Setting the stage

Aristotle & Plato

Descartes' Dualism vs. Locke's Empiricism

Psychology as a science

Wundt, Titchner, & the Structural Approach--searching for the elements of conscious experience

James and the Functional Approach--the mind is about doing

Gestalt Psychology--experience transcends elements

Freud and the great unconscious

Watson and the rise of behaviorism

The Cognitive Revolution--psychology discovers the mind--again.

Descartes' Dualism

Body

Directly observable

 

 

Obeys natural laws

 

 

Controls reflexive behaviors

Soul

Observable only through interaction with body

 

 

Source of free will & thought

 

 

Uniquely human

Descartes' model of vision and location of the soul (mind)

Rejected the notion that there is a soul divorced from the body

Believed that all knowledge and thought were derived from sensory experience

Believed in a model of the mind as a blank slate--we are the product of our sensory experience and there is no "ghost in the machine"

"The book which I here present to the public is an attempt to mark out a new domain of science"--Principles of Physiological Psychology, 1874

Method of Introspection--

Rely on a person's description of the sensations they experience in response to some stimulus (e.g., a sound), and try to break those descriptions down to "basic elements."

Rejects the notion that experience can be reduced to elements. Argues that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

What do you hear?

Watson's Declaration

Psychology should study behavior, not the unobservable "mind"

We should look for the "causes" of behavior in the environment

Understanding behavior requires no reference to any unobservable event occurring within the individual

No fundamental differences between human and animal behavior