Lecture 1 - Prehistory and the Classical Antiquity Flashcards
Exam information
just read through it
- 25 multiple-choice
- 3 open-ended (one per week)
> original texts are exam material as well
> book is important, and it is not possible to pass exam just by focusing on the lectures
> look at posted multiple choice questions in discussion board, because if there are enough, two of them will be in the exam
! don’t focus on small details. It is important to know order, general time frame of philosophers, but not necessarily specific years
Learning Goals
just read through it
- paraphrase traditional and modern ideas on fundamental problems in psychology
- use valid arguments about fundamental issues in psychology (e.g. empiricism vs rationalism)
> e.g. in exam they might ask us to give n. arguments from Hume on causality, in open-ended (it is just an example of how and open-ended might be) - evaluate the approaches to science in terms of their strengths and weaknesses
> e.g. how philosophers respond to each other, what came first, what followed and why - explain the effect of a stance of phylosophy of science to the practice of science
- explain the difference between different views on the philosophy of science
In this lecture:
just read through it
- Prehistory
- Classical Antiquity
- Plato and Aristotle
- Rationalism and Empiricism
> at the beginning we would study anything that we could observe, afterwards we started studying ourselves as well
Prehistory - the beginning of language
just read through it
- on walls: it started with images, then writings and numbers
> this is a way to record knowledge, facts
> this was a starting point for knowledge to grow, because we were able to capture it and build on it
1. with language a representation communicated from one person to another
2. with writing, representations can be brought into someone’s head without the other being physically present
3. it becomes possible to have shared representations: ideas can easily spread and can also be sustained over generations
What arised from shared representations?
just read through it
- religion (could be discussed and shared among people)
- money (their valued had to be agreed upon)
- complex social structures (society with people with different roles, people start collaborating with structure)
- agriculture (even for exchange with other tribes)
Social developments - from agriculture to society
just read through it
- through the discovery of agriculture, a man can
> stay in one place and establish settlements
> produce more food than is needed to feed everyone, so not everyone has to constantly arrange food - there is the possibility of creating a community in which different people fulfil different roles
- a hierarchy typically emerges, in which higher ranked individuals have time
Greek Antiquity - what is the difference between Greece and the other early civilizations?
> among the earlier civilizations, we have Egypt and mesopotamia
- in Greece, higher-ranked individuals start thinking about science and knowledge
- here systematic research is born
What disciplines did Greeks create?
- Ontology (what is the world like?)
- Epistemology (how do we know what’s true?)
- Aestethics (what makes some things beautiful and others ugly?)
- Ethics (what makes some deeds good and some bad?)
> in this course, we’ll focus on Ontology and Epistemiology
What are Ontology and Epistemology?
- e.g. in psychology
- Ontology: what is the world like? what is an emotion?
- Epistemology: how do we know? how do we learn about emotions?
What are the first main philosophers?
- (Heraclitus)
- Socrates
- Plato
- Aristotle
- (the stoics, the Epicureans, the skeptics)
Heraclitus
- when and main idea
- 535-475 BC
- called “The Obscure”
- doubts whether something ever stays the same
- “no man ever steps in the same river twice”
What was Heraclitus’ main point?
Is this idea ontological or epistemological? Why?
- the only constant is change itself
- everything always flows and changes
- “Panta Rhei” → everything flows
> this is an ontological statement, because it’s about what he thought the world was like
Heraclitus nowadays - how do his ideas apply to psychology today?
- “everything changes” depends on the school of psychology you look at
> e.g. in experimental psychology, we look at human beings as interchangeable (through random assignment the noise cancels out → Invariance principle)
The invariance principle - what is the dilemma in psychology?
- many sciences now rely on this principle:
> through random assignment, participants are interchangeable
> all electrons are interchangeable - in psychology however, are people really interchangeable? Are there psychological invarances?
> if in experimental psychology we assume that people don’t differ, in psychometric research we have opposite assumption, and we investigate those differences
What are the two main contrasting epistemological concepts?
Which one is the more dominant now in psychology?
- Rationalism vs Empiricism
> Rationalism: knowledge comes from reason (ratio)
> Empiricism: knowledge comes from a sensory experience - for now, psychology focuses mostly on empiricism
! these two themes are still relevant in present psychology and philosophy, the debate is still ongoing
Disclaimer!
- For now we associate Plato to Rationalism and Aristotle to Empiricism
- However, it is not a black-and-white difference; there are nuances of both concepts in both philosophers
Plato vs Aristotle - what is their main disagreement? What was their relationship?
- Plato: world of forms, ideas come from something apart from this planet
- Aristotle: knowledge comes from observations
! Main difference is about their epistemological perspective (how to gain knowledge)
> Plato was the teacher of Aristotle
Plato - what is his central thesis?
- Central Thesis: Knowledge comes from the ratio (intelligence)
- practical knowledge is partly based on observation, but not the real knowledge
What is real knowledge? What knowledge is superior?
- Real knowledge: about the good, the true and the beautiful
- knowledge from reason is superior to knowledge from experience
What is idea/concept associated to Plato and Rationalism? How is it called?
- There is innate knowledge
> Nativism
How can we use a circle to explain Plato’s rationalism?
- in nature, no observable circle is ever perfect
- so then, how do we know what a perfect circle looks like?
> this is because we already have the perfect shapes in our minds!
~ “idea” comes from “eidos”, which means form or image
According to Plato, how do we access ideas?
- we remember these ideas from our divine origin
- knowledge is recognized, therefore we know it must be true
Where does our mind come from?
According to Plato
- from the world of forms
> this is a transcendent world where the perfect forms are - reincarnation explains our prior knowledge on perfect forms
Plato’s cave - what does it explain?
- we are like prisoners in a cave, and all we see are faulty observations (the shadows), e.g. about circles
- some of us escape the cave and experience what true knowledge is; it’s very hard to escape
→ it’s very hard to get from faulty observations to real knowledge - escaped people (with real knowledge) cannot communicate with people in the cave
Plato and Socrates - What are the Socratic Dialogues?
- Socrates was Plato’s teacher
- Socrates didn’t write anything, but Plato wrote Socrate’s teachings in the Socratic Dialogues
> Socratic Dialogues: written dialogues where Socrates asks questions, to prove his point
Socrates and Meno - What was their dialogue about?
- Socrates asked Meno where his slave got the geometrical knowledge → Meno replied that his slave was never thaught anything about it
- so Socrates said that then he must have gotten that knowledge in the realm before being a man, and the soul possessed this knowledge
- since the truth of all things always existed in the soul, the soul must be immortal
Nativism in modern psychology
- studies show that even very young children can reason casually and that babies are surprised when natural laws are violated
> e.g. study with puppets, babies surprised when something fell upwards - according to many, language ability is innate
! however, now nativism is not rooted in reincarnation, but in the evolution of the brain
Empiricism
- Central Thesis: knowledge lies in observation
> associated thesis: if all knowledge comes from experience, there is no need for innate knowledge
Who is the founding father of empiricism? What did he add to rationalism?
- Aristotle
> Self-evident axioms cannot be rejected by observations
→ e.g. geometrycan be deduced using maths, you don’t need observations in this case
→ he understood that observations can be faulty
BUT! these axioms are acquired through experience, they are not innate or shown to us before birth
→ e.g. we are not born with maths skills
Peripatetic Principle
- what is it? What was it later known as?
- “nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses”
- called Paripatetic Principle because Aristotle was teaching in the lyceum (peripateo in Greek)
- later known as “Tabula Rasa” theory
→ the mind is an unwritten tablet (blank state) at birth
How does Aristotle interpret the circle?
How does this apply to modern psychology?
- even if circles in nature are not precise, we can collect many observations and extract general knowledge about how the perfect circle should be
> in experiments we know that participants are not accurate when answering self-reports, but when we collect enough data we can still see patterns and infer knowledge
Aristotle vs Plato
- Aristotle rejects Plato’s idea of two-worlds theory (there is only the world we can observe)
- A: everything around us consists of forms and matter
- A: the forms are not just something in our heads, but are the essence of being
the Paripatetic Principle throughout history, until now
- John Locke became famous because of it
- John Watson based his behaviorism on this idea
- the nature-nurture debate still plays a role (e.g. individual differences in intelligence)
Aristotle’s view on knowledge - what is knowledge based on? + example
-
sensory experiences
> e.g. we observe swans -
induction
> we induce that swans have specific properties -
logic: combining laws in a way that is truthful
> from self-evident laws (the axioms) we can deduce theoretical statements using logic
> e.g. all swans are white + Cygnus is a swan → Cygnus is white
! Logic does not tell us what to think, but how we get from premises to a conclusion
