Learning: Early Beginnings to Modern Times
Chapter 3
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Epistemology
Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of knowledge and seeks answers to questions below. Epistemology is a philosopher’s way of looking at learning.
What is knowledge? What are the limits of knowledge? What are the origins of knowledge? How is knowledge acquired (learning)?
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Socrates
Theory of Knowledge
Knowledge is acquired through disciplined conversation (dialectics). filipinaatheist.files.wordpress.com Disciplined conversation requires ideas be consistently clarified through dialogue.
(470-399 BC)
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1 Problems
1. Conversations, in defining ideas can lead to confusions rather than clarity. 2. Such confusions arise due to different perspectives people may hold especially with abstract definitions, that are hard to define in the first place. People stick to particular cases when defining abstract ideas, e.g., beautiful flower and not the idea of beauty.
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Plato
Innateness of Knowledge
Plato student of Socrates, believed in the innateness of knowledge.
Human mind possessed www.poems.net.au knowledge. To acquire knowledge, humans must reflect on the contents (447-327 BC) of the mind. 5
Plato
Innateness of Knowledge
Self-exiled himself to Italy after Socrates execution and joined Pythagoras.
Pythagoras suggested that www.poems.net.au universe was dualistic. Plato proposed mind-body dualism, and said that mind affected (447-327 BC) the body, but the body could not affect the mind. 6
Knowledge through Experience Aristotle student of Plato, believed that sensory information was the basis of all knowledge (experience). www.martinfrost.ws Attainment of knowledge was through mind, which interconnects ideas. All forms (384-322 BC) of sensory information result in mental ideas. 7
Aristotle
Aristotle’s Laws
Laws of Association a. Similarity (lemon-lime) b. Contrast (night-day)
c. Contiguity (table-chair) www.martinfrost.ws Law of Frequency If two events are experienced repeatedly, presentation of (384-322 BC) one will lead to the recall of other. 8
Law of Association
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3 Comparison
Plato (Nativist) Aristotle (Empiricist) Knowledge is innate. Knowledge is acquired through senses.
Plato & Aristotle (Rationalists): Mind acquires knowledge because it is a reasoning organ.
Plato thought mind was Aristotle thought mind associated with the was associated with the brain. heart.
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Rene Descartes
Interactive Dualism www.img.tfd.com Like Plato, Descartes believed, mind possessed innate ideas. (1596-1650) Proposed Interactionism. Mind and body interacted at
pineal gland. pages.slc.edu Description of reflex action. Beginnings to modern S-R psychology. 11
Thomas Hobbs
Sense Impressions
Hobbs was an empiricist and an associationist, like Aristotle. Believed that sense impressions are the basis of www.raffiniert.ch knowledge. Proposed stimuli either help (1588-1679) or hinder vital functions of the body. 12
Tabula Rasa
Locke was an empiricist and completely against the idea of innate ideas.
Mind is blank slate (tabula www.artunframed.com rasa) at birth and experience writes on it.
(1632-1704)
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John Locke
Qualities
Characteristics of the physical world can be primary, those that form accurate mental www.artunframed.com representations e.g., size, weight, quantity, solidity, extension etc., and secondary that cannot e.g., (1632-1704) color, odor, sound, atoms, molecules, airwaves etc. 14
George Berkeley
Secondary Qualities
Berkeley an empiricist, suggested that contents of the mind are derived from
experience. upload.wikimedia.org No primary qualities, all secondary qualities. What we experience through (1685-1753) our senses are God’s ideas.
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Reality?
Hume an empiricist- associationist, suggested that chaosandoldnight.files.wordpress.com we cannot be sure of the physical world and the ideas it generates. Because of secondary qualities of sensory information. Mind = stream of ideas, (1711-1776) memories, images, associations, and feelings. 16
John S. Mill
Complex Ideas
Revised Hobbs and Locke empiricism and associationism.
All ideas do not reflect upload.wikimedia.org sensory stimulation. Complex ideas may not be based on combination of (1806-1873) simple ideas e.g., red, blue and green gives white light. 17
Immanuel Kant
Nativist & Empiricist
Kant was both a nativist and an empiricist, revived Plato’s rationalism.
Attempted to save www.markrietmeijer.nl philosophy from Hume’s criticism and removed the impractical aspects of rationalism and empiricism. (1724-1804)
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Sensory Experiences
Sensory experience (ideas & concepts) are manipulated by reasoning. However, meaningfulness is generated www.markrietmeijer.nl by sensory experiences and innate categories.
(1724-1804)
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Immanuel Kant
Innate Categories Proposed 12 Innate categories of thought.
Categories of Quantity Categories of Relation • Unity • Substance and accident
• Plurality • Cause and effect www.markrietmeijer.nl • Totality • Reciprocity (agent and patient) Categories of Quality • Reality Categories of Modality • Negation • Possibility—Impossibility • Limitation • Existence—Non-existence • Necessity—Contingency (1724-1804)
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Thomas Reid
Faculty Psychology
Reid was an empiricist and a nativist, like Kant. Proposed even greater number of innate categories www.martinfrost.ws (27 in all) and founded Faculty Psychology. (1710-1796)
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7 Franz J. Gall
Phrenology
Faculties (categories) housed in different parts of the brain. Founded the area of phrenology. The idea that portrait.kaar.at skull bumps and dips represent degrees of development of faculties. (1758-1828)
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“Skull Bumps”
Phrenology
Faculties became stronger with practice, and weaker without it. A “mental muscle”
approach called formal etc.usf.edu discipline. Area 21: Love of Beauty Phrenology (a pseudoscience) Area 25: Form in ways similar to modern Area 26: Size Area 27: Weight neuroscience envisioned Area 28: Color Area 29: Order functional brain modularity. Area 35: Language 23
Phrenology Hi-tech
Early 1900s
During early 1900s Phrenology went electrical and amused www.sparkmuseum.com people at train stations and theme parks.
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8 Brain Anatomy
Brodman’s Areas
Phrenology (a pseudoscience) thebrain.mcgill.ca led modern neuroscience to discover functional modularity of the brain. See anatomical areas of the brain charted by Areas 1-3: Sensory areas Korbinian Brodman in 1909. Area 4: Motor area Areas 17, 18 & 19: Visual areas Areas 39-40, 44-45: Language areas
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Hermann Ebbinghaus
Memory & Forgetting
Emancipated psychology from philosophy. Introduced rigorous experimental methodology. www.unipublic.unizh.ch Studied memory and forgetting (using nonsense syllables) to investigate how humans made mental (1850-1909) associations. FUP XIZ JOF GEK VAW 26
Retention
Saving in Memory 25 20
As participants practiced 15 the list more on Day 1, they needed fewer 10
repetitions to relearn it on 5 Time (Minutes) to Relearn Day 2 Day Relearn (Minutes)Time to Day 2. Information was 0 retained due to practice on 0 8 16 24 32 42 53 64 List Repeated Day 1 Day 1.
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9 Wilhelm Wundt
School of Voluntarism
Wundt (1879) founded the first school of thought in psychology called voluntarism, meaning active www.psych.upenn.edu mind. It was based on German rationalist tradition to study human will. (1832-1920)
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Wilhelm Wundt
School of Voluntarism
Humans can selectively attend to elements of thought (apperception) and can arrange them in a www.psych.upenn.edu number of ways (creative synthesis).
(1832-1920)
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First Psychology Lab
Wundt founded the first psychology lab in Leipzig, Germany (1879) and devised introspection as a
method to study the elements of thought. www.dgps.de
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10 Edward B. Titchner
School of Structuralism
Student of Wundt. Carried out experiments on mind at
Harvard. organizations.uncfsu.edu Used introspection to study the elements of mind: sensation, images and feelings. (1869-1927) Studied laws of association between mental elements. 31
Charles Darwin
Evolution & Learning
Darwin was an empiricist and an associationist, proposed
the theory of evolution, which www.biografiasyvidas.com affected modern science and religion. Learnt (as opposed to innate) behaviors in man and animal were a predominant way to (1809-1882) greater environmental adaptability. 32
William James
School of Functionalism
Consciousness (mind) cannot be divided into elements. It flows like a stream (James, www.philosophyprofessor.com 1901). Function of consciousness is to make the individual adapt to the environment. (1842-1910)
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11 John B. Watson
School of Behaviorism
Goodbye consciousness, hello behavior. Scientific study of overt behavior. S-R psychology. “Give me a dozen healthy infants… and I'll guarantee to take any one… and train him to allpsych.com become [a] – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, (1878-1958) even beggar-man…,” (Watson,
1930). 34
Max Wertheimer
Gestalt School of Psychology Mind or behavior must be
studied as a whole, not arbeitsblaetter.stangl broken into parts. “The whole is greater than the
sum of its parts”.
- taller.at Laws of Perceptual Organization. (1880-1943) Triangle or misaligned “Vs”? 35
Questions
1. Compare and contrast Plato’s and Aristotle theory of knowledge. Include terms like nativism, empiricism, and rationalism. 2. Describe and elaborate on three philosophers after Descartes who followed Aristotle’s tradition of empiricism and two that followed Plato’s tradition of nativism. 3. Describe and elaborate schools of thought in psychology.
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