Great Ideas of Psychology.pdf

The Great Ideas of Psychology

Part I

Professor Daniel N. Robinson

T HE T EACHING C OMPANY ®

Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.

Georgetown University

Daniel Robinson is professor of psychology at Georgetown University, where he has taught since 1971. Although

his doctorate was earned in neuropsychology (1965, City University of New York), his scholarly books and articles

have established him as an authority in the history of psychology, philosophy of psychology, and psychology and

law. He holds the position of adjunct professor of philosophy at Georgetown and, since 1991, he has lectured

regularly for the sub-faculty of philosophy at the University of Oxford.

Dr. Robinson’s books include The Enlightened Machine: An Analytical Introduction to Neuropsychology

(Columbia, 1980), Psychology and Law (Oxford, 1980), Philosophy of Psychology (Columbia, 1985), Aristotle’s

Psychology (1989), An Intellectual History of Psychology (3 rd ed., Wisconsin, 1995) and Wild Beasts & Idle

Humours: The Insanity Defense from Antiquity to the Present (Harvard, 1996). Dr. Robinson has served as principal

consultant to the Public Broadcasting System for the award-winning series “The Brain” and the subsequent nine-

part series, “The Mind.” He is past president of two divisions of the American Psychological Association: the

division of the history of psychology and the division of theoretical and philosophical psychology. He is fellow of

the American Psychological Association and of the British Psychological Society. Dr. Robinson is also visiting

senior member of Linacre College, Oxford.

1997 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership

The Great Ideas of Psychology

Table of Contents

Professor Biography …………………………………………………………..1

Course Scope …………………………………………………………………..3

Section I: Foundations ………………………………………………………..4

Lecture One: Defining the Subject …………………………………………..4

Lecture Two: Ancient Foundations: Greek Philosophers and

Physicians ………………………………………………………………………6

Lecture Three: Minds Possessed: Witchery and the Search for

Explanations ………………………………………………………………….8

Lecture Four: The Emergence of Modern Science: Locke’s

“Newtonian” Theory of Mind ……………………………………………….10

Lecture Five: Three Enduring “isms”: Empiricism, Rationalism,

Materialism …………………………………………………………………..12

Section II: Psychology in the Empiricist Tradition ……………………….14

Lecture Six: Sensation and Perception …………………………………….14

Lecture Seven: The Visual Process …………………………………………15

Lecture Eight: Hearing ……………………………………………………..17

Lecture Nine: Signal-Detection Theory …………………………………….19

Lecture Ten: Perceptual Constancies and Illusions ……………………….21

Lecture Eleven: Learning and Memory: Associationism—Aristotle to

Ebbinghaus ………………………………………………………………….23

Lecture Twelve: Pavlov and the Conditioned Reflex ……………………...25

Biographical Notes ………………………………………………………….27

Glossary ………………………………………………………………………..30

Timeline ………………………………………………………………………..34

Comprehensive Bibliography ………………………………………………..36

1997 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership

The Great Ideas of Psychology

Scope

These forty-eight lectures examine the conceptual and historical foundations, the methods, the major findings, and

the dominant perspectives in psychology. The subject is vast. The lectures are designed to achieve balance between

basic processes and real-life issues; between the “hard science” and “soft science” of psychology; between the

personal and the social; between the normal and the deviant.

In addition to a critical review of major findings and theories, the lectures examine several controversial issues

arising from or illuminated by psychological research and theory. Included among these are the issue of “nature”

versus “nurture”; theories of genetic or behavioristic or biological determinism; theories of moral relativism and

absolutism; sex “roles” and gender stereotyping; the place of psychology within the legal system (e.g., in predicting

violence, establishing competence, or determining whether or not a defendant is sane).

Although psychology and kindred disciplines help to clarify such issues, the lectures will point to the limitations

imposed on any purely scientific or empirical approach to matters of this sort.

Objectives

The student will be able to:

1. Identify the broad historical and conceptual foundations of psychology from its origins in classical philosophy to the

present;

2. Identify the major research methods and findings that characterize contemporary psychology;

3. Explain the principal claims and the main points of contention between and among the major schools and systems of

psychology, including the behavioristic, the psychoanalytic, the neurocognitive, and social constructionist;

4. Explain the dependence of these issues on the larger framework bequeathed by the history of ideas.

1997 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership

Section One: Foundations

Lecture One

Defining the Subject

Scope : I t is customary to define psychology as a “behavioral science” or, following William James, as a “science

of the mind.” What is left unexamined in such statements is the model of science presupposed in such

definitions.

One influential model of science requires that any candidate-science be able to explain events by

subsuming them under general laws; e.g., the law of universal gravitation “explains” why objects fall

toward the center of the earth. But very few psychological events have ever been subsumed under reliable

general laws. Moreover, some have argued that any event that can be thus subsumed is, by that fact, not a

social or psychological event at all! Thus does controversy abound even at the outset.

Objectives : Upon completion of this lecture you should be able to:

1. Explain why there is no settled position on just what is or is not a fit subject for “science,” or whether

psychology is a science “through-and-through.”

2. Explain the “nomological-deductive” model of science and give an illustration of it.

3. Give two or three examples of events that are not “explained” in terms of causes but only in terms of the

actor’s reasons for acting.

Outline

I. Psychology as an independent science

A. Psychology cannot be understood as a “science” because it employs the scientific method. It is not at all

clear what the scientific method entails.

B. Alternatively, science can be understood as a particular mode of explanation, as opposed to a particular

method.

1. Hempel’s nomological-deductive model posits that an explanation is scientific if it makes reference to

a universal law know to be true, and if the event being explained is an instant case of the universal

law. The explanation then is simply a deduction from the universal law.

2. Hempel’s model of science is too strong for psychology. There are no universal psychological laws

known to be true. Thus Hempel offers the explanation sketch as an alternative. Although explanation

sketches are not “full-fledged,” they can provide good explanations where the universal from which the

explanation is derived is relatively probable although not known.

3. Under the Hempelian model, because Newtonian mechanics was replaced by relativity theory,

Newtonian physics is not science at all, which is undeniably an absurd claim. Although relativity theory

revealed Newton’s limitations, the Newtonian model is still powerful within a specific context.

4. A general law is true when it has not been falsified by any previous trials. What other standard could

there be?

5. In areas of psychology, such as sensory psychology, there are relatively good general laws, but these

are the least interesting areas. In attempting to understand human beings, however, psychology would

scarcely fit into the Hempelian model of science.

II. The humanistic tradition questions whether or not psychology should be molded into a “science” at all. The

humanists see the most important aspects of human psychology as precisely those unique factors which make

us human.

A. An event is “psychological” to the extent that it results from human goals, desires, or aspirations.

B. The participants in psychological events are unique. Thus the event is not reducible to general laws. The

ontology of psychology is not one which lends itself to scientific explanation.

1997 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership

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