1. Eureka! The Roots of Philosophy in Psychology
History and Systems of Psychology

2. Click link in case of emergency
The Game of Philosophy
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3. The Physicists Thales of Miletus (620-546 BCE):
Water
Critical Tradition
“Question Everything”
Anaximander ( BCE)
“Question Thales”
Boundless
Evolution and Cannibalism
Don’t eat fish

4. More Physics Empedocles (490-430 BCE) Heraclitus (535-475 BCE)
The four elements
Eidola perception theory
Heraclitus ( BCE)
The only constant is change
Fire
No man steps in the same river twice
No stability = no knowlege
Parmenides of Elea (early 5th century BCE)
All movement is an illusion (Zeno’s paradox)
Democritus ( BCE)
Atoms

5. Hippocrates (Ca. 460BCE, Khios, Greece)
Attacked the conventional ideas of illness
Empedocles'’ 4-element idea with humors in the body
Earth: Black bile
Air: Yellow bile
Water: Phlegm
Fire: Blood
The body’s natural healing process
Rest, diet, exercise, fresh air, baths, massages

6. Galen ( Ca. 140CE Rome)
Hippocrates’ 4-humor idea extends to personalities
Blood: Sanguine
Phlegm: Phlegmatic
Black bile: Melancholic
Yellow bile: Choleric

7. Sophists Truth is in the mind of the beholder
Rhetoric and logic teachers
Protagoras ( BCE)
No single truth exists
In order to understand a person’s actions or beliefs, one must understand the person
Changes focus of philosophy from what is it all made up, to what can we know and how can we know it.

8. Socrates (Ca. 469-399 BCE) Not really a sophist
There was an actual truth in there somewhere
The purpose of life is to gain knowledge
The unexamined life is not worth living
Inductive definition

10. In the Psyche Corner, Wearing Red Robes: PLATO! (Ca. 429–347 BCE)
Everything in the everyday world is a manifestation of a pure form
Interact with imperfect matter to make poor shadow
The allegory of the cave
Nothing is learned from experience; only remembered

11. Levels of Knowledge Physicality is an impediment to true understanding
“All those who attempt to gain knowledge by examining the physical world are doomed to ignorance, or at best, opinion.”

12. Plato’s Tripartite Soul
The Rational Soul (Reason) is immortal; all others are corruptible
Must suppress bodily needs for the good of Reason
Created a dualistic theory of the soul, which resulted in a very powerful religious dogma

13. And in the Soma corner, in blue robes and wielding a heavy book, ARISTOTLE! (Ca. 384-322 BCE)
Rational thought is important
Essences exist within nature, not apart from it
In order to infer these essences, one must study their manifestations
Therefore, the body is not a hindrance to enlightenment

14. Aristotle’s Tripartite Soul
Vegetative (nutritive): Plants
Growth, reproduction, feeding
Sensitive: Nonhuman animals
Above plus response to environment
Pleasure, pain, memory
Rational: Human only
Above plus ability to engage in rational thought

15. Motivation, Emotion, and Memory
We are happiest when doing that which comes naturally
Rational thought for humans
Emotion serves to amplify existing tendencies
Remembering is a spontaneous recollection of something previously experienced
Differs from Plato in that it is the result of sensory experience
Not nativisitic

16. Aristotle's Principles of Memory
Contiguity
Frequency
Similarity
Contrast

17. Now, Let’s Jump to 17th Century Europe!

18. The Spirit of Mechanism
The idea that natural processes are mechanically determined and capable of explanation by laws of physics and chemistry
Julien de La Mettrie
Fever-induced hallucination
People are “enlightened machines”
Human body is “nothing more than a watch that winds itself.”
Died of an overdose of truffles and pheasant

19. Doctrines du Jour Determinism: Acts are determined by past events
Set a clock in motion, and it becomes predictable
Reductionism: Phenomena on one level (e.g., complex ideas) can be explained in terms of phenomena on another level (simple ideas)
A clock is explained in terms of gears and springs

20. Renee Descartes (aka Cartius) 1596-1650
Born wealthy enough to pursue intellectual pursuits and travel
“He who lives well, lives well hidden.”
Exceptional pupil at a Jesuit school
Mathematical prodigy

21. It’s Good to be a Wealthy, Well-Connected Student
Got special consideration from school director to arrange classes so that he could sleep until noon
“Health reasons”
Kept this habit up for most of his life
Parisian Playboy
Exceptional gambler
Heavy drinker
Expert swordsman
One lasting romantic affiliation
3-year affair with an unknown Dutch woman
Produced a daughter (?) who died at 5
“The greatest sorrow of my life”

22. One too many gambling debts, hangovers, or jealous others later…
At around 21, served as “gentleman volunteer”
Holland
Bavaria
Hungary
Spirit of Truth
Fever-induced dream
Devote his life to apply math to all of the sciences and produce certainty of knowledge

23. Application to Practical Concerns
Returned to Paris, sold Dad’s property
Used the funds to live in comfort and solitude
Lived in 13 towns, 24 houses, kept his address secret
Always near a Roman Catholic church
Used geometry (Cartesian) to improve maneuverability of wheelchairs
Experiments to find ways to keep hair from going grey
Prolific writer and questionable experimenter
“I think therefore I lamb.”

24. Descartes and the Mind-Body Problem
Dualism vs Monism
The puppet with nothing to offer
Versailles Gardens
The soul (mind) and the pineal gland
Animal spirits
Hollow nerves
Two-way interaction
Reflex action
“no mind involvement”

25. Native Rene Nativism vs Empiricism Descartes: Derived and Innate ideas
Plato vs Aristotle
Descartes: Derived and Innate ideas
Break with plato
Derived: Ideas that arise from external stimulus
Innate: Ideas that develop of the mind alone
God
Self
Perfection
Infinity
Will be inlfuential in the development of other theories (e.g., Gestalt) and will provide a springboard against others to rebel
John Locke

26. Perhaps Sleeping In is Good for the Health
Got attention from 20-year-old Queen Christina of Sweden
Asked him to be personal tutor of philosophy
Declined, but she eventually won him over in 1649
Needed tutoring at 5:00 am
Drafty castle, cold environment
Descartes of pneumonia died within a year

27. A Problem With Mind/Body Dualism
Too tall to fit in a coffin
Cut off head to ship separately
Ship with his body and skull sank just before docking
Took 17 years to restore his notes
Skull disappeared and resurfaced in private collections for years afterward

28. John Locke (1632-1704) Will initiate “British Empiricism”
Rejects any innate ideas
“Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper.”
Primary vs Secondary qualities
Primary: exist in an object independent of perception (e.g., size)
Secondary exist in perception (e.g., tickle of the feather)
The Shaftesbury rebellion

29. Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753)
Initiated Mentalism
Mental monist
Taking Locke a step further
If there are two realities, one on the world and one in the mind…what is the difference?
We can only be sure of our perceptions
How, then can there be stability in the universe?
Also 3D vision theorist
Accommodation

30. Berkeley and the Permanent Perceiver
There was a young man who said "God, I find it exceedingly odd That this very tree Should continue to be When there is no one about in the quad.“
The Answer:
"Young man, your question is odd. I am always about in the quad. And that's why this tree Continues to be" Signed by, yours faithfully, God.

31. David Hume (1711-1776) Another Mental Monist Takes God from Berkeley
If there is no permanent perceiver, we can only be sure of our own minds
Solipsism
Nothing exists but the mind

32. Hume Anticipating the Functionalists
Impressions
Basic elements of mental life (similar to perceptions)
Ideas
Mental experiences in the absence of a stimulating object
Very careful to leave out physiology or external stimuli
Early associationism:
Similarity
Contiguity
Clear Aristotle influence!

33. David Hartley ( )
Added repetition to Hume’s laws of association
As kids grow, a variety of sensory experiences and trains of associations of increasing complexity are established
Thus, higher levels of thought can be reduced to simpler sensations
First to apply laws of association to all types of mental activity
Doctrine of specific vibrations

34. James Mill (1775-1836) Ex-clergyman from Scotland
No one could understand his sermons
The Anti-Berkeley
Attempted to apply mechanism and destroy subjectivity
Machines are no longer a metaphor for the mind
The mind IS a machine
A passive entity that automatically responds to stimuli

35. What If He Had a Son? Fill his head at an early age 5-h daily drills:
Classic languages
Mathematics
History
Politics
Read Plato at 3
1st scholarly paper at 11
Mastered standard univeristy curriculum at 12
“Nervous Breakdown” (Severe depression) at 21
So analytical, “I could not feel.”
Poetry of Wordsworh helped

36. John Stewart Mill (1806-1873) Mental chemistry
Based on the discovery of H2O
Adding H and O to get water, something completely new
Mixing colored lights to get white, something completely new
Creative synthesis
Complex ideas form from simple ones
Takes on new qualities not present in its pieces
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts?

37. Mechanism and Reductionism in the 19th Century
Analytical
Engine
(Babbage, 1833)
Tik Tok
Frank Baum (1914)
Mary Shelly
Frankenstein (1818)
Babbage’s Brain
(Harvested 1871)
Charles Babbage

38. Philosophy is NOT for Everyone
It STILL Doesn't work?