Psychology & Philosophy

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How has the study of philosophy contributed to modern psychology? And how is it important to pyschology?

-- Allie Roze (akr@sfu.ca), October 14, 2002

Answers

A good way to understand that is to read one of the philosophically oriented history texts, such as Robert I. Watson's The Great Psychologists, D. B. Klein's history, or Brett's History of Psychology. You can also find a variety of texts with the title Philosophical Psychology. A nice summary of some of the important philosophical issues in psychology may be found in Robert Brodie MacLeod's The Persistent Problems of Psychology. There is also an elegant summary in Michael Wertheimer's A Brief History of Psychology, which shows the philosophical roots. You might check an encyclopedia of psychology to see what they say about philosophical psychology. Still another view is presented in Daniel Robinson's An Intellectual History of Psychology--where Robinson traces The Problem of Knowledge, the Origins of Reason, The Problem of Universals, and problems of social behavior and governance as philosophical issues that recur in psychology.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), October 14, 2002.

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