The Death of Consciousness

1. The Death of Consciousness • American Pragmatism • Charles Sanders Peirce • William James • Behaviourism • Watson: The Behaviourist Manifesto. • Pavlov • Hull • Tolman • Skinner

2. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) • He was son of a Harvard professor of mathematics & astronomy and a well-educated US senator’s daughter • He had a privileged upbringing as the second of five children • His work was influenced by and influenced William James (they were good friends) • Pragmatism • the meaning of a concept depends upon its practical outcomes. • a concept is meaningless if it has no practical or experiential effect on the way we conduct our lives or inquiries.

3. Introducing Abduction • Prior to Peirce’s studies in logic, science (knowledge) was seen to progress through induction and deduction. • Deduction All balls in this bag are red (rule) All balls in this random sample are taken from the bag (case)  All balls in this random sample from the bag are red (result) • Induction All balls in this random sample are taken from the bag All balls in this random sample from the bag are red  All balls in this bag are red • Abduction All balls in this bag are red All balls in this random sample are red All the balls in this random sample are taken from the bag

4. Peirce’s Scientific Method • Peirce argued that science progresses through three stages • Abduction • Moving from cases to hypotheses • Deduction • Deriving outcomes from the hypotheses • Induction • Testing the outcomes of the hypotheses • According to Eco (1984, Sign of Three) Sherlock Holmes followed the same methodological processes in his problem solving.

5. William James (1842-1910) • Born to a second generation Irish immigrant family in New York City • Educated at some of the best schools in New York and encouraged strongly by his father’s positive attitudes to the benefits of education • He was a Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University • The Principles of Psychology (1890) • Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907) • ‘Stream Consciousness’ • Individual and ever-changing • Discrete yet continuous • Selective

6. Against Structuralism • According to James • Consciousness cannot be broken down into individual structures (e.g. sensations) • Consciousness cannot be understood by trying to pieces such individual elements together (like four blind men trying to identify and elephant) • Consciousness serves an adaptive function (or else why would it survived evolutionary processes) • Mind and body are not separate interacting systems. • Mental and physical experiences are two aspects of the same thing…it is often the way that things are described that makes them seem different.

7. James’ Pragmatism • There are a number of features of William James’ pragmatism • It is a theory of truth & meaning • “True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and identify. False ideas are those that we cannot (p133) • Truth is made in action and through it’s consequences. • It is a functionalist theory • How does the mind adapt to it’s environment, it’s history, and it’s actions?

8. John B. Watson (1878-1958) • Born in South Carolina, to poor parents, the fourth of six children. • He studied at Furnham University from the age of 16, though he was not hugely successful academically • Moved to Chicago in 1900 and studied under John Dewey and James Rowland Angell – he was the youngest student at the time to obtain a PhD (supervised by Angell) • Moved to John Hopkins in 1908 but was ‘sacked’ in 1920 after divorcing his wife and marrying his research assistant • He moved with his new wife to New York and took a job with the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency and studied advertising from a behaviourist perspective…

9. The ‘Radical’ Behaviourist Manifesto (1) • “Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. It’s theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist's total scheme of investigation” (Watson, 1913, Psychological Review, 20, 158-177)

10. The ‘Radical’ Behaviourist Manifesto (2) • The following summary comments are taken from Watson, (1913, Psychological Review, 20, 158-177) • Human psychology has failed to make good its claim as a natural science • Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences of chemistry and physics. • This suggested elimination of states of consciousness as proper objects of investigation in themselves will remove the barrier from psychology which exists between it and the other sciences. The findings of psychology become the functional correlates of structure and lend themselves to explanation in physico-chemical terms. • Psychology as behavior will, after all, have to neglect but few of the really essential problems with which psychology as an introspective science now concerns itself.

11. The Objects of ‘Radical’ Behaviourism • Adjustment and maladjustment • When organisms become ‘maladjusted’ to their environment they behave • Phylogenetic continuity • The mechanisms/processes are essentially the same for animals and humans • The Determination of Behaviour • Behaviour emerges from the stimuli and characteristics of the organism • The Classification of Behaviour • Somatic/Hereditary • Somatic/Acquired • Visceral/Acquired • Behavioural Redefinition of the Traditional Categories of Mentalism

12. Ivan P. Pavlov (1849-1936) • Pavlov, was born in the small Russian town of Ryazan. He obtained his degree in Medicine from the University of Petersburg in 1883. • He has stated that he was greatly influenced by Darwin and Sechenov (Reflexes of the Brain) • He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology for his Lectures on the Work of the Digestive Glands • His main contribution was the introduction of the • Unconditioned response • Conditioned response • Unconditioned stimulus • Conditioned stimulus • Behaviour can be explained through increasingly complicated chains of learned responses.

13. Clark Hull (1884-1952) • As a child he suffered from both typhoid fever and poliomyelitis • He studied at the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin and researched at Yale (hypnosis & suggestibility) • He emphasized the need to consider not only the stimulus and the response but also intervening organismic variables • Habit strength (SHR) • Reaction Potential (SER) • Drive (D) • Negative Reaction Tendencies (D-) • Drive Reduction Theory • SER=SHRxD

14. Edward Chace Tolman (1886-1959) • Born in a Boston suburb to a middle class family. • Studied at MIT and Harvard where he stayed as a professor • Disagreed with Watson’s overly mechanistic S-R account • Tolman argued that learning is essentially goal-directed • Learning is expectancy related • He also included other organismic variables such as • Cognitions, purposes, hypotheses and appetite • He distinguished two types of learning • Place learning – cognitive maps • Response learning – learning through repetition and reinforcement of specific responses

15. B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) • Grew up in a small Pennsylvanian town to protestant parents (work ethic…) • Studied at Hamilton College, New York and Harvard, where he eventually held a faculty post • Rejected the necessity for organismic variables. • He distinguished between two types of condition • Type S (respondent conditioning) • Pavlovian Conditioning • Type R (operant conditioning) • Wherein the immediate consequences of a behaviour affect the probability that the behaviour will be repeated.