Title: Functionalism
1Functionalism American Psychology
- Structure of lecture
- 1. Brief characterisation
- 2. Background in C19 thinking
- 3. William James and John Dewey as examples
- 4. Cultural conditions the nature of
functionalism - 5. The legacy of functionalism
- And so?
- adaptation a good and happy life
- the entwining of science morals
philosophy psychology?
2A brief characterisation of functionalism
- Central intellectual concern
- the purposes of psychological abilities and
properties - . And what they allowed people to do
- E.g.
- How does the mind mediate between the
environment the needs of the organism? (Angell,
1907)functions not structures - EVOLUTIONARY in tone
3Roots
- Place of C19 moral mental philosophy
- Producing an appropriate social elite
- e.g. Richards (1995, 2004)
- Noah Porter and James McCosh
4Noah Porter (1811-1892)
- Philosopher
- President of Yale 1871-1886
- Author of The Human Intellect (1868) amongst
other works
5Porters Psychology
- A science of the soul requiring
- exact observation, precise definition, fixed
terminology, classified arrangement and
rational explanation (1868). - Phenomena apprehended by consciousness
- Emphasized the importance of mental operations,
individual character and the habit of
self-knowledge
6- If we would know our fellow-men to do them
good, we must first know ourselves. This
suggests the important service which psychology
may render to teachers of every class. - (Porter, The Human Intellect, 1868)
- Self knowledge - Other knowledge
- Protestant moral project of self scrutiny and
this project as effortful
7Porters psychology
- A coming together of
- scientific aims to know and
- religious aims to know
- in order to be a better person and to lead a
better life - Richards (1995)
- this approach gave psychology an explicitly
moral dimension
8Porters legacy
- Psychological knowledge as having moral dimension
- Influential on his students
- e.g. G. T. Ladd
- Yale Professor of mental moral philosophy
1881 - Taught physiological psyc from 1884
- Wrote early, popular American texts on
- Physiological Psychology
- shared Ps religious leanings and the moral
aspects of psychology - Also concerned with practical benefits of
psychology - not an uncommon pattern
9Some functionalist views on Psychology
- William James (1842-1910).
- New England, wealthy, scholarly family
- UG at Harvard medicine
- Early 1870s starts to recover from emotional
problems - 1875 course in Physiological psychology at
Harvard
10Some major works
- 1890 Principles of Psychology
- Wundt (allegedly) Its literature, its
beautiful, but its not Psychology - The Will to Believe
- 1899 Talks to Teachers on Psychology
- 1902 Varieties of Religious Experience
- 1907 Pragmatism
11Consciousness and free will
- consciousness grows the more complex intense
the higher we rise in the animal kingdom. it
seems an organ, superadded to the other organs
which maintain the animal in the struggle for
existence the presumption is that it helps
him in some way in the struggle. - consciousness helps regulate a complex nervous
system it has adaptive value
12- Much of the functional value of consciousness
came through the possession of free will. - James chose to believe in free will
- opposing determinism idea that complete
knowledge of the present allows perfect
prediction of the future - BUT free will operates under constraint
13James on emotion
- stimuli evoke reaction experience emotion
- stimulus behaviour experience
- bear on path freeze fear
- bear on path run fear
- bear in zoo gaze admiration emotions
differ - idea of emotion as embodied and action-based
not simply mental and passive - Smith (1997) functionalism also embedded a
general tendency to focus on what people do
rather than on what they think -
14James on the self
- Self as multi-faceted
- known an object of knowledge empirical ego or
me - material self
- social self . itself a variety of selves
- spiritual self
- Self as knower transcendental ego or I
- which cannot be the object of investigation
- but which is the essence of personal identity
and (illusory) sense of continuity
15Self self-esteem
- Self-esteem a ratio of success to pretensions
- I, who for the time have staked my all on being a
psychologist, am mortified if others know much
more psychology than I. But I am contented to
wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. My
deficiencies there give me no sense of personal
humiliation at all. Had I 'pretensions' to be a
linguist, it would have been just the reverse. So
we have the paradox of a man shamed to death
because he is only the second pugilist or the
second oarsman in the world. That he is able to
beat the whole population of the globe minus one
is nothing he has 'pitted' himself to beat that
one and as long as he doesn't do that nothing
else counts. He is to his own regard as if he
were not, indeed he is not.
16- Yonder puny fellow, however, whom every one can
beat, suffers no chagrin about it, for he has
long ago abandoned the attempt to 'carry that
line,' as the merchants say, of self at all. With
no attempt there can be no failure with no
failure no humiliation. So our self-feeling in
this world depends entirely on what we back
ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the
ratio of our actualities to our supposed
potentialities a fraction of which our
pretensions are the denominator and the numerator
our success thus, Self-esteem Success /
Pretensions. Such a fraction may be increased as
well by diminishing the denominator as by
increasing the numerator. To give up pretensions
is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified
and where disappointment is incessant and the
struggle unending, this is what men will always
do. The history of evangelical theology, with its
conviction of sin, its self-despair, and its
abandonment of salvation by works, is the deepest
of possible examples, but we meet others in every
walk of life.
17 truth
- James Pragmatism (1907)
- Ideas (which themselves are just part of our
experience) become true just in so far as they
help us get into satisfactory relations with
other parts of our experience. - truth is found through instrumental means
truth is instrumental
18What was Jamess Principles of Psychology about?
- Richards (1996)
- Principles of Psychology is at heart really
about how to stay sane and honest
19again a set of instructions a theory
psychology and the good life
- Refuse to vent a passion and it dies. Count ten
before venting your anger, and its occasion seems
ridiculous. Whistling to keep up courage is no
mere figure of speech. On the other hand, sit
all day in a moping posture, sigh, and reply to
everything in a dismal voice, and your melancholy
lingers. There is no more valuable precept in
moral education than this.....if we wish to
conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in
ourselves, we must assiduously, and in the first
instance cold-bloodedly, go through the outward
movements of those contrary dispositions which we
prefer to cultivate. The reward of persistency
will infallibly come, in the fading out of
sullenness or depression, and the advent of real
cheerfulness and kindliness in their stead.
Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the
dorsal rather than the ventral aspect of the
frame, and speak in a major key, pass the genial
compliment, and your heart must be frigid indeed
if it do not gradually thaw!
20James is revealing instructing
- On how to
- live our lives
- he lived his life
- Through using
- autobiography
- psychological knowledge
- moral and ethical injunctions
-
21Another functionalist John Dewey (1859-1952)
- Philosophy at Johns Hopkins
- PhD with Hall
- Chair in Psy Phil at Chicago
- then Columbia
- Education
22Deweys most famous paper The Reflex Arc (1896)
- Background
- reflex stimulus-links-response
- three stages each causing next
- Dewey this is wrong!
23- Stimulus - association - response
- are not separable psychic entities
- they are differing functions within an integrated
whole and one does not cause the other in any
simple sense - Analogy
- watch cat through a peephole
- conclude whiskers cause tails
24The S R account
Response
Stimulus
Stimulus
Response
25Reflex arc
- NOT
- see candle-grasp-burn-withdraw hand
- (stimulus-response-stimulus-response) but
- act of looking, of seeing, reaching and pain
- Activities obtain their significance only as part
of the whole - so not see reach grasp
- but an integrated system (see also Charles
Sherrington) -
26Dewey as functionalist
- Perception-action as adaptive
- Mind was representational allowed organism to
guide organism and allow it to adapt and
anticipate - Mind is an actor on the world
- knowledge of it becomes a means of understanding
and then changing the world
27Back to the cultural context
- Summary so far
- Broadly what functionalism is
- Intellectual roots in moral philosophy
- .. Psychological knowledge for improvement of
self, others society - Examples of functionalist style
- William James John Dewey
28Where from ..?
- Moral philosophy as discussed
- More widely in US culture
- Religion
- Enlightenment project
- Education
29Religion
- Centrality of religion
- moral imperatives
- Religious belief common among psychologists
- compatible with science
- allying knowledge and values
- beware anachronistic thinking
30Enlightenment project
- Crudely
- to understand the nature of the world through
human effort the application of rational
enquiry - and beliefs in the importance of direct
experience, progress and egalitarianism. - Criticism in late C19 Europe
- Germany elites fear of Enlightenment
(Harrington, 1996) - But in USA more persistent Constitution ..
Social values
31- Roger Smith writes of Cattell
- Cattell, like many in his generation, believed
in expertise as the means to make America modern,
civilized and democratic. His interest in
science was an interest in the occupations that
he believed would contribute to social advance
he was not interested in the development of an
academic discipline for the sake of learning. It
was precisely because these values were widely
shared that psychology gained an academic base so
quickly in the US in the 1890s.
Smith (1997, p. 523) - my emphasis
32Education
- Equiping immigrants for life in America
- Education allows exploitation of opportunity and
to attain individual fulfilment. - Education a site for inculcating the right morals
and the right values. - Expertise in child development and in the process
of education was worthwhile (Baldwin, Dewey, Hall)
33- The project of moral training of providing a
conventional morality in a pluralistic society -
- a. no longer solely the provinces of philosophy
and religion but has been taken on by the New
Psychology - b. it is no longer solely a programme for the
elite - it is a moral project for the population
34Legacies of functionalism
- Attitude rather than specific theories
- notion of expertise becomes central loaded.
E.g. testing (week 4) - Values knowledge is of value for its own sake?
- or for the benefit of society? Or the
individual life? - Recurrent themes adaptiveness, action, Dewey and
reflex arc, role of free will, consciousness,
improvement - Are we all functionalists now?
- Most of all how notions of values, science, and
purposes of psychology can become inseparable?
Discuss..