Category Archives: Science

Arts, Philosophy, Psychology, Science

Philosophy: David Hume

EMPIRICIST & ESSENTIAL THINKER (1711–1776)

– A narrative and critique on the philosophy of David Hume

David Hume is the philosophical hero of modern day sceptics and empiricists, renouncing all knowledge except that which can be gained from the senses. Alas, as Quine would later famously say, echoing Hume, what can be garnered from the senses is, after all, not much.

From Locke, Hume had drawn the conclusion that all human knowledge is based on relations amongst ideas, or “sense impressions”. Anything not given in experience is mere invention and must be ruthlessly discarded. As a result he denies the existence of God, the self, the objective existence of logical necessity, causation, and even the validity of inductive knowledge itself. His aim is twofold: at once demolitionary – to rid science of all falsehoods based on “invention rather than experience” – and constructive, to found a science of human nature. Much impressed with how Isaac Newton had described the physical world according to simple mechanical laws, Hume had a mind to do something similar for the nature of human understanding. His Treatise on Human Nature is a painstaking study in experimental psychology in search of general principles. In this, however, Hume can be seen as being spectacularly unsuccessful, primarily because his whole taxonomy of “impressions” and “ideas” is derived from the much discredited Cartesian model. Nevertheless, Hume’s negative program is a devastating example of the power of logical critique. His sceptical results, especially regarding induction, remain problematic for modern philosophers.

Hume observes that we never experience our own self, only the continuous chain of experiences themselves. This psychological fact leads Hume to the dubious metaphysical conclusion that the self is an illusion, and in fact personal identity is nothing but the continuous succession of perceptual experience. “I am,” Hume famously says, “nothing but a bundle of perceptions”. Following a similar line of thought, Hume notices that the force that compels one event to follow another, causation, is also never experienced in sense impressions. All that is given in experience is the regular succession of one kind of event being followed by another. But the supposition that the earlier event, the so-called “cause”, must be followed by the succeeding event, the “effect”, is merely human expectation projected onto reality. There is no justification for believing that there is any casual necessity in the ordering of events.

Hume’s scepticism does not stop there, and the belief in causation is just a special case of a more general psychological trait: inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is the process that leads us to make generalisations from observing a number of similar cases. For example, having observed many white swans but no black swans, one might seemingly be justifiably led to the conclusion that “All swans are white”. Equally, being aware that men often die, we conclude “All men are mortal”. But such generalisations go beyond what is given in experience and are not logically justified. After all, black swans were found in Australia, and there is always the logical possibility of coming across an immortal man. Hume claimed that inductive reasoning could not be relied upon to lead us to the truth, for observing a regularity does not rule out the possibility that next time something different will occur. Since all scientific laws are merely generalisations from inductive reasoning, this so-called “problem of induction” has been pressing for philosophers of science. Trying to show how induction is justified has taxed them throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries. Karl Popper is notable for offering the most promising solution to Humean scepticism. Popper’s brand of scientific method, ‘falsificationism’ gave rise to a whole new area of debate in the philosophy of science. According to Popper, the mark of a scientific theory is whether it makes predictions which could in principle serve to falsify it.

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Philosophy, Science

Philosophy and science

THE PERTINENCE OF PHILOSOPHY vs. SCIENCE

THROUGHOUT much of the history of philosophy, there was no such thing as science in its modern form: in fact, it was from philosophical enquiry that modern science has evolved. The questions that metaphysics set out to answer about the structure and substance of the universe prompted theories that later became the foundations of “natural philosophy”, the precursor of what we now call physics. The process of rational argument, meanwhile, underpins the “scientific method”.

Since the 18th century, many of the original questions of metaphysics have been answered by observation, experiment and measurement, and philosophy appeared to be redundant in these areas. Philosophers have since changed their focus to examine science itself. Some, like Hume, challenged the validity of inductive reasoning in science, while others sought to clarify the meaning of terms used by science, opening up a “philosophy of science” that considers areas such as scientific ethics and the way science makes progress.

ADVANCES IN SCIENCE

MOST of the sciences evolved from branches of philosophy, complementing them with scientific theories describing the physical world. But as the pace of progress accelerated with the scientific revolution of the Enlightenment, the natural sciences largely replaced metaphysics, and by the end of the 19th century psychology and neuroscience began to provide a scientific alternative to the philosophy of the mind.

In the 20th century, Albert Einstein’s theories seemed to provide a comprehensive explanation of the physical universe, but many aspects of the new physics threw up almost as many questions as answers – problems that science alone could not explain. And just as science appeared to be replacing aspects of philosophy, some philosophers turned their attention to science itself. Karl Popper proposed a practical answer to the problem of induction, the basis of scientific methods, while Paul Feyerabend questioned the notion of a single reliable scientific method, based on Thomas Kuhn’s idea that science makes advances not in a smooth progression, but in radical jumps.

. On the Origin of Species

The cultural influence of science reached a climax in the mid-19th century with the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Although it was a scientific rather than a philosophical work, his theory of evolution by natural selection put many aspects of philosophy in a new perspective. In the same way as Copernicus’s proposal of a heliocentric universe challenged religious authority and became symbolic of emergent Renaissance humanism, Darwin’s explanation of evolution presented humans as just another animal – part of the natural world rather than separate from it. In his later Descent of Man, he applied the principles of evolutionary theory specifically to humans, explicitly stating for the first time that we have evolved from animals, and so challenging previous notions of man as superior to other animals because of his ability to reason. But perhaps most important in terms of its effect on philosophy was the implicit idea that humans are not the pinnacle of God’s creation, but merely a stage in the evolution of the natural world.

ATOMIC THEORY

In the 5th century BCE, the philosopher Leucippus and his pupil Democritus proposed the revolutionary notion that everything is composed of indestructible particles in empty space. In other words, it was through philosophy that Atomic Theory first emerged.

Like many other philosophers, the Atomists, as they were later known, attempted to explain the reality of motion and change. Parmenides had said that these are mere illusions, since motion requires the existence of a void, which he deemed a logical impossibility.

Atomists turned this argument on its head, however, suggesting that since motion is patently possible, the void must exist, and matter must be free to move within it. Since the movement of matter takes place at a microscopic level, it is not visible. Matter is formed of minute particles that Leucippus called “atoms”, which exist in empty space, and the changes that can be observed in the cosmos are due to the motion of these atoms in the void. Each atom is an eternal and unchanging entity, both indestructible and indivisible, but capable of joining with others to form different substances and objects.

Where Parmenides posited eternal, immutable unity, the Atomists proposed an infinite diversity of eternal particles that gives rise to an ever-changing cosmos.

Building blocks

According to the Atomists, the atom is the basic unit of every material substance. These building blocks of matter are constantly in motion in the void, and react with each other, being either mutually repelled or attracted. There are countless kinds of atoms, which join together in different combinations to form the huge variety of substances. They then separate as those substances decay. The atoms themselves are immortal, and remain intact. They continue their movement throughout the void, continually and ceaselessly combining, separating, and reforming.

NEED TO KNOW

> The void described by the Atomists is more than empty space – it is an absolute absence of matter, akin to a vacuum.

> The word “atom” comes from the Greek atomon, meaning “uncuttable” or “indivisible”.

Kinds of Atom

Democritus suggested that atoms come in a range of sizes and shapes, their properties determining the characteristics of different substances. He proposed that the atoms of liquids are smooth and can move freely past one another, while solids have more rigid atoms that move less and can connect with other atoms.

AIR – Air atoms are light and wispy, and move freely and independently

WATER – The smooth, round atoms of water give it its flowing, liquid character

IRON – Atoms of iron have hooks that interlock to give the metal its solidity

SALT – The taste of salt is caused by its jagged atoms acting on the tongue

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.” – Democritus (5th century BCE)

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Mental Health, Psychology, Science

Schools of Thought: Humanistic Psychology

HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY

THE move towards cognitive psychology came about through frustrations with what were seen as the limitations of psychoanalysis and behavioural psychology. In the 1950s, another movement within psychology also began to gain ground – one that rejected all the main strands of psychology: psychoanalysis, behavioural psychology, and the emerging cognitive psychology approach. This fourth approach has become known as humanistic psychology.

Rather than seeing the human psyche as a minefield of conflicting parts of the self, driven by primitive urges (as the psychoanalytic approach was characterised), or viewing the self as the result of myriad stimulus-response exchanges that make us who we are (as behaviourists do), or seeing the reasons for our beliefs and actions as residing in our perception and cognition of what’s around us (as the cognitive psychologists are doing), humanist psychologists view the individual as a whole person with their own free will, desires, responsibilities, passions, aims, and aspirations. In short, all the kinds of things that make us human. For the humanists, the concept of mental health for far too long had been obsessed with reducing negative states such as anxiety or depression. The humanists wanted mental health to be all about striving for something better, like happiness or fulfilment.

What do you really want from life?

Two key thinkers are the pioneers of the humanist psychologist movement. One is Abraham Maslow, best known for his 1954 concept of the “hierarchy of needs,” which dates from 1943, and which presents an image of what people really want from life – and the idea for striving for something for its own sake. Having established lower-order needs – such as food, shelter, belonging, self-esteem – we seek knowledge, meaning, and, ultimately, the realisation of our full potential.

The second, Carl Rogers, shared Maslow’s view that humankind seeks this higher state of self-actualisation, making the most of our talents or education or skills. And along with that, we seek positive regard, which can be love, or simply respect, from others. In his 1961 book On Becoming a Person, he discussed some of the conditions necessary to achieve this state – a discussion that was to form the basis of a client-centred therapy (later renamed “person-centred” therapy). At its heart is the concept of unconditional positive regard – the kind of parental love that children can enjoy no matter what they might do, and which gives them a freedom to take risks and discover what they like doing. In cases where children receive only conditional positive regard, parental love may only be won through good behaviour or excellent performance, with the risks of the child becoming a perfectionist or neurotic later in life. Client-centred therapy could redress this by the therapist providing the unconditional positive regard, and allowing the client to start finding their own way toward their self-actualising goals.

The “I” and the “me”

For Rogers, an important theoretical aspect was the self concept. There are two parts to it: the “I” that does stuff, and the “me” that the “I” sometimes thinks about, such as when we say “I am ashamed of myself.” The self concept develops as we grow up, and we are happiest, Rogers believed, when we have congruence between the “I” and the “me” – that is, minimal conflict between the perceived self and the kind of behaviours we actually find ourselves doing.

Rogers developed his “Q Sort” test – a kind of personality test using a deck of flash cards – to measure levels of this congruence, which allowed for some degree of quantitative testing to demonstrate correlation between congruence of the self concept, and other measures of well-being or social adjustment.

Nonetheless, humanistic psychology is often characterised as being more of a qualitative than quantitative strand of psychology. By contrast, positive psychology is a related branch that also has as its goal not simply a reduction of psychological pain, but more positively, the advancement of well-being – looking, for example, at the science of happiness, or how creativity is stimulated: in many respects, another route to the summit of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

. See also Positive Psychology

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