Lecture

Liberalism

Summary so far

Classical theories of human nature: Humans are by nature rational animals (Aristotle)

Christian theories of human nature: Humans are by nature sinful (early Christian thought)

Liberal theory of human nature: Humans are by nature free and reasonable. They will do good, progress, and flourish if they are provided with the right experiences. Comment: TOHN and context?

Happiness

Classical theories: A life of reasonChristian theories: Rejoicing in God.Liberal theories: A free life based on a

cultivated and interested mind (ranging from nature, arts, history; past, present, and future; to collective interests).

John Locke (1632-1704)

English philosopher (psychologist, educator, political theorist). Friend of Newton. His political writings influenced the authors of the U.S. Declaration of

Independence. Pioneer of (British) empiricism. Empiricism: An Essay Concerning Human

Understanding (1690). Critique of the rationalistic idea that the mind is equipped with innate ideas,

ideas that do not arise from experience. Locke: Human mind develops knowledge from observations of things in the

external world. Mind is passive and receptive. Mind without innate ideas: Tabula rasa (blank slate).

Ideas

Ideas come from two sources: Sensations of objects: Provide ideas about the external world. Reflections (on the mind's own operations): Provide ideas of the internal

workings of the mind. Simple ideas versus complex ideas:

A simple idea (like an atom) could not be divided or analyzed further. Complex ideas were composites of simple ideas, and therefore could be analyzed.

The inexperienced mind's earliest sensations and reflections give rise to a variety of simple ideas (redness, loudness, coldness, saltiness: from sensation; willing, perceiving, liking, or disliking: from reflection).

With experience simple ideas can be combined by the mind to produce complex ideas (idea of hunger).

Some ideas are associated because they naturally belong together Other associations are learned by chance, custom, or mistake. Perception: People are not directly aware of physical objects but only of ideas.

William Molyneux (1656-1696): Problem

“Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man be made to see: quaere, whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube?” (cited by Locke in An essay)

Locke: The blind man, at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them.

Blind man does not have the experience.

Primary and secondary qualities.

Distinction has a long philosophical tradition. The primary qualities of an object are its

physical characteristics: Solidity, mobility, shape, and weight.

The secondary qualities are the perceiver’s judgments (taste, smell, color, and sound). Produced in the perceiver of the object.

Locke: Is temperature a primary or secondary quality?

“Paradox of basins”

If you put one hand in cold water, the other one in hot, and then place both in tepid water, the water may produce the sensation of heat in one hand and cold in the other. But it is impossible that the water is both cold and warm.

“Explains how water felt as cold by one hand may be warm to the other. Ideas being thus distinguished and understood, we may be able to give an account how the same water, at the same time, may produce the idea of cold by one hand and of heat by the other: whereas it is impossible that the same water, if those ideas were really in it, should at the same time be both hot and cold”

Temperature is a secondary quality.

Locke's influence

George Berkeley (1685-1753) The only reality of which we could be aware was our

perceptions. If there was a physical world, we could never experience

it directly. Berkeley's motto: "Esse est percipi" (to be is to be

perceived). Depth perception. The ability to see things in three

dimensions is not innate. David Hume (1711 - 1776)

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Mill’s social philosophy: Mill believed in scientifically guided social progress and

the superiority of scientific knowledge. All phenomena are subject to natural law,

comprehensible by science alone. Using science and technology: Create prosperity for all. Liberalism: A defense of civic freedom, private property,

and the free market. Equal opportunity for men and women.

Mill on liberty

Harm principle: Individual liberty cannot be infringed by government, society, or individuals except in cases where the individual's action causes harm to others.

On Liberty (1859): “The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant”

Q: What is harm? Epistemological violence? Some consequences:

No legitimacy for paternalistic laws. Legal restrictions on the expression of opinion are not justified.

Mill’s Support of Women’s Emancipation

Described the subjugated status of women.

Argued for gender equality.Proposed a plan of social and political

change to bring about equality.

Mill’s psychology.

Mill proposed a scientific psychology in his book: A system of logic (1843).

Science: Explain the causes and effects of individuals’ personal and social actions. Provide the means for improving these actions.

Human happiness: Shaped by environmental factors. Psychology: An inexact science. Its subject matter was not

amenable to the experimental method of the physical sciences. Psychology was amenable to other empirical methods such as observation.

Mill: Mental chemistry. Sensations can combine to form a new sensation that is different from any of the individual sensations that comprise it. Complex ideas: not just aggregates of simpler ideas.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

German philosopher. One of the greatest philosophers of all time.

Kant was the foremost thinker of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment: Celebration of reason.

Reconciled rationalism and empiricism.Reason in knowledge, ethics, and

aesthetics.

Knowledge: Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

Criticism: Concepts without perceptions are empty, perceptions without concepts are blind.

We need reason and experiences.

We approach nature with principles

that UNDERLIE experience.

(a) Forms of sensibility (space, time) (b) Categories (a priori) (mind organizes

phenomena according to them).Without categories (Kant identified 12) our sensory

experience would have no meaning.Four groups of categories:

Quantity: Unity, plurality, and totality.Quality: Reality, negation, and limitation.Relation: Substance-and-accident, cause-and-effect, and reciprocity.Modality: Possibility, existence, and necessity.

“Constructivism”

The external world consists of things-in-themselves, objects that are independent of experience.

Humans can know only what is presented to their senses or what is contributed by their own mind.

Ethics: Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

Categorical imperative: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Formal principle.

Inclination versus moral reason. Duty and moral obligation: Matter of reason. Desire: Matter of inclination. Follow reason.

Intentions versus outcome.

Aesthetics: Critique of Judgment (1790)

Taste: Faculty of judging the beautifulThe beautiful is different from the pleasurable

and the good. Subjective universality (we assume that a

judgment is universally valid).Beauty is independent of perfection.

Kant's critique of psychology

Background: 18th century German psychology Academic psychology (Christian Wolff) (faculty

psychology) Physiological psychology Popular psychology (Magazin zur

Erfahrungsseelenkunde) Analytic psychology (detailed account of inner

feelings)

Main figures of academic psychology

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) Monads

Christian Wolff (1679-1754) Rational psychology versus empirical psychology

Johann Nikolas Tetens (1736-1807) Division of psychological faculties into processes of

feeling (Gefühl), understanding (Verstand), and willing (Wille)

Division became the systematic basis for Kant's critical philosophy

Rational and empirical psychology(Wolff)

Psychologia rationalis est scientia eorum, quae per animam humanam possibilia sunt

Psychologia empirica est scientia stabiliendi principa per experientiam, unde ratio redittur eorum, quae in anima humana fiunt

Deductive - inductive

Topics Rational psychology: The soul's substantiality,

simplicity, immateriality, immortality. Empirical psychology: The soul’s ability to know,

desire, the interaction of the soul and the body, the faculties of the soul Cognitive faculties or faculties to know (de facultatis

cognoscendi)Lower cognitive faculties: Perception, senses, imagination,

memory, oblivion, and reminiscence.Higher cognitive faculties: Attention, reflection, and reasoning.

Appetitive faculties or desiring faculties (de facultatis appetendi).Lower desiring facultiesHigher desiring faculties:Willing.

Kant

Critique of rational psychology was more important than critique of empirical psychology

Critique of rational psychology: Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Understanding (Verstand) transforms sensory experiences. Reason (Vernunft) transforms understanding when it grasps

abstract ideas. Yet, reason runs into problems.

Soul: Reason -> Paralogisms. Universe: Reason -> Antinomies. God: Reason -> Problems.

Paralogisms

Kant's critique of rational psychology is contained in the extensive section on paralogisms (A338-A405; B406-B432)

Paralogism (Aristotle): "Whenever, if A is or happens, a consequent, B, is or happens, men's notion is that, if the B is, the A also is – but that is a false conclusion”

First paralogism of substantiality

A: The absolute subject of our judgments and something that cannot be used to determine another thing is defined as substance

B: The cogito (I think) is "the absolute subject of all my possible judgments, and this representation of Myself cannot be used as the predicate of any other thing"

Rational psychology’s conclusion: I am, as soul, substance.

Kant: This conclusion is false. The category of substance has no objective significance and has only meaning when a perception is subsumed under it.

More paralogisms

Second paralogism of simplicityThird paralogism of personalityFourth paralogism of the ideality

Epistemology Kant: False conclusion, that "the existence of all

objects of outer sense is doubtful”

Summary

The subject matter of rational psychology (I think) is a consequent (Aristotle's B) based on which rational psychologists made false conclusions regarding the substantiality, simplicity, identity, and relations of the soul (Aristotle's A).

From rational to empirical psychology

Rational psychology is a discipline that should limit the speculations of reason, reject materialism as well as spiritualism.

One should move from useless speculation to the practical use of reason.

Because rational psychology goes beyond the powers of human reason, we have only the opportunity to study the soul from an empirical point of view.

But empirical psychology is not a science but only an assembly of psychological bits and pieces.

Kant's critique of empirical psychology

Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786)

Philosophy has two basic subject matters: Nature and freedom

Freedom: What should be.Nature: What is.

Physics (objects of the external sense) Psychology (objects of the inner sense)

(A) Hierarchy of sciences

At the top:Proper natural science: Studies its objects

according to a priori principles and shows apodictic certainty.

Requires mathematics.The complete body of knowledge can be

organized systematically according to principles.Example: Physics.

(B) Hierarchy of sciences

Proper natural science is followed by: Improper natural science: Studies its subject

matter according to empirical laws and shows empirical certainty.

Example: Chemistry.Chemistry is according to Kant a systematic art,

an experimental doctrine.

(C) Hierarchy of sciences

At the bottom: Psychology is not a proper natural science “because mathematics

is inapplicable to the phenomena of the internal sense and their laws”

Psychology is not an improper natural science, because psychology is only able to develop an empirical doctrine of the soul which contains organized facts.

Empirical psychology and method

Psychology can "never become anything more than a historical (and as such, as much as possible) systematic natural doctrine of the internal sense, i.e., a natural description of the soul, but not a science of the soul, nor even a psychological experimental doctrine"

Introspection: Leads to idolization [Schwärmerei] and even to madness

[Wahnsinn]. One would discover only what one has put into the mind.

Implications for Kant

Empirical psychology should be banished from the field of metaphysics.

Understood as applied philosophy it was too important to be neglected.

Kant included it in his Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View (1798) Anthropological Didactic: cognition, senses, ideas, consciousness,

reason, imagination, understanding, feelings, desire, affects, passions, the moral good, etc.

Anthropological Characteristic: Character of person, gender, folk, race, and human species.

Implications for the discipline

Traditional rational psychology after Kant: Declined in academia.

Dessoir (1911): “An irony of history that despite everything, fundamental progresses in psychology were introduced by [Kant's] criticism.”

Boring (1950): Kant "set his mark on German thought of the entire nineteenth century.”

Researchers wanted to render Kant wrong. Neo-Kantianism.

Kant and the problem of colonialism

"The Negroes of Africa have by nature no sense which would transcend the foolish".

"The blacks are very vain, in a Negro way, and so chattily, that they have to be chased apart by beating them".

The "strong smell of the Negro ... cannot be avoided through any hygiene … All Negroes stink."

The Negro is "strong, fleshy, supple but [also] lazy, feeble, and dallying".

Skin color of Africans explained by phlogiston theory. Kant: Perversions of modernity and Enlightenment?

Liberty

Negative liberty: Absence of obstacles, barriers, constraints. Individualistic.

Positive liberty: Presence of possibilities of action. Freedom produces a positive good. Collectivistic.

Negative and positive liberty might contradict each other. Example: National health care system.

Smoking?