Historical Psychology

Historical Psychology

This is a magazine about the history of psychology

All about psychology
What methods did Wundt use to study psychology?

What methods did Wundt use to study psychology?

13-02-2019

Wundt used three methods to study psychology

  • Experimental method
    • Psychophysical methods to study the connection between physical stimuli and their conscious states
    • The measurement and duration of simple mental processes
    • The accuracy of reproduction in memory tasks
  • Introspection
    Self-observation under highly controlled circumstances
  • The historical method
    Studying the human mind by investigating the products of human cultures
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What are the four idols of Bacon?

What are the four idols of Bacon?

11-02-2019

The idols of Bacon are problematic ideas
The four of them are:

  • Idol of the Tribe
    Everything that all humans possess that distort objective observation
  • Idol of the Cave
    Someone's personal idols. These are the things that distort the objective observation
  • Idol of the Market Place
    A wrong choice of words hinders understanding
  • Idol of the Theatre
    'Knowledge' and ideas that came into people's minds by Dogma's and wrong laws of demonstration. Things that are believed because of authority.

 

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What are the three main views in the mind-brain problem?

What are the three main views in the mind-brain problem?

28-02-2019

The mind-brain problem is the issue of how the mind is related to the brain.
Three main views on this problem are:

  • Dualism
    The mind (or soul) is something independent of the body
  • Materialism
    The mind is nothing but a by-product of the biological processes taking place in a particular brain.
  • Functionalism
    The mind is indeed realised in a brain, but it could be copied in any other brain.
    Just like information on a computer can be copied to other computers.
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What conditions must be met to describe an action to free will?
What are Leibniz monad's?

What are Leibniz monad's?

28-02-2019

Monads are (according to Leibniz) but energy-laden and soul-invested units. He believed there are four types of monads.

  • Simple monads
    The bodies of all matter
    Some type of unconscious and unorganized perception. They ware motivated by a tendency to keep in line with the existing, pre-established harmony of the universe.
  • Sentient monads
    Present in all living organisms, but not in inorganic material
    Had capacities for feeling pleasure and pain, and for the voluntary focusing of attention.
    Lacked the ability to reason
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On which four principles does science claim superiority of knowledge?

On which four principles does science claim superiority of knowledge?

04-03-2019

Science’s claim of superiority was based on four principles

  •  Realism
    There is a physical world with independent objects, which can be understood by human intellect
  • Objectivity
    Knowledge of the physical world does not depend on the observer.
    ‘Objective’ agreement among people is possible, irrespective of their worldviews.
    • Science aims to uncover this knowledge so that it becomes public, verifiable and useable
  • Truth
    Scientific statements are true when they correspond to the physical reality
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What are problems with the verification criterion in science?

What are problems with the verification criterion in science?

04-03-2019

Verificationism states that a proposition is scientific only if it can be verified through objective, value-free observation
Problems with this are:

  • It is logically impossible to prove the truth of a conclusion on the basis of repeated observations.
  • Many scientific theories include non-observable variables.
  • Any dividing line between observable and non-observable ultimately turned out to be an arbitrary distinction.
  • Over time, many initially hypothesised, non-observable phenomena became observable, because of technical
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What are the differences between realism and idealism?

What are the differences between realism and idealism?

04-03-2019

Realism holds that:

  • Concepts used in human knowledge refer to a physical reality which has priority
  • Knowledge is discovered rather than created
  • Truth is determined by the correspondence between knowledge and the physical world

Idealism holds that:

  • The world as we know it is a construction of the mind
  • Human knowledge is a subjective or social construction that does not necessarily correspond to the outside world
  • All knowledge is affected by language and culture
  • The truth of statements
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What are the three forms of materialism?
What characteristics does a good counsellor have in the eyes of Carl Rogers?

What characteristics does a good counsellor have in the eyes of Carl Rogers?

09-03-2019

A good counsellor in Rodger’s eyes was characterised by:

  • Unconditional positive regard
    The counsellor supports the client unconditionally and is non-judgmental
  • Emphatic understanding
    The counsellor ensures that he/she understands the client’s thoughts, feelings and meaning from the client’s point of view
  • Congruence
    The counsellor is genuine in his/her support and understanding, it is not a mere implementation of a therapeutic technique
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What are the seven demarcation criteria of science?

What are the seven demarcation criteria of science?

25-03-2019

Science has seven demarcation criteria. These criteria are:

  • Verification
    The theory is shown in the outside world
  • Falsification
    The theory can be shown to be incorrect
  • Cumulative knowledge
    New knowledge is consistent with previous findings and theories
  • Clearly described methods
    Replication is possible
  • Clarity
    Unambiguous wording
  • Predictability
    No post hoc explanations
  • Knowledge can be revised
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Plato's Allegory of the Cave
Understanding Plato and Aristotle
Descartes thought experiment
Kants view on the human mind and computers
History of brain research
Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition) - a summary

Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition) - a summary

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This is a summary of the book: Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K. This book is about the history of Psychology and how now-day psychology came to be. The book is used in the course 'Foundations of psychology' at the second year of psychology at the University of Amsterdam.

Revolutions as Changes of World view, Thomas Kuhn - a summary

Revolutions as Changes of World view, Thomas Kuhn - a summary

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Text Kuhn
Revolutions as Changes of World view

Paradigm changes cause scientists to see the world of their research-engagement differently.
As their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world.

At times of revolution, when the normal-scientific tradition changes, the scientist’s perception of his environment must be re-educated in some familiar situations he must learn to see a new gestalt.
After he has done so the world of his research will seem, and hence there, incommensurable with the one he had inhabited before.

A paradigm is prerequisite to perception itself.
What a man sees depends both upon what he looks t and upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.
In the absence of such training there can only be ‘a bloomin buzzin’ confusion.

The scientists can have no recourse above or beyond what he sees with his eyes and instruments.
If there were some higher authority by recourse to which his vision might be shown to have shifted, then that authority would itself become the source of his data, and the behaviour of his vision would become a source of problems.
In the sciences, if perceptual switches accompany paradigm changes, we may not expect scientists to attest to these changes directly.

Even the most striking past success provides no guarantee that crisis can be indefinitely postponed.
Even though the world does not change with a change of paradigm, the scientist afterwards works in a different world.

What occurs during a scientific revolution is not fully reducible to a reinterpretation of individual and stable data.

  • The data are not unequivocally stable
    The data that scientists collet are themselves different
  • The process by which either the individual or the community makes the transition is not one that resembles interpretation
    Rather than being an interpreter, the scientists who embraces a new paradigm is like the man wearing inverting lenses.
    Confronting the same constellation of objects as before and knowing that he does so, he nevertheless finds them transformed through and through in many of their details

An interpretive enterprise can only articulate a paradigm, not correct is.
Paradigms are not corrigible by normal science at all.
Instead, normal science ultimately leads only to the recognition of anomalies and to crises
These are terminated, not by deliberation and interpretation, but by a relatively sudden and unstructured event like the gesalt switch.

The operations and measurements that a scientists undertakes in the laboratory are not ‘the given’ of experience but rather the ‘collected with difficulty’.
They are not what the scientist sees, at leas not before his research is well advanced and his attention focussed.
They are the concrete indices to the content of more elementary perceptions, and as such they are selected for the close scrutiny of normal research only because they promise opportunity for the fruitful elaboration of an accepted paradigm.
Operations and measurements are paradigm-deterimined.

Only after experience has been thus determined that the research for an operational definition or a pure observation-language can begin.

All the interim summaries of the first half of Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition)

All the interim summaries of the first half of Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition)

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Chapter 1

The invention of writing

  • Features of the preliterate civilisation:
    • Knowledge confined to know-how without theoretical knowledge of the underlying principles
    • Fluidity of knowledge
    • Collection of myths and stories about the beginning of the universe (animism)
  • Written language appeared separately in at least four cultures, in each case it was preceded by proto-writing
  • Writing consists of a combination of pictograms and phonograms
  • Written records form an external memory, which allows an accumulation of knowledge
  • For a long time the number of readers was limited. In addition, they were not encouraged to think critically about what they were reading (scholastic method)

The discovery of numbers

  • Knowledge depends on counting and measuring. The first written forms of counting consisted of lines (tallies) in the bones and stones
  • Because it is difficult to discern more than four lines in a glance, the tallies were grouped. The grouping usually occurred in fives
  • Gradually a separate symbol was used for five and multiples of five
  • Later numbers systems were based on multiples of 10
  • Number names indicate that the intention of numbers was a slow process; it took quite some time before a useful system was discovered
  • The Greek and Roman number systems were suboptimal because their notation did not assign a meaning to the place of digits. Such a place coding system was developed in India. This required the symbol for 0.

The Fertile Crescent

Civilisations in the Fertile crescent:

  • Ancient Mesopotamia: mathematics (algebra, astronomy, calendar)
  • Ancient Egypt: geometrical knowledge, calendar, hieroglyphs

The Greeks

  • Ancient Greece was the birthplace of philosophy and saw major advances in medicine.
  • Two great philosophers were Plato and Aristotle.
  • Plato and Aristotle founded schools (Academy and Lyceum) which together would educate students for centuries. The two other schools were the Stoa (with an emphasis for self-control) and the Garden of Epicurus (which emphasised the enjoyment of simple pleasures)
  • Under Alexander the Great, there was significant expansion and interaction with other cultures, leading to what is called the Hellenistic culture and a shift to Alexandria, where knowledge became more mathematical and specialised.

Developments from the Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages

Ancient Romans:

  • Assimilated the Greek methods and knowledge
  • Were more interested in technological advances than in philosophy

Byzantine empire

  • Eastern part of the Roman empire
  • Preservation of the legacy of the Ancient Greeks

Arab empire:

  • Founded on Islam, contained the Fertile Crescent
  • Translation and extension of the Greek works
  • Particularly strong on medicine, astronomy, mathematics (algebra) and optics
  • Occupied most of Spain

Western Roman empire:

  • Largest decline in scientific knowledge
  • Catholic church main preserver; not very science-oriented
  • In the Renaissance referred to as ‘dark ages’

Turning the tide in the West

Post-medieval developments in Western Europe

  • The establishment of (cathedral) schools and universities
  • Increased mobility of the scholars
  • Discovery of the ancient Greek and Arabic texts
  • Growing impact of Aristotle’s work

A cultural movement:

  • Increased interest in and imitation of the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures (Renaissance)
  • Increasing status of science and scientists

The Protestant reformation

  • Rebellion against the dominance of the Catholic church
  • More importance given to education, critical thinking, hard work and worldly success

Book printing

  • Rapid and Massive availability of reliable information

Colonisation of the world

  • Need for technological and scientific innovations
  • Discovery of new worlds

The limits of history writing

  • History writing always involved simplification and streamlining
  • Therefore, biases easily slip in:
    • Centred on persons rather than on zeitgeist
    • Too much credit is given to a small number of people (Matthew effect)
    • Facts are interpreted on the basis of what happened afterwards (hindsight bias)
    • Too much attention is given to the contribution of the author’s own group (ethnocentrism)
    • History writers often rely on summaries and interpretations made by other writers

Chapter 2

From a geocentric to a heliocentric model of the universe

  • The need for an improved calendar renewed interest in the motions of the Earth, the Moon and the Sun relative to one another.
  • The model of the universe that was used was the geocentric model of Aristotle and Ptolemy. This model has the Earth at the centre of the universe.
  • Copernicus became interested in an alternative heliocentric model with the Sun at the centre. He did not publish this model until the year of this death, partly because he thought the evidence was not convincing enough and partly because he did not want to upset the Roman Catholic church.
  • Nearly a century later Galileo Galilei used a telescope to look at the night sky and observed several phenomena that were easier to explain on the basis of a heliocentric model than on the basis of a geocentric model. in doing so, he upset the Roman Catholic church.
  • Because the evidence was so convincing and could be verified by others, the heliocentric model rapidly came to dominate astronomy despite the Roman Catholic church’s resistance.

Mechanisation of the world view

  • The response of the Roman Catholic church to Galilei encouraged René Descartes to build a new philosophy of man
  • In this philosophy a clear distinction was made between the soul, which was define and could not be studied with scientific methods, and the rest of the universe (including the human body), which was a complex machine that could be studied scientifically. This became known as (Cartesian) dualism.
  • The mechanistic view of the world came to replace Aristotle’s view, which still contained animistic elements

The formulation of the fist laws of physics

  • Newton explained why planets orbit the Sun and moons orbit planets
  • In doing so, he not only defined the relevant forces, but described them in such detail that they could be calculated precisely
  • The resulting mathematical equations were the first laws of physics, published in the Principia mathematica, convincing scholars that science could uncover the mechanisms underlying the universe

What set off the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century Europe?

The following factors are thought to have precipitated the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century Europe

  • The growth of the population, urbanisation, and the emergence of a considerable class of merchants
  • A crisis in religion
  • New inventions that made information more easily available, that led to new questions, and that included the promise of scientific discoveries leading to wealth and power
  • The existence of universities and patronage
  • Massive enrichment from the Greek and Arab civilisations
  • The idea that small issues could be solved without the need of an overall view that explained everything in the universe

The scientific revolution could also have died prematurely if:

  • A major disaster or war had happened
  • Religion had been able to suppress the new thinking
  • Natural philosophers had not been able to organise themselves and create structures that solidified their process

The new method of the natural philosopher

  • In particular, the writings of Francis Bacon were important in making the new method of the natural philosopher explicit
  • Bacon’s advice comprised the following elements
    • Observation and inductive reasoning are much more important in science than acknowledged by Aristotle
    • Systematic observation is important to have a good understanding of the phenomena and to come to correct axioms; it is also important to spot evidence against the prevailing axioms and convictions
    • Because of the limitations of observations, they must be supplemented by experimental histories to extract the truth from nature (rather than passively observe nature); observation and understanding must constantly interact
  • Bacon’s view was able to explain quite well the developments that resulted in the scientific revolution, but the emphasis on observation and experimental histories did not explain the ways in which Galilei and Newton sometimes did came to their conclusions
  • Another major change was that natural philosophers started to realise that not all knowledge had been known in ancient times and that much still remained to be discovered

Changes in society as a result of the scientific revolution

Science has induced many changes in society, such as:

  • People became more prosperous and knowledgeable
  • A scientific career became a new means of upward social mobility
  • Life and knowledge became more differentiated and specialised

The reactions to the scientific revolution can roughly be divided into positive and negative ones

  • Positive reactions
    • Reason and science should be the basis of social order (age of enlightenment)
    • Science is the motor of progress and true knowledge (positivism)
    • Scientific knowledge is always true and should guide decisions made
  • Negative reactions
    • Roman Catholic church: scientific knowledge is second-rank and dangerous if not guided by religious morals
    • Protestant churches: many saw no inherent contradiction between science and religion, but science still had to be guided by religion (led to attacks by positivists around 1870)
    • Humanities: the traditional world order and education have proven their use; it is dangerous to overhaul it all with rationality and science
    • Romanticists: the mechanistic world view relied on by scientists is wrong; the universe is a living, changing organism

The two cultures

  • Snow regretted the gulf that existed between scientists and humanists in the 1950s

Chapter 3

Individualisation in Western society

Since the end of the middle ages there has been increasing individualisation in society. Factors hypothesised to play a role include:

  • Increased complexity of society
  • Increased control by the state
  • Individuality promoted by Christianity
  • The increased availability of mirrors, books and letters

Empiricism vs rationalism

Rationalism

  • Existence of innate knowledge (nativism)
  • Reason is the source of knowledge
  • Main research method: deductive reasoning
  • Main applications: logic, mathematics
  • Main proponents: Plato, Descartes, Leibniz

Empiricism

  • No innate knowledge (tabula rasa)
  • Perception is the source of knowledge
  • Main research methods: observation, experimentation, inductive reasoning
  • Main applications: natural sciences
  • Main proponents: natural philosophers, Locke, Berkeley, Hume

Psychological studies of the mind

Epistemology

  • Rise of empiricism (Locke), which questioned the traditional rationalist view
  • In its extreme form empiricism leads to idealism, as argued by Berkeley and Hume
  • Kant sought to reconcile rationalism and empiricism by arguing that the mind imposes structure on the incoming sensory experiences and that it requires a coherent and constant input to make sense of input
  • Idealism was also put aside by Scottish common sense

Rational and empirical psychology

  • Psychology was added as the fourth part of metaphysics
  • Important impetus: two books by Wolff, who made a distinction between rational psychology (based on axioms and deductions) and empirical psychology (based on introspection)
  • Kant argued that psychology could not be a proper natural science, because of the act of introspection changed the state of the mind, inner observations could not be separated and recombined at will, and could not be formulated in mathematical laws
  • Comte argued that introspection as a scientific method was flawed and claimed that the human mind could only be studied scientifically by focusing on physiology and the products of the human mind

Textbooks of psychology

The increased importance of psychology has resulted in the production of textbooks since the late 1700s, which illustrate the themes considered important and which also influenced people’s views of psychology. Four books have been discussed:

  • Kant: Anthropology as a collection of observed facts about humans
  • Herbart: Attempt to make psychology scientific by introducing mathematical laws
  • Upham: Claim that intellectual (mental) philosophy is a science worthwhile to be studied
  • Bain: Introduction of the nervous system and other physiological information in a textbook of psychology

Scientific studies of 'psychological' functions

Characteristics and limitations of human perception and information processing interested the natural philosophers, who began to run Baconian experimental studies. They discussed two lines of research:

  • Studies on human perception. The level of detail humans can discern (Hooke), the influence of illumination on this capacity (Mayer), the detection of just noticeable differences between stimuli (Weber, Fechner) and the formulation of a psychophysical theory based on them (Fechner)
  • The time needed to perform tasks and the speed of signal transmission in the nervous system.
  • Astronomers varied in their estimates of the timing of events (personal equation) and showed variability in them. Von Helmholtz could measure the transmission speed of nerves in frogs (and humans), Donders could measure the time needed for simple mental operations

Evolutionary theory

Evolutionary theory

  • Proposed by Darwin
  • Several developments made the theory likely in the nineteenth century: interest in diversity and correspondence between species, discovery of fossils, cultivation of new flower types
  • Darwin discovered that random variations at birth, together with limited availability of resources, could explain evolution on the basis of natural selection
  • Theory published in The origin of species
  • Darwin could not explain how new random generated organisms could come to dominate the existing organisms

Common misunderstandings of evolutionary theory

  • The mistaken belief that there is a direction in the genetic changes that cause the initial variation
  • The mistaken belief that evolution results in better or stronger organisms

An example of Darwin’s influence: Galton

  • Galton tried to find evidence for the heredity of animal and human features
  • Was not very successful, but inspired subsequent generations to address the issue of intelligence testing.

The contribution of statistics

  • Research on living organisms required other data analysis than research in physics and chemistry, because the data were noisy and simultaneously influenced by many different factors
  • Quetelet discovered that, whereas individual data points were impossible to predict, such prediction was possible when the analysis were based on the means of hundreds of observations
  • Fisher further showed how researchers could adapt their methodology so that the influence of confounding variables could easily be factored out in statistical analysis

Chapter 4

The foundation of the first laboratory of experimental psychology in Germany

  • German universities were reformed in the nineteenth century to make them more dynamic and advance the new sciences
  • Wundt was a German physician who became interested in applying the physiological methods to psychological phenomena
  • When to obtained a professional chair at the University of Leipzig, he established a new laboratory in 1879. This event became seen as the birth of psychology
  • Wundt not only used the experimental methods from physiology, but also thought that introspection was a valid research method and that information about the psychology of individuals could be obtained by looking at cultures (historical method). The impact of the latter two methods increased as he grew older.
  • Many psychologists got their initial training in Wundt’s laboratory.

Starting psychology in America: James and Titchener

  • James was an Americal physician who became interested in psychology through his teachings. Arguably wrote the most influential textbook of early psychology.
  • James was influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary theory. This resulted in interest in the survival functions of the human mind and in comparative research of animals and humans
  • Titchener promoted structuralism on the basis of introspection in the USA
  • Had limited impact because of criticisms of the method (introspection), the limited usefulness of the knowledge (functionalism), and the objection that humans are more than the sum of the individual sensations (Gestalt psychology)

Psychology in France: Ribot, Charcot, Binet

  • In France, psychology was seen as part of the humanities as a result of Comet’s writings. This was questioned by Ribot, who pointed to the developments in the UK and the German lands.
  • Another towering figure in France was Charcot, a neurologist best known in psychology for his research on hysteria. Trusted entirely on his clinical expertise, which turned out to be wrong in case of hypnosis.
  • Binet and Simon’s development of the first valid test of intelligence is France’s best-known contribution to early psychology

Freud and psychoanalysis

  • Freud was one of the first neurologists, a new group of therapists at the end of the nineteenth century. Before, people with mental disorders had been taken care of first on an informal basis and then – increasingly- in institutions, where they were treated as prisoners or patients. Basic treatment in asylums consisted of containment and attempts to re-educate the patients.
  • Freud was the first to actually talk to his patients (psychological treatment). On the basis of these talks he constructed the psychoanalytical theory, which argues that the unconscious mind plays a strong role in the control of people’s actions
  • Psychoanalysis had a massive impact, both on neurologists and psychologists, because it provided a coherent and attractive theory of psychopathology

Starting psychology in UK

  • Psychology had a hard time becoming an academic discipline in the UK. This largely had to do with the fact that the universities did not encourage the new discipline. Although there is no evidence for active opposition, every bit of progress required substantial effort
  • In England James Sully from University College London was the driving force, although the University of Cambridge managed to have the first laboratory of experimental psychology under the direction of W.H.R Rivers. Another main source of inspiration was Galton’s work on individual differences.
  • In Scotland the most active college was the University of Aberdeen where Alexander
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All the interim summaries of the second half of Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition)

All the interim summaries of the second half of Historical and conceptual issues in psychology, by Brysbaert, M and Rastle, K (second edition)

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Chapter 7

Introduction

Mind-brain problem: issue of how the mind is related to the brain.
Three main views

  • Dualism
    The mind (or soul) is something independent of the body
  • Materialism
    The mind is nothing but a by-product of the biological processes taking place in a particular brain.
  • Functionalism
    The mind is indeed realised in a brain, but it could be copied in any other brain.
    Just like information on a computer can be copied to other computers

Dualism

  • The mind refers to a person’s faculties to perceive, feel, think, remember and want
  • In religions the mind is often equated with an immaterial, divine soul. This is an example of dualism. A similar view was defended by Descartes and, therefore, in philosophy is often called Cartesian dualism
  • Dualism is an intuitively attractive model of the mind-brain relationship because it gives humans free will and it readily accounts for the existence of consciousness in humans. The latter refers to the rich and coherent, private, first-person experience people have about themselves and the world around them.
  • Dualism does have problems explaining how an immaterial mind can influence the body, and how it is possible that so much information processing in humans occurs unconsciously. It also does not agree with a scientific world view, where there is no place for mysterious and animistic substances.

Materialism

  • Materialism holds that there is no distinction between the mind and the brain, and that the mind is a direct consequence of the brain in operation. To make the distinction with functionalism clear, we take this to imply that the mind is linked to the specific brain in which it has been realised
  • According to the strongest versions of materialism, there is no consciousness or free will. Consciousness is an illusion, a form of folk psychology, and humans are comparable to robots or machines. According to Dawkins, they are the slaves of their genes
  • A fist problem with materialism was that it seemed unable to account for the identity problem: how can different exposures to the same event be experienced as the same if they are not encoded similarly? A second problem was that attempts to simulate the human mind as a by-product of biological or mechanical processes were not successful, whereas computers running sequences of instructions on stored information started to thrive

Functionalism

  • Computer science has shown that information may transcend the medium on which it is realised. It can be copied from one Turing machine to another
  • This insight provides a solution to the identity problem, the fact that it is unlikely that two identical thoughts are physiologically realised in exactly the same way
  • This insight led to functionalism in the philosophy of mind, the conviction that philosophers of mind had to investigate the functions of information, and not the precise ways in which the information was realised in the brain
  • Functionalism (and materialism) can explain how the mind is not lost in the thought experiment of teleportation, unlike dualism
  • Some authors see the fact that information is a realm separate from the machine upon which it is implemented as a way in which humans can reclaim their free will; others claim it simply implies that humans are not only slaves of their genes but also slaves of the information realm
  • Cognitive psychology and cognitive neuropsychology were realisations of functionalism in psychological research. They are currently questioned by the rapid expansion of cognitive neuroscience, which postulates a closer link between information processing and brain functioning. A further challenge for functionalism lies in the fact that digital computers cannot survive independently because they rely on humans for symbol grounding and to remain functional in a changing environment. This suggests that the human mind is more intimately connected to the brain and body upon which it is realised than is postulated by functionalism

Consciousness

  • Information as currently implemented in computers does not seem to possess the phenomenological richness of human consciousness. Block proposed to make a distinction between access consciousness and phenomenological consciousness.
  • There is a lot of empirical evidence that processing is going on in humans without them being consciously aware of it. We discussed the phenomena of masked priming, implicit memory, and Libet’s experiment on the voluntary initiation of movement.
  • Unconscious processing strongly resembles conscious processing; the main differences seem to be that it is less rich and integrated than conscious processing and that humans cannot deliberately act on it
  • A model of access consciousness is the global workplace model, which compares the human mind to a theatre. A lot of activity is going on behind the scenes, but the activity on the scene must be visible to all, in order to synchronise the various activities. This is the function of consciousness
  • The phenomenological richness of human conscious experiences seems to require the existence of qualia. This has been illustrated by three thought experiments; the Chinese room, Mary, and the zombie world.
  • Because of the differences between human consciousness and information processing in computers, Chalmers claims that the hard problem of phenomenological consciousness had not yet been solved. Others disagree and argue that it will be solved when a solution to the symbol grounding is found.
  • A possible solution to the symbol grounding problem is to assume that human cognitive representations (symbols) derive their meaning from the interactions between the human body and the environment. Cognitive neuroscience has found evidence in line with this view of embodied cognition.

Focus on

  • There is increasing evidence for two thinking systems
    • Type I, automatic and based on associative learning
    • Type 2, controlled, explicit and based on hypothetical thinking
  • For a long time, cognitive psychology was only interested in type 2 thinking, which was seen as heuristic-based and prone to reasoning errors. Type 1 thinking was largely overlooked and considered as the origin of some reasoning errors.
  • Currently there was a redressing of the balance, because it is now realised that system 1 thinking forms the basis of much of everyday interaction and intuitive thinking
  • According to the theory of unconscious thought, it is possible to evaluate information without consciousness. Such evaluation is less susceptible to the capacity limitations of conscious thought. It does not lead to precise conclusions, but to rough estimates of the desirability of the alternatives, and can be used in combination with conscious thought when complex decisions must be made

Chapter 8

Twentieth-century changes in the treatment of mental health problems

  • Before World War I psychologists were largely excluded from treatment; their main task was administering psychological tests; there were a few university-related centres
  • Because of the increased need for advice and treatment during World War II, psychologists because involved in treatment
  • After World War II, the position of psychologists in the treatment of mental disorders was further strengthened by:
    • The antipsychiatry movement
    • Scientific research on the efficacy of psychotherapies
    • The fact that psychiatrists became more involved with the prescription of psychoactive drugs
    • The increase of social management and individualisation in society
  • Knowledge of psychology also became of public interest

Psychological testing

  • Psychologists needed reliable and valid assessments. These were not provided by unstructured interviews, due to problems with first impressions and the implicit personality theories people have
  • Standardised tests were proposed as an alternative. These tests were administered to a test group in a uniform way, so that the users know how new test-takers scored relative to the test group. In addition, the reliability and validity became empirically verified
  • IQ tests allowed psychologists to assess an individual’s intellectual potential. Achievement tests allowed them to test the acquired knowledge about a particular topic in a reliable van valid way
  • Good personality tests required empirical validation and measures to tackle the problem of social desirability
  • In the non-pathological range, most personality tests are self-report questionnaires that measure traits. At the moment most researchers believe that the personality can be described accurately on the basis of five traits (the Big Five). Previously, Cattell defended a minimum of 16 and Eysenck an minimum of 3.
  • Tests have become popular partly because of the increased individualisation of society

The psychology of work and organisation

  • At the beginning of the twentieth century, industrial psychology was under the influence of scientific management which considered workers as dispensable ‘hands of the factory’, motivated solely by money to address physiological needs
  • Based on the Hawthorne studies, Mayo pointed to the importance of social and psychological factors for the well-being and motivation of employees. This was the start of the human relations movement
  • In the 1980s, human resource management stressed that the employees were the central asset of a company. Workers should not be controlled but given autonomy and responsibility so that they come to self-discipline. Works is no longer a chore, but an opportunity that can help self-actualisation

The weak methodology of the Hawthorne studies

  • The Hawthorne studies were not well done, because many aspects were changed simultaneously, so tat the authors could not conclude for sure which factor was the origin of the effects they observed
  • Still, strong conclusions were drawn on the basis of these findings
  • These conclusions have been perpetuated in textbooks because:
    • Writers do not read the original sources
    • The story is too good not to be true
    • The basic message of the human relations movement was correct
    • The story strengthened the positions of psychologists and managers
  • The idealised depiction of the Hawthorne studies is an example of the pseudohistory of science, an attempt to excite enthusiasm for science by narrating simplified and heroic stories that promote false ideas of how science works

Chapter 9

Thoughts before the twentieth century

  • To a great extent, the rise of the scientific approach can be summarised as a shift in balance from deductive reasoning to inductive reasoning. Before the scientific revolution it was generally accepted that only deductive reasoning led to necessary truth (Plato, Aristotle)
  • The men of science at first tried to convince their audience that the new way of thinking was very close to traditional deductive reasoning and demonstration (Galilei, early Newton)
  • Gradually natural philosophers started to argue that inductive reasoning could lead to conclusions as probable as truth, when facts were collected in large numbers and without prejudice, when effects could be replicated, and when theories led to new verifiable predictions (Bacon, Huygens, later Newton, Bayes, Laplace, Herschel)
  • Whelwell and Comte further pointed out that there was no clear distinction between observation and idea, between fact and theory. They are closely interconnected and influenced each other.
  • As a result of the successes of science, most of the initial doubts about whether inductive reasoning could lead to true conclusions were swept under the carpet towards the end of the nineteenth century

Logical positivism

  • Logical positivism tried to reconcile the practical success of sciences with the methodological concerns formulated by philosophers
  • It tried to define demarcation criteria for science that would be universal and ahistorical, and that could be applied to other knowledge areas
  • The movement found prominence with the publication of the 1929 manifesto of the Vienna Circle
  • The most important demarcation criterion put forward for empirical truths was empirical verification
  • Almost immediately, however, the criterion met with a series of objections
    • Verification does not solve the induction problem
    • Scientific theories are full of variables that cannot be observed directly
    • There are no demarcation criteria that unambiguously define ‘observable’
    • Sometimes things are not observable until one knows how to search for them
    • Verifiable observations do not guarantee a correct understanding
  • Because of the many criticisms, logical positivism failed, which gave positivism a negative connotation of naive belief in the power and the truthfulness of scientific research

Popper’s falsification alternative to logical positivism

  • Science is better considered as the formulation of theories (on the basis of inductive reasoning and educated guessing) that scientists subsequently try of falsify by deriving hypotheses which are put to the falsification test; this is the hypothetico-deductive method.
  • There is no guarantee that an initially proposed theory is correct; therefore, science proceeds by trial and error
  • Science differs from on science because
    • The theories can be falsified
    • There is a willingness to do so
  • Falsification is a better criterion than verification, because it is logically possible to falsify a statement based on inductive reasoning
  • The more falsifiable a theory is (depending on its level of detail and scope), the better the theory is
  • Falsification is counterintuitive because people have a bias towards trying to confirm their opinions rather than trying to reject them
  • Limitations to falsification
    • Popper’s insistence on replacing falsified theories by bold alternatives as soon as they are contradicted by empirical observations does not agree with scientific practice and would also seem to be too radical
    • When researchers are confronted with conflicting evidence, they first try to modify the existing theory so that it can account for the contradictory finding
    • According to Popper, modifications are acceptable as long as they do not make the theory less falsifiable; otherwise, they are unacceptable ad hoc modifications
    • Problem: researchers regularly propose modifications they do not test and that are not taken up by other researchers. Is this still science?

Kuhn’s theory

  • A discipline needs a general theory to become scientific, otherwise it is pre-science. This theory forms a paradigm against which observations are made, questions are posed and answers interpreted
  • During periods of normal science, scientists solve puzzles within the existing paradigm. They defend the paradigm and ostracise colleagues who question it. Modifications of the theory in the light of contradictory findings must stay within the paradigm. Otherwise the findings is an unexplained anomaly
  • During a period of normal science, anomalies accumulate and modifications become increasingly ad hoc. This triggers a crisis
  • During a crisis, scientists are more open to an alternative, incommensurable theory, if the latter provides the same level of explanation and in addition allows the formulation of new predictions that stand the falsification test. If such an alternative is found, a paradigm shift takes place, which Kuhn calls a scientific revolution
  • Because of these scientific revolutions, scientific progress is not steady and cumulative. During the revolution progress is very fast; at the end of a period of normal science, progress is very slow or non-existent
  • The cycle of periods of normal science followed by scientific revolutions is never-ending.
  • Paradigm shifts in Kuhn’s theory do not imply that the old paradigm is replaced by a better one; it is just replaced by another one
  • This means that all scientific knowledge is relative and time-dependent, because it is based on a paradigm that is bound to be replaced in the future
  • The awareness that scientific knowledge is relative has elicited strong criticism from the postmodernists. In their view science is in no way superior to other types of knowledge, because it consists of social constructions made up by the scientists. Scientists have more power because they have formed strong alliances with other powerful groups

Pragmatism

  • A strong component of the discussion within the philosophy of science is the extent to which human perception and understanding correspond to a physical reality. This is known as the realism vs. idealism debate.
  • Another view is that knowledge of reality is derived from successfully coping with the world. Ideas that work are retained; ideas that do not make a practical difference get lost. This is the pragmatic view
  • The pragmatic view has been ignored for a long time, because it does not give a special status to scientific knowledge, but currently seems to be gaining momentum

Chapter 10

Reasons why psychology is claimed to be a science

  • The founders have defined psychology as the study of the human mind with the scientific method
  • They further argued that whether or not a discipline is a science depends on the research methods used and not on the topic investigated: psychology used the scientific method and, therefore, was a science
  • The scientific method has proven to be a fruitful approach and is fully integrated within mainstream psychological research
  • Psychological research is fully integrated within other scientific research. It is one of the seven major areas with strong links to two other major areas. It forms a hub for a series of less central sciences related to human functioning

Reasons why psychology is not seen as a science

  • The stereotypical view people have of a psychologists is that of a clinical psychologists treating patients. This view does not overlap with the stereotypical view people have of a scientists as a loner who is obsessed with his work and which he studies in an uncreative way, making use of instruments.
  • Professional psychologists largely outnumber psychology researchers, and they are users of scientific knowledge rather than creators of such knowledge. There is even evidence that many practitioners return to their intuition once they have finished their studies
  • People are convinced that they have as much knowledge about psychological issues as psychologists, or at least that they can keep up with psychologists as long as they pay attention to the psychological research that is described in the media
  • Next to the mainstream scientific tradition in academic psychology, there is a hermeneutic approach that is more in agreement with the public’s view of psychology as
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