Lecture 4 Flashcards
What discipline was psychology born out of?
Physiology!! (NOT philosophy)
In 18th and 19th century physiology, what were 2 areas where the boundary btw physiology and psychology was unclear?
- How does the activation of _____ produce _____?
- What causes ______ to ______ movement?
- How does the activation of sensory nerves produce sensations?
- What causes motor nerves to initiate movement?
What was different in the way Kant understood perception vs Descartes, Locke and Hume?
- proposed we are active participants in perception
- previous accounts said we were passive, objective observers of our ideas
What are Kant’s 2 a priori forms?
time and space (we need these to be able to perceive)
How many a priori categories did Kant define? What were the 4 sub categories?
- 12
- OF quantity
- of quality
- of relation
- of modality
Distinguish a priori forms and a priori categories
- forms: more basic, involved w perception (space + time)
- categories: more elaborate, tools that help us reflect on our perception
How did Kant reconcile Empiricism and Rationalism?
- established need for both sensation and a priori concepts to make sense of our world!
- need one to make sense of the other
What was Kant’s new “copercican revolution”?
- the mind participates actively in how we see the world
- named after theory that sun is center of universe, not earth
What did Enlightenment thinkers say about our role in perception? did Kant agree?
- spectator theory; objectivity in all perception and knowledge
- Kant disagrees! (mind is active participant)
Distinguish noumena and phenomena
noumena: thing in itself
phenomena: thing for me (how we perceive it, only thing we can actually know)
What did Kant think about psychology as a science?
- psychology can’t be a science
- natural science requires rational analysis, axioms and demonstrations written as mathematical laws
- psychology is at most a historical doctrine of nature
August Comte (1798-1857) was a French ____ and ____ who founded the doctrine of _____. He was also one of the founders of _______.
philosopher and writer; doctrine of positivism; founder of sociology
What is Positivism (Comte)
- info derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and logic, is only source of all certain knowledge
- valid knowledge is found only in this a posteriori knowledge
- society, like physical world, operated according to general laws (science can inform us about both!)
- rejects introspective/intuitive knowledge, metaphysics and theology bc can’t be verified by senses
Comte’s positivism is essentially proposing ____
a scientific utopia (science is the answer to everything)
What is a “positive truth”? (Comte)
something we can validly assert about the world (through senses)
What are the 3 stages of Comte’s Theory of Science?
- all human societies go through 3 stages
- Theological: gods and spirits dominate culture (3 substages: animism –> polytheism –> monotheism)
- Metaphysical (abstract): age of enlightenment; thinking based on abstract/unverified suppositions/speculations; explanations more rational/philosophical
- Positive (scientific): science based on observations dominates; social policies should aim at rational organization of society
How are the following subjects ordered in terms of complexity of instruments? (Comte, Theory of Science)
Astronomy, Sociology, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Mathematics
- starts w very complex methods, ends w not great methods
Mathematics
Astronomy
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Sociology
How are the following subjects ordered in terms of complexity of phenomenones? (Comte, Theory of Science)
Astronomy, Sociology, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Mathematics
- starts w very simple phenomena, ends w very complex phenomena
Mathematics
Astronomy
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Sociology
Why does Comte say “this pretended psychological method is then radically null and void”?
- the thinker can’t divide himself in 2
- we can’t observe our thoughts objectively bc the organ observed and the organ observing are identical!
What was the prominent position before 18th/19th century physiology?
- late 17th/early 18th century dualism
- in humans, voluntary actions explained by soul
- in humans and animals, involuntary actions explained by inner mechanisms
What is Descartes’ geologism?
our body is like a machine/automaton
What is the Canard Digerateur?
- created to show that it’s possible to think of animals as little machines
- could eat and poop and walk around
- 17th/18th century dualism
What did 18th/19th century physiology want to change about the dualist approach?
- wanted to take immaterial soul out of equation
- explain workings of nervous system as if it were a machine
Explain the evolution of the concept of “stimulation”
- most pervasive category in 20th century physiology
- sensation + perception deal w external stimulation
- motivation + emotion as responses to internal stimulation
- behaviour as response to stimulation (S –> R; response within organism becomes stimulus for next response, chain continues until there is an external response)
Distinguish mechanistic and vitalistic physiology
- Mechanistic: the whole is the sum of its parts; all processes of CNS can be explained in terms of basic properties of its constituent parts
- Vitalistic: living organisms are different bc they contain some non-physical element (think Aristotle scale of nature)
Distinguish Reductionism and Emergentism
Reductionism:
- similar to mechanistic physiology
- intellectual/philosophical position that interprets a complex system as the sum of its parts
Emergentism:
- a property of a system is emergent if it is a new outcome of some other properties of the system and their interaction
- whole is different than sum of its parts
- ex consciousness in the brain
What would Reductionism and Emergentism answer to the following question?
Can we explain complex meteorological phenomena using atoms?
Reductionism: yes!
Emergentism: no, there are principles that govern meteorology that are beyond atoms
Emergentism and reductionism are (distinct/a continuum)
a continuum!!!
How can Aristotle’s ship example be explained in terms of Reductionism/Emergentism?
- reductionism would say its a different ship
- BUT formal cause remains
- form is emergent property of matter!!!
What is the typical position of hardcore material determinists about free will?
usually skeptics ab free will (incompatibilists)
Compatibilism is more similar to (reductionism/emergentism)
emergentism
Incompatibilism is more similar to (reductionism/emergentism)
reductionism
What is the strongest form of libertarianism (incompatibilism)?
Descartes’ dualism (we are free, causal determinism is false)
What is “qualia”? What is this similar to?
- instances of subjective, conscious experience
- comes from latin word for “of what kind”
- eg redness of red can’t be reduced to anything material
- similar to what Locke said about primary/secondary categories
Haller was a (vitalistic/mechanistic) physiologist. He argued that ____ is a unique property of living things, and animate motion depends on _______. This is similar to _____
vitalistic
SENSIBILITY is a unique property of living things
animate motion depends on A SPECIAL IRRITABILITY OF CERTAIN NERVES
- similar to Aristotle’s scale of nature
What is Mueller’s law of specific nerve energies?
- each sensory nerve in the body is made to convey only one kind of sensation
What did vitalistic physiology add to the stimulus-response equation (S –> R)
S –> O –> R
- organism isn’t automaton
- only responses that preserve the integrity of the organism are emitted
What example was given for the vitalistic roots of stimulation?
- vomiting! can be triggered by ingesting poison or observing/thinking about vomiting
- causes of responses can be mental or physical
- responses can be considered to be at diff degrees of voluntary vs involuntary
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1884) was a student of ________
Mueller
he went rogue and confronted vitalistic psychology
von Helmoltz pushed _________ to its extreme
mechanistic physiology
What is von Helmoltz’s Law of Conservation of Energy? How does it apply to frogs?
- a machine is simply a device for transforming energy of one kind to another kind
- showed that amount of heat + energy produced by frog muscles is roughly equal to the energy released from oxidation of the food it ate
- so living things also follow law of conservation of energy!!
Who did research on the conduction velocity of nerves in a frog leg in the 1850s?
Hermann von Helmoltz
von Helmoltz measured the conduction velocity in frog legs and found that it was much (slower/faster) than previously thought. The speed was ____m/s, which is a little more than ____km/h.
Why did these results stun people?
SLOWER; 30 m/s, a little more than 100km/h
stunned ppl bc when we perceive things it feels instantaneous (30 m/s is slow if we think about a whale – a whole second for message to pass from tail to brain)
What is the metaphor of mental energy?
- energy was very modern term in 1850s
- explains mental phenomena in physicalist terms
- maybe we can transform other kinds of energy into mental energy?
- can be conducted (channeled), accumulated and discharged
Who is the distinction btw sensations and perceptions attributed to?
Hermann von Helmoltz
How does von Helmoltz distinguish sensation and perception?
Sensation: raw elements of conscious experience (require no learning or prior experience) (ie blobs of colour and light)
Perception: meaningful interpretations given to sensations (ie face)
von Helmoltz was also a ______ and investigated the working of the eye from that point of view
physicist!
What did von Helmoltz conclude about the eye as an optical device?
it is a very poor optical device
What did von Helmoltz discover that contributed to him deciding the eye was a poor optical device?
the blind spot! (defect in small part of retina where optic nerve leaves eye, contains no light-sensitive receptor cells)
In the late 1600s, Newton demonstrated visible light is made out of _______; (shorter/longer) light waves get bent more (refraction)
all the colours; shorter waves get bent more
What is colour mixing (neurophysiology of colour vision)
- phenomenon whereby varying mixtures of spectral light can produce the same colour sensations as pure spectral colours
What are primary colours (neurophysiology of colour vision)
- spectral colours (red, green , blue) which are the building blocks for all the kinds of colour sensation
What is the Young-Helmoltz trichromatic theory?
- Thomas Young and Hermann von Helmoltz
- suggests there are 3 types of receptor cells in the eyes, each responding to a different spectral hue
- this is what makes colour vision possible!
von Helmoltz was stunned by the lack of correspondence between ______ and _____
our subjective perception of the world and how our nervous system is designed to perceive the world
Compare and contrast the perspectives of Kant, von Helmoltz and Locke in terms of how we develop perceptual abilities
Kant: a priori knowledge is innate (never actually said we are “born” with them but many interpret him this way)
Helmoltz: perceptual processes acquired through experience (wants to reject nativism)
Locke: a person born blind and suddenly granted sight would not immediately be able to perceive environment from sight (real examples of this happening, ppl do learn to see normally but takes some time to start making sense of environment)
What is perceptual adaptation?
- idea that when a person’s visual field is altered (eg shifting images w special glasses), the brain adapts to new perceptions automatically and unconsciously
- but this takes a few days!!
What is unconscious inference?
- according to Helmoltz
- idea that perceptual adaptation + other perceptual phenomena might result from a process in which there is an unconscious adoption of certain logical rules
EXAMPLE:
- size of an object varies inversely with its distance (general premise is inference based on experience)
- size of ball in my vision is gradually getting smaller
- the ball is moving away from me
What area did Ernst Heinrich Weber (1785-1878) work in? What is he known for?
- interested in tactile senses
- known for Weber fractions (JND between 2 stimuli)
What is a Weber fraction?
- the JND btw the standard and comparison weight is always close to 1/40 (or 0.025) of the standard weight
- there is a diff Weber fraction for each sensory dimension
Where did Gustav Fechner sit in the monism/pluralism debate? Whose position is this similar to?
- dual aspect monist
- in style of Spinoza
What did Fechner want to prove? What idea did the start with?
- wanted to prove mental + physical were 2 sides of same thing
- started w idea that every JND is perceptually equivalent (his Eureka moment)
Who developed the following equation? Why is it meaningful?
Sensation = k log(physical stimulus intensity)
- Fechner!
- equation showing how every JND is perceptually equivalent
- first mathematical equation where one side is something subjective being predicted by something physical
- proved Kant wrong: psychology can be a proper natural science!!
- birth of psychology according to Dr. Roy!!!
What is mental chronometry? What made this research possible?
- measuring speed at which humans can perform elementary mental tasks to then make inferences ab processes involved
- made possible by discovery that conduction velocity of nerve cells is relatively slow
Who is Franciscus Cornelis Donders (1818-1889)?
- invented mental chronometry
- often overlooked in history of psychology
What was the example given of one of Donders’ mental chronometry experiments?
- asked to repeat a syllable, measure time btw hearing syllable and beginning of oral production (m: 197 ms)
- other condition: present 5 syllables, only repeat ki (m: 243 ms)
- time needed to identify identity of stimulus is 243-197 = 46
- asked to repeat every syllable (m: 285 ms)
- time needed for response selection is 285 - 243 = 42 ms
What modern area of research does Donders’ mental chronometry resemble?
like modern cog sci experiments, only thing missing is modern statistics
What was Wilhelm Wundt’s first study about?
- studied the influence of salt deprivation on the composition of his own urine
- studied chemistry! then got a degree in medicine
After earning his degree in medicine, Wundt moved to Berlin to study _______ with ______ and _______
physiology with Muller and Bois-Raymond
In 1858, ___ founds the Institute of Physiology in Heidelberg and Wundt becomes ________
Helmoltz!; Wundt becomes his assistant (bittersweet relationship)
What is Wundt’s thought meter?
- pendulum with horizontal knitting needle that hits bells
- where is the pendulum when the knitting needle hits the bell?
- perception is 100-125ms late; we don’t see and hear the bell being hit at the same time
- argued separate acts of consciousness are involved in registering the bell and noting the position of the pendulum
- these “acts of consciousness” became basis for his psychology
- this contribution to the theory of sensory perception meant there was sufficient ground to establish a whole new field of experimental psychology
In 1862 Wundt taught his first course called ______
Psychology as a natural science
Wundt’s 1874 book “principles of physiological psychology” proposed what about psychology?
proposed psychology can be a new scientific discipline
In 1879, _______ opened the first laboratory of experimental psychology called the __________
Wundt; Institute for Experimental Psychology
What department did psychology used to be a part of at universities (at McGill until 1910-20ish)?
philosophy!!
How did Wundt contribute to the field of psychology // his university beyond setting up the first lab? (3)
- created a journal (philosophical studies)
- taught six-month intro course
- trained many students (186; that’s crazy high!)
What were the 2 introspective techniques that Wundt defined?
- internal perception: un-scientific; practiced by philosophers; what Kant and Comte criticized
- experimental self-observation: highly controlled circumstances; stimulus presented repeatedly and Ps report experiences to stimulus
- ex ticking of metronome, played in class as example and asked how ppl perceived beat (tik tik vs tik tok tik tok)
What is voluntaristic psychology?
- general term describing Wundt’s psychology
- emphasized events like apperception, creative synthesis, and psychic causality
- all associated w the will or voluntary effort!
How did Wundt distinguish apprehension and apperception?
Apprehension: first step in perceiving, individual beats of metronome enter consciousness
Apperception: making sense out of our experience; requires consciousness
Wundt argued that all of Helmoltz’s mechanistic processes stopped at the level of ________. _______ requires something more than a mechanism, it is associated with ______.
apprehension; apperception; effort
Psychology was evolved to fill the gaps between ___ and __
Sensation and motor action
If we were to try to relate Aristotle’s epistemology to Wundt’s Voluntaristic Psychology:
Sensation would be like _______, memory would be like ________, and organized experience would be like ______.
(apperception/apprehension/creative synthesis)
Sensation would be like apprehension, memory would be like apperception, and organized experience would be like creative synthesis
what was the example of remembering letters or words used to illustrate? What do we find about how many letters vs words ppl can remember?
- difference between apprehension and apperception
- we apprehend all letters but only apperceive a subset
- number of elements is what matters, ppl remember about same # in both conditions
Wundt observed that silent thought is more than ______. He came to this conclusion using _______.
more than a low-level talking to oneself
came to conclusion using introspection
What 3 things did Wundt use to prove that silent thought is more than just talking to yourself?
- we can sometimes realize our speech isn’t expressing our thoughts properly
- we can object to something before being able to put it into words
- we can convey the same meaning using completely different words
According to Wundt, what is the most basic unit of thought?
the “general idea”, it is grasped by apperception and translated into a sentence
What are the 3 steps in Wundt’s model ab how thought relates to language?
“General idea”
Apperception (not automatic, the will captures the idea through apperception)
Sentence
**all 3 levels influence each other!
What is creative synthesis?
- Wundt
- theory that apperceived ideas may be combined/organized in many ways, including some that have never been experienced before
- ex spontaneous strategies people used to remember letters/words during last example
What is psychic causality?
- Wundt
- notion that there are different rules in place for apperceptive processes that do not follow the same mechanistic causality that distinguishes perceptive processes
- partially rejects Helmoltz’ mechanistic approach
What are the 3 dimensions of Wundt’s tridimensional theory of feeling?
- tension and relief (anticipating of next beat)
- excitation and depression (speed of tempo)
- pleasantness and unpleasantness (unregular patterns are unpleasant)
Wundt argued that _____ are central parts of all psychological processes
emotions
What does Lisa Feldmann-Barret’s chapter title “Affect as a Psychological Primitive” mean? Who is responsible for introducing this idea?
- affect accompanies everything; it can’t be reduced to anything else
- Wundt introduced this idea
What is the Wundt curve?
- graphs pleasantness and unpleasantness according to stimulus intensity
- pleasantness is optimal w medium intensity stimulation
- eg chocolate: one crumb or eating a whole shipment would be very unpleasant
Wundt had a career of over ___years and wrote more than _____ pages
65; 50 000
Where is Wundt on the list of most eminent psychologists of the 20th century? Why (4 reasons)?
- tied at 93.5 with 3 others
- didn’t come up with an influential theory (could have been but not remembered for anything specific)
- writing was hard to understand
- writing was often contradictory
- William James, who was very influential, openly hated Wundt’s work
