“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).
 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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
 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
 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, it’s not what you
know but what you don’t know that matters most.
(Popper’s 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 Plato’s original
thought.
 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.
 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.
 Aristotle
• Aristotle was a student of Plato who, after
leaving the Academy at Plato’s 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.
 More About Aristotle
• In De Anima, Aristotle’s 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. (20 th 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.
 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.
 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.
 Aristotle’s 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.
 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.
 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.
 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.