Lecture 3: Predecessors Of Psychology Flashcards
Individualization
Trend in a society towards loser social relations and a greater focus by individuals on themselves than on the groups they belong to
What are 4 factors that contributed to individualization
- Increased complexity of society
- Increased control by the state
- Individuality promoted by Christianity
- Mirrors, books and letters (new inventions)
Epistemology
Branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge
Idealism
View within philosophy that human knowledge is a construction of the mind and does not necessarily correspond to an outside world; the truth of knowledge depends on the coherence with the rest of the knowledge in the social group
Realism
View within philosophy that human knowledge tries to reveal real properties of the outside world; the truth of knowledge is determined by the correspondence of the knowledge with the real world
Introspection
Research method in psychology consisting of a person looking inward and reporting what he/she is experiencing; usually done under controlled circumstances
Physiognomy
Belief that the personality of an individual can be deduced from their appearance, in particular from the shape of the head and the face
Psychophysics
Part of psychological research dealing with the relationship between physical stimuli and the corresponding sensation
Mental chronometry
Using reaction times to measure the time needed for various mental tasks; on the basis of a comparison of different tasks, models of the mental processes involved in the tasks are postulated
Natural selection
Process in Darwin’s evolutionary theory by which the environment results in the continuation and multiplication of organisms with certain genetic features and hinder the reproduction of organisms with other genetic features; the first type of features are called favorable and the second type unfavorable
survival of the fittest
Term introduced by Herbert Spencer to describe the outcome of natural selection; only organisms that fit within the environment and can produce viable offspring survive
The Origin of Species
Book by Charles Darwin (1859) in which he presented the evolutionary theory
What were the two most important things related do Descartes
He doubted everything and the mind exists separate from the body = dualism
From whom is the quote; “I think, therefore I am”
Descartes
Descartes was a … (rationalist/empiricist)
Rationalist
What is dualism
The mind is a separate substance (immaterial) from the body (material), it controls the body and the body is just a machine
What is reductionism
Reducing mental states to simple brain cells
Who came up with the concept of tabula rasa
John Locke
John Locke was an … (rationalist/empiricist)
Empiricist
Who can be seen as the father of empiricism
John Locke
George Berkeley was an … (rationalist/empiricist)
Empiricist
What was an additional concept that Berkeley came up with
Idealism
What is the most important thing connected to David Hume
Causality and the induction problem
What is the induction problem
Induction is the generalization of observed cases to all cases, however, induction is a logically invalid form of reasoning; the conclusion does not follow from the premises
What are the 3 criteria of Hume’s analysis of causality
- Proximity of cause and effect; near in time and space
- Cause precedes effect
- Necessary connection between cause and effect —> Hume argued that you cannot be sure about this because you cannot observe every possible scenario
What was Thomas Reid’s general idea
To bring back common sense from idealism
Who defined empirical psychology and what was it built on
Wolff; it’s built on introspection and should aim for mathematical demonstrations (similar to newton) for full understanding (= psychometria)
Kant was a … (rationalist/empiricist)
He was actually a mix of both
What was Kant’s mission and how did he argue for that
He wanted to save Newton from Hume’s induction problem; solution - humans themselves bring concepts such as space, time and causality with them as a priori categories with which they structure perception; we need these categories to make sense of the world, its not a bad thing that we have them
What is the problem of interaction
How does an immaterial substance (mind) interact with a material one (brain) —> related to mind-body problem (Descartes)
What did George Berkeley believe when it comes to perceptions
Perceptions do not necessarily correspond to reality and therefore they must come from somewhere —> they come from god, he put them in our mind
Who said “to be is to be perceived”
Berkeley
4 important books were discussed in this chapter, who wrote them and what were they about
- Kant; anthropology as collection of observed facts about humans
- Herbart; attempt to make psych scientific by introducing mathematical laws
- Upham; claim that intellectual mental philosophy is a science worthy of study
- Bain; introduction of the nervous system and other physiological info in a psych textbook
What did
- Hooke
- Mayer
- Weber
- Fechner
discover
- level of detail humans can discern (perception)
- influence of illumination in this above capacity
- detection of just noticeable differences between stimuli
- formulation of a psychophysical theory based on the above
Which two people were important for research on time needed to perform tasks and the speed of signal transmission in the nervous system
Von Helmholtz and Donders
Why is the idea of dualism rejected by modern physics
Because it violates the Law of Conservation of Energy; a mind that controls the brain must set something in motion but the mind itself is immaterial and does not fall under the laws of physics, this would therefore mean that the mind adds energy out of nothing
What are impressions according to Hume
They are “stamps” of experiences that are saved in the mind, if these impressions occur together then we see them as linked and assume there is a causal connection
