Summary whole course resume - History and Methods of Psychology (FSWP2-032-A)

Problem 1


Plato (427-347 BC)  nativist & rationalist
 Knowledge
 How can it be justified?
 Truth = permanent and rationally justifiable
 Perception with the senses is NOT the path to knowledge
 According to Plato, truth was in the realm of Forms (not in the material world), thus
it couldn’t be accessed by material senses that reflected the material world
 Theory of Forms
 Reasoning makes reality reveal to the soul  Rationalism
 Forms = eternal  exist outside the physical realm of Becoming
 Nonphysical objects, perfect
 Exist fixed and universally outside human minds
 Allegory of the cave
 Human condition  humans are imprisoned in an imperfect body, forced to look by
imperfect eyes copies of the Forms, illuminated by the sun
 Plato asks us to abandon the ordinary world and undertake the difficult journey of
escaping the cave and go towards the better world of the Forms
 Find truth
 Ladder of love: Being drawn to good
 Love of beauty = easiest path to world of Forms
 Seek immortality of the soul  not procreation but preservation of ideas
 Intellectual heirs instead of physical heirs
 Beauty in the soul is more valued than in the body
 Learning as Remembering
 Souls are born in heaven, in the realm of Forms, and see all the Forms before their
first incarnation
 Nativism  character and knowledge are innate
 Living is a process of recollection of the knowledge of the Forms we saw when
our soul was born
 Three souls
 Rational  head
 Spirited  motivated by glory and fame
 Desiring  irrational wants, self-interest
 Reason is motivated by justice
 Homunculus problem
 Little man inside our heads  rational soul
 Does this little man also have a little man inside his head? Where does it end?

,Aristotle (384 -322 BC)  empiricist
 Overview
 Empiricism
 Observer of nature
 Concerned with discovering what is natural
 Rejected dualism
 Philosophy of explanation
 Four ways to explain things and events
 Form  what makes a thing what it is (not mystical anymore)
 Formal cause = defines what something is in its essence
 Efficient cause = how things come into existence or what are they made of
 Final cause = purpose for which a thing exists (soul)
 Matter  sheer, physical existence (material cause)
 Form cannot exist without matter
 Potentiality and actuality
 Everything in the universe has potentiality and actuality
 Aristotle sees purpose (final cause) everywhere in nature, including non-living things
 Psychology
 Soul and body
 Psychology = study of the soul
 Soul = final cause of an organism
 Aristotle rejected separation of soul and body
 Without soul, there is no body and vice versa
 Three levels of soul
 Nutritive soul  plants
 Sensitive soul  animals
 Rational soul  humans
 The rational soul
 Knowledge is acquired first by the perception of objects, ending in general
knowledge of forms  it is a psychological process
 Sense perception = starting point of knowledge
 Has to do with form, not matter
 First stage  reception of aspects of an object’s form = special senses
 Second stage  information processed by special senses is passed on to
other faculties = interior senses (can be flawed)
 Common sense = heart
 Imagination
 Memory (recall of previous experiences in our earthly lives)
 Mind
 Rational part of the human soul
 Unique to humans
 Function  acquire knowledge of abstract universals
 Motivation
 Natural goal of human life = human flourishing  only one best way of life
 Human good turns out to be the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue
 Ethical focus = character (wisdom, courage)  Morality is a matter of practical
reason

, Descartes (1596-1650)  dualist
 The brain has the power to think  mind is governed by the search of truth
 Psychology of Descartes
 Aim = show that a number of psychophysiological functions that had been recognized
as corporal could be accounted for in such way that did not involve matter sentient
 Mind vs. body
 Human soul  think
 Separation of humans and animals  differ humans from animals
 Experience  humans posses reflective, thoughtful awareness of their own
awareness and animals don’t
 Behaviour  because of thought, humans can have more flexible behaviour than
animals (e.g.: respond to novel situations by thinking about them)
 Language  unique to humans, critical for self-awareness
 There is an innate human language of the mind
 Philosopher
 Aim = discover/create methodological rules that should guide scientific thinking
 Separate it from religious dogma and mysticism
 Radical doubt  until finding something so true that couldn’t be doubted
 Force himself to find good reasons from believing with certainty in things
 He found that the one thing he cannot doubt is his own experience as a self-
conscious thinking entity  one cannot doubt that one doubts
 Doubting = thinking = existing  I think, therefore I am
 Radical dualism  soul and body are completely different
 Do not share matter or form
 Two worlds
 Objective, scientifically knowable, mechanical-material world
 Subjective world of human consciousness through introspection
 Cartesian theater  where consciousness experience is presented to the mind
 Psychology of consciousness
 Consciousness = collection of sensations projected to the mind that can be
reflectively examined by oneself
 Psychological science = reflective, introspective study of sensation qua sensations
 splitting off experience from the self and making it a thing to be studied
 consciousness = subjective
 difficulties
 homunculus problem
 how do soul and body interact?  he proposed that the pineal gland was the
location of the cartesian theater and that it made possible the soul-body
interaction, but brain studies proved it wrong
 problem of the other minds  how are we sure that my soul is not the only
one in the universe?