Syllabus: Philosophical Psychology

This course will examine research programs in experimental psychology, including behaviorism, Gestalt, and cognitivism. The conception of psychological phenomena, data, and explanation in each of these traditions will be examined. Students will be expected both to understand the basic tenets of these traditions and to engage in critical evaluation of their adequacy. Major attention will be given to the establishment of the information processing tradition in cognitive psychology and the relevance of issues dealt with in that tradition to philosophical questions. Thus, we will consider recent work on propositional versus imagistic representation and on concepts and categorization. Lastly, we will consider recent claims that psychological results are relevant to issues in ethics. Students will be expected to be able to characterize what is controversial about the various claims advanced in these areas and to engage in critical analysis of these claims.

B. Course Requirements

Students are required to read the assigned materials, attend class regularly, and participate actively in the class discussions. The degree of participation can raise or lower the final grade.

Written work for the course will consist of three papers, based primarily on the assigned readings and class discussion. For undergraduates, each of these papers should be approximately 5 pages in length and will count equally. For graduate students the first two papers should be approximately 5 pages in length, while the final paper should be approximately 10 pages in length (the first two papers will each count 30%; the final paper 40%).

Recommended topics for these papers will be presented in class.

C. Schedule of Class Meetings and Assigned Readings

Note: Due to commitments to give talks, I will need to miss classes scheduled for September 23, 25, and October 14. We will attempt to find suitable times for make-up classes for these. If that proves impossible, two additional class meetings will be appended at the end of the course and the dates for covering various topics will be modified accordingly.

I. Research Traditions in Psychological Science

A. Philosophical Categories for Analyzing Scientific Research: theories, models, paradigms, and research traditions (August 28)

B. Some 19th Century Roots: Psychophysics, Brentano, Darwin, Spencer, Wundt, Functionalism (September 2, 4, 9)

• Weber, H. R. (1834). Excerpts from De pulsu, resorptione, auditu et tactu: anotationes anatomicae et physiologicae.
• Fechner, G. T. (1860). Excerpts from The measurement of sensation and The fundamental formula and the measurement formula. From Elemente der Psychophysik
• Darwin, C. (1859). Excerpts from chapter 7 of On the origin of species. London
• Wundt, W. (1896). Excerpts from Grundriss der Psychologie. Leipzig.
• James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Volume 1, chapter 5. (on consciousness)
• Angell, J. R. (1907). Excerpts from The province of functional psychology. Psychological Review, 14, 61-91

• Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158-177.
• Hempel, C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation, excerpts from part 1. In C. G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: Free Press
• Hull, C. (1943). The problem of intervening variables in molar behavior theory. Psychological Review, 50, 273-291.
• Skinner, B. F. (1984). Methods and theories in the experimental analysis of behavior. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, 511-523
• Skinner, B. F. (1945/84). The operational analysis of psychological terms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, 547-553.

• Köhler, W. (1930/1971). Human perception. In M. Henle (Ed.), The selected papers of Wolfgang Köhler, pp. 143-167. New York: Liveright.
• Kanizsa, G. (1994). Gestalt theory has been misinterpreted, but has also had some real conceptual difficulties. Philosophical Psychology, 7, 149-162
• Epstein, W. and Hatfield, G. (1994). Gestalt psychology and the philosophy of mind. Philosophical Psychology, 7, 163-181.
• van Leeuwen, C. and Stins, J. (1994). Perceivable information or: the happy marriage between ecological psychology and Gestalt. Philosophical Psychology, 7, 267-285.

E. The Cognitive Turn (October 7, 9, 16, and 20)

• Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
• Miller, G. A., Galanter, E., and Pribram, K. H. (1960). Plans and the structure of behavior, chapters 1, 2, and 4. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
• Newell, A. and Simon, H. A. (1973). Human Problem Solving, chapter 14
• Fodor, J. (1968/1971). Materialism. In D. M. Rosenthal (ed.), Materialism and the mind-body problem. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Putnam, H. (1967/1991). The nature of mental states. In D. M. Rosenthal (ed.), The nature of mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Neisser, U. (1997). The future of cognitive science: An ecological analysis. In D. M. Johnson and C. E. Erneling (Eds.), The future of the cognitive revolution. New York, Oxford.
• Bruner, J. (1997). Will cognitive revolutions ever stop? In D. M. Johnson and C. E. Erneling (Eds.), The future of the cognitive revolution. New York, Oxford.
• Donald, M. (1997). The mind considered from a historical perspective: Human cognitive phylogenesis and the possibility of continuing cognitive evolution. In D. M. Johnson and C. E. Erneling (Eds.), The future of the cognitive revolution. New York, Oxford.

A. Propositions versus images (October 28, 30, November 4)

• Shepard, R. N. and Metzler, J. (1971). Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects. Science, 171, 791-803.
• Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1981). The imagery debate: Analogue media versus tacit knowledge. Psychological Review, 88, 16-45.
• Kosslyn, S. (1995). Mental imagery. In S. M. Kosslyn and D. N. Osherson (Eds.). Visual cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Bechtel, W. and Abrahamsen, A. (1990). Beyond the exclusively propositional era. Synthese, 82, 223-253.

B. Concepts and Categorization (November 6, 11, 13, 18)

• Rosch, E. (1978). Principles of categorization. In E. Rosch and B. B. Lloyd (Eds.) Cognition and Categorization, pp. 27-48. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Armstrong, S., Gleitman, L. and Gleitman, H. (1983). What some concepts might not be. Cognition, 13, 263-308.
• Rey, G. (1983). Concepts and stereotypes. Cognition, 15, 237-262.
• Barsalou, L. W. (1987). The instability of graded structure: Implications for the nature of concepts. In U. Neisser (1987). Concepts and conceptual development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Barsalou, L. W. and Prinz, J. J. (1997). Mundane creativity in perceptual symbol systems. In T. B. Ward, S. M. Smith, and J. Vaid (eds.), Conceptual structures and processes: Emergence, discovery, and change. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

• Kohlberg, L. (1968). The child as moral philosopher. Psychology Today, 2, 4, 24-30.
• Flanagan, O (1991). discussion of Kohlberg in The science of mind. Second Edition, pp. 149-173. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Gilligan, C. and Attanucci, J. (1988). Two moral orientations. In C. Gilligan, J. V. Ward, and J. M. Taylor, Mapping the moral domain. Cambridge, Harvard.
• Johnson, M. (1996). How moral psychology changes moral theory. In L. May, M. Friedman, and A. Clark (Eds.), Mind and morals: Essays on ethics and cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
• Bechara, A. Damasio, A. R., Damasio, H., Anderson, S. W. (1994). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition, 50, 7-15.