What is the role of the doctrine of the soul in the philosophy of Descartes?

What, according to Descartes, are the main features of the concept of thinking substance?

The soul as a monad in Leibniz's metaphysics. The problem of the immortality of the soul. Pre-established harmony.

Literature

Descartes R. Works in 2 volumes, M., 1989-1994. T. 1. P. 78-100, 316, 327, 334-335, 348-349, 482-572; T. 2. pp. 20-28, 58-72.

Locke J., Works in 3 vols. M. 1985-1988. Parts 1-2 (Vol. 1), 4 (Vol. 2).

Leibniz G. Works in 4 volumes. M. 1982-1989. T. 1. P. 271-281, 413-429; T. 2. P. 47-271, 363-545.

Gartsev M. A. The problem of self-consciousness in Western European philosophy. M., 1987.

Zhuchkov V. A. German philosophy of the early Enlightenment. M., 1989. P. 71-126.

Zaichenko G. A. John Locke. M., 1988.

Mayorov G. G. Theoretical philosophy of G. Leibniz. M., 1973.

Sokolov V.V. Philosophy of spirit and matter of Rene Descartes // Descartes R. Works. T. 1. pp. 51-61.

Sokolov V.V. Introduction to classical philosophy. M., 1999.

Fischer K. Descartes. St. Petersburg, 1994. pp. 326-328, 347-348, 354-359, 393-419.

Fischer K. History of new philosophy. T. 3: Leibniz, his life, writings and teachings. St. Petersburg, 1905.

Chapter 2. Rational and empirical psychology in the teachings of H. Wolf

When starting a discussion of the doctrine of the soul in the philosophy of Christian Wolff, one should agree on the order of consideration of the relevant issues. First of all, it is necessary to give a brief outline of the foundations of his philosophy. Then it will be possible to begin the study of Wolffian psychology and its place in the system of metaphysics.

So, let's talk about Wolf's philosophical system as a whole. The first thing to note is that Wolf is a representative of the new scholasticism. Not “neo-scholasticism,” but precisely new scholasticism. He sums up the philosophical conclusion of the 17th century. He gives systematic form to the ideas of Descartes, Leibniz and Locke. The systematic efforts of Wolf and his students contributed to the introduction of the ideas of the new philosophy into university education programs. This was one of the reasons that caused the obvious progress of German philosophy in the 18th century. And despite some “secondary nature,” Wolf is in no way an epigone. He is still an independent philosopher, who is quite critical of Leibniz.

Recognition of Wolf's independence, of course, does not deny the fundamental circumstance that he consciously sought to synthesize previous concepts in all directions. This concerns not only the substantive aspects of his system, but also methodological settings. The main parameters of his method are, on the one hand, deductivism and “solidity”, on the other, the widespread use of experimental data. Orientation towards broad layers of the reading public (making Wolf a classic representative of the German Enlightenment) is manifested not only in his preference for German language Latin in the presentation of his philosophy (although after the publication of his main works in German, Wolf “duplicated” their main themes in detailed Latin treatises), but also in the extensive illustrative base of his metaphysics. Wolf was so passionate about the idea of ​​​​popularizing philosophy that he often fell into banality (let us remember his famous “example” with a window, when he explains to readers that a window is needed, firstly, so that light enters the room, and secondly, in order to see through it what is happening outside). Another very characteristic feature of his philosophy is pragmatism. Philosophy should not and cannot be useless. True, some branches of philosophy are “more useful” than others. Let's say that empirical psychology is more useful than rational psychology. The criterion of usefulness is very simple: the extent to which a particular discipline contributes to “practical” sciences - ethics, politics, etc. In his pragmatism, Wolff follows the ideas of the founders of modern philosophy, Descartes and Bacon.

Now is the time to talk about the structure of Wolff's philosophy. The main outlines of his system are outlined in “Rational Thoughts about God, the World, the Soul and All Things in General” (in short, Wolf himself calls this fundamental work of 1719 “Metaphysics”). The composition of the system is already specified in the name itself. The first major section is ontology (the study of “things in general”). Then Wolf examines the issues of empirical psychology (the term itself does not yet exist; it was introduced later by Wolf’s student L.F. Thümmig and adopted by the teacher, who for now uses the name “about the soul in general”). After this he moves on to the doctrine of peace. Then comes rational psychology (“about the essence of the soul and the spirit”). Theology completes the system.

The unifying thematic principle of all sections is monadology (somewhat more naturalistic than Leibniz's). The doctrine of simple substances or monads constitutes the main content of all parts of metaphysics. In this regard, the question cannot but arise about the legality of drawing rigid boundaries between them. It seems that with Wolf only the context in which monadology is presented changes.

Monadology is, of course, a Leibnizian trace in Wolff's philosophy. The influence of Descartes is manifested mainly in the fact that Wolf begins the presentation of his philosophical system with a statement about the reliability of the thesis about our own existence. The most notable Lockean influence is Wolf's thesis that all our concepts begin with sensations.

Why does Wolf place empirical psychology after ontology? Why does cosmology wedge itself between empirical and rational psychology? By the way, this composition seemed unsuccessful to Wolf’s students. Already L.F. Thümmig in “The Provisions of Wolff’s Philosophy” (1725) and G.B. Bilfinger in “Explanations” express a certain disagreement with Wolff, placing psychology behind cosmology. A. Baumgarten does the same in his famous “Metaphysics”. F. Baumeister does the same. It is interesting that Kant also followed this order in his lectures on metaphysics. But in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant begins his critical analysis of “particular metaphysics” with psychology.

The need to consider psychology after cosmology is caused, according to Wolf’s students, by the fact that the soul is one of the world’s substances, and therefore psychology inevitably turns out to be a special case of the general doctrine of the world, which naturally should precede this special section. But still, why does Wolf, who in principle agrees with these theses, choose other compositional solutions? To answer, we need to take a closer look at the structure of Wolff’s work. The first chapter of Metaphysics results in a thesis about the certainty of one’s own existence. Further, the ontological section examines the most general principles of the structure of existence. After this, Wolf must move on to the study of specific areas of existence. But where to start? In reality, much has already been decided. Theme I is stated at the very beginning, that is, in the introductory chapter. This is the first thing. Another significant point: the position of one’s own existence is of an empirical nature. And a concrete conversation about the kinds of beings should be conducted in such a way that the objects most closely related to experience are subject to analysis first. These are the soul and the world. Therefore, it is quite logical that Wolf begins with empirical psychology and continues with cosmology. Then he returns to the study of the soul, conducting it on a rational level (after all, it is rational psychology that presupposes a general doctrine of the world), and ends with the most rational and farthest from experience section - theology. It is worth emphasizing once again that Wolf himself, in “A detailed report on his own writings in German,” wrote that he agreed with his students that psychology should follow cosmology. However, empirical psychology, he continued, only externally relates to metaphysics, and therefore this rule does not apply to it. He placed it in the initial part also because it is the most understandable, simple and “useful” discipline. In addition, it works as a kind of counterbalance to the dry and “scholastic” ontology.

However, Wolf’s ontology is not at all divorced from psychology. There is a reciprocal relationship between them. As researchers of Wolffian metaphysics rightly note, the ontological model of Wolff’s teaching “about things in general” is the human soul (this observation is also true regarding Leibniz). On the other hand, in rational psychology, Wolff refers to many of the conclusions he made in the “ontological” section.

In any case, in the Latin Rational Psychology, Wolff sums up all these discussions, clearly articulating the thesis that rational psychology “presupposes ontology, cosmology and empirical psychology” (6: 3) (Hereinafter references are given to the list of references to the corresponding section, and the first digit corresponds to the serial number of the source in the list, the second - to the page; in the case of publications in several volumes, the second place is the volume number, separated by a comma from the page number).

Let's now talk about the relationship between empirical and rational psychology. First, we need to understand why Wolff distinguishes two sciences about the soul at all. Several answers can be given here. On the one hand, this is due to the difference between sensory and rational knowledge. The same thing can be investigated both with the help of experience and with the help of reason. This is also true for the soul. Secondly, each object, including the soul, can be considered both from the side of its external properties and from the side of its essence. These two explanations can be combined. Penetration into the essence of the soul is provided by reason, while the soul as a phenomenon is cognized in internal experience.

Thus, it may seem that in the case of Wolff’s distinction between empirical and rational psychology, we are dealing with the coincidence of subject and methodological criteria. These sciences differ both in subject and method, and the methodological difference entails the subject difference, and vice versa. However, despite the apparent obviousness of this assumption, it is still a certain idealization. In reality, the situation is far from so clear-cut. A real analysis of the material presented by Wolf shows that the methodological difference prevails over the substantive one, while thematically and substantively rational and empirical psychology largely coincide.

The fact is that Wolf quite clearly states the position according to which rational psychology must use the material obtained in empirical psychology. This is how he writes about it in the “Detailed Message”: “I divide psychology into two parts. The first deals with what is known about the human soul from experience, while the second explains everything from the nature and essence of the soul and indicates in them the basis of what is observed. I call the first part empirical psychology, the second – rational psychology” (3: 231). Empirical psychology thus constitutes a certain epistemological basis of rational psychology. It turns out that rational psychology is, as it were, an addition to empirical psychology and, in a certain sense, rises above it as a superstructure. From this we can draw an important conclusion: from the point of view of reliability, Wolff places empirical psychology obviously above rational psychology. Wolf talks about this directly. In addition, some of Wolf's statements suggest that he is generally inclined to treat rational psychology as at least partly a hypothetical discipline. It takes as its starting point some given fact, for example, the fact of the coincidence of mental and physical changes. Next, an attempt is made to explain its possibility. The situation is such that it is almost always possible to offer some alternative explanations - hence the hypothetical, or at least “quasi-hypothetical.”

Another significant advantage of empirical psychology over rational psychology is related to its benefits. It is useful for the “pragmatic” sciences - morality, politics, etc. The fact is, writes Wolf, that it is from experience that we learn “important truths” about the soul, from which not only the “rules of logic” that guide a person derive their proof in the knowledge of the truth, but “and the rules of morality” that lead him to good and turn him away from evil (3: 251). The basis of such teachings must be something self-evident. But experimental knowledge about the soul satisfies these criteria.

Rational psychology is, in many ways, the fruit of idle curiosity. But, on the other hand, it is a truly philosophical discipline. It is dedicated to discussing questions like: “how is it possible?” Wolf recognizes such problems as the proper work of metaphysics (by the way, given that posing the question “how is it possible?” is often considered, at the suggestion of Kant, as the main sign of the “criticality” of philosophy, Wolf can well be called a “criticist”).

All these, however, are preliminary remarks. Final conclusions can be drawn after completing a substantial consideration of Wolff’s presentation of the mentioned disciplines in Metaphysics. This choice is partly explained by the fact that it was Wolff’s German version of empirical and rational psychology that had a decisive influence on German philosophical psychology, while his special Latin psychological treatises caused a somewhat lesser resonance in Germany (although, say, in France in the 18th century they were primarily known ), despite the fact that they can be very informative for explaining some of Wolf’s fundamental theses.

Let's start with empirical psychology. In “Metaphysics,” Wolf opens the experimental study of the psyche with the definition of the soul, saying that by soul he understands “a thing that is aware of itself and other things outside of it, just as we are aware of ourselves and things outside of us” (2: 1, 107).

This position contains the premises that specify Wolff’s interpretation of the soul. Consciousness of oneself and things different from oneself presupposes the possibility of distinguishing oneself from them. We can say that the ability to distinguish between things is the main character of Wolffian psychology. It is through her that Wolf interprets the concepts of clarity and distinctness, which, in turn, determine the distinctive features of the various faculties of the soul. However, genetic analysis of the abilities of the soul is the prerogative of rational psychology. As for clarity and distinctness as such, Wolff gives them traditional definitions, which he drew from the works of Descartes and Leibniz. Clarity of a representation occurs when we can distinguish it from another representation; distinctiveness occurs when we can explain this difference, which involves distinguishing the parts or components of a given representation.

Starting the empirical part of psychology, Wolf does not specify its tasks in any way, saying only that he is not going to “show here what the soul is and how changes arise in it.” His intention is “simply to tell what we perceive in it in everyday experience” (2: 1, 106). And only in retrospect can we clarify the goals of empirical psychology and state that it solves the following problems. Firstly, it deals with the classification of the abilities of the soul and assigning them to classes of “higher” or “lower” mental forces. It should be noted that we're talking about not just about cognitive abilities. Empirical psychology is not identical to so-called “epistemology” or epistemology. A person is considered here in the unity of his cognitive, emotional (feeling) and moral powers. Secondly, the empirical doctrine of the soul provides definitions of fundamental psychological concepts. The most important of these are the concepts of clarity and distinctness already mentioned above. Thirdly, empirical psychology studies a psychophysical problem at the level of generalization of basic experimental data on this issue.

In the classification of the main cognitive powers (and he also identifies many secondary abilities), Wolf is quite traditional. He lists sensuality, imagination, memory, reason, reason. The definitions he gives of them are indeed (i.e., as stated by Wolff in the program of empirical psychology) largely based on introspection, although some of them contain hidden ontological assumptions.

The sensation of feelings, for example, is interpreted by Wolf as a state of mind that arises due to external influence on our sense organs: “Thoughts that have a basis in changes in the organs of our body and are stimulated by bodily things outside of us, we will call sensations, and the ability to feel - feelings” ( 2:1, 122).

In contrast to sensation, an image is the representation of an absent object: “Representations of absent things are usually called images , and the ability of the soul to produce such ideas is called imagination” (2: 1, 130). The images are less vivid than the sensations. The imagination can either reproduce previous sensations or generate new images from the original experimental data. If the sensations are weakened and the images have nothing to compare with, their relative brightness increases, and they can even be confused with the sensations themselves, as happens in a dream.

The next fundamental cognitive ability of the soul is memory. Memory, according to Wolf, is the consciousness of what is represented in this moment has already been perceived before. “In order that we may recognize reproduced thoughts as something we have already had before, we attribute memory to the soul” (2: 1, 139). It is important for Wolf to distinguish between memory and reproductive imagination. Imagination is responsible for the reproduction of ideas, while the essence of memory consists precisely in the consciousness of their identity with what was previously felt. “Otherwise imagination and memory will not be sufficiently different from each other. Thus, nothing remains for memory except the knowledge that we have previously had a thought. And this, in fact, is the action of memory, by which we recognize it and distinguish it from other faculties of the soul” (2: 1, 140).

Reason is the ability to perceive things clearly. “This is the difference between reason and feelings and imagination, that where there are only the latter, ideas in best case scenario may be clear, but not distinct, whereas the addition of reason makes them distinct” (2: 1, 153). It is in these words that Wolf clearly formulates the famous (“Leibniz-Wolffian”) concept of the quantitative difference between reason and sensuality and other lower faculties of the soul, which was later sharply criticized by Kant. He immediately gives the definition of “pure reason”, which is in no way connected with sensory images. However, Wolf adds, the human mind is “never completely pure” (2: 1, 157).

The next most important cognitive ability is the mind. Reason is the ability to clearly perceive the internal “connection of truths” or judgments, as well as events (2: 1: 224).

Rational knowledge is opposed to experienced knowledge. By experience, Wolf means “the knowledge that we achieve by paying attention to our sensations and mental changes” (2: 1, 181).

All of the above are basic abilities. However, as already noted, Wolf also defines other cognitive forces. For example, he calls attention the attempt to give distinctness to our clear ideas. Wolf also talks a lot about judgments, which he interprets as ideas about the connection of concepts. He also examines related topics in some detail, for example, the “philosophical” foundations of word usage and the functions of signs.

In the process of analyzing perception, Wolf sometimes makes a kind of “phenomenological observations,” showing that behind the external simplicity of mental actions lies the richness and diversity of cognitive acts. Here is a typical example (based on § 334 of the first book of Wolff’s “Metaphysics”). Let us take, at first glance, an elementary experimental judgment that fixes some given thing, say, “this is a table.” In fact, Wolf argues, such a judgment involves many cognitive activities. It is necessary, firstly, to perceive a given thing, secondly, to pay attention to its form, thirdly, to correlate this form with the essence of the thing, albeit vaguely imagined, and, finally, to understand the meaning of the corresponding name. And these are far from elementary components.

Another important feature of Wolff's research in empirical psychology is that he attempts to establish certain psychological laws that manifest themselves in the actions of mental faculties. For example, if we talk about sensation, then Wolf discovers the law of repression in the perception of weak sensations by strong ones. It also fixes the limits of our power over sensations. Another interesting psychological law concerns the relationship between clear and distinct in our ideas. Clarity always extends one level further than distinctness. However, this law has a very conditional relationship to empirical psychology, since it directly follows from the definition of the clear and distinct and the recognition that our mind is “never completely pure.” Wolf also analyzes the law of association of representations. The imagination always tries to complete past images on the basis of newly perceived fragments of previous sensations. Memory also functions according to very specific rules, which Wolf does not miss an opportunity to record. For example, clear and distinct sensations are remembered much better than vague ones. Repetition also promotes memorization.

All these and other laws identified by Wolf are on the verge of philosophical and “scientific” psychology. From his reasoning about the mechanisms of memory and association, it is one step to setting up specific psychological experiments (say, to what extent, in quantitative terms, the blurriness of images reduces the effectiveness of their memorization), which takes us into the “scientific” doctrine of the soul. On the other hand, noting the essential characteristics of the cognitive abilities of the soul and the complexity of cognitive acts, Wolf is halfway to introspective (phenomenological) psychology. However, there is no need to talk about any possible differences between the attitudes of phenomenological and experimental psychology in Wolf’s works: all these possibilities are fused in his single program of “empirical teaching about the soul.”

At the end of the chapter on empirical psychology, Wolf touches on the question of the relationship between soul and body. Wolf states that the states of the soul are parallel to certain bodily movements: “When external things produce a change in the organs of our senses, then sensations immediately arise in our soul, i.e. we are immediately aware of these things” (2: 1, 323). The opposite ratio also occurs (2: 1, 327). Wolf emphasizes that experience cannot prove the interaction of soul and body. It only shows the correspondence of their states. “We perceive no more than that two things are simultaneous, namely, the change taking place in the senses, and the thought by which the soul is aware of the external things which cause this change. But we in no way experience the action of the body in the soul. After all, if this were to happen, we would have to have, if not a distinct, but at least a clear concept of it. But whoever pays close attention to himself will discover that he has not the slightest idea about such an action. And therefore we cannot say that [the idea of] the action of the body in the soul is based on experience. Anyone who wants to be precise can attribute to experience no more than that two things are simultaneous. But from this we cannot conclude that one is the cause of the other, or that one arises from the other” (2: 1, 323-324). The parallelism of mental and physical states can be explained in different ways. But explanations must be given in rational psychology.

Note that the chapter on empirical psychology discusses more than just cognitive abilities in detail. Wolf also touches on the question of the sensual nature of man.

Wolff calls pleasure the feeling that arises when contemplating perfection: “When we contemplate perfection, pleasure arises in us, so that pleasure is nothing other than the contemplation of perfection, which Cartesius already noted” (2: 1, 247). Displeasure has the opposite nature and sources. If perfection is not imaginary, then pleasure is sustainable. “Pleasure is constant when we know the perfection of a thing or can prove it” (2: 1, 249).

Wolf also paid a lot of attention to the practical component of human life. Wolff calls good that which promotes perfection. The desire for good is desire. If the object of desire is not clearly conceived, then this desire (Begierde) is sensual. Wolff calls intensified sensual desires affects. Affects are “pleasant, unpleasant and mixed” (2: 1, 269-270).

If the desire is distinct, then we can speak of a rational desire, or volition (Willen). A clear idea of ​​the good provides a kind of guarantee of its authenticity. However, the human will is never completely free from sensory desires - this is due to the impossibility of a person realizing the ideal of “pure reason” and “pure reason”.

Volition belongs to the highest faculties of the soul. Belonging to this class of mental forces is determined by one criterion - the clarity of the ideas corresponding to them. Therefore, the first higher ability turns out to be reason as the main “supplier” of clarity. The highest ability is the mind.

Let's move on to the analysis of Wolf's rational psychology. In the corresponding section of “Reasonable Thoughts,” Wolf continues his exploration of the soul. He recalls that he had already spoken about psychological problems in the chapter devoted to “the soul in general” (i.e., in the empirical-psychological section), but emphasizes that there was talk about the soul “only insofar as we can perceive and achieve a clear concept of her". “Now,” he continues, “we must investigate what the essence of the soul and spirit in general is and how what we perceive in it and noted above is based in it” (2: 1, 454). The first and one of the main tasks he solves in the chapter on the essence of the soul is the reduction of the soul’s abilities to one basic force - the power of representation (note that, unlike “Metaphysics”, in the Latin “Rational Psychology” Wolf somewhat weakened the reductionist ideas and, in general, partially blurred the boundaries between rational and empirical psychology). The need for such a reduction is due to the fact that the soul is a simple thing. Simple thing cannot have many basic powers. The fact is that, as is known from ontology, each such force expresses the essence of a simple substance. But one thing cannot have many entities.

This is how Wolf himself says about this: “There cannot be many forces different from each other in the soul, since otherwise each force would require a special independent thing to which it would belong” (2: 1, 464). “And thus there is but one single power in the soul, from which all its changes proceed, although because of its various changes we give it different names” (2:1, 464-465).

So, Wolf poses the problem of psychological reduction and believes that it should be possible. It is interesting that Kant, knowing this argument, did not agree with its conclusions and said that from the unconditional presence of one primary ability it is impossible to draw a conclusion about the real possibility of the mentioned reduction (it is also interesting that Kant related this issue to empirical psychology).

Wolf recognizes the main strength of the human soul as the ability to represent the world according to the position of the human body in it. This power is known to us by its actions (2: 1, 465-466). Let's say, if we pay attention to the act of sensation, we will see that it is a representation of the complex in the simple, that is, in the soul, and the specificity of what is felt is determined by the state of the body and its bodily environment. All bodies interact with each other. Therefore, we can say that in sensation we represent the whole world, but clearly only those things that are next to us. One way or another, such observations lead us to the conclusion that the main power of the human soul is the ability to represent the world and that “the soul has the power to represent the world in accordance with the position of its body in the world” (2: 1, 468).

Psychological reduction based on these conclusions is carried out by Wolf as follows. Sensation is a representation (Vorstellung) that arises in the soul as a result of the influence of external objects on our senses. Imagination is the representation of absent things. Memory is a composite ability: it presupposes imagination and is the consciousness that we have experienced an imaginary object previously (that is, memory also includes a component of representation). Reason is a more distinct representation of things than imagination. Judgment is an idea of ​​the connection between concepts. Reason is also interpreted by Wolf as a derived ability. It is the ability to form inferences and involves memory and sensation. Memory and imagination (or reason) provide a larger premise, a smaller sensation. With the simultaneous presence of both, the conclusion occurs as if automatically (paradoxically, all this is very reminiscent of the reasoning of the extreme sensualist E. Condillac, a philosopher who seemed to be the exact opposite of Wolf). Desire “automatically” arises when imagining a pleasant thing (Spinozist variations). Volition - when it is clearly represented. Thus, Wolff argues, all abilities are modifications of the power of representation. Wolf makes a comparison with fire. The fiery force is one, but we call it differently, depending on its actions. Also with the soul.

Let us note, however, that this reduction, in essence, differs little from Locke’s classification of modes simple ideas reflections. It is quite external in nature. Later, namely, in the chapters on Hume and Tetens, we will see what dynamics can be given to the reductionist program.

Wolf begins rational psychology with the analysis of consciousness. He recalls the definition of the soul given at the beginning of empirical psychology. The soul is a thing that is aware of itself and things outside it. Consciousness presupposes the ability to distinguish oneself from other things. The ability to differentiate is related to the clarity of ideas. Thus clarity and distinctness give rise to consciousness. But these are not all the essential moments of consciousness. Wolf captures its temporal nature (2: 1, 458-459). All perception occurs in time. We must distinguish parts of time and remember the previous moments of perception, connecting and, in a certain sense, while maintaining the differences of these moments, identifying them with the present, i.e. we must understand that we perceive the same thing. Thus, consciousness involves the reproduction of ideas with the help of imagination, as well as memory and reflection, correlating ideas with each other and with the Self.

Interestingly, approximately these arguments were reproduced by Kant in his discussion of the so-called “synthesis of recognition” in the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (these parts of the Critique became real “tidbits” for phenomenologists). It is also interesting that Kant also refers them to the field of empirical psychology (as well as all reductionist problematics).

In the section on rational psychology, Wolf pays great attention to the problem of justifying the possibility of interaction between soul and body. He examines several alternative explanations, generally following Leibniz. First of all, it is a theory of the natural influence of the soul on the body and vice versa. Its main disadvantage is that it implies a disruption of the natural course of natural events and mental processes. The occasionalist concept suffers from the same drawback (Wolf for some reason associates it with the name of Descartes, and not Malebranche).

The only one possible variant explanations of psychophysical parallelism - the theory of pre-established harmony of soul and body. However, it is not without difficulties. The most serious of them, according to Wolf, is due to the fact that it is unclear what exactly in the body corresponds to acts of rational comprehension in the soul. However, Wolf argues that this difficulty is completely solvable and that these acts correspond to bodily movements that accompany the utterance of words corresponding to the concepts of reason.

Here Wolff discusses the paradox: a body deprived of a soul can behave intelligently (here he takes Descartes’s reasoning about living mechanisms to its logical extreme). There is nothing to be done about this, you just need to remember that he still does not have a soul, and therefore consciousness, thinking, etc. (although it will be quite meaningful to reason about this creature).

Wolf also examines the differences between human and animal souls. Wolf calls the spirit an entity endowed with reason and will ( human souls, thereby, perfume). Animals are not spirits. They don't use words. This means they have no common concepts. No general concepts - no reason and reason. There is no reason, which means there is no will, since will presupposes a clear representation of the object of volition.

However, this does not mean that animals do not have souls. There are souls, and animals can feel, imagine, remember. They even have an analogue of reason: the expectation of similar cases (by the way, the difference between this expectation and the rational principle of sufficient reason, according to Wolf, is only quantitative).

The last of the topics discussed by Wolf in rational psychology is the problem of the immortality of the soul. Wolf distinguishes between the concepts of incorruptibility and immortality. Everything is imperishable, even parts of matter. But we do not say that they are immortal. Immortality presupposes the consciousness of the identity of ourselves in time. Animals do not have such consciousness. Therefore, their souls are not immortal. As an argument in favor of preserving such consciousness after death, Wolf argues about the need to improve the soul and about the insufficiency of our life for this.

Wolf's school systematically presented and simplified his ideas. For example, A. Baumgarten in his famous “Metaphysics” (1739) talks about rational psychology on almost several pages. Of the thousand paragraphs of his Latin textbook, there are only fifty-nine on rational psychology. In his presentation of rational psychology, Baumgarten follows Wolf, although there is a serious difference between some of the provisions of his doctrine of the soul from the theses of Wolf’s “Rational Thoughts”. Baumgarten does not believe that rational psychology is largely based on empirical material. He asserts their relative independence. The fact is that the structure of human abilities can be learned both a posteriori and a priori. Therefore, rational psychology can get by on its own, almost without drawing on empirical material (however, the difference between Baumgarten and Wolff in this matter should not be exaggerated, and tendencies similar to those noted in Baumgarten can, if desired, be found in Wolff’s writings, since his statements on a number of fundamental issues were not unambiguous).

In the opening paragraphs of the section on rational psychology in Metaphysics, Baumgarten defines the human soul, establishing that it is endowed with the power of representing the world, is spirit and substance. It is indivisible, i.e. it is a monad and cannot arise (although it is random). The soul has many abilities and moves its body. In paragraph 752, Baumgarten defines feeling, imagination, foresight through representation (present, past and future), thereby following Wolf's reductionist method. From ideas grow desire and volition. Since the soul can clearly imagine the world, its will is free. Next (from paragraph 761) Baumgarten abruptly moves on to a discussion of systems that explain the interaction of soul and body. In listing them, he follows Wolff's classification. Next he briefly considers the question of the origin of the soul. After this, Baumgarten turns to the problems of immortality. Death is the cessation of mental-physical harmony. All substances are incorruptible, therefore the soul is too. The question is only about the state of the soul after death. The soul retains its nature, Baumgarten argues. In the sixth section of rational psychology, Baumgarten talks about the structure of animal souls. The hallmark of the animal soul is exceptional sensuality. The interpretation of animal souls is exactly the same as that of Wolf. The last and shortest section deals with finite spirits other than the human soul. But their properties are the same. They have a clear vision of the world, but they also have dark ideas. They are immortal, etc. The discussion of these topics is even more curtailed by F. Baumeister (it is interesting that Baumeister, following the tradition begun by Thümmig, actually recognizes the hypothetical nature of some provisions of rational psychology. Thus, he leaves open question about the mechanisms of interaction between soul and body, simply listing possible solutions) - a Wolffian who, however, loved to turn to Latin poetry for confirmation of his thoughts. But empirical psychology is presented in detail both by Baumgarten and Baumeister, and by many other students of Wolf. However, here too, almost everywhere we see a repetition of Wolf’s well-known definitions. Let us note that the Wolffian school of empirical psychology still fails to find ways of possibly transforming this discipline into a rigorous science populated by interesting problems and complex questions. New horizons of empirical psychology were opened by D. Hume, to the study of whose doctrine of the soul we are now moving on.

Empirical psychology of consciousness. Empiricism and associationism

Introduction

Chapter IEmpiricism

Chapter II Associationism

Chapter III Empirical psychology of consciousness

3.1 Empirical psychology and its main directions

3.2 The foundation of empirical psychology in the works of John Locke

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

The 18th century was marked by the further strengthening and development of capitalist relations in advanced countries. The industrial revolution took place, turning England into a powerful power. Profound economic changes led to a political revolution in France at the end of the century. Feudal foundations in Germany were being shaken. Socio-economic changes gave rise to ideological forms that opposed the theological worldview. In the fight against it, a movement called “Enlightenment” expanded. It was directed against everything that hindered the growth of science and the scientific worldview. The concept of “natural man”, which had developed in the 17th century, was strengthened. and embodying the principle of formal bourgeois equality. Sensualism and empiricism become the main methodological commandments as opposed to rationalism and apriorism. It was in this atmosphere that psychological thought took shape.

Chapter I . Empiricism

(Empiricism; Empiric) - in philosophy - a direction in the theory of knowledge that recognizes sensory experience as a source of knowledge and believes that the content of knowledge can either be presented as a description of this experience, or reduced to it. The empirical approach in psychology describes and studies specific phenomena of mental life, Jung defined his psychology as empirical, meaning that it was based more on concrete research and experiment than on theory." He saw this as the opposite of speculation or ideology and believed that empiricism has the advantage of presenting facts in the most accurate way, although it is limited underestimation of the value of ideas Empirical thinking is no less rational than ideological thinking; Jung discussed these two approaches in relation to introversion, which he considered as an expression of empiricism, while extraversion turned out to be more inherent in the ideological type (KSAP, p. 167).

The word "empirical" is derived from the Greek word "empeira", which means "experience".

All true knowledge, Locke declared, stems from experience, i.e. from the perception of the surrounding reality using the senses. But a person’s “soul” cannot serve as the subject of such perception. No matter how much a person tries to observe his “soul,” he is unable to do it. Internal experience provides knowledge only about individual mental states or processes. From this Locke concluded that the subject of psychology can only be mental processes or states, and not the “soul.”

Empirical psychology sought to build all its conclusions on observation and experiment. These methods of experimental research were borrowed by empirical psychology from the natural sciences, which began to develop rapidly in the 17th century. However, in empirical psychology, these methods have lost their objective nature (the focus on knowing objects and phenomena of the external world, the world of objects), turning into methods of introspection and subjective experiment (the focus on knowing the internal, subjective processes of human consciousness).

Chapter II . Associationism

ASSOCIANISM - associative psychology, trends in psychology in which the concept of association acted as a chapter. will explain. the principle of all psychic life; A. sought to establish a strictly causal approach to human behavior and consciousness. Philosophical Encyclopedia

Associationism is also a theory of associative psychology that reduces mental processes, primarily thinking, to the association of ideas. New dictionary foreign words. by EdwART, 2009. associationism a, plural. no, m. (... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Associationism (associationism) - Assoc. ideas is the intuitive idea that ideas are grouped together (associated) in some interpretable way. For example, when we hear the word “horse”, we are likely to think of “animal”, “rider” or “horse”, but not of... ... Psychological Encyclopedia

Associations acted as the main explanatory principle of all mental life; A. sought to establish a strictly causal approach to human behavior and consciousness. A. is based on the idea that the sequence of ideas that arise in the mind reflects the order of external influences on the body. It was assumed that since the interaction of an organism with the physical world occurs according to the laws of mechanics, then connections of ideas arise according to the same laws. This position, first put forward by the English philosopher T. Hobbes, was developed by the Dutch philosopher B. Spinoza, who formulated the law of association: “If the human body was once subjected to the action of two or more bodies simultaneously, then the soul, subsequently imagining one of them, will immediately remember and about others” (“Ethics”, in the book: Selected works, vol. 1, M., 1957, p. 423). The term “association” was first used by the English philosopher J. Locke (in 1698), who, however, used it to designate “... incorrect and unnatural combinations of ideas...” (“An Essay on the Human Mind,” in the book: Selected Philosophers .prod., vol. 1, M., 1960, p. 400), contrasting them with connections based on reason. In the middle of the 18th century. The English philosopher D. Hartley, relying on the mechanics of I. Newton, substantiated the theory that all manifestations of mental life, including reason and will, are subject to the law of association - universal and inevitable, like the law of universal gravitation. The influence of this theory, which believed that any connection between ideas and actions is deduced from sensations and the traces they leave in the brain, was extremely great. It extended not only to psychology, but also to ethics, aesthetics, biology, pedagogy, and logic. In contrast to this natural scientific trend, the idealistic philosophy of the English philosophers J. Berkeley and D. Hume arose, who argued that the connection between mental elements is given within consciousness and is purely subjective. At the beginning of the 19th century, A.’s characteristic view of the complex processes of consciousness as a product of the combination of elements (sensations, ideas) led to to the straightforward mechanistic concept of the English philosopher J. Mill, according to which the entire edifice of mental life is made up of “bricks” - sensations and the “cement” connecting them - associations. In an effort to soften the extremes of this concept, the English philosophers J. S. Mill and A. Bain modernized it, recognizing that qualitatively new mental units can arise from sensations.

The principles of A. fertilized progress psychological research, in particular, the development of new methods for studying memory [mechanical (G. Ebbinghaus - Germany) and figurative (F. Galton - England)], emotions (C. Darwin - England), motivation (Z. Freud - Austria, C. Jung - Switzerland ). A reorientation is taking place. Instead of outdated mechanistic explanations, biological ones are put forward (G. Spencer - England, I.M. Sechenov - Russia). The concept of A. is transformed into a new physiological basis in the doctrine of conditioned reflexes and Behaviorism. Some psychological schools(Würzburg school and Gestalt psychology (See Gestalt psychology)) criticized A. for mechanism, atomism, and inability to explain the integrity and activity of consciousness. From the standpoint of Marxist psychology, this criticism was one-sided and, although it contained rational aspects, it ignored historical meaning A., his contribution to the causal explanation of mental activity.

Chapter III . Empirical psychology of consciousness

3.1 Empirical psychology and its main directions

The emergence of the empirical trend in psychology is associated with the name of the English philosopher J. J. Locke (1632-1704).

Empirical psychology believed that mental processes by their nature are inaccessible to objective observation, which is a method of scientific research in natural science, that in psychology only internal observation, or introspection, is possible, during which a person can observe only his own mental experiences. Naturally, the method of introspection, due to its subjective nature, could not ensure the construction of a truly scientific psychology.

Empirical psychology viewed consciousness as self-contained directly given to a person inner world mental experiences, governed by its own laws, the knowledge of which is possible only through internal experience or introspection.

This statement was based on an idealistic understanding of the nature of the psyche.

Empirical psychology took the position of dualism, that is, the idealistic doctrine that the world consists of two independent and unrelated principles - spiritual and material.

Representatives of dualism considered extension to be the main feature of material phenomena. Mental phenomena do not differ in such extent: thoughts, feelings, desires cannot be said to have dimensions, to be on the right or left, etc. Their distinctive feature is that they are given only in the human mind. This served as the basis for dualist philosophers to distinguish these phenomena into a special spiritual world, existing and developing according to its own laws completely independently of the phenomena of the extended material world.

Dualism has created insurmountable difficulties for empirical psychology in solving the so-called psychophysical problem.

Experimental data show that there is a certain connection between bodily processes in the body and internal mental processes. Violation of the correct flow of physiological processes immediately leads to corresponding changes in the course of mental processes. For example, depending on the physical state of the body, a person feels either tired or cheerful. The need to scientifically explain this connection is the essence of the psychophysical problem. Several theories have been proposed in empirical psychology to address this problem.

The theory of psychophysical interaction argued that there is interaction between mental phenomena and material processes in the body: physiological processes affect mental ones and vice versa. However, this conclusion contradicted the basic principle of dualism, according to which the mental, not differing in extension, cannot turn into the physical, just as the physical cannot turn into the mental. Standing on the position of dualism, it was impossible to simultaneously recognize the truth of the theory of psychophysical interaction.

The theory of psychophysical parallelism argued that physiological and mental processes proceed only in parallel, being completely independent of each other. For example, when certain physiological (nervous and muscular) processes occur in a person’s body while walking, a certain change in mental experiences occurs in his consciousness simultaneously, but completely independently of the first ones (the person perceives his walking).

According to this theory, neuromuscular processes, on the one hand, and motor sensations, on the other, exist simultaneously, but only as parallel and essentially unrelated processes: a series of material phenomena in the body and, independently of it, an existing series of mental phenomena in human consciousness coincide with each other in time so that certain changes in one series correspond to strictly defined, but completely independent of the first, changes in the second series.

What explains this amazing parallelism?

Representatives of dualistic philosophy, following its founder Descartes, taking the position of idealism, argued that although the world consists of two principles - material and spiritual, yet the basis of the world lies and is controlled by the spiritual (divine) principle. The parallel existence of material and spiritual phenomena so different in essence, observed in experience, is the result of “pre-established harmony.” This explanation shows that the theory of psychophysical parallelism is unscientific, and at the same time the somewhat scientific basis of empirical psychology is destroyed.

During its existence, empirical psychology managed to collect a large amount of material on the subjective characteristics of individual mental processes, for example, sensations, memory, attention, etc. However, with all this, it turned out to be completely untenable and unable to create scientific psychology, because in understanding the subject of psychology it stood on the position of idealism.

In its development, empirical psychology gave rise to many directions that described and explained mental processes in different ways, but agreed with each other in the idealistic interpretation of their essence.

Structural psychology, like all other areas of empirical psychology, differing from them in details, considered the essence of mental processes idealistically, as determined by the internal mental laws of their structure. Based on this position, Gestaltists tried to explain the behavior of animals as determined not by the interaction of the organism with the environment, but by the structural features of the actions performed by animals. The Gestalt theory of animal behavior put forward by Köhler was sharply criticized by I.P. Pavlov, who revealed its idealistic essence.

The failure of these and other directions of empirical psychology is explained not by one or another shortcomings inherent in each individual direction, but by the idealistic understanding of the essence of mental processes common to all of them.

Empirical psychology, through introspection and experiment, has been able to accumulate a certain amount of descriptive knowledge about mental processes. However, she accumulated this knowledge in spite of her idealistic basis and dualistic understanding of human nature. Since the explanation of mental processes was given by empirical psychology, based on an idealistic understanding of the nature of the psyche, it could not give a truly scientific explanation of the facts it had accumulated.

The term "empirical psychology" was coined German philosopher XVIII century X. Wolf to designate a special discipline whose task was to study specific phenomena of mental life, in contrast to rational psychology, which dealt with the eternal, immortal soul. Empirical psychology of consciousness was developed in the works of French materialists and educators J. Lametrie, C. Helvetius, E. Condillac. Representatives of French empirical psychology more attention, than the English associationists, paid attention to the activity of the subject in the perception of the surrounding world, considering the psyche from a natural scientific position.

3.2 The foundation of empirical psychology in the works of John Locke

empirical psychophysical parallelism cognition

The real “father” of empirical psychology is John Locke (1632-1704), an outstanding English philosopher, teacher, doctor by training, political figure, ideologist of the revolution of 1688. In 1690, John Locke’s main philosophical work, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (4th ed., 1700), was published. During Locke's lifetime the book was translated into French and had a strong influence on the development of French philosophy and psychology. In 1693, his pedagogical work “Thoughts on Education” was published.

Locke's goal was to investigate the origins of certainty and the extent of human knowledge. It all starts with a critique of the theory of innate ideas. It is directed mainly against medieval scholastic teaching, which recognized the innateness of most general principles and concepts, but also against Descartes. “I do not assert,” wrote Descartes, “that the spirit of the baby in the womb reflects on metaphysical questions, but it has ideas about God, about itself, and about all those truths that are known in themselves, as they are in adults.” when they don't think about these truths at all." Locke opposes all arguments in defense of the innateness of knowledge with the proposition that it is possible to prove its origin. Locke considers the human soul as a certain passive, but capable of perception, medium; he compares it to a blank board on which nothing is written, or to an empty room in which there is nothing. These comparisons relate only to knowledge. Locke did not deny natural inclinations, inclinations, and constitutional differences between people. The source of knowledge is experience as the individual life story of an individual. Locke first turns to the very beginnings of spiritual life, which lie in childhood. “Follow a child from his birth and observe the changes produced by time, and you will see how, thanks to the feelings, the soul is more and more enriched with ideas, more and more awakened, and thinks the more intensely, the more material it has for thinking.” Experience has two sources. Locke called the first source sensation. Its object is objects of nature, external material things; organ - external sense (vision, hearing, etc.); the product is ideas. “In this way we receive the ideas of yellow, white, hot, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those ideas which we call sensible qualities.” The second source is reflection, internal perception, the activity of our mind. Its object is ideas acquired previously; organ (or instrument) - the activity (ability, in Locke's terminology) of our mind (perception, thinking, doubt, faith, reasoning, desire and all the diverse activities of our mind); the product is ideas of a different kind which we could not obtain from external things. Inner experience provides both knowledge about the external world and, even more so, about ourselves.

All ideas come from either one source or another. Locke distinguishes, but does not separate them from each other: sensation is the beginning of knowledge, reflection arises after and on the basis of sensations. Consequently, sensation is ultimately the source of all knowledge. “There is nothing in the mind that is not in the senses” - this sensualist thesis, which was expressed by Hobbes and Gassendi, is defended and developed materialistically by Locke. The division of experience into external and internal gave rise to introspective psychology as the science of internal experience, the method of which is introspection.

Ideas, according to Locke, can be simple or complex. A simple idea contains only one idea or perception in the mind, not dividing into different ideas. These are elements of knowledge. They constitute the material of all knowledge and are delivered to the soul in two indicated ways - through sensation and reflection. With Locke, the atomistic elementalist attitude begins in the study of the content of consciousness: the simple is primary, the complex is secondary and derivative from it. In the doctrine of simple and complex ideas, Locke considers important issues of cognition: the relationship between ideas and things, the activity of cognition.

We have ideas in our souls. They correspond to qualities in things. Locke distinguished three kinds of qualities: primary, secondary, and also tertiary, which, in essence, are reduced to secondary, so that the main distinction is made between primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are real, completely inseparable qualities, regardless of whether we perceive them or not. The simple ideas they generate - density, extension, shape, etc. - accurately reproduce them. Secondary qualities - colors, sounds, smells, etc., are not actually found in things, they exist as long as we feel, and depend on the primary ones, namely on the volume, shape, structure and movement of particles. “Primary qualities are similarities, secondary ones are considered but are not similarities, tertiary qualities are not considered and are not similarities.” The division of qualities into primary and secondary contains the possibility of an idealistic separation of sensation from the object. Berkeley and Diderot came out of Locke. In the perception of simple ideas, the mind is for the most part passive, “the mind is also little free not to accept these simple ideas when they are presented to the soul, to change them when they are impressed, to cross them out and create new ones, just as a mirror can not accept, or change, or erase the images or ideas that the objects placed in front of him evoke in him.” Although Locke is not always consistent when describing simple ideas of reflection, he says that the mind is often not completely passive, yet in general he is faithful to the thesis about the passivity of the cognizing subject when perceiving simple ideas: external influences influence consciousness, bypassing the activity of the cognizing subject . Here the idea emerges that activity in cognition is the reason for the departure from adequate cognition of the object. Modern research in the field of philosophy and psychology of cognition has convincingly shown the inconsistency of this approach. The orientation towards object-oriented cognition is assessed as naturalistic; To explain the work of consciousness, the mechanism of reflection is used.

Unlike simple ones, complex ideas are combinations of them, united together under one common name. Complex ideas are formed by the mind arbitrarily as a result of the following actions: connection, summation of simple ideas; comparison, comparison; generalization through previous abstraction. Locke gave an outline of the process of generalization, which includes the following operations. First, we empirically select, if possible, all the individual objects about which we want to obtain general concept. These objects are divided into their constituent properties, then compared according to these properties. After this, ideas that are not repeated in objects are isolated and discarded (this is called abstraction). Then those ideas that are repeated in all objects are abstracted, that is, isolated. These ideas are summarized, which gives a set of ideas that makes up the desired complex general idea, which is denoted by the word. Locke's theory of ascent from simple ideas to the hard way highlighting what individual things and facts have in common has been used for a long time in the practice of scientific research. “...Due to the formation of abstract ideas and their consolidation in the mind, in words, people become able to consider things as if in whole bundles and speak about them accordingly, striving for an easier and faster improvement and communication of their knowledge.” For a long time, Locke's theory of generalization acted as the only possible scientific basis for organizing the learning process at school. However, this theory is characterized by limitations and a simplified interpretation of the general. Psychological analysis and criticism of the empirical theory of generalization was given by V.V. Davydov contrasted it with a theoretical generalization. According to S.L. Rubinstein, theoretical knowledge is impossible on the basis of empirical generalization.

Locke called association one of the mechanisms for the formation of complex ideas. He first introduced the term “association of ideas” (the phenomenon itself was described earlier, back in Antiquity). According to Locke, association is an incorrect, i.e., not corresponding to a natural correlation, connection of ideas, when “ideas, which in themselves are not related, are united in the minds of some people in such a way that it is very difficult to separate them. They always accompany each other, and as soon as one such idea penetrates the mind, an idea connected with it appears along with it...” Examples are all our likes, dislikes, brownie ideas, etc. Such a connection is acquired through upbringing and habit, but is destroyed over time. The task of education is to prevent children from forming unwanted connections of consciousness. Despite the fact that Locke introduced the concept of associations in a limited way, after him this mechanism of consciousness received the greatest development, on the basis of which associative psychology arose and developed.

Locke considers consciousness as an obligatory sign of mental phenomena. “It is impossible for anyone to perceive without perceiving that he perceives.” Consciousness is also considered as a kind of spiritual force that unites existing experiences and makes a personality out of them. “Personality is a rational thinking being, which has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, as the same thinking being, in different time and at various moments only thanks to consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking.”

Conclusion

In Locke's empirical concept, the task of psychology was reduced to the study of the phenomena of consciousness as a product of individual experience. It was psychology without a soul. “I will not trouble myself to inquire what the essence of the soul is,” wrote Locke. The entire methodology for the study of consciousness was built by analogy with the study of phenomena of the material world, things. Laws of human actions in material and ideal world are the same. “Since the materials in both cases are such that it is not in the power of man to create them, all that he can do is either to combine them together, or to compare them with each other, or to separate them completely.”

Bibliography

1. Ivanovsky V.N., Psychological and epistemological associationism, Kazan, 1909; him. The doctrine of the association of ideas, “Uch. zap. imp. Kazan University", 1915, book. 12; 1917-18, book. 2, 7-9, 10-12;

2. Shevarev P. A., Generalized associations in schoolchildren’s educational work, M., 1959;

3. YaroshevskyM. G., History of psychology, M., 1966, ch. 6; Warren N. S., A history of the association psychology, , 1921.

16. Identification of consciousness as a criterion of the psyche. The concept of man in Descartes' system. Psychological views of V. Spinoza.

Descartes

He developed a mechanical understanding of the work of the body, considering it a mechanically working system. Thus, if previously living body was considered to be governed by the soul, it was now freed from its influence. For psychology, the works of Descartes are important: “The Passions of the Soul” and “Discourse on a Method for a Well-Directed Reason and the Finding of Truth in the Sciences.” Descartes's view of the relationship between soul and body is defined as dualism - the recognition of two substances that are not reducible to each other and have independent properties: the body, according to Descartes, has the property of extension, and the soul has thinking. As a result, the philosopher develops two different doctrines - about the body and about the soul. The soul in Descartes' system turned out to be intellectualized: everything that can be thought, observed, and realized belongs to it. This means that the soul turned out to be identical to consciousness.

The problem of the relationship between soul and body: soul and body are 2 substances, which means they should not influence each other, but their mutual influence is not in doubt, since a change in the bodily state affects thinking, for example, and the spirit influences the body, controlling the implementation of the necessary movements. Therefore, Descartes violates the strictness of the dualistic scheme. Physiologically, he solves this problem by finding the dwelling point of the soul (non-extended) in the body - the “pineal gland” (modern pineal gland), which the soul vibrates, influencing the animal spirits in the nerves. From the psychological side, Descartes introduces the concept of “passion” - a product of both spiritual and bodily activity; arise in the same gland from the interaction of the desires of the spirit and the movements of the body, often passions are the decisive moment of behavior. Descartes associates the soul with thinking, and thinking is the perception of ideas and the establishment of connections between ideas. Ideas can arise from different sources: 1) come from sensory experience (unreliable, they need the guidance of reason, they are a necessary part of knowledge, but they can also be a hindrance); 2) innate ideas - provide material for intuition (absolutely clear, distinct awareness); are not deducible from empirical practice (for example, the concepts of God, being, number, etc.). A new understanding of the soul as consciousness, identified mainly with thinking, also clearly emerges in his views. As a methodologist, Descartes also influenced psychology, trying to determine the correct methods of reasoning: 1) in cognition, divide the whole into the largest possible number of parts, which can be cognized; 2) go from simple to complex.

VIEWS OF B. SPINOZA

Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632 -1677) was a monist (he asserted the existence of a single substance, which in his system was nature, omnipresent and eternal). A person knows nature through its attributes (properties), from an infinite number of which thinking and extension are available to us. Knowledge of any of them is knowledge of nature as a whole. Thus, since thinking is a property of nature, it means; Spinoza's nature is spiritualized. This idea of ​​universal spirituality is called hylozoism.

Man is a complex mode formed by the soul mode and the body mode. In turn, the soul is understood as the mind, as a mode of thinking, consisting of modes-ideas. The soul is the idea of ​​the human body and is inseparable from it. However, the soul depends on the body. Part of the spirit is immortal (here Spinoza agrees with Aristotle), but individuality perishes along with the body. The soul, as it were, serves the body, strives for the image of what is pleasant to the body, and rejects the images of what is unpleasant.

The law of connection of ideas according to Spinoza: “the order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things” - memory is connected with this. “If the human body was once subjected to the action of two or more bodies simultaneously, then the soul, subsequently imagining one of them, will immediately remember the others.”

17. Epiphenomenalism in Comrade Hobbes’s teaching on consciousness. J. Locke as the founder of the empirical psychology of consciousness.

He opposed Descartes' doctrine of two substances. He considers the words “substance” and “body” to be synonyms, and the expression “incorporeal substance” to be taftology. By corporeal being we mean existence defined entirely in relation to space, time, number and movement. Sensory qualities are only the various movements of matter within the object that causes them. Likewise, man: the phenomena of consciousness characteristic of him cannot be attributed to the soul, these are manifestations of the movement of the body. Man is a body among many other natural bodies. Human movements are a reality; consciousness - parallel emerging manifestations of these movements; sensations are manifestations of movements in our sense organs that arise under the influence of external objects. External body(object) is the cause of sensations, it puts pressure on the organ corresponding to each sensation directly (with taste or touch) or indirectly (with vision, hearing, smell). Inwardly, this pressure continues through the nerves of the brain and heart, causing resistance or back pressure. Pleasure is a manifestation of movement in the heart. Hobbes cannot explain how bodily movements give rise to consciousness and even exclaims: “... the most amazing circumstance is that something can become a phenomenon at all, a phenomenon of consciousness.” Thus, the psyche is a shadow of real material processes, it is an epiphenomenon. The conclusion is the result of a mechanical understanding of the relationship between the psyche and the brain in the spirit of parallelism. Thinking is not a special, non-sensory process: the human mind has as movement only sensation, idea and connections of ideas. Ideas that cannot be expressed in images are empty sounds. Hobbes limits human knowledge to phenomena, which logically follows from the principles of empiricism and sensationalism. When traces of sensation and representation, similar in essence, merge, common ideas arise, denoted by words. Connecting and separating words represents a judgment. Hobbes pays great attention language and speech as specific feature person.

J. LOCKE'S VIEWS.

John Locke (1632 -1704): father of empirical psychology, English philosopher, teacher, doctor by training, politician. The main philosophical work is “Essay on the Human Mind,” which had a strong influence on the development of French philosophy and psychology.

Locke's purpose is to explore the origin of the certainty and extent of human knowledge. Begins with a critique of the theory of innate ideas, directing it against the elastic doctrine and against Descartes. He considers the human soul as a passive, but capable of perception medium, comparing it to a blank slate. The source of knowledge is experience - the individual life story of an individual. Inner experience provides knowledge about the external world and about ourselves. At the same time, Locke also sees the relationship between these two sources, because sensation is the beginning of knowledge, reflection arises after and on the basis of sensation, therefore, sensation is primordial and the source of all knowledge. Locke defends and develops the thesis materialistically: “there is nothing in the mind that is not in the senses” (it was also expressed by Hobbes and Gassendi). The division of experience into external and internal gave rise to introspective psychology - the science of internal experience, the method of which is introspection. Locke's ideas are divided into simple and complex:

1) a simple idea contains only one idea or perception in the mind (these are elements of knowledge that constitute the material for all knowledge and are received by the soul from the two indicated sources);

2) complex ideas break down into various simple ones. The atomistic elementalist attitude in the study of the content of consciousness begins with D. Locke: the simple is primary, the complex is secondary and derived from it.

Empirical psychology

(from Greek empeiria - experience) - a term introduced by the German philosopher of the 18th century. H. Wolf to designate a special discipline that describes and studies specific phenomena of mental life, in contrast to rational psychology, which derives phenomena from the nature and essence of the soul (see). The task of electronic research was considered to be individual facts, their classification, and the establishment of a logical connection between them, verifiable by experience. The idea that psychological cognition should be based on experience, became cornerstone teachings of J. Locke, however, the very concept of experience acquired an ambiguous character in this teaching. Experience was divided into external and internal (see). This became a prerequisite for the subsequent splitting of economic psychology into two directions - materialist (French materialism) and idealistic (J. Berkeley, Hume). As a consequence of this split, the formation that emerged in the middle of the 19th century. E. p. (“experimental school” in psychology) combined the emphasis on empirical observation, concrete analysis and inductive knowledge of mental phenomena with the doctrine of the special essence of these phenomena, comprehended only through introspection. The “experimental school” program prepared the transition from a speculative interpretation of the psyche to its experimental study. Subsequently, the ambiguity of the term “” led to a division between supporters of the natural scientific approach to the psyche, who understood it as knowledge of real processes of consciousness and behavior controlled by observation and experiment, and supporters of “pure” experience, reduced to subjective phenomena.

Brief psychological dictionary. - Rostov-on-Don: “PHOENIX”. L.A. Karpenko, A.V. Petrovsky, M. G. Yaroshevsky. 1998 .

EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY

(English) empirical psychology) is a term introduced by German. philosopher of the 18th century H. Wolf to denote a special discipline that describes and studies specific phenomena of mental life (as opposed to rational psychology, which deals with “immortal” soul). The task of the E.P. was considered behind individual mental facts, their classification, the establishment of a logical connection between them, verifiable by experience. This attitude has been characteristic of many researchers of human behavior since ancient times.

In the teachings of ancient Greek. philosophers contained not only general provisions about the nature of the soul and its place in the universe, but also numerous information about specific mental manifestations. In the Middle Ages, the importance of the empiric-psychological approach was substantiated by Arabic-speaking thinkers (especially Ibn Sina), as well as such progressive philosophers as F.Bacon, W. Ockham, etc. During the Renaissance, the Spanish doctor was an ardent supporter of E. p. X.L.Vives, whose book “On the Soul and Life” (1538) had an impact big influence on psychological theories New time. Vives argued that it is not the metaphysical essence of the soul, but its real manifestations that should become the object of analysis, that the individual method is the only reliable way to acquire such knowledge about people, which could be used to improve their nature. The idea that psychological knowledge should be based on experience became the cornerstone of the doctrine J.Locke, which divided experience into external and internal. If external experience was considered as a product of influence real world on the senses, then the internal one acted in the form of operations performed by the soul. This became a prerequisite for the splitting of economic psychology into two directions: materialistic and idealistic.

A number of idealists ( J.Berkeley,D.Hume), having rejected the division of experience into external and internal, they began to understand by “experience” the sensory impressions of the subject, which have a basis only in himself, but not in anything external. The French took a fundamentally different position. materialists of the 18th century Acting as supporters of ethnoscience, they understood it as a natural-scientific study of the mental properties of a person’s bodily organization.

Formed in the middle of the 19th century. The “experimental school” in psychology bore the stamp of duality, since it combined an attitude of observation, concrete analysis and inductive knowledge of mental phenomena with the doctrine of the special essence of these phenomena, comprehended only through introspection. The research of the “experimental school” prepared the transition from a speculative interpretation of the psyche to its experimental study. Subsequently, the ambiguity of the term “experience” led to a division between supporters of the natural science approach, understood as knowledge through observation and experiment of the processes of consciousness and behavior, and supporters of pure experience, which they reduced to subjective phenomena.

Large psychological dictionary. - M.: Prime-EVROZNAK. Ed. B.G. Meshcheryakova, acad. V.P. Zinchenko. 2003 .

See what “empirical psychology” is in other dictionaries:

Empirical psychology- psychology based on experience and contrasted with rational psychology based on speculation. It developed in line with English empiricism in Great Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. (D. Hartley, James Mill, John St. Mill, A. Ben, G. ... ...

Psychology- science of the soul (Greek ψυκή soul and λόγος concept, word). Its creator is considered to be Aristotle, who wrote an essay on the soul, in 3 books, and a number of special works: on memory and recollection, on sleep and wakefulness, on dreams, on sensations and their... ... encyclopedic Dictionary F. Brockhaus and I.A. Ephron

PSYCHOLOGY- PSYCHOLOGY, the science of the psyche, personality processes and their specific human forms: perception and thinking, consciousness and character, speech and behavior. Soviet P. builds a coherent understanding of the subject of P. on the basis of the development of the ideological heritage of Marx... ... Great Medical Encyclopedia

PSYCHOLOGY- the science of mental reality, how an individual perceives, perceives, feels, thinks and acts. For a deeper understanding of the human psyche, psychologists study the mental regulation of animal behavior and the functioning of such... ... Collier's Encyclopedia

Psychology- The request “Psychologist” is redirected here. A separate article is needed on this topic... Wikipedia

Psychology- (from Psycho... and... Logia) the science of the laws of generation and functioning of an individual’s mental reflection of objective reality in the process of human activity and animal behavior. Subject, main problems and methods. In his... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Child psychology- branch of psychology that studies facts and patterns mental development child. Has a number common problems with educational psychology (See Educational psychology). Closely connected with pedagogy (See Pedagogy), as well as with age... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

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During its existence, empirical psychology managed to collect a large amount of material on the subjective characteristics of individual mental processes, for example, sensations, memory, attention, etc. However, with all this, it turned out to be completely untenable and unable to create a scientific psychology, since in understanding the subject of psychology it stood on the position of idealism.

In its development, empirical psychology gave rise to many directions that described and explained mental processes in different ways, but agreed with each other in the idealistic interpretation of their essence.

Structural psychology, like all other areas of empirical psychology, differing from them in details, considered the essence of mental processes idealistically, as determined by the internal mental laws of their structure. Based on this position, Gestaltists tried to explain the behavior of animals as determined not by the interaction of the organism with the environment, but by the structural features of the actions performed by animals. The Gestalt theory of animal behavior put forward by Köhler was sharply criticized by I.P. Pavlov, who revealed its idealistic essence.

The failure of these and other directions of empirical psychology is explained not by one or another shortcomings inherent in each individual direction, but by the idealistic understanding of the essence of mental processes common to all of them.

Empirical psychology, through introspection and experiment, has been able to accumulate a certain amount of descriptive knowledge about mental processes. However, she accumulated this knowledge in spite of her idealistic basis and dualistic understanding of human nature. Since the explanation of mental processes was given by empirical psychology, based on an idealistic understanding of the nature of the psyche, it could not give a truly scientific explanation of the facts it had accumulated.

The term "empirical psychology" was introduced by the 18th century German philosopher. X. Wolf to designate a special discipline whose task was to study specific phenomena of mental life, in contrast to rational psychology, which dealt with the eternal, immortal soul. Empirical psychology of consciousness was developed in the works of French materialists and educators J. Lametrie, C. Helvetius, E. Condillac. Representatives of French empirical psychology paid more attention than English associationists to the activity of the subject in perceiving the world around them, viewing the psyche from a natural scientific perspective.

3 .2 The foundation of empirical psychology in the works of John Locke

empirical psychophysical parallelism cognition

The real “father” of empirical psychology is John Locke (1632-1704), an outstanding English philosopher, teacher, doctor by training, major political figure, ideologist of the revolution of 1688. In 1690, John Locke’s main philosophical work “An Essay Concerning Human Reason” was published. (4th ed., 1700). During Locke's lifetime, the book was translated into French and had a strong influence on the development of French philosophy and psychology. In 1693, his pedagogical work “Thoughts on Education” was published.

Locke's goal was to investigate the origins of certainty and the extent of human knowledge. It all starts with a critique of the theory of innate ideas. It is directed mainly against medieval scholastic teaching, which recognized the innateness of the most general principles and concepts, but also against Descartes. “I do not assert,” wrote Descartes, “that the spirit of the baby in the womb reflects on metaphysical questions, but it has ideas about God, about itself, and about all those truths that are known in themselves, as they are in adults.” when they don't think about these truths at all." Locke opposes all arguments in defense of the innateness of knowledge with the proposition that it is possible to prove its origin. Locke considers the human soul as a certain passive, but capable of perception, medium; he compares it to a blank board on which nothing is written, or to an empty room in which there is nothing. These comparisons relate only to knowledge. Locke did not deny natural inclinations, inclinations, and constitutional differences between people. The source of knowledge is experience as the individual life story of an individual. Locke first turns to the very beginnings of spiritual life, which lie in childhood. “Follow a child from his birth and observe the changes produced by time, and you will see how, thanks to the feelings, the soul is more and more enriched with ideas, more and more awakened, and thinks the more intensely, the more material it has for thinking.” Experience has two sources. Locke called the first source sensation. Its object is objects of nature, external material things; organ - external sense (vision, hearing, etc.); the product is ideas. “In this way we receive the ideas of yellow, white, hot, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all those ideas which we call sensible qualities.” The second source is reflection, internal perception, the activity of our mind. Its object is ideas acquired previously; organ (or instrument) - the activity (ability, in Locke's terminology) of our mind (perception, thinking, doubt, faith, reasoning, desire and all the diverse activities of our mind); the product is ideas of a different kind which we could not obtain from external things. Inner experience provides both knowledge about the external world and, even more so, about ourselves.

All ideas come from either one source or another. Locke distinguishes, but does not separate them from each other: sensation is the beginning of knowledge, reflection arises after and on the basis of sensations. Consequently, sensation is ultimately the source of all knowledge. “There is nothing in the mind that is not in the senses” - this sensualist thesis, which was expressed by Hobbes and Gassendi, is defended and developed materialistically by Locke. The division of experience into external and internal gave rise to introspective psychology as the science of internal experience, the method of which is introspection.

Ideas, according to Locke, can be simple or complex. A simple idea contains only one idea or perception in the mind, not dividing into different ideas. These are elements of knowledge. They constitute the material of all knowledge and are delivered to the soul in two indicated ways - through sensation and reflection. With Locke, the atomistic elementalist attitude begins in the study of the content of consciousness: the simple is primary, the complex is secondary and derivative from it. In the doctrine of simple and complex ideas, Locke considers important issues of cognition: the relationship between ideas and things, the activity of cognition.

We have ideas in our souls. They correspond to qualities in things. Locke distinguished three kinds of qualities: primary, secondary, and also tertiary, which, in essence, are reduced to secondary, so that the main distinction is made between primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are real, completely inseparable qualities, regardless of whether we perceive them or not. The simple ideas they generate - density, extension, shape, etc. - accurately reproduce them. Secondary qualities - colors, sounds, smells, etc., are not actually found in things, they exist as long as we feel, and depend on the primary ones, namely on the volume, shape, structure and movement of particles. “Primary qualities are similarities, secondary ones are considered but are not similarities, tertiary qualities are not considered and are not similarities.” The division of qualities into primary and secondary contains the possibility of an idealistic separation of sensation from the object. Berkeley and Diderot came out of Locke. In the perception of simple ideas, the mind is for the most part passive, “the mind is also little free not to accept these simple ideas when they are presented to the soul, to change them when they are impressed, to cross them out and create new ones, just as a mirror can not accept, or change, or erase the images or ideas that the objects placed in front of him evoke in him.” Although Locke is not always consistent when describing simple ideas of reflection, he says that the mind is often not completely passive, yet in general he is faithful to the thesis about the passivity of the cognizing subject when perceiving simple ideas: external influences influence consciousness, bypassing the activity of the cognizing subject . Here the idea emerges that activity in cognition is the reason for the departure from adequate cognition of the object. Modern research in the field of philosophy and psychology of cognition has convincingly shown the inconsistency of this approach. The orientation towards object-oriented cognition is assessed as naturalistic; To explain the work of consciousness, the mechanism of reflection is used.

Unlike simple ones, complex ideas are combinations of them, united together under one common name. Complex ideas are formed by the mind arbitrarily as a result of the following actions: connection, summation of simple ideas; comparison, comparison; generalization through previous abstraction. Locke gave an outline of the process of generalization, which includes the following operations. First, as far as possible, all individual objects about which we want to obtain a general concept are empirically identified. These objects are divided into their constituent properties, then compared according to these properties. After this, ideas that are not repeated in objects are isolated and discarded (this is called abstraction). Then those ideas that are repeated in all objects are abstracted, that is, isolated. These ideas are summarized, which gives a set of ideas that makes up the desired complex general idea, which is denoted by a word. Locke's theory of ascent from simple to complex ideas by highlighting what single things and facts have in common has been used for a long time in the practice of scientific research. “...Due to the formation of abstract ideas and their consolidation in the mind, in words, people become able to consider things as if in whole bundles and speak about them accordingly, striving for an easier and faster improvement and communication of their knowledge.” For a long time, Locke's theory of generalization acted as the only possible scientific basis for organizing the learning process at school. However, this theory is characterized by limitations and a simplified interpretation of the general. Psychological analysis and criticism of the empirical theory of generalization was given by V.V. Davydov contrasted it with a theoretical generalization. According to S.L. Rubinstein, theoretical knowledge is impossible on the basis of empirical generalization.

Locke called association one of the mechanisms for the formation of complex ideas. He first introduced the term “association of ideas” (the phenomenon itself was described earlier, back in Antiquity). According to Locke, association is an incorrect, i.e., not corresponding to a natural correlation, connection of ideas, when “ideas, which in themselves are not related, are united in the minds of some people in such a way that it is very difficult to separate them. They always accompany each other, and as soon as one such idea penetrates the mind, an idea connected with it appears along with it...” Examples are all our likes, dislikes, brownie ideas, etc. Such a connection is acquired through upbringing and habit, but is destroyed over time. The task of education is to prevent children from forming unwanted connections of consciousness. Despite the fact that Locke introduced the concept of associations in a limited way, after him this mechanism of consciousness received the greatest development, on the basis of which associative psychology arose and developed.

Locke considers consciousness as an obligatory sign of mental phenomena. “It is impossible for anyone to perceive without perceiving that he perceives.” Consciousness is also considered as a kind of spiritual force that unites existing experiences and makes a personality out of them. “Personality is a rational thinking being who has reason and reflection and can consider himself as himself, as the same thinking being, at different times and at different moments only thanks to consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking.”

Conclusion

In Locke's empirical concept, the task of psychology was reduced to the study of the phenomena of consciousness as a product of individual experience. It was psychology without a soul. “I will not trouble myself to inquire what the essence of the soul is,” wrote Locke. The entire methodology for the study of consciousness was built by analogy with the study of phenomena of the material world, things. The laws of human actions in the material and ideal world are the same. “Since the materials in both cases are such that it is not in the power of man to create them, all that he can do is either to combine them together, or to compare them with each other, or to separate them completely.”

Bibliography

1. Ivanovsky V.N., Psychological and epistemological associationism, Kazan, 1909; him. The doctrine of the association of ideas, “Uch. zap. imp. Kazan University", 1915, book. 12; 1917-18, book. 2, 7-9, 10-12;

2. Shevarev P. A., Generalized associations in schoolchildren’s educational work, M., 1959;

3. YaroshevskyM. G., History of psychology, M., 1966, ch. 6; Warren N. S ., A history of the association psychology, , 1921.