As I read through these gentlemen I
could see that they were not quite grasping what psychology was, but they were
trying. A couple of them were almost
there, but I just felt they were not quite getting it. At least these guys were closer that the last
few people we have read. They were still
trying to use science to explain psychology and where, yes, psychology is a
science in certain parts of it, but not in the entire world of psychology. Science is a more definite world where
psychology is a world of “definites”, “maybes” and “what-ifs”. When trying to decide to whom I would lean
more toward, I am think that would have to be Titchener and Ebbinghaus. As I read their things I could understand it
a lot more and they made more sense.
Wundt was one of those people who
were still using science to explain psychology, which to me did not really make
sense, but did at the same time. He, at
first, started out by talking about supplementary concepts and trying to figure
out what was and was not considered these concepts, “Every empirical science
has certain particular facts of experience whose nature and reciprocal
relations it seeks to investigate. In
solving these problems it is found to be necessary to have general supplementary concepts that are not contained in experience
itself, but are gained by a process of logical treatment of this
experience.” He later goes to tell what
these supplementary concepts are and then proceeds to tell us how we can
functions with these supplementary concepts.
That is where he lost me. A lot
of those concepts I would not consider to be fundamental to the study of Psychology. If anything a few of those concepts would get
in the way of psychology since they are more materialistic concepts rather than
theoretical or contemplative.
James was a reading that was easy to
go through, but difficult to grasp. The
title of this article alone, “Are we Automata?” made it sound as though he was
going to say that we are like robots. In
the second paragraph, which is only one sentence, he seems to doubt that we are
ran by our emotions and that one event can cause our emotions to take over,
apparently he had not studied women enough before he wrote that, “The theory
also maintains that we are in error to suppose that our thoughts awaken each
other by inward congruity or rational necessity, that disappointed hopes cause
sadness, premises conclusions. The
feelings are merely juxtaposed in that order without mutual cohesion, because
the nerve-processes to which they severally correspond awaken each other in
that order.” Later in the article he
still does not believe that our mind is what controls us most of the time. He seems to feel that our consciousness is
what controls us the most. Without that
consciousness we would not be able to have free will. He does admit that there is a part of us that
is in our brain that we cannot control, but thinks that that part is only to
keep our memories at bay that is it.
Titchener one of the guys that I
liked since he seemed to make a lot of sense to me; he started out the section
of this book we read with Wundt’s theory of supplementary concepts. He used it not exactly to support him, but to
support his argument that it would work at certain time and not at other times
within psychology. In the second section
of this article he basically says that there is one word in the Scientific
Method which supports Psychology and that word is “observation”. In this final section of this article he
talks about how psychology not only affects us, but it also affects animals as
well and that we are noticing that high developed animals can think and feel
the same way that we can.
When reading the comparison
discussion by Titchener I could not help but side with experimental
psychology. I mean do not get me wrong,
empirical studies are interesting and everything, but I had taken an empirical
science class in my high school and from what I remember of it, I cannot see
how that has anything to do with psychology.
I know that Titchener was explaining it and everything, but I still just
cannot see it. I can see Experimental
psychology very well though since obviously our class, Learning Theory, is
based off of experiments and plus needing to create and carry out experiments
to figure certain out about the functions of the brain and our senses makes
sense.
Ebbinghaus’ article on memory was
amazing in my opinion. I only found it
such because I have a horrible memory and so I have always found the topic to
be quite interesting. The fact that he
saw that each individual had a different sized memory was astounding to
me. Not many people realize that even
though a person looks like they do does not mean that they think they way that
they do. We still have that problem
today. When it comes to memorizing or
retaining information, I, personally have to go over it over and over again,
take notes, read it out-loud or reason through it so that way I can compare it
to something else that I enjoy doing or that I think about often so I when I
think about that one thing I can think about what I was trying to
remember. So many people out there in
our society jump to the conclusion that you can ramble off anything and whoever
you are talking will remember it up to years later just because you do, but
that other person might have forgotten as soon as the words left your
mouth. Ebbinghaus hit the nail on the
head in my opinion.
As you can see they all had their
own arguments, translations and opinions on things. Where it sounded as though they were starting
to get it then they would claim that that way had to be false because this
couldn’t possibly happen since there is no physical evidence for it. What we have come to learn is that Psychology
is not necessarily evidence based, but rather theory based. There are a few types of Psychologies that are
evidence based, but the majority of Psychology is run on the information that
we gather from our thoughts and feelings as we develop, learn and grow. In my opinion this is why Psychology is not
necessarily a “definite” science, but a mixture of philosophy and science which
can support each other into existence and into what we know to be Psychology
today.
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