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Animals and the Unity of Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Gareth B. Matthews
Gareth B. Matthews
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Extract

By ‘the unity of psychology’ I mean something one might also express by saying that the psychology of human beings is part of the psychology of animals generally.

Perhaps there are several different ways of trying to trace out the ramifications of the idea that psychology is one. A central consideration, I think, is likely to be some sort of principle of continuity up and down the scale of nature. The idea would be that up and down the scale of animated or ensouled things (‘psyched up’ beings, empsucha) there are always psychological continuities, never any strict discontinuity. If human beings can get angry, can want to get ahead in life, can see an illusion, can develop an Oedipus complex, then so can some lower animal do either the very same thing, something similar, or at least something analogous.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 53 , Issue 206 , October 1978 , pp. 437 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1978

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References

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2 E.g., Phaedo 81d–82bGoogle Scholar, Timaeus 90e–91c.Google Scholar

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25 This article draws on material from two lectures in a series of eight given at Cambridge University in 1976 under the title, ‘The Concept of Soul’. I have responded to criticisms from my Cambridge audience and from audiences at the Universities of Notre Dame, Rochester, Vermont, Rice Univrsity, Oberlin College and Franklin and Marshall College. At Oberlin this material went into two in the 1976 series of Mead-Swing Lectures.