First Attempts To Establish Psychology Flashcards
What was Immanuel Kant’s view?
- Said we can’t know object properties - mind actively imposes categories on experience (mind imposes causality onto events - can propose things not necessarily there)
- scientific psychology impossible - can’t study consciousness directly + introspection changes the mind
- can have anthropological psychology - study faculties, appetite + human character
- goal = improve human behaviour
What is romanticism?
Counter movement to enlightenment
Humans as cultural entity can’t be studied with Newtonian model - while is more than sum of its parts
Anti reductionism needed to study society
Knowledge based on language, customs etc
Need to study history and language to understand human nature
What was Schelling’s view?
Naturphilosophie - reunite man with nature
Should study: conscious and unconscious, normal and abnormal, hidden forces of nature, physiognomy and phrenology, ‘philosophical’ anatomy (ideal patterns and structures common to all in nature)
What was Goethe’s view?
Physics can’t be used to study nature/colour - doesn’t give insight to how we experience colour -> rejected Newton’s ideas (prism) - need to look at poetry/peoples’ opinions
Darkness is polar to and interacts with light
Only 2 pure colours - blue/yellow - rest are degrees of these
19th century
What was Helmholtz’s contribution?
Had contributions to acoustics, optics, electrodynamics, physics, fluid dynamics, geometry
Measurement of speed of nerves
Laws of conservation of energy - blow to interactive dualism
Materialist - not dogmatic
Empiricist
Unconscious inferences (cognitive subconscious)
Influence on Freud, Pavlov and academic psychology
19th century
What was Freud’s contribution?
Started in Newtonian tradition
Switched to Romantic tradition -> couldn’t explain why have psychological traumas
Man isn’t in control of his reason
19th century
What was Wundt’s contribution?
Assistant of Helmholtz
Independent experimental lab
Pendulums, timers, chronoscope, electrical stimulators, sensory mapping devices etc
Internal perception = wrong
Experimental self-observation = okay
Heidelberg years = learn about subconscious via experiments with conscious processing
Can hold 4-6 simple ideas
Apperception can overcome this = organises simple ideas into complex ideas - gives rise to attention -> linked with felling of mental effort
Experimental psychology focuses on links between physiology and consciousness/behaviour (naturwissenschaft)
Anthropology focuses on higher mental process eg language, aesthetics, religion (Geisteswissenschaft - völkerpsychology)
Compare history, cultures, species - evolution of mind eg. language
19th century
What was Donder’s contribution?
Reaction times -> subtraction method = press button as soon as light comes on
L> simple reaction time
L> discrimination reaction time
L> choice reaction time
Perception and motor time - time required for simple task
Discrimination time - time for discrimination task minus simple task
Choice time - time for choice task minus discrimination time
19th century
What was Titchener’s contribution?
Mind consists of images of sensation
Basic sensation elements
Can be linked to physiological processes
Apperception rejected
Method: introspection
Association explains complex images/ideas
Attention not a mental process - clearest sensations
Continued empirical approach to psychology
Continued psychology’s separation from philosophy
Structuralism died with Titchener - made way to functionalism and behaviourism
19th century
What was psychophysics?
Weber and Fechner
Fechner transformed Weber’s ratio to formula
S = k log R
S = sensation, k = constant, R = physical intensity of stimulus ( k = depends on what measuring)
Chapter 3
Individualisation of in western society
Individualisation - trend in society towards looser social relations and greater focus on individual self than groups belong to
Factors contributing:
- Increased complexity of society - increased urbanisation and industrialisation = more complex and competitive social networks
- Increased control by the state - society gathered and stored more info about individuals and was reported back to citizens
- Individuality promoted by Christianity - religion out emphasis on solitary individual = each persons state of faith and relation to god
- Mirrors, books, letters - more aware of themselves, characters depicted with increasing depth, way to explore, express and share intimate experiences through communication
Chapter 3
Philosophical states of mind
Epistemology - branch of philosophy concerned with nature of knowledge
Rationalism - knowledge obtained by means of reasoning - usually deductive reasoning on basis of innate knowledge eg. Plato, Aristotle
Empiricism - knowledge obtained by perceptual experiences - no innate knowledge eg. Bacon, Locke
Chapter 3
What is idealism?
View within philosophy that human knowledge is a construction of the mind and doesn’t necessarily correspond to an outside world - truth of knowledge depends on coherence with rest of knowledge in social groups
Chapter 3
Idealism - what are Berkeley’s views?
Contents of soul entirely consist of impressions acquired through observation - no guarantee contents of soul are faithful rendition of world - no guarantee outside works exists -> contents of mind could be self generated
Chapter 3
What is realism?
Human knowledge tries to reveal real properties of outside world - truth of knowledge determined by correspondence of knowledges with real world
