History and Theory of Psychology: An early 21st century student's perspective
Paul F. Ballantyne, Ph.D. 2008©.
pballan@comnet.ca
Section 1:
From the Presocratics to Aristotle: Fundamental issues and the theoretical imperative
Now the Introductory Comments have been presented we can move into a roughly chronological account of various past eras of thought or practice which influenced the development of psychological science. The first of the five Sections to be presented is called "From the Presocratics to Aristotle." Although this relatively brief Section takes us way back to the 6th-3rd century BC, it will become apparent that many of the fundamental ontological, epistemological, and methodological issues raised during the ancient period of combined philosophy and practice are still with us in various modern or postmodernized versions.
The "theoretical imperative" requiring us to make informed choices between holding one position over another is also still with us (Tolman, 1999a). At some point in each of your careers, it will become incumbent upon you to adopt, apply, or even advocate a theoretical position which assumes: either a strictly "quantitative" distinction between physiological and psychological processes or a "qualitative" distinction as well; either the "fallibility" or the "trustworthiness" of perception; either determinism of personal deportment from "outside forces" (e.g., environment, innate ideas) or a relative freedom and control over one's actions according to ongoing forward-reaching "goals," internalized "motives;" and the like.
Our rationale for reaching back to cover the Ancient Greek philosophers, therefore, is to provide you with a brief acquaintance with how others have dealt with such fundamental issues and with the eventual practical outcome of their adherence to one theoretical view over another. Raising such issues in this safe third-hand manner gives you the opportunity, so to speak, of trying on each position for size without having to worry about suffering the direct repercussions (both personal and professional) of choosing one path over another on your own.
Ancient Greek Culture and the Presocratic Philosophers
As Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy (1946) points out, philosophy and practical science were not originally separate. They were born together in the beginning of the 6th century BC and they both involved a transition from a theistic toward a natural way of thinking about the world.
Around 800 BC, following a long period of war the ancient Greeks reacquired a written language and by 750 BC two Greek poems the Iliad and the Odyssey (attributed to Homer) were written down. In Greek myths, regarding the creation and deeds of the gods, statements about cosmological topics (e.g., creation and structure of the universe) appeared only incidentally and by implication.
The Homeric gods were the gods of a conquering aristocracy, not the useful fertility gods of the Egyptians or Babylonians. Although the gods of most nations claim to have created the world, the Olympians made no such claim. The most they ever did was conquer it. According to Hesiod (750-700 BC) a farmer who tried to systematize the varied ancient myths into a "Theogeny" these divine constituents of the universe were personal beings. Their occasional causal interventions into universal events or interest in human affairs were likewise personal, self-serving, and motivated by sexuality, hatred, jealousy, and so forth.
Subsequent Greek thinkers, from the ones we now call the "Presocratic philosophers" onward, were particularly interested in the universe (in questions regarding its origin, its fundamental elements, and its ongoing development). In order to ask the kinds of ontological questions they did, they had to make a break with this former mythological way of thinking (see Kirk, Raven, & Schofield, 1983). Russell (1946) reports there were two tendencies at play in this chapter of Ancient Greek culture. One was passionate, religious, mystical and otherworldly. The other was cheerful, empirical and interested in acquiring knowledge of diverse worldly facts. To a point, the early Greek philosophers -from Thales in the 6th century BC, right up through to Aristotle in the 3rd century BC- represent this latter tendency.
The Greek World 5th-4th century BC (From: Lloyd, 1970).
"As Greece is a mountainous and rather barren country, its inhabitants have been obliged from remote times to seek new lands that would offer them work and prosperity. At the beginning of the sixth century BC (Before Christ), we find one winding series of coastal colonies, extending from the coast of Asia Minor to Africa, to Spain and to southern Italy. Here the Greeks were so numerous that they outnumbered the inhabitants of Greece properly so called, and hence the name Magna Graecia was given to this far-flung territory. The colonies, favored by democratic liberties and economic well-being, and moreover having contact with a greatly advanced civilization in Persia and Egypt, had an opportunity to develop their own sense of culture.
Among the Grecian stocks which have contributed greatly to the formation of philosophy is the Ionian strain, which was spread through Asia Minor, the islands of the Aegean Sea (Ionia), and southern Italy and Sicily. It is among the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor that the story of philosophy takes its beginning, because it was in the flourishing city of Miletus that the first three Western philosophers were born and lived: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes" (Description: From a "Radical Academy" site).
Thales (625-545 BC)
By convention Presocratic philosophy is said to begin with Thales who can be dated only because he predicted a solar eclipse, which (according to astronomers) occurred in 585 BC. This citizen of Miletus (a commercial city in Asia Minor with trade links to Babylon and Egypt) is said to have declared the "world is made of water" and to have held that the transformation of this fundamental substance is the source of all living things.
It is important to note that this first cosmological metaphysic is not only ontologically materialist and empirical but also contains an implicit view of dynamic motion and change. Water can be seen to be transformed from a liquid into other states. By evaporation water turns into steam and hence apparently into air. Water also freezes to become solidified ice. Further, both processes can be reversed. Rain, dew, and condensation were recognized as a return of water from the air and melting snow likewise turns a solid into a liquid. Thales used these commonly observable facts to postulate that things were water all along.
Two successors of Thales (also from Miletus) retained a material monist metaphysic but differed from him regarding the details of their cosmological view. Anaximander (610-547 BC) doubted whether any fundamental substance would exist in an observable pure form, because it would not only be "timeless" but also "overpowering." Anaximenes (585-525 BC) suggested that air is the fundamental substance and that observable objects differ in the "quantity" of air contained therein.
Heraclitus (540-480 BC)
Heraclitus (of Ephesus) was the first philosopher we know of to both emphasize the general process of change in nature and to analyze (carefully) their particular manifestations. He is best known for two important general positions:
(1) the Heraclitean "doctrine of flux" which viewed the whole cosmos as in a constant state of change. He expressed this view poetically as a metaphor: "You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you" (Fragment 91).
(2) his disagreement with Thales about the basic fundamental element. For Heraclitus, the fundamental element of the universe was fire not water.
Starting out with a materialist position similar to that of Thales, Heraclitus went beyond mere debates over fundamental substance by suggesting that the important aspect of the cosmos to account for is its varied dynamic transformations -e.g., ice to water and water to clouds. Fire, he reasoned, is a more fundamental element than water because it is fire (in the sun, or in a forge) which transforms solids into liquids. This fire itself is very active and so too is everything else in the world.
Like the earlier Ionians, Heraclitus takes his general stand on a clearly materialist ground: "This world which is the same for all, was made by no god or man. It has always been, it is, and will be an ever-living fire. Kindling with measure and being quenched with measure" (Fragment 30).
His specific ontological position is a relational materialist monism achieved by accepting the internal contradictions of particular things (rather than an "absolute," unchanging, or timeless monism). In the process of transforming from one state into another, or from one element into another, there is always contradiction within the object being transformed. Consider, for instance, fuel burning in a fireplace: There is a point at which the fuel is clearly a log and a later point at which it has been changed into smoke and ash. But during the transition (where the fire is), it is smoke, ash, and log. Or said another way, neither merely smoke, nor ash, nor log. The fuel of the fire is what it was and what it will be.
In other words, like Thales, Heraclitus viewed this cycle of changing diversified elements as a unity, but in contrast to Anaximander it was not a timeless, unchanging, or absolute pattern. Why? Because the particular principles of change are actually internal to the varied nature of the stuff of the universe itself. Change in any particular object is not merely imposed upon it from outside by some initial timeless or overpowering substance, but is rather to be understood by us by way of our careful metaphoric reasoning and reference to that object itself. The unity in the diversity of the river we are wading in is not timeless (absolute) or imposed upon it by fire but develops along with the age and changing course of the river over time.
By utilizing this dynamic kind of reasoning about both general and particular aspects of nature, Heraclitus recognized all apparently fixed states of being as part of a varied process of perpetual "becoming" (in which every object enters existence, stays for a while and passes away). He also went well beyond the predominantly cosmological topics of his Miletian predecessors to considered diverse life phenomena (e.g., sleeping-waking; hunger-fullness; youth-age; and life-death relations). For instance, in considering "life," Heraclitus argued that death is a pervasive feature in our lives. If all things are changing and if change is death to the old and birth to the new, then strictly speaking we have constant experience of death. Just as the river is always changing, so too does everything else including ourselves.
Anaxagoras (500-428 BC)
Anaxagoras of Clazomene (on the Lydian coast of Asia Minor) was the last of the great Ionian philosophers and first to choose Athens as his home. He was a teacher and friend to Pericles (495-429 BC), the famous Commander-in-chief of Greece (for fifteen terms) during a period considered to be the height of that civilization.
Anaxagoras is know to have laid down his cosmological views in a prose work, "On Nature," written in the Ionic dialect. Only fragments of this work, however, have survived as quoted and interpreted by others.
With regard to the ongoing fundamental element debate, he postulated a near infinite materialist monism by arguing that in anything there is a "portion of everything." By this he meant that even the smallest speck of dust contains some portion of each element. These elements (translated variously as "germs" or "seeds") included not only earth, air, fire, and water; but also blood, gold, hair, and bone. Contained in each such material "seed" are the traditional analytical opposites (a.k.a., qualities) of hot and cold, wet and dry, and also "color." It is of these inherently unified attributes and qualities of matter itself that he is expressly speaking when he says that the things in the "one world" are not truly cut off from one another as if by a "hatchet."
Any observable object is a "mixture" in which one such element may "predominate," thereby determining that object's appearance and allowing its classification into a rough typology (like solid, liquid, or vapor). This is often described as Anaxagoras’s ontological "principle of predominance." Although this term succeeds in stressing the quantitative arrangement aspect of his account, another central qualitative relational aspect should also be appreciated. That is, according to Anaxagoras, observable objects differ qualitatively and these qualities reside within the elements of which they are composed to varying quantitative degrees. Thus, for Anaxagoras, a piece of metal in which gold predominates quantitatively is called "gold" and when it is melted it retains its qualitative yellowish hue. Likewise, though somewhat paradoxically, even a piece of snow (which appears white) is at least partially "black" for when it freezes to become ice or melts to become water, both products are "darker."
In other words, the apparent logically paradoxical ontological statements by Anaxagoras (regarding both the qualitative transition from an initially "undifferentiated mass" to a differentiated and "orderly" cosmos containing "planets;" as well as his statements regarding the source of the qualitative attributes of objects as residing within their elemental material "seeds") are best understood or analytically resolved by recognizing that (like Heraclitus) Anaxagoras was motivated by an attempt to grasp and accept the objective contradictions of material existence wherever he might find them.
One of the most notable qualitative (objectively contradictory) aspects of nature which Anaxagoras tackled was the distinction between "living and non-living" matter. Here, he is sometimes suggested to have made an exception to his otherwise broadly applicable and characteristically Ionic "materialist" position by way of introducing the concept of "nous" (generalized sensitivity, minding, or reason). Nous is conceived by him as a special substance, liquid, or power that is present only in living beings and distinguishes them from non-living or dead matter. Although the other elements contained in objects have a proclivity to "mix or divide," nous is considered to be a more uniform, pure, indivisible, and perhaps even immaterial property or power of living matter. It is, presumably, present in plants (which bend toward light) but is most certainly present in animals and man.
The presence of nous in animals is considered by Anaxagoras as the source of their motility and its presence in human beings allows us to appreciate (or attend to) the structured order, pattern, and sequential arrangement of the world around us. It is not clear though, whether Anaxagoras fully broke with the tradition of earlier materialist explanation by going so far as Parmenides (504-456 BC) to suggest that the observable order or mechanical motion of physical objects through space was mentally imparted.
In any case, concerns over the inconsistencies of Ionian views on order, arrangement, change, and causation led to the articulation of a set of logical paradoxes regarding motion by a student of Parmenides called Zeno. Zeno of Elea (490-430 BC) argued that if we see things in motion and our analytical theory of the universe does not allow such motion, then our senses must lie. He therefore postulated a Block Universe with no real change or motion (a static form of "absolute monism") which created much difficulty for later thinkers.
Take, for example, the so-called paradox or "argument of Achilles" in which the hero of the winged foot (Achilles) is seemingly mismatched with a turtle (symbol of slowness) in a running race. Analytically speaking, even if this gallant hero gives the turtle a suitable handicap of time and space by which to start the race, it is conceivable that he may never overtake his slower opponent. Let us supposed that at the start of the race this interval between Achilles and the turtle is twenty feet, and while the hero runs twenty feet, the turtle advances only one foot. Achilles, it is said, cannot reach his running mate because while he runs twenty feet the animal moves one foot and while he runs a foot his rival will have scurried one-twentieth of a foot, and successively, while Achilles proceeds one-twentieth of a foot the animal will have traveled one-twentieth of a twentieth of a foot, and so on ad infinitum.
A similar sort of analytical paradox regarding time, space, and motion is encountered in the "example of the arrow" which will never reach its target. Before striking the target, the arrow must traverse half the distance, and before it reaches half this space it must traverse one-half of this half, ad infinitum. Thus the arrow remains (analytically) ever at the same place, no matter how much it may seem to be displaced to the eye. Such Sophistic arguments, as Aristotle later noted well, are based on a false prejudgment that space is (in fact) made up of an infinite number of analytically discrete and separate parts.
Anyway, let's return briefly to Anaxagoras and his seemingly equivocal ontologically materialist concept of "nous". One easily referenced indication that "nous" (which is typically translated as simply "mind" but which seems to mean far more than that to Anaxagoras) was introduced by him as a valid recognition of something that needed to be explained -i.e., the distinction between living and dead matter as well as the observable sequential arrangement of worldly events- but for which there was still too much ignorance to provide an explanation as such, comes from Socrates. Socrates, who, as we will see adopts an unequivocal ontologically idealist metaphysic makes the following derogatory remarks about Anaxagoras:
"I once heard someone reading from a book, as he said, by Anaxagoras, and asserting that it is mind [nous] that produces order and is the cause of everything. This explanation pleased me. Somehow it seemed right that mind should be the cause of everything....
I lost no time in procuring the books, and began to read them.... It was a wonderful hope, my friend, but it was quickly dashed. As I read on I discovered that the fellow made no use of mind and assigned to it no causality for the order of the world, but adduced causes like air and aether [fire] and water and many other absurdities" (Socrates in Plato's Phaedo, 97b-98c; In Hamilton & Cairns, 1961, p. 80).
These so-called "absurdities" are, of course, the materialist explanations that we now identify with the early Ionic Greek philosophers. So, at least by the assessment of Socrates (through Plato), the approach of Anaxagoras was not a radical departure from the general materialist trend of his era.
I don't think we really have to worry about which portrayal of his reliance upon "nous" is ultimately correct in this regard. It is enough for us to simply note, that -for whatever reason- we have in Anaxagoras this first instance of an appeal to an abstract ordering principle concept for explanation. In having introduced "nous," Anaxagoras had not just introduced a new or wider definition for an older word, he had done something which the previous Ionians up to this point had not done: He appeals to an albeit tentative and as yet abstract mental concept to reassert a natural fact of existence -i.e., the observable structure, order, or sequence of changing worldly events.
Empedocles (490-435 BC)
Empedocles of Acragas (on the south coast of Sicily), was at various times a democratic politician, mystical philosopher, and miracle-worker who also eventually claimed to be a god. He is best known for systematizing the "doctrine of four elements" (water, fire, air, and earth) and their "qualities" (hot, cold, wet, dry) which dominated popular thinking for two thousand years thereafter. Although this cosmological position was both a statesmanlike compromise between the conflicting views of the Ionians (Thales-Anaxagoras) and shared their naturalistic ontology, it differed from it because Empedocles considered these elements as analytically separable (as a "plurality" which form no actual unity).
Any particular object contains a "chaotic" and conflicting admixture of different proportions of each analytically separate element. Like Anaxagoras, Empedocles held that the qualities exhibited by a particular object are determined by the proportional mixture of elements which it contains, but (unlike Anaxagoras) he believed these qualities to be an outcome of the relations between those elements and not to reside in the elements themselves. Such qualities as color, coldness, etc., were viewed as a special resultant of the specific mixture of elements and not a property of the elements or even of the object per se.
Change in the cosmos was produced by two fundamentally abstract and anthropomorphized forces "love and strife." The first was the cause of combination (or rather congealment). The other was the cause of separation. Empedocles attempted to explain cosmic nature, the functions of the human body, and the activities of the "soul" as resulting from these conflicting active forces.
He did not share Parmenides' distrust of the senses and produced the first (inside-outward) version of various subsequent "emanation" hypotheses to account for our visual contact with objects (see our coverage of Aristotle below who argued against all of these).
Empedocles is also said to have utilized observational methods -e.g., a water clock & bucket; and whirling cup on a string- to argue not only that air is a separate substance but also to illustrate the related physical principle of centrifugal force. It must be pointed out, however, that in both drawing conclusions from observation and in his assertion of an absolute plurality of elements, Empedocles was hampered by a very prevalent lack of distinction at the time between what would later be called the logic of discourse and the logic of being. This confusion between discursive argument and being seems to have extended itself into his personal life. After having been banished from Acragas for proposing charlatan-like claims, he is said to have leapt into the fiery crater of Mt. Etna to prove he was a god.
Democritus (460-360 BC)
Democritus (of Abdera in Thrace) was a contemporary of Empedocles, Zeno, Socrates, and Plato. The details of how his materialist ontology or views on cosmological change (motion) differed from his contemporaries are rather important because they are played out again in various eras of subsequent scientific endeavor. Democritus is best known for his doctrine that the world is made of "atoms" (which means indivisible) and for his suggestion that our ability to split objects up into sections (e.g., carving up an apple) implies the existence of a "void" between these indivisible aspects of the material universe.
Democritus is also credited with having proposed a "substantive" theory of mind (see Morris, 1932) along with a second (outside-inward) version of the emanation hypothesis to account for our contact with observable objects. Yet since his theory of mind was intimately tied to his active view of material substance, we will have to return to it only after considering how this more central ontological aspect of his philosophy fits into the ongoing and subsequent course of Greek thought.
First of all, while Empedocles considered his four elements as analytically separate (as an absolute plurality which congeal but do not truly combine or transmute), Democritus proposed an explicitly materialist "monism" which bridged the logical gap between diversity and unity by returning to the "dialectical" insight of Heraclitus (and Anaxagoras). That is, with regard to the relative ontological relation between objects and their constituent elements, the one is many and the many is one. To put this another way, Democritus seems to have recognized "objective contradiction" in nature.
Furthermore, like Heraclitus, he recognized that matter and motion are different yet they are identical. This appreciation of the unity of such differences emboldened Democritus to suggested (in a similar manner) that the inherent activeness of atoms was the fundamental origin of all change in the cosmos.
Thus while he postulated that such "active atoms" are alike (in their indivisibility) and differ from one another only in terms of "quantity" (size, smoothness, or speed of resonation), he also acknowledged the possibility that an orderly combination of such "like" elements might somehow produce the vast array of palpable objects or perceivable events we deal with in our ordinary lives. As Russell points out, however, the middle part of the latter comment (regarding quantity) is debatable because we only have fragmentary writings and secondhand accounts of Democritus -predominantly from Aristotle- to rely upon. It is traditional though to contrast Anaxagoras who seems to place "qualities" (like color) in the elements (or "seeds"), with Democritus who (after the fashion of Empedocles) seems to deny that they reside in "atoms."
We do not know if Democritus explicitly addressed the major concerns of his fellow-townsman Protagoras (480-410 BC) regarding the "one-sided" relationship between elements and "qualities" characteristic of most of the early Ionic naturalists. That is, if objects have observable qualities (e.g., color, shape, texture) and elements or atoms don't, then: "Where do these qualities come from?" Protagoras suggested that according to the arguments of the Ionians (and Democritus), these qualities come from the "senses." Furthermore, suggests Protagoras, if their implied theories are to be taken literally, "man is the measure of all things."
Whether or not Protagoras was truly the first "Sophist" (of the sort later vilified for holding that no truth is to be had from intellectual argument), it was in this manner -of drawing out the implications of earlier overzealous claims- that the original "ontological" concerns of the Ionians (and Democritus) were redirected toward the "epistemological, logical, and ethical" concerns of subsequent philosophical thought. Ancient Greek Sophism, we will simply note here, is our first exemplar of an explicitly combined "subjective idealist" ontology and "anti-realist" epistemology in which the latter is nearly absolutized. For the Sophists and their clientele (see below), the art of individual argument was made the central emphasis of methodological concern. Their focus was on the manner by which personal opinions and convictions are formed or transmitted to others by way of persuasive discourse (epistemological and logical questions) rather than with ascertaining the place of human kind in the cosmos (ontological questions) or even with those epistemological aspects of a given debate which touch on the truth of the opinions or convictions being debated.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
The respective contrasts between the Sophist's position and that of Socrates who kicked-off the "Classical period" of Greek thought by proposing a distinctly objective idealist and indirect realist position, as well as with the similar views of Plato and Aristotle (who elaborate the Socratic position further) will be our main concern for the remainder of this Section.
Socrates (469-399 BC)
Socrates (of Athens) taught verbally and did not put his doctrines into writing. We must, therefore, rely on conflicting accounts from his students to reconstruct his life and philosophical approach. All such sources agree, however, that Socrates (the son of a stonecutter and a midwife) was exceedingly ugly, had an unorthodox (lowly) manner of dress and often wandered around barefooted.
Socrates was born in the year following the end of a 20 year war in which the army of Sparta and the navy of Athens had combined to fight off a bid by Persia (under Darius and Xerxes) to turn Greece into a colony of their Asiatic empire. After the war, Sparta demobilized, returned to its tradition of xenophobic seclusion and declined economically. The city-state of Athens, however, turned her navy into a merchant fleet and prospered.
"Sparta relapsed into agricultural seclusion and stagnation, while Athens became a busy mart and port, the meeting place of many races... and of diverse cults and customs, whose contact and rivalry begot comparison, analysis and thought" (Durant, 1933, p. 8).
Unlike the Sophists (who were paid for teaching a new class of wealthy economic aristocrats the skills of oration and persuasive argument), Socrates charged no fees and taught students (including women) from various walks of life. He owned a modest home in Athens and drew on a yearly income from moneys wisely invested with one of his business-minded pupils.
Socrates is best known for the technique of artful questioning he employed -now called "Socratic dialogue." In such dialogue, teachers help students to define their discursive terms exactly and thereby discover for themselves the implications of holding one position over another. Socrates is said to have demonstrated the utility of this leading-questions technique by helping an uneducated slave to discover the Pythagorean theorem regarding the square-root on the hypotenuse of a right-angle triangle (see Plato's Meno).
In contrast to the Sophists, Socrates believed that a distinction could be made between "appearance and essence." According to Plato, the latter entailed an acquaintance with "absolute" truth gained through skillful argument. Despite conflicting accounts of his view on truth it is well-known that Socrates was primarily concerned with issues of ethics ("virtue" and "right action"). His fundamental argument is that the route to virtue is "self-knowledge" because no man sins wittingly. Essential knowledge, as contrasted to easily attained "apparent" knowledge, leads inexorably to virtue and can be found in the mind. Whether absolute or otherwise, his ontology is clearly an objective idealist one -where truth needs only to be "drawn out" of the mind and clarified by skillfully guided discourse.
Relatedly, his implied epistemology is of the "indirect realist" variety. Let's note that the above demonstrative example of his technique of helping people dredge the truth up out of their mind is not one about ethics, but is one about "being"; about some aspect of the real world. The Pythagorean theorem is one that pertains to the way reality is structured on a two-dimensional plane. The Sophists had attempted to counter the early Ionian or Miletian philosophy (of naive materialist ontology in the absence of any systematic epistemology or logic) by replacing it with a form of argumentative discourse in which epistemology was totalized. This was a troubling development which Socrates set out to correct for various reasons.
Since this is our first openly confrontational encounter between such "subjective vs. objective idealist" positions, it will probably be instructive to provide a selected passage from Socrates which indicates the relevant contrast. Here, Socrates (in Plato's Theaetetus) is conversing with a student of Protagoras called Theodorus. During that exchange of views, Socrates produces the following reductio ad absurdum of the Sophist's position:
"Socrates: Well then Theodorus, shall I tell you a thing which surprises me about your friend Protagoras?
Theodorus: What is that?
Socrates: The opening words of his treatise. In general, I am delighted with his statement that what seems to anyone also is, but I am surprised that he did not begin his Truth with the words, 'The measure of all things is the pig, or the baboon,' or some sentient creature still more uncouth. There would have been something magnificent in so disdainful an opening, telling us that all the time, while we were admiring him [Protagoras] for a wisdom more than mortal, he was in fact no wiser than a tadpole, to say nothing of any other human being.... If what every man believes as a result of perception is indeed to be true for him; if, just as no one is to be a better judge of what another experiences, so no one is better entitled to consider whether what another thinks is true or false, and, as we have said more than once, every man is to have his own beliefs for himself alone and they are all right and true – then, my friend, where is the wisdom of Protagoras, to justify his setting up to teach others and to be handsomely paid for it, and where is our comparative ignorance or the need for us to go and sit at his feet, when each of us is himself the measure of his own wisdom? Must we not suppose that Protagoras speaks in this way to flatter the ears of the public? I say nothing of... the ludicrous predicament to which... this whole business of philosophical conversation [is brought by adherence to such a proposition], for to set about overhauling and testing one another's notions and opinions when those of each and every one are right, is a tedious and monstrous display of folly..." (Socrates from Plato's Theaetetus, 161b-e; In Hamilton & Cairns, 1989, pp. 866-867).
Socrates is pointing out to Theodorus that even though Protagoras may succeed in drawing or swaying a crowd, the fundamentally subjective position being assumed by Sophism itself is ultimately self-undermining. For example, if during the course of some heated discussion I become tired of the dispute and blurt out "well, we each interpret these events in our own way," there appears to be very little left to talk about. If you try to counter with "no we don't, there are certain indisputable facts to be considered here..." etc., I would be wise to grant that's true "for you." I haven't won the argument, nor lost it, but at least you've fallen quite nicely into the epistemological trap I set. This being the case, there is no remaining ground for our common inquiry into the matter originally under dispute, nor motivation (at least on my part) for further argument. Whether we were discussing Ancient Greek history or this week's departmental gossip, such off-putting tricks of argument are the stock and trade of the Sophist both ancient and modern. They are designed to throw one's opponent off balance, end discussion, or amuse a crowd and most usually nothing more. Parenthetically, had you avoided the trap by taking the maddening though effective Socratic tact of insisting that I clarify more fully what I mean by "interpreting" the events, then I would have been in trouble. That's one way to beat the Sophists at their own game!
So in the face of such subjective idealism (along with all its inconsistent anti-realist indeterminacy), Socrates offers up for us an objective idealist position in its place. According to him, there is truth, and it is about nature as well as about virtue -because human virtue (as indicated below) is for him always to be considered with regard to our relation to the real and social world within which we live. But according to Socrates, truth (a.k.a., "essential knowledge" of the real world) is not discovered by referring directly to the material world, it resides within our own mind and is ascertained by engaging in reasonable deliberations with oneself or carefully defined assertions with others.
To the modern reader who is encountering this "objective" variety of ontological idealism for the first time, it might seem quite problematic as to how such knowledge got there in the first place. Be assured, however, that the position of Socrates is but a mere starting-point or anticipator of more fully worked-out versions of that particular metaphysical position. Some of those later versions will mobilize an appeal to "innate ideas", while others appeal to an orderly structure of "sensory phenomena" or common "experience", and still others will rely on so-called "a priori categories" to provide their respective accounts of why objective knowledge is to be sought in the mind. All we need be concerned with now though is preparing ourselves to encounter some rather convincing versions of objective idealism, each of which find their roots and share their limitations with the Classical Greek positions of Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle.
Returning to his related account of human nature and virtuous action, Socrates is notable for the non-elitist progressive flavor of his views. A proper assessment of human nature is not achieved by considering the merits of men or women as isolated groups (e.g., by gender) nor even as individuals, but rather by way of considering with whom and how they associate socially as well as with careful regard the kind of state or historical era within which they reside.
Thus, for Socrates, the apparently diverse issues of whom to marry as well as "who is best suited to fix shoes, mend ships, or run the ship of state" were essentially the same. He proposed that to make such decisions or to perform any of these societal tasks competently requires self-knowledge and humility. Further, he suggests that no special reverence should be afforded to those who overestimate their own inherent worthiness in any of these pursuits.
Socrates applied this latter irreverential doctrine as closely to himself as to others. Upon being named by the Delphic Oracle "the wisest of all philosophers," he denied this to be the case and then began circulating among pretentious people of various professions (including politicians, poets, and artisans) to question their knowledge. He concluded none of these fellow-Athenians were knowledgeable and suggested that the only difference between himself and them was that he recognized his own ignorance.
This irreverence for established authority and social hierarchy was viewed as a challenge to the only recently reestablished political balance of the era (see below) as well as an affront to the mildly conservative sensibilities of "ordinary" (slave-owning) democratic citizens in Athens. A decision was eventually made to silence the now 70-year-old philosopher, partly because one of his former students (called Critias) had just carried out a failed armed uprising. Upon being accused of corrupting youth by his teachings, Socrates both annoyed the court by accusing them of "eloquence" (arrogance) and then refused to plea-bargain in any way that would openly admit intentional guilt. He accepted the resulting sentence of death with equanimity and willingly drank the deadly hemlock potion in the presence of his students.
Plato (427-347 BC)
In contrast to the lowly Socrates, Plato was a cultural aristocrat in both birth and political sentiment. He was born in Athens and enjoyed a privileged childhood during the early years of the generation-long Peloponnesian War with Sparta which Athenian democracy eventually lost in 404 BC. During an era in which large landowning aristocrats and then Spartan-imposed military Oligarchs were being successively edged out of power by a disorderly though democratic citizen Ecclesia (general assembly), Plato was frustrated in his initial youthful efforts to enter politics. Quite early on, therefore, he was drawn to the teachings of Socrates who scorned such amateur "mob rule" for its incompetence.
Plato was 28 when the old master died at the hands of a supreme court of 1000 members rotationally selected every few months on the mere basis of alphabetical rote from the roll of all the citizens. This event above all others (including the death of his "Tyrant" uncle Critias on the field of battle) is said to have solidified Plato's disdain of the loose nonprofessional style of Athenian democracy. After a prudent though self-imposed exile in which he traveled widely, Plato returned to Athens at age 40. It was at this time that he is said to have began writing various works designed to influence the general lay citizenry and to have founded the Academy of Athens.
Written in the style of "dialogues," Plato's numerous works are notable for their socially stratified views on Utopia; for their elitist advocacy of producing a professional ruling-class of philosophical politicians; and for their appeal to a theory of "abstract ideals" in their related account of knowledge. These works are often said to have contributed to psychology by anticipating later developments such as the introspective method (doctrine of recollection) and faculty psychology (by dividing the "soul" into reason, spirit, and appetite). Most notably, however, Plato not only proposed a third (rather idealist) version of the sensory emanation hypothesis (see our coverage of Aristotle who argued against it); but beyond even that was also one of the main ancient progenitors of the highly problematic "enrichment" theory of perception (where the "senses" and body are considered as hindrances to the ascertainment of "knowledge" which is only obtained through careful reasoning).
Plato's Republic, which outlines his views of human nature and the perfect (Utopian) state, was both antidemocratic and heavily influenced by Spartan ideology. The antidemocratic aspect is evidenced in the inequitable role he proposes for three classes of citizens in that state (the common people, the soldiers, and the "philosopher guardians"). The Spartan influence is evidenced in his advocacy of surreptitious selection of couples for mating, open weeding out of "sickly" young, and coeducation of girls and boys along rather bland non-artistic lines. The aim of the state is simply to provide victories in war against foes from city-states of roughly equal populations. The aim of education is to cultivate decorum in some and courage in the others for their eventual role in war. Furthermore, in Plato's Utopia, slaves would learn only the menial tasks required to serve the citizens.
In Plato's philosophical attempt to counter both the Presocratic materialists and the Sophists, he was deeply concerned with elaborating the difference between particular things (which are revealed by the senses) and ideals (the essence of things) revealed by reason. Plato argued that it is toward immutable "ideas" that the philosopher should turn to capture the true or ultimate realities because the world of mere sensible or perceptible things (material objects or events) is only a vague, transitory and untrustworthy copy of this ideal realm of existence.
In terms of ontology, therefore, Plato's position must be described as an "abstract" variety of objective idealism. It is objective because one can get at truth, but it is idealist and abstract because the route to truth was one of attaining an understanding of idealized "concepts" rather than concrete material things or events. For him, permanent, perfect, and changeless absolutes are more "real" than the perishable, transitory and imperfect objects we encounter in our everyday lives. Ideal conceptions have a timeless perfection which is never present in concrete transitory objects.
Furthermore, in contrast to former ontologically materialist positions which can be distinguished along "monist versus pluralist" lines, Plato's idealist account is neither monist nor pluralist. Instead, it is a our first clear exemplar of a dualistic ontology. His distinct "matter-idea" dualism is a profoundly influential progenitor of a later sort of dualism which is important for psychology and expresses itself as one between body and mind. Two central methodological points in this regard should be highlighted. First, whenever we encounter a mind-body dualism in later figures (e.g., Descartes), we should appreciate that it has its direct ancestor in the idea-matter dualism of Plato. Second, all such mind-body dualisms ultimately rely on an idealist metaphysic where mind is considered as primary and matter (or body) somehow derivative and secondary. This too has its origin in Plato. So, when considering Plato's metaphysic we want to appreciate this implied ontological aspect of his argument -regarding the priority or respective "reality" of the two parts of his dualism- along with the more explicit epistemological intention of Plato's position regarding "access" to these supposedly separate realms.
Matter and idea (mind) for Plato are not just analytically distinguishable, they exist separately and inhabit different ontological "realms." In order to illustrate the epistemological role of the philosopher guardian in sorting out the difference between the mere realm of sensible material appearance (of which "opinions" can be produced) and in gaining access to the higher realm of ideal reason or understanding (from which "knowledge" is gained), Plato's Republic employs the "Allegory of the Cave."
"Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot, able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along which a low wall has been built, as the exhibitors of puppet shows have partitions before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets...
...See also, then, men carrying past the wall implements of all kinds that rise above the wall, and human images and shapes of animals as well, wrought in stone and wood and every material, some of these bearers presumably speaking and others silent...
...If then they were able to talk to one another, do you not think that they would suppose that in naming the things that they saw they were naming the passing objects? And if their prison had an echo from the wall opposite them, when one of the passers-by uttered a sound, do you think that they would suppose anything else than the passing shadow to be the speaker?...
...Then in every way such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects...
...Consider, then, what would be the manner of the release and healing from these bonds and this folly if in the course of nature something of this sort should happen to them. When one was freed from his fetters and compelled to stand up suddenly and turn his head around and walk and to lift up his eyes to the light, and in doing all this felt pain and, because of the dazzle and glitter of the light, was unable to discern the objects whose shadows he formerly saw, what do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly?" (Plato's Republic, VII, 514a-515d, Paul Shorey’s translation).
By utilizing this allegory, Plato is suggesting that what ordinary folk take to be reality is not reality at all, but rather the distorted "shadows" of reality. What's more, ordinary men will have great difficulty recognizing this and would rather keep it that way.
But consider the two main methodological implications of this version of metaphysics. First, what has happened to motion and change? They have been relegated to the realm of base matter and the apparent. In contrast, the ideal realm, being "perfect" is necessarily immutable and static. Second, perception can no longer be the source of true knowledge since it is confined to the scope of shadows and illusion. For Plato, and for a millennia of monastic "Neoplatonists" thereafter, true knowledge can not be obtained through practice or experiment with regard to our natural surroundings, it can come only from some kind of philosophically contemplative exercise.
Regarding Plato's overall account, Bertrand Russell points out that there is an overemphasis on the "logical opposition" between the world of (ideal) essence and of transient sensible things, as well as an underemphasis on the "relative relations" between those concerns. Some of these shortcomings would be righted in the works of Aristotle on logic, physics, cause, and "sensitive" psyche (as outlined below), but it was Plato's metaphysical position that was best known and most often adopted in subsequent philosophy right up to the Renaissance and Reformation periods. As for psychology, in particular, subsequent theory in the areas of perception, personality, and especially in the subdiscipline of so-called intelligence testing remained very "Platonic" indeed right up to the later part of the 20th century (see Sections 2-5 in this regard).
Plato's perfect state, it should be added, was never attempted in any Ancient Greek polis nor was it wholly actualized in any other earthly republic or secular principality thereafter. Durant (1933), however, makes a convincing case for the profound influence and uptake of certain prominent features of Plato's Utopia into the organization, dogma and effectiveness of "the" Medieval Church in Europe:
"... For a thousand years Europe was ruled by an order of guardians considerably like that which was visioned by our philosopher. During the Middle Ages it was customary to classify the population of Christendom into laboratores (workers), bellatores (soldiers), and oratores (clergy). The last group, though small in number, monopolized the instruments and opportunities of culture, and ruled with almost unlimited sway half of the most powerful continent on the globe. The clergy, like Plato's guardians, were placed in authority... by their talent as shown in ecclesiastical studies and administration, by their disposition to a life of meditation and simplicity, and ... by the influence of their relatives with the powers of state and church. In the latter half of the period in which they ruled [800 AD onwards], the clergy were as free from family cares as even Plato could desire [for such guardians]... [Clerical] Celibacy was part of the psychological structure of the the power of the clergy; for on the one hand they were unimpeded by the narrowing egoism of the family, and on the other their apparent superiority to the call of the flesh added to the awe in which lay sinners held them....
Much of the politics of Catholicism was derived from Plato's 'royal lies,' or influence by them: the ideas of heaven, purgatory, and hell, in their medieval form, are traceable to the last book of the Republic; [Epilogue of Book X]; the cosmology of scholasticism comes largely from the Timaeus; the [contemporaneous] doctrine of realism (the objective reality of general ideas) [as contrasted with nominalism,] was an interpretation of the doctrine of Ideas; even the educational 'quadrivium' (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) was modeled on the curriculum outlined in Plato. With this body of doctrine the people of Europe were ruled with hardly any resort to force; and they... contributed plentiful material support to their rulers, and asked no voice in the government" (Durant, 1933, pp. 49-50).
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Born at Stagira in Thrace (where his father was a physician to the Macedonian king), Aristotle was first educated by physicians until the age of 18 when he moved south to Athens for a 20 year stint at the Academy under Plato. After Plato's death, Aristotle traveled briefly and taught notable pupils such as the young Alexander-the-Great but then returned to Athens to found his own philosophical school (called the Lyceum). It is said that he wrote down most of his works in the latter twelve year period (335-323 BC) of his life.
In contrast to Plato, Aristotle was both a naturalist and a thoroughly logical thinker who attempted to not only systematize his varied philosophical writings into a single overarching account (i.e., his Metaphysics) but to also present his other works (e.g., his Physics) in a careful, pedantic, consistent, and step-by-step professorial style. Some of these works were definitively naturalistic (e.g., those on the classification and movements of animals). Others were either distinctly psychological (e.g., De Anima, De Sensu, and those covering memories and dreams) or developmental (e.g., his short tract on youth and aging). Still others were more logical, political, ethical, or cosmological in their concerns. Several of Aristotle's treatises were also subsequently grouped under the title Organon ["Instrument"] and regarded as comprising his main logical works (Categories; On Interpretation; Prior Analytics; Posterior Analytics; Topics; On Sophistical Refutations).
Aristotle is one of the most fascinating figures from this entire Ancient Greek period. I like the naturalistic strivings of Thales, Heraclitus, Democritus, and even Anaxagoras; and I don't intend to slight them in any way. It is indisputable, however, that Aristotle has also remained a potent source of inspiration and error for later generations. Although his system of philosophy strictly speaking (like Plato's) represents an objective idealism, Aristotle's thinking is much more conducive to a naturalistic and scientific account of the world. While Platonism encourages a monastic retreat from the world, Aristotle was far more interested in engaging the worldly events of nature. He also made successive attempts to establish an assumptive methodological basis for clear and "logical" human discourse about observable events, as well as for the carrying out of careful empirical or rational inquiry into their underlying explanatory "causes."
Before proceeding to the pertinent details of Aristotle's logical contributions, naturalism, views on cause, and psychology, our first task should be to establish that his overall philosophical approach was objective idealist -most specifically with respect to how it overlapped with that of Plato.
In Aristotle's Metaphysics, the Platonic dualism (of matter and ideals) is revised somewhat into an account of "matter" and "form." The most important revision that Aristotle introduced here (aside from changing the latter term) was to reduce the absoluteness of the assumed distinction. What got Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, and Plato into trouble was their absolutization of the philosophical issues they dealt with respectively. But with Aristotle, there is a notable backing-off from such extremes and the presentation of a more relational ontologically monist position.
This relational distinction between "matter" and "form" blends in well with another important analytical distinction Aristotle made between the "actual" and the "potential." Given that he posits a relation between actual manifestations of matter and their potential form (or "essence"), it is easy to appreciate that these are understood by Aristotle to exist in some sort of monistic unity with each other. Aristotle's account was not 100 percent in this regard, however, for he did also posit some exceptional forms which do not have "actuality" in matter (e.g., the Aristotelian "God" and one aspect of his account of Soul) but it is clear that he did manage to back off considerably from the absolute duality of ontological realms posited by Plato for matter (on the one hand) and ideas (on the other).
For Aristotle, all matter is actualized form and yet also holds other form potentials within it. Similarly, most (but not all) form is actualized in particular instances of matter or functions of matter. There tends to be a kind of assumed unity between the two which we don't see in Plato's account. Marble, for instance, is matter to the "statue" and the statue is form realized in marble or "bronze". The word realized, however, is important because like in Plato, the "form" (by virtue of its definition as a "potential") is -at least in one sense of the term (Book V, Part 11)- suggested to exist "prior" to -or is otherwise "more real" than (Book VII, Part 3)- the actualized material statue. In other words, the "form" of any perceptually given (particular) object is taken by Aristotle to be its essence. Aristotle's position is that the form of the statue -the potential for its material substance to become an actualized end state (though not the statue's "shape")- is already there in the block of "stone." The active efforts of the sculptor merely reveals that form -e.g., as an actualized statue of "Hermes" (Book III, Part 5). Such form "potency" is preexisting, eternal and "unchangeable" (Book V, Part 12) -just like in Plato- and may or may not become realized or revealed in particular manifestations of matter. Particular ("concrete") objects -even those worked on by the highly skilled artisan- may approach or approximate the perfection of the forms existing within, but they do not ever attain such potential perfection.
When Plato discusses the distinction between particular objects and ideals, they are clearly being conceived as existing in different ontological "realms" (localities), but for Aristotle they are not. For him, forms are substantialized (embodied within matter) while the "universals" of Plato are not. Aristotle's position implies a very complex interweaving of the two so that they produce an ultimate unity. The forms have a prior existence of their own but just not in a different place. They exist within the material substance or living body (organism) as a potential:
"Again, 'being' and 'that which is' mean that some of the things we have mentioned 'are' potentially, others in complete reality. For we say both ... of that which can actualize its knowledge and of that which is actualizing it, that it knows... And similarly in the case of substances; we say the Hermes is in the stone, and the half of the line is in the line, and we say of that which is not yet ripe that it is corn..." (Book V, Part 7).
"And when we have the whole, such and such a form in this flesh and in these bones, this is Callias or Socrates; and they are different in virtue of their matter (for that is different), but the same in form; for their form is indivisible" (Book VII, Part 8).
"For even if the line when divided passes away into its halves, or the man into bones and muscles
and flesh, it does not follow that they are composed of these as parts of their essence, but rather as matter; and these are parts of the concrete thing, but not also of the form..." (Book VII, Part 10).Much of this is a clear improvement over Plato and appears to flirt (at times) with a return to some sort of dynamic Heraclitean materialism. Russell (1946) cautions us, however, that although a "form" (for Aristotle) is intended as something quite different than a Platonic universal ideal, it does have many of the same characteristics: "Form is, we are told, more real than matter; this is [at least] reminiscent of the sole reality of the [Platonic] ideas" (p. 179). Russell then quotes Eduard Zeller (who we can simply paraphrase) by saying that Aristotle had: "only half emancipated himself from Plato's tendency to hypostatize [(reify)] ideas. The 'Forms' had for him, as the 'Ideas' had for Plato a metaphysical [(assumed ontological)] existence of their own... And .... [are at times treated as if they had the status of] .... an immediate presentment of a supersensible world, ... [which (as such) is accessible only by way of] .... intellectual intuition" (After Zeller, 1897, in Russell, 1946, p. 179).
To put this point a little more plainly, the fact is that Aristotle's (idealist) version of relational monist ontology is but a mere methodological half-step out of Plato's absolute idealist and ontologically dualist tradition. This can be appreciated when we note the remaining uneven relationship between actualized matter and its supposed underlying (resident) form potential. Aristotle usually talks about matter striving to be realized in form and form being substantiated in matter. This is certainly a recognition that movement, motion, change, or development occurs but we should be careful to notice where that motion (change or development) is located: It is in the matter, not in the form. For Aristotle, "sensible substance" changes but only so as to approximate the presumably "unchanging," immutable, and "indivisible" form existing within it (Book XII, Parts 2, 7 & 8). Once again, the idealized "forms" are assumed to have a timeless perfection which is never quite attained by "concrete" transitory objects.
When it comes to his postulation of such albeit substantialized forms, therefore, Aristotle's idealist (though relational) ontological monism contrasts unfavorably with the simpler (more parsimonious) materialist monism of Heraclitus and Democritus. This may seem like a subtle or minor contrast but it actually makes a world of difference. It means that when we get the Classical period of Greek philosophy (specifically Plato and Aristotle) what are now being taken as the prior, more real, or fundamental constituents of the universe -the ideals or forms- are assumed to be static and unchanging entities which exist either in their own realm (Plato) or embedded within their particular material manifestations (Aristotle).
Aside from these questionable, equivocal, and problematic idealist aspects of his philosophical system, Aristotle did make many other more long-lasting logical and methodological contributions to posterity. So let's move on to cover those contributions. Most notable among these are: his initial introduction of deductive "syllogism" to the analytical lexicon of philosophy (Prior Analytics); his proposal (elsewhere) of three maxims of so-called formal (deductive) "logic"; and his very useful doctrine of "four" causes (reasons for) which subsequent scientific practice would utilize to varying degrees and with varying success.
A "syllogism" is simply a trio of propositions of which the latter (the conclusion) follows from granting the truth of the other two (the major and minor premises). As a methodological thinker, Aristotle noticed that when presented with a three-part syllogism (such as: Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is mortal), certain regularities or truisms have to be assumed about the categories (nouns and predicates) contained in each of the three propositions. He therefore made a concerted subsequent effort to formalize the rules of logic as they had developed implicitly in those who preceded him (mainly Parmenides and Protagoras). These truisms have come to be called Aristotle's three maxims (or laws) of logical discourse.
The three maxims of what would later be called "formal logic" -which Aristotle somewhat implicitly set down in his Metaphysics and Posterior Analytics- can be described as follows: (1) Law of Identity: A is A; (2) Law of Noncontradiction: A is not non-A; and (3) Law of Excluded Middle: Any X is either A or non-A. In our example, the maxims would simply state respectively that: (1) Socrates is always Socrates; (2) Socrates can not be equal to that which is not Socrates; and (3) There is nothing other than Socrates and not Socrates.
As you can probably appreciate, these maxims are statements about the necessary conditions that exist for the descriptive categories used while entering into ontological arguments. In other words, they relate to (emphasize or highlight) the necessarily assumed consistency between the nouns or predicates utilized in the various propositions of such arguments. They are maxims or laws of clear discourse which may or may not apply to particular cases of actual (concrete) being as such.
Aristotle's exposition of these logical laws of correct "thinking" was certainly a groundbreaking advance over his predecessor's loose art of argumentative discourse. Russell states for instance:
"Aristotle's influence, which was very great in many different fields, was greatest of all in logic. In late antiquity, when Plato was still supreme in metaphysics [(primarily on issues of epistemology)], Aristotle was the recognized authority in logic, and he retained this position throughout the Middle Ages" (Russell, 1946, p. 206).
It should be pointed out, however, that the considerable limitations of Aristotelian logic (its overemphasis on deduction and its abstract either/or quality) were direct echoes of the idealist legacy passed down from Socrates and Plato to Aristotle. His three maxims of Identity, Noncontradiction and Excluded Middle are certainly helpful in promoting clear discourse (defining one's terms and drawing deductive inference). The problem with them arises when one begins to overgeneralize them; to treat them as rules that necessarily apply to being (the nature of things).
For instance, consider the formal logical contrast between "life" and "non-life." This latter non-life category is an abstract negation of life -i.e., everything that is not alive (rocks, machinery, etc.)- and as long as we are dealing with oppositions like this, all three maxims (including the noncontradiction law) always hold. Yet consider now, the more ontological or naturalistic contrast between "life" and "death" (which is the concrete negation of that which was once alive). If as a biologist, I want to know about the nature of life (living organisms) I can not understand that topic without studying death because life and death are (just as Thales and Heraclitus suggested) so intimately or dialectically related that the essence of one depends on the other. Organisms which are living from day to day are also dying from day to day. Such basic vital processes are always two-sided -i.e., they are a constant "building and destroying" as Heraclitus once put it. So, if we are trying to grasp such naturalistically related processes as life and death, the kinds of points which Heraclitus is making seem to apply, because being is contradictory. The noncontradiction maxim of Aristotle does not apply in this particular concrete instance of being.
Although this important distinction between discourse and being was (in the main) handled quite well by Aristotle, it was not well handled by later 17th-18th century mechanical thinkers (covered in Section 2) who ran into great difficulties in accounting for motion, change, and development because those topics imply an understanding of objective rather than logical contradiction in nature. Nature is contradictory in a way that is not necessarily reflected in the realm of exclusionary (either/or) symbolic discourse.
This is all quite ironic because we can recognize in Aristotle's writing (choose any one at random) some of the lingering dynamics of the Presocratic period being reasserted. He was constantly utilizing terms like the coming to be and the passing away because his notion of substance (matter) was that which changes (Physics, Book I, Part 2, Part 7, Part 8). Yet when we get to the 17th century we'll find they utilize a markedly more static notion of material substance as that which persists through change.
Historically, such overgeneralization worked to set our inquiries back in a way that Aristotle would not have liked. He wanted to understand motion, change, and process in both physical matter and in developing organisms. What we can say about the later mechanistic thinkers is that they granted a changing universe and even worked successively (e.g., from Galileo, 1590 through to Newton, 1686) toward a theory of mechanical motion but had no theory or adequate account of change or development in the organic or organismic realm of natural processes. These limitations of the way Aristotelian logic (etc.) were picked up and utilized by later philosophers, however, were not drawn out into the open until the 19th century in the equally groundbreaking exposition of dialectical logic by Hegel, Marx, and Engels.
An altogether more favorable analysis (even from the perspective of the relative present) can be made of Aristotle's somewhat more explicit outline of four causes (Formal, Material, Efficient, and Final). Although he didn't always apply them consistently, Aristotle's Metaphysics (Book I, Part 3; Book V, Part 2) and Posterior Analytics (Book II, Part 11) did point out the "four" kinds of information we need in order to understand any object, process, or action we may have under study: 'What is it; from what does it come; by what agent; and for what end?'
"Evidently we have to acquire knowledge of the original causes (for we say we know each thing only when we think we recognize its first cause), and causes are spoken of in four senses. In one of these we mean the... the essence (for the 'why' is reducible... to the definition [the Formal cause]...); in another the matter or substratum [(Material cause)], in a third the source of the change [(Efficient cause)], and in a fourth the cause opposed to this, the purpose and the good (for this is the end [-the Final cause-] of all generation and change)" (Metaphysics, Book I, Part 3).
"We think we have scientific knowledge when we know the cause, and there are four causes: (1) the definable form, (2) an antecedent which necessitates a consequent [(Material cause)], (3) the efficient cause, (4) the final cause" (Posterior Analytics, Book II, Part 11).
"Besides this it is plain that when the causes are being looked for, either all four must be sought thus or they must be sought in one of these four ways" (Metaphysics, Book I, Part 8).
From the standpoint of science, the inductive aspects and explanatory potential of Aristotle's "causes" (reasons "why") go well beyond the confines of the categorical either/or deductive logic passed down to him from Plato (see Randall, 1960). Most notably, there is an ever-present methodological tension in Aristotle's writing between his discursive logical laws (which seem to reject contradiction in nature), his occasional reference to an "unmoved" prime mover (which seems to play the role of an initial efficient cause for motion in the cosmos), and his allowance for all "four" kinds of cause. Why? Because the seeking out of answers to the "final cause" ('for what end') question seems to imply an intimate understanding of physical objects, events, or organisms in their respective forward-reaching and teleological relations (i.e., as contradictory and inherently dynamic processes of nature).
For instance, Aristotle's reasons why allow for not only discussion or formal definitional classification of what animals look like -their categorical appearance- (how many legs, etc.); but also for informed inductive speculation about deeper (more essential) questions like how each of these varied apparent groupings (the observable As and non-As) might have come to be that way; or how they may each form part of wider -less apparent- groupings (Man, Mammals, etc.), as well as how they might all fit together into a scala natura. This "scale [or ladder] of nature" itself, in turn, poses further relational and causal questions about the ecology of animals and their actual or potential developmental contradictions.
Aristotle's scala natura (a.k.a., ladder or chain of being) consisted of God, man, mammals, oviparous organisms with perfect eggs (e.g., birds), oviparous organisms with non-perfect eggs (e.g., fish), insects, plants, and non-living (inanimate) matter. He considered each link in the chain as a "species" of being. In our terms, however, he made extensive taxonomic studies of more than 500 animal species -dissecting many of them (with the exception of man). The observations he published in Generation of Animals and Historia Animalum (Investigation of Animals) were meticulous, and his differential classification scheme was conspicuously modern because it departed from the prior Greek practice of using merely apparent categories such as with feet vs. footless and winged vs. wingless (Balme, 1975).
The ongoing dominance of mere categorical (either/or) logical thought, however, seems to have played a large part in the fact that three of the "four" causes which Aristotle utilized were subsequently rejected or rather ignored by 17th-18th century mechanistic thinkers -who favored appeal to "efficient" (by what agent) cause in their mechanical "billiard-ball" explanation of inclined planes, reflex action, and even human will (Section 2). Similarly, even after the establishment of psychology as a distinct discipline (1879 onward), the rest of the causes only appeared definitively with the American functionalist movement of the 1890s (Section 4) and have waxed and waned rather irregularly in the varied schools or systems of psychology ever since that time (White, 1990, pp. 3-4; C.W. Tolman, 1983a&b, 1991d).
Aristotle's coverage of what would now be considered psychological topics is found primarily in his overarching De Anima [On the Soul] and a more specialized tract "De Sensu et Sensibili" [On Sense and the Sensible]; as well as in two lesser tracts called: De Memoria et Reminiscentia [On Memory and Reminiscence] and De Somniis [On Dreams]. Each in their own way reflect both his naturalistic approach to the world and the idealist aspects of his philosophy.
With De Anima, Aristotle became the first Greek philosopher to devote an entire separate work to the psychological topics of sensation; reminiscence or imagination (now called memory or mental imagery); and reason or thought (now called higher mental processes or cognition). Book I of that three-book work starts out with a critical review of the sketchy and sometimes transparently arcane views of Aristotle's predecessors on such topics (stretching from Thales through to Plato).
Basically, Aristotle argues that if "psuchê" (an ancient Greek word equivalent to "psyche" but which is usually translated most problematically as "the soul") is a distinctive "principle", characteristic, or aspect of "active" and "living" organisms -rather than either a kind of "element" or mixed "harmony" of "spatial" substance (as the materialist traditions held) on the one hand; or a disembodied "incorporeal" entity (as the mystical traditions held) on the other- then the most "appropriate" way to investigate its various manifestations (in plants, animals, and human beings) is a "natural[istic]" one (see Book I, Part 1, 4 & 5). More precisely, what Aristotle suggests in terms of procedure is that we should start with a generalized descriptive encapsulation (a "summa general" indicative of these as yet ill-defined or varied processes); and then move carefully forward from such early "conjecture" to "investigate" each such "form of soul" so as to successively refine our initial understanding of their "essential nature" and ultimately "discover the derived [functional] properties" of each (see Book I, Part 1; Book II, Part 1 & 4).
Aristotle's critical introductory comments about the proper assumptive basis or procedural starting-point for the analysis of such a new "subject" area are for the most part followed up quite well and elaborated with details throughout Book II and III. At the outset of Book II a provisional "general formula applicable to all kinds of soul," is presented which "describes" (but does not define) psyche in abstract (non-particular) terms "as the first grade of actuality of a natural [living] organized body" (Book II, Part 1). This is Aristotle's initial generalized answer to the ontological "What is it [that we are setting out to study]?" question he had raised in the first three paragraphs of De Anima. For as he says upfront:
"Further, does soul [psyche] belong to the class of potential existents, or is it not rather an actuality? Our answer to this question is of the greatest importance" (Book I, Part 1).
Having now indicated that psyche is an as yet ill-defined "actuality" which must therefore be investigated further, Aristotle then proceeds to fill in the more concrete details -i.e., the "particulars subsumed under the [above] common name." That is, he begins to distinguish the various manifestations of psyche in more precise terms of the particular functional utility or activities they each respectively carry out. Aristotle argues that in plants psyche fulfills an "active" but merely "nutritive" and "reproductive" function only; but in animals it can be observed to have become a "sensitive" (sensory or perceptive) and "locomotive" power with characteristically derivative though "sentient" and directional "means to ends" relationships ("since Nature does nothing in vain"); while in human beings it is (as well) the capacity for both "particular" intentionally goal-oriented "practical" reasoning and higher (more "universal") "intellective" ("theoretical" or "speculative") thinking (Book II, Part 1-5; Book III).
"That perceiving and practical thinking are not identical is therefore obvious; for the former is universal in the animal world, the latter is found in only a small division of it. Further, speculative thinking is also distinct from perceiving -I mean that in which we find rightness and wrongness- rightness in prudence, knowledge, true opinion, wrongness in their opposites; for perception of the special objects of sense is always free from error, and is found in all animals, while it is possible to think falsely as well as truly, and thought is found only where there is discourse of reason as well as sensibility" (Book III, Part 3).
In providing this detailed, broad-spectrum, and functional account of various forms of psychic activities, Aristotle can be recognized as explicitly distancing himself from the prior Platonic view which merely assumed the "soul" to be devisable into "parts" which reside (as abstract and ill-defined potentialities or even spiritual entities) in various locales of the human body -e.g., thought in the head, courage in the chest, or appetite in the abdomen. We must be ever careful, however, not to overstate the case for Aristotle's functionalism.
There are two intimately related reasons for caution that can be mentioned with regard to his account of psychological topics in De Anima. First of all, there is the relatively minor point that, in Book I, Aristotle often continues to utilize the older language of the Democritean "substantial" theory of mental activity even while explicitly attempting to break free from it -toward what is best described as a near functionalist account peppered with hints of his idealist (form-matter) ontology. Secondly, a more serious (major) point is that the idealist aspect of Aristotle's ontology itself actually stands in the way of a thoroughgoing or completely functionalist account of psychological processes. Noting this second obstacle here and now will be especially useful to us later because we'll encounter it in subsequent figures as well.
To help illustrate these two related points, I've selected a few crucial passages from Book I for our joint consideration. In the first paragraph of the following extract, for instance, Aristotle is attempting to articulate the rather subtle difference between erroneously assuming the lower manifestations of psyche to be 'material or spatially located entities' versus assuming them to be 'special functional activities' of the living substantial "vehicle in which" (or by which) those functions are carried out. In the initial paragraph, Aristotle seems to do this quite well and it is clear that he is calling for a bi-directional functional analysis of basic (lower) psychological processes in both their apparently passive "sensory" (outside-inwards) and more active "movement" producing (inside-outwards) roles. But, in the subsequent paragraph dealing specifically with "mind" ("nous" -by which Aristotle seems to mean the more complex, uppermost, or highest reaches of human reasoning ability and mental capacity), he slips rather abruptly back into his quintessentially idealist (form-matter) ontology -where the human "mind" is again likened to a Platonic "impassive" or "divine" eternal entity.
".... For example we may regard anger or fear as such and such movements of the heart, and thinking as such and such another movement of that organ, or of some other; .... (the special nature of the parts and the special modes of their changes being for our present purpose irrelevant). Yet to say that it is the soul [psyche] which is angry is as inexact as it would be to say that it is the soul that weaves webs or builds houses. It is doubtless better to avoid saying that the soul pities or learns or thinks and rather to say that it is the man who does this with his soul. What we mean is not that the movement is in the soul, but that sometimes it terminates in the soul and sometimes starts from it, sensation e.g. coming from without inwards, and reminiscence starting from the soul and terminating with the movements, actual or residual, in the sense organs.
The case of mind ["nous" -the higher 'form' of active intellect] is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the [human] soul and to be incapable of being destroyed. If it could be destroyed at all, it would be under the blunting influence of old age. What really happens in respect of mind in old age is, however, exactly parallel to what happens in the case of the sense organs; if the old man could recover the proper kind of eye, he would see just as well as the young man. The incapacity of old age is due to an affection not of the soul but of its vehicle, as occurs in drunkenness or disease. Thus it is that in old age the activity of mind or intellectual apprehension declines only through the decay of some other inward part; mind itself is impassible. Thinking, loving, and hating are affections not of mind, but of that which has mind, so far as it has it. That is why, when this vehicle decays, memory and love cease; they were activities not of mind [(as form)], but of the [material] composite which has perished; mind is, no doubt, something more divine and impassible" (Book I, Part 4).
So, as indicated immediately above, Aristotle's (form-matter) idealism -which we first encountered in his Metaphysics- is carried over into his psychological notion of a higher active "intellective soul" (a.k.a., "mind" or "nous") which unlike all lower manifestations of animal or human psyche (e.g., sensation, reminiscence, or even object-oriented "practical" reason) is not a material function of the body but is assumed by him to survive after death (see also De Anima, Book III, Part 4 & 5). Yet, now we have made these required caveats as plain as possible, I'd like to reemphasize that the more prominent tendency in Aristotle is to consider the other manifestations of psyche to be functional utilities of particular sorts of living bodies -or organs of a body- which can be classified according to the types of activity they carry out.
This carefully qualified case for Aristotle's functional approach to psychological topics can be made by considering how his causal (outside-inward) theory of sensation (in general), and his theory of visual perception (in particular), departed from three prior versions of the so-called emanation hypothesis put forward by Empedocles, Democritus, and Plato (see De Anima, Book II, Part 6-12; and "De Sensu").
Empedocles Emanation hypothesis: Lantern simile unidirectional (inside-outward) Democritus Emanation hypothesis: Image theory unidirectional (outside-inward) Plato Emanation hypothesis: Synaugeia theory bi-directional (inside-outward-inward) Aristotle Discriminative Act account: Pneuma theory unidirectional (outside-inward) The first sketchy attempts to produce a theory of vision emphasized the respective roles of material elements assumed to be contained within the eye (predominantly water and fire). The water, was said to be a passive though reflective element similar to a mirror -which accounts for observable reflections on the surface of the eye (as seen by one person gazing closely into the eyes of another). Fire, on the other hand, was said to be a more active element.
For example, Empedocles suggested that fire in the eye is sent outward (emanated) to objects just as a lantern lights a roadway. The exact details of his account have been lost to posterity and what we do know about it comes only from those who argued for or against his views. We do not know, for instance, whether the emanated fire is assumed to have reached the object and to have bounced back to the eye (like a sound bounces off a the flat face of a rocky bluff to return to us in the form of an echo). Yet in having proposed this lantern simile -which in and of itself is taken as an initial unidirectional (inside-outward) version of the emanation hypothesis- Empedocles seems to have assumed that there has to be some sort of physical contact between the object and the sensory organs if stimulation is to occur at all. The content and structure of those respective organs also seem to have been recognized as providing a specificity for the differences between the kinds of sensations produced or picked up. He is often said to have reasoned, therefore, that since all objects contain some proportion of each element (water, fire, earth, and air), the sensory organs act according to the principle of "like seeking like".
Democritus proposed a similar, though (outside-inward), version of the emanation hypothesis. He reasoned that since all material objects are "active" collections of atoms, they must emanate streams of particles which reach other objects -some of which happen to be sensory organs. All such sensations are the product of some variety of contact of atoms with differentially substantive sensory organs. Inherently active material substance emits (emanates) structured streams of atoms into the surrounding medium (air or water) which can be picked up either through immediate physical contact (as in taste or touch) or contact at a distance (as in smell, hearing, or vision). The point is that since such sensory organs (just like all other material objects) vary with respect to their constituent elements, they may admit particles of only one particular (or predominant) kind. Thus, Democritus is said to have adhered to the now somewhat modified epistemological principle of "like through like".
For Democritus, it is the orderly combination of such "like" elements which somehow produces the vast array of palpable objects or observable events we deal with in our ordinary lives. The analytical hitch is that (in his ontological account of material substance itself), Democritus had already attributed hardness, weight, and solidity to atoms; while other qualities (smell, color, and temperature) were considered as existing only in "common opinion." In the case of sight, therefore, Democritus is said to have been forced into distinguishing between sensory vision and mental vision. In sensory vision, structured substances are (in the form of "flouting pictures") transferred directly onto the pupil and perhaps into the eye. These "images" are assumed by him to be an exact copy of the object's atomic structure, but colors are not. Colors where said to occur as an indirect (perhaps mental) consequence of the contact between atoms and the visual organ. There might be a definite arrangement of atoms which correspond to each color, but since colors do not reside in atoms themselves, these colors must somehow be imparted by us to the objects we see.
Anaxagoras (like Aristotle later on) is the odd man out in these early epistemological discussions. First of all, let's recall that it was Anaxagoras who distinguished between material substance and "nous" (a mental ordering principle which allows us to attend to the structured order, pattern, and sequential arrangement of the world around us). This ontological distinction between nous (mind) and the objects which are attended to, can be appreciated as an early attempt to emphasize an active though naturalistic account of what has come to be called the subject-object relation. The immediate implication is that every conceivable case of sensation is an active relation between a subject (which observes) and an object (which is observed).
As is often suggested, his immediate argumentative point may have been simply that mere passive (mechanical or physical) contact with an external object was, in itself, insufficient to guarantee the production of a sensory impression (or perception) in the subject. At the very least, a counteraction by the differentially sensitive sensory organ (which is itself an active collection of conflicting elements) was also needed. Yet when this point is pushed just a little bit further, it becomes apparent this is the first indication that not only the activity of the sensory organ, but also the movement of the eyes, the turning of the head, and even the organism's goal-directed locomotion through space must be somehow drawn into our account of vision or any other sensory modality.
Furthermore, Anaxagoras seems to have had no trouble at all with what would later be called the problem of "secondary qualities" (see Section 2). This is because (unlike Democritus), Anaxagoras assumed the traditional opposites or qualities (hot and cold, wet and dry, and also "color") to reside within the elements (or "seeds") and -by extension- within the objects of perception themselves. The perception of color, therefore, presented no special epistemological problem for him as it had for Democritus and a host of subsequent thinkers.
His overall account of the subject-object relation is often summed up in a few pithy phrases which contrast with that of Empedocles, Democritus, and -as we will soon see- with Plato. For instance, in having recognized the ontological difference (as well as the epistemological unity) between "nous" (the organism's mindful activity) and the "objects" being observed or attended to, he is said to have adhered to a principle of "unlike to unlike" in his account of our contact with the world around us. In other words, Anaxagoras realized that even though the subject and the object are analytically different they also form a unity through their active reciprocal relationship. The subject and the object (just like the elements themselves) are in no way "cut off" from one another as if by a "hatchet."
The analytical gains made by Anaxagoras on the subject-object relation, were not picked up by Plato. In the Timaeus, Plato passes down to posterity a rather retrograde 'synaugeia' (union of rays) theory of vision and color which is similar in many respects to the initial emanation hypothesis of Empedocles. Fire in the eye, he suggests, proceeds outwards and when that "inner fire" reaches an object it is seen (Part 13). Plato never, however, quite gets around to telling us exactly how this might occur. Instead, he merely alludes to the as yet ill-defined but seemingly joint concepts of both a "line of vision" (which presumably has something to do with the direction of the head or eyes) and of some sort of physical "coalescent" (or proximity) between the outward "stream of vision" and the "light of day":
"When the light of day surrounds the [outward] stream of vision, then like falls upon like, and they coalesce, and one body is formed by natural affinity in the line of vision, wherever the light that falls from within meets with an external object" (Plato, Timaeus, Part 13).
Similarly, whenever that outgoing "visual ray" encounters (and is "dilated" by) light travelling in the "opposite direction" -presumably from the mildly reflective surfaces of objects
