Philosophical & Sociological Perspectives on Human Nature PDF

Philosophical & Sociological Perspectives - Basics Assumptions about Human Nature Knowledge and Learning Introduction A couple of centuries ago the two disciplines philosophy and psychology were not separated at all; it was not until the nineteen hundreds that the two began t...

Philosophical & Sociological Perspectives - Basics Assumptions about Human Nature Knowledge and Learning Introduction A couple of centuries ago the two disciplines philosophy and psychology were not separated at all; it was not until the nineteen hundreds that the two began to be perceived as separate areas of inquiry. But if one looks closely at the different perspectives we find in psychology psychoanalysis, behaviorism, cognitive psychology, humanistic psychology, and evolutionary psychology, for example one begins to find underlying assumptions concerning human nature which are often unstated. These can be subtle and may be implicit rather than explicitly stated. So it can be enlightening to see which ideas or personal biases about the nature of human beings underlie each of the major perspectives. Are people basically good and moral, for example, or are they selfish and evil? Does what motivates one person differ from another – the drive to achieve, for instance, might be the prime motive for one person whereas perhaps the more simple seeking of the ―good life‖ of pleasure and comfort might drive another. Or is there a single ―master motive‖ which underlies all of our strivings which we can call ―human nature‖? This lesson provides a brief introduction to some of the areas of philosophy needed to delve more deeply into such philosophical assumptions. It is an interesting exercise to then examine which of these ideas are most appealing to each viewer from his or her own perspective. Three Areas of Philosophy which Bear on Psychological Perspectives Some of the general areas of philosophy that are of most concern to the present course of study are: Epistemology (or theory of knowledge): How do we know what we know? How is knowledge acquired and how is this knowledge verified through experience – or is there some sort of inborn or innate knowledge? Metaphysics: Metaphysics concerns the very nature of reality, including what is meant by ―being.‖ Metaphysics means, literally, ―after physics,‖ or things not explained by the study of physical reality. This is a difficult concept to define! Though not always made explicit, metaphysical ideas ―creep into‖ some of the perspectives considered here. Certain metaphysical ideas appear through this book, such as are encountered when considering ―mind-body‖ distinctions and the issue of free-will versus determinism. Ethics (or moral philosophy): Plato asked ―What is the good life?‖ or in other words, how ought we to live? This has been a important one, designed by nature through the process of evolution to ensure survival of the individual and of the species. Basic assumptions in knowledge In everyday usage, knowledge refers to awareness of or familiarity with various objects, events, ideas, or ways of doing things. But, as philosophers have noted for centuries, things get complicated fairly quickly. Consider, for example, the question: What is real? Is the coke bottle on my desk real? Are the trees outside my window real? What about the number pi? What about the pain from the slight cut on my finger? Separating the "How" from the "What" of Knowledge With some reflection, it becomes clear that, at least to some extent, what is real for me depends in part on how I come to know things. For example, my perceptual, cognitive background structures allow me to experience and understand the Coke bottle on my desk in a particular way; different perceptual or cognitive background structures would result in a different reality. This point was well made in the 1980 film, The Gods Must Be Crazy, which tells the story of the dramatic impact a Coke bottle dropped by a passing airplane had on an isolated tribe in the Kalahari Desert. The tribesmen interpreted the bottle as a gift from the gods, and the film tracked how that meaning permeated the tribe and impacted its members. This brief example highlights the two broadest angles philosophers take regarding knowledge, which is that of ―epistemology‖ and ―ontology.‖ Ontology refers to the question of reality and is about determining what can be said to really exist in the world. In contrast, epistemology refers to how we humans know things. A ―theory of knowledge‖ would explain what knowledge was, how humans could come to know things, what truly existed in the world, and the complicated relationship between the two. A Basic Approach to Conceptualizing Knowledge One of the oldest and most venerable traditions in the philosophy of knowledge characterizes knowledge as ―justified true belief‖. Although not all philosophers agree that ―justified true belief‖ does in fact adequately characterize the nature of knowledge, it remains the most dominant conception of knowledge. Thus, for many, knowledge consists of three elements: 1) a human belief or mental representation about a state of affairs 2) accurately corresponds to the actual state of affairs 3) legitimized by logical and empirical factors. Justification, thus, is central to this idea of knowledge. The question of what kind of justification is necessary to constitute knowledge is the focus of much reflection and debate among philosophers. Three prominent approaches that have been taken in an attempt to articulate how justifiable beliefs are formed are: 1) foundationalism, which attempts to articulate foundationally true beliefs, from which other conclusions can be derived; 2) coherentism, which argues that knowledge consists of systems and must be evaluated on the degree to which the system has logical coherence that corresponds to external facts; and 3) reliabilism, which argues that there are good and bad ways to develop beliefs, and that justified beliefs are those beliefs that are formed based on good and reliable methods. Kinds of Knowledge Philosophers often divide knowledge up into three broad domains: personal, procedural, and propositional. Personal knowledge relates to firsthand experience, idiosyncratic preferences, and autobiographical facts. Procedural knowledge refers to knowledge how to do something, such as how to play basketball or ride a bike. Propositional knowledge refers to general truth claims about the world and how we know it. An important difference between philosophy and psychology can be seen in these various kinds of knowledge. Whereas philosophers have generally been concerned with general propositional knowledge, psychologists have generally concerned themselves with how people acquire personal and procedural knowledge. Ways of Knowing: Empirical and Rational By what mechanisms do we come to achieve knowledge? The two most dominant answers to this question in philosophy have come from the rationalists and the empiricists. The rationalists argue that we utilize reason to arrive at deductive conclusions about the most justifiable claims. Rationalists tend to think more in terms of propositions, deriving truths from argument, and building systems of logic that correspond to the order in nature. Rene’ Descartes and Immanuel Kant are some of the most famous rationalists, in contrast to John Locke and David Hume, who are famous empiricists. Empiricists tend to argue that the most basic knowledge we achieve about the world comes from our senses, the direct observations that we make about the world. The distinction between the rationalists and empiricists in some ways parallels the modern distinction between philosophy and science. As the scientific method emerged and became increasingly distinct from the discipline of philosophy, the fundamental distinction between the two was that science was constructed on empirical observation, whereas the initial traditions in philosophy (e.g., Aristotle) were grounded more in utilizing reason to build systems of knowledge. Modern versus Post-Modern Views on the Nature of Knowledge The birth of science gave rise to the Enlightenment, and arguably the defining feature of the Enlightenment was the belief that humans could use reason and scientific observation and experimentation to develop increasingly accurate models of the world. Such models were conceived to be ―true‖ in the sense that they described ontology (the way the world was) in a manner that was separate from subjective impressions. The Periodic Table of Elements is a great example of the success of the idea that nature can be objectively described. But in many disciplines, especially in the social sciences and humanities, since the 1960s there has been an increasing chorus of voices that challenge the conception of scientific knowledge as being a pristine, objective map of the one true reality. Instead, many have argued that human knowledge is inherently based on context, that is created in part by the way the human mind organizes and constructs perceptions and also by the way the social context legitimizes certain ideas in various historical and political times, and that these elements cannot be completely divorced from our ―knowledge‖. These scholars fall under the broad term ―postmodernism‖ to highlight the contrast in assumptions regarding the nature of knowledge in contrast to the modernist assumptions of the Enlightenment. Basic assumptions in Learning Related to both the metaphysical worldview philosophies and the educational philosophies are theories of learning that focus on how learning occurs, the psychological orientations. They provide structures for the instructional aspects of teaching, suggesting methods that are related to their perspective on learning. These theoretical beliefs about learning are also at the epistemic level of philosophy, as they are concerned with the nature of learning. Each psychological orientation is most directly related to a particular educational philosophy, but may have other influences as well. The first two theoretical approaches can be thought of as transmissive, in that information is given to learners. The second two approaches are constructivist, in that the learner has to make meaning from experiences in the world. Information Processing Information processing theorists focus on the mind and how it works to explain how learning occurs. The focus is on the processing of a relatively fixed body of knowledge and how it is attended to, received in the mind, processed, stored, and retrieved from memory. This model is derived from analogies between how the brain works and computer processing. Information processing theorists focus on the individual rather than the social aspects of thinking and learning. The mind is a symbolic processor that stores information in schemas or hierarchically arranged structures. Knowledge may be general, applicable to many situations; for example, knowing how to type or spell. Other knowledge is domain specific, applicable to a specific subject or task, such as vowel sounds in Spanish. Knowledge is also declarative (content, or knowing that; for example, schools have students, teachers, and administrators), procedural (knowing how to do things—the steps or strategies; for example, to multiply mixed number, change both sides to improper fractions, then multiply numerators and denominators), or conditional (knowing when and why to apply the other two types of knowledge; for example, when taking a standardized multiple choice test, keep track of time, be strategic, and don't get bogged down on hard problems). The intake and representation of information is called encoding. It is sent to the short term or working memory, acted upon, and those pieces determined as important are sent to long term memory storage, where they must be retrieved and sent back to the working or short-term memory for use. Short term memory has very limited capacity, so it must be kept active to be retained. Long term memory is organized in structures, called schemas, scripts, or propositional or hierarchical networks. Something learned can be retrieved by relating it to other aspects, procedures, or episodes. Behaviorism Behaviorist theorists believe that behavior is shaped deliberately by forces in the environment and that the type of person and actions desired can be the product of design. In other words, behavior is determined by others, rather than by our own free will. By carefully shaping desirable behavior, morality and information is learned. Learners will acquire and remember responses that lead to satisfying aftereffects. Repetition of a meaningful connection results in learning. If the student is ready for the connection, learning is enhanced; if not, learning is inhibited. Motivation to learn is the satisfying aftereffect, or reinforcement. Behaviorism is linked with empiricism, which stresses scientific information and observation, rather than subjective or metaphysical realities. Behaviorists search for laws that govern human behavior, like scientists who look for pattern sin empirical events. Ivan Pavlov's research on using the reinforcement of a bell sound when food was presented to a dog and finding the sound alone would make a dog salivate after several presentations of the conditioned stimulus, was the beginning of behaviorist approaches. Learning occurs as a result of responses to stimuli in the environment that are reinforced by adults and others, as well as from feedback from actions on objects. The teacher can help students learn by conditioning them through identifying the desired behaviors in measurable, observable terms, recording these behaviors and their frequencies, identifying appropriate reinforces for each desired behavior, and providing the reinforce as soon as the student displays the behavior. For example, if children are supposed to raise hands to get called on, we might reinforce a child who raises his hand by using praise, "Thank you for raising your hand." Other influential behaviorists include B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) and James B. Watson (1878-1958). Cognitivism/Constructivism Cognitivists or Constructivists believe that the learner actively constructs his or her own understandings of reality through interaction with objects, events, and people in the environment, and reflecting on these interactions. Early perceptual psychologists (Gestalt psychology) focused on the making of wholes from bits and pieces of objects and events in the world, believing that meaning was the construction in the brain of patterns from these pieces. For learning to occur, an event, object, or experience must conflict with what the learner already knows. Therefore, the learner's previous experiences determine what can be learned. Motivation to learn is experiencing conflict with what one knows, which causes an imbalance, which triggers a quest to restore the equilibrium. Piaget described intelligent behavior as adaptation. The learner organizes his or her understanding in organized structures. At the simplest level, these are called schemes. When something new is presented, the learner must modify these structures in order to deal with the new information. This process, called equilibration, is the balancing between what is assimilated (the new) and accommodation, the change in structure. The child goes through four distinct stages or levels in his or her understandings of the world. Some constructivists (particularly Vygotsky) emphasize the shared, social construction of knowledge, believing that the particular social and cultural context and the interactions of novices with more expert thinkers (usually adult) facilitate or scaffold the learning process. The teacher mediates between the new material to be learned and the learner's level of readiness, supporting the child's growth through his or her "zone of proximal development." Humanism The roots of humanism are found in the thinking of Erasmus (1466-1536), who attacked the religious teaching and thought prevalent in his time to focus on free inquiry and rediscovery of the classical roots from Greece and Rome. Erasmus believed in the essential goodness of children, that humans have free will, moral conscience, the ability to reason, aesthetic sensibility, and religious instinct. He advocated that the young should be treated kindly and that learning should not be forced or rushed, as it proceeds in stages. Humanism was developed as an educational philosophy by Rousseau (1712- 1778) and Pestalozzi, who emphasized nature and the basic goodness of humans, understanding through the senses, and education as a gradual and unhurried process in which the development of human character follows the unfolding of nature. Humanists believe that the learner should be in control of his or her own destiny. Since the learner should become a fully autonomous person, personal freedom, choice, and responsibility are the focus. The learner is self-motivated to achieve towards the highest level possible. Motivation to learn is intrinsic in humanism. Recent applications of humanist philosophy focus on the social and emotional well-being of the child, as well as the cognitive. Development of a healthy self- concept, awareness of the psychological needs, helping students to strive to be all that they can are important concepts, espoused in theories of Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Alfred Adler that are found in classrooms today. Teachers emphasize freedom from threat, emotional well-being, learning processes, and self-fulfillment. Summary In this lesson we have seen so far about the basic assumptions about human nature, knowledge and learning in terms of philosophical and sociological perspectives