Plato’s impressive contributions to psychology.

Plato's contributions: his vision of knowledge and his influence on psychology.

Psychology also drinks from the contribution of numerous thinkers, writers and philosophers.

In this article we will explain the contributions of Plato to PsychologyHis vision of knowledge, the rational soul, the psychic structure and his influence on the science of human behavior. A historical figure whose ideas are still valid today.

Plato (428-348) and his contributions to Psychology

Plato was born in the period of peace and splendor of Pericles' democracy. Pericles. Belonging to the Athenian aristocracy, he received the education of an upper-class young man (mainly gymnastics and poetry). He was also one of the most fervent disciples of Socrates until his death ("The wisest, good and just of men", in his opinion). He traveled through Greece and Egypt, receiving the capital influences of the mathematician Theodore, as well as those of the Orphics, Pythagoreans, and Eleatics: Heraclitus and Parmenides.

Plato founded the Akademiadedicating his life to the teaching of the philosophy. He accepted the relativism of Parmenides concerning perception (Three buckets of water in line: hot, warm and cold: introducing one hand in each of the extreme buckets and then both in the intermediate one, the one that was in the cold one will feel hot, and the one that was in the hot one cold). Plato would also accept the doctrine of Heraclitean flux, arguing that all objects are in constant change, so it is impossible to know them. The knowledge for Plato is of the eternal and immutable (Being of Parmenides) and, therefore, there is no knowledge of perishable things.

The world of Ideas

Plato called Forms or Ideas the objects of immutable knowledge. There is a Form for each kind of object for which there is a term in language (e.g., "cat, "round," etc.). Plato believed that perceived objects were imperfect copies of these Forms, since they are in permanent change and are relative to the perceiver (importance of language in shaping reality: concepts are the only immutable thing, they are related to the Forms and are not conventional).

An example of this idea appears in the metaphor of the line, belonging to The Republic (Fig.1). Let us imagine a line divided into four unequal segments. The line is divided into two large segments representing the world of perceived Appearances and opinion, and the world of abstract Knowledge, or intelligible world. The first segment is shorter, to denote its imperfection. The world of Appearances is divided, in turn, in equal proportions, into the world of Imagination and the world of Belief.

Imagination is the lowest level of cognition, since it deals with simple images of concrete objects, analogous to the world of Belief.since it deals with simple images of concrete objects, analogous to reflections fluctuating in water. Plato banished Art from his republic, relegating it to this imaginary plane.

The eternal epistemological debate

For Plato, the apprehension of images or imagination is the most imperfect form of knowledge. It is followed by the contemplation of the objects themselves; the result of this observation he called Belief. With the next segment, Thought, mathematical knowledge begins. The mathematician possesses a general knowledge of things. The ideal world of Geometry is very similar to the world of Forms (or Ideas): the Pythagorean theorem (the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the legs) refers to the Right Triangle, and any particular example will be an inferior copy of the perfect Right Triangle. Plato believed that the relationship between the copy and the shape was true, however, in all cases.

For Plato the last segment, the higher form of knowledge (Intelligence or Knowledge) is of a higher level than mathematical knowledge.. Indeed mathematical thinking produces knowledge within its system of premises, but since it cannot know whether its premises are correct (the starting axioms such as A = A), it cannot constitute true knowledge.

To attain knowledge we must go back higher, to the realm of Forms, to the fundamental principles. His position on this scheme of knowledge evolved throughout his life. In the early dialogues, Plato believed that the experience of concrete objects stimulated the remembrance of innate knowledge of forms, albeit imperfectly, thus being real stimuli to awaken our knowledge.

In the Intermediate Dialogueshe denied any valid role for sensory perception and confined knowledge to abstract and philosophical dialectics. Finally he returned to his first belief in the potential value of sense perception. He further elaborated his notion of dialectics, making it an instrument for accurately classifying all things. At the same time his conception of Forms became increasingly mathematical and Pythagorean.

The problem raised by Plato in the theory of Forms has preoccupied some researchers in modern cognitive psychology on concept formation. The theory of traits states that each concept is formed by a series of traits, some of which are essential and some of which are not. Prototype theory claims that the concept is formed around a prototype or formula. The Form could be considered the prototype of which the concrete cases are imperfect replicas (myth of The Cave).

Psychic structure

Plato divided the soul, or mind, into three parts. First there was the immortal or Rational soullocated in the head. The other two parts of the soul are mortal: The Impulsive or spirited soulsoul, oriented to conquer honor and glory, is located in the thorax, and the Passional and appetitive soulinterested in bodily pleasure, in the belly (Fig. 2).

The Rational soul has kinship with the Forms and knowledge. It is its duty to control the desires of the other two, just as the charioteer controls two horses. The Passional soul was, for Plato, particularly in need of subjection by reason. (analogy with the Freudian psychic apparatus: it-ego-super-ego).

Plato is strongly influenced by the Eastern tradition, which also appears in the myth of the Magi. myth of the Magi. They offer the child three chests to find out whether his nature is human, real or divine. The content of the chests is the material substance corresponding to each of these natures: myrrh - red gomorresin -, gold and incense.

Motivation

Plato has a poor conception of pleasure -Pythagorean inheritance-: the body seeks pleasure and avoids painThis only hinders the contemplation of the Good. In his later writings, some pleasures, such as the aesthetic enjoyment to be gained from Beauty, are considered healthy, while purely intellectual life is rejected as too limited.

His conception of motivation is almost Freudian: we possess a stream of passionate desires that can be channeled toward any part of the soul, toward pleasure, personal achievement, or philosophical knowledge and virtue. Impulses can motivate the search for transitory pleasure or the philosophical ascent to the world of Forms. world of Forms.

Physiology and perception

Given his distrust of perception, he hardly spoke of the Physiologyempirical science. His ideas in this respect were conventional among the Greeks. Vision, for example, obeys the emission of visual rays by our eyes that have an impact on objects located in the visual path.

Learning: innatism and associationism

Plato was the first great innatist. Since, according to him, all knowledge is innate, it must exist in every human being from birth. Perceived objects resemble the Forms in which they participate, and this resemblance, together with instruction, stimulates the Rational soul to remember what the Forms are like (Anamnesis) (Analogy with the Chomskyan theory of language, according to which linguistic competence is innate).

Plato also lays the foundations of the associationist doctrine, later a fundamental part of atomism and empiricist philosophy. The relationship between objects and Forms obeys two aspects: formal similarity and the fact that they are associated in our experience, i.e. contiguity. They correspond to the syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions described by Jakobson as constitutive of the structure of language.

They are also the laws of the Unconscious, or its basic operations: metaphor as condensation and metonymy as displacement. (Aphasia of Production -Broca- versus Aphasia of Comprehension -Wernicke-) (Analogy with the two types of magic described by Frazer: Contaminating Magic -by contiguity- and Contagious -by resemblance-).

Development and education

Plato believed in reincarnation -metempsychosis-. At death, the rational soul separates from the body and attains the vision of the Forms. Depending on the degree of virtue achieved, it is then reincarnated somewhere in the phylogenetic scale. When the soul reincarnates in a body full of needs and sensations it falls into a state of confusion. Education consists in helping the Rational soul to gain control of the body and the other parts of the soul.

The main disciple of Plato, Aristotlewould develop the first systematic systematic psychologya.