Religion Essay due midnight CST

16 Jun Religion Essay due midnight CST

David Hartley’s Enlightenment Psychology: From Association to Sympathy, Theopathy, and Moral Sensibility

Richard T. G. Walsh Wilfrid Laurier University

In Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duties, and His Expectations David Hartley (1749/1971) presented a systematic, comprehensive, complex, and medically informed psychological treatise, drawn from Newtonian mechanics. Evidently motivated by religious beliefs about the perilous state of humankind, he speculated that human nature’s physical foundation in vibrations and association ranged from sensory pro- cesses and simple ideas to sympathy (i.e., benevolent social relations, leading to perspective-taking), theopathy (i.e., loving union with God), and moral sensibility (i.e., reliance on moral principles to guide conduct). However, typical accounts of scientific psychology’s roots in Enlightenment thought have neglected the complex psycholog- ical processes and developmental, interpersonal, societal, religious, and moral aspects of Hartley’s system. For him, manifestations of sympathy, theopathy, and moral sensibility are central to human experience, whereas self-fulfillment results from the developmental transit of self-interest to moral sensibility. Thus, after describing the multiple facets of association in sensation, ideas, action, language, and memory, I show how Observations synthesizes contemporaneous scientific, religious, and moral thought about human psychology. Then I relate Hartley’s views to subsequent psychological thought, identify parallels with concepts in past and present scientific psychology, and suggest the value of his synthesis for exploring the interface between psychology, and religion and spirituality. However, philosophical impediments in psychology’s tradi- tions make such explorations unlikely without facilitative institutional changes.

Keywords: David Hartley, associationism, psychology and religion, philosophical psychology, history of psychology

According to E. G. Boring’s (1950) history of experimental psychology, David Hartley (1705–1757) elaborated the seminal concept of association in his 1749 work, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duties, and His Expecta- tions. Boring attributed scientific psychology’s intellectual foundation to association as prac- ticed by many Anglo American psychologists. Hartley is also credited with producing in Ob- servations “the first distinctly psychological treatise” (Walls, 1982, p. 260), based on the mechanistic assumptions of the Scientific Rev- olution. Yet if textbooks of psychology’s his- tory include Hartley, they typically do not de- scribe how he construed association not just

mechanistically but also in terms of social, re- ligious, and moral development, which stemmed from both his medical practice and his approach to Christianity. In Volume I of Obser- vations, Hartley (1749/1971) discussed biolog- ical, psychological, and social development pri- marily, while integrating extant Christianity and natural and social philosophy with conceptions of self-interest and moral sensibility (also termed “the moral sense”). In Volume II he argued for the existence of God, prescribed so- cial morality for humankind, and identified the terms of universal eternal life.

In effect, Hartley integrated biophysical, psy- chological, developmental, social, and religious aspects of human nature (Allen, 1999, 2013). His scope was biophysical in positing neurolog- ical “vibrations” (internal physical responses produced by sensory impressions) that operated in tandem with association (Webb, 1988). His scope was psychological in explaining associa- tion as the catalyst for the relationship between

This article was published Online First August 29, 2016. Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-

dressed to Richard T. G. Walsh, Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3C5, Can- ada. E-mail: rwalsh@wlu.ca

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Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology © 2016 American Psychological Association 2017, Vol. 37, No. 1, 48–63 1068-8471/17/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/teo0000047

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perception and action. It was developmental in incorporating biopsychosocial growth across the life span, such as the emergent relationship between language and thought. Hartley’s scope was social in accounting for interpersonal and societal relations. It was religious in positing the ultimate annihilation of the self in both sympa- thy (i.e., benevolent social relations leading to perspective-taking) and theopathy (i.e., the per- fectibility of humans in loving union with a divine being). Ultimately, Hartley’s scope was moral. Accordingly, his treatise has been char- acterized as “one of the great [psychological] syntheses of the eighteenth century” (Robinson, 1995, p. 271). Mindful that the overarching purpose of Hartley’s (1749/1971) Observations was to substantiate belief in God’s existence and strengthen moral conduct (Allen, 1999, 2013), I discuss its psychological, religious, and moral facets in the context of scientific, social, and religious Enlightenment thought. Then I compare it to subsequent and modern psycho- logical thought.

Hartley structured Observations as a formal logical argument with specific propositions. Ac- cordingly, when quoting from the edition that I consulted, I identify the volume and proposition numbers before the page numbers because of differences in pagination across editions.

Philosophical and Religious Roots

Hartley was an English physician with a mas- ter’s degree but not a medical degree (Allen, 1999, 2013). With a colleague he conducted research on kidney stones, from which he suf- fered chronic severe pain. Attracted to practical applications of science, known then as natural philosophy, he was enamored of mathematics and emergent statistics. Although his father was an Anglican pastor, Hartley became an outspo- ken, nonconforming Christian idealist. Thus, his standpoint in Observations was rooted in both natural philosophy and religion.

Philosophical Heritage

Examination of Observations reveals the her- itage of Hartley’s Enlightenment forebears, Isaac Newton (1642–1727), John Locke (1632– 1704), and George Berkeley (1685–1753).

Newton’s and Locke’s Influence

Broadly speaking, Newton’s mechanistic conception of the universe as matter in motion is one foundation for Hartley’s (1749/1971) psychological system, including its religious and moral aspects (Allen, 1999, 2013). Accord- ing to Newtonian theory, matter is composed of atomic particles cohering into molecular sys- tems of attraction, repulsion, and motion grav- itating toward Earth. As Newton had described the reciprocal influence of these mechanistic forces underlying the physical universe, so Hartley deduced his conception from Newton’s hypothesis of vibrations operating in sensation and motion and proposed interacting laws of vibrations and association underlying bodily and mental functions.

Like Locke, whom he often cited in Obser- vations, Hartley held that just as mechanical laws govern natural objects, composed of at- oms, so they govern the component particles of human bodies (Allen, 1999). He also followed Locke in adopting Newton’s view that one ac- cesses the mind only through sensory impres- sions and Locke’s explanation of habits as as- sociation. But unlike Locke, he focused on the mind/body problem, uniting physiological and psychological phenomena and situating con- sciousness in processes of the brain stem.

Yet Hartley’s psychological system also is dynamic in that he adopted Newton’s principle that reciprocal forces of attraction and repul- sion, which shift between concretion and disso- lution, are inherent in all natural objects, includ- ing minute particles (Allen, 1999, 2013). Besides mathematics and physics, Newton had studied the relationship of natural philosophy, morality, and law to divine wisdom (Westfall, 1980). Newton’s explorations of this relation- ship apparently inspired Hartley to provide an account of human psychology based on an an- alogue to the Newtonian principle of reciproc- ity. In effect, Hartley’s analogy was: attraction is to association and concretion as repulsion is to counterassociation and dissolution. Just as the forces of repulsion are as necessary as those of attraction, he reasoned, so the countervailing forces of pleasure and pain, associations and counterassociations, are in balance. His overar- ching intention in Observations was to show the operation of “a divinely preordained moral or-

49HARTLEY’S ENLIGHTENMENT PSYCHOLOGY

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der” both in psychological processes (Danziger, 2008, p. 46) and an ideal social order.

Berkeley ’s Influence

As a bishop in colonial Ireland, Berkeley endeavored to preserve the relationship between the Anglican state religion and a society threat- ened by sociopolitical and intellectual develop- ments (Leary, 1977). He strove to counter the danger that materialist natural philosophy posed to faith in immaterial reality, an immortal soul, and an omniscient, benevolent God. Material- ists held that, even if God created nature, He (sic) was peripheral; nature functioned mecha- nistically; and all natural objects, including hu- mans, were explicable only materially. Conced- ing material reality exists, Berkeley viewed it is a mental product and God as the origin of ideas. Representing the only certainty for Berkeley, ideas encompass sensing, perceiving, imaging, and thinking, and constitute all natural objects.

In addition, Berkeley argued that just as nat- ural objects are attracted to each other through gravity, so humans are naturally sociable (Leary, 1977). Social harmony, anchored by the existing class structure, requires order, duty, and virtue (Kelly, 2005), whereas self-centered desires expressed in greed and display of wealth impair the common good (Leary, 1977). For Berkeley, individuals act morally by exercising rational free will (Darwall, 2005). A benevolent God requires that humans conform to His will by obeying his earthly representatives, namely clergy and the sovereign, who administer di- vinely sanctioned religious and secular laws.

Apparently, Hartley (1749/1971) adopted much of Berkeley’s thought. He too held that an active mind renders sensory experience mean- ingful with perceptual categories that direct hu- man action. Employing the term “frame” to mean anatomical and physiological composi- tion, Hartley stated, “The internal frame of our minds [is] the source and spring from whence our external actions flow” (Vol. II, prop. 71, p. 326). Like Berkeley, he proposed that touch and kinesthetics link perception with action (Allen, 2013).

However, Hartley insisted that the term “mind” encompasses all physiological and psy- chological phenomena. Consciousness, he pos- ited, results from the mechanistic laws of vibra- tions and association. Moreover, animals,

depending on the species, have some level of consciousness, the essential difference with hu- mans being anatomical (Allen, 2013). As parts of nature, matter and spirit simultaneously con- stitute humans; thus, Hartley rejected belief in a separate, immaterial mind/soul. Although his acquaintance with them is unknown, French peers Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and Julien La Mettrie (1709–1751) also argued that the mind/ soul is based materially in the brain (Walsh, Teo, & Baydala, 2014). Still, Hartley believed in the soul’s potential for eternal life with God and was deeply troubled by social and moral decay.

Free Will

The notion of a rational will guiding the mind to take specific actions was central in Berk- eley’s, Thomas Reid’s (1710–1796), and Im- manuel Kant’s (1724–1804) metaphysics, as well as in Christian theology (Royce, 1961). But for Hartley (1749/1971), “the seat of the soul” is the brain, which operates mechanisti- cally (Vol. I, prop. 21, p. 110); therefore, vibra- tions are the basis of ideas and voluntary motion or will. Hartley recognized the operations of “practical freewill,” but claimed “it results from the frame of our natures” (Vol. I, p. viii). The expression, “an act of will,” he asserted, is an inaccurate attribution to a mechanistically ex- plicable situation, the result of an associatively produced motive. In his words, “The will is therefore that desire or aversion [that] is stron- gest for the present time” (Vol. 1, prop. 89, p. 371).

In critiquing free will Hartley (1749/1971) distinguished between “popular” language, meaning oral and written discourse in which humans speak or write about what we intend to do or not, and “philosophical” language, mean- ing recognition that any presumed voluntary action is “excited by an associated circum- stance” (Vol. I, prop. 70, p. 235). It is “popular” language, he maintained, that implies that we can choose actions because of free will. Al- though popular language is appropriate in its domain, it is not equivalent to “philosophical necessity,” for which the “doctrine of associa- tion” is the scientific basis, he argued. Thus, in the Conclusion to Volume I, Hartley (1749/ 1971) reasserted a mechanistic foundation for “free will in the philosophical sense” (p. 501).

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Nevertheless, Hartley appealed to divine neces- sity as the ultimate explanation for human con- duct: “Man is subject to a necessity ordained by God” (p. 508), given that we “are what we are entirely by the grace and goodness of God” (p. 510), known in the form of a benevolent Father God. Moreover, as he asserted later, the moral sense monitors one’s conduct.

Philosophical Reflection

Hartley adhered to the Newtonian proposi- tions of universal necessity and the certainty of cause-and-effect relations. This “doctrine of ne- cessity” or “necessitarianism” meant that just as an absolute God bent the physical world to His (sic) will, so humans as God’s biological cre- ations follow it by necessity (Swartz, 1985). Consequently, the laws of physics determine the laws of body and mind that, in turn, mirror the structure of the natural world and the harmonies of the universe, revealing a divine system of moral governance. In this regard, Hartley’s syn- thesis seems to reflect idealism. Thus, his claim that “virtue has always the fairest Prospect, even in this Life; and Vice is always exposed to the greatest Hazards” (Vol. II, prop. 79, p. 363) suggests Gottfried Leibniz’s (1646–1716) opti- mistic faith in a benevolent God and benign world that Voltaire (1694 –1778) satirized (Walsh et al., 2014). In addition, echoes of natural and revealed religion reverberate throughout Observations.

Religious Heritage

In Hartley’s context the prominent systems of religious beliefs were religious revivalism, de- ism, and revealed religion (Hirst, 2005). Angli- can Christianity was (and remains) the state religion, which like other revealed religions, provides its adherents with explanations of mat- ters of faith and morals based on what revela- tion (i.e., personal experience and scripture, subject to interpretation by religious authorities) shows about God, human nature, and moral conduct.

Religious revival movements, such as the Philadelphian Society, emphasized the practice of benevolence, love, peace, and piety (Hirst, 2005). Hartley’s concepts of sympathy and moral sensibility coincide with the revivalist notions of benevolence and peace and the Uni-

tarian stress on agape (i.e., fraternal and sororal love), but Observations is not laced with reviv- alism per se.

Among natural philosophers and their devo- tees deism was common. Deists believe that empirical observation and logical argument, ex- clusive of revelation, are sufficient to establish the existence of a God who set nature in motion and let it be (Gay, 1968). Deism relies on what natural religion, grounded in empirical reality and reason, shows about God, human nature, and moral conduct. Thus, for Hartley (1749/ 1971), natural law dictated how the universe and human nature function. He argued, “Since God is the cause of all things . . . he must be the cause of all the motions in the material world” (Vol. II, prop. 6, p. 31). Moreover, during his era a nascent counterpoint to religion consisted of indifference to religion as well as agnostic and atheistic discourses in English society (Fairchild, 1942). Perhaps Hartley sought to counter this cultural strain with a religiously inspired but scientifically grounded explanation of human nature, known as religious material- ism, that fused natural philosophy with natural religion.

Nevertheless, his persistent exhortation for society to return to God shows the influence of revealed religion, specifically Anglican con- cepts. Hartley (1749/1971) affirmed faith in “the existence and attributes of God, his provi- dence, a future state [an afterlife], and the re- wards and punishment of it” (Vol. I, prop. 76, p. 347). He echoed the doctrine of universal sal- vation by which fallen humanity will become reconciled with God through the Second Com- ing of Christ and will return to Eden, the Garden of Paradise. Believers thereby will “become members of the mystical body of Christ; all have an equal care for each other; all increase in love and come to their full stature, to perfect man- hood [sic]” (Vol. II, prop. 68, p. 287, emphasis in original).

Hartley (1749/1971) also held a virtually apocalyptic vision of the human condition, ex- claiming in the penultimate sentence of the Conclusion to Volume II, “The present circum- stances of the world are extraordinary and crit- ical, beyond what has ever yet happened” (Vol. II, p. 455). In this section he lamented the practice of “Christian countries of Europe” (p. 441) turning their backs on ideals of the faith. He claimed that a “torrent of vice and impiety

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. . . seem ready to swallow us up” (p. 440) because of the following, interconnected reli- gious and societal dangers that “threaten ruin and destruction to the present states of Chris- tendom” (p. 441): atheism and infidelity to Christianity, male and female lewdness, civic administrators’ self-interest, contempt for hu- man and divine authority among the inferior classes, clergy’s obsession with worldly mat- ters, and careless education of youth and their consequent corruption.

Reflection on Religious Roots

It appears that Hartley was convinced that only by adopting a religiously but scientifically sound, psychological synthesis could human- kind secure salvation. In Observations he at- tempted to provide a plausible rationale for ob- jectively regarding the natural world as a reflection of divine laws. He understood the person as explicable by those laws and as in- tended for salvation in eternal union with God, pending ethical conduct. As such, Hartley’s standpoint evinces both revealed and natural religion. But it is not theological per se.

Hartley’s Psychological System of Thought

In 99 propositions in Volume I of Observa- tions and 95 in Volume II, Hartley (1749/1971) explained psychological functions in terms of the complementary “laws” or “doctrines” of vibrations and association. Vibrations explain a person’s frame and cause association, whereas association explains mental capacities in rela- tion to developmental and social processes. Vi- brations and association are “subject to the laws of mechanism . . . [i.e., body and mind have] a mechanical nature” (Vol. I, prop. 78, p. 267), while “all reasoning, as well as affection [i.e., a hierarchy of passions], is the mere result of association” (Vol. I, prop. 99, p. 499).

Proposing an inclusive system of psycholog- ical dimensions that develop across the life span, Hartley characterized all sensory, kines- thetic, psychological, social, religious, and moral action as reciprocally related, just as body and mind are; hence, he cautioned, one can investigate individual psychological phenom- ena only artificially (Allen, 2013). Giving nu- merous medical examples (e.g., phantom-limb experiences), he addressed unconscious phe-

nomena that influence mental life (Richardson, 2001) as well as social, religious, and moral development.

Basic Processes

To explain how basic psychological pro- cesses occur in humans and animals, Hartley accepted Newton’s hypothesis that physical im- pulses vibrate. He reasoned that the spinal cord, brain stem, and nerves collectively govern sen- sations and movement, whereas the brain gov- erns ideas. Hartley (1749/1971) assumed that “since the human body is composed of the same matter as the external world, it is reasonable to expect that its component particles should be subjected to the same subtle laws” (Vol. I, prop. 9, p. 62). He also argued that human action is motivated by “obtaining pleasure and removing pain” (Vol. I, prop. 22, p. 112). However, the source of all good, he insisted, is God, who is associated with all our pleasures. For Hartley, the divine being is the ultimate cause of reality, and the ultimate goal of human development is union with it.

Sensation

According to Hartley, sensory impressions evoke physical vibrations in the molecular par- ticles of the nerves, the spinal marrow, and ultimately the medulla. Vibrations occur as “vi- bratiuncles,” (i.e., little vibrations), which are positive and negative charges in the electro- chemical transmission of impulses. As Har- tley’s biographer explained, “A nerve fiber vi- brates, changes its frequency or amplitude of vibration, and transmits those changes to other fibers” (Allen, 1999, p. 398). Sensory input stimulates vibratiuncles traveling to the brain, causing a response. For instance, a sound wave evokes a vibration that one hears as a specific tone. Moderate vibratiuncles produce pleasure, violent ones produce pain. The nervous system then “remembers” experiences of pleasure and pain. Anything not a sensation is an “idea.”

The close relationship between an individu- al’s sensations and actions, particularly skilled actions, is the basis for the biophysical union of vibratiuncles, which, Hartley (1749/1971) pro- posed, “cohere together through joint impres- sion, i.e., association” (Vol. I, prop. 11, p. 71). In this respect he concurred with Berkeley that

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the perception of coherence is the result of ideas generated by joint impression from the senses, and that “the fundamental source of information in respect of the essential properties of matter” and “our first and principal key to the knowl- edge of the external world” are embodied in the sense of touch (Vol. I, prop. 30, p. 138).

Ideas

Concerning the relationship among physical events, neurological processes, and psycholog- ical phenomena, Hartley discussed how the mind categorizes experience. Ideas represent the mechanistic conjunction of vibratiuncles and association. Just as the concepts of vibra- tions and vibratiuncles explain sensations of the body, so association explains processes of the mind. Designated collectively as ideas, associ- ation encompasses perception, movement, memory, emotions, language, and cognition. Although vibrations necessarily accompany mental events through association, the latter generates ideas and perfects secondarily auto- matic actions.

Hartley (1749/1971) hypothesized that the plethora of associative connections among nerve fibers, expressed in physical sensations, brings the brain to the verge of complex psy- chological phenomena. An “attraction” exists, he hypothesized, between sensory impressions and simple ideas, motivated by pleasure- seeking and pain-avoidance, analogous to how gravity mechanistically and deterministically binds physical bodies together. This psycho- physiological attraction constitutes association, Hartley speculated, in that interacting vibrati- uncles within nerve fibers are transmitted to other nerve fibers in connected webs of associ- ation. These webs represent the active process that engenders ideas that jell from aggregated impressions.

Frequent repetition of simple sensations leaves “images” of them that amalgamate to form what Hartley (1749/1971) termed “simple ideas.” These are “the individual and largely imperceptible neural events that register sen- sory stimuli” (Allen, 1999, p. 189). In turn, as Locke (1690/1975) had held, aggregates of sim- ple ideas become complex ones. Compounded complex ideas then assemble into what Hartley (1749/1971) termed “decomplex” ideas, such as multifarious language. Thus, “Complex ideas

are our primary categories of perception, emo- tion, and action,” whereas “decomplex ideas are the sequences we form out of complex ideas” (Allen, 1999, p. 189). Using his analogy, simple ideas are like letters, complex ideas like words, and decomplex ideas like sentences, whereas the mind is a “hyper-complex” idea. Hartley claimed that because sensations are corporeal, ideas are as well. He illustrated this point by asserting that association enables a person to interpret the circumstances of suffering a bodily wound.

Hartley explained complex psychological processes as the eventual result of neuronally associated, joint impressions, by which mean- ingful perceptions emerge from sensory impres- sions conveyed by two or more sensory modal- ities simultaneously. Thanks to association, every whole perception is greater than the sum of its parts, to employ an anachronistic concept, and coheres. Association connects sensations with ideas in that cerebral vibrations run parallel to mental events, whereas the latter are linked with the internal feelings of sensations and ideas (Walls, 1982). Hartley’s example was learning to play the violin, when the interacting pro- cesses of audition, vision, and kinaesthetic movement, aided by self-monitoring, are in- volved. At each level of learning, he posited, a given psychological body–mind sequence func- tions as a totality.

According to Hartley (1749/1971), just as association arises from vibrations, so “most complex ideas arise from sensation” (Vol. I, prop. 83, p. 360), not from reflection, which contradicted Locke’s position. Yet Hartley also held that ideas can entail physiological and psy- chological processes not derived immediately and directly from sensations. Rather, they can result from, using current terms, perceptual and cognitive constructions. But regardless of their origins, ideas for Hartley always occur in de- velopmental processes and social contexts.

Action

In Hartley’s (1749/1971) synthesis motoric action is central and results from the conjunc- tion of vibrations and association. In his words,

If any sensation A, idea B, or motion C, be associated for a sufficient number of times with any other sensa- tion D, idea E, or muscular motion F, it will, at last, excite d, the simple idea belonging to sensation D, the

53HARTLEY’S ENLIGHTENMENT PSYCHOLOGY

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