On The Threshold of Psychology

1
On The Threshold of Psychology

• Associationism A Philosophy of Mind Brain
• David Hartley
• Alexander Bain
• Evolution Abandoning Teleology
• Charles Darwin
• Foundations of An Experimental Psychology
  Psychophysics.
• Weber
• Fecher
• Helmholz
• Structural Psychology and the Introspective
  Method
• Wilhelm Wundt
• Edward Titchener

2
David Hartley (1705-1757)

• Originally trained to by a minister in the
  Anglican church but decided against the clergy
  and trained to tbe a medic
• His most famous work was Observations on Man, his
  Frame, his Duty and his Expectations
• This book combines neurology (as it was then
  understood), moral psychology and spirituality.
• He was perhaps the first writer to proposed
  physiological model of association as a model of
  the mind
• This was based on extending Newtonian science
  into the field of human psychology

3
The Science of Man

• Since therefore sensations are conveyed to the
  mind, by the efficiency of corporeal causes . . .
  it seems to me, that the powers of generating
  ideas, and raising them by association, must also
  arise from corporeal causes, and consequently
  admit of an explication from the subtle
  influences of the small parts of matter on each
  other, as soon as these are sufficiently
  understood. (OM 1, prop. 11)
• According to Hartley nerves vibrate and can
  change their frequencies or amplitudes of
  vibration and pass on those changes to other
  nerves.
• Because there are a huge number of associative
  connections between nerves this basic mechanism
  generates all the complexities of action we
  observe in living beings.
• For Hartley the mind is essentially the brain and
  its operations. This avoids the substance
  duality of the mental and the physical.

4
Alexander Bain (1818-1803)

• A Scottish philosopher born in Aberdeen who
  originally trained as a weaver.
• Best known for two books
• Senses and the Intellect (1855)
• Emotions and the Will (1859)
• Like Hartley he argued that mental and physical
  processes operated together to create the mind
• But his was a psychophysical parallelism
• Like Hartley the associations formed in the mind
  were essentially caused by neurological changes.
• Bain introduced hedonism into associationism
  emphasising that pleasurable associations of
  behaviour were more likely to be repeated than
  those that were painful (pre-dating Thorndikes
  law of effect)

5
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

• Darwin studied medicine at the University of
  Edinburgh but it was not to his taste so he was
  sent by his father to Cambridge to study for the
  clergy (Anglican) obtaining his degree in 1831.
• He developed his interest as a naturalist and
  obtained the unpaid role of naturalist on the
  H.M.S. Beagle.
• During the Beagles five year voyage Darwin kept
  extensive notes which later became the basis for
  his later writings
• While on the Galapagos islands Darwin observed
  small variations in the beaks of the finch
  populations that seemed to him to be adapted to
  the local ecologies and behaviours of these birds.

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Darwins Key Ideas

• Humans are animals like all other animals
  (descended from primates)
• Freud pointed out that this was the second great
  blow to the human ego.
• Natural selection was the process by which
  organisms change over time.
• Random, and often minor, variations in animals
  are the raw material of natural selection
• Adaptation to the environment is the goal of
  evolutionary processes
• Following on from Malthus, the adaptations that
  are functional will survive whilst non-functional
  adaptations will die out.

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A Useful Resource

• The following link is to a list of journal
  articles, book chapters, and essays by some of
  the historical characters that have been
  mentioned so far.
• http//psychclassics.yorku.ca/

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The Consequences of Evolution for the Study of
Psychology

• Comparative Psychology if animals and humans
  are related then studying animals can tell us
  something about ourselves
• Individual Differences examining the variations
  between individuals and how they are selected
  will inform us about the human mind
• Francis Galton (a half cousin of Darwins)
  developed both the science and statistical
  analysis of individual differences (e.g. Pearson
  (r) was one of his students.
• The structure of the nervous system could now be
  considered in terms of the older and newer
  parts of the brain.
• The notion of evolution was applied to the
  understanding of developing and developed
  societies
• Developmental Psychology as Ontogeny
  recapitulates Phylogeny studying children gives
  access to the early development of the human mind.

9
Ernst Weber (1795 -1878)

• He was a doctor and professor of anatomy at the
  University of Leipzig.
• He asked a fundamental questions about perception
• How do we notice the difference in intensities of
  two different stimuli? (e.g. how do we know that
  one thing weighs more than another)
• He set out to systematically and experimentally
  study this question.
• He developed a psychological law concerning
  just noticeable differences
• ?R/RK
• where R is the stimulus intensity (RReiz) and K
  is a constant

10
Gustav Fechner (1801-1887)

• Fechner also studied and worked at the University
  of Leipzig.
• Fechner is considered the founder of
  Psychophysics the study of the relationship
  between stimuli (specified in physical terms) and
  the sensations and perceptions evoked by these
  stimuli
• He studied the limen (thresholds) of perception
• Absolute (what is the minimal amount of energy
  for a stimulus to be detected)
• Relative (what change in stimulus energy is
  required for that change to be detected)
• He was interested in relating the perceived
  magnitude of a sensation to the physical
  stimulus
• S k log R

11
Hermann Von Helmholz (1821 -1894)

• Helmholz studied at a medical institute in Berlin
  and served as a military surgeon in the prussian
  army.
• He later worked as a professor in the University
  of Konisberg doing ground breaking research in
  physiology, physics and psychology
• He developed a theory of hearing that involved
  the basilar member acting as a tonal analyzer
  responding differentially to different
  frequencies.
• His method focussed on sensations themselves and
  not on the objects sensed
• He introduced the idea of unconscious processing
  of stimuli (based on learned associations
• This process is inductive and leads to
  generalisations between similar stimuli

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Wilhelm Wundt (1832 1920)

• Wilhelm Wundt was born in the Baden region of
  southwest Germany
• He studied at the University of Heidelberg
  initially as a physiologist but changing to
  medicine and then back to physiology. He later
  working in Leipzig
• In his book (Principles of Physiological
  Psychology) Wundt set about establishing
  Psychology as the experimental science of the
  mind.
• He emphasized the need to study the content of
  the mind
• Both attention and volition were fundamental to
  Wundts psychology which he name voluntarism

13
Edward Titchener (1867-1927)

• Titchener, was a British student of Wilhelm Wundt
  and eventually founded the first Psychology
  Department in the USA at Cornell.
• He originally studied philosophy at Oxford
  University but became fascinated by Wundts work
• He developed his own view of Wundtian Psychology
  and tried to convince his American Colleagues of
  its importance
• Structuralism was his renamed version of
  voluntarism

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Structural Psychology

• Structural Psychology had three fundamental aims
• To describe consciousness in terms of its basic
  elements
• To describe how those elements combine together
• To explain how the nervous system is connected to
  consciousness
• Consciousness was defined as immediate experience
  the nature of experience as it is experienced
• The experimental method used was introspection
• It was only considered appropriate if it was
  conducted by well-trained scientists
• Most of the findings of this system of Psychology
  were undermined by other researchers
• E.g. the Imageless thought controversy
• Boring (1950) noted that Structural Psychology
  was probably a negative force in the development
  of Psychology a lot of effort was spent
  discrediting structural psychology.