MaterialismThe Enlightened Machine

Materialism With the Empiricist/Rationalist divergence we

finally came to the beginnings of a clear Nature-Spirit split However some were not exactly on one side or

the other, some of the different conclusions had the same starting points, both sides adhered to mentalism

In some sense materialism stems from the empiricists, however really rejects even the rationalist-empiricist argument outright

Materialism The interesting thing to note is that by the 20th century, in

rather abrupt and silent fashion, materialism took over psychology

From Patristic psychology through the early 20th century, all of psych adhered at least partly to some religious explanation (save perhaps Hume)

Then, after 1800+ years it was gone, and no major psychological player or theory since really makes explicit reference to the spirit side of the debate

Gone now is talk of the soul and relying on any aspect of the religious as necessary to understanding human nature The metaphor of the machine has taken over

Materialism Unlike the Aristotelian (Church sponsored) view, Newton

found that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion God could set the planets going and step back…

…Why not humans?

Also his Rule 1 of reasoning in philosophy We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are

both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Galileo showed other aspects of the Aristotelian system were

wrong as well (e.g. with falling bodies), but more importantly gave evidence that we were not at the center of the universe Kepler would expound on that idea and show the non-perfect

elliptical nature of the orbits of planets

The Metaphor of the Machine Couple such scientific findings along with many others (e.g.

Harvey’s work on the circulatory system) and with the Reformation, and Church authority along with reliance on its explanations was diminishing rapidly

Voltaire It would be very singular that all nature, all the planets, should obey

eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal five feet high, who, in contempt of these laws, could act as he pleased, solely according to his caprice.

Pretty much since the beginning, Philosophy and Psychology have a habit of using metaphor in explanations of mind and brain

The metaphor of the machine was now to become a reality

Thomas Hobbes 1588-1679 Leviathan Man is a machine functioning within a

larger machine – matter and motion as Galileo’s explanation of the universe.

He used the deductive method of Galileo and Descartes but all ideas come from sensory experience then deduction is used. Epistemological empiricism Methodological rationalism

Dissatisfied with the rationalist approach that would reason before defining terms, had a belief in universals etc.

Thomas Hobbes Hobbes was a materialist in that the “mind” was a series of

motions within the person Mind not doubted, but subject to physical laws as the rest of the body

is A physical monist

He proposed a hedonistic theory of motivation – appetite, seeking or maintaining pleasure; aversion, avoidance or termination of pain drove human behavior Some desires are native (e.g. seeking food) but most from experience There is no free will, a strict deterministic view of behavior

For Hobbes, complex thought processes resulted from law of contiguity (originating with Aristotle)

Thomas Hobbes Governments were necessary to control human innate

tendencies to aggressiveness, selfishness, and greediness. Democracy was dangerous because it gives too much

freedom to these tendencies. Advocated monarchy (not from some notion of ‘divine

rights’), but perhaps surprisingly, believed in the equality of man And their equal propensity to cause harm, necessitating some

measure of security that the monarch can provide Ideas would later influence later utilitarians by means of his

mechanistic, pragmatic, and even egalitarian views

The Reflex Newton’s laws of motion

First law Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and objects at rest tend to

stay at rest unless an outside force acts upon them. Second law

The rate of change of the momentum of a body is directly proportional to the net force acting on it, and the direction of the change in momentum takes place in the direction of the net force.

Third law To every action (force applied) there is an equal but opposite reaction

(equal force applied in the opposite direction).

It was these laws that ruled science, and science-minded individuals, e.g. Newton himself, Descartes (who’d wait for to publish until after his death) etc., thought they could also apply to biological systems as well

While some, e.g. Hume and Locke avoided the issue, many were eager to apply the new science to mental life

The reflex arc was the mechanical equivalent of ‘association’

David Hartley 1705-1757 Observations on Man

Psychology as the mechanics of associationism 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 and complex ideas can become associated with other complex ideas to form “decomplex “ ideas.

Laws of association can be applied to behavior to describe how voluntary behavior can develop from involuntary behavior

David Hartley Hartley proposed that excessive nerve vibration produced pain and mild to moderate

vibration produced pleasure Through experience objects, events, and people become associated with pain or pleasure and

we learn to behave differentially to these stimuli Memory as a fading vibration, learning as physical associations in the brain

Though lacking any real evidence at the time, Hartley’s goal was to synthesize Newton’s conception of nerve transmission (vibrations in nerves) with versions of empiricism Essentially combined Newton’s physics, Descartes’ physiology, Hume’s empiricism and even

some of Leibniz’ ideas, paving the way for modern psychology

Galvani would later provide the mechanism working with frogs His nephew, Giovanni Aldini, with executed criminals

French sensationalism Pierre Gassendi 1592-1655 Gassendi’s goal was to replace

Descartes’s deductive, dualistic philosophy with an observational inductive science based on physical monism Had similar overall goals as Descartes

(an advancing science of physics and mathematics) but without spiritual restrictions and replacement of rationalism by experimentalism

Approached the dualist argument from an Epicurean perspective

Gassendi 1. Why deny bodies the power to move themselves without the aid of a

soul? Examples of water flowing and soulless animals moving about

2. Since it is obvious that whatever acts is, why go to all the trouble to establish that you (Descartes) are?

3. Why only a thinking thing? Why exclude other possibilities e.g. that one is a gas Even if you know that you are a thinking thing it doesn’t follow you might

not be other things also 4. How can the mind reason without a brain?

Even Descartes construed brain as perceptual unifier/organizer 5. Even though the senses deceive, sometimes they don’t, and we

typically have means for assessing whether or not they do. 6. How can an unextended thing (mind) have knowledge of extended

things?

French sensationalism Julien de La Mettrie 1709-1751 L’Homme Machine

Universe 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 (intelligence)

Intelligence is influenced by three factors – brain size, brain complexity, and education.

Humans are typically superior in intelligence to animals because we have bigger, more complex brains and because we are better educated. We have more complex everyday interactions with other

people. While causing quite a stir at the time, the demonstrations

of his positions were not exactly scientifically or philosophically sound

French sensationalism Etienne Bonnot de Condillac 1715-1780

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 Claude Helvetius 1715-1771

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 and thus social skills, moral behavior, and genius can be taught by controlling experience (behaviorism)

Materialism As science developed so too did mechanistic

versions of man and mind While the Reformation had provided the impetus to

challenge the Church, a general revolt against old ideas swelled alongside it

By the nineteenth century only lingering traces of the once dominant efforts of spirit could be seen in philosophy and psychology

The Science of Psychology was just around the corner