Psy 421: Systems and Theories of Psychology

 

Chapter 5: Continental Philosophies: Rationalism, Positivism, Romanticism

 
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

  1. Hume awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumbers
  2. Called himself a "critical idealist"¾ we can only know what we experience combined with transcendental categories of mind
  3. Phenomenal experience is due to sensations combining with a priori categories.
  4. We do not encounter things in themselves (noumena) but only appearances or phenomena.
  5. Knowledge requires reason which is due to a priori rules of thought
  6. Kant identified the "synthetic" which refers to relationships and the "analytic" which refers to objects.
  7. Cause and effect, time, space, the possibility of measurement are all synthetic a priori necessary and universal relationships
  8. We use these categories to know that things occur in time and space, all events are caused, and things have a fixed quantity
  9. contingent truths¾ any particular cause and effect or quantitative measure is empirical
 Hegel (1770-1831)
  1. Probably the most popular philosopher of 19th c
  2. Dialectic: thesis+antithesis¾ >synthesis
  3. There is a unity, "the Absolute," which we try to know by reason.
  4. Thought develops toward the Absolute
  5. One must be conscious to be free
  6. Error is due to irrationality and incompleteness
  7. There is a natural law which is necessary for perception, knowledge of the world and self-knowledge
 Johann Herbart (1776-1841)
  1. Psychology is a mathematical but not experimental science, "psychic mechanics"
  2. Active ideas striving for consciousness, some of which one is unaware of
  3. Apperceptive mass a unitary consciousness based on experienced ideas
  4. Importance of early experience
  5. First educational psychologist--a teacher must consider the apperceptive mass. That which is incompatible will not be learned
 August Comte (1798-1857)
  1. Positivist
  2. Three stages of civilization--theological, metaphysical, scientific
  3. Science must be objective
  4. Psychology could not be a science¾ introspection teaches one nothing
 Ernst Mach (1838-1916)
  1. Modern positivist
  2. Space and time are perceived directly
  3. Science can only deal with phenomenal experience
  4. Science orders this experience
  5. Did not believe in atoms because they could not be seen
 J-J Rousseau (1712-1778)
  1. The noble savage¾ people are naturally good civilization makes them miserable
  2. Feelings are more important than reason sensibility and feeling are the major source of knowledge
  3. Education--let child grow according to his own nature, contact with the physical world and learning by trial and error
  4. Social contract¾ legitimate government supports the general will
 Goethe (1749-1832)
  1. Phenomenal experience major source of knowledge
  2. One should have a full experience
  3. Mathematics and measurement distort our view of nature (didn’t like Newton)
  4. Imagination and fantasy (intellectual intuitions) are a source of knowledge
  5. Striving with attraction and repulsion as basic factors are universal characteristics of nature
  6. Love of life and new experience in humans
 Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
  1. People are basically unhappy
  2. Momentary pleasures followed by boredom
  3. More intelligent suffer most
  4. Will is important as a driving force
  5. All animals have a "will to survive"
  6. There is also a fear of death
  7. Minimize pain by being an aesthete, or escape it somewhat (sublimate it) with aesthetics
 Nietsche (1844-1900)
  1. Apollonian (rational) and Dionysian (irrational, emotional) sides of human nature
  2. Will to power¾ source of all motives, one should satisfy his feelings
  3. "God is dead" ¾ we killed him
  4. Thus spake Zarathustra¾ become a superman, strive to be what you can be
  5. One must overcome weakness and negative feelings, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
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