Lecture One

Question 1

What does it mean by Psychology has a long past and a short history?

Answer 1

Long past - people have always sought to understand ad themselves and each other.

Short History - The discipline has only formally existed for 140 years.

Question 2

Muller (1801-1858)

Answer 2

Proposed the law of specific energies > The nature of perception is defined by the pathway over which the sensory information is carried/

Question 3

Webber (1795-1878)

Answer 3

The just noticeable difference between two stimuli is proportional to their

Question 4

Fecher (1801-1887)

Answer 4

Subjective sensation is proportional to the logarithm of stimulus intensity (the difference between 50 grams and 55 grams is more noticeable than the difference between 150 grams and 155 grams).

Question 5

wundt (1832-1920)

Answer 5

Physician, physiologist, philosopher and professor.
Set up formal laboratory in scientific psychology at University of Leipzig.

Emphasised the use of experimental methods drawn from the natural sciences.

Viewed psychology as the study of thoughts, feelings and perceptions.

The study consisted as the self-examination of one’s consciousness.

Question 6

What is experimental psychology?

Answer 6

Subsumed under supra-ordinate disciplines, such as neuroscience, cognitive science, medical science.

Question 7

Why is psychology hard to define?

Answer 7

There is no single thing that they all do, no single way of doing it and no single subject matter.

Question 8

Different types of psychologists:

Answer 8

1. Physiological Psychologist
   - e.g. brain behaviour relations in the rat.
   - experimental manipulations of some variable, measurement of effect, and statistics used to draw inferences.
2. Cognitive Psychologist
   - e.g. mental rotation speed.
   - correlation between variables.
3. Behavioural Psychologist
   - e.g. the role of reinforcement contingencies in establishing and maintaining behaviour.
   - focus on the individual - systematic observation, baseline, manipulation, measurement.
4. Social Psychologist
   e. g. the presence of others and willingness to help someone in need
   - observe and record natural activity.
5. Freudian Psychology
   - Aim for the patient to gain insight into themselves.
   - e.g. the use of dreams to obtain insight into the unconscious.

Question 9

What is held in common between the different branches of psychology?

Answer 9

While there are differences in what we do, how we do it, choice of subject matter, each of the different branches of psychology share the view that we should take an experimental approach towards advancing knowledge in our discipline.

Question 10

What did John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) advocate for?

Answer 10

J.S. Mill advocated scientific study of human affairs

• Assumed that human affairs have an underlying order that is quantifiable.
• Emphasised methods of observation and induction.
• Advocated methods of the natural sciences e.g. a focus on natural explanations for human affairs.
• Intent was to bring to bear the methods and concepts of the natural sciences to philosophical problems of mind, especially the so-called epistemological problems of what knowledge is and where it comes from.

Question 11

Positivism

Answer 11

• General approach to epistemology.
• Assumed that science rests on the foundation of facts.
• Knowledge ultimately derived from, and could only be justified in terms of, evidence provided by the senses.

Question 12

Logical Positivism

Answer 12

• Issue with positivism as it only focused on the observable > too strict and would allow for philosophical problems or things to do with the mind to be observed using logical analysis.
• The key to logical analysis was operationalism. Translates the unobservable into the observable. To operationalise is to turn a concept into something measurable and quantifiable.

Question 13

Recipe for Science - Logical Positivism

Answer 13

1. Operationally define theoretical terms.
2. State theory using operational definitions.
3. Generate and test predictions.
4. Revise theory as needed.

Question 14

Problems with positivism

Answer 14

Positivism is just verificationism.

Question 15

Popper

Answer 15

• Thought falsifiability was far more important and powerful in creating a strong theory.
• Thought outliers had an extreme impact as it prompts the revision of a theory.

Question 16

Problems of Falsifiability

Answer 16

Poppers’ methodological reconstruction of science avoids the philosophical difficulties of positivism, but fails on other counts.

Can claim something easily refutable but absolutely ridiculous.

When should you abandon a testable hypothesis if falsified?

Question 17

Thomas Kuhn

Answer 17

Challenged the idea of normative science that was suggested by philosophers like Popper.

Attempted to describe what scientists actually do.

The Kuhn Cycle 
Normal Science > 
Model Drift > 
Model Crisis > 
Model Revolution > 
Paradigm Change

Question 18

Max Planck

Answer 18

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

This idea is not without its critics - ambiguity of the term paradigm.