The science of human nature

Question 1

Who was the real threat to religion and why?

Answer 1

Newton - he had a theory of how things worked which didn’t need an external thought. The laws of physics govern things, rather than God.

Question 2

What are the laws of human nature?

Answer 2

The equivalent of Newton’s laws for the mind.

Question 3

What did Descartes and Locke believe about the nature of knowledge?

Answer 3

Descartes believed that some knowledge is innate (rationalist), whereas Locke believed there was no innate knowledge, all knowledge was gained through experience.

Question 4

What viewpoints is Molyneux’s question used to distinguish between?

Answer 4

Descartes’ (rationalist) and Locke’s beliefs regarding the nature of knowledge.

Question 5

What is Molyneux’s question?

Answer 5

Suppose a Man born blind and now adult and taught by his touch to distinguish between a Cube and a Sphere of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the Cube, which is the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere are placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see. Query, whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which the Globe and which the Cube.

Question 6

How does rationalism answer Molyneux’s question?

Answer 6

People have innate knowledge of shapes, so the formerly blind man could distinguish between the cube and the sphere.

Question 7

How does Locke answer Molyneux’s question?

Answer 7

The blind man wouldn’t have the sensory impression - have no knowledge of what a cube or sphere looks like, therefore couldn’t distinguish.

Question 8

When did George Berkeley live?

Answer 8

1685-1753.

Question 9

What does ‘esse is percipi’ mean?

Answer 9

To be is to be perceived - Berkeley’s idea.

Question 10

What was Berkeley?

Answer 10

An idealist and immaterialist.

Question 11

Define idealism.

Answer 11

The idea that everything that exists is either a mind or depends for its existence upon a mind.

Question 12

Define immaterialism.

Answer 12

The idea that matter does not exist except in the mind.

Question 13

What reason did Berkeley give for things not disappearing when they’re not perceived?

Answer 13

God is an omnipresent observer. (Berkeley was very religious, and was an Irish bishop.)

Question 14

What did Berkeley believe about the nature of knowledge?

Answer 14

He was an empiricist and believed that knowledge is based on experience.

Question 15

What two books is Berkeley best known for?

Answer 15

• An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (1709) - first scientific attempt to explain vision, including 3-D vision.
• A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).

Question 16

What was the aim of Berkeley’s new theory of vision?

Answer 16

To explain how we perceive the “distance, magnification, and situation of objects” - depth and 3-D vision. Also to consider the difference between sight and touch and whether they have a common idea.

Question 17

What two kinds of perception did Berkeley distinguish between?

Answer 17

Mediate (indirect, e.g. perceiving pleasure by a smile on someone’s face, no necessary association), and immediate (direct, e.g. sensory information).

Question 18

What did Berkeley’s New Theory of Vision state about extension?

Answer 18

That there is no way to demonstrate the extension (occupation of space) of things in the world except through ideas (percepts, properties of object). Nothing about the object itself gives us knowledge.

Question 19

What are the immediate ideas that mediate (not direct) the perception of distance?

Answer 19

• The kinesthetic sensations associated with focusing the eyes when perceiving objects at various distances.
• As objects are brought closer to the eye, their appearance becomes more confused - point eyes slightly inward, eventually it goes out of focus.
• This confusion can be mitigated by straining the eyes which is recognized by kinesthetic sensations.
Thus there is no necessary connection between the ideas and distance, merely a customary connection between two types of ideas.

Question 20

What did Berkeley assume about touch?

Answer 20

That it provides immediate access to the world.

Question 21

What did Berkeley claim about visual ideas?

Answer 21

That they’re merely signs of tactile ideas:

• There’s no resemblance between visual and tactile ideas
• Their relationship is like that between words and their meanings, in that if one hears a noun, one thinks of the object it denotes. Similarly, if one sees an object, one thinks of an object it denotes.

Question 22

From what did Berkeley draw his conclusions about visual ideas?

Answer 22

Introspection.

Question 23

What thesis does Berkeley follow in general?

Answer 23

The heterogeneity thesis.

Question 24

What is the heterogeneity thesis?

Answer 24

The objects of sight and touch and each of the other senses are distinct and incommensurable.
So, one complex tactual object corresponds to the indefinitely large number of visual objects.
Since there are no necessary connections between the objects of sight and touch, the objects must be distinct.

Question 25

What were Berkeley’s opinions regarding abstraction?

Answer 25

He distinctly disliked it, as it allowed uncertainty with respect to human knowledge (he blamed philosophical scepticism on both abstraction and materialism). If object judgement is based on abstraction, it’s too uncertain - an object could belong to several categories.

Question 26

Outline Locke’s theory of abstraction.

Answer 26

Abstraction explains how general terms obtain meaning. For example a general term, such as ‘mouse’, refers to an abstract general idea, which contains all and only those properties that one deems common to all mice, or, more properly, the ways in which all cats resemble each other.

Question 27

If Locke’s theory of abstraction is believed, what happens to an object following any meaning it loses one of its key properties?

Answer 27

It’s no longer the same object.

Question 28

What did Berkeley state regarding abstraction?

Answer 28

1. I can’t do it
2. We don’t need it - just make judgements based on exemplars
3. The theory leads to inconsistencies.

Question 29

What was Berkeley’s opinion on materialism?

Answer 29

He was against it. His attack on materialism is an attack on how material objects come to be represented.

Question 30

Outline Berkeley’s attack on materialism.

Answer 30

We perceive ordinary objects (chairs, cars, houses, etc).
We perceive only ideas.
Therefore ordinary objects are only ideas.
We don’t need to know about objects, only our ideas/representations of them.

Question 31

What reply can a representational materialist use against Berkeley’s argument against materialism?

Answer 31

Can use the distinction between mediated and immediate perception to reply that ordinary objects are mediately perceived, and ideas are immediately perceived.

Question 32

What is Berkeley’s reply to the representational materialist view?

Answer 32

That it is essentially nonsense - the representations of the represented objects are ideas and not the objects themselves.

Question 33

How could Berkeley’s antimaterialist stance be described?

Answer 33

As essentially dualist - it involves the same question of how material objects can cause mental ideas.

Question 34

When did David Hume live?

Answer 34

1711-1766.

Question 35

Who was David Hume?

Answer 35

A Scottish empiricist philosopher.

Question 36

What is Hume’s best known work?

Answer 36

His Treatise on Human Nature (1739/40), republished as Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.

Question 37

Why was Hume remarkably unpopular among the religious hierarchy, despite being a deist?

Answer 37

He argued against miracles, life after death, and in favour of a person’s right to commit suicide and even murder.

Question 38

What did Hume state regarding empiricism?

Answer 38

That we should “reject every system… which is not founded on fact and observation” and listen to no arguments except those derived from experience. All our thought is derived either from sensation (“outward sentiment”) or from reflection (“inward sentiment”).

Question 39

What did Hume state about complex ideas?

Answer 39

That they are composed of simple ideas and thereby limited by our simple ideas which are copies of our sensory impressions.

Question 40

What did Hume’s philosophical scepticism lead him to conclude?

Answer 40

That when a “philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is too frequent), we need but enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived?”
Essentially, people need to back up their claims.

Question 41

What is Hume’s empirical method?

Answer 41

• find the idea to which a term is annexed. If none can be found, then the term has no content, however prominently it may figure in philosophy or theology - no sensory experience, bizarre to think it exists.
• if the idea is complex, break it up into simple ideas of which it is composed, then trace the simple ideas back to their original sensory impressions.

Question 42

What did Hume’s empirical method aim to do?

Answer 42

Remove all dispute which may arise concerning the nature and reality of claims.

Question 43

What is associationism?

Answer 43

The means by which ideas connect in order to become more complex are not simply rational, rather they reflect the ‘natural’ activity of the mind.

Question 44

What are the principles of connection?

Answer 44

How we make associations (reflecting the natural activity of the mind

• resemblance (however there’s the problem of induction - just because something seems like other things, doesn’t mean they’re the same. misleading)
• contiguity (automatic, e.g. hands near someone belong to them)
• cause and effect (never simple. can imagine a causal event happening without its effect)

Question 45

How is the relationship between cause and effect difficult?

Answer 45

• Causes and effects are distinct events: we can imagine the causal event occurring without the effect (e.g. sex and pregnancy).
• The external reality - “an object, followed by another, and where all objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second“ (association)
• Internal experience - “an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other”.

Question 46

When did Immanuel Kant live?

Answer 46

1724-1804.

Question 47

Describe the life of Immanuel Kant.

Answer 47

Never travelled outside Konigsberg in Prussia, his birthplace - he was born to a wealthy Lutheran couple.

Question 48

In what key way was Kant arguably the most influential philosopher for psychology?

Answer 48

He addressed the question of what we can know, and Piagetian theory is based on Kantian thinking.

Question 49

What stance did Kant take on the nature of knowledge?

Answer 49

Rationalist - it is possible to know things without experience.

Question 50

What is Kant best known for?

Answer 50

His book ‘A critique of pure reason’, in which he deliberately obscured his meaning, gossamer veil. 1781/7, became famous because another philosopher used it in an argument.

Question 51

What fundamental question did Kant address, and what was his answer?

Answer 51

What we can know - wrote that our knowledge is limited to mathematics and the empirical, natural sciences, and cannot extend to metaphysics, e.g. God. The mind is active in constructing the features of experience and the mind activity is limited to the empirical reality of space and time.

Question 52

Outline the debate between rationalism and empiricism.

Answer 52

The empiricists argue that all human knowledge is known a posteriori, whereas the rationalists argue that at least some human knowledge is known a priori.

Question 53

How did Kant demolish the debate between rationalism and empiricism?

Answer 53

He argued that any theory of knowledge that relies on the distinction between a priori and a posteriori is destined to fail - a further distinction between synthetic and analytic knowledge is needed.

Question 54

How did Kant define analytic knowledge?

Answer 54

The predicate is contained within the subject, e.g. ‘every body occupies space’ - to occupy space requires a body.

Question 55

How did Kant define synthetic knowledge?

Answer 55

The predicate is not contained within the subject, e.g. ‘it’s cold and sunny today’ - there’s nothing about ‘today’ that necessitates ‘cold and sunny’.

Question 56

What is the problem for the empiricists?

Answer 56

That some of the foundations of their theories cannot be known a posteriori (for certain on the basis of experience), e.g. every event must have a cause.

Question 57

How did Kant describe empiricist theoretical foundations?

Answer 57

Such statements are both synthetic and a priori, and empiricism fails as a theory of what can be known because of this.

Question 58

What is Kant’s solution to the problem of synthetic a priori knowledge as the basis of empiricism?

Answer 58

That there are some things that the mind knows that shape our understanding of our sensory experiences - rationalism. The nature of our experience of the external world must be as much about the features and activity of the mind that knows it as the external world itself. Essentially, Kant is introducing a transcendental mode of argument.

Question 59

What is a transcendental mode of argument?

Answer 59

Knowledge is “transcendental if it is occupied, not with objects, but with the way that we can possibly know objects even before we experience them.” Kant’s theory of the nature of knowledge is both rationalist and empiricist at the same time - both internal (brings structure) and external world (experience) - interaction with knowledge shaping experience.

Question 60

Describe the Kantian mind.

Answer 60

• Relatively complex idea
• Serves as the foundation for modern theories of cognition (Chomsky and Piaget)
• The mind consists of by a set of complex abilities (functions)
• Thinking requires both percepts (on the basis of our sensory experiences) and concepts (cognitive functions that shape our perception)
• These functions operate a synthesis within the mind
• One concept is the transcendental idea of cause. Support - babies’ eyes follow hidden rolled ball, expect it to continue. Structure of experience exists before experience.
• To understand the mind is to understand those hidden, unobservable mental functions.
• Different representations are combined through synthesis.