Epicureans – Survival Ethics

Negative Hedonism

Advocated against gluttony and excess

Suggest we make 3 mistakes when thinking about happiness.

1.Looking for love instead of friends.

2. Materialism – we have to make sacrifices to get it and lack a sense that we “make a difference”.

3.Mistake luxury for calmness (security)

There are only 3 things you need for a happy life.

1.Friends

2.Sense of personal accomplishment

3.Meditation to seek calmness rather than the pursuit of luxury.

Epicurean Communes were very common even up until the 5th century.

At its peak there were 400,000 people living in communes.

Christianity wiped them out, but converted them to monasteries.

StoicismAnxiety - Expect the worst and you will not be disappointed.

We are each stronger than we think.

We will be able to survive what ever hardship makes us anxious . . . and if we cannot, there is always the option of suicide.

Preached that we should regularly practice the worst possible scenario to remind oneself that almost nothing material is needed for a happy life.

Anger

Argue it is not a natural tendency but is the result of ignorance about the nature of life.

Keeping low expectations will keep us from getting hurt.

Rise of ChristianityRise of Christianity

Christianity began in 1st century AD Jerusalem as a minor jewish sect. It spread initially in the Near East, ultimately becoming the state religion of Armenia in either 301 or 314, of Ethiopia in 325, of Georgia in 337, and then the state religion of the Roman Empire in 380. During the Age of Exploration (15th to 17th cent.), Christianity expanded throughout the world, becoming the world's largest religion.

St. Paul (10 – 64)Born in Tarsus (Turkey)Trained as a Rabbi in JerusalemCombined Greek and Jewish theology withChrist’s teachings.

Dualist Human body is evilHuman soul (spirit) divine

Like Plato saw the body as our major source of problemsUnlike Plato he said faith in God (rather than reason) as the solution to the conflict..

60 BC

180 AD

Between 1st and 4th century – Growth of Christianity Pagan Philosophers were replaced by Patrists (Fathers of the Church)

3rd Century – Constantine adopts ChristianityBattle of Milvian Bridge 2 3 4 5 6(Parts 1 and 2)

Roman Culture

“The Romans invented no art forms, constructed no original system of philosophy. And made no scientific discoveries. They made good roads. Systematic legal codes, and efficient armies: for the rest they looked to Greece.” Bertram Russell, History of Western Philosophy.

Video beginning to 19:50After Constantine restart at 53.00

Autocracy - political power is held by a single self-appointed ruler.

Edict of Milan

In February 313, Constantine I, emperor controlling the western part of the Roman Empire and Licinius, controlling the Balkans, met in Milan and, among other things, agreed to treat the Christians benevolently.

Plotinus – 205 – 270Neo-PlatonismCombined Plato with ethical concepts fromChristianity, Judaism and Near Eastern Mysticism

Like Plato – IdealistTo get closest to the One, each individual must engage in divine work. Each individual as a microcosm reflects the gradual ordering of the universe referred to as the macrocosm. In mimicking the divine mind, one unites with it. Thus the process of unification, of "The Being", and "The One", making each man a God by replacing the concept of God as creator with themselves as creators, builders, craftsmen of their own lives.

Orthodoxy & Heresy

1st & 2nd Century – no authority = no Heresy

3rd Century – Bishop of Lyons

Refutation of Heresies

-

One of the earliest heresies to arise in the Christian church was Gnosticism

Gnostics were dualists, teaching that there are two great opposing forces:

good versus evil

light versus darkness

knowledge versus ignorance

spirit versus matter.

Since the world is material, and leaves much room for improvement, they denied that God had made it.

How can the perfect produce the imperfect, the infinite produce the finite, the spiritual produce the material?

Gnostic’s solution was to say that there were thirty beings called AEons, and that God had made the first AEon, which made the second AEon, which made the third, and so on to the thirtieth AEon, which made the world.

They taught that Christ did not really have a material body, but only seemed to have one. It was an appearance, so that he could communicate with men, but was not really there.

They said that Jesus had had two doctrines: one a doctrine fit for the common man, and preached to everyone, and the other an advanced teaching, kept secret from the multitudes, fit only for the chosen few, the spiritually elite. They, the Gnostics, were the spiritually elite, and although the doctrines taught in the churches were not exactly wrong, and were in fact as close to the truth as the common man could hope to come, it was to the Gnostics that one must turn for the real truth.

Constantine backs the authority of the bishop and confiscates the public property of heretics.

Persecuted become persecutors!

Augustine of Hippo (345 – 430) •one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity

•Strongly influenced by Neo-Platonism.

Dualist - humans have souls – animals do not.

Free Will (Choice)Intrinsic motivation Doing good leads to feelings of virtue Doing evil leads to guilt.People who choose evil deny themselves an afterlife

Concepts of original sin and just warUnbelievers persecuted because of cruelty; Christians persecuted because of love.

Science and Philosophy not in the service of theology were suspect.

Roman Empire in the West was starting to disintegrateAugustine developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual City of God distinct from the material City of Man.

“Give me chastity and continency, but not yet”

AD 385 – executions for heresy begin.-Priscillian Bishop of Villa – charges with witchcraft.Tried and Tortured; confessed and were executed.

Schisms in the Church

475 Fall of Rome

475 – 1000 Dark ages

Middle Ages (500 – 1500)

• Crusades began around 1100 ad

• Plague

• Famine

• Writings were lost to western culture

Saint Anselm (1033 -1109)Contrary to Christian belief he felt that reason Could help better understand God.

Scholasticism – to join faith with reason

Use logical deduction to account for traditional theological teachings.

Ontological Argument for God’s existenceIf God did not exist, then something greater than He could be thought; thus, God must exist.

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 -1274)

Argued Reason and Faith are compatibleReintroduced Aristotle theology

Tabla RasaEmpiricist Argued for the supremacy of reason – free will.

John Duns Scotus (1265 – 1308)

Criticized both Aquinas and Aristotle

Argued for the Supremacy of God’s willIf God’s will is subordinate to reason then it appears that God is limited, which can not be. Thus God must be absolutely free.

God’s moral rules are good because God willed them to be good, not because His wisdom recognized them to be. Thus one cannot understand morality from a rational standpoint.

Dunsmen, Duncemen --- Dunces.

Late Middle Ages – Famine, Plague, War, Peasant Revolutions

When you hit Bottom, there is no where to go but up!!!

Late Middle Ages

William of OckhamOckham’s Razor - the principle that when trying to choose between multiple competing theories the simplest theory is probably the best. (K.I.S.S!)

Nominalist – Universals (truths) exist in name only.

Charged with heresy & excommunicated.

Representation of a university class, (1350s).

The first European medieval institutions generally considered to be universities were established in Italy, France, and England in the late 11th and the 12th.

RENAISSANCE

Lorenzo de' MediciRuler of Florence and patron of arts

Lorenzo the Magnificent

The Elizabethan era (16th century to the early 17th century) - the English Renaissance with the work of writers William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Milton, and Edmund Spenser.

• 1450 – first publication – the bible.

by 1492 – 20 million books had been printed.

1492 – Christopher Columbus sets sail.

Humanism

The view that we can make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values and that we can live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs.

Martin Luther

German father of the Protestant Reformation

• Called for more personalized, less ritualized religion.

• Reformation polka

• Challenged the absolute authority of the Pope over the Church by maintaining that the doctrine of indulgences, as authorized and taught by the Pope, was wrong.

• Salvation was by faith alone without reference to good works, alms, penance, or the Church's sacraments.

• challenged the authority of the Church by maintaining that all doctrines and dogmata of the Church not found in Scripture should be discarded. 

The Edict of Worms was a decree issued on 25 May 1521 by Emperor Charles V, declaring:

“For this reason we forbid anyone from this time forward to dare, either by words or by deeds, to receive, defend, sustain, or favor the said Martin Luther. On the contrary, we want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic, as he deserves, to be brought personally before us, or to be securely guarded until those who have captured him inform us, where upon we will order the appropriate manner of proceeding against the said Luther. Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work.”

John CalvinRuled Geneva as a religious dictatorship- No drinking, dancing, icons, candles, incense and

obligatory church attendance for everyone.- In Calvin’s view, Man, who is corrupt, is

confronted by the omnipotent (all powerful) and omnipresent (present everywhere) God who before the world began predestined some for eternal salvation (the Elect) while the others would suffer everlasting damnation (the Reprobates).

The chosen few were saved by the operation of divine grace which cannot be challenged and cannot be earned by Man’s merits. You might have lead what you might have considered a perfectly good life that was true to God but if you were a reprobate you remained one because for all your qualities you were inherently corrupt and God would know this even if you did not. However, a reprobate by behaving decently could achieve an inner conviction of salvation. An Elect could never fall from grace.

Renaissance Science

1543 – Nicolaus Copernicus

- Heleocentric view of the world.

- As opposed to a ptolemic (Earth centered).

- Contrary to common sense.

- Biblical reference. (5 days creating earth, 1 day on universe and 1 day on resting).

Giordano Bruno: (1548 – 1600)

-Proposed the existence of multiple suns and innumerable earths, each revolving around its own sun and potentially inhabited by sentient beings ~ a limitless universe.

-Burned at the stake in 1600.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)Uses of the Telescope (war and business)Galileo used it to peer into the sky. His finding supported Copernicus.Pope Urban supported the publication of Copernicus but insisted on a disclaimer that Coperinicanism was a hypothesis. “Simplicius’ Disclaimer”

“The Holy Spirit intended to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”.

"My dear Kepler, I wish that we might laugh at the remarkable stupidity of the common herd. What do you have to say about the principal philosophers of this academy who are filled with the stubbornness of an asp and do not want to look at either the planets, the moon or the telescope, even though I have freely and deliberately offered them the opportunity a thousand times? Truly, just as the asp stops its ears, so do these philosophers shut their eyes to the light of truth."

In 2000, Pope John Paul II issued a formal apology for all the mistakes committed by some Catholics in the last 2,000 years of the Catholic Church's history, including the trial of Galileo among others.

Economy

Cities and towns were centers of wealth production and of creativity.

European cities expressed their sense of corporate pride and identity in public buildings – infrastructure.

Economic organization within towns was usually through guilds.

Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727)

If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.

‘This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. …”

Sir Edmund Halley used Newton’s Laws of motion to predict the next occurrences of Halley’s comet.

Count down to Armageddon

When a body is once in motion, it moveth, unless something else hinder it, eternally; and whatsoever hindereth it cannot in a instant, but (only) in time and by degrees, quite extinguish it; and as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after; so also it happenth in that motion that is made in the internal parts of a man, then, when he sees, dreams, etc. For after the object is removed, if the eye shut, we still retain an image of the things seen, though more obscure than when it was seen.

Invisible Colleges

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge”

- common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation

Sir Francis Bacon (1605)When I set before the conditions of these times, in which learning hath made her third visitation or circuit, in all the qualities thereof: the excellence and vivacity of the wits of this age, the noble and lights which we have the travails of ancient writers: the art of printing, which communicateth books to men of all fortunes: the openness of the world by navigation, which hath disclosed multitudes of experiments, and a mass of natural history …I can not but be raised to this persuasion, that this third period of time will far surpass that of the Graecian and Roman learning.

René Descartes (1596 – 1650)

•Rationalist First –doubt everything. I think, therefore, I am. (Cogito, ergo sum)

I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that ‘I’, that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter …

So why is he not a solipsists???

God has provided him with a working mind and sensory system and does not desire to deceive him. From this supposition, however, he finally establishes the possibility of acquiring knowledge about the world based on deduction and perception.

Rationalist

From there, he went on to conclude that there were a number of things equally certain:  God, time and space, the world, mathematics.  These things, he said, were innate -- in-born -- to the mind.  You derive them not from experience but from the nature of one’s mind itself. E.g., Ideas in his mind either come from within or from without. He is an imperfect, finite being. Therefore, his conception of God as a perfect, infinite being could have only come from without – from God. Therefore, God exists.

Mechanical-hydraulic theory of human behavior

Royal Automata

The Canard Digérateur (Digesting Duck) - an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them. While the duck did not actually have the ability to do this—the food was collected in one inner container, and the pre-stored feces was 'produced' from a second, so that no actual digestion took place—Vaucanson hoped that a truly digesting automaton could one day be designed.

ReflexesHe was the first to note the idea of the reflex. The idea that some of our actions are reflexive leads inevitably to the possibility that all actions are reflexive.  Descartes theorized that animals (at least) have no need for a soul:  They are automatons.  Being a good Catholic, he exempted human beings.  We do have a soul, although he acknowledged that he did not know how the soul and the body interacted – although he did feel they interacted and thought this was mediated through the Pineal gland.

Pineal Gland

Mind-Body ControversyInteractive Dualism

- pineal Gland

Differ from animals

because of our souls.

Six-Passions – wonder, love, hate, desire, joy and sadness.

Benedict Spinoza• Parallelism - Monistic Parallelism Every bodily event coexists with and is coordinated

to a mental event. Body and mind correlate, but they do not cause one another. The apparent interaction arises from ignorance on our part and shows only the coincidence of actions; an illusion.

God is the universe.

Leibniz – psychophysical parallelosm.

fatalism [ˈfeɪtəˌlɪzəm] n

1. (Philosophy) the philosophical doctrine that all events are predetermined so that man is powerless to alter his destiny

2. (Philosophy) the acceptance of and submission to this doctrine

3. a lack of effort or action in the face of difficulty fatalist  n

Gottfried Leibniz (Nativist)Metaphor of a block of veined Marble.

The veins represent the minds inborn dispositions. The sculptor’s hand frees a figure from this marble, but the figure was present before the chisel was ever lifted. Ideas are present in the mind at birth, and the role of experience is to allow them to emerge.

EmpiricistsThomas Hobbes

• Social contract theory Individuals came together and ceded some of their individual rights so that others

would cede theirs (e.g. person A gives up his/her right to kill person B if person B does the same). This resulted in the establishment of society, and by extension, the state, a sovereign entity which was to protect these new rights which were now to regulate societal interactions. Society was thus no longer anarchic.

• Monarchist

Calvin and Hobbes

We are basically aggressive animals.

Hobbes is proud to be an animal and seems to have a low opinion of humans in general (when Calvin is wondering why people exist, Hobbes simply responds "tiger food")

According to Calvin, "Hobbes is always a little loopy when he comes out of the dryer."

According to Hobbes tigers need to learn physics, biology and artistic

expression to hunt.

“For there is no conception in man’s mind, which hath not first been begotten upon the organs of the sense.”-Thomas Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes

Eyes Wide open

Spaceman Spiff

Imagination being only of those things which have formally been perceived by sense . . . is simple imagination, as when one imagined a man or a horse, which he hath seen before. The other is compounded; as when, from the sight of a man at one time and of a horse at another, we conceive in our minds a centaur.

John Locke

EmpiricistHumans are innately good.People are born equal in potential (Tabla Rasa) - – education is essential.Developmental Issues Two Sources of ideas-Sensible and Reflective-Sensation is not always reliable-Reflective processes involve associations and abstractions.

Molyneux's question:

``Suppose a Man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a Cube and a Sphere of the same metal, and nightly the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and other, which is the Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a Table, and the Blind Man to be made to see.

Quaere, Whether by his sight, before he touch'd them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which is the Globe, which the Cube (Locke 1694, page 67)

Empiricist philosophers, like Locke, argued that we learn to perceive visual space by associating it with touch and muscular movement.

George Berkeley

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one it there, does it make a sound.”

Rationalist (immaterialism) – Matter does not exit in and of itself; it exists because it is perceived.

(Object Permanence????)

•  God in the QuadA limerick by Monsignor Ronald Knox

• There was a young man who said, "God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad."

REPLY • Dear Sir:

Your astonishment's odd: I am always about in the Quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully, GOD.

David Hume (1776) “I sense therefore I am.”

Pneumatic Philosophy

Advocated for a new science of human nature

• Use the methods of natural science

• Human thought is the product of mental processes and can be studied scientifically.

• Perhaps Hume is the father of Psychology!!

Physical features directly related to personality and metal processes

Physiognomy

Franz Joseph Gall • That moral and intellectual faculties are innate

• That their exercise or manifestation depends on organization

• That the brain is the organ of all the propensities, sentiments and faculties

• That the brain is composed of as many particular organs as there are propensities, sentiments and faculties which differ essentially from each other.

• That the form of the head or cranium represents the form of the brain, and thus reflects the relative development of the brain organs.

  

 

He was a pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain. Around 1800, he developed "cranioscopy", a method to divine the personality and development of mental and moral faculties on the basis of the external shape of the skull.

Claimed there are some 26 "organs" on the surface of the brain which affect the contour of the skull, including a "murder organ" present in murderers.

Brain organs that were used got bigger and those which were not used shrunk, causing the skull to rise and fall with organ development.

Gall's early work was with criminals and the insane and his brain "organs" reflected this interest.

Phrenology

-phrenological theories best accepted in England, where ruling class used it to justify the inferiority of colonial subjects.

-popular in the United States from 1820 to 1850

Debunking

•In 1808, the Institute of France assembled a committee of savants.

- declared phrenology was not to be trusted (may not have had scientific evidence)

Napoleon Bonaparte was furious because Gall's interpretation of his skull "missed" some noble qualities he thought he had.

AnthropometryIn the 19th and early 20th centuries, used mainly to classify potential criminals by facial characteristics. Cesare Lombroso "Criminal Anthropology" 1895, associated certain craniofacial features to criminal types. (e.g., murderers have prominent jaws, and that pickpockets have long hands and scanty beards). Popular among the police and judicial systems in Italy and in many other countries.

Well until the 30s, many judges ordered "lombrosian" anthropometric analyses of defendants in criminal charges, which were used against them by the prosecution in the trial procedures.

Craniology

Influential during the Victorian era, Used by the British to justify racism and dominance of "inferior people", such as the Irish and the black tribes of Africa. "Inferior" races were said to be similar to apes and monkeys, so that they were considered to be more kin to these animals than the main European people (such as the Anglo-Saxon, of course...). Jonh Beddoe, the founder and president of the British Anthropological Institute, The Races of Man" (1862), developed "Index of Nigressence", stated that the Irish had crania similar to those of the Cro-Magnon pre-historic men and thus were a kind of "Africanoid" white race !

Bumps(1932)

National Hygiene Department in the Ministry of the Interior and in the Bureau for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare, proposed the "scientific" classification of Arians and non-Arians

Official craniometric certification required by law

“Many persons were sent to the death camps or denied marriage or work as a result of this "mismeasurement“. Stephen Jay Gould

1838 - 1911

Popularity in US

Quack Quack!!• Phrenology gave rise to the invention of the

psychograph by Lavery and White, a machine which could do a phrenological reading complete with printout. It is said that this device netted its owners about $200,000 at the 1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.

Localization of Function

As it turns out, Gall and the phrenologists were correct when it came to the central debate of neurology of the time. The brain is compartmentalized, with each piece serving a specific function modern map is based on fundamental functions, such as Broca’s and Werinike’s Areas.

Franz Anton Mesmer

Early Studies of the Central Nervous System

Stephen Hales (1677–1761)English Botanist Worked with frogs.

Hales showed that some reflexes are mediated by the spinal cord.

Hales studied stones taken from the bladder and kidneys and suggested solvents which might reduce them without surgery.

He also invented the surgical forceps.                        

Luigi Galvani~ 1780

Luigi Galvani touched the nerves of a frog's spinal cord with metal electrodes which caused contractions of the leg muscles.

Galvanic Skin Response named after him, but not invented by him.

Charles Bell - 1823

Scottish surgeon-anatomist

published "Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting"

Nerves of the senses could be traced from specific areas of the brain to their end organs.

Germany – birthplace of Psychology

1815 – 1871 – federation of 38 principalities.Wissenschaft – philosophy of education• encouraged research, teaching • academic freedom• students wandered from university to university• degrees involved sitting examinations or writing of thesis.

Methods from Physiology• Development of measurement instruments• Replication of results• Public data and academic debate• Experimental methods

Johannes Peter Müller

1840 – further developed Bell’s research .The doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies- Nervous stimulation is the link between the

physical world and our psychological experience of it.

- For example, the visual nerves, however they may be stimulated, are only capable of transmitting visual data.

Mechanistic View of Human Behavior

Müller – proposed that there was in addition to physical and chemical properties of the physiological system, there was also a “Vital Force” that could not be reduced further. (Vitalism)Mechanistic View – vitalism is a myth. All living organisms can be reduced to physical, chemical and mechanical principles. (Müller’s Students, Helmhotz).

Emil Du Bois-Reymond - 1850

Developed very sensitive galvonometer.

Was able to measure the role of electrical impulses in neural conductance

“No force other than the common physical chemical ones are active within the organism.”

Hermann Ludwig von HelmholtzPhysicist

Speed of neural conductance.

(90 feet per second)

Established Reaction Time

As a measure of

Psychological Processing.

More Helmholtz …

Invented ophthalmoscope – for examining retina.

Trichromatic theory of Color Vision

Opponent Process TheoryHerring

Charles Wheatstone (1833)

Psychophysics

Ernst Weber – two point threshold.

Weber’s LAW

Thresholds – just noticeable differences.

How much does a stimulus need to change before it can be detected. JND/S = k

-Studied the relationship between the physical and the psychological.

Gustav FechnerStudies on afterimages led to blindness. - became an invalid, depression.Recovered vision by “taking control over his life”.Mind-Body ControversyIn his last work Fechner, aged but full of hope, contrasts this joyous "daylight view" of the world with the dead, dreary "night view" of materialism.

JND depends on the intensity of the standard

Weber’s Law I/I = k

Change in Intensity divided by Intensity of the standard is a constant. Not “Absolute” but it is predictable.

Time Check!!!1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents Telephone.

1886- The Statue of Liberty, a gift to the United States from France, is dedicated by President Cleveland in New York City harbor.

Broadway New York City 1881

Thomas Edison – 1877 became the first person to ever record and play back the human voice.

1903- The first successful powered airplane flight is made by Orville and Wilbur Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

The first production Model T was built on September 27, 1908.

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt

Born August 16th, 1832 outside of Mannheim, Germany.

Youngest of four children born to a Lutheran minister and his wife.

One school he attended suggested that he drop out and become a mailman.

He went to medical school at the University of Tübingen for a year but did not do well.

After his father died, Wundt finally realized that he had to change his ways or he would not finish medical school.

In an amazing turn around, he enrolled at the medical school at Heidelberg, studied hard, received his M.D., and in 1855 received the highest scores in the state medical examinations.

Had no interest in becoming a clinical doctor – but liked the research aspects of science. Developed a background in Physiology, neurology and medicine.

First independent research project “Effects of restricted salt input on chemical composition of his own urine”.

Wundt studied at the University of Berlin for a semester under Müller and then, in 1857, he became a lecturer in physiology at the University of Heidelberg.

Privatdozent – offered university courses but his pay was dependant on student enrollment. - first course enrollment was 4 students - became very ill (1857).

Worked for Helmholtz ( 1858-1864 – Heidelberg University)

- published two books and several studies on sensation and perception.

1864 – set up his own lab.

1871 – hired as extraordinary professor

1873- published Principles of Physiological Psychology“The work I here present to the public is an attempt to mark out a new domain of science”

Hired by University of Zurich (1874-75)

University of Leipzig (1875- 1917)

1879 - Established the first laboratory for Experimental Psychology (destroyed in 1943 by an allied bombing raid).

Measuring the Mind

Student of Robert Bunsen

From Helmholtz and Bunsen, Wundt acquireda love of gadgetry devices.Timing and stimulusPresentation apparatus!

Wundt-style Tachistoscope :This is a device designed to present a visual stimulus for a very short adjustable exposure time by using a gravity operated falling shutter. The onset of the drop (fall) of the shutter is controlled by solenoids

Wundt's perimeter : This device allows the presentation of visual stimuli in all parts of the visual field and at a constant distance from the subject's eye. It is used to examine the visual field for defects and to plot visual acuity and color acuity. It presumably comes from Wundt's time with Helmholtz.

It was through using introspection that Wundt and his students concluded that the sensations and feelings are what constitute the activity in our minds.

They believed that the combination of or the relationship between sensations and feelings are what creates constantly shifting psychological processing.

Analogy to chemistry: . . . in precisely the same way in psychology . . . It would be quite wrong to say that the experiment determines only the action of [stimuli} on the psyche. The behavior of the psyche in response to the external influences is determined as well, and by varying those external influences we arrive at the laws to which the psychic life as such is subject. . . . By creating manifold changes in the sensory stimuli while continually studying the psychic phenomena, we apply the principle that is the essence of the experimental method: as [Francis] put it, “we change the circumstances in which the phenomena occurs.”

His writings, totaling an estimated 53,000 pages, include: articles on animal and human physiology, poisons, vision, spiritualism, hypnotism, history, and politics; text- and handbooks of “medical physics” and human physiology; encyclopedic tomes on linguistics, logic, ethics, religion, a “system of philosophy;” not to mention his magna opera, the Principles of Physiological Psychology (in ten volumes).

He was very narrow-minded and dictatorial. He told his doctoral students what they were to write on for their dissertations.

He was strongly opposed to child psychology, animal experimentation, and any practical applications of psychology.

Wundt could be very scornful to psychologists who did not do things his way, and he often rejected new ideas that became very important in the history of psychology.

By the end of his career, he had made his fair share of enemies, even though his psychological laboratory had many imitators and his books and lectures were much admired.

Wundt retired in 1917, but continued writing until shortly before his death in Grossbothen, Germany, on August 31, 1920.

James McKeen Cattell

American student who studied under Wilhelm Wundt.

He invented a timing device used to measure visual stimuli, and the "lip key," which was developed to measure reaction time by movement of the subject’s lips or vibrations from the subject’s voice. While measuring verbal "association times" (word responses to verbal stimuli) noted much variability across tasks as well as between subjects.

Cattell interpretation: some people have generally quicker association times, and those who react faster think faster and experience more ideas in the same objective period of time.This was an early suggestion that differences in an individual’s reaction time may be related to differences in individual intelligence.

For each row, which of the three comparison shapes on the right is identical to the shape on the left?

Modern Use of Reaction Time Mental rotation studies

Introspection

Inspection of one’s own thoughts, feelings or mental states. In common sense terms, we turn our attention "inward."

Edward B. Titchener Titchener attempted to systematize the Wundtian point of view, producing laboratory research using only Wundt's method of introspection.

Psychological observation is observation by each man of his own experience, of mental processes which lie open to him but to no one else. Hence while all other scientific observation may be called inspection, the looking-at things or processes, psychological observation is introspection, the looking inward into oneself. (Titchener, 1898 p. 27).

The "general rules" must be observed in all investigations involving experimental introspection. They are:

1. Be impartial. Do not form a preconceived idea of what you are going to find by the experiment; do not hope or expect to find this or that process. Take consciousness as it is.

2. Be attentive. Do not speculate as to what you are doing or why you are doing it, as to its value or uselessness, during the experiment. Take the experiment seriously.

3. Be comfortable. Do not begin to introspect till all the conditions are satisfactory; do not work if you feel nervous or irritated, if the chair is too high or the table too low for you, if you have a cold or a headache. Take the experiment pleasantly.

4. Be perfectly fresh. Stop working the moment that you feel tired or jaded. Take the experiment vigorously.

(Titchener, 1898, pp.34-35).

Stimulus Error.For example, if you look at a ripe tomato and say, "The tomato is red," you are doing it wrong. You are paying attention to the tomato, not to your own mental experience. You have broken the first two general rules. What you should report is something like, "Redness."

Titchener considered his own highly trained introspective observers to be so good that they had become mere recording instruments of the mind. He said,…the practiced observer gets into an introspective habit, has the introspective attitude ingrained in his system; so that it is possible for him, not only to take mental notes while the observation is in progress, without interfering with consciousness, but even to jot down written notes, as the histologist does while his eye is still held to the ocular of the microscope. (Titchener, 1909, p. 23).

Structuralism - attempting to find the Elements of conscious experience ~ just like Chemistry identifies the elements of the physical world.

According to Titchener, there are three classes of elements: sensations, images, and affections. The sensations were the mental elements as given by the senses. Titchener had discovered about 50,000 sensations. Images were the elements of ideas, and affections were the elements of emotions. All the elements had attributes: quality, intensity, duration, and clearness (and for vision, extensity in space). The qualities multiply the number of discrete sensory conditions one might discern to 194,250 for vision and 46,222 for the other senses, for a total of 240,470.

Like Wundt, Titchener refused to consider applied psychology a valid enterprise, had no interest in studying animals, children, abnormal behavior, or individual differences.

When Titchener died in 1927, so did structuralism and the whole introspectionist movement.

Introspectionism became a ”Dirty Word” in research, regardless what one was measuring.

Other Facts about Titchner

•Titchener was the first to have a woman Ph.D. graduate.  Over 1/3 of his doctorates were women when Harvard and Columbia excluded them, and he advocated their right to serve as faculty

•Titchener’s first Ph.D. student was Margaret Floy Washburn, she was the first woman elected to National Academy of Sciences, served as President of the APA, and established Vassar College Psychology Program.

Edwin G. BoringStudent of Titchner’s What a man! To me he has always seemed the nearest approach to genius of anyone with whom I have been closely associated." (E. G. Boring on E. B. Titchener Pictorial History of Psychology and Psychiatry).

Boring Figure

Titchner’s Brain remains at Cornell in a jar

"

William James

William James

Father - Henry studied theology, philosophy, and mysticism.

Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. At the age of fifty-six he entered into a spiritual phase, in which he experienced dreams and visions. This culminated in a spiritual awakening, where he claimed he was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly doctrine to reform Christianity. He claimed that the Lord had opened his eyes, so that from then on he could freely visit heaven and hell, and talk with angels, demons, and other spirits. From Wikipedia

1852-1855 - William attends school in New York.

1855-1858 - School and private tutors in England and France.

1859-1860 - Back overseas. School and private tutors in Switzerland and Germany. Attends Geneva Academy (a European university)

1860-1861 - Studies painting with William Morris Hunt, Newport, R.I.

1861- Enters Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University.

1864 - William enters Harvard Medical School.

1865-1866 - Joins Louis Agassiz on an expedition to the Amazon.

1866 - resumes medical school

. . . but had assorted ailments—back pain, weak vision, digestive disorders, and thoughts of suicide—some or most of which were related to his indecision about his future. Seeking relief, he went to France and Germany for nearly two years, took the baths, studied under Helmholtz and other leading physiologists, and became thoroughly conversant with the New Psychology (Wundt).

1869 - James receives his MD from Harvard.

He made no effort to practice because of his poor healthSpent his time studying psychology, sunk in gloom about his prospects and troubled by the profound differences between his scientific views of the mind and the world and his father's mystical and spiritual ones. In 1870, at twenty-eight, after nearly a year in these doldrums, he had an “abrupt emotional crisis."

For almost three years after graduation, James lived in the family home.

Had increased periods of depression after a young woman whom he had befriended died following a prolonged illness.

Later described his depression as a descent into a profound crisis—of spirituality, of being, of meaning, of will.

He suffered panic attacks and even hallucinations and sought help through spiritual quests.

Feared that his depression was a biological destiny he would be unable to overcome. One day in April of 1870, he recorded in his journal that he had come to believe that free will was no illusion and that he could use his will to alter his mental state. "My first act of free will," he wrote, "shall be to believe in free will."

James was now 30, three years out of medical school, and with no career prospects or plans except for a vague desire to devote himself to philosophy.

Harvard president Charles Eliot, a neighbor and former teacher of James, offered him a post at Harvard teaching physiology for the modest sum of $600 per year.

Within three years of arriving at Harvard, he began offering courses in physiological psychology and performing demonstrations for students in his little laboratory.

There were no professors of psychology in American universities (except phrenology) before James began teaching it in 1875.

James had never taken a course in the New Psychology because there were none. He once jested, 'The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.‘

James introduced experimental psychology to America. He began giving laboratory demonstrations to students at least as early as Wundt, and he and his students started performing laboratory experiments about the same time as Wundt and his students, if not earlier.

Ironically, while James made much of the value of experimentation, he himself found it boring and intellectually confining. He usually spent no more than two hours a day in the laboratory, told a friend that

"I naturally hate experimental work," and said of the Leipzig style of laboratory work, "The thought of psycho-physical experimentation and altogether of brass-instrument and algebraic-formula psychology fills me with horror."

1890 – Principles of Psychology (2 volumes), chapters on habit, attention, perception, association, memory, reasoning, instinct, emotion, imagination, psychological methods, and even hypnotism.

The Jimmy

TheoryFunctionalism James opposed the structuralism focus on introspection and breaking down mental events to the smallest elements. Instead, James focused on the wholeness of an event, taking into the impact of the environment on behavior.

Psychology is the study of mental activity (e.g. perception, memory, imagination, feeling, judgment). Mental activity is to be evaluated in terms of how it serves the organism in adapting to its’ environment .

The functionalists tended to use the term 'function' rather loosely. It can refer to the study of how a mental process operates. This is a major departure from the study of the structure of a mental process, the difference between stopping a train to tear it apart to study its parts (structuralism), and looking at how the systems interact while it is running (functionalism).

The term 'function' can also refer to how the mental process functions in the evolution of the species, what adaptive property it provides that would cause it to be selected through evolution.

On Introspection: felt that a naturalistic kind of introspection—an effort to observe our own thoughts and feelings as they actually seem to us—could tell us much about our mental life. This was, for him, the most important of investigative methods; he defined it as "looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover."

Stream of ConsciousnessAll people unhesitatingly believe that they feel themselves thinking, and they distinguish the mental state as an inward activity or passion, from all the objects with which it may cognitively deal. I regard this belief as the most fundamental of all the postulates of Psychology, and shall discard all curious inquiries about its certainty as too metaphysical for the scope of this book.The proper subject of psychology was, therefore, the introspective analysis of the "states of mind" that we are conscious of in daily life and of the functions they perform for the organism.

Pragmatism - wrote considerably on the concept of pragmatism. According to pragmatism, the truth of an idea can never be proven. James proposed we instead focus on what he called the "cash value," or usefulness, of an idea.

James-Lange Theory of Emotion The James-Lange theory of emotion proposes that an event triggers a physiological reaction, which we then interpret. According to this theory, emotions are caused by our interpretations of these physiological reactions. Both James and the Danish physiologist Carl Lange independently proposed the theory.

Influence on PsychologyIn addition to his own enormous influence, many of James' students went on to have prosperous and influential career in psychology. Some of James' students included Mary Whiton Calkins, Edward Thorndike, G. Stanley Hall, and John Dewey.

In 1894 he was the first American to call favorable attention to the recent work of relatively obscure Viennese physician, Sigmund Freud.

William James Quotations

Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Hugo MunsterbergHired by James in 1892

One of Munsterberg's intentions was to treat psychology as broadly and as widely as possible. He did not have any patience with approaches like Titchener's, which he viewed as too restrictive. Munsterberg was known to speak of Titchener's structuralism as precise but not useful.

However, Munsterberg did not like giving a concrete definition of psychology becasue he thought that any definition would create rules and restrictions that he did not want and could not accept. Instead, Munsterberg was interested in functions or acts such as, memory, understanding, learning, a search for beauty, empathy, love, and faith. Munsterberg saw psychology in a purpose-oriented functionalist manner. For him, it was "more natural to drink the water than to analyze it in the laboratory into its chemical elements" (Hothersall, 1995, p163). Dr. Munsterberg's lifetime interest was in the application of psychological knowledge, specifically in the service of humanity. Munsterberg always considered himself to be an experimental psychologist.

Applied Psychology

Application of research methods to applied areas of human behavior.

Basic Research – research into general, abstract laws.

Clinical PsychologyHe had an unusual style when treating patients; he would meet them in his laboratory instead of a clinic, and his only patients were those who were of scientific interest to him.  None of Munsterberg’s patients ever had to pay a fee for his counseling services.  He believed that mental illness had a physiological basis .

Direct suggestions and autosuggestions were used to encourage the patient to "expect" to get well. His main objective was to give his patients immediate relief. For example, he did this by assuring his patients that they would get a good night's sleep and low-and-behold, they would wake up feeling rested.

He wrote about these clinical experiences in his book, Psychotherapy. Reported that he saw success using these techniques in the treatment of a wide range of problems, including hallucinations, drug addiction, phobias, sexual disorders, alcoholism, and obsessions.

 

Industrial PsychologyHe studied problems with monotony, physical/social influences on the working power, attention and fatigue, the effects of advertising, and the future development of economic psychology. In 1913, Munsterberg's work in I/O psychology was presented in his book, Psychology and Industrial Efficiency.  The book was divided into three main sections: "The best possible man for the job", "the best possible work", and "the the best possible effect." "The best possible man for the job" dealt with selection of workers, "the best possible work", discussed factors affecting worker efficiency, and "the best possible effect" discussed sales, marketing, and advertising techniques. 

Forensic psychology & Eyewitness Testimony Published On the Witness Stand.

Reality ExperimentsLie DetectionGroup Decision Making

False ConfessionsMunsterberg wrote about people who confessed to have committed a crime, but really had not. He looked at situations in which these untrue confessions were likely to occur. Munsterberg found that with intense interrogation of those who have a strong need to please and that with those who have a need to comply with powerful authority, untrue confessions were likely to arise. He also found that these same results occurred with deeply depressed individuals who feel a need for punishment.

On December 16, 1916, Munsterberg died on the lecture platform while beginning a lecture at Radcliffe. He was not even able to finish his opening sentence.

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885) Scientific Study of Memory

Stimulus - nonsense syllable method (e.g., DAX, BUP, GEJ).Presented on a Memory Drum

Tested his own memory

Each list learned to criterion of 2 errorless tests.

IV: Retention time (minutes, hours, days)

Dependant Measures1) Number recalled - fast loss at beginning, then levels out.

2) Savings # of trials to relearn

Large Savings at short retention, Rapid decreased with longer retention Then leveled out.

E.g., After 6 days 30% savings.

3) Overlearning- learn to criterion then rehearsed thirty times more.

Greatly increased savings. E.g., At 6 days 64% savings.

Appears Rehearsal leads to Memory.

Reductionist Methods - claims that everything that exists can be explained as the interactions of a small number of simple things.

In Ebbinghaus’ case, what effects memory of nonsense syllables also effects memory of words, dates and other information.

Early History of Clinical Psychology

Early man widely believed that mental illness was the result of supernatural phenomena such as spiritual or demonic possession, sorcery, the evil eye, or an angry deity and so responded with equally mystical, and sometimes brutal, treatments.

Trephining:  surgical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull, exposing the dura mater in order to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases.

 Hippocrates (460-377 BC) humoral theory, proposed a triad of mental disorders termed melancholia, mania and phrenitis (an acute mental disorder accompanied by fever). He also spoke of other disorders such as phobia.

He believed that disease was the product of environmental factors, diet and living habits, not a punishment inflicted by the gods, and that the appropriate treatment depended on which bodily fluid, or humour, had caused the problem

Greek Era

 Plato (427-347 BC) argued that there were two types of mental illness: "divinely inspired" mental illness that gave the person prophetic powers, and a second type that was caused by a physical disease.

16th to 18th Century

Some mentally disturbed people may have been victims of the witch-hunts that spread in waves in early modern Europe. Those judged insane were increasingly admitted to local workhouses, poorhouses and jails.  

St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital

Harsh treatment and restraint in chains was seen as therapeutic, helping suppress the animal passions. 

People paid to visit old Bedlam and to see the sight.

1814: 96 people each paid a penny to visit.

Benjamin Rush

 The gyrator, based on the principle of centrifugal action to increase cerebral circulation.

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was born on 6 May, 1856.

Parents favored him over his siblings ~ they sacrificed everything to give him a proper education.

Graduated with honors from high school.

Freud enrolled at the University of Vienna in 1873, where it took him three years longer than normal to complete his medical studies.

Medical school

In 1876, he published his first paper about “eel testicles”

In 1874, the concept of "psychodynamics" was proposed with the publication of Lectures on Physiology by German physiologist Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke (in coordination with physicist Hermann von Helmholtz) the living organism is a dynamic system to which the laws of chemistry and physics apply.

In 1879, Freud interrupted his studies to complete his one year of obligatory military service, and in 1881 he received his M.D. with a thesis on “the spinal cord of lower fish species".

Joseph Breuer - catharsis

From 1884 onwards, he began to experiment with cocaine, using it on himself. Freud felt that cocaine would work as a panacea for many disorders and wrote a well-received paper, "On Coca," explaining its virtues.

1885 - Ernst von Fleischl’s death

1886 – becomes Privatdozent U of Vienna

Paris - Jean-Martin Charcot - hypnosis

1886 – opened his own medical practice, specializing in neurology.

“On Male Hysteria” - etiological role of trauma

Wilhelm Fliess Berlin. Ear Nose and Throat Specialist.

Male (23) and female (28) Life cycles.

Linked to mucus lining of the nose.

Humans are basically bisexual .

Death of Emma Eckstein.

The Seduction TheoryApril 21,1896 - Freud presented a paper before the Society for Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna, entitled "The Aetiology of Hysteria“. Using a sample of 18 patients from his practice, he concluded that all of them had been the victims of unwanted sexual assaults by various caretakers. The cause of the patient’s distress lay in a trauma inflicted by an actor in the child’s social environment. The source of internal psychic pain lay in an act inflicted upon the child from outside. This led to his well known ‘seduction theory’.

1897-1898 - abandoned the Seduction theory

from actual early traumatic experiences, the knowledge of which has been repressed. But Freud eventually renounced this theory in favor of a new view, that his women patients had "fantasized" their early memories of rape and seduction - a view on which the whole budding science of psychoanalysis would be based.Masson makes available previously unpublished letters from Freud's closest friend, Wilhelm Fliess, which reveal that Freud had grave doubts about abandoning the "seduction theory." Masson discovered that not only had Freud read the contemporary literature documenting the high incidence of sexual abuse of children, he had in all likelihood witnessed autopsies of children who had been raped and murdered. That Freud abandoned his seduction theory, Masson argues, was a failure of courage rather than a clinical or theoretical insight.As a result, most psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have in effect been reluctant to trust the memories of their patients, women in particular, about the traumas they experienced in childhood. Like Freud, they see such traumas as fantasy rather than reality. This cover-up of the truth, Masson asserts, has poisoned the entire profession. From http://www.jeffreymasson.com/other-publications/assault-on-truth.html

In 1981, J.M. Masson was fired from his position as Projects Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, shortly after suggesting in a talk in New Haven that a key theory Freud had developed in 1895 and later repudiated - the so-called seduction theory - may have been valid after all. This talk scandalized the Freudian orthodoxy, as reported in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times.Here for the first time are the letters from Freud, long kept from public view, which stirred this controversy. On the basis of these letters and other new information Masson discovered at the Archives and elsewhere in Europe, he has written a devastating and highly controversial expose of the origins of psychoanalysis. In 1895, Sigmund Freud formulated what was perhaps his

most profound theory: that emotional disturbances in adults stem from actual

ANNA O (Bertha Pappenheim)-patient of Josef Breuer (collaborator with Freud) -Free Association (chimney sweeping)-Transference

"Breuer told Freud that she was deranged; he hoped she would die to end her suffering". She later recovered over time and led a productive life. 

Freud's background in neurophysiology included an understanding of late 19th Century thermodynamics and, in particular, the principle of conservation of energy. Since Freud viewed the impulses of the psyche as bursts of energy, it was clear to him that the Ego could not simply destroy these impulses but that it must, in some way, convert them or send them elsewhere. Thus, Freud used a term "sublimation" which Nietzsche had already used in a similar context. Repression requires sublimation; that is, the energy must be channeled elsewhere. (e.g., one channel for energy is self-directed aggression --- guilt and self-hate.)

Freud tried to trace movement of psychic energy from excitation to discharge, something that Helmholtz was examining.

Psychic energy arises from two sources, excitation from the external world and excitation from bodily tissues.

Freud generally used the terms "instinct" and "libido" when referring to psychic energy arising from bodily tissue.

Treatment: Bottled up energy must be released to reduce tension (cathartic release).

Breuer later distanced himself from Freud, because, “Freud is given to absolute and exclusive formulations: this is a psychical need which leads to excessive generalization. There may in addition be a desire d’épater le bourgeois [to shock the bourgeois]. ... I confess that the plunging into sexuality in theory and practice is not to my taste”

Communication Style

His analyses of cases were like detective stories in which he succeeded in tracking down the “guilty” one -- the unconscious emotional motive -- with an original way of interpreting the patient’s associations, dreams, and symptoms. And it seemed all pretty exact, scientific.

What Have we kept from Freud????

- what is still relevant today.

Behaviorism had it's earliest start with the work of a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov's research on the digestive systems of dogs led to his discovery of the classical conditioning process, which demonstrated that behaviors could be learned via conditioned associations.

Pavlov referred to the process as Psychic Learning!!!! In 1904 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering studies of how the digestive system works.

http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/pavlov/index.html

Behaviorism is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior can be researched scientifically without recourse to inner mental states. It is a form of materialism.

J.B. Watson"Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,"

Behaviorist Manifesto: In 1913, in one of the most famous lectures in the history of psychology was given by John Broadus Watson.

"Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,"

Called for a radical revision of the scope and method of psychological research.

• Introspection was to be abandoned in favor of the study of behavior.

•Objective methodology in research.

Operational definitions: Represent concepts in psychology in terms of the ways they are objectively found. i.e., hunger became the amount of time without food.

Stimulus/Response.

Animal Research Behavioral laws are so basic they apply equally to animals and to humans.

Materialism -No reference to the mind, unconscious influences, thoughts, emotions.

Radical Behaviorism – mind as epiphenomena

Relational Behaviorism – behavior as mechanistic

Philosophical Behaviorism- consciousness “ a form of behavior guided by future results.

What Motivates?

Instinct and Habits

Drive Reduction (thirst, hunger, etc.)

Social Behavior

Language and thought - thinking to oneself occurs only when there is overt muscle movement.

The curare Experiment (1947)An anesthesiologist agreed to be subject to complete paralysis. While completely paralyzed, the subject's vital signs were monitored throughout.  As long as the patient was able to move muscles voluntarily, he answered questions asked by the experimenters. Once fully paralyzed, the subject was asked to  keep mental notes of his experiences, to be transcribed immediately after recovery of voluntary muscles.  In addition, an electro-encephalogram  recorded brain activity throughout. The subject was a healthy male, aged 34, weighing 80 Kg.

Results

“The subject maintained consciousness including full awareness of the sensorium and full comprehension of verbal stimuli.”

•Therefore overt muscle movement is not required for thinking.

Smith, S. M., Brown, H. O., Toman, J. E.P., & Goodman, L. S., (1947) "The Lack of Cerebral Effects of d-Tubocurarine", Anesthesiology, 8(1), 1-14.

Purpose of psychology : The prediction and control of behavior.

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select -- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.--John Watson, Behaviorism, 1930

Strengths of Behaviorism

Behaviorism is based upon observable behaviors, so it is easier to quantify and collect data and information when conducting research.

Effective therapeutic techniques such as intensive behavioral intervention, token economies, and discrete trial training are all rooted in behaviorism. These approaches are often very useful in changing maladaptive or harmful behaviors in both children and adults.

Weakness????????

“If we ever do end up acting just like rats or Pavlov’s dogs, it will be largely

because behaviorism has conditioned us to do so.”

~ Richard Dean Rosen

Author of Psychobabble (1979)