1. Pre-scientific Psychology

Question 1

What’s Plato’s theory on the origin of knowledge?

Answer 1

• We have innate knowledge
• eg. Socrates (Plato’s teacher) and the uneducated slave boy
  Asked him questions and made him draw geometrical figures on sand

Question 2

What’s Aristotle’s theory on the theory of knowledge?

Answer 2

• All knowledge are learned through our experience of the material world
• Tabula rasa!!!!

Question 3

Plato’s doctrine of innate ideas

Answer 3

1. Souls (minds) pre-exist in an ideal world where they acquire notions
2. Implicit knowledge - trauma of birth into material world makes us forget what we know, but knowledge is still there
3. Learning is remembering - souls remember and rediscover what they know

Question 4

Tabula rasa

Answer 4

• Ideas are acquired as concepts from experience in the material world
• eg. our minds are an unscribed wax tablet

Question 5

Plato and Aristotle’s contrasting theories of the circle

Answer 5

Plato - we are born with the idea of a perfect circle, and use it to recognise the imperfect features of the world

Aristotle - experience imperfect forms in material world, and gain an abstract idea of the perfect circle

Question 6

Res extensa and Res cogitans

Answer 6

Res extensa (matter/body)
 - Can be observed, measured and explained scientifically

Res cogitans (soul/mind)

• Immaterial and can only be studied by introspection
• Unitary, indivisible faculty
• Contains innate faculty
• Use reasoning to allow us to overcome the errors in our senses
• Poverty of stimuli because sensory experiences too poor to produce true knowledge

Question 7

Explain dualism

Answer 7

• Mind (souls) controls our body through the pineal glands - point of contact between material and spiritual substances
• Notion of reflex - mechanical reactions of the body without mental thought
• Animals have no reflex, no conscious experience or feelings, just automatic reflex reactions

Question 8

What’s empiricism (Locke, Hume, Berkeley)

Answer 8

• Tabula rasa, no innate ideas
• All complex ideas come from simple ideas
• All ideas come from sensation and reflection

Question 9

What’s constructivism

Answer 9

• Rationalism + empiricism = constructivism
• Knowledge is the result of interaction between mental capacities and their use on the material world to gain experience and knowledge
• eg. no knowledge is possible without innate knowledge / without experience
• “construction reality” - we have no direct access to reality, form of knowledge shape how we see the world

Question 10

Broca

Answer 10

• Brain and mind are closely linked, damage to a specific part of the brain impairs mental function
• Mind is a function of the brain - brain needs to be studied scientifically as an aspect of the material world