Chapter 6

From Philosophy to Social Science

Modified: 2023-03-10 (8:56 PM CDST)

Remember, this outline follows chapter 6 closely and adds material to help you learn and understand it. Please report any problems with the page by e-mailing me. The links on this page worked as of March 10, 2023 at 8:45 pm CDST. Please report any problems.

ZEITGEIST (p. 187)

• Europe After 1648:
  • Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War
    • Dutch Republic gained independence
    • France became Europe's major power
    • The Holy Roman Empire gradually broke up into smaller and independent states
    • Statehood was solidified and international relations normalized
    • International law recognized:
      • National sovereignty
      • Balance of power
      • Noninterference in the internal affairs of other sovereingn states
  • Philosophers looked for other solutions to the Mind-Body Problem
    • New solutions sought to keep philosophy and theology apart
    • The roles of:
      • Self-awareness
      • Mathematics
      • Morality
    • Became more important
  • The new philosophies of utilitarianism and romanticism developed
  • Laboratories for chemistry, physics, and biology were established.
  • Social Science emerged
    • Sociology
    • Psychology
  • Psychology adopted the laboratory model

Learning Objective: Analyze how the founding of laboratories was important to early psychology.

PREVIEW (p. 187)

• Descartes’s interactionist solution to the mind-body problem led to the creation of other solutions including: double-aspectism, occasionalism, pre-established harmony, and psychophysical parallelism.
• The nature-nurture problem was at the heart of the conflict between rationalists and empiricists.
• Representation, or how information is represented in the mind is still not known today.
• Apperception, on the other hand, has largely disappeared as a topic in current psychology and has been replaced by perception.
• Utilitarian accounts of behavior have survived into modern psychology but romantic accounts have not.
• Hegel’s dialectic has flourished as an idea and crossed from philosophy into many other disciplines.
• Ideas first derived from sociology such as alienation and positivism crossed over into other subject fields including psychology.
• Social Darwinism has fallen far from its original prominent position but is still invoked by some, especially in political discourse.
• Herbart’s threshold or limen played an important role in the development of psychophysics and is still a fundamental topic in psychology.
• Lotze was the first to provide an explicit link between physiology and psychology.

Learning Objective: Summarize the philosophical ideas that led to the emergence of psychology.

Nature-Nurture-the philosophical problem regarding the sources of knowledge.

INTRODUCTION (p. 188)

• Descartes's interactive dualism:
  • Had no viable mechanism'
  • Depended on personal experience
  • Depended on God's benevolence
• Other philosophers had different approaches:
  • Baruch Spinoza invoked pantheism
  • Nicolas Malebranche occasionalism argued for God interfering with the world from time to time
  • Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz posited simultaneous but separate representations of nature
  • Immanuel Kant cleanly separated philosophy from theology
    • Kant argued for innate categories of mind
    • That position separated him from the British Empiricists over the Nature-Nurture problem
• Seay and Gottfried's (1978) modern analysis saw the Nature-Nurture problem as more complex
  • Instead of only nature vs nature, they saw the problem as having five facets
    • Biology
    • Experience
    • Ontogeny
    • Culture
    • Individual Differences
    • All above play a role in the sources of knowledge and behavior
    • They wrote (p. 31):
      • "Any behavior in an organism is the result of dynamic interaction among the five determinants of behavior described . . . Their action is interdependent, and one determinant can augment, modify, or negate the influence of another. Behavioral determination is always probabilistic . . . The more precisely one can determine the characteristics of the individual organism, the more accurately one can predict and understand that organism’s behavior."

Determinism-the doctrine that all events are caused by other antecedent events.

Double-aspectism-a solution to the mind-body problem in which the mental and physical parts are considered to be separate representations of the same substance.

FOUR PHILOSOPHERS (p. 189)

• Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Kant warrant further study because their work influenced the rise of psychology.
  • Spinoza's double excommunication was another example of religious intolerance
  • The Dutch Republic was relatively tolerant of religious thought but still more intolerant than most countries today
    • That "tolerance" in the Dutch Republic enabled Spinoza to write and publish in a manner impossible in any other country in Europe at the time
  • Malebranche was one of a minority of philosophers who invoked a role for God in their philosophy
  • His allowing God to make exceptions to rational rules and logic was unacceptable to most other contemporary philosophers
  • Leibniz, a confirmed rationalist, opposed Locke's tabula rasa and Descartes's materialism and interactionism.
  • A life member of the Royal Society; he independently invented the calculus and a mechanical calculating machine.
  • Kant forged a connection between rationalism and empiricism, peacefully separated theology from philosophy, and promoted an anti-hedonist explanation for moral behavior.
• Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza
• Ostracized by both Jewish and Christian communities in Amsterdam Principles of Cartesian Philosophy only work published during his lifetime (All placed on Index)
• Corresponded with Leibniz and others
• Rationalist, used math
  • Inspired by Euclid
  • His ideas presented as axioms, postulates, and proofs
• Determinist

determinism: the doctrine that all events are caused by other antecedent events. For Spinoza God was the cause of everything.

• Pantheist (God = Nature)
  • God was nature itself
  • Thus, knowing God was the ultimate goal of his philosophy
• Path to God lay in philosophy
• He used:

double-aspectism: a solution to the mind-body problem in which the mental and physical parts are considered to be separate representations of the same substance. That avoided the need for having mind and body affect each other

• "Clear and distinct ideas"
  • True for all time and all places (not relativistic)
• Observations are inadequate ideas
  • Only provide partial understanding
• Studied human behavior too: love, envy, hate, pride, jealousy
  • Actions: came from within were the products of the mind acting on an adequate idea
  • Passions: came from outside attracting or repelling them to people or objects
• Rational thought COULD moderate passion
  • Could not live a life totally free of passion
• The highest understanding was knowing God (same as knowing nature)

Learning Objective: Describe an example of intolerance you have witnessed.

• Nicolas Malebranche and Occasionalism
  • Also dissatisfied with Descartes's interactionism
  • God invoked as causal agent
• Miracles are an example
• Called Occasionalism because he believed God chose when to intervenc (only on occasion)
• Rejected by other philosophers (Nose in the camel's tent...If you don't stop the camel from putting its nose under the tent right away, then you'll be sleeping with the camel.)
• Most other philosophers wanted a complete separation between philosophy and theology.

• Rationalist Philosophers
  • Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
    • Self taught child prodigy
    • Turned down academic position at the University of Altdorf
    • Courtier (bureaucrat)
      • For the houses of Mainz and, later, Hanover
    • Had a strong interest in mathematics
    • Also invented calculus, independently of Newton
    • Invented a mechanical calculator
    • Wrote extensively (much of which has not yet been translated)
    • He was satirized Voltaire's Candide (he's Dr. Pangloss)
    • He was against Locke's Tabula Rasa
    • He opposed Descartes' materialism and interactionism
    • His Mind-Body solution, pre-established harmony (see below) led directly to his notion of monads
    • Monads were:
      • indivisible
      • infinite
      • do not occupy space
      • God is a monad (the top one)
      • Animal monads existed too, but were unable to achieve rational thought
      • Revealed the same truth, but represented it from two points of view (science represents physical world and philosophy the mental world)
        • Represent a circle
          • It can be represented geometrically as a figure,
          • algebraically as a formula (x² + y² = r²),
          • algorithmically as a procedure (e.g., fix the point of a compass onto a piece of paper and rotate the end holding the pencil 360°),
          • or mentally as an image.
        • In every representation, however, it is still a circle
    • Perceptions differed from apperception (also see below)
      • Perceptions accounted for simple sensory input
      • Apperceptions involved self-awareness
        • For example, right now I am aware that I am creating a lesson.
    • Petites perceptions-some monads existed but they were below the threshold of perception
      • Examples include: the sound of a single wave, sound of a single raindrop compared to roar of ocean or sound of a thunderstorm
      • But just because they cannot be perceived does not mean they do not exist.
    • The Matrix and Leibniz
      • That movie nicely illustrated the pre-established harmony Mind-Body solution
        • In the movie most people believe they are living normal lives (the mind)
        • In reality, however, they have been imprisoned by machines and are stuck away in a dark place where their bodies are being used for energy (the reality)
        • Neo, the hero, makes a choice (swallows the Red Pill--video) to live in the real world and to defeat the machines
          • If you have not seen the movie you should watch the video above
        • The real world in The Matrix, a pod
        • Want more explanation? Read Really Good Noodles

Pre-established harmony-the mind-body solution in which mental events affect other mental events and physical events affect other physical events but each cannot affect the other. God willed the apparent coordination between mind and body at the time of creation.

apperception-being conscious of one's own perceptions.

• Immanuel Kant
• Born in Königsberg
• Taught at University of Königsberg
• Regular habits
  • Early to rise, wrote, lectured, lunch with friends, walk
• Critique of Pure Reason
  • Book was against Leibniz's rationalism and Hume's skepticism
    • Against Hume he wrote:
      • "I freely admit that it was the remembrance of David Hume which, many years ago, first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a completely different direction."
    • Against Leibniz he argued that his monads were not required to understand the world
• Kant argued fo a priori innate knowledge (meaning these qualities of mind were innate, not learned)
  • Quantity: unity, plurality, totality
  • Quality: reality, negation, limitation
  • Relation: inherence and subsistence, cause and effect, community
  • Modality: possibility-impossibility, existence-nonexistence, necessity, contingency
  • Intuitions: space, time
  • My easy way to understand Kant: think that perception of space, time, causality are innate
  • Spoiler Alert: Helmholtz (chapter 7) will show that Kant was mistaken
  • Kant's logic dictated that God, the immortal soul, and freedom were out of bounds in his philosophy
• Transcendental Idealism: the innate categories of mind combined with sensory observations to reveal the truths of the physical world (AKA: synthetic approach-innate categories plus sensory observations)
• Crisis of the Enlightenment: how to separate God from philosophy
  • What was the relationship between theology and philosophy
    • Kant's approach removed God from philosophy but did not denigrate worship, reverence, and a belief in God. All of those were simply not part of philosophy
• Moral Behavior
  • Were there similar a priori principles for action based on reason and not on passions?
• Kant argued for reason over passions
• He differentiated between hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives
• Hypothetical imperatives included the word "if"
  • Example: If you don't wish to pass this course, quit reading this page."
• Categorical imperatives included the word "ought"
  • Example: "You ought to keep your promises."
    • Logic only was required to prove a categorical imperative
      • If promises were not kept then the concept of a "promise" could not exist
  • Free will
    • Outside forces limited people's freedom
      • Example: SAU will post an F on your transcript for any course you do not pass. Here SAU is the outside force, and you, the SAU student, are not free.
    • Ahead of his time?
      • Perhaps. Kant applied the idea of freedom equally to men and women
• Kant demonstrated necessary connection between rationalism and empiricism
  • Modern psychology uses both
• Consciousness and cognition
  • Those topics in psychology (see chapter 14) derive directly from Kant
  • BUT, Kant did not foresee the development of a scientific psychology
  • Instead, He predicted psychology would never exist as a science

Learning Objective: Interpret the differences between the rationalist philosophers’ ideas.

OTHER 19TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHIES (p. 198)

• Utilitarianism
  • Old history, back to Hobbes
    • Part of moral philosophy
      • Morally correct actions were those that produced the most overall good
    • In other words, what is best for the group is best for all
  • Secular
    • Role of God removed
  • Pleasure is good and pain is bad. Definition of hedonism

hedonism: the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain

• Some pleasures superior to others:
  • Intellectual pleasures (write a book) superior to baser pleasures (video games)
• What about when something is good for group but not for individual
  • A problem for utilitarianism:
    • What to do when an action is personally deleterious but good for the group?
      • Common theme in art, literature, and film
        • Mission to Mars self-sacrifice scene. If Blake's character had not killed himself the entire crew would have died trying to save him.
• Jeremy Bentham
  • One of the first utilitarians
  • Suppied parameters to help decide utility:
    • intensity: stronger is better
    • duration: longer is better
    • certainty: surer is better
    • purity: unmixed is better
    • extent: better for more people
  • No intrinsically moral behaviors (they changed in time and place)
    • In other words, moral relativism existed. What was moral today might not be so in the future
      • Example of such relativism: Confederate monuments were once acceptable, today they are not
  • Social reformer: anti-slavery, pro women's rights
• John Stuart Mill
  • Follower of Bentham
  • Most influential British philosopher of 19th century
  • Divided Bentham's pleasures into categories: higher and lower
  • Argued for internal constraints on morality (guilt)
    • guilt, the unconscious, and anxiety would lead to psychoanalysis (see chapter 12)
    • Freud's London library included two volumes by Mill
  • Mill wasd an early contributor to clinical and counseling psychology
  • Utilitarianism and Evolution
    • Led to widespread search for utility:
      • function of animal body parts
      • universal laws of learning
  • Influential in Great Britain
  • John Stuart Mill quotes
• Romanticism
  • Complex response to Enlightenment
    • Antimaterialist
    • Anti-skepticist
    • Against reason
    • Reveled in the sensual
    • Refocused on the individual
    • Mostly influential in German speaking Europe
      • The Holy Roman Empire (it dissolved in 1806)
      • Spoiler Alert: Germany emerges in the late 19th century under the leadership of Prussia after its victory in the Franco-Prussian War.
  • Affected literature, art, music,
  • Response to American and French Revolutions and the Enlightenment
  • Johann Gottlieb Fichte
    • Influenced by Kant
      • Moral law compatible with Kant's transcendental idealism
    • Ethical idealism
      • Combined Kant's dualisms, understanding and sensibility into one idea:
      • Absolute ego
        • Humans possesed finite egos that could never reach the absolute ego
    • His philosophy peaked quickly but did not last
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
    • Used Fichte's ideas as a starting point
    • Absolute idealism
      • Redifined matter itself
      • Mind and Body became one living Absolute
        • Consciousness was at one end and the simplest animal bodies at the other end
        • In other words only complexity separated living things
    • Split with Hegel (see below)
      • Hegel combined religion, social philosophy, economics, politics, and history into a single account of human understanding called objective or absolute idealism
    • Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
      Highly influential philosopher
      • “virtually every major philosophical movement of the twentieth century—existentialism, Marxism, pragmatism, phenomenology, and analytic philosophy—grew out of reaction against Hegel” (Beiser, 2005, p.2)
      • Kept the Absolute and the historical nature of knowledge
      • No one person could know everything (knowledge was historical)
      • Dialectic: from Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato
        • Led to: thesis-antithesis to synthesis as a historical force
          • You should watch this video
          • This video differentiates Hegel from Marx (see below)
        • Alienation (still a topic in psychology today)
          • Knowing that you are not a part of society
            • Teen agers
            • Racial inequality
            • Gender inequality
            • Slavery
          • Utilitarianism and romanticism influential to rise of the social sciences and to psychology in Germany

Learning Objective: Appraise the responses to rationalism by utilitarianism and romanticism.

dialectic-the belief that every proposition (the thesis) contains its own negation (the antithesis), and that their resolution produced an advance in knowledge (the synthesis), which in turn becomes a new thesis, causing the process to repeat itself, but at a new level of knowledge.

alienation-the feeling of being an outsider or of being isolated even while living inside of society or a social group.

NOTE: from this point on we are leaving philosophy (for the most part) and beginning to see early social science and psychology.

THE SOCIAL SCIENCES (p.203)

• Psychologies emerged in the 19th century (see below) but sociology was the first social science to appear on the scene
• Sociologists applied scientific methods to the study of society
• Auguste Comte
  • Founder of sociolology (coined the word)
  • Studied society based on positivism

positivism-Comte's anti-metaphysical and anti-theological view that argued that knowledge can only be sought through empirical means verifiable by the senses.

• Scientific approach to the study of society
• Divided hitory into three periods:
  • theological
  • metaphysical
  • scientific
• Emile Durkheim
  • Inspired by Comte
  • First to hold academic position in a Sociology department
  • Studied:
    • suicide
    • crime
    • law
    • religion
• Karl Marx
  • Rejected positivism
  • Secular approach to study of society
    • Marxism
  • Philosophy should be about action
  • Wanted societal change
  • Russian Revolution
• Max Weber
  • Anti-positivistic approach
    • Also studied history and economics
  • Studied changes between people and society (especially bureaucracy)
  • Inspired others to study individuals scientifically

• Herbert Spencer
• English, worked as railway engineer
• Began to write
• His second book was: Principles of Psychology (1855/1870)
  • The second edtion sold well
    • covered from simple reflexes to rational behavior
    • Spoiler Alert: William James taught from Spencer's text until he wrote his own (see chapter 8)
• He wrote other books covering:
  • biology
  • sociology
  • ethics
  • education
• Unlike Darwin Spencer was a Lamarckian
  • Spencer coined the phrase "Survival of the fittest" (see chapter 8 to see why that phrase is wrong)
• Social Darwinism
  • Another misapplication of evolutionary theory
    • Europeans saw themselves as the pinnacle of evolution because of their technology, weaponry, and living standards
    • Attempt to justify the status quo
      • Examples: women should not go to college because their brains are smaller, Asian, Black, or Southern European immigrants should not be allowed into United States, German Jews should be sent to death camps

social Darwinism-the misapplication of Darwinian principles of evolution to explain observed differences between societies or human groups, especially to justify the status quo.

• Alexander Bain
• Nearly the first psychologist
• Worked with John Stuart Mill
• Senses and the Intellect, first textbook in psychology
• First appearance of a physiological chapter in a psychology text
  • Contemporary psychology texts universally include at least one chapter on physiological psychology and other chapters related to the border between psychology and biology (e.g., sensation, perception, hormones, evolution, and others).
• Psychophysical parallelism
  • Mind-Body solution related to pre-established harmony but the parallelism means neither affects the other
• Compound associationism and constructive association
  • Added compound association to British empiricist principles of:
    • contiguity
    • similarity
    • repetition
  • His constructive association explained how new ideas arose in the mind
• Studied movement in baby lambs
  • They learned to walk, run, and nurse within a few hours
• Trial-and-Error learning
  • Anticipated Pavlov, Thorndike, and Skinner
• Why is he not the first psychologist?
  • He was more a philosopher and not an experimenter
  • Did not found a laboratory
  • Did not train experimentally minded students

THEN AND NOW (p. 207)

• The Physiological Chapter
  • General psychology studdnts seem perplexed when they realize they will be studying neurons and the brain close to the beginning of the course.
  • Little do they realize they are following in Bain’s footsteps.
  • Contemporary psychology texts universally include at least one chapter on physiological psychology and other chapters related to the border between psychology and biology (e.g., sensation, perception, hormones, evolution, and others).
  • The border between psychology and biology is now well defined.

psychophysical parallelism-the mind-body problem solution that allows for two separate systems, one for physical events and the other for mental events, but prohibits them from affecting each other.

• Johann Friedrich Herbart
• German
• Educational psychology
• Successor to Kant
  • To me that's a big deal, big shoes to fill there.
• Argued for mathematical, empirical, scientific psychology
• Threshold or Limen: important to early psychology (see chapter 8)
  • One of his most original contributions
• Apperceptive Mass
  • Extension of Leibniz's apperception
  • Sum total of competing ideas
  • Imagine a triangle:
    • It has three sides
    • Now imagine a triangle with four sides, does not make sense, not an apperceptive mass
  • Imagine a yardstick
    • It has two ends
    • Now imagine a yardstick with only one end, does not make sense, not an apperceptive mass
  • Psychology and mathematics (mathematical psychologists are rare today)

threshold or limen-Herbart's conception of a limit below which an idea will be out of consciousness, and conversely, in consciousness when above it.

BORDER WITH SOCIAL SCIENCE

Educational Psychology

Today, educational psychology is nearly its own independent discipline; many universities have separate departments of psychology and educational psychology, for instance. Herbart was among the first to think closely about how children learned and how teachers should teach. He set up a separate demonstration school soon after he began teaching at the University of Königsberg. From his experiences there he came up with five rules for teaching:

1. Pick topics and materials that will grab children’s interest
2. Teach the topic clearly
3. Ask inductive questions afterward
4. Link the new knowledge taught to what the children already knew
5. Apply the new knowledge in a concrete manner

• Hermann Lotze
  • German
  • Studied with Weber and Fechner
  • Succeeded Herbart at University of Göttingen
  • First to write about Weber's Law (see chapter 8)
  • Karl Stumpf and G. E. Müller were his students (see chapter 7)
  • One of the first to see scientists as disinterested observers and the importance of new journals
  • Placed psychology in between biology and philosophy
  • Helped create borders for psychology

BORDER WITH COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE (p. 210)

Mathematical Psychology

• Mathematical psychologists are in short supply today (Clay, 2005),
• Today’s mathematical psychologists apply their expertise to theorizing and the proper collection of data.
• Townsend (2008, p. 275) cited signal detection theory, mathematical learning theory, scaling, decision theory, psychophysics, and neural modeling as active areas today related to mathematical psychology.
• He also noted that “the central advantage psychology has had over other fields in past years has been the relatively heavy component of education in practical statistics and methodology” (p. 276).

Learning Objective: Review the steps to psychology taken by early social scientists.

SUMMARY (p. 211)

• Continental rationalists, as a group, disagreed with the British empiricists but they also disagreed among themselves.
• Spinoza disagreed with Descartes over the nature of God and dualism.
• Leibniz altered Descartes interactionism using his own dualistic solution, pre-established harmony.
• Leibniz posited that the universe was made up of infinitesimals: monads. Those could be viewed from both physical and mental viewpoints
• Kant proposed a complex solution, one that separated, once and for all, philosophy from theology in a manner that respected both disciplines
• Kant revived moral philosophy through his categorical imperative.
  
• In England, Utilitarianism arose after the writings of Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
• In the German-speaking countries, Romanticism flourished culminating with Hegel’s dialectic.
• Social science also made its first appearance with the emergence of sociology.
• Its founders were Comte, Durkheim, Marx, and Weber.
  
• Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain, protopsychologists but not experimentalists, each wrote textbooks of psychology.
• Herbart, another nonexperimental protopsychologist was one of the first to look at an applied area: educational psychology.
• His work with sensory thresholds helped open the door for psychophysics (see chapter 8).
• Lotze, another psychological pioneer was the first to publish about Weber’s Law preparing the way for a more scientific approach to psychology.

GLOSSARY

nature-nurture the philosophical problem regarding the sources of knowledge.

determinism the doctrine that all events are caused by other antecedent events.

double-aspectism a solution to the mind-body problem in which the mental and physical parts are considered to be separate representations of the same substance.

pre-established harmony the mind-body solution in which mental events affect other mental events and physical events affect other physical events but each cannot affect the other. God willed the apparent coordination between mind and body at the time of creation.

apperception being conscious of one’s own perceptions.

dialectic the belief that every proposition (the thesis) contains its own negation (the antithesis), and that their resolution produced an advance in knowledge (the synthesis), which in turn becomes a new thesis, causing the process to repeat itself, but at a new level of knowledge.

alienation the feeling of being an outsider or of being isolated even while living inside of society or a social group.

positivism Comte’s anti-metaphysical and anti-theological view that argued that knowledge can only be sought through empirical means verifiable by the senses.

Social Darwinism the misapplication of Darwinian principles of evolution to explain observed differences between societies or human groups, especially to justify the status quo.

psychophysical parallelism the mind-body problem solution that allows for two separate systems—one for physical events and the other for mental events—but prohibits them from affecting each other.

threshold or limen Herbart’s conception of a limit below which an idea will be out of consciousness, and conversely, in consciousness when above it.

gymnasium the most academically advanced level of secondary education in Germany, roughly equivalent to the college preparatory track of American high schools.

papal infallibility the belief that the Pope, after prayer and meditation, may formally and without question reveal God’s intentions to the Church.

phenomenalism the philosophical system that examines conscious experience itself directly, intentionally, and from one’s own point of view.

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