the Discussion is based on the topic of your choice from chapters 5. Explain your understanding of the chapter, include examples, experiences, and theories.
Hergenhahn’s An Introduction to the History
of Psychology
Eighth Edition
Chapter 5
Empiricism,
Sensationalism, and
Positivism
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Learning Objectives
After reading and discussing Chapter 5, students should:
• Understand the basic tenets of empiricism.
• Be familiar with the ideas and conceptions of the
British empiricists.
• Be familiar with the ideas of the French sensationalists.
• Understand the tenets of positivism and the concepts
of the positivists.
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British Empiricism
•
Epistemology
– Asserts that the evidence of senses constitutes the
primary data of all knowledge
?
?
Knowledge cannot exist unless this evidence has first
been gathered
All subsequent intellectual processes must use this
evidence and only this evidence in framing valid
propositions about the real world
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Thomas Hobbs (1 of 4)
•
•
Founder of British empiricism
Man is a machine functioning within a larger
machine
– Matter and motion as Galileo’s explanation of the
universe
•
Used the deductive method of Galileo and Descartes
– Attempted to apply the ideas/techniques of Galileo to
studying humans
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Thomas Hobbs (2 of 4)
•
Governments were necessary to control human
innate tendencies of aggressiveness, selfishness,
and greediness.
–
•
•
Democracy was dangerous because it gives too much
freedom to these tendencies.
Was a materialist in that the “mind” was a series of
motions within the person (a physical monist).
Attention
–
Sense organs retain the motion caused by certain
external objects
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Thomas Hobbs (3 of 4)
•
Imagination
–
Sense impressions decay over time.
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Thomas Hobbs (4 of 4)
•
Proposed a hedonistic theory of motivation
–
•
Appetite, seeking or maintaining pleasure; aversion,
avoidance or termination of pain drove human behavior
There is no free will
–
A strict deterministic view of behavior.
•
Complex thought processes resulted from law of contiguity
(originating with Aristotle).
•
Hobbes was a materialist, mechanist, determinist,
empiricist, and hedonist
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John Locke (1 of 6)
•
All ideas come from sensory experience
–
•
•
An idea is a mental image employed while thinking and
comes from either sensation (direct sensory stimulation) or
reflection (reflection on remnants of prior sensory stimulation).
The source of all ideas is sensation
–
•
There are no innate ideas as Descartes proposed.
These ideas can be acted upon by operations of the mind
giving rise to new ideas.
Operations of the mind include perception, thinking, doubting,
believing, reasoning, knowing, and willing
– These operations are innate—a part of human nature.
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John Locke (2 of 6)
•
Simple ideas
– Cannot be divided further into other ideas
•
Complex ideas
–
Are composites of simple ideas and can be analyzed
into their parts (simple ideas).
–
Are formed through operation being applied to simple
ideas through reflection (comparing, abstracting,
discriminating, combining and enlarging, remembering,
and reasoning).
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John Locke (3 of 6)
•
•
Feelings of pleasure and pain accompany simple and
complex ideas, other emotions are derived from these
two basic feelings.
Feelings of pleasure and pain accompany simple and
complex ideas
– Other emotions are derived from these two basic
feelings.
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John Locke (4 of 6)
•
Primary qualities
– Create ideas in us that correspond to actual physical
attributes of objects
?
•
Solidarity, extension, shape, motion, and quantity
Secondary qualities
– Produce ideas which do not correspond to the objects in
the real world
?
Color, sound, temperature, and taste
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John Locke (5 of 6)
•
•
Association was used to explain faulty beliefs,
which are learned by chance, custom, or mistake
(associated by contiguity).
Many ideas are clustered in the mind because of
some logical connection among them and some are
naturally associated.
– These are safe types of associations because
they are naturally related and represent true
knowledge.
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John Locke (6 of 6)
•
Education of children
– Parents should increase stress tolerance in their children
and provide necessities for good health
– Teachers should always make the learning experience
pleasant and recognize and praise student
accomplishments.
•
Locke challenged the divine rights of kings and
proposed a government by and for the people.
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George Berkeley (1 of 2)
•
•
Opposed materialism because it left no room for God.
“To be is to be perceived,” which basically states that
we exist only in being perceived by another
–
Therefore, only secondary qualities exist because they
are, by definition, perceived.
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George Berkeley (2 of 2)
•
•
All sensations that are consistently together (contiguity)
become associated.
Berkeley’s theory of distance perception suggests that
for distance to be judged, several sensations from
different modalities must be associated
– For example, viewing an object and the tactile sensation
of walking toward it.
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David Hume (1 of 5)
•
•
Goal was to combine the empirical philosophy of
his predecessors with principles of Newtonian
science to create a science of human nature.
Focused on use of the inductive method of Bacon
to make careful observations and then carefully
generalize.
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David Hume (2 of 5)
•
Contents of the mind come from experience
– Can be stimulated by either external or internal events.
•
Distinguished between impressions and ideas
– Impressions
?
Strong, vivid perceptions
– Ideas
?
?
Weak perceptions
Faint images in thinking and reasoning
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David Hume (3 of 5)
•
•
•
Simple ideas cannot be broken down further (like
Locke)
Complex ideas are made of other ideas.
Once in the mind, ideas can be rearranged in an
infinite number of ways by the imagination.
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David Hume (4 of 5)
•
For Hume there were three laws of association:
– Law of resemblance
– Law of contiguity
– Law of cause and effect
?
•
•
Causation is not in reality, not a logical necessity; it is a
psychological experience.
The mind is no more than the perceptions we are having
at any given moment.
There is no self independent from perceptions
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David Hume (5 of 5)
•
•
•
All humans possess the same passion (emotions)
All humans differ in degree of specific emotions
The passions determine behavior
– Therefore, we respond differently to situations.
•
Both animals and humans learn to act in particular
ways through experience with reward and
punishment.
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David Hartley (1 of 2)
•
•
Goal was to synthesize Newton’s conception of nerve
transmission (vibrations in nerves) with versions of
empiricism.
Ideas are diminutive vibrations (vibratiuncles) and are
weaker copies of sensations.
– These may become associated through contiguity, either
successive or simultaneous.
•
•
Simple ideas become associated by contiguity to form
complex ideas
Complex ideas can become associated with other
complex ideas to form “decomplex” ideas.
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David Hartley (2 of 2)
•
•
Laws of association can be applied to behavior to
describe how voluntary behavior can develop from
involuntary behavior.
Proposed that excessive nerve vibration produced
pain and mild to moderate vibration produced
pleasure.
– Behavior is involuntary at first, and then becomes
voluntary
– Objects, events, and people become associated with
pain or pleasure through experience, and we learn to
behave differentially to these stimuli.
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James Mills
•
•
•
The mind was sensations and ideas held together by
contiguity
Complex ideas were made of simple ideas.
When ideas are continuously experienced together, the
association may become so strong that they appear as
one idea.
– Strength of associations is determined by:
?
?
Vividness of the sensations or ideas
By the frequency of the associations
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John Stuart Mill (1 of 2)
•
•
Proposed a mental chemistry in which complex ideas
are not made up of aggregates of simple ideas but that
ideas can fuse to produce an idea that is completely
different from the elements of which it is made.
Science of human nature
– Primary laws
– Secondary laws
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John Stuart Mill (2 of 2)
•
Mill argued for the development of a “science of the
formation of character,” which he called ethology.
– His ethology would explain how individual minds or
characters form under specific circumstances.
•
Mill was a social reformer who took up the causes of
freedom of speech, representative government, and the
emancipation of women.
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Alexander Bain (1 of 4)
•
•
Often referred to as the first full-fledged
psychologist.
Goal was to describe the physiological correlates of
mental and behavioral phenomena.
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Alexander Bain (2 of 4)
•
The mind has three components:
– Feelings
– Volition
– Intellect
? Intellect is explained by the laws of association,
primarily the law of contiguity which applies to
sensations, ideas, actions, and feelings.
? Contiguity supplemented by the law of frequency.
The laws had their effect in neuronal changes in the
nervous system.
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Alexander Bain (3 of 4)
•
Two other laws of association
–
Law of compound association
?
–
Single ideas are not associated, rather an idea is
usually associated with several other ideas through
contiguity or similarity.
Law of constructive association
?
Mind can rearrange memories of experiences into an
almost infinite number of combinations, accounts for
creativity.
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Alexander Bain (4 of 4)
•
Voluntary behavior explanation
–
–
–
When a need arises, spontaneous or random activity
is produced.
Some of those movements will produce approximate
conditions necessary to satisfy the need, other
movements will not.
Activities which produce need satisfaction are
remembered.
?
?
When in similar situation again, the activities which
previously produced need satisfaction will be performed.
Essentially Skinner’s selection of behavior by
consequences.
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French Sensationalism
•
Like British empiricists, French sensationalists tried to
be Newtonians of the mind
– Stressed that the mind was mechanical in nature
– Believed the mind could be explained with a few basic
principles
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Pierre Gassendi
•
•
•
Goal was to replace Descartes’s deductive, dualistic
philosophy with an observational inductive science
based on physical monism.
“I move, therefore I am”
Saw no reason to postulate an immaterial mind
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Julien do La Mettrie (1 of 2)
•
A strict materialist who believed:
– The universe is made of matter and motion
– Sensation and thoughts are movements of particles in
the brain.
– Man is a machine.
– Humans and animals differ only in degree (of
intelligence)
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Julien do La Mettrie (2 of 2)
?
Intelligence is influenced by three factors:
o Brain size, brain complexity, and education
?
Humans
o Humans are typically superior in intelligence to animals
because we have bigger, more complex brains and because
we are better educated.
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Etienne Bonnot de Condillac
•
Powers which Locke attributed to the mind can be
derived from the abilities to sense, to remember, and
experience pleasure and pain.
– The sentient statue
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Claude Helvetius
•
•
Explored the implications of the empiricist and
sensationalist proposal that contents of the mind come
only from experience.
Proposed that if you control experience you control the
mind of the person
– Thus social skills, moral behavior, and genius can be
taught by controlling experience.
•
Empiricism became radical environmentalism
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Positivism
•
Scientism: the belief that science, not religion, is the
only valid knowledge, provides the only information one
can believe
– For these people, science itself takes on some of the
characteristics of a religion
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Auguste Comte (1 of 4)
•
Proposed that the only thing we can be sure of is that
which is publicly observable
– Sense experiences that can be perceived by others
•
Positivism equates knowledge with empirical
observation
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Auguste Comte (2 of 4)
•
Proposed the law of three stages
– Meaning societies and disciplines pass through stages
defined by the way members explain natural events.
?
First stage
o Theological, based on superstition and mysticism
?
Second stage
o Metaphysical, based on unseen essences, principles,
causes, and laws
?
Third stage
o Scientific, description, prediction, and control of natural
phenomena.
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Auguste Comte (3 of 4)
•
Sociology described the study of how different
societies compared in terms of the three stages of
development.
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Auguste Comte (4 of 4)
•
Proposed a religion of humanity which was a utopian
society based on scientific principles and beliefs.
–
•
Humanity replaced God; scientists and philosophers
would be the priests in this religion
Also arranged sciences in a hierarchy from the first
developed and most basic to the most recently
developed and most comprehensive in this order:
–
Mathematics ? astronomy ? physics ? chemistry ?
physiological biology ? sociology
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Ernst Mach
•
Proposed a second brand of positivism
– Differed from Comte’s positivism primarily in what type
of data science could be certain about.
•
He thought that we can never experience the physical
world directly.
– Mach insisted on defining scientific concepts in terms of
procedures used to measure them instead of their
“ultimate reality” or “essence”
?
Anticipating the concept of the operational definition
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History and Theories of Psychology
Class Book:
Hergenhahn’s An Introduction to the History
of Psychology
ISBN: 978-1-337-56415-1
Cengage