Immortal Curiosity

03/20/2006 04:26:23 PM
Notes on Psychology The Briefer Course, by William James, ed. by Gordon Allport, Notre Dame edition-

Introductory -  Read more... (1575 words, estimated 6:18 mins reading time)

• The definition of psychology, as given by Professor Ladd: “the description and explanation of states of consciousness as such”.
• Psychology will be treated as a natural science.
• While a single science of truth, Philosophy, may be the goal, currently sciences such as psychology have separate assumptions and problems.
• Psychology assumes particular data:
  • Thoughts and feelings
  • Knowledge
  • Incomplete statements are often practically necessary, in order to make progress.
  • Mental facts cannot be studied apart from the physical environment of which they take cognizance.
  • Older psychology failed by setting the soul apart as an absolute spiritual being. Mind and world have evolved together and are a mutual fit.
  • Mental life is primarily teleological. The essence of mental and bodily life are the same: the adjustment of inner to outer relations.
  • The mental life is for the sake of action of a preservative sort.
  • All mental states are followed by bodily activity of some sort, all states of mind are motor in their consequences.

Notes on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe-

Preface

Section:  Read more... (987 words, estimated 3:57 mins reading time)

• 1- Augustine; Every word has a meaning.
• 2- A complete primitive language: Person A needs to receive particular items in an order from B. A calls out words, B brings items appropriate to the call he has learned. Compare the system he describes to basic computer languages. Seems to fit perfectly.
• 3- Circumscribed definitions.
• 4- Scripts.
• 6- Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. Ostensive definition, ostensive learning.
• 7- Language-games.
• 10- Signification.
• 11- Application of words.
• 13- When we say “Every word in language signifies something” we have said nothing whatsoever. We must explain what distinction we wish to make.
• 17- Kinds of words.
• 18- Language as orders. “Our language may be seen as an ancient city: a mace of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.”
• 19- It is easy to imagine a language means to imagine a life-form.

Notes on The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
(first edition text)

-”I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species–that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.” –it is interesting that he refers to this first, i.e. to the inhabitants (viz., assumably, the human inhabitants) and not the animal species. He does not reference this again in the first chapter, but moves on to domesticated animals. What about the distribution of men gave him insight into the origin of species? Was it perhaps, in refering to the “geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent”, that he saw how the various human populations had changed in combination with their geographic motion (speciation as a result of separation, etc)?

-Many people came up with similar ideas around this time. This is odd in some ways. Perhaps due to the movement of the World-Spirit…  Read more... (3840 words, estimated 15:22 mins reading time)

Samuel Huckins
04/24/06- Senior Seminar
The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud. Avon edition.
An interesting inscription on the title page: Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo. ["If I cannot bend Heaven, I will move Hell. (Aeneid VII, 1.312)"]

Chapter 2- The Method of Interpreting Dreams: an Analysis of a Specimen Dream  Read more... (1991 words, estimated 7:58 mins reading time)

• His aim is to show that dreams are capable of being interpreted.
• Interpretation of dreams implies assigning a meaning to them, i.e. replacing them by something which fits into the chain of our mental acts as a link having a validity and importance equal to the rest.
• Historically, people have both thought dreams absurd and meaningless and yet also accepted that dreams have meanings that can be unraveled. 2 methods have been employed: the symbolic method which gives the dream as a whole a symbolic meaning, and the decoding method which takes each sign in a dream as corresponding to signs in a pre-determined and fixed key of meanings.
• Neither method allows for a scientific approach. He will establish a scientific procedure for interpreting dreams.
• Unraveling the psychopathic structures in patients, showing their causes, removes the problems.

Notes on “On Instinct in Man and Animals”, by Alfred Wallace.

• Pleasure and Change- If a pleasure is associated with a certain beneficial activity there will be an advantage conferred, namely that the activity would be likely to be emulated within a population within a shorter period of time than mere genetic inheritance. However, this association will be disadvantageous in that it will be that much harder to stop the activity from occurring. In fact, it seems that such a pleasure would counter all but the strongest survival benefits to its cessation.
• It seems one readily associates a physical characteristic with instinct. I.e. Instinct has some physical cause, or is a manifestation of a physical structure or process. Is Wallace getting around instinct by saying that things called “instinctual” are really just caused by physical structure, or “organization”? Was not this obvious? Does this eliminate the idea of instinct, though? Consider examples like sea turtle hatchlings going to the ocean.
• His definition of instinct: “the performance by an animal of complex acts, absolutely without instruction or previously-acquired knowledge.”
• “Now, in a scientific inquiry, a point which can be proved should not be assumed, and a totally unknown power should not be brought in to explain facts, when known powers may be sufficient.”