The Story of Psychology
What do think psychology is?
What do you know about the discipline of psychology?
Yes it is the study of messed up people and development and
philosophy is involved and addiction and emotion and biology. It is many things.
Our Definition: It is the study of human experience.
Intro
to Psych History
Realist
- spiritualist theme
This class will first trace the development of Western
Psychology. All will be divided into
two categories: Spiritual and Realist thinking. This is done for a couple of reasons
a) It is interesting to
get a perspective on the history of the thinking of the mind. To look at all the ways that folks have
looked at the mind. The sort of
questions that people have asked about man’s relationship, mentally and
spiritually , to the world.
b) In our time we respect the scientific and dismiss the
spiritual. I want to make the arguement
that spirit should also be respected (in whatever form you do so). This is an attempt to give all athiests a
nd agnostics perspective on their own consciouness.
I hope to have you take a
side on the issue. Or at least give you a recognition of the importance of the
issue. And take it seriously as a
thought. Make it a candle of doubt in
your life that may someday inspire a flame.
Psych
in ancient history
Psychology exploration goes very far back.
1) realist
There was an Egyptian King, Psamtik 1, who did a psych experiment
in the 7th Century BC. He wanted to
find out if the Egyptians were the oldest peoples on the face of the
earth. He figured that the oldest
people would have the primal language.
He therefore isolated an Egyptian boy to see if the first words he spoke
would be Egyptian.
He repeatedly said to the Herdsman who guarded him “Becos”. It turned out this was the Phrygians word
for bread so this, unfortunately,
proved they were the oldest race on earth.
(this is a sort of realist conception).
2) spiritualist
However, for most of
history we were gatherers and hunters and the whole world was Spiritual. The religion of gatherers and hunters is
called Animism: All things have souls.
All things, including moods and actions were ruled by spirits. This mostly continued throughout the early
post-agricultural world.
the notion of exorcisms was big.
Good and bad spirits were thought to create lightning, thunder,
earthquakes, storms, fires sickness etc.
So then the idea of possesion by a good or bad spirit. How many in the class room believe that the
lord inhabits you and makes you do things, can change you or guide your
life? How many believe the devil can do
the same?
But for most of history, since Jesus is a new concept,
anthropologically, it was a bird or wind spirit or a curse.
Ezekial or St. John the Divine sound quite nuts.
Jesus (Mark 5:1-13) cured a man with an “unclean spirit” by
transferring the devils that plagued him to a herd of swi ne who , in turn,
became possessed and “ran violently down a steep place into the sea”
Get notes from pgs 3, 4 and 5 of Morton Hunt’s History of Psych
references.
Buddha
(possibly to go under cognitive psychology)
Then in the 6th Century in China Buddha happened!!!!
Buddha said “A man can command his principles; principles do not
master the man”.
Greece
There is barely a topic that we’ll study that cannot be reduced to
the division between these two men.
Someone said “All of Western history is a footnote on Plato.” That is somewhat true.
Greece is a little area on the NorthEastern part of the
mediterranian. Its intellectual
explosion happened from 480 to 399 bc.
It was, in structure, much like all other places at that time.
At the bottom were the peasants and slaves. All places since agriculture started have
had peasants and slaves. Then came the
army. On top of that is where we get
the difference. All others had priests
and King Gods. But Greece invented
something else! Democracy.
In a king god ruled state, all happens due to the thinking of the
Gods. The king rules due to the
gods. You were born a blacksmith
because of the gods. You burned yourself
at work because you pissed off a god.
Etc.
Democracy implies that people can choose their own fate and
direction. Then the questions pop up:
What is the best life? What is
life? What is nature? Do we have souls? What are the principles of valid thinking? Does the mind rule emotion or vice versa?
Because of this questioning without as much reference to gods, the
greeks considered themselves the first human beings. All before them were just followers. All before didn’t control their own fate or minds.
Clear air that led them to congregate outdoors, being a sea power,
divergency in states cultures are reasons that people think the bloomed. But they did.
Plato
v. Aristotle
Questions? Who believes that we have souls? Do the souls outlast the body? Does the sould matter more than the
body? Is the body a kind of illusion
then? Is the next world more important
than this one? Is this world a kind of
illusion then?
The question between the two is whether you think that knowledge
comes from thinking and things apart from the brain, or is strictly of the
brain. And this splits psychology in
half.
Plato
- Socrates
Socrates is your man if you believe in a soul. If you are a spiritualist.
Socrates was a fairly ugly man.
I have seen a bust of him. He
was the son of a sculptor and early on decided that his life would be about
philosophy. He would spend his days
hanging out in the market place talking with people. Content to be poor he wore one simple shabby robe all year and
went barefoot; once, looking about in the marketplace, he exclaimed, “How many
things there are that I do not want!”
His method was to ask questions always. What is beauty? What is
the best life? What is justice?
And his thinking greatly affected psychology.
Spiritualism
of Socrates/Plato
Plato had a theory of knowledge that separated spirit from the
material. He is the first change from a
world of spirits that had a body to just spirits.
Draw the three levels on the board
3rd - ideals
2nd-beliefs
1st-perception
At the bottom level of
knowledge there is perception. This is what you see
when you see a specific apple. It is an
aple, but it is not the permanent apple it is a changing thing that never will
last. This is not an eternal
truth. It is a temporary thing.
Example two a horse. You
see the horse, but you look at the horses but is that the horse? Or its head. You cannot look at all of it at once.
What you can see gives you limited knowledge.
At the second level there is
the belief about the percieved things. So I may know all about
things happening this week and which I know of. There was a tv show this week or President Clinton... Or a
political issue or Johnnie said that Jane said that....
This is knowledge but not
real stuff. It cannot give us true
knowlege because it is about things that are in a state of change. It is higher than the bottom level though
because it does recognize some stable characteristic and does provide some
prediction.
So johnnie looks like so and will look like so for so long. Also johnnie is a turd and will behave like
one. There is some truth to that.
But johnnie is a changing thing.
Also, you can never get at truths or ultimate ideas from
senses. Show me justice equality,
justice, nonexistence, honor and dishonor,
beauty and ugliness. It doesn’t
exist in this room. What does love look
like? Not through the senses.
At the third level there is
the level of unchanging universal truths known by our intellects.
What can we say , not of Johnnie, but of all men everywhere?
With Platos third level we reject the lives of those that look at
the concrete, changing, particular objects of perception, to the rational
understanding of abstract, unchanging,
uniersal concepts know by our intellect.
A person may see an appl eor a star. But true knowledge says when to plant that kind of apple, what
part of the apple propogates, what is the growing season of apples. A true intellect can tell you where that
star will be based on math for a very long time.
Whereas the object of perception are concrete (one apple one star
one person) the objects of intellect are abstract (positions of stars, parts of
apples’ functions.)
Whereas the objects of perception are particular things (this or
that apple) the objects of intellect are eternal. You always want to plant in this season.
We may be in tune with the latest government scandal, but what of
the ideas that are of the essence in our form of government. What are its basic ideals?
For Plato, concepts like cirle, triangel, beauty , justice house,
yellow, man have two functions
----One they allow us to have knowledge of all objects
We can say there is a man,
there is a house. If there were
not a universal ideal of such things, if it were entirely personal, than one
person would see a toad when they say man.
Or a rock when they say house.
But we know what these things are and all agree.
HERE DO A STUDY OF THE IDEAL FEMALE BEAUTY. 14 PICTURES OF WOMEN.
---Two they give us an ability to evaluate and criticize all these
objects.
These give us standards which to judge by.
This is easiest to see with a tringle or a circle DRAW A CIRCLE IN
YOUR NOTES. Is it a perfect circle
? how do you know if it is perfect or
not?
As one woman gets old and ugle the idea of beauty will stay. The ideal of love will stay.. These are not, for plato, things that just
depend on you or me. They really exist
before and after us.
To be a real idea, they must be unchanging and eternal.
HERE IN CERTAIN CLASSES, IT WOULD BE GREAT TO interject that he
stands for moral absolutism. Not
cultural relativism. The Sophists said
that each society had its own values.
He said no!
--------PLATOs Theory of a good life.------------------------
Plato was fighting the view that Pleasure and playb oy life are the best.
For plato, any kind of being, a dog, a man, has virtue, is just or
excellent insofar as it functions according to its nature, according to the
standard set by its form. In order to
know what is virtuous or just or excellent or right for man we must therefore
find out what is the form, idea or essence of man.
The specific thing that man has, which distinguishes him from
other living things, is his power to use language and to reason.
Beyond this he has 2) bodily appetities, desires, needs; and 3) a
spirited emotional element which expresses itself in aggression, ambition,
pride, protectiveness, honor loyalty, courage.
Happiness requires that we function in accordance with our own
nature. This will give us happiness.
Excellence would require that we embody them in the amount they
should exist in the human. Language and
reason is the greatest share, spirit second and appetite should be the third in
size.
We must fulfill all three with reason being the guide. Though some men act more in the name of
reason (who desires truth and wisdom) some more for spirit (who wish public
acclaim) and those dominated by appetite (who wish material gain).
Pleasure cannot be our highest good because it is only one of
three and the lowest at that. As we are
an organism all three parts must function (not just pleasure).
The spirit can act towards helping or hindering either reason or
appetites.
He held that the existence of innate knowledge,
revealed by the dialectic method of instruction, proves that we possess an
immortal sould, an entity that can exist apart from the brain and body.
We should strive to be wise. To know the ultimates. But how?
It is not through looking at this world. I can feel hot and cold, but these are not understood as opposites
except by the mind.
Important things come from mind. To know you should look at ideas.
If you want to know the perfect horse. Look at each. They all have defects.
The most perfect thing is the idea of the horse. Then the horse will get old. Then you must look to another horse for
perfection? No!
The story of the cave.
To know what is truth, we must deduce from great
truths what our minute experience shoud be.
The physical, the particular and mortal is
illusion and error. The conceptual,
abstract and eternal is real and true.
Aristotle
Aristotle was Platos student for 20 years.
He compiled or wrote 170 books in 40 years. He was mostly a “scientist”. He studied and categorized things in nature
endlessly. He was the teacher of Alexandar
the Great (for those of you who study history).
He believed that was not
hooked into eternals.
Without mind, we would just see brown and shape and never a horse.
He said we look at a series of objects and then we see
similarities and from these for m a “universal”, a word or a concept signifying not an actual thing, but a sort
of thing or a general principle.
Reason comes from things.
He said that the eternal
thing was not true. We get our
knowledge inductive reasoning: We look
at situations and then draw conclusions.
Nor can the soul exist apart from the body. It is a function of the body.
juman beings have a cognitive ability by which the external things
are remembered. They are stored into
memory. This gives rise to experience
and from this the whole of experience comes.
ROME
Rome didn’t add much to psychology. The most notable exception was the Stoics. They said that one could achieve tranquility
through control of the emotions. The
good life, was one in which the mind is in total control. This is very Plato. The desires and emotions are bad, what is
eternal is good. Screw now you have
eternity to worry about.
Still they were a blend because Aristotle was in there in the
constant roman practicality.
Read from Marcus Arealius on Stoicism
THE
DARK AGES
The main ideas of the church come from saint Augustine. He was born in
Northern africa. One of his main works
is confessions. He has two main themes:
1) Man is bad.
In it he tells of the sinful nature of man. Original sin is when Eve and ADam ate the
apple. All men have sinned and come
short of the glory of god. You are a
sinner. Man’s inclinations are
evil. He is always tempted and the
sould may be willing but the flesh is weak. Temptation was all around him as a
youth and he succumbed.
What is the number one virtue of the Dark Ages of Catholic
rule? Being humble.
Not arrogant, but to count oneself among the lowly.
To make up for beingevil and having evil thoughts you have to do works. In a monestary this would
include praying on a cold cement floor for hours a day. Juniperro Serra who founded our California
missions had a beam with dull nails sticking into his stomach at all times.
Even today Catholics perform pennance because they are bad. You tell your sins and the Father gives you
things to do as punishment to make you okay in the eyes of god.
2) Faith is Better than reason.
Faith was better than reason.
Therefore you should not think.
People don’t get to heaven for thinking. Thinking means you think you are great. You are not great you are a sinner. You do works.
Thinking and reading could lead you astray. The devil is always trying to tempt people
through trickery. Including mental
trickery that makes them question.
For the dark ages all church services were in Latin. None understood it. Anyhow if you have faith... Paintings were
enough. Monks who copy the manuscripts cannot
read them. Priests in the church who
read services dont understand them. The
people don’t either. Thinking is
bad. It is illegal to translate the
bible out of Latin until 1835.
Empiricists - Hobbes and Locke (realist)
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) is mostly known for his nasty defense of
kings against democracy.
He actually visited Galileo and resoned that all events are matter
in motion; applying this to psychology, he reasoned that all mental activities
must be motions of atoms in the nervous system and brain reacting to motions of
atoms in the external world.
He said that everything in the mind arises from sense
experience; complex thoughts are
derived from simple ones, and simple ones from sensations.
Read the handout from Hobbes
from the history of the philoso of mind book
**********Perhaps do sense
and perception stuff and gestaltism here
1800s gestaltism
*
* *
* *
*
* * *
Its not just what we sense, but how we perceive.
Their motto “ the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Not just dots , but a triangle we see
Wewe fill in missing information.
PRETEND YOUR TALKING ON A DYING MICROPHONE AND LEAVE INFORMATION OUT see
if people still understand.
If I throw a basketball at you it takes up more and more of your
field of vision. But you don’t believe
it gets larger and larger. This is SIZE
CONSTANCY. When people leave you across
the yard they get smaller and smaller.
But you don’t accept that do you?
Cones are in the center and are color and clearest
Rods are b & W and grey and peripheral and fuzzy.
Pigeons are all cone, but no rods (they don’t see at night) Nocturnals are rods.
***********************************************************
This is the first effort to explain how sense impressions are
transformed into higher mental processes.
Idealists
- Descarte and Hegel (spirit)
Descartes is famous for “I think there for I am” Ergo Cogito Sum.
Born in 1596, he got tuberculosis from his mother (who died from
it days after his birth).
He was a sickly child, but a brilliant one. So his teachers permitted him to remain in
bed reading long after the usual hour of rising. This became his lifelong habit.
As a teenager he tried being social in the casinos of Paris, but
found the people there boring. So he
returned to mathematics and philosophy.
Then he got depressed because so many great thinkers had so many
different ideas about philosophy. So he
sought answers in the real world. He
joined the army. He soon found that
ordinary men were no wiser than the scholars.
He returned to his bed.
To find truth he decided to reject all that he could doubt. So he’d only be left with certainties.
He doubts all his senses.
When you see a stick bend in water.
When it goes dark to things not have color? He looks at geometry.
It seems one plus one is two, but could an evil demon not be concocting
all these things in his mind? When he dreams he thinks things are real
enough.
The only thing that he cannot doubt is that he thinks. This means that there is something
thinking. He thinks and therefore he
is.
Next, he asks himself what this thinking “I” was that necessarily
existed. He could imagine his thoughts
without a body, but not the reverse. He
says:
“Thus it follows
that this ego, this mind, this soul, by which I am what I am, is entirely
distinct from the body...Even if the body did not exist, the soul would not
cease to be all that it now is.
He decides that the world is like a machine that God mad for our
minds to frolic in. God wouldn’t trick
us so it must be something like what it looks like. But the real, real stuff is
mind.
The brain worked like a
machine with spirit fluids going through it.
It does the lower functions. But
consciouness, reasoning and wil are functions of the soul. They connect in the pineal gland.
The body thus engenders in the soul such passions as love, hatred,
fear and desire. The soul consciously
considers each passion and freely wills o act in response to itor ignore it.
He suggested diverting your attention while the animal spirits of
the body distract the soul.
conclusion:
On the one hand, he taught that a person was a machine, capable of
being studied by the methods of natural science. On the other hand, he taught tha the most valuable and unique
human attribute, the soul, was beyond the reach of scientific method and could
be understood only by rational reflection.
hegel
George Hegel (1770-1831)
After the empiricists a heavy question hangs in the air. The question is can we any longer, be
mystics? Has spirituallism been
killed. Hume said all metaphysics is
worthleass and meaningless and a distraction from the real world.
For Hegel, following Descarte, that all is mind. Unlike Plato, he believes that ideas do not
exist in removed unchanging world. All
is made of ideas changing in this world.
Reality is the whole truth captured by our minds, as we understand
it.
-Society-
Each society has its own philosophy and spirit.
If we look at societies they are all different. So many have existed and so many died. But they all had an essence. This is seen in its art, philosophy, music,
religion, and government.
Society is bigger than you.
Hegel said that there were “objective”powers such as family ,
society, and government. These things exist before, during and after
the individual. The individual just
inhabits them.
You learn a language. The language exists beofre and after
you. It fills you up to replicate
it.
All these things are part of society and a society has ideas. These are bigger than you. And, you are just a poor representative of
the ideals of a society.
-Organicism-
And each play a part in keeping its spirit alive. ORGANICISM says, though , that none can live
outside of their society. A liver
cannot live outside the body. A heart
either. Nor can the artist or the
individual.
In every such age there is a Zeitgeist ( a spirit of the time)
The spirit is kept alive by many individuals all persuing their
desires. But their desires come from
the society.
Society is kept alive by individuals. But they get theirvalues, beliefs, attitudes from the cultural
totality of which they are a dependent part.
-Every society is an improvement-
He spoke of huge currents in history. History was like a river.
Any little particular point is determined by larger currents. Thought goes rushing through traditions and
material conditions.
Things are right or wrong or exist only in their historical
context. You cannot detach any
philosopher or person from their context.
We cannot judge the past.
Slavery was right just as driving a car is.
But, modern stuff is better than old stuff. For him we are progressing. History is the story of “world spirit”
gradually coming into consciousness of itself.
Before people just new of their culture. Now we are at a space where we can look at different cultures and
thought patterbns and pick and choose.
But it is never perfect so it breeds its opposite. Then joins with the opposite to make
something new. Which isn’t perfect and
so it breeds its opposite.
Te dialectic pattern is the law by which we progress.
Another law is that whatever is right survives. Like womens rights survived. Those who
fought for it were right. But we now
have the hindsight of history to see it.
The leaders are the World Historical Individuals.
They are the ones who can tell what the people want when the
people don’t even know. They interpret
and propogate the next step.
-The process-
The true philosopher and leader then is one who can see the
progress of ideas in history.
We are moving toward being aware of the ideals of our society as
relative and taking conscious control of them.
there are three types of spirit 1st subjective spirit. This
is the world spirit begining to evolve by locating itself in individuals. Then2nd
is the objective spirit. It appears
in the interaction between people. This
is again, family, the society and traditions of that society. This is the world spirit manifesting itself
in groups. The 3rd and highest form is absolute
spirit. these are the thinkers
thinking on social ideals. This is the
world spirit reflecting on itself. Absolute spirit is a subjective spirit
thinking about objective spirit.
The objective spirit contains the zeitgeist or the spirit of the
time. That is what our minds are made
of unless we’re historians, artists or philosophers.
-The Goal-
And the best things that history is moving towards are greater
rationality and freedom.
We go from BEAS in which only one is free to Greece in which some
are free to the chrisatian era in which we are all spiritually free
-mature happiness-
You start in a ¨family from them you get everything. After that you move into civil society
this is the scene in which all individuals are trying to follow their own
interests. In doing so they are
fullfilling the needs of the state.
Finally the individual should internalize the ethics of the state. At last here the political state is the
synthesis of th eunity of the family and the separateness or individuality of
life in civil society.
If you don’t get to this final state you feel alien and separate from
your society. If you do you get
happiness. You don’t get the false
negative freedom (formal freedom) of the enlightenment. That is, freedom from despotism, freedom
from impingement. You get (substantive
freedom) through making the ideals of the state your own and working not in
isolation, but unity.
-politics (for another class)-
The state is the only true individual. The individual has no inaliable rights. His morals and choices come from the state.
Hegel says there are three branches to good government. The legislative, the executive and the
monarchy. Election of the legislature
turns the stae into a mere formless, meaningless mass or heap of individuals,
lacking any organic unity. And the
public doesn’t know.
The three estates of agriculture business and civil service,
should be appointed or aristocratic at birth.
BUT other nations shouldn’t be like germanies. The best governmnent expresses the spirit or
genius of its people at that time.
The constitution is not just a piece of paper. It is the work of centuries. It represents the historical development of
the spirit of the people.
-philosophers-
Unlike the enlightenment folk, he felt that philosophers were not
there to change the world. The
philosopher cannot transcend his own nation and cannot, therefore, alter the
future from its track. He can only try
to understand and express his society.
Physicalists
Johannes Muller (1801-1858) wondered how one stimulation
led to a sight and a nother to a touch.
He thought the nerves of each sensory system convey only one kind of
data or quality. The optic nerves
always and only sensations of light, the aural nerves only sound.
So that “If we could splice the outer extremity of our optic
nerves to our ears, and that of our auditory nerves to our eyes, we should hear
the lightning and see the thunder.”
He spliced frogs and found that there were special optical chords
and auditory chords that attached to the brain. He believed he had proven himself right.
He started to answer questions raised by Hobbes and Locke as to
how senses got transformed into thought.
HERE WE DO THE DROP THE RULER AND CATCH IT WITH YOUR FOOT, WITH
YOUR HAND.
ON THE CUE OF A SNAP. ON
THE CUE OF A TOUCH.
PRECEEDING THIS ONE THEY TOUCH THE DESK AND SEE IF THE FEELING OF
THE TOUCH IS AT THE SAME TIME AS THE TOUCH.
EVERYONE TOUCH EACHOTHERS ANKLES AND SEE HOW LONG THAT TAKES. VS. ALL TOUCH EACHOTHERS SHOULDER. SEE HOW LONG THAT TAKES. WHICH IS CLOSER TO THE BRAIN.
HERE WE INTRODUCE RESEARCH METHODS
Is the use of a planning
calander helpful? How many say yes? How many say no? well that doesn’t matter. lets find out.
Get 200 people and randomly assign them.
see which group does better.
INDEPENDENT VARIABLE -
with, without planning calanders is the independent variable.
DEPENDENT VARIABLE is
whether their (operational definition) homework completion increases.
Does diet affect academic
achievement?
CORRELATION STUDY. Get
people to record their food intake for two days and get their test scores.
If they vary in the same direction its a positive correlation. If they vary against eachother its a negative
correlation.
Correlation studies don’t show cause (which causes which or maybe
a third thing).
And it involves no manipulation.
Ernst Weber (1795-1878) did experiments on Just
noticable differences (JND)
He wanted to show that the bigger the weight the bigger the
difference needed to tell that there
was a difference.
If we use a match in a dark room you notice the difference. If we do it in a light room you don’t
We put more in a heavy suitcase because we don’t notice the extra
weight and so over pack.
He did this with the
brightness of lights, the loudness of sound, pain of electric shocks.
Helmholtz
Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894) He applied electricity to a frog
leg. In this way he was able to measure
the speed of reaction. He showed that
the reaction of the leg is slower than pure electricity would account for. Therefore, it is elctrochemical. So we don’t feel things instantaneously. It brought the soul to time.
Wundt
(realist)
Psychology proper is said to have started when, in 1879, Wilhelm
Wundt opened his institute.
This is kind of ridiculous, because others did experiments like
his before him. But he did have the
first permanent institute and he trained others (personally supervising over
200 disertations).
Others (Muller, Weber and Helmholtz) asked mechanical questions.
He does psychological experiments.
He figured that just as the chemist learns from experiments not
only how a substance is affected by others, but also what its own chemical
nature is, he can do the same with psychology.
He was a slow child, he failed in jr. high and his best friend was
a retarded child. He had no idea what
to do after his first year of university
But when he came home after the first year and saw his family was
hungry he got serious. He worked his
butt off and became a number one student in medical school.
His
laboratory
He played metronomes and
checked peoples heart rates and asked them for their introspective feelings.
We could do the same thing with music.
He had folks report when they heard something, but in one case
said when your aware of it and in another when as soon as you notice it. There were differences. With one question it was 2 tenths of a
second. With question 2 it was one
tenth of a second.
Have two pieces of paper, each with numbers on them. Say right if the right one is higher or left
if the left one is.
Do number cards one through ten.
flash two and ask if they add to a prime number (1,3,5,7,11,13, 17,19)
Try to touch a pencil, a) after placing it with closed eyes and
then , with them still closed, tried to touch them again or b) looked at the
object and then closed his eyes before trying to touch it.
Which is more accurate, visual memory or touch memory (when doing
a touching task)?
James
(spirit)
Introduction
William James (1842-1910) is our number thinker. If you were to read about the American
contribution to philosophy it is the first name mentioned. He is also the founder of American
psychology.
His thinking should make you proud to be an american. It does me.
His outstanding feature is that he is accessible. His writing is really entertaining. He is not high falootin like a European
thinker. Or stiff like an Asian or
Dogmatic like a muslim. He is common
sense American.
I recommend it
highly. His writings on philosophy are
better than his writings on psychology.
But, alas, this is a psychology class so...
James
(spirit)
Introduction
William James (1842-1910) is our number thinker. If you were to read about the American
contribution to philosophy it is the first name mentioned. He is also the founder of American
psychology.
His thinking should make you proud to be an american. It does me.
His outstanding feature is that he is accessible. His writing is really entertaining. He is not high falootin like a European thinker. Or stiff like an Asian or Dogmatic like a
muslim. He is common sense
American.
I recommend it highly. His
writings on philosophy are better than his writings on psychology. But, alas, this is a psychology class so...
WHAT
IS CONSCIOUSNESS 4parts
His first assertiaon is anti Wundt. His analysis of Mind is reflective, not dissective.
-a- Every mental state is PERSONAL
No thoughts are alone.
They all exists in a personal state. ex. when I see a coffee cup “I” see
a coffee cup and all that that means to me.
My thoughts belong with my other thoughts and yours with you.
There is no this thought
or that thought, but only my thought
or your thought.
-b- Conciousness is always CHANGING.
No mental state is the same as another. They keep changing.
We feel differently accordingly as we are sleepy or awake, hungry
or full, fresh or tired’ differently at night and in the morning, and above
all, differently in child hood, man hood and old age.
For the exact same coffee cup to be the identical sensation, it
would have to occur in an unmodified brain.
A permanently existing idea is a myth. It occurs to someone and is changed each time.
-c- Each personal consciousness is CONTINUOUS.
Our thoughts are all joined in us. They keep changing, but are connected.
Look upon your own thoughts, are they not connected? All.
Here he invents the phrase “stream of consciousness”
The only objections would be sleep and lapses in
consciousness. But upon waking our
thoughts have such an intimacy and warmth with us that there is no big
break.
It may seem moment to moment that your thoughts jump. But not like thunder to lightening. The jump isn’t so abrupt that its
startling. It continues.
Like a bird flies and rests.
When it rests that is Substantive thought. Substantive thought are concentrated upon conscious
thoughts. Transitive thoughts are the
fleeting semi-conscious transition
thoughts. They are important too.
People don’t see both of these as important. Sensationalists (HUme and Locke) look at
transitive and say all thought is nothing.
Just dust in the wind, a windstorm.
Intellectualists (Hegel and Descartes) just see the substantive thought
and think it eternal and reify it.
There is not only what is thought of but a fring that goes along
with it.
A good illustration of fring is that I say “a” “b” “c”. He draws three overlaping bell curves. The
“a” is still sort of there when I say “c” .
If you’ve ever been trying hard to remember something that you
can’t remember, then you know that there is groups of knowledge that go along
with each knowledge.
As thoughts flutter transitively, they are in harmony or discord
with the goal to the substantive. And
the Substantive goal of our thought directs their staying or going. The amount of control depends on how
immediate the substantive thought is.
-d- Our attention DISCRIMINATES
We notice only those things which happen to interest us
aesthetically or practically.
What is called our experience is due almost entirely to habits of
attention.
4 men walk into a
room. The plumber sees... the artist
sees... the pot head sees...
These are determined by our choices. If I decide to marry a woman or commit a crime or be a lawyer or
hang out on a porch for the rest of my life, they will affect what I deem
important and worthy of attention.
But mankind has generally agreed what to divide up in the world
and name. We have the same names. But we all disagree on what to divide into
“me” and “Not-me”.
What is the self? 3 parts
a. the material me
The material me is what is mine.
But I belong to also. My
immediate family is part of me. When
they die, a part of me dies. Our home
maybe comes next.
Flesh of my flesh, if they do something wrong we get their shame.
If you have some love, maybe a person or a collection of more than
1000 books. That is a part of you.
QUESTION: What are the most
important parts of your material self.
b. the social me
The social you is the recognition
that you get from your mates. You don’t
even appreciate how important this is until you go to another country and noone
speaks your language. Tell of William.
There are as many social selves as there are people who hold you
in their minds.
Many a youth who is demure enough before his parents and teachers,
swears and swaggers like a pirate among his “tough” young friends. We are different to employees and employers.
QUESTION - write on some
social selves you have.
The most peculiar social self with is the one you’re in love
with. They love you and you are
elated, hate you and you are dejected.
Their image of you is very important and special.
C - The feelings and emotions of self
a- self esteem
self appreciation streches from food to bad pride to shame vanity
arrogance modest humility.
this is reflected in your body postrue. The stance of someone, their nostrils, their heartbeat.
People are many different things.
They are priests and they are millionaires and philosophers and
warriors. To have self esteem it must
be based on some characteristic. Once
chosen, all other possible selves become unreal. You measure yourself by the one.
self esteem = What you wish to be now or success
what you are pretentions
every thing you take pride in is a burden as well as a great
thing. Give up singing you may make
yourself, and others, happier.
The first rule of manifpulation is find out what a person wants to
be and play on it.
The stoics became invincible by not regarding what was out of
their power as in their power. Some
people still do that. They protect
their self esteem by not identifying themselves as much. They are okay. They never tried anything.
3 - Habit
Habit has a physical basis.
Habits of mind are pathways through the nerve-centers.
Bad habits are reflexive discharges. Biting ones nails or bad form in basketball.
Materials are plastic in movement. Once bent one way, paper
bends easier that way than any other.
A sprained ankle, a dislocated arm are in danger of being
sprained or dislocated again.
The laws of Nature are nothing but the imutable habits.
If something happens to a ball in motion to change its inertia, it
gets a new habit.
PRACTICAL EFFECTS-
If practice things become habit and they become “second nature” If practice did not make perfect, you would
take forever to dress yourself.
Learning is a process by which you make things habit. You make them second nature. So,
a pianist reads to playing via second nature and then “learns” more and
more of the piece until its easy.
Once you get these habits they stick and , like bent paper, are
hard to change. If there is a minimum
day and we have nutrition after first, we start with first period, I go to third after nutrition. Once I mostly talk with my girlfriend and
she is honey, all are honey.
PEDAGOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF HABIT-
Did you ever hear that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? I just can’t figure out how to use the
VCR. People are not used to car phones.
Habit is totally what people are comfortable doing.
Habit is the fly-wheel of society. They have the habit of going to
the bus bench every morning and....
Its what keeps poor people
from going into rich neighborhods and attacking them.
It is, therefore, important that we formgood nervous system routs
early on. That’s when it happens.
Changing your accent is hard.
It is important that we make habits our friend not our enemy.
We need to automate useful habits. There is no more miserable human than one in whom nothing is
habitual except indecision. who
every going to bed, passing a liquor
store without drinking, getting out a pen in the beginning of class. Having bus change in his pocket in the
morning is a big decision.
If one were to instead, make music or a second language an
automatic habit, that would be better.
And it is better not to get in the habit of being lazy. The habit by which every effort takes loads
of will power, because your not used to or are in the habit of indulging your
every impulse to slacken. Every day do
something you’d rather not do, and you’ll
have strength. Resolve will not
be a problem.
Nothing is totally automatic.
We become permanent drunks one drink at a time, we become saints one
moral act at a time. But make it your
tendancy to be good as a habit and its a lot easier later on.
4) Will
Will is something we all know of so it is hard to make clearer in
definition.
We desire to have things done.
If doing them is not possible then we have a wish.
If we believe that the desired feeling, having or doing shall be
real and it becomes so we have used our will.
A willed act is not instinctive or automatic. He studies this stuff, but we skipped it.
EXPERIENCE OF WILL-
Try to will something and do it.
What was that like? What
constituted the direction of the will?
He says it is two things:
1) it is the image of what
feelings would happen once the act was done.
2) the decision to do it.
THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF DECISIONS
1) motor - cue
In this one 2 (the decision)
is very low. infact, it just
required an idea of what the outcome would be like.
It is almost as if the burger eats me. I decide to walk across the room to see someone, but it is with
very little thought.
The image of the final outcome is enough to make it happen.
The doing is not part of the will. If I decide to say Paul instead of Peter, there is the thought of
what it would be like to say Paul, then the decision. As for the muscular contortions required to do it, that just
happens.
With practice, more and more stuff goes to motor-cue. Some of you still need to think when you write. FOr others the idea of the written word
writes itself.
2) action after thought
This is when there is a choice between two objects. When we need to keep reasons or motives in
our mind to continue doing it.
This action requires continuous thought. Working on a car. Writing
a book. Studying. The decision to tryout for a team. The decision not to do bad things (which are
easier to do than not do).
This takes effort and strength.
This requires holding the reasons infront of our eyes when we’d rather
they slip away. That is what is known
as concentration. All great things
require reasons plus concentration.
WILL POWER IS THE ABILITY TO HOLD IDEAS INFRONT YOUR MIND.
Everyone here has felt some fiery passion. The passion to bash someone’s head in. It would be easy to do. It has the full force of passion behind it.
In such a case the difficult thing is to get the wise action to
stay before the mind at all.
It is not natural. It is
natural for thoughts to follow emotion.
Depressed people have the hardest time thinking of happy
things. Jealous people cannot trust
. Things that don’t go with the emotion
get smothered or crowded out.
I’m not going to sleep
with him. Its going to trash my life
for momentary pleasure. Then you have
to keep that resolve in front of you.
I’m going to do my homework tonight. Why? Because I’ll learn
something and the more I know the more I’ll be able to conceive of and do, the
more options and power s I’ll have in life.
Keep it infront of you.
Eventually these things become habits. You just do your homework or you just get drunk everynight. Then you just beg for change or get to
change jobs as the economy changes.
The difference is one a) either couldn’t formulate, or didn’t get
the reasons or b) couldn’t hold them
infront of their mind when immediate distractions were impinging.
Why is this so difficult?
What is weighing more on you? what is immediate or what is distant and
abstract? Thats right? And your mind will trick you. It will say its not a drink,
The Behaviorists - Pavlov, Watson and Skinner (realist)
The behaviorists said psychologists should not concern themselves
with the mind. What is this thing that
sees feels and thinks? Where is the
soul? What are dreams? We should ignore those questions.
We should, instead focus on behavior.
First, Edward Thorndike (1874-1947), a student of William James,
did animal studies.
In James’ basement, he built mazes out of books.
He put 3 blind alleys and one way that led to food and other
chicks. The chick peeped and ran about
blindly until it found the exit. It
very slowly got better at this until it would just walk out the right
path.
If there had been learning it would have happened much faster.
Cats that had to hit a bar to get out of a box. They got it by trial and error. If heshowed the cat another cat doing the
behavior it made no difference at all.
Cats don’t think. They simply do
things by trial and error until they fall on the behavior that leads to the
reward. Once the satisyer is done it is
more likely to be repeated. It is
eventually “stamped in”. If you move
the thing that makes it happen you are back to ground zero.
The animal is just responding, it is not thinking.
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
Pavlov was a poor Russian.
He was a physiologist who studied dogs digestive systems to tie it
to the nervous system.
By surgically creating in the stomach of laboratory dogs a little
pouch that let him observe their gastric reflexs (the secretion of gastric
juices when the dog began to eat).
Between 1897 and 1900 he noticed something would secrete stomach
acid when something that usually came with the food happened.. He spent the rest of his life studying this.
He invented two terms “Unconditioned
response” and Conditioned response”.
The Unconditioned response took no training. When a dog had meat in its mouth the saliva
flowed.
The Conditioned response took training. He would ring a bell before the food came. Then after some pairings, the dog would
react to the bell with saliva.
Example A -Find out if its someones birthday.
Start to blow up a balloon. Watch as people squirm.
Hearing the loud noise is the unconditioned stimulus. Being startled is the unconditioned
response.
Anticipating it popping is the conditioned response. If a baby saw a balloon being blown up it
would not get nervous. It would say
look at that pretty thing getting bigger.
After a couple of pairings with explosions however... The slow startled response is learned. A balloon is being inflated and people
cringe and contort.
Example B - Prejudice
You have a bad experience with a guy who wears his hair like so
two times. After you decide that all
people with their hair like that are bad.
You may not even know why you don’t like them.
A car accident on a freeway may make you afraid of freeways.
You have STIMULUS -
RESPONSE
Extinction: Eventually the connection goes away if
it is not reinforced. Generalization: The dogs would secrete less saliva to close
objects or sounds. The less similar,
the less saliva.
Discrimination: If the sound were paired with a similar
sound, but the similar sound got no reinforcement with food or petting, the dog
would learn to differentiate between them.
Mr. Behaviorism John Watson
(1878-1958)
Watson was a strange man.
His father ran off when he was young and never came back. He would always get into fights. He often left the room when he didn’t like the conversation. He never kissed or hugged his children. At bedtime he shook hands with them. He got into univerities by sweet talking the
presidents. He also worked really hard
and even had a break down due to not sleeping, just working.
He also trained rats. His
first big thing, though, was to create the term “Behaviorism”. He did it in a paper in 1913. In the paper he outlined 3 big new ideas
1- PSYCHOLOGY SHOULD BE THE STUDY OF BEHAVIOR, NOT THE MIND.
2 - ITS METHOD SHOULD BE OBJECTIVE MEASUREMENT
3-IITS GOAL SHOULD BE PREDICTION AND CONTROL OF BEHAVIOR.
Psychology , having first lost its soul to Darwin, lost its mind
to Watson.
All organisms adjust to their environment and that certain stimuli
lead them to make the necessary responses.
Psychology should be the study between stimulus and responses.
To this end Watson first sought to discover the unconditioned
reflxes of the human. He did this by
studying infants. He found three. a-
fear at hearing a loud sound or at suddenly being droped.
2-rage when its arm or head movements are forcibly restrained
3 love when stgroked rocked, gently patter and the like.
Fear (catching breath, puckering lips and crying)
Rage (stiffens the body, makes thrashing arm movements, holds its
breath, and turns red in the face
Love (gurgles, coos, or smiles)
All other human behaviors and emotional reactions were built up of
conditioned reflexes. If one gets joy
whenever someone comes in the room you learn to love that person, not just the
rewards. And visa versa. So when someone says something not nice, you
avoid them. This is just natural
behavior and you associate bad feelings with them THis is not thinking.
To prove this he did his famous Albert study. when albert was 9 months old they showed him
a rat which he did not fear. They then
started to pair it with the striking of a steel bar. Alber jumped violently, fell forward and buried his face in the
mattress.
After a dozen times, the child feared the rat. Also anything furry (a rabbit, a dog, a seal
coat, cotton wool and Watson in a santa clause mask).
He then fell in love with his beautiful young assistant Rosalie
Rayner and began an affair with her.
His wife caught him and got him fired.
In those days conduct unbecoming a proffesor could get you fired.
He then got a job working for an advertising company and was
really successful. He did Camel
cigarettes and deodorants.
He did one where he paired the Queens of Spain and “Romania with
Ponds creams. And one for Maxwell House
that helped to make the “coffee break : an American custom for offices,
factories and homes.
He was kicked out of universities at his heighth but continued to
write and speak. Then Rosalie got a disease
(dysentary) and died in her mid thirties.
Watson 58 was shattered and he moved back to his farm where he became
careless about himself, dressed poorly, grew fat and was solitary.
B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)
Was during his lifetime, the best known psychologist in the
world. His ideas are in wide use today
in psychological research, education and psychotherapy.
He was the king of behaviorism was the king (mid 20s to 1960s it
ruled American psychology. If you
weren’t a behaviorist, you pretended to be.
Why? Probably two
reasons. 1- it was “scientific” 2- it fit in with american “use” policy
In mid-century American psychology, it would have cost a career to
publish on ind, consciousness, volition, or even energy.
He said that all complex behaviors are learned to external
causes. Everything we do and are is
determined by our history of rewards and punishments.
Like Watson he was a great publicist. On his first TV appearance, he asked if he would rather burn his
books or kids. He said his kids. Outrage and fame followed.
He created the “skinner box”
it is something that monitors behavior and dispenses rewards and records
the occurances without the human having to be there.
He found that things intermittently reinforced are extinguished
slower than things consistently reinforced (hence a gambler).
He taught a pigeon to play piano.
He taught a pig to turn on a TV set, pick up dirty clothes and put
them in a hamper, and run a vacuum cleaner over the floor.
Skinners big technical change in traditional behaviorism was that
he added “operant” conditioning. Here,
the animal or human (makes no difference) operates on the environment and
learns the rewarded behaviors and stops the punished ones.
CLAssical is S-> R.
Operant is R -> S
He did taught pigeons by rewarding approximate behavior. When they got near a key he’d reward
them. Then when they got nearer to what they should do he’d
reward that and not the other. Till
they did exactly what he wanted.
This would be how people learn to talk. When you make the sound “ma ma” you get a big reward and
reaction. Then you learn “juice” and
you get juice. Then you learn to say “change the channel” and it may get
changed. If not you hit the
person. If this is rewarded you repeat
it. If this is punished you don’t.
In fact its probably a combination of classical conditioning and
operant. You grow up and every time you see a banana you hear the sound
banana. Then you associate the banana
with the sound. That is classical.
Later when you say “give me a banana” you get the reward of a
banana.
A persons whole life and every action is a result of these
punishments and rewards. Operant
conditioning.
Little Johnnie studies and he gets a reward. He then studies more. As he goes to high school he becomes more
aware of the “a”s. He finds them
rewarding and does the behavior to get them.
Later heknows that in science there is a thing called the Nobel
Prize. It makes one Famous. He studies for it. Or he and his colleagues know that getting someone to the moon
would be rewarding so they do the necessary behaviors.
This can also be bad. A
girl gets the complimant “boy you look great, you’re so thin” Then she starts to starve herself hoping for
another compliment.
REINFORCEMENT: means to strengthen. Like reinforcing a house or troops. Reinforcement strengthens a response.
So you give the pigeon a food pellet for turning right. You reinforce that behavior.
Negative Reinforcement: You stop a bad thing. How can you use electric shock to make a
pigeon do something? When it leans on a
wall the electric shock stops.
Punishment can be positive (hit someone) or negative (take away a good).
Intermittent reinforcement increases a previously learned
response. So letting the cat in every 5th
time it scratches the door is going to really strengthen the response. Also harder to extinguish than everytime.
Extinguish is the death of the habit. The behavior goes away.
Slowly or quickly.
In 1953 he visited his daughter’s 4th grade class. He
got the idea to teach things like pigeon learns to play piano. Reward simple steps. He created machines that reward you when you
get a behavior right.
Now with computers this is really huge. Math programs that reward the right behavior
He also came up with behavior modification. So token economies are used at mental
homes. Everytime you groom yourself or
eat you food without spilling you get a token.
At the end of the day you can trade it in for candy or cigarettes.
He used approximations to stamp out fears. To undo conditioned responses.
During this time all experiments were with rats.
One a rat is put in a maze with six choices. Every seventh time it gets a reward. Another, no reward. At the end of the
The
Psychotherapists - Freud and Jung (spirit)
Sigmund Freud
freud is the most famous psychologist ever. He was particularly able to ghet popular in
the crazy world of Post - WWI
Europe. His sort of explanation for WWI
made more sense than anyother system.
freud’s most important concept for our purposes is the id, the ego
and the super ego.
-ID-
The id is the animal sex
and aggression part of us. It is
the part that seeks to be satisfied imediately. It is the part that wants to kill people that make you angry,
possess those that make you happy, rape those you find sexy and eat people when
you get hungry. It is the animal in
you. All have this.
The ultimate example of this is the oedipus complex. This is the boys desire to possess his
mother . It leads him to try and out
compete or kill his father. This desire
to out do the father leads to leaders and the desire to be the primal ape. The desire to be great comes from this
complex.
Id includes all that is unconscious. Your real motivations.
Fictionally, Write of
whatare your worst desires - 5 lines
-Super - EGO-
The super ego represents what society wants. Society wants you to only think of its
needs. To always be polite. Brush your teeth. Sit quietly in class.
Never hit your teacher and be good.
Write what your society and
family would have you do.
-The ego-
This is how you balance out the two. This is how you satisfy the id by playing the game of the super
ego.
This is created by sublimation.
Sublimation putting a bad desire into a good one.
So you want to rape, but instead you get an “A” in history . This will get you the girl eventually. It gives you something to do with that
energy.
Our real motivations are ,
therefore, not what they seem.
-Childhood-
Theadult is a grown up version of the child.
If the child is overly toilet trained, he will become anal
expulsive. If under trained, anal
retentive.
If the child cannot get attention from the parents, he will get
attention from the world.
If the child is smothered in love he/she will be unable to love.
If the child is sexually assaulted, then all their relationships
will be affected.
If the child is given too high expectations, they will quit before
they get succeed generally.
-Dreams-
In your dreams the battle between the id and the ego is played out
with less inhibition. What you cant
look at directly turns into symbols. So
the dream is a thinly veiled account of what your id desires.
Here the clash of childhood problems and the id fighting the
super-ego comes out.
My fiancee had a dream:
She dreampt she was in Japan.
And her father was very angry at her for doing something wrong. She knew /guessed that it was having
relations with a man. Her father was
screaming and like an animal ready to hit her.
Her sister was crying so she cried too and comforted her sister as her
father yelled.
Later she told me that since the dream was in Japan her sister was
probably having an affair with a Japanese man.
Write a dream of 5
lines. Then come up with a meaning of
the drawing seeing how it hides sex or aggression.
After this point the
distinction between spirit and mechanical is not as potent.
In our society the
mechanicists win.
To Developmental, to social
psychologists, to humanist, to cognitive psychology to biological psychology.