Chapter 6-Rationalism Flashcards
Compare and contrast rationalism and empiricism
They both postulated in mind but they differed in the type of mind they postulated
The empiricists tended to describe a passive mind, a mind that acts on sensations and ideas in an automatic, mechanical way. The rationalist tended to postulate a much more active mind, a mind that acts on information from the senses and gives it meaning that it otherwise would not have
For the rationalist, the mind added something to sensory data rather than simply passively organizing and storing it in memory. Typically, the rationalist assumed innate mental structures, principles, operations, or abilities that are used in analyzing the content of thought. And they tended to believe in the existence of truths that could not be discovered through sensory data alone
For the empiricist, experience, memory, Association, and hedonism determine not only how a person thinks and acts but also his or her morality. For the rationalist, however, there are rational reasons that some acts or thoughts are more desirable than others.
The empiricist tends to emphasize mechanistic causes of behavior, whereas the rationalist tends to emphasize reasons for behavior
Whereas the empiricist stresses induction, the rationalist stresses deduction
What did bacon and Descartes have in common?
Although bacon was an empiricist and Descartes was a rationalist, both had the same load of: to overcome the philosophical mistakes and bye sis of the past. Mainly those of Aristotle and his scholastic interpreters and sympathizers.
Both thought objective truth that withstood the criticism of the skeptics, they simply went about their search differently
Equated God with nature and said that everything in nature, including humans, consisted of both matter and consciousness. His proposed solution to the mind-body problem is called double aspectism. The most pleasurable life is one lived in accordance with the laws of nature. Emotional experience is desirable because it is controlled by reason; passionate experience is undesirable because it is not. His deterministic view of human cognition, activity, and emotion did much to facilitate the development of scientific psychology
Baruch Spinoza
Summarize Spinoza’s philosophy with respect to the nature of God
God not only started the world in motion but also was continually present everywhere in the nature. To understand the laws of nature was to understand God. God was nature. He embraced pantheism, or the belief that God is present everywhere and in everything. With this, he embraced a form of primitive animism.
The belief that God is present everywhere and in everything
Pantheism
Describe Spinoza’s philosophy with respect to the relationship between mind and body
Assumed that the mind and body were two aspects of the same thing-the living human being. The mind and the body were like two sides of the coin, even though the two sides are different, they are two aspects of the same coin. The mind and body are inseparable; anything happening to the body is experienced emotions and thoughts; and emotions and thoughts influence the body. This is been called double aspectism
Summarize Spinoza’s philosophy with respect to free will
He denied free will because God is nature and nature is lawful, and because humans are part of nature, their thought and behavior are lawful or determined
He insisted that the best life was one lived with a knowledge of the causes of things and that the closest we can get to freedom is understanding what causes our behavior and thoughts
Summarize Spinoza’s philosophy with respect to clear and unclear ideas
He was a hedonist because he claimed that what are commonly referred to as good and evil or nothing else but the emotions of pleasure and pain.
My pleasure he meant the entertaining of clear ideas, ones that are conductive to the mind’s survival because they reflect an understanding of causal necessity, or a knowledge of why things are as they are
When the mind entertains unclear ideas or is overwhelmed by passion, it feels weak and vulnerable and experiences pain
Summarize Spinoza’s philosophy regarding emotions and passions
Starting with a few basic emotions such as pleasure and pain, he showed how as many as 48 additional could be derived from the interactions between these basic emotions and various situations encountered in life
He made an important distinction between emotion and passion: The experience of passion is one that reduce is the probability of survival. Unlike an emotion, which is linked to a specific thought, passion is not associated with any particular thought
Because passion can cause non-adaptive behavior, it must be harnessed by reason because behavior and thoughts guided by reason or conductive to survival, but behavior and thoughts guided by passion or not
Describe Spinoza’s influence on the development of psychology
Spinoza’s belief in psychic determinism is a principal that stimulated a scientific analysis of the mind, which assumes that the processes of the mind are too subjects to natural laws, and that these laws can be consequently investigated and study
He thought had similarities with psychoanalytic thinking. And had a strong influence on two individuals who were instrumental in launching psychology as an experimental science: Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt.
Believed that we could trust our sensory impressions to accurately reflect physical reality because it makes commonsense to do so. Attributed several rational faculties to the mind and was therefore a faculty psychologist
Thomas Reid
Describe Reid’s views regarding common sense
The position that we can assume the existence of the physical world and of human reasoning powers because it makes commonsense to do so- common sense philosophy
We are naturally endowed with the abilities to deal with and make sense out of the world
The belief that sensory experience and presents physical reality exactly as it is. Also called naïve realism
Direct realism
Describe Reid’s views regarding conscious and unconscious perception
He did not believe that consciousness was formed by one sensation being added to another or to the memory of others. Rather, we experience objects immediately as objects because of our innate power of perception. He believed in direct realism, because he believed that our sensations not only accurately reflect reality but do so immediately
The belief that the mind consists of several powers or faculties
Faculty psychology