Epicureans – Survival Ethics
Negative Hedonism
Advocated against gluttony and excess
Suggest we make 3 mistakes when thinking
about happiness.
1. Looking for love instead of friends.
2. Materialism – we have to make sacrifices to
get it and lack a sense that we “make a
difference”.
3. Mistake luxury for calmness (security)
There are only 3 things you need for a
happy life.
1. Friends
2. Sense of personal accomplishment
3. Meditation to seek calmness rather than the
pursuit of luxury.
Epicurean Communes were very common
even up until the 5th century.
At its peak there were 400,000 people living
in communes.
Christianity wiped them out, but converted
them to monasteries.
Stoicism
Anxiety - Expect the worst and you will not
be disappointed.
We are each stronger than we think.
We will be able to survive what ever hardship
makes us anxious . . . and if we cannot, there
is always the option of suicide.
Preached that we should regularly practice the
worst possible scenario to remind oneself that
almost nothing material is needed for a happy
life.
Anger
Argue it is not a natural tendency but is the
result of ignorance about the nature of life.
Keeping low expectations will keep us from
getting hurt.
Rise of Christianity
Christianity began in 1st century AD Jerusalem as a minor jewish
sect. It spread initially in the Near East, ultimately becoming the
state religion of Armenia in either 301 or 314, of Ethiopia in 325,
of Georgia in 337, and then the state religion of the Roman
Empire in 380. During the Age of Exploration (15th to 17th cent.),
Christianity expanded throughout the world, becoming the world's
largest religion.
St. Paul (10 – 64)
Born in Tarsus (Turkey)
Trained as a Rabbi in Jerusalem
Combined Greek and Jewish theology with
Christ’s teachings.
Dualist
Human body is evil
Human soul (spirit) divine
Like Plato saw the body as our major source of problems
Unlike Plato he said faith in God (rather than reason) as the
solution to the conflict..
60 BC
180 AD
Between 1st and 4th century – Growth of
Christianity
Pagan Philosophers were replaced by
Patrists (Fathers of the Church)
3rd Century – Constantine adopts
Christianity
Battle of Milvian Bridge 2 3 4 5 6
(Parts 1 and 2)
Roman Culture
“The Romans invented no art forms, constructed no
original system of philosophy. And made no scientific
discoveries. They made good roads. Systematic legal
codes, and efficient armies: for the rest they looked to
Greece.” Bertram Russell, History of Western
Philosophy.
Video beginning to 19:50
After Constantine restart at 53.00
Autocracy - political power is
held by a single self-appointed
ruler.
Edict of Milan
In February 313, Constantine I, emperor
controlling the western part of the Roman
Empire and Licinius, controlling the Balkans,
met in Milan and, among other things, agreed
to treat the Christians benevolently.
Plotinus – 205 – 270
Neo-Platonism
Combined Plato with ethical concepts from
Christianity, Judaism and Near Eastern
Mysticism
Like Plato – Idealist
To get closest to the One, each individual must engage in
divine work.
Each individual as a microcosm reflects the gradual ordering of
the universe referred to as the macrocosm. In mimicking the
divine mind, one unites with it.
Thus the process of unification, of "The Being", and "The One",
making each man a God by replacing the concept of God as
creator with themselves as creators, builders, craftsmen of their
own lives.
Orthodoxy & Heresy
1st & 2nd Century – no authority = no Heresy
3rd Century – Bishop of Lyons
Refutation of Heresies
-
One of the earliest heresies to arise in the
Christian church was Gnosticism
Gnostics were dualists, teaching that there are two
great opposing forces:
good versus evil
light versus darkness
knowledge versus ignorance
spirit versus matter.
Since the world is material, and leaves much room
for improvement, they denied that God had made it.
How can the perfect produce the imperfect,
the infinite produce the finite, the spiritual
produce the material?
Gnostic’s solution was to say that there were
thirty beings called AEons, and that God had
made the first AEon, which made the second
AEon, which made the third, and so on to the
thirtieth AEon, which made the world.
They taught that Christ did not really have a
material body, but only seemed to have one. It
was an appearance, so that he could
communicate with men, but was not really
there.
They said that Jesus had had two doctrines: one a
doctrine fit for the common man, and preached to
everyone, and the other an advanced teaching, kept
secret from the multitudes, fit only for the chosen
few, the spiritually elite. They, the Gnostics, were
the spiritually elite, and although the doctrines taught
in the churches were not exactly wrong, and were in
fact as close to the truth as the common man could
hope to come, it was to the Gnostics that one must
turn for the real truth.
Constantine backs the authority of the
bishop and confiscates the public
property of heretics.
Persecuted become persecutors!
Augustine of Hippo (345 – 430)
•one of the most important figures
in the development of Western Christianity
•Strongly influenced by Neo-Platonism.
Dualist
- humans have souls – animals do not.
Free Will (Choice)
Intrinsic motivation
Doing good leads to feelings of virtue
Doing evil leads to guilt.
People who choose evil deny themselves an afterlife
Concepts of original sin and just war
Unbelievers persecuted because of cruelty;
Christians persecuted because of love.
Science and Philosophy not in the service of theology were
suspect.
Roman Empire in the West was starting to disintegrate
Augustine developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual
City of God distinct from the material City of Man.
“Give me chastity and continency, but not yet”
AD 385 – executions for heresy begin.
-Priscillian Bishop of Villa – charges with witchcraft.
Tried and Tortured; confessed and were executed.
Schisms in the Church
475 Fall of Rome
475 – 1000 Dark ages
Middle Ages (500 – 1500)
•
•
•
•
Crusades began around 1100 ad
Plague
Famine
Writings were lost to western culture
Saint Anselm (1033 -1109)
Contrary to Christian belief he felt that reason
Could help better understand God.
Scholasticism – to join faith with reason
Use logical deduction to account for traditional theological
teachings.
Ontological Argument for God’s existence
If God did not exist, then something greater than He could be
thought; thus, God must exist.
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 -1274)
Argued Reason and Faith are compatible
Reintroduced Aristotle theology
Tabla Rasa
Empiricist
Argued for the supremacy of reason – free will.
John Duns Scotus (1265 – 1308)
Criticized both Aquinas and Aristotle
Argued for the Supremacy of God’s will
If God’s will is subordinate to reason then it appears that God is
limited, which can not be. Thus God must be absolutely free.
God’s moral rules are good because God willed them to be good, not
because His wisdom recognized them to be. Thus one cannot
understand morality from a rational standpoint.
Dunsmen, Duncemen --- Dunces.
Late Middle Ages – Famine, Plague, War, Peasant Revolutions
When you hit Bottom,
there is no where to go but up!!!
Late Middle Ages
William of Ockham
Ockham’s Razor - the principle
that when trying to choose
between multiple competing
theories the simplest theory is
probably the best. (K.I.S.S!)
Nominalist – Universals (truths)
exist in name only.
Charged with heresy &
excommunicated.
The first European medieval
institutions generally considered
to be universities were
established in Italy, France, and
England in the late 11th and the
12th.
Representation of a university class, (1350s).
RENAISSANCE
Lorenzo de' Medici
Ruler of Florence
and patron of arts
Lorenzo the
Magnificent
The Elizabethan era (16th century to the early
17th century) - the English Renaissance with the
work of writers William Shakespeare,
Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, and Edmund
Spenser.
• 1450 – first publication – the bible.
by 1492 – 20 million books had been printed.
1492 – Christopher Columbus sets sail.
Humanism
The view that we can make sense of the world
using reason, experience and shared human
values and that we can live good lives without
religious or superstitious beliefs.
Martin Luther
German father of the Protestant Reformation
• Called for more personalized, less ritualized
religion.
• Reformation polka
• Challenged the absolute authority of the Pope over
the Church by maintaining that the doctrine
of indulgences, as authorized and taught by the
Pope, was wrong.
• Salvation was by faith alone without reference to
good works, alms, penance, or the Church's
sacraments.
• challenged the authority of the Church by
maintaining that all doctrines and dogmata of the
Church not found in Scripture should be
discarded.
The Edict of Worms was a decree issued on 25 May 1521
by Emperor Charles V, declaring:
“For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward
to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend,
sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther. On the contrary,
we want him to be apprehended and punished as a
notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought
personally before us, or to be securely guarded until
those who have captured him inform us, where upon we
will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against
the said Luther. Those who will help in his capture will
be rewarded generously for their good work.”
John Calvin
Ruled Geneva as a religious dictatorship
- No drinking, dancing, icons, candles, incense and
obligatory church attendance for everyone.
- In Calvin’s view, Man, who is corrupt, is
confronted by the omnipotent (all powerful) and
omnipresent (present everywhere) God who
before the world began predestined some for
eternal salvation (the Elect) while the others
would suffer everlasting damnation
(the Reprobates).
The chosen few were saved by the operation of
divine grace which cannot be challenged and cannot
be earned by Man’s merits. You might have lead
what you might have considered a perfectly good life
that was true to God but if you were a reprobate you
remained one because for all your qualities you were
inherently corrupt and God would know this even if
you did not. However, a reprobate by behaving
decently could achieve an inner conviction of
salvation. An Elect could never fall from grace.
Renaissance Science
1543 – Nicolaus Copernicus
- Heleocentric view of the world.
- As opposed to a ptolemic (Earth centered).
- Contrary to common sense.
- Biblical reference. (5 days creating earth, 1
day on universe and 1 day on resting).
Giordano Bruno: (1548 – 1600)
-Proposed the existence of multiple suns and
innumerable earths, each revolving around its
own sun and potentially inhabited by sentient
beings ~ a limitless universe.
-Burned at the stake in 1600.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Uses of the Telescope (war and business)
Galileo used it to peer into the sky.
His finding supported Copernicus.
Pope Urban supported the publication of Copernicus but insisted on a
disclaimer that Coperinicanism was a hypothesis.
“Simplicius’ Disclaimer”
“The Holy Spirit intended to teach us how
to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”.
"My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable
stupidity of the common herd. What do you have to say about the
principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the
stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets,
the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and
deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly,
just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their
eyes to the light of truth."
In 2000, Pope John Paul II issued a
formal apology for all the mistakes
committed by some Catholics in the last
2,000 years of the Catholic Church's
history, including the trial of Galileo
among others.
Economy
Cities and towns were centers of wealth production and of
creativity.
European cities expressed their sense of corporate pride and
identity in public buildings – infrastructure.
Economic organization within towns was usually through guilds.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727)
If I have been able to see further, it was only
because I stood on the shoulders of giants.
‘This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and
comets, could only proceed from the counsel and
dominion of an intelligent Being. …”
Sir Edmund Halley used Newton’s Laws of
motion to predict the next occurrences of
Halley’s comet.
Count down to Armageddon
When a body is once in motion, it moveth, unless something
else hinder it, eternally; and whatsoever hindereth it
cannot in a instant, but (only) in time and by degrees, quite
extinguish it; and as we see in the water, though the wind
cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after;
so also it happenth in that motion that is made in the
internal parts of a man, then, when he sees, dreams, etc.
For after the object is removed, if the eye shut, we still
retain an image of the things seen, though more obscure
than when it was seen.
Invisible Colleges
The Royal Society of London for
Improving Natural Knowledge”
- common theme was to acquire
knowledge through experimental
investigation
Sir Francis Bacon (1605)
When I set before the conditions of these times, in
which learning hath made her third visitation or
circuit, in all the qualities thereof: the excellence and
vivacity of the wits of this age, the noble and lights
which we have the travails of ancient writers: the art
of printing, which communicateth books to men of all
fortunes: the openness of the world by navigation,
which hath disclosed multitudes of experiments, and a
mass of natural history …I can not but be raised to
this persuasion, that this third period of time will far
surpass that of the Graecian and Roman learning.
René Descartes (1596 – 1650)
•Rationalist
First –doubt everything.
I think, therefore, I am. (Cogito, ergo sum)
I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole
essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it
may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any
material thing; so that ‘I’, that is to say, the mind by which I
am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even
more easily known than the latter …
So why is he not a solipsists???
God has provided him with a working mind
and sensory system and does not desire to
deceive him. From this supposition, however,
he finally establishes the possibility of
acquiring knowledge about the world based
on deduction and perception.
Rationalist
From there, he went on to conclude that there were a
number of things equally certain: God, time and
space, the world, mathematics. These things, he
said, were innate -- in-born -- to the mind. You
derive them not from experience but from the nature
of one’s mind itself. E.g., Ideas in his mind either
come from within or from without. He is an
imperfect, finite being. Therefore, his conception of
God as a perfect, infinite being could have only
come from without – from God. Therefore, God
exists.
Mechanical-hydraulic theory of
human behavior
Royal Automata
The Canard Digérateur (Digesting Duck) - an automaton in the
form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739. The
mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain,
and to metabolize and defecate them. While the duck did not actually
have the ability to do this—the food was collected in one inner
container, and the pre-stored feces was 'produced' from a second, so
that no actual digestion took place—Vaucanson hoped that a truly
digesting automaton could one day be designed.
Reflexes
He was the first to note the idea of the
reflex. The idea that some of our actions
are reflexive leads inevitably to the
possibility that all actions are
reflexive. Descartes theorized that
animals (at least) have no need for a
soul: They are automatons. Being a
good Catholic, he exempted human
beings. We do have a soul, although he
acknowledged that he did not know how
the soul and the body interacted –
although he did feel they interacted and
thought this was mediated through the
Pineal gland.
Pineal Gland
Mind-Body Controversy
Interactive Dualism
- pineal Gland
Differ from animals
because of our souls.
Six-Passions – wonder, love, hate, desire, joy
and sadness.
Benedict Spinoza
• Parallelism
- Monistic Parallelism
Every bodily event coexists with and is coordinated
to a mental event. Body and mind correlate, but they
do not cause one another. The apparent interaction
arises from ignorance on our part and shows only the
coincidence of actions; an illusion.
God is the universe.
Leibniz – psychophysical parallelosm.
fatalism [ˈfeɪtəˌlɪzəm] n
1. (Philosophy) the philosophical doctrine
that all events are predetermined so that
man is powerless to alter his destiny
2. (Philosophy) the acceptance of and
submission to this doctrine
3. a lack of effort or action in the face of
difficulty fatalist n
Gottfried Leibniz (Nativist)
Metaphor of a block of veined Marble.
The veins represent the minds inborn
dispositions. The sculptor’s hand frees a
figure from this marble, but the figure was
present before the chisel was ever lifted.
Ideas are present in the mind at birth, and the
role of experience is to allow them to emerge.
Empiricists
Thomas Hobbes
• Social contract theory
Individuals came together and ceded some of their individual
rights so that others would cede theirs (e.g. person A gives up
his/her right to kill person B if person B does the same). This
resulted in the establishment of society, and by extension, the
state, a sovereign entity which was to protect these new rights
which were now to regulate societal interactions. Society was
thus no longer anarchic.
• Monarchist
Calvin and Hobbes
We are basically aggressive animals.
Hobbes is proud to be an animal and seems to
have a low opinion of humans in general
(when Calvin is wondering why people exist,
Hobbes simply responds "tiger food")
According to Calvin,
"Hobbes is always a little
loopy when he comes out
of the dryer."
According
to Hobbes tigers need to
learn physics, biology and artistic
expression to hunt.
“For there is no conception in man’s mind, which hath not
first been begotten upon the organs of the sense.”
-Thomas Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes
Eyes Wide open
Spaceman Spiff
Imagination being only of
those things which have
formally been perceived by
sense . . . is simple
imagination, as when one
imagined a man or a horse,
which he hath seen before.
The other is compounded; as
when, from the sight of a man
at one time and of a horse at
another, we conceive in our
minds a centaur.
John Locke
Empiricist
Humans are innately good.
People are born equal in potential (Tabla Rasa) - –
education is essential.
Developmental Issues
Two Sources of ideas
-Sensible and Reflective
-Sensation is not always reliable
-Reflective processes involve associations and
abstractions.
Molyneux's question:
``Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught
by his touch to distinguish between a Cube and a Sphere
of the same metal, and nightly the same bigness, so as to
tell, when he felt one and other, which is the Cube,
which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere
placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see.
Quaere, Whether by his sight, before he touch'd them,
he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe,
which the Cube (Locke 1694, page 67)
Empiricist philosophers, like Locke, argued that we
learn to perceive visual space by associating it with
touch and muscular movement.
George Berkeley
“If a tree falls in the forest and no one it there,
does it make a sound.”
Rationalist (immaterialism) – Matter does not
exit in and of itself; it exists because it is
perceived.
(Object Permanence????)
• God in the Quad
A limerick by Monsignor Ronald Knox
• There was a young man who said, "God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."
REPLY
• Dear Sir:
Your astonishment's odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
GOD.
David Hume (1776)
“I sense therefore I am.”
Pneumatic Philosophy
Advocated for a new science of human nature
• Use the methods of natural science
• Human thought is the product of mental
processes and can be studied scientifically.
• Perhaps Hume is the father of Psychology!!
Physiognomy
Physical features directly related to
personality and metal processes
Franz Joseph Gall
• That moral and intellectual faculties are innate
• That their exercise or manifestation depends on
organization
• That the brain is the organ of all the propensities,
sentiments and faculties
• That the brain is composed of as many particular
organs as there are propensities, sentiments and
faculties which differ essentially from each other.
• That the form of the head or cranium represents
the form of the brain, and thus reflects the relative
development of the brain organs.
He was a pioneer in the study of the localization
of mental functions in the brain. Around 1800,
he developed "cranioscopy", a method to divine
the personality and development of mental and
moral faculties on the basis of the external shape
of the skull.
Claimed there are some 26 "organs" on the
surface of the brain which affect the contour of
the skull, including a "murder organ" present in
murderers.
Brain organs that were used got bigger and those
which were not used shrunk, causing the skull to
rise and fall with organ development.
Gall's early work was with criminals and the
insane and his brain "organs" reflected this
interest.
Phrenology
-phrenological theories best accepted in
England, where ruling class used it to justify
the inferiority of colonial subjects.
-popular in the United States from 1820 to
1850
Debunking
•In 1808, the Institute of France
assembled a committee of savants.
- declared phrenology was not to be
trusted (may not have had scientific
evidence)
Napoleon Bonaparte was furious
because Gall's interpretation of his
skull "missed" some noble qualities
he thought he had.
Anthropometry
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, used mainly to classify
potential criminals by facial characteristics.
Cesare Lombroso "Criminal Anthropology" 1895,
associated certain craniofacial features to criminal types.
(e.g., murderers have prominent jaws, and that
pickpockets have long hands and scanty beards).
Popular among the police and judicial systems in Italy and
in many other countries.
Well until the 30s, many judges ordered "lombrosian"
anthropometric analyses of defendants in criminal charges,
which were used against them by the prosecution in the
trial procedures.
Craniology
Influential during the Victorian era,
Used by the British to justify racism and dominance of
"inferior people", such as the Irish and the black tribes of
Africa.
"Inferior" races were said to be similar to apes and monkeys,
so that they were considered to be more kin to these animals
than the main European people (such as the Anglo-Saxon, of
course...).
Jonh Beddoe, the founder and president of the British
Anthropological Institute, The Races of Man" (1862),
developed "Index of Nigressence", stated that the Irish had
crania similar to those of the Cro-Magnon pre-historic men
and thus were a kind of "Africanoid" white race !
Bumps(1932)
National Hygiene Department in the Ministry of the
Interior and in the Bureau for Enlightenment on
Population Policy and Racial Welfare, proposed the
"scientific" classification of Arians and non-Arians
Official craniometric certification required by law
“Many persons were sent to the death camps or
denied marriage or work as a result of this
"mismeasurement“. Stephen Jay Gould
Popularity in US
1838 - 1911
Quack Quack!!
• Phrenology gave rise to the invention of the
psychograph by Lavery and White, a
machine which could do a phrenological
reading complete with printout. It is said
that this device netted its owners about
$200,000 at the 1934 Century of Progress
Exposition in Chicago.
Localization of Function
As it turns out, Gall and the phrenologists were
correct when it came to the central debate of
neurology of the time.
The brain is compartmentalized, with each piece
serving a specific function modern map is based on
fundamental functions, such as Broca’s and
Werinike’s Areas.
Franz Anton Mesmer
Early Studies of the Central
Nervous System
Stephen Hales (1677–1761)
English Botanist
Worked with frogs.
Hales showed that some reflexes are mediated by the spinal
cord.
Hales studied stones taken from the bladder and kidneys and suggested
solvents which might reduce them without surgery.
He also invented the surgical forceps.
Luigi Galvani~ 1780
Luigi Galvani touched the nerves of a frog's
spinal cord with metal electrodes which
caused contractions of the leg muscles.
Galvanic Skin Response named after him, but
not invented by him.
Charles Bell - 1823
Scottish surgeon-anatomist
published "Essays on the
Anatomy of Expression in
Painting"
Nerves of the senses could be traced from
specific areas of the brain to their end organs.
Germany – birthplace of Psychology
1815 – 1871 – federation of 38 principalities.
Wissenschaft – philosophy of education
•
encouraged research, teaching
•
academic freedom
•
students wandered from university to university
•
degrees involved sitting examinations or writing of thesis.
Methods from Physiology
•
Development of measurement instruments
•
Replication of results
•
Public data and academic debate
•
Experimental methods
Johannes Peter Müller
1840 – further developed Bell’s research .
The doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies
- Nervous stimulation is the link between the
physical world and our psychological
experience of it.
- For example, the visual nerves, however
they may be stimulated, are only capable of
transmitting visual data.
Mechanistic View of Human
Behavior
Müller – proposed that there was in addition
to physical and chemical properties of the
physiological system, there was also a “Vital
Force” that could not be reduced further.
(Vitalism)
Mechanistic View – vitalism is a myth. All
living organisms can be reduced to physical,
chemical and mechanical principles. (Müller’s
Students, Helmhotz).
Emil Du Bois-Reymond - 1850
Developed very sensitive galvonometer.
Was able to measure the role of electrical
impulses in neural conductance
“No force other than the common physical
chemical ones are active within the
organism.”
Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz
Physicist
Speed of neural conductance.
(90 feet per second)
Established Reaction Time
As a measure of
Psychological Processing.
More Helmholtz …
Invented ophthalmoscope – for examining
retina.
Trichromatic theory of Color Vision
Opponent Process Theory
Herring
Charles Wheatstone (1833)
Psychophysics
Ernst Weber – two point threshold.
Weber’s LAW
Thresholds – just noticeable differences.
How much does a stimulus need to change
before it can be detected. JND/S = k
-Studied the relationship between the physical
and the psychological.
Gustav Fechner
Studies on afterimages led to blindness.
- became an invalid, depression.
Recovered vision by “taking control over his life”.
Mind-Body Controversy
In his last work Fechner, aged but full of hope,
contrasts this joyous "daylight view" of the world
with the dead, dreary "night view" of materialism.
JND depends on the intensity of the
standard
Weber’s Law
I/I = k
Change in Intensity divided by Intensity of
the standard is a constant.
Not “Absolute” but it is predictable.
Time Check!!!
1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents Telephone.
1886- The Statue of Liberty, a gift to the United
States from France, is dedicated by President
Cleveland in New York City harbor.
Broadway New York City 1881
Thomas Edison – 1877 became the first
person to ever record and play back the
human voice.
1903- The first successful powered airplane flight is made by
Orville and Wilbur Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
The first production Model T was built on September 27, 1908.
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt
Born August 16th, 1832 outside of Mannheim, Germany.
Youngest of four children born to a Lutheran minister and his wife.
One school he attended suggested that he drop out and become a
mailman.
He went to medical school at the University of Tübingen for a year
but did not do well.
After his father died, Wundt finally realized that he had to change
his ways or he would not finish medical school.
In an amazing turn around, he enrolled at the medical school at
Heidelberg, studied hard, received his M.D., and in 1855 received
the highest scores in the state medical examinations.
Had no interest in becoming a clinical doctor – but liked the
research aspects of science. Developed a background in
Physiology, neurology and medicine.
First independent research project “Effects of restricted salt input
on chemical composition of his own urine”.
Wundt studied at the University of Berlin for a
semester under Müller and then, in 1857, he
became a lecturer in physiology at the University
of Heidelberg.
Privatdozent – offered university courses but his
pay was dependant on student enrollment.
- first course enrollment was 4 students
- became very ill (1857).
Worked for Helmholtz ( 1858-1864 – Heidelberg
University)
- published two books and several studies on sensation
and perception.
1864 – set up his own lab.
1871 – hired as extraordinary professor
1873- published Principles of Physiological Psychology
“The work I here present to the public is an attempt to
mark out a new domain of science”
Hired by University of Zurich (1874-75)
University of Leipzig (1875- 1917)
1879 - Established the first laboratory for
Experimental Psychology (destroyed in 1943 by an
allied bombing raid).
Measuring the Mind
Student of Robert Bunsen
From Helmholtz and
Bunsen, Wundt acquired
a love of gadgetry devices.
Timing and stimulus
Presentation apparatus!
Wundt's perimeter : This device allows the presentation of
visual stimuli in all parts of the visual field and at a constant
distance from the subject's eye. It is used to examine the
visual field for defects and to plot visual acuity and color
acuity. It presumably comes from Wundt's time with
Helmholtz.
Wundt-style Tachistoscope :This is a device
designed to present a visual stimulus for a very short
adjustable exposure time by using a gravity operated
falling shutter. The onset of the drop (fall) of the
shutter is controlled by solenoids
It was through using introspection that
Wundt and his students concluded that the
sensations and feelings are what constitute the
activity in our minds.
They believed that the combination of or the
relationship between sensations and feelings
are what creates constantly shifting
psychological processing.
Analogy to chemistry: . . . in precisely the same way in
psychology . . . It would be quite wrong to say that the
experiment determines only the action of [stimuli} on the
psyche. The behavior of the psyche in response to the
external influences is determined as well, and by varying
those external influences we arrive at the laws to which the
psychic life as such is subject. . . . By creating manifold
changes in the sensory stimuli while continually studying
the psychic phenomena, we apply the principle that is the
essence of the experimental method: as [Francis] put it,
“we change the circumstances in which the phenomena
occurs.”
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
Principles of Physiological Psychology
(in ten volumes).
He was very narrow-minded and dictatorial.
He told his doctoral students what they were to write on for their
dissertations.
He was strongly opposed to child psychology, animal
experimentation, and any practical applications of psychology.
Wundt could be very scornful to psychologists who did not do
things his way, and he often rejected new ideas that became very
important in the history of psychology.
By the end of his career, he had made his fair share of enemies,
even though his psychological laboratory had many imitators and
his books and lectures were much admired.
Wundt retired in 1917, but continued
writing until shortly before his death
in Grossbothen, Germany, on August
31, 1920.
James McKeen Cattell
American student who
studied under Wilhelm Wundt.
He invented a timing device used to measure
visual stimuli, and the "lip key," which was
developed to measure reaction time by
movement of the subject’s lips or vibrations
from the subject’s voice.
While measuring verbal "association times"
(word responses to verbal stimuli) noted much
variability across tasks as well as between
subjects.
Cattell interpretation: some people
have generally quicker association
times, and those who react faster think
faster and experience more ideas in the
same objective period of time.
This was an early suggestion that
differences in an individual’s reaction
time may be related to differences in
individual intelligence.
Modern Use of Reaction Time
Mental rotation studies
For each row, which of the three comparison shapes
on the right is identical to the shape on the left?
Introspection
Inspection of one’s own thoughts, feelings or
mental states. In common sense terms, we
turn our attention "inward."
Edward B. Titchener
Titchener attempted to systematize the
Wundtian point of view, producing
laboratory research using only Wundt's
method of introspection.
Psychological observation is observation by
each man of his own experience, of mental
processes which lie open to him but to no
one else. Hence while all other scientific
observation may be called inspection, the
looking-at things or processes,
psychological observation is introspection,
the looking inward into oneself. (Titchener,
1898 p. 27).
The "general rules" must be observed in all investigations involving
experimental introspection. They are:
1. Be impartial. Do not form a preconceived idea of what you are
going to find by the experiment; do not hope or expect to find this or
that process. Take consciousness as it is.
2. Be attentive. Do not speculate as to what you are doing or why you
are doing it, as to its value or uselessness, during the experiment.
Take the experiment seriously.
3. Be comfortable. Do not begin to introspect till all the conditions
are satisfactory; do not work if you feel nervous or irritated, if the
chair is too high or the table too low for you, if you have a cold or a
headache. Take the experiment pleasantly.
4. Be perfectly fresh. Stop working the moment that you feel tired or
jaded. Take the experiment vigorously.
(Titchener, 1898, pp.34-35).
Stimulus Error.
For example, if you look at a ripe tomato and say, "The tomato
is red," you are doing it wrong. You are paying attention to the
tomato, not to your own mental experience. You have broken
the first two general rules. What you should report is
something like, "Redness."
Titchener considered his own highly trained
introspective observers to be so good that they had
become mere recording instruments of the mind. He
said,
…the practiced observer gets into an introspective
habit, has the introspective attitude ingrained in his
system; so that it is possible for him, not only to take
mental notes while the observation is in progress,
without interfering with consciousness, but even to jot
down written notes, as the histologist does while his
eye is still held to the ocular of the microscope.
(Titchener, 1909, p. 23).
Structuralism - attempting to find the Elements of
conscious experience ~ just like Chemistry identifies the
elements of the physical world.
According to Titchener, there are three classes of elements:
sensations, images, and affections. The sensations were the
mental elements as given by the senses. Titchener had discovered
about 50,000 sensations. Images were the elements of ideas, and
affections were the elements of emotions. All the elements had
attributes: quality, intensity, duration, and clearness (and for
vision, extensity in space). The qualities multiply the number of
discrete sensory conditions one might discern to 194,250 for
vision and 46,222 for the other senses, for a total of 240,470.
Like Wundt, Titchener refused to consider applied
psychology a valid enterprise, had no interest in studying
animals, children, abnormal behavior, or individual
differences.
When Titchener died in 1927, so did structuralism and the
whole introspectionist movement.
Introspectionism became a ”Dirty Word” in research,
regardless what one was measuring.
Other Facts about Titchner
•Titchener was the first to have a woman
Ph.D. graduate. Over 1/3 of his
doctorates were women when Harvard
and Columbia excluded them, and he
advocated their right to serve as faculty
•Titchener’s first Ph.D. student was
Margaret Floy Washburn, she was the
first woman elected to National Academy
of Sciences, served as President of the
APA, and established Vassar College
Psychology Program.
Edwin G. Boring
Student of Titchner’s
What a man! To me he has always seemed the
nearest approach to genius of anyone with
whom I have been closely associated." (E. G.
Boring on E. B. Titchener Pictorial History of
Psychology and Psychiatry).
Boring Figure
Titchner’s Brain remains at Cornell in a jar
"
William James
William James
Father - Henry studied theology, philosophy,
and mysticism.
Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and
scientist. At the age of fifty-six he entered into a
spiritual phase, in which he experienced dreams and
visions. This culminated in a spiritual awakening,
where he claimed he was appointed by the Lord to
write a heavenly doctrine to reform Christianity. He
claimed that the Lord had opened his eyes, so that
from then on he could freely visit heaven and hell,
and talk with angels, demons, and other spirits.
From Wikipedia
1852-1855 - William attends school in New York.
1855-1858 - School and private tutors in England and France.
1859-1860 - Back overseas. School and private tutors in Switzerland
and Germany. Attends Geneva Academy (a European
university)
1860-1861 - Studies painting with William Morris Hunt, Newport, R.I.
1861- Enters Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University.
1864 - William enters Harvard Medical School.
1865-1866 - Joins Louis Agassiz on an expedition to the Amazon.
1866 - resumes medical school
. . . but had assorted ailments—back pain, weak vision, digestive
disorders, and thoughts of suicide—some or most of which were related
to his indecision about his future. Seeking relief, he went to France and
Germany for nearly two years, took the baths, studied under Helmholtz
and other leading physiologists, and became thoroughly conversant with
the New Psychology (Wundt).
1869 - James receives his MD from Harvard.
He made no effort to practice because of his poor health
Spent his time studying psychology, sunk in gloom about his prospects
and troubled by the profound differences between his scientific views of
the mind and the world and his father's mystical and spiritual ones. In
1870, at twenty-eight, after nearly a year in these doldrums, he had an
“abrupt emotional crisis."
For almost three years after graduation, James lived in the family home.
Had increased periods of depression after a young woman whom he had
befriended died following a prolonged illness.
Later described his depression as a descent into a profound crisis—of spirituality,
of being, of meaning, of will.
He suffered panic attacks and even hallucinations and sought help through
spiritual quests.
Feared that his depression was a biological destiny he would be unable to
overcome. One day in April of 1870, he recorded in his journal that he had come
to believe that free will was no illusion and that he could use his will to alter his
mental state. "My first act of free will," he wrote, "shall be to believe in free will."
James was now 30, three years out of medical school, and with no career
prospects or plans except for a vague desire to devote himself to philosophy.
Harvard president Charles Eliot, a neighbor and former teacher of James,
offered him a post at Harvard teaching physiology for the modest sum of $600
per year.
Within three years of arriving at Harvard, he began offering courses in
physiological psychology and performing demonstrations for students in
his little laboratory.
There were no professors of psychology in American universities (except
phrenology) before James began teaching it in 1875.
James had never taken a course in the New Psychology because there
were none. He once jested, 'The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard
was the first I ever gave.‘
James introduced experimental psychology to America. He began giving
laboratory demonstrations to students at least as early as Wundt, and he
and his students started performing laboratory experiments about the same
time as Wundt and his students, if not earlier.
Ironically, while James made much of the value of experimentation, he
himself found it boring and intellectually confining. He usually spent no more
than two hours a day in the laboratory, told a friend that
"I naturally hate experimental work," and said of the Leipzig style of
laboratory work, "The thought of psycho-physical experimentation and
altogether of brass-instrument and algebraic-formula psychology fills
me with horror."
1890 – Principles of Psychology (2 volumes), chapters on habit, attention,
perception, association, memory, reasoning, instinct, emotion, imagination,
psychological methods, and even hypnotism.
The Jimmy
Theory
Functionalism James opposed the structuralism focus on introspection and
breaking down mental events to the smallest elements. Instead, James focused
on the wholeness of an event, taking into the impact of the environment on
behavior.
Psychology is the study of mental activity (e.g. perception, memory, imagination,
feeling, judgment). Mental activity is to be evaluated in terms of how it serves the
organism in adapting to its’ environment .
The functionalists tended to use the term 'function' rather loosely. It can refer to
the study of how a mental process operates. This is a major departure from the
study of the structure of a mental process, the difference between stopping a train
to tear it apart to study its parts (structuralism), and looking at how the systems
interact while it is running (functionalism).
The term 'function' can also refer to how the mental process functions in the
evolution of the species, what adaptive property it provides that would cause it to
be selected through evolution.
On Introspection: felt that a naturalistic kind of
introspection—an effort to observe our own thoughts and
feelings as they actually seem to us—could tell us much about
our mental life. This was, for him, the most important of
investigative methods; he defined it as "looking into our own
minds and reporting what we there discover."
Stream of Consciousness
All people unhesitatingly believe that they feel themselves thinking, and
they distinguish the mental state as an inward activity or passion, from all
the objects with which it may cognitively deal. I regard this belief as the
most fundamental of all the postulates of Psychology, and shall discard all
curious inquiries about its certainty as too metaphysical for the scope of this
book.
The proper subject of psychology was, therefore, the introspective analysis
of the "states of mind" that we are conscious of in daily life and of the
functions they perform for the organism.
Pragmatism - wrote considerably on the concept of pragmatism. According to
pragmatism, the truth of an idea can never be proven. James proposed we instead
focus on what he called the "cash value," or usefulness, of an idea.
James-Lange Theory of Emotion The James-Lange theory of emotion proposes
that an event triggers a physiological reaction, which we then interpret. According
to this theory, emotions are caused by our interpretations of these physiological
reactions. Both James and the Danish physiologist Carl Lange independently
proposed the theory.
Influence on Psychology
In addition to his own enormous influence, many of James' students went on to
have prosperous and influential career in psychology. Some of James' students
included Mary Whiton Calkins, Edward Thorndike, G. Stanley Hall, and John
Dewey.
In 1894 he was the first American to call favorable attention to the recent work of
relatively obscure Viennese physician, Sigmund Freud.
William James Quotations
Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the
outer aspects of their lives.
The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless
abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of
others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave
vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled
as long as life endures.
Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each
man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man
as he really is.
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to
contradict other philosophers.
Hugo Munsterberg
Hired by James in 1892
One of Munsterberg's intentions was to treat psychology as
broadly and as widely as possible. He did not have any
patience with approaches like Titchener's, which he viewed
as too restrictive. Munsterberg was known to speak of
Titchener's structuralism as precise but not useful.
However, Munsterberg did not like giving a concrete definition of psychology
becasue he thought that any definition would create rules and restrictions that he
did not want and could not accept. Instead, Munsterberg was interested in
functions or acts such as, memory, understanding, learning, a search for beauty,
empathy, love, and faith. Munsterberg saw psychology in a purpose-oriented
functionalist manner. For him, it was "more natural to drink the water than to
analyze it in the laboratory into its chemical elements" (Hothersall, 1995, p163).
Dr. Munsterberg's lifetime interest was in the application of psychological
knowledge, specifically in the service of humanity.
Munsterberg always considered himself to be an experimental psychologist.
Applied Psychology
Application of research methods to applied
areas of human behavior.
Basic Research – research into general,
abstract laws.
Clinical Psychology
He had an unusual style when treating patients; he would meet them in his
laboratory instead of a clinic, and his only patients were those who were of
scientific interest to him. None of Munsterberg’s patients ever had to pay a fee
for his counseling services. He believed that mental illness had a physiological
basis .
Direct suggestions and autosuggestions were used to encourage the patient to
"expect" to get well. His main objective was to give his patients immediate relief. For
example, he did this by assuring his patients that they would get a good night's
sleep and low-and-behold, they would wake up feeling rested.
He wrote about these clinical experiences in his book, Psychotherapy.
Reported that he saw success using these techniques in the treatment of a wide
range of problems, including hallucinations, drug addiction, phobias, sexual
disorders, alcoholism, and obsessions.
Industrial Psychology
He studied problems with monotony, physical/social
influences on the working power, attention and fatigue, the
effects of advertising, and the future development of
economic psychology. In 1913, Munsterberg's work in I/O
psychology was presented in his book, Psychology and
Industrial Efficiency.
The book was divided into three main sections: "The best
possible man for the job", "the best possible work", and
"the the best possible effect." "The best possible man for
the job" dealt with selection of workers, "the best possible
work", discussed factors affecting worker efficiency, and
"the best possible effect" discussed sales, marketing, and
advertising techniques.
Forensic psychology & Eyewitness Testimony
Published On the Witness Stand.
Reality Experiments
Lie Detection
Group Decision Making
False Confessions
Munsterberg wrote about people who confessed to have
committed a crime, but really had not. He looked at situations in
which these untrue confessions were likely to occur. Munsterberg
found that with intense interrogation of those who have a strong
need to please and that with those who have a need to comply
with powerful authority, untrue confessions were likely to arise.
He also found that these same results occurred with deeply
depressed individuals who feel a need for punishment.
On December 16, 1916, Munsterberg died on the
lecture platform while beginning a lecture at
Radcliffe. He was not even able to finish his
opening sentence.
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885)
Scientific Study of Memory
Stimulus - nonsense syllable
method (e.g., DAX, BUP, GEJ).
Presented on a Memory Drum
Tested his own memory
Each list learned to criterion
of 2 errorless tests.
IV: Retention time (minutes, hours, days)
Dependant Measures
1) Number recalled
- fast loss at beginning, then levels out.
2) Savings # of trials to relearn
Large Savings at short retention,
Rapid decreased with longer retention
Then leveled out.
E.g., After 6 days 30% savings.
3) Overlearning
- learn to criterion then rehearsed thirty times more.
Greatly increased savings.
E.g., At 6 days 64% savings.
Appears Rehearsal leads to Memory.
Reductionist Methods - claims that everything that exists can
be explained as the interactions of a small number of simple things.
In Ebbinghaus’ case, what effects memory of
nonsense syllables also effects memory of words,
dates and other information.
Early History of Clinical Psychology
Early man widely believed that mental
illness was the result of supernatural
phenomena such as spiritual or demonic
possession, sorcery, the evil eye, or an
angry deity and so responded with equally
mystical, and sometimes brutal,
treatments.
Trephining:
surgical intervention in which a
hole is drilled or scraped into
the human skull, exposing
the dura mater in order to treat
health problems related to
intracranial diseases.
Hippocrates (460-377 BC) humoral theory,
proposed a triad of mental disorders
termed melancholia, mania and phrenitis (an acute
mental disorder accompanied by fever). He also
spoke of other disorders such as phobia.
He believed that disease was the product of
environmental factors, diet and living habits, not a
punishment inflicted by the gods, and that the
appropriate treatment depended on which bodily
fluid, or humour, had caused the problem
Greek Era
Plato (427-347 BC) argued that there were
two types of mental illness: "divinely
inspired" mental illness that gave the person
prophetic powers, and a second type that was
caused by a physical disease.
th
16
to
th
18
Century
Some mentally disturbed people may have
been victims of the witch-hunts that spread in
waves in early modern Europe. Those judged
insane were increasingly admitted to
local workhouses, poorhouses and jails.
St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital
Harsh treatment
and restraint in
chains was seen
as therapeutic,
helping suppress
the animal
passions.
People paid to
visit old Bedlam
and to see the
sight.
1814: 96 people
each paid a penny
to visit.
Benjamin Rush
The gyrator,
based on the
principle of
centrifugal action
to increase
cerebral
circulation.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud was born on 6 May, 1856.
Parents favored him over his siblings ~ they sacrificed
everything to give him a proper education.
Graduated with honors from high school.
Freud enrolled at the University of Vienna in 1873, where it
took him three years longer than normal to complete his
medical studies.
Medical school
In 1876, he published his first paper about “eel testicles”
In 1874, the concept of "psychodynamics" was proposed
with the publication of Lectures on Physiology by German
physiologist Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke (in
coordination with physicist Hermann von Helmholtz) the
living organism is a dynamic system to which the laws of
chemistry and physics apply.
In 1879, Freud interrupted his studies to complete his one
year of obligatory military service, and in 1881 he received
his M.D. with a thesis on “the spinal cord of lower fish
species".
Joseph Breuer - catharsis
From 1884 onwards, he began to experiment with cocaine,
using it on himself. Freud felt that cocaine would work as a
panacea for many disorders and wrote a well-received paper,
"On Coca," explaining its virtues.
1885 - Ernst von Fleischl’s death
1886 – becomes Privatdozent U of Vienna
Paris - Jean-Martin Charcot - hypnosis
1886 – opened his own
medical practice,
specializing in
neurology.
“On Male Hysteria” -
etiological role of
trauma
Wilhelm Fliess
Berlin. Ear Nose and Throat Specialist.
Male (23) and female (28) Life cycles.
Linked to mucus lining of the nose.
Humans are basically bisexual .
Death of Emma Eckstein.
The Seduction Theory
April 21,1896 - Freud presented a paper before the Society
for Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna, entitled "The
Aetiology of Hysteria“. Using a sample of 18 patients from
his practice, he concluded that all of them had been the
victims of unwanted sexual assaults by various caretakers.
The cause of the patient’s distress lay in a trauma inflicted
by an actor in the child’s social environment. The source of
internal psychic pain lay in an act inflicted upon the child
from outside. This led to his well known ‘seduction theory’.
1897-1898 - abandoned the Seduction theory
In 1981, J.M. Masson was fired from his position as Projects Director of the
Sigmund Freud Archives, shortly after suggesting in a talk in New Haven that
a key theory Freud had developed in 1895 and later repudiated - the so-called
seduction theory - may have been valid after all. This talk scandalized the
Freudian orthodoxy, as reported in Time, Newsweek, and The New York
Times.
Here for the first time are the letters from Freud, long kept from public view,
which stirred this controversy. On the basis of these letters and other new
information Masson discovered at the Archives and elsewhere in Europe, he
has written a devastating and highly controversial expose of the origins of
psychoanalysis. In 1895, Sigmund Freud formulated what was perhaps his
most profound theory: that emotional disturbances in adults stem from actual
from actual early traumatic experiences, the knowledge of which has been repressed. But Freud eventually
renounced this theory in favor of a new view, that his women patients had "fantasized" their early memories
of rape and seduction - a view on which the whole budding science of psychoanalysis would be based.
Masson makes available previously unpublished letters from Freud's closest friend, Wilhelm Fliess, which
reveal that Freud had grave doubts about abandoning the "seduction theory." Masson discovered that not
only had Freud read the contemporary literature documenting the high incidence of sexual abuse of children,
he had in all likelihood witnessed autopsies of children who had been raped and murdered. That Freud
abandoned his seduction theory, Masson argues, was a failure of courage rather than a clinical or theoretical
insight.
As a result, most psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have in effect been reluctant to trust the memories of
their patients, women in particular, about the traumas they experienced in childhood. Like Freud, they see
such traumas as fantasy rather than reality. This cover-up of the truth, Masson asserts, has poisoned the
entire profession.
From http://www.jeffreymasson.com/other-publications/assault-on-truth.html
ANNA O (Bertha Pappenheim)
-patient of Josef Breuer
(collaborator with Freud)
-Free Association (chimney sweeping)
-Transference
"Breuer told Freud that she was deranged; he
hoped she would die to end her suffering". She
later recovered over time and led a productive
life.
Freud's background in neurophysiology included an
understanding of late 19th Century thermodynamics
and, in particular, the principle of conservation of
energy.
Since Freud viewed the impulses of the psyche as bursts
of energy, it was clear to him that the Ego could not
simply destroy these impulses but that it must, in some
way, convert them or send them elsewhere.
Thus, Freud used a term "sublimation" which Nietzsche
had already used in a similar context. Repression
requires sublimation; that is, the energy must be
channeled elsewhere. (e.g., one channel for energy is
self-directed aggression --- guilt and self-hate.)
Freud tried to trace movement of psychic energy
from excitation to discharge, something that
Helmholtz was examining.
Psychic energy arises from two sources, excitation
from the external world and excitation from bodily
tissues.
Freud generally used the terms "instinct" and
"libido" when referring to psychic energy arising
from bodily tissue.
Treatment: Bottled up energy must be released to
reduce tension (cathartic release).
Breuer later distanced himself from Freud,
because, “Freud is given to absolute and
exclusive formulations: this is a psychical
need which leads to excessive generalization.
There may in addition be a desire d’épater le
bourgeois [to shock the bourgeois]. ... I
confess that the plunging into sexuality in
theory and practice is not to my taste”
Communication Style
His analyses of cases were like detective stories
in which he succeeded in tracking down the
“guilty” one -- the unconscious emotional motive
-- with an original way of interpreting the
patient’s associations, dreams, and symptoms.
And it seemed all pretty exact, scientific.
What Have we kept from Freud????
- what is still relevant today.
Behaviorism had it's earliest start with the
work of a Russian physiologist named Ivan
Pavlov. Pavlov's research on the digestive
systems of dogs led to his discovery of the
classical conditioning process, which
demonstrated that behaviors could be
learned via conditioned associations.
Pavlov referred to the process as Psychic
Learning!!!! In 1904 he received the Nobel
Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his
pioneering studies of how the digestive
system works.
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/pavlov/in
dex.html
Behaviorism is an approach to psychology
based on the proposition that behavior can be
researched scientifically without recourse to
inner mental states. It is a form of
materialism.
J.B.
Watson
"Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,"
Behaviorist Manifesto: In 1913, in one of the
most famous lectures in the history of
psychology was given by John Broadus Watson.
"Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,"
Called for a radical revision of the scope and
method of psychological research.
• Introspection was to be abandoned in favor of the
study of behavior.
• Objective methodology in research.
Operational definitions: Represent concepts in
psychology in terms of the ways they are objectively
found. i.e., hunger became the amount of time
without food.
Stimulus/Response.
Animal Research
Behavioral laws are so
basic they apply equally
to animals and to humans.
Materialism -No reference to the mind,
unconscious influences, thoughts, emotions.
Radical Behaviorism – mind as epiphenomena
Relational Behaviorism – behavior as mechanistic
Philosophical Behaviorism
- consciousness “ a form of behavior guided by
future results.
What Motivates?
Instinct and Habits
Drive Reduction (thirst, hunger, etc.)
Social Behavior
Language and thought - thinking to oneself
occurs only when there is overt muscle
movement.
The curare Experiment (1947)
An anesthesiologist agreed to be subject to
complete paralysis. While completely paralyzed,
the subject's vital signs were monitored
throughout. As long as the patient was able to
move muscles voluntarily, he answered questions
asked by the experimenters. Once fully paralyzed,
the subject was asked to keep mental notes of his
experiences, to be transcribed immediately after
recovery of voluntary muscles. In addition, an
electro-encephalogram recorded brain activity
throughout. The subject was a healthy male, aged
34, weighing 80 Kg.
Results
“The subject maintained consciousness including full
awareness of the sensorium and full comprehension
of verbal stimuli.”
•Therefore overt muscle movement is not required
for thinking.
Smith, S. M., Brown, H. O., Toman, J. E.P., &
Goodman, L. S., (1947) "The Lack of Cerebral
Effects of d-Tubocurarine", Anesthesiology, 8(1), 114.
Purpose of psychology : The prediction and
control of behavior.
Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my
own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee
to take any one at random and train him to become any
type of specialist I might select -- doctor, lawyer, artist,
merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief,
regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities,
vocations, and race of his ancestors.
--John Watson, Behaviorism, 1930
Strengths of Behaviorism
Behaviorism is based upon observable behaviors, so it is easier to quantify
and collect data and information when conducting research.
Effective therapeutic techniques such as intensive behavioral intervention,
token economies, and discrete trial training are all rooted in behaviorism.
These approaches are often very useful in changing maladaptive or harmful
behaviors in both children and adults.
Weakness????????
“If we ever do end up acting just like rats
or Pavlov’s dogs, it will be largely
because behaviorism has conditioned us
to do so.”
~ Richard Dean Rosen
Author of Psychobabble (1979)