Chapter 6

Rationalism

Rationalism

• the active mind vs. the passive mind
  • rationalism posits a mind that seeks knowledge
• reasons vs. causes
  • moral behavior (act for a reason not a cause)
• deductions vs. inductions
  • rationalists emphasized deduction
• loves math and logic
  • follows from above
• distinction between rationalism and empiricism is not always clear
• Descartes is father (Bacon father of empiricism)

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

• Life
  • ostracized by religious communities
  • worked as a lens grinder
  • published one anonymous book
  • died in poverty
  • remainder of his works published after his death
• Philosophy:
  • believed God, nature, and mind inseparable
    • God was nature - pantheism
    • mind and body like two sides of a coin - psychophysical double aspectism
  • free will is fiction - everything is determined by a cause
  • "good and evil" really emotions of "pleasure and pain"
    • pleasure = clear ideas
    • pain resulted from unclear ideas
  • greatest pleasure = understanding God
• Legacy
  • Emotions:
    • distinction of emotion and passion
    • behavior and thought guided by reason was conducive to survival
    • behavior and though guided by passion was not
  • More influence on modern psychology than Descartes? (Bernard, 1972)
    • psychic determinism
    • laws of nature must apply to humans too
    • read by Fechner and Wundt

Nicolas de Malebranche (1638-1715)

• priest, interjected God in human activities
• used occasionalism to explain human behavior
• reverted to earlier view of knowledge

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)

• Life
  • mathematician, contemporary of Newton
  • disagreed with Locke, wrote two rebuttals
  • independently invented the calculus (monadology)
• Philosophy
  • psychophysical parallelism and pre-established harmony
    • physical and mental monads do not influence each other
    • criticized for his mind-body position (Voltaire)
  • monads were infinitesimals, very small differences
  • a monad could not be perceived, but a collection could be:
    • cannot hear the first raindrop on the roof, but can hear rain
  • limen or threshold
    • a limit to perception (absolute or difference)
    • his petites perceptions are subliminal or imperceptible
    • apperception is when enough petites perceptions occur and something is perceived
    • above leads to quantitative explanation of perception and provides continuum between unconscious and conscious
• Legacy
  • limen
    • vital to psychophysics
  • confusing
    • led to many "blind alleys" in early psychology (Esper, 1964)
  • influenced later German philosophers

Thomas Reid (1710-1796)

• Scottish rationalist
• reacted to Hume's philosophy
• common sense philosophy
  • analogy--mind:thinking::stomach:digestion
    • in other words, the mind is the organ of thought
  • we CAN trust our sense impressions
  • if Hume concludes we cannot, his philosophy must be wrong
• direct realism
  • world is perceived directly, without benefit of reason
• faculty psychology
  • powers of mind united in a single mind
  • first instance of discussing mind in terms of collection of abilities
  • influential idea today (i.e., Sternberg's triarchic theory and Gardner's seven parts of the mind)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

• Life
  • never left Konigsberg
  • the prototypical rationalist (i.e., space, time, and causality)
  • Critique of Pure Reason written "...to rescue philosophy from Hume's skepticism."
  • life of the mind
• Philosophy
  • categories of thought:
    • unity, totality, time, space, cause and effect, reality, quantity, quality, negation, possibility-impossibility, and existence-nonexistence
    • above were built-in (innate) properties of the mind, thus did not have to be learned
    • Descartes proposed innate ideas, Kant proposed innate categories
  • anti-hedonist
    • there existed a moral imperative that compelled humans to act in ways counter to their hedonistic impulses (i.e., religious principles, moral principles)
  • faculty psychologist
    • because his categories of thought can be viewed as faculties of mind
• Legacy
  • brought the idea of innate categories of mind back into psychology
    • a debate that continues today, i.e., temperament
  • influenced development of Gestalt psychology
  • Kant was not optimistic on the prospects of psychology, however

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841)

• Life
  • Kant's successor at Konigsberg (what a job to fill...)
    • left after 24 years
  • Ended his career at Gottingen
  • Textbook in Psychology
• Philosophy
  • Agreed with Kant on impossibility of an experimentally-based psychology
  • Disagreed with faculty psychology because he saw the mind as a whole
  • Psychic mechanics
    • Herbart's notion that ideas have energy and can attract or repel other ideas
    • Derived from Leibniz's monads
    • But, Herbart did allow that experience could give rise to ideas
    • Once those ideas existed, however, they had a "life" of their own
  • The Apperceptive Mass
    • Compatible ideas attract each other into an apperceptive mass
    • Incompatible ideas are excluded, i.e., a yardstick with only one end, a triangle with 4 sides
    • His goal was to mathematize the relationship of apperceptive mass, limen, and conflict between ideas
  • Educational psychology
    • Herbart applied his ideas to education
    • Produced advice on how to teach
    • Similar to Piaget's advice later
• Legacy
  • Mathematical basis for psychology (for the first time)
  • Popularized: unconscious, repression, and conflict (Freud would use later)
  • Limen or threshold was important to Fechner later on
  • Wundt would use apperception as a concept in his psychology

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

• Life
  • Mother taught him Latin
  • Classical education
  • Studied and published in religion
  • University of Berlin
• Philosophy
  • The Absolute
    • Like Plato's form of the good
    • God is The Absolute, people attempt to approach and understand it
    • The state is more important than the individual (contrast with Locke)
    • The whole is more important than the parts
  • Dialectics
    • Process of argumentation
    • Derived from Hegel's analysis of history
    • Thesis
    • Antithesis
    • Synthesis
    • But, synthesis becomes a new thesis and process repeats itself
    • Mechanism for our pendulum metaphor
• Legacy
  • Very influential
    • Fechner, Freud, self-actualization (Jung, Rogers, Maslow)
  • Alienation
    • Realization that one exists apart from The Absolute
    • Concept was adapted by Marx, Fromm, and Rogers (in different ways)
  • Gestalt Psychology

Summary

• Active mind takes sensory input and transforms it
  • (unlike the simple acceptance of sensory input of the empiricists)
• Very influential to the development of psychology both in history and today

URLs

• Pantheon of Famous Philosophers--interactive, adv., long, links, graphics
  • Offers pictures and quotes from a large number of philosophers, allows users to guess the identity of the philosopher. Links to the Department of Philosophy of the Ohio State University. http://www.cohums.ohio-state.edu:80/philo/pantheon.html
• Other Philosophies A to Z--text, basic, long, links
  • Page consists of a glossary of philosophies and other related terms. http://www.dreamscape.com/willp/phil/evil/other_philosophies.html
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy--index, basic, long, links, search
  • This page describes itself as a "dynamic encyclopedia" because its authors maintain its links continously. The page features information on philosophy and philosophers. http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy--index, adv., short, links, search
  • An index page featuring menu selections: timeline, philosophy text collection, key words, and a search. The coverage is both broad and deep. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/
• Bjorn's Guide to Philosophy--index, interm., short, links, graphics, search
  • Another index page dedicated to philosophers, this page contains biographies and other information about 27 philosophers. Further, there is a picture of each philosopher and links to other pages of each one. http://www.knuten.liu.se/~bjoch509/
• Digital Text Projects--index, adv., short, links
  • Site contains full text works by the following philosophers: Aristotle, Bentham, Berkeley, Dante, Descartes, Dewey, Emerson, Hegel, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Leibniz, Locke, Machiavelli, Mill, Plato, Rousseau, Socrates, Spinoza, and Vergil. Links to similar sites are also provided. http://daemon.ilt.columbia.edu/academic/digitexts/index.html
• Philosophy Page--index, interm., medium, links
  • A list of texts and definitions of philosophy from Aristotle to World Congress of Philosophy on The English Server. http://english-www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/
• The Philosopher's Gallery--index, basic, short, links, graphics
  • Page provides links to pictures of philosophers sorted by country of origin. The site also has links to other information on philosophy and philosophers. http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/PHIL/cpshelle/Gallery/gallery.html
• Pre-History of Cognitive Science--index, interm., short, links, graphics search
  • Another page on philosophy and philosophers, contains links to philosophical and psychological concepts (i.e., associationism, language) cross referenced to original writings about those concepts. http://humanitas.ucsb.edu/users/cstahmer/cogsci/brain.html
• Philosophical Antecedents--tutorial, interm., long, links, graphics
  • Coverage of the history of thought from the Greeks to modern times, topics are: the Greek agenda, modern philosophical origins, the logical empiricist program, and new approaches. http://www.geneseo.edu/~intd225/philants.html