Psychology and philosophy

A couple of days ago Simonne was taking to me about a homework problem that she had in her psychology class in grade 12. Essentially the problem deals with a social dilemma that involves a conflict between immediate self-interest and longer-term collective interests. We had an interesting discussion. That discussion resulted in me thinking more about “should teens be taught these two subjects in high school?”  I believe they should be taught. Here is my reasoning. 

Let’s understand the two subjects first. Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. The term philosophy comes from the Greek words “philo” and “sophia” which mean “love of wisdom”. The purpose of philosophy is to solve problems that occur in reality. Psychology deals with the study of the human mind and its behaviour in a given social context. The word “psychology” comes from the Greek words “psyche” and “logos”. Respectively, these mean “soul” and “study”. Therefore, psychology means the study of the soul. In a simple way, we could say that psychology is the science responsible for the study of the behaviour. Simply eh ?  Not quite if you try to analyse further you get to see that philosophy is a study of ethics, aesthetics, logic , morality, metaphysics, epistemology and values. These discrete studies provide one with an understanding of why people behave in a particular manner and what they consider as moral behaviour. Psychology on the other hand deals with the study of the brain it’s patterns and of the resulting behaviour. 

Simply put philosophy is the study of the why and psychology is the study of the resultant action.  Now that being the case then studying psychology will allow teens to understand their own behavior, emotions and ideas. They will also realize that studying the principles of psychology will allow them to assess, evaluate and provide solutions to all unwanted emotional situations. On the other hand learning philosophy would help them to analyze concepts, definitions, arguments, and problems and also help in understanding  of nature of its concepts and its relation to other disciplines. Psychology depends on philosophy.  A huge difference in the way these two subjects are taught lies in their conception of morality. Philosophy seeks to explain everything, which includes right ways of behaving. Philosophy sometimes describes what is right and what is wrong. Psychology does not enter into this debate. Although psychology has proposed scales of ethics and morality, its objective is not to study what is moral and what is not, but rather what different morals exist. 

Essentially both study human behaviour. The teen would be so ready for life (most of them have lived sheltered lives and find it very difficult to adjust to reality, relationships etc once they fly the next) if both or one of them was made part of high school curriculum. 

I read “Games people play” by Eric Bern when I was well into my working career. A subject that explained those concepts in that book would have helped immensely while I was in college and during the start of my career - I would have saved time learning simple psychological and psychological concepts. But then that is not what this post is about - it’s not about being able to save some time that would have been spent otherwise in learning from experience (experience is the best teacher) but rather what is the value in learning these at a young age. The answer is simple philosophy will teach them about morality and ethics. These two govern human behaviour and in turn psychology would teach the teen about behavioural analysis. 

Skip geography (it’s my favourite subject by the way) and teach kids these two. Teach them history by analysing the psychological and philosophy of the kings and queens in question. Teach them literature in the same manner; a philosophical and psychological analysis of the characters. May be we land up with a generation far better equipped than we are. 

C