Rene Descartes

1
Rene Descartes

• French philosopher of the mid -1600s end of
  the Renaissance Period
• Greatly influenced by the works of Leonardo da
  Vinci, Galileo, and Copernicus
• Also influenced by development of mechanical toys
  and clocks
• Major contribution for psychology was his focus
  on behavior and the mind in the mind-body issue

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Philosophy Influenced by Authorities of the time

• 1st book written in 1638 very mechanistic like
  the toys and clocks he saw
• Human behavior the result of reflexes
• Eliminated the idea of free will
• No evidence of a soul
• This book was not published until after his death
• Shortly after the reformation
• The trial and imprisonment of Galileo

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New Philosophy of Descartes

• Nonhumans are mechanical and fully automated
• Humans are somewhat mechanized, but we have a
  soul, are unique in our ability to think and
  reason
• Led to Dualism humans have a mechanical body
  but also a mind that was different from the body

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Dualism

• Mind and body coordinated their activities in the
  brain pineal gland
• The mind has structure, it is a thing
• The content of the mind was ideas
• Innate ideas such as ideas about God and self
  I think, therefore I am. Concepts of space,
  time, and motion
• Derived ideas come from experience and they
  alter the nervous system

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Descartes Deductive Rationalism

• Method of Scientific inquiry was deductive
  reasoning
• Sensory information unreliable and can not be
  totally trusted

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Example of Descartes' Reasoning

• My body and objects in the environment are real.
  I can see, touch, hear, and taste them. I get
  thirsty, feel pain, etc.
• However, I dream and people report pain long
  after a limb has been amputated these feelings
  and sensations are not real
• Therefore how do I know things really exist,
  maybe I shouldnt trust my experiences as
  evidence of the existence of self and objects
• God gave us these senses, God is not deceitful,
  therefore we can use trust the senses God gave us

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Descartes as a Foundation for Psychology

• First attempt to develop a model of the Mind-Body
  position Dualism
• Methodology breaking a large complicated
  problem down into simpler individual parts
• Learning and experience alter the Brain

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British Empiricism

• John Locke, John Stuart Mills among others
• Not interested in the content of the mind most
  interested in how the mind worked
• Wanted to understand how the mind acquires
  knowledge, not what it knows
• The importance of learning through experience

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John Locke

• Many of his philosophical ideas were the basis
  for our American form of democracy
• But he was also an important foundation of
  psychology
• We develop ideas sensations, perceptions, and
  abstractions through experience
• Concept of Tabula Rosa used by Descartes, but
  Locke denied the idea of innate ideas
• Yes, sensory experiences maybe inaccurate at
  times, but we have no choice there is no other
  source of information

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Qualities and Ideas

• Addressed accuracy of sensory systems using 2
  terms
• Qualities the ability of the physical
  properties of an object to produce an idea
  wavelength is a quality of light
• Ideas a mental image that could be employed
  while thinking results from sensations or
  reflections
• The source of all ideas is sensation
• But these ideas can be acted upon and rearranged
  by operations of the mind

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Qualities of an Object or Event

• 2 types of qualities
• Primary qualities- the actual attributes of the
  object or event
• Secondary qualities the type of psychological
  experience they cause
• Paradox of the basins 3 basins - hot water,
  cold water, and lukewarm water

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Ideas

• 2 kinds of ideas
• Simple ideas - the basic elements of experience
  because they cannot divided or analyzed further
  into other ideas
• Complex ideas combinations of simple ideas
• Mental processes operate on simple ideas to form
  complex ideas
• Complex ideas have attractive forces that bring
  simple ideas together
• Mutual attraction of ideas became the basis for
  many learning theories

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John Stuart Mills -Associationism

• Interested in how sensations and ideas became
  associated or combined
• People who study his work and compare it to
  others estimate his IQ was about 200, the highest
  in history
• Strong advocate for womens rights and was
  anti-slavery all people created equal

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Mills A Foundation of Psychology

• Human thinking involved actively restructuring
  and rearranging the ideas provided by experience
• Mental chemistry ideas, like chemicals, could
  be combined to produce a combination with
  properties not found in the individual ideas
• Argued against the ideas of Auguste Compte that
  it was impossible to scientifically study the
  mind
• Many of the questions that concerned him are
  relevant to psychology today

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Alexander Baine

• British associationist who was more similar to a
  psychologist than the others
• Wrote what was later to become the 1st British
  Psychology textbook
• An important foundation for Edward Thorndikes
  Law of Effect
• Supported the study of psychology using
  naturalistic observation and experimentation
• Created the first psychological journal, Mind

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Opposition to Associationism

• Emmual Kant a strong nativist
• We learn through experience, but what we learn is
  innately determined
• We learn a language through experience, but the
  ability to learn a language is an innate quality
  of the mind
• A foundation for a number of current
  developmental theories attempting to explain the
  interaction between innate processes and
  experiences

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Importance of Early Philosophers

• Raised some of the basic questions psychologists
  strive to answer today
• Developed the methods of deductive and inductive
  reasoning
• Stressed the importance of understanding the mind

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Differences in Ideas About the Nature of Humans

• Christian Church humans bad, need religion to
  control instincts
• Hobbs agreed humans are basically aggressive
  animals. Society has to teach them to control
  aggression
• Locke humans are naturally good and people are
  born with equal potential
• Rousseau French Romanticist children have an
  innate knowledge of right and wrong. They will
  be good unless society interferes
• Freud humans born with need for instant
  gratification, selfish, etc.
• Maslow and Rogers humans born to strive to be
  good