chapter 6 - rationalism

Question 1

compare and contrast rationalism and empiricism

Answer 1

• rationalism: logical deduction, analysis, and argument; active mind, both bottom-up and top-down approaches; innate mental structures
• empiricism: knowledge based on senses; passive mind; experience, memory, and hedonism guide our thoughts
• similarities: the use of skepticism (doubt that other ideas are true, to lead to knowledge of the truth); using innate ideas despite prioritization; importance of sensory information

Question 2

how do the rationalists characterize the mind?

Answer 2

• characterized the mind as active, interacting with information from the senses and giving it meaning it otherwise wouldn’t have
• consider both nature and nurture

Question 3

what did leibniz contribute to our understanding of conscious perception and the unconscious?

Answer 3

• notion of “insensible perceptions” was as useful to psychology as the notion of insensible atoms was to physics
• petites perceptions (not aware of)
• apperception (constantly perceiving)
• limen (threshold between conscious/unconscious perception)
• unconscious mind

Question 4

what are kant’s categories of thought? how is this related to the ideas of plato and pythagoras?

Answer 4

• knowledge that does not come from senses; the mind must add to data before it can be attained
• time: never experience the passing of time, just the present
• causality: connections are a creation of the mind
• totality: imagine the all of something (like all cats on earth)
• relates: dualism; subject of knowledge, either opinion or objective (like the pythagorean theorem)

Question 5

how would the rationalists describe the causes of human behavior and thought?

Answer 5

• rational reasons some acts/thoughts are more desirable than others
• stresses deduction