1
Western Civilization

• Greek Empire (300-100 BC) is the foundation of
  Roman Empire (100 BC to 400 AD). The revival of
  Greek knowledge is also the root of the
  Renaissance (1450-1600 AD), which ends the Dark
  Ages and Middle Ages (400-1450 AD).

2
Non-Greek Ancient Perspectives

• Early Chinese Perspectives
• Early psychological thought was anchored to a
  larger worldview surrounding the number five.
• The Chinese accepted five basic elements (wood,
  fire, metal, earth, and water) as well as five
  senses, five colors, five emotions, five basic
  human relationships, and so on.
• Confucius was a great humanistic philosopher who
  investigated human relationships among other
  topics.

3
The Chinese

• Hsün Tzu was compared with Aristotle as a
  naturalist who emphasized the regularity and
  orderliness of nature.
• Yin and Yang are both opposite and complementary
  forces.
• Yang is associated with force, hardness, heat,
  dryness, and masculinity.
• Yin is associated with weakness, softness, cold,
  moistness, and femininity.
• Equilibrium between Yin and Yang is essential to
  physical and psychological health.
• The Chinese opened the door to physiological
  psychology with their belief that mental
  processes are central and are associated with the
  physical body.

4
The Babylonians

• Babylonia influenced the intellectual traditions
  of the Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and Arabs.
• The Babylonians recognized many Gods and devils,
  and they emphasized demonological methods as a
  diagnosis and a treatment of physical and mental
  illnesses.

5
The Egyptians

• Egyptian psychology was deeply intertwined with
  the polytheistic Egyptian religions and the
  emphasis on immortality and life after death.
• Although the Egyptians appear to be the first to
  describe the brain, they most often viewed the
  heart as the seat of mental life.
• By the way, women attained greater status among
  Egyptians than among most other ancient peoples.

6
Other Eastern Philosophies

• Thinkers in India, as reflected in the Vedas and
  the Upanishads, investigated knowledge and
  desire, among many other topics.
• Hebrew philosophy and psychology must be
  understood in light of radical monotheism.
• Humans have two sides, a biological, self-serving
  side and a spiritual side capable of serving the
  larger community.
• The Hebrews had well-developed notions of mental
  disorders that were attributed to the anger of
  God or human disobedience.

7
Other Eastern Philosophies

• Persia was the birthplace of the Zoroastrian
  religion based on the teachings of Zarathustra
  and the holy book Avesta.
• Zoroastrianism is the first monotheistic religion
  recorded in history flourished until the Muslim
  conquest of Persia.
• Human beings were the testing grounds of good and
  evil, and mental and physical disorders were
  viewed as the work of the devil demonological
  diagnoses and treatments were common.

8
The Golden Age of Greece

• As was discussed in the previous lecture, the
  Greek philosophers, primarily Socrates, Plato,
  and Aristotle, are commonly considered the
  intellectual foundation of Western Civilization
  (450-300 b.c.)
• This historical period is known as the Golden Age
  of Greece

9
The Golden Age of Greece

• Socrates argued against relativism he claimed
  that through reason we can discern objective
  truths.
• Knowledge is virtue, and ignorance results from
  evil. We may all have limited knowledge, but
  Socrates claimed to be somewhat wiser than some
  in that he was aware of his own ignorance. To
  paraphrase, its not what you know but what you
  dont know that matters most. (Poppers notion of
  falsifiability?)
• Plato was a student of Socrates before forming
  the Academy, his own school.
• Early Platonic dialogues reflect the early
  teachings of Socrates, later dialogues show more
  of Platos original thought.

10
Plato Revealed

• Plato argued that our senses provide only
  illusion and that reason can provide true
  knowledge.
• Plato reconciled the assertions of Parmenides
  (two views of reality Truth vs. Opinion) and
  Heraclitus (doctrine of change you can not step
  twice into the same river) in his theory of
  forms.
• The temporal and changing world of becoming we
  perceive with our senses derives its meaning from
  a world of being and from forms that are
  timeless, immutable, and unextended.
• Plato discusses psuche, usually translated as
  soul or mind in numerous works that extend
  over years of his life. He speaks of a tripartite
  mind including the appetitive soul, the affective
  soul, and the rational soul.

11
Plato Revealed

• For Plato, learning is the remembering of the
  true knowledge of forms from before our birth
  into a human body.
• Plato discussed sensory function and perception
  and emphasized pleasure and pain in the
  motivations of humans. (Behaviorism?)
• Plato argued that mental illnesses may be
  associated with irrational drives, discord among
  parts of the soul, or ignorance. (Freud?)
• Love can take several forms for Plato, ranging in
  a hierarchy from erotic love to love of knowledge
  through philosophy.

12
Aristotle

• Aristotle was a student of Plato who, after
  leaving the Academy at Platos death, founded his
  own school, the Lyceum.
• Aristotle was an empiricist who approached the
  problem of causality in four ways (see chapter
  2).
• Aristotle argued for hylomorphism in his
  description of the mind and the body as
  interdependent. Hylo is from hule meaning
  matter and morphe meaning form.

13
More About Aristotle

• In De Anima, Aristotles classic work on the
  soul, Aristotle attributes to the soul a
  nutritive function, sensitive and movement
  functions, and, in humans, reason.
• Memory, for Aristotle, is a passive process while
  recollection is active. He provided an
  associationist view of memory emphasizing the
  roles of similarity, contrast, contiguity, and
  frequency in memory. (20th theories of learning
  in psychology)
• Aristotle maintained that the sensing of objects
  actualizes stimuli through a range of different
  media (with a different medium for each sense) to
  our sense organs, and he addressed perceptual
  illusions in his discussions of the senses.

14
More About Aristotle

• Thinking, for Aristotle, is rooted in perception
  and in objects of the world, but thinking may be
  flawed. Imagination does not have the corrective
  influence of the external world and allows
  greater freedom of thought.
• Additionally, Aristotle advocated a naturalistic
  approach to dreams.
• While he recognized the importance of pleasure
  and pain in human motivation, Aristotle advocated
  a golden mean between the extremes of human
  activity.

15
And More Aristotle

• He recognized four factors that affected human
  ability to achieve the good life individual
  differences, habit, social supports, and freedom
  of choice.
• Psychological thought after Aristotle moved from
  a pursuit of knowledge to a pursuit of
  gratification and the determination of what
  constitutes a good life.

16
Aristotles Hierarchy of Souls

• Vegetative (nutritive) Soul - possessed by
  plants allows only growth, assimilation of food,
  and reproduction.
• Sensitive Soul - possessed by animals but not
  plants organisms with a sensitive soul sense and
  respond to the environment, experience pleasure
  and pain, and have a memory.
• Rational Soul - possessed only by humans adds
  thinking and rational thought to the functions of
  the other two souls.

17
Aristotle and Psychology

• Three distinct contributions to psychology
• 1. Provided the first organized system for
  studying the soul, using both empirical and
  rational assumptions about living organism.
• 2. In defining the soul and its roles, provided
  the earliest foundation for dualism of soul and
  body.
• 3. Outlined a method for describing and
  interpreting human experience in concrete terms.

18
Plato vs. Aristotle

• Plato essences (truths) could be found in forms
  that existed independently of nature by looking
  inward (introspection).
• Aristotle essences could be known only by
  studying nature.
• Plato primary principles come from pure
  thought all knowledge existed independently of
  nature.
• Aristotle primary principles (premises) were
  attained by examining nature nature and
  knowledge were inseparable.

19
Plato vs. Aristotle

• Plato endorsed the importance of mathematics.
• For Aristotle mathematics were essentially
  useless, instead he proposed the careful
  examination of nature through observation and
  classification.
• Aristotle, as we have noted in previous
  lectures, was the champion of Causation and
  Teleology.