Early Explanations of Human Activity and the Human Mind: The Ancient

Greeks

Philosophical Debates

• As popular as sporting events!

• Two primary beliefs debated: Idealism vs. Materialism

Contributions of the Greeks to Psychology

• Sensation and Perception• Learning• Personality• Neurology• Reasoning• Memory

Five Orientations

• Naturalistic• Biological• Mathematical• Eclectic• Humanistic

Naturalistic Orientation

• Human activity is simply part of nature and the physical universe

• Ionian physicists (6th bce) - life and physical matter are inseparable

• Emphasis on the role of the senses in determining reality

Atoms and the Physical World

• Democritus (4th bce) developed the concept of atoms

• Knowledge relies on our senses

• Senses receive "atoms" from the world

• “Mind Atoms” and memory errors

The Element of Water

• Thales (a.k.a the “Ancient sage of Greece,” or the “1st Philosopher")

• Thales stimulated beginning of “Golden Age of Greece”

• Said the essence of life was water

The Element of Fire

• Heraclitus “The Obscure“ (6th bce)

• Fire symbolizes change – an important fact of nature clip

• "You can never step into the same river twice"

• Understanding occurs by tempering sensory info with logos (reason)

• "If men cared to dig for the gold they might find it; if not, they must be content with straw."

Distortion of the Senses I

• Parmenides (6th bce) - Nature is permanent and immobile

• The changes we perceive are due to distortions from our senses

• Our subjective experience is invalid

Distortion of the Senses II

• Zeno of Elea (6th bce)• "The fall of a single millet

seed to the ground makes no sound; empty a half-bushel of seeds on the ground, and there will be a sound. Our senses have fooled us, because either the single falling seed made a sound or the many falling made no sound."

Zeno’s Paradoxes

• 9 paradoxes, including the infamous runner traversing a race-course (an infinite number of units must be traveled by a runner in a finite number of time, which cannot be done, therefore there is no motion)

Distortion of the Senses III

• Empedocles (5th bce)• Sensations come from

particles falling upon “pores” of the sensory organs

• Claimed to restore women from death, cure madness, control the winds

• Mt. Etna…

Biological Orientation

• Emphasizes physiology as holding the clue to life and mind

• The Greek Physicians

Alcmaeon (5th bce)

• "Father of Greek medicine"

• Brain is the organ of thought

• Distinction between sensory-perceiving and thinking

• Animal dissection, discovered optic nerves

• First to treat purely psychological problems?

Hippocrates (5th bce)

• Emphasized the brain in psychological processes

• The theory of "humors“– blood (fire)– yellow bile (air)– black bile (earth)– phlegm (water)

• Perfect health is a balanced mixture of above (e.g., someone is in a "bad humor“)

Hippocrates and Mental Disorders

• Described phobias, hysteria, postpartum depression

• Thought hysteria was caused by a "wandering uterus"

Galen (2nd bce)

• Brain is organ of mind• Discovered 7 of 12

cranial nerves• Named neural structures

such as corpus callosum, pineal and pituitary glands, ventricles

Galen’s Trait Theory

• Based on 4 humors:• Sanguine (cheerful) -

excess of blood• Melancholic (sad) -

excess black bile• Choleric (fiery) - excess

yellow bile• Phlegmatic (dull) -

excess phlegm

Mathematical Orientation

• The "ordered beauty" of mathematical structures responsible for the unity of the universe

• Pythagoras of Samos (6th bce)

The Cult of Pythagoras

• Founded a cult where philosophy and mathematics was a lifestyle aimed at salvation

• Soul becomes purified through studying science and mathematics

• Women allowed and vegans only

Pythagoras and Psychology

• Our senses distort the world• Reality is in underlying mathematical

relationships not available to the senses• We use reason to arrive at knowledge of the

real world• Only humans have reasoning• Pythagoras on the Soul*

– "In the case of the soul, the three parts that have to be brought into accord are of course reason, passion and desire."

Eclectic Orientation

• Sophists - A person's knowledge depends on their background of experience, objective truth is not possible, people must be skeptical

Humanistic Orientation

• Places humanity on a higher plane than other life

• Emphasizes characteristics of a person such as reason, language, self-reflection that make humans unique

Socrates (5th bce)

• 1st great philosopher from Athens

• Uniqueness of the individual is key to understanding life

• A reasonable person can ascertain truth and moral judgments

• Logic is the method by which we gain knowledge of ourselves

The Dialectic

• Logical argumentation (the Socratic method)

The Psyche

• The psyche, or soul, was the human capacity for intelligence and character

• Two objects of thought: the particular (e.g., a pretty flower) and the general (the idea of prettiness)

Hemlock or Decapitation?

Plato (5th bce)

• Student of Socrates• Founded The Academy

(387 bce)• "Let no one without

geometry enter here."

Plato’s Theory of Forms

• Two worlds: Knowledge and Opinion

• World of Knowledge contains the forms, or ideas, known only through reason

• World of Opinion contains the material world conveyed by the senses

“Myth of the Cave” from The Republic claymation

Knowledge

• Knowledge only knowable through reason• Innateness - truth and knowledge are present

in the soul before birth• The Tripartite Soul

– The soul consists of reason, spirit, and appetite– Hierarchy of souls: nutritive to sensitive to

rational

Views on the Body

• Believed that the body was evil, a prison that interfered with the higher, more human functions of the soul

Aristotle (4th bce)

• The culmination of Greek thought

• Student of Plato until 347 bce

• Tutored Alexander the Great

• Started up The Lyceum

Aristotle’s Idea of Potential

• A block of marble (matter) has the potential to assume whatever form a sculptor gives it, and a seed or embryo has the potential to grow into a living plant or animal form

Aristotle the Scientist

• Physics, political science, biology, economics, meteorology, ethics, psychology

• “Man is by nature a political animal”

The Scientific Method

• Plato was a rationalist (i.e., reality can only be known through reason)

• Aristotle was an empiricist (i.e., reality can only be known through the senses)

• Plato: deductive reasoning• Aristotle: inductive reasoning

Aristotle’s Method

• Define an object, construct a proposition about the object, then test the proposition through syllogistic reasoning

• “White reflects light.”• “Snow is white.”• “Therefore, snow ________ .” ?

Observations

• ”If many observations point to the same general conclusion, then the conclusion may well be correct."

• Is a danger in sweeping conclusions drawn from limited data.

Aristotle and Psychology (De Anima)

• The heart is the seat of the psyche; brain is just a “radiator” cooling the blood.

• There is a “common sense” that assimilates information from the other senses.

• Sensation precedes thought• Psyche: substance with the capacity to receive

knowledge• Psyche allows sensory qualities to persist after

they are gone• Mind without thought was a blank slate• Memory and thought require images

Memory Recall

• Recall of an event tends to:• evoke a memory of something similar

(similarity principle)• evoke a memory of something opposite

(contrast)• evoke a memory of something that occurred at

the same time or place (contiguity)

Catharsis

• Tragic drama allows the viewer to purge negative emotions