Alternative Intellectual
Perspectives
• There some isolated but significant contributions
to Psychology by Renaissance scholars.
• Petrarch advocated a broader approach to the
Greek classics and set the stage for the
expansion of humanism through the
Renaissance.
• Niccolò Machiavelli encouraged the use of a
naturalistic, objective, and descriptive
methodology that rejected moralistic approaches
to human behavior. He emphasized the
malleability of humans and the power of social
influences.
Alternative Intellectual
Perspectives (continued)
• As noted in your text, in terms of methodology and
research interests, Juan Luis Vives may be viewed as
the founder of modern psychology.
• Juan Luis Vives described emotions objectively and in
bodily terms.
• He also argued for associationism in memory and for a
broad and secular approach to education including
education for women.
• Leonardo da Vinci was a true Renaissance Person
whose contributions to psychology include an accurate
anatomy of the visual system, advances in
understanding of visual perception, and descriptions of
the variety of emotional facial expressions.
Alternative Intellectual
Perspectives (continued)
• Paracelsus was an innovative chemist who applied his
chemical knowledge to medicine.
• He argued that mental processes may affect the health of
the body and vice versa.
• Paracelsus argued strongly for knowledge through
experience instead of by authority.
• Julius Caesar Scaliger was one of the first to study
kinesthetic and muscle senses and the role of muscles in
habit.
• Michel de Montaigne was a Catholic with strong
Protestant sympathies during the time of bloody conflict
between these religions. He resurrected skepticism in his
Apology for Raimond Sebond, a scathing, multifaceted
attack on the arrogance of human knowledge.
Alternative Intellectual
Perspectives (continued)
• Michel de Montaigne takes the reader through his
personal explorations of psychological topics including
thought, emotion, and motivation. More practically, he
argued against the brutal child-rearing practices of his
day.
• He argued that experience is not pure, and he accurately
described much of human behavior as inconsistent in
terms of both conduct and opinion.
• Olivia Sabuco examined the physical and psychological
consequences of the passions, and even though she
emphasized the importance of intellectual processes, she
stressed the central role of emotions for humans.
• Finally, Juan Huarte studied individual differences in
aptitude and attributed these differences to the effects
of the humors and the condition of the brain.
British Empiricism
• Empiricism – belief that knowledge is the
result of experience. (no experience = no
knowledge)
• British empiricism – sensory experiences
are the building-blocks of our knowledge.
– For example, the color “orange” is your
abstraction of your many experiences with
orangish-colored-things
Early Empiricists
• William of Occam (1285 - 1349), an English
Franciscan friar and major figure of medieval thought,
set roots of empiricism with his belief that our
knowledge of our world is entirely from sensory
experiences.
• Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) – theories are “figments
of the imagination.” Bacon wanted science to focus on
the observations, and making generalizations of many
observations, rather than testing theories.
Francis Bacon
• Bacon and a French contemporary, Rene Descartes
(1596-1650), attempted to justify human knowledge
through empiricism and rationalism. (We will cover
Descartes later.)
• Empiricism is closest to the term “experience.” Generally,
empiricists argue for posteriori knowledge, a passive
mind that responds to sensory input, and induction as a
method of knowledge.
• Francis Bacon focused on problems of human knowledge
and was a pioneer in the development of the scientific
method.
Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679)
• Founder of British empiricism
• Worked for Francis Bacon, friends with
Galileo and Descartes.
• Hobbes was influenced by Galileo’s
proposal that the universe was made
entirely of matter and motion, and he
believed people could also be explained in
terms of matter and motion.
• Concluded that the mind is sensory
experience of matter and motion.
John Locke (1632 – 1704)
• The most influential British empiricist
• Also had and interesting Life:
– Son of a puritan
– Studied and remained at Oxford for 30 years
– Studied medicine and empirical philosophy
later in life and finally received an M.D. in
1674 at the age of 42
John Locke
• Locke’s thinking was influenced by Robert
Boyles, a chemist who proved that
physical objects are made of tiny particles.
• Locke, in turn, concluded that our mental
processes are composed of tiny “particles”
of sensory experiences.
• Objected to innate ideas, as proposed by
Descartes. They are not based on
experiences, and not everybody has them.
John Locke’s Mental Model
Sensation and Reflection
• Ideas are products of
either sensation or
reflection
 Reflection refers to the
mind’s ability to reflect on
itself (upward movement)
 Sensation is the source of
ideas (the starting point)
Simple versus Complex Ideas
 Complex ideas are the
composites of simple
ideas. (made of many
“atoms”)
 Simple ideas are the
“atoms” of experience.
(the starting point)
Locke and Ideas
• Once obtained, ideas can be arranged and
rearranged by mental operations thereby
creating new ideas through reflection.
• Once in the mind, ideas can be transformed
into other ideas. This is how Locke explains
all thought processes, including perception,
thinking, doubting, believing, knowing, and
willing.
• Note: he opposed specific “innate ideas” but
not innate operations or faculties of the
mind.
Qualities of Thought
Secondary Qualities –
psychological in nature,
have no worldly
counterpart
Primary Qualities –
physical in nature,
composed of the parts
and the whole of our
experiences
Paradox of Basins
• Is temperature a characteristic of the
physical world?
• Locke conducted an experiment to answer
this question.
• Take three basins
– One containing cold water (A)
– One containing hot water (B)
– One containing warm water ©
• Place one hand in basin A and the other in
basin B
• The hand in A will feel cold, the hand in B
hot
 This would make it appear that cold and hot
are properties of water. Hence, temperature
=primary quality
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Now place both hands in basin C (warm water).
What would you experience?
How did the hand that had been in cold water feel?
HOT
How about the hand that had been in hot water?
COLD
Why is this so?
Temperature is a secondary, not a primary quality.
Primary and Secondary
Qualities
• Refers to the power to produce ideas.
• With primary qualities, there is a match
between what is present in the physical
world and what is experienced in the
mind.
• Secondary qualities do not correspond to
anything in the physical world.
– Required to produce notions such as color,
sound, temperature
Locke and Emotion
• Feelings of pleasure or pain can
accompany both simple and complex ideas
• Other emotions (passions) such as love,
desire, joy, hatred, sorrow, anger, fear,
despair, envy, shame and hope are more
complex derivatives of pleasure and pain
Other Lockean Ideas
• The mind can neither create nor destroy
ideas, but it can arrange existing ideas
into an infinite number of configurations.
• Association of Ideas
• Associationism takes association to be the
fundamental principle of all mental life.
• Note: Locke was not a pure associationist.
• He believed most knowledge comes from
actively reflecting on the ideas in the
mind.
John Locke’s Mental Model
George Berkeley
(1685-1753)
• While Bacon and Locke applied empiricism to questions
of epistemology, George Berkeley took an empirical
approach to ontology. He challenged the materialism of
Locke, and he advocated a return to spiritual
interpretations of the world.
• In his classic Three Dialogues Between Hylas and
Philonous, Berkeley noted that we experience secondary
qualities with the senses, and he also pointed out that
we can only know primary qualities through the senses.
If all we know about the world comes through
experience, how can we speak of primary qualities
outside of experience?
George Berkeley
(continued)
• If all knowledge of the world comes through experience,
humans cannot validate the existence of anything
outside of experience. Therefore, for Berkeley, the only
real world is the world of experience, and existence is
defined as being perceived (“Esse est percipi”).
• Berkeley’s critics asked how the world could be so
consistent if nothing could be demonstrated to exist
without a perceiver. Berkeley’s reply was that
consistency implies a continual perceiver, God.
Therefore, for Berkeley, the consistency of the world
demonstrates that God must exist.
George Berkeley
(continued)
• If, as Berkeley asserts, all I can know with
certainty is my own experience, I may fall
into solipsism, the belief that only selfknowledge is possible.
• Berkeley addressed other psychological
topics including vision and the relationship
between vision and touch.
David Hume (1711-1776)
• David Hume agreed with Berkeley that experience is
the primary subject matter of philosophy, but he
maintained that our experience is simply a chain of
events. We do not experience cause as a necessary
connection residing outside the world of experience.
• Causality and other relationships are only functions of
our mental habits.
• Hume distinguished between impressions, mental
phenomena that present themselves with force (e.g.,
taste, color, sensations, and emotions), and ideas, fainter
images of impressions.
David Hume (continued)
• Hume argued that our selves and our
experiences are not as continuous as we
would like to believe and that they may be
more like a disjointed parade than a
single, self-coherent system.
• Hume studied the emotions extensively,
and he advocated comparative studies in
physical anatomy and “anatomy of the
mind.”
Associationism and
Utilitarianism
• Associationism and Utilitarianism were motivated by
practical problems in education and society.
• David Hartley, often regarded as the founder of
modern associationism, classified the varieties of
pleasure and pain and their effects on human
motivation.
• Hartley also proposed a neurophysiological system of
association in which miniature vibrations (vibrantiuncles)
remain after the initial stimulus has passed.
• Vibrantiuncles become the basis of memory.
• At the intersection of law and psychology, Jeremy Bentham
attacked intuitive methods of dispensing justice and argued for a
utilitarian approach to jurisprudence emphasizing the greatest good
for the greatest number.
• Bentham accepted psychological hedonism, the idea that humans
seek pleasure and avoid pain; he debated whether pleasures and
pains were quantifiable.
• Mary Wollstonecraft, an early pioneer in the battle for the
emancipation of women, suggested that the societal differences
between the genders resulted from the lack of opportunities for
women.
• Wollstonecraft argued against essentialism, the belief that the
essential nature of men is qualitatively different from the essential
nature of women.
The Mills:
James and John Stuart
• James Mill argued for a mechanistic approach to the
mind based in association and conditioning, and he
strongly advocated education for the masses.
• John Stuart Mill, the son of James Mill, was a product
of his father’s mechaniisitc approach to conditioning and
education.
• But, John Stuart Mill viewed the mind in probabilistic
terms rather than mechanical terms.
• He maintained that a science of psychology was
possible, and he also suggested a science of the
development of character, which he called etholog.
• John Stuart Mill, perhaps due in part to his
relationship with Harriet Taylor, advocated
feminist views, and he grounded these
views in his empiricism and his
utilitarianism. He argued that we cannot
know the capabilities of women until
women are given the same opportunities
as men, and he suggested that there
would be societal benefits from providing
women with opportunity.