History Of Psychology Ch. 2 The Early Greek Philosophers

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Active reason

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According to Aristotle, the faculty of the soul that searches for the essences or abstract concepts that manifest themselves in the empirical world. Aristotle thought that the active reason part of the soul was immortal.

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Alcmaeon

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One of the first Greek physicians to move away from the magic and superstition of temple medicine and toward a naturalistic understanding and treatment of illness.

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Allegory of the Cave

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Plato's description of individuals who live their lives in accordance with the shadows of reality provided by sensory experience instead of in accordance with the true reality beyond sensory experience.

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Analogy of the divided line

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Plato's illustration of his contention that there is a hierarchy of understanding. the lowest type of understanding is based on images of empirical objects. Next highest is an understanding of empirical objects themselves, which results only in opinion. Next is an understanding of abstract mathematical principles. Then comes an understanding of the forms. The highest understanding (true knowledge) is an understanding of the form of the good and includes a knowledge of all forms and their organization.

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Anaxagoras

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Postulated an infinite number of elements (seeds) from which everything is made. He believed that everything contained all the elements and that a thing's identity is determined by which elements predominate. An exception is the mind, which contains no other element but may combine with other elements, thereby creating life.

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Anaximander

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Suggested the "infinite" or "boundless" as the physis and formulated a rudimentary theory of evolution.

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Animism

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The belief that everything in nature is alive.

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Anthropomorphism

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The projection of human attributes onto nonhuman things.

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Aristotle

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Believed sensory experience to be the basis of all knowledge, although the five senses and the common sense provided only the information from which knowledge could be derived. Aristotle also believed that everything in nature had within it an entelechy (purpose) that determined its potential.Active reason, which was considered the immortal part of the human soul, provided humans with their greatest potential, and therefore fully actualized humans engage in active reason. Because everything was thought to have a cause, Aristotle postulated an unmoved mover that caused everything in the world but was not not itself caused.

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Associationism

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The philosophical belief that mental phenomena, such as learning, remembering, and imagining, can be explained in terms of the laws of association.

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Becoming

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According to Heraclitus, the state of everything in the universe. Nothing is static and unchanging; rather, everything in the universe is dynamic--that is becoming something other than what it was.

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Being

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Something that is unchanging and thus, in principle, is capable of being known with certainty. Being implies stability and certainty; becoming implies instability and uncertainty.

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Common sense

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According to Aristotle, the faculty located in the heart that synthesizes the information provided by the five senses.

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Cosmology

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The study of the origin, structure, and processes governing the universe.

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Democritus

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Offered atoms as the physis. Everything in nature, including humans, was explained in terms of atoms and their activities. His was the first completely materialistic view of the world and of humans.

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Dionysiac-Orphic religion

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Religion whose major belief was that the soul becomes a prisoner of the body because of some transgression committed by the soul. The soul continues on a circle of transmigrations until it has been purged of sin, at which time it can escape its earthly existence and return to its pure, divine existence among the gods. A number of magical practices were thought useful in releasing the soul from its bodily tomb.

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Dreaming

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According to Aristotle,the experience of images retained from waking experience. Dreams are often bizarre because the images experienced during sleep are neither organized by our rational powers nor supported by ongoing sensory experience. That dreams sometimes correspond to future events was, for Aristotle, mere coincidence. However, because bodily processes are exaggerated in dreams, physicians can sometimes use dreams to detect the early signs of disease.

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Efficient cause

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According to Aristotle, the force that transforms a thing.

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Eidola (singular, eidolon)

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A tiny replication that some early Greek philosophers thought emanated from the surfaces of things in the environment, allowing the things to be perceived.

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Elementism

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The belief that complex processes can be understood by studying the elements of which they consist.

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Empedocles

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Postulated earth, fire, air, and water as the four basic elements from which everything is made and two forces, love and strife, that alternately synthesize and separate those elements. He was also the first philosopher to suggest a theory of perception, and he offered a theory of evolution that emphasized a rudimentary form of natural selection.

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Entelechy

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According to Aristotle, the purpose for which a thing exists and which remains a potential until actualized. Active reason, for example, is the human entelechy, but it exists only as a potential in many humans.

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Essence

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Those indispensable characteristics of a thing that give it its unique identity.

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Final cause

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According to Aristotle, the purpose for which a thing exists.

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Formal cause

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According to Aristotle, the form of a thing.

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Forms

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According to Plato, the pure, abstract realities that are unchanging and timeless and therefore knowable. Such forms create imperfect manifestations of themselves when they interact with matter. It is these imperfect manifestations of the forms that are the objects of our sense impressions.

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Galen

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Associated each of Hippocrates' four humors with a temperament, thus creating a rudimentary theory of personality.

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Golden mean

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The rule Aristotle suggested people follow to avoid excesses and to live a life of moderation.

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Gorgias

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A Sophist who believed the only reality a person can experience is his or her subjective reality and that this reality can never be accurately communicated to another individual.

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Heraclitus

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Suggested fire as the physis because in its presence nothing remained the same. He viewed the world as in a constant state of flux and thereby raised the question of what could be known with certainty.

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Hippocrates

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Considered the father of modern medicine because he assumed that disease had natural causes, not supernatural ones. Health prevails when the four humors of the body are in balance, disease when there is imbalance. The physician's task was to facilitate the body's natural tendency to heal itself.

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Imagination

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According to Aristotle, the pondering of the images retained from past experiences.

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Inductive definition

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The technique used by Socrates that examined many individual examples of a concept to discover what they all had in common.

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Introspection

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The careful examination of one' inner experiences.

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Law of contiguity

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A thought of something will tend to cause thoughts of things that are usually experienced along with it.

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Law of frequency

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In general, the more often events are experienced together, the stronger they become associated in memory.

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Law of similarity

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A thought of something will tend to cause thoughts of similar things.

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Laws of association

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Those laws thought responsible for holding mental events together in memory. For Aristotle, the laws of association consisted of the laws of contiguity, contrast, similarity, and frequency.

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Magic

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Various ceremonies and rituals that are designed to influence spirits.

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Material cause

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According to Aristotle, what a thing is made of.

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Nihilism

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The belief that because what is considered true varies from person to person, any search for universal (interpersonal) truth will fail. In other words, there is no Truth, only truths. The Sophists were nihilists.

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Olympian religion

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The religion based on a belief i the Olympian gods as they were described in the Homeric odes. Olympian religion tended to be favored by the privileged classes, whereas peasants, laborers, and slaves tended to favor the more mystical Dionysiac-Orphic religion.

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Parmenides

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Believed that the world was solid, fixed, and motionless, and therefore that all apparent change or motion was an illusion.

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Passive reason

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According to Aristotle, the practical utilization of the information provided by the common sense.

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Physicists

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Those who search for or postulate a physis.

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Physis

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A primary substance or element from which everything is thought to be derived.

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Plato

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First a disciple of Socrates, came under the influence of the Pythagoreans, and postulated the existence of an abstract world of forms or ideas that, when manifested in matter, make up th eobjecst in the empirical world. The only true knowledge is that of the of the forms, a knowledge that can be gained only be reflecting on the innate contents of the soul. Sensory experience interfere with the attainment of knowledge and should be avoided.

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Protagoras

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A Sophist who taught that "Man is the measure of all things." In other words, what is considered true varies with a person's personal experiences; therefore, there is no objective truth, only individual versions of what is true.

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Pythagoras

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Believed that an abstract world consisting of numbers and numerical relationships exerted an influence on the physical world. He created a dualistic view of humans by saying that in addition to our body, we have a mind (soul), which through reasoning could understand the abstract world of numbers. Furthermore, he believed the human soul to be immortal. Pythagoras' philosophy had a major influence on Plato and, through Christianity, on the entire Western world.

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Rational soul

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According to Aristotle, the soul possessed only by humans. It incorporates the functions of the vegetative and sensitive souls and allows thinking about events in the empirical world (passive reason) and the abstraction of the concepts that characterize events in the empirical world (active reason)

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Recall

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For Aristotle, the active mental search for the recollection of past experiences.

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Reductionism

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The attempt to explain objects or events in one domain by using terminology, concepts, laws, or principles from another domain. Explaining observable phenomena (domain 1) in terms of atomic theory (domain 2) would be an example; explaining human behavior and cognition (domain 1) in terms of biochemical principles (domain 2) would be another. In a sense, it can be said that events in domain 1 are reduced to events in domain 2.

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Remembering

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For Aristotle, the passive recollection of past experiences.

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Reminiscence theory of knowledge

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Plato's belief that knowledge is attained by remembering the experiences the soul had when it dwelled among the forms before entering the body.

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Scala naturae

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Aristotle's description of nature as being arranged in a hierarchy from formless matter to the unmoved mover. In this grand design, the only thing higher than humans was the unmoved mover.

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Sensitive soul

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According to Aristotle, the soul possessed by animals. It includes the functions provided by the vegetative soul and provides the ability to interact with the environment and to retain the information gained from that interaction.

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Socrates

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Disagreed with the Sophists' contention that there is no discernible truth beyond individual opinion. Socrates believed that by examining a number of individual manifestations of a concept, the general concept itself could be defined clearly and precisely. These general definitions were stable and knowable and, when known, generated moral behavior.

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Solipsism

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The belief that a person's subjective reality is the only reality that exists and can be known.

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Sophists

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A group of philosopher-teachers who believed that "truth" was what people thought it to be. To convince others that something is "true," one needs effective communication skills, and it was those skills that the Sophists taught.

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Teleology

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The belief that nature is purposive. Aristotle's philosophy was teleological.

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Temple medicine

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The type of medicine practiced by priests in early Greek temples that was characterized by superstition and magic. Individuals such as Alcmaeon and Hippocrtes severely criticized temple medicine and were instrumental in displacing such practices with naturalistic medicine--that is, medicine that sought natural causes of disorders rather than supernatural causes.

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Thales

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Often called the first philosopher because he emphasized natural instead of supernatural explanations of things. By encouraging the critical evaluation of his ideas and those of others, he is thought to have started the Golden Age of Greek philosophy. He believed water to be the primary element from which everything else was derived.

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Theory of forms

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Plato's contention that ultimate reality consists of abstract ideas or forms that correspond to all objects in the empirical world. Knowledge of these abstractions is innate an can be attained only through introspection.

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Transmigration of the soul

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The Dionysiac-Orphic belief that because of some transgression, the soul is compelled to dwell in one earthly prison after another until it is purified. The transmigration may find the soul at various times in plants, animals, and humans as it seeks redemption.

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Unmoved mover

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According to Aristotle, that which gave nature its purpose, or final cause, but was itself uncaused. In Aristotle's philosophy, the unmoved mover was a logical necessity.

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Vegetative soul

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The soul possessed by plants. It allows only growth, the intake of nutrition, and reproduction.

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Xenophanes

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Believed people created gods in their own image. He noted that dark-skinned people created dark-skinned gods and light-skinned people created light-skinned gods. He speculated that the gods created by nonhuman animals would have the characteristics of those animals.

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Zeno's paradox

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The assertion that in order for an object to pass from point A to point B, it must first traverse half the distance between those two points and then half of the remaining distance, and so forth. Because this process must occur an infinite number of times, Zeno concluded that an object could logically never reach point B.