometry could be solved algebraically, later mathematicians developed x, y, x coordinate system using his notation, named Cartesian in his honor

• Sought to explain reflexes by hydraulic model of nerve action, mechanistic model

• Distinguished between humans and animals by assigning mind only to humans, animals no minds behaved only as result of mechanistic principles

• Descartes contribution to mathematics profoundly important to later development of calculus by Newton & Leibniz

• Determined to reform natural philosophy or physics

• Explained phenomenon of refraction, would later use phenomenon to explain his approach to proper methods of gathering knowledge, Central to later thinking was that immersed in water object only looked broken

• Therefore , information presented by the senses was false: However, mathematically derived rules explaining phenomena were true

Descartes: New Philosophy

• Descartes realized physics needed a firm metaphysical foundation to explain discordant sensory & mathematic results

• In Meditations moved into metaphysics and helped found new philosophy

• Metaphysics = study of first principles and of how knowledge is acquired

• Breakthrough when realized he was thinking “Cognito, ergo sum” “I think, therefore I am,” bedrock foundation of his knowledge

• Proposed radically new classification of knowledge, separate theology from philosophy and divided faculties of mind into categories of history, imagination, & reason

Descartes: Dualism – Mind & Matter

• Then went on to divide world into two parts

– External, physical world = matter

– Internal, immaterial, & independent = human mind

• Matter could be studied mechanistically by measuring size, shape, position, & motion

• Mind could think, imagine, & sense, operated on ideas and possessed will that allowed it to seek pleasure or avoid pain

• Defined one of most persistent modern philosophical questions = the mind-body problem

The Mind-Body Problem & Scientific Progress

• Division of world into mind and body revolutionary

• According to Descartes

– Now physics only concerned with material parts of universe (e.g. body)

– Mathematics could ultimately explain workings of the universe beyond all doubt using minimum of measureable variables

– The mind was where variables such as color, sound, smells, & tastes originated, variables highly individualized and could not be explained

• Left with the problem of explaining how body and mind interacted

• Descartes solution to mind-body problem = interactionism, a type of dualism

• Believed both mind and body existed and that each affected the other “. . .body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible”

• Descartes interactive dualism claimed pineal gland of brain locus of where interaction occurred

• His mind-body distinction has lasted until present day

• Other philosophers have proposed solutions to mind-body problem

– Monistic solutions of idealism (either mind or body)

– Materialism

– Dualistic solutions (mind & body) of epiphenomenalism, occasionalism, parallelism, double aspectism, and pre-established harmony

Mind-Body Problem: Border with Social Science

• Descartes founder of new philosophy, legacy is vast, inspired others to complete & refine his rationalist approach or create new to counter

• Synergy between physics, mathematics, & mind-body problem advantageous to physical science

• Separation of body from mind meant sciences whose subject matters could be studied by measuring primary qualities quickly prospered

• 1st physics, later chemistry developed quickly, could be profitably studied only by examining physical universe

• Psychology & social sciences 1st to emerge from moral philosophy, Descartes saw as concerned with passions & their control, along with methods of directing will toward good

• Physics & hard sciences smoother historical past, social sciences have to cope with both halves of the problem

Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626): Empiricism

• Proposed radically new classification of knowledge, separate theology from philosophy and divided faculties of mind into categories of history, imagination, & reason

• Believed only proper role of theology was to prove existence of god, philosophies job to illuminate wonders of god’s creation

• Revived & expanded logical method of induction

• Believed scientists could successfully understand world through the use of their senses, however scientific facts could only be obtained if sensory information was collected properly

• Discounted phenomena that could not be repeated, railed against imprecise words

• Noted humans inherently biased, proposed methods to control for biases

• Biases via four idols if not accounted for would lead to falsehoods derived from observation

– Idols of the Tribe = common human errors in perception, sensory errors, correctable by multiple observers or instrumentation, conclusions on small sample, desire to confirm preconceived notions

– Idols of the Cave = culture & individual differences, families, schools, religions, gender, social class, alter perceptions of same observations

– Idols of the Market Place = social interactions & miscommunications, jargon,

– Idols of the Theatre = competing systems of philosophy, required viewers to suspend belief

• Proposed new kind of induction methodology to address problems of biased observation, wanted scientists to guarantee accurate results & facts from observations, facts then would become reliable databases of science, believed all sciences could collect reliable data

• Next step to develop tables of how facts were related to each other, presence, absence, or degree of common factors, looking for primitive type of correlation, recognized contradictions in observations logically important

• Never proposed role of hypothesis, proposed another essential feature of modern science, the close collaboration of scientists, idea led to Royal Society

• Divided science into two categories

– Theoretical

– Applied

• Recognized intimate relationship between science & technology

• Ideas contrasted sharply with Descartes, set up long running conflict between empiricism & rationalism

English Civil Wars (1642 -1651)

• England, Scotland, Ireland

• Issues of divine right of kinds, religious toleration, civil rights central

• Greatly affected fortunes of two empiricists

– Thomas Hobbes

– John Locke

The British Empiricists

• Thomas Hobbes

• John Locke

• George Berkley

• David Hume

Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679): Materialism

• Disagreed with Descartes on important issue of notion of separate and incorporeal mind existing without a physical substrate

• Materialist, for everything including god had to possess physical existence

• Categorically opposed to dualism

• Agree with Descartes that philosophy should proceed from rationalist precepts

• Believed that motions were the cause of everything including sensations

• In vision, particles of light hit eye, caused parts of brain to move, movements of brain not image constituted perception

• Like Descartes minimized importance of sensory experience

• Greatest contribution analysis of politics, proposed prior to formation of governments humans lived in state of nature, hypothetical primordial state, state of nature relativistic, chaotic, brutish

• Believed in absolute monarchy, only way to escape brutality was to surrender liberties to monarch, in turn monarch issue and enforce laws, if monarch keep governed safe, then social contract

Hobbes: Relativism & Social Contract

• Relativism = belief that no universal values exist and that instead values vary by individuals, groups, or historical era

• Social Contract = agreement between the governed and the government to provide security, welfare, and laws agreeable to both

• Hobbes 1st instance of social contract, social psychology of the governed and the government, John Locke and others would modify & expand

• Hobbes provided mechanism for former royalists to accept legitimacy of Parliamentary government

• Social contract theory held that any government in power that was providing for public’s safety was legitimate and should be obeyed

• Believed that experimentation useless

• Limited conception of psychology, believed people motivated more by passion than reason

• Believed thinking was computation, idea prominent today in artificial intelligence & cognitive science

John Locke (1632 – 1704)

• Founding members of Royal Society taught Locke to study nature, exposed to Royal Society

• After read Descartes and met Newton, lifelong friends with Newton

• Much of American Declaration of Independence words Lockean

• Attempted to bring human understanding into realm of natural philosophy

• Consciously trying to put together science of psychology, failed

• Helped transform intellectual landscape of the time

– Argued against Descartes’ notion of innate knowledge, admitted limited forms of pre- existing knowledge such as existence of god & geometric theorems

– Famous metaphor Tabula rasa, the blank slate

– Argued experience would eventually fill and cover slate that is our mind

– Mind full of ideas, simple ideas from sensation, can be combined by association into complex ideas by reflection & memory

Locke: Empiricism & Associationism

• Many philosophers after Locke invoked association-ism as mechanism for own theories, Ivan Pavlov early in 20th C. to provide successful mechanistic account for associationism by work on conditioned reflex and classical conditioning

• Also discussed differences in primary & secondary qualities

• Primary qualities of objects such as mass, location, movement, texture, degree of solidity, or qualities of objects themselves

• Secondary properties such as color, taste, smell were acts perception, could differ from person to person

• Divided knowledge into three categories

– Intuitive – knowing your own & god’s existence, some preexistent

– Demonstrative – included theorems of mathematics, still had to be learned

– Sensitive – largest category, consisted of all ideas that come to fill the blank slate of minds

• Unlike Descartes willing to accept less than certain knowledge and to accept it from the environment

• Possessed probabilistic view of reality

• Also looked at language, equated words with ideas, differentiated between particular & abstract ideas

• Examined how mind classified words and ideas, examined limits of knowledge, and examined relationship between reason & faith

• Swept away Scholasticism, countered Descartes rationalism, prepared ground for empirically based science of psychology

• Since Chomsky-Skinner debate over nature of language, structure of language, & how learned, believed best cognitive learning mechanism, most psychologists today believe language learned does not follow Locke’s tabula rasa metaphor

• Also published The Second Treatise on Government

• Set forth different understanding from Hobbes on relationship between people & government

• Locke’s political thinking, people may choose to form communities and their government, main difference, Locke believed need not transfer all rights to government, may transfer some and keep others to themselves

• Locke’s version of social contract, it is the people who choose, French & American revolutions invoked Locke’s political thinking

• Also wrote on religious toleration, also basis of doctrine of separation of church & state in American Constitution

• Writings major step forward in soon to emerge science of psychology

• 1st to clearly link evolving empirical ideas to possibility of psychological science, rejected Cartesian model, substituted radical empiricist model

• Later criticism from rationalists & empiricists

George Berkeley (1685 – 1753): Idealism

• George Berkley & David Hume early empiricist critics

• Berkley criticized Locke’s division of primary & secondary quality, provided idealist alternative to Locke’s ideas

• Idealism = belief that reality lies within an abstract & non-physical realm accessible only through introspective analysis

• 1st publication analysis of vision

• Idealist or immaterial philosophy, used idealism to simultaneously counter Descartes’ dualism, Hobbes materialism, and Locke’s version of empiricism

Berkeley: Perception

• Wanted to prevent philosophy from degenerating into skepticism or atheism

• Saw materialist accounts of Descartes, Hobbes, & Locke inevitably heading in that direction

• Berkeley justified idealism by using god’s mind, required god as essential component of philosophy

• Idealism – all that is perceived exists only in mind

• Berkeley attacking dualism & materialistic monism of Hobbes

• Described approach as esse est percipi (to be is to perceive), only ideas were real, denied existence of anything other than mental constructs

• Primary qualities could not exist, all came through act of perception

• Through emphasis on perception, moved philosophy closer to psychology, complete account of perception still not solved

• Anticipated philosophy of David Hume

David Hume (1711 – 1776)

• Most influential of all British empiricists

• Carried ideas of Locke & Berkeley to logical conclusions, ended up rejecting metaphysics while place whole of his philosophy on back of perception

• His philosophy minimized role of rationalism

• Not until Immanuel Kant’s response to Hume that revised & integrated form of moral philosophy arose & laid groundwork for creation of early forms of psychology

• Humes’ system inspired rationalist response, just as Descartes’ system had inspired earlier empiricist response

• Two major goals

– Rid philosophy of metaphysics

– Improve on empiricism of Locke & Berkeley

– Both goals in service of creating science of human nature, a science of psychology

• Only partially successful because his radical empiricism left no room for cognition or innate behaviors

• Kant’s criticism of Hume led others to more moderate empiricism & reinstated role of consciousness & pre-existing mental categories in yet to emerge science of psychology

• Hume dissatisfied with Locke’s empiricism

• Hume’s philosophy materialistic, no role for god

• Agreed with earlier materialists but added details to strengthen

• Agreed perception major factor in human understanding, altered earlier view by adding own terms & mechanism, such as impression

• Hume’s impressions direct and vivid results of perception, precursors of ideas

• For Hume, ideas secondary and dimmer residues of impressions

• Retained Locke’s ideas distinction simple and complex, complex resulting from combinations of simpler

• Also retained role of memory, provided three new mechanisms for creation of complex ideas

– Resemblance

– Continuity (resemblance & continuity extension of Locke’s ideas)

– Cause & effect

• Much like later Gestalt psychologists, held that events similar to each other would be perceived as similar, events that followed each other closely in time would be perceived as belonging together

• Explanation of cause & effect new and different, gave it most power, saw it as arising from perception alone when one idea or event always preceded another idea or event

• For Hume, every part of human knowledge had to arise from perception

• Dismissed any idea of ultimate realities not grounded in perception

• Belief that science of human nature possible, but had limits

• Beliefs might be wrong, while impressions or ideas were never wrong

• Placed rational though below passions, passions innate, unlike impressions

• Reversal of usual relationship between reason & emotion new to philosophy

• Believed moral judgments also depended on experience and had to be learned

• Judgments not product of reason, instead result of pursuit of pleasure or avoidance of pain

• Argued against Hobbes’s use of self-interest to explain social behavior, used benevolence instead, benevolence original part of human nature, led to justice and social welfare

• Interests more than moral philosophy, also economics, history of ideas, aesthetics, & religion

• Viewed religion as irrational & pathological, most vehemently against monotheistic religions because of intolerance, promotion of irrational beliefs, & corruption of philosophy

• Hume’s philosophy one of the final wedges that led to complete separation of science & religion

• Revision of Locke & Berkeley helped lay foundation for empirical, materialistic, & behavioral psychology predicated upon primacy of perception

• Foundation seemed faulty & incomplete to rationalists

• Led to Kant’s synthesis of rationalist objections

Immanuel Kant’s Response to Hume

• Foundation seemed faulty & incomplete to rationalists

• Led to Kant’s synthesis of rationalist objections, in process helped add innate & cognitive principles to still incomplete philosophical foundation of psychology

• Kant’s response capstone to philosophy of those that followed & built on Descartes’ rationalistic philosophy

• Rationalist’s also instrumental in creating science of psychology

Ideas

• Enlightenment – separation of theology & philosophy finally parted disciplines, gave birth to new philosophy

• Descartes’ rationalism sought to explain natural world by removing doubt of existence, mind- body plus interactionist solution laid foundation for future rationalist philosophers, still unwilling to part with god in philosophy

• Bacon’s empirical methods, Idols among 1st attempts to ensure reliability & validity for sensory observations, emphasis on induction, separation of science into theoretical & applied still survives

• English Civil Wars showed how state of nature & social contract could change

• British philosophers chose other directions than Descartes to address same problems

• Hobbes used materialism to dispense of mind-body problem

• Locke posited tabula rasa as powerful empiricist metaphor, understood did not explain all behavior, also promoted doctrine of associationism

• Berkeley invoked god in idealism to deal with mind-body problem

• Hume removed god from philosophy while searching for more precise understanding of empiricism, analyses of resemblance, continuity, cause & effect were seminal, reversed age-old relationship between emotions & rational thought

Summary

• New Philosophy, earliest Rene Descartes & Francis Bacon

• Descartes interactionist dualist approach, clear statement of mind-body problem liberated natural philosophy from classic roots, dualism created problems, biggest problem who could non-material entity, the mind, control material body, explanation reflex action too simplistic & false

• British empiricists disagreed with Descartes

• Bacon focused on problems surrounding collection of unbiased data, also 1st to divide science into pure & applied

• Hobbes proposed strictly materialist philosophy, did seminal work in area of sociology today, analysis of social contract

• Locke disagreed on origin of knowledge, all knowledge learned through experience, radical empiricist, stressed primacy of perception, made allowance for primary qualities as part of nature & not learned

• Berkeley proposed completely idealist yet empirical philosophy, argued everything learned, primary qualities did not exist, left room for god, mind of god that created everything humans perceived

• Hume, most influential empiricist, wanted philosophy free of metaphysics, no room for god, wanted to explain everything without resorting to divine interference, skeptical approach added mechanisms such as resemblance, contiguity, & cause & effect that did not require a priori mental structures, placed emotion above reason, startling reversal, emotions & passions source of social behavior