Chapter 1 - Early Thoughts of Human Mind Flashcards
What was Descartes believe of the human mind?
Descartes believed in dualism (mind and body are separate) and that the body is like a machine and the mind is free-will (god-like)
what is reflex actions? who coined this term?
Reflex actions are for every action of the body a stimulus made it happen; it is automatic and the mind can alter reflex (controlling it) but animals can’t so they work reflexively all the time
Decartes coined this term
Which idea of behaviourism was arose from Decartes definition of a human mind?
Stimulus-Response idea
idea that a stimulus causes a response
What was Hobbe’s idea of the mind? how did it differ from Descartes?
Hobbes believed in monism and that the mind and body are both subject to physical laws
What was Hobbes idea of Hedonism? What theory did this idea influence?
Hedonism ==> the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain
this influenced Reinforcement theory
Who were the two first British Empiricists?
Locke and HUme
What was Locke and Hume’s idea about the mind?
they believed in the mind being a tabula rasa (blank slate) and how humans are born with a blank slate and learn through experience
Which theories did Locke and Hume’s idea about the mind influence?
experience and associations between simple ideas
What was Locke’s view of how we form ideas and learn?
Locke thought in an atomistic view ==> that simple sensations combine to form complex ideas
What was Hume’s view of how we form ideas and learn?
Hume thought in association view ==> how ideas become more complex by taking perceptions and forming it into complex ideas and then forming complex ideas from those ideas
What are the 5 Laws of Association?
- Contiguity: close in time
- Similarity: similar in senses
- Lively (salient): Noticeable
- Practiced (dwelt upon): Thought about alot
- Recency: Occurred together RECENTLY (within one or two weeks)
What is Rationalism?
Rationalism is an alternative to empiricism which is gaining knowledge in other ways besides experience
What was Kant’s idea about the human mind?
Kant thought that the mind did not learn everything through experience (unlike Locke and Hobbes), he thought of ‘A prioris’ which is a set of principles/ideas existing in the mind before birth to help it organize subsequent experiences (i.e. language debate)
What did Kant’s ‘A prioris’ idea give rise to theoretically?
the preparedness theory in evolution
this is a concept developed to explain why certain things are more easily associated in our brains than others like phobias of snakes or height which are more common and more readily induced than other phobias
What was Aristotles early thought on Animals?
He thought animals had intelligence and morality but not reason; this meant that animals could know whats right vs. wrong morally and can be held in trial for their actions but they can’t use reason to problem solve (used trial and error)
what was Plotinus (roman philosopher) early thoughts on Animals?
He believed that animals had intelligence and souls (mind) and that they should not be killed or eaten
What was Celsus’s (Christian Philosopher) early thoughts on animals?
He thought animals had soul and reason; and thought that animals only seem different to humans because we are looking at them from a human’s point of view
What was Descartes early thoughts on animals?
thought of them as ‘automata’; no mind or voluntary action and worked only with reflexes
What are the 3 general thoughts about animals around the time before Darwin?
- Animals are ‘below’ humans in the great chain of being
- Animals can be held accountable for moral transgressions
- Animals can be put on trial for various crimes
How did Darwin view animals? Under which model?
Darwin thought that Evolution by natural selection had important implications for how animals were viewed. He said that the differences in the mind between man and higher animals is one of degree and not kind.
What is continuity (physical and mental)?
Explore evolution of behaviour and psychological processes by studying animals
Darwin’s idea of similar mental processes should be found In species with similar nervous systems.
Therefore if we studied mental systems of animals we can learn about the mental systems of humans, so we can understand evolution of behaviour and the mind by comparing different species
What is comparative psychology? and its goal
Started by Darwin
a logical outgrowth of his idea of continuity
the goal is to trace the evolution of the mind by studying the mental lives of animals
What are the main differences between studying Psychology and biology using animals?
in psychology, we look at general processes like how the animals adapt to their environment, and if animals can do what humans can do & the mechanism behind that; also is ATHROPOCENTRIC (human centred) and uses mechanisms to explain concepts
in biology, they mostly study the adaptive specializations in animals like why they become so adaptive to their environment and why they do what they do in the wild; it is also ECOLOGICAL (animal-cantered) and based on evolution to explain concepts
What was one of the big downfalls of comparative studies in psychology?
early comparative psychologists studied animals out of convenience i.e. they are cheaper and easier to obtain than other animals and did not consider the evolutionary aspect of how related those animals are to humans
what is the difference between studying convenient species vs. Evolutionary species comparison? (example_
convenient species comparisons are not efficient and it involves comparing spatial memory between pigeons, rats and humans which is only the general idea
Evolutionary comparison is like comparing spatial memory of food-storying and non-food-storing birds and coming up with a hypothesis; evolutionary explanation for species differences
