Great Ideas of Philosophy

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V. These debates illustrate a far less tidy world of science than the one depicted in textbooks. For all its technicaland theoretical achievements, science is a human product and will always bear the mark of its maker.A. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn drew attention to the guild-like nature ofthe scientific community.1. Kuhn referred to this as “normal science,” to distinguish it from those radical departures that constitutetruly revolutionary changes.2. A key feature of this enterprise is that the research guided by such considerations unearths only whatwas known in advance. The same set of commitments and method, the same paradigm, dictates thatproblems are chosen to the extent that they promise fairly ready solutions.B. Karl Popper, the eminent philosopher of science and logician, criticized Kuhn’s reliance on the concept ofruling paradigms as “the myth of framework.”1. Popper himself had made an important contribution to philosophy of science in his critique ofverificationism and his alternative methodological standard, falsificationism.2. In the scientific positivism of the 1930s and 1940s, the meaning of statements was nothing more thanthe method by which they could be verified. Any statements that did not lend themselves to empiricalmodes of verification were essentially meaningless or merely argumentative.3. Popper observed that such a standard would render all the laws of science nonsensical. He replaced theconcept of verification with falsificationism: Though a law cannot be verified an infinite number oftimes, it need only be falsified once to lose credibility.Recommended Reading:Hempel, Carl. Aspects of Scientific Explanation. Free Press, 1965.Van Fraassen, Bas. The Scientific Image. Oxford University Press, 1980.Questions to Consider:1. If the laws of science do not reflect reality as it “really” is, how should we account for practical success?2. How do the laws of physics “lie,” and what standard is there for telling the difference between the truth and thelies?3. Is the culture of science hostile to criticism and novelty of thought?12©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
Lecture Fifty-ThreePhilosophy of Psychology and Related ConfusionsScope: Psychology is a subject of wide-ranging interests but rather narrow modes of inquiry. Its history is one ofaspiring to the status of a natural science and, as a result, committing itself to what it takes to be themethods of investigation and research common in the developed sciences. Initially, as with Locke, thiscommitment was expressed in the form of introspective inquiries into thought or, more generally, cognitiveand emotional states. The private nature of these, combined with their “metaphysical” properties, resultedin the rejection of the mental by those in the positivist school of science. In keeping with the dictates ofthat school, psychology, early in the 20 th century, subscribed to a theory-neutral and “purely descriptive”science of behavior. The failure of that science to account for any number of behavioral outcomes led to arestoration of cognitive, even “mental” states within psychology. This, in turn, set the stage for thecognitive neuroscience dominant today. Nonetheless, the defects and deficiencies of earlier schools havereappeared, owing to the same problems: the aptness of the science model in psychology, the nature ofmodels themselves, and the uniqueness of psychological processes.OutlineI. At least three times in the 20 th century, psychology has settled on its subject matter, only to unsettle itself andadopt yet another “reality.”A. The problem should not be attributed to psychology’s alleged “youth.”1. Psychological laboratories do not appear that much later than laboratories in other disciplines.2. Chemistry laboratories appear at universities no earlier than 1830.3. Non-academic settings for research were numerous, and psychology experiments were performed inthem as early as the 18 th century.B. Psychology is a hybrid science, because its interest ranges over both scientific and humanistic issues.1. The breadth and diversity of phenomena may be seen as excuse enough for psychology’s unsettlednature as it seeks unity and disciplinary coherence.2. The challenge is no greater, however, in psychology than in physics, which has made room for thoseinterested in the red-shift of stars retreating from the Milky Way and those whose subjects of interestwink in and out of existence in less than a billionth of a second.C. The special subject of philosophical psychology also reflects on the disordered state of the discipline.Attempts to create order and a “system” must be arbitrary but are also necessary, or else there really wouldbe no subject at all.II. The starting point presumably is the identification of what psychology is about, what its practitioners identifyas good reasons for having the discipline, and what other reasonably informed persons would reasonably expectof it.A. The Oxford Pocket Dictionary defines psychology as “the study of the human soul or mind; a treatise on orsystem of this,” a definition that does little to clarify the discipline.B. A more informing approach would be to examine offered courses and assigned texts in major departmentsof psychology. These days, the courses and the activities would be highly particularized, focusing on anynumber of questions that, at best, relate obliquely to what has traditionally been understood to be humanmental life.C. Aristotle used the term psyche in his treatise on the subject to mean the “first principle of living things.”1. What is “psychic” is a complex process, not a thing occupying a place and having some existenceoutside the creature so animated.2. Also, this animating principle is expressed in various ways and confers different powers or faculties ondifferent living things.D. With the 17 th century’s scientific achievements, Descartes, then Locke took a more daring approach tothese concepts.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 13
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Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Lecture OneFrom the Upanishads to H
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E. The Upanishads would merge us wi
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2. Despite their oracles, priests,
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4. Looking at geometry, we are told
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E. The contribution of pre-Socratic
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of the mystery of earth itself impe
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Lecture SixHerodotus and the Lamp o
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Lecture SevenSocrates on the Examin
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Xenophon. Memorabilia. Cornell Univ
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II. A philosopher is engaged in the
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Lecture NineCan Virtue Be Taught?Sc
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Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
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Annas, J. “Classical Greek Philos
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III. The dominant school of Greek m
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1. Epistemonikon is a special featu
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Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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1705...............................
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1873...............................
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Functionalism: The view that consci
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Tabula rasa: A blank slate. In the
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progress in one of its most summoni
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John Locke (1632-1704): Physician a
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The Great Ideas ofPhilosophy, 2 nd
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Table of ContentsThe Great Ideas of
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Lecture ThirteenAristotle on Friend
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C. Aristotle is recovering the Home
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III. The problem of conduct is then
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C. The Stoic account relies on the
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Lecture SixteenThe Stoic Bridge to
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Recommended Reading:Bede. A History
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III. Roman law successfully permitt
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Lecture EighteenThe Light Within⎯
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B. Augustine approaches the problem
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B. Very early, the Islamic commitme
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Lecture TwentySecular Knowledge⎯T
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IV. The third great institutional c
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1. Scholasticism was an attempt to
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Lecture Twenty-TwoScholasticism and
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E. Further, to the intellectual vir
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historical volumes tell Florentines
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Lecture Twenty-FourLet Us Burn the
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1. First, the courts required a doc
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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1794...............................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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B. This expansion, however, does no
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1. This standard essentially rules
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Lecture Twenty-SevenNewton⎯The Sa
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Lecture Twenty-EightHobbes and the
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Recommended Reading:Hobbes, T. Levi
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B. Other things can be known to be
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Lecture ThirtyNo Matter? The Challe
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Lecture Thirty-OneHume and the Purs
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Lecture Thirty-TwoThomas Reid and t
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efore him were not always faithful
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2. His Letters on the English makes
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Lecture Thirty-FourThe Federalist P
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VI. The Federalist Papers and the g
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III. Kant argues that there is some
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Lecture Thirty-SixMoral Science and
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Questions to Consider:1. A hypothet
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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1794...............................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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C. Though his system would be mocke
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1. There is nothing in the physics
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F. To include Hegel within the trad
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Lecture FortyThe Aesthetic Movement
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insisted that our very character is
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