Psych Overview: U1 Test

Question 1

Aristotle’s Three Types of Souls

Answer 1

i. Vegetative soul: all organisms, including the simplest plants, included this and enabled them to nourish themselves and to reproduce
ii. Sensitive/Animal Soul: This soul provided animals with more complex function of locomotion, sensation, memory and imagination
iii. Rational Soul: This soul enables humans to reason consciously and take on the highest moral virtues.

Question 2

how Descartes eliminated the first two in his mechanistic physiology

Answer 2

Eliminated vegetative and sensitive souls.
i. Descartes argued that the traditional concepts of vegetative and sensitive soul could be replaced with mechanistic explanation by reviewing the 10 physiological functions.

Question 3

How Descartes saw animals (and the bodies of humans)

Answer 3

The animals and the bodies of humans were just vessels for the soul (or mind) to execute its will. The body would be explained mechanistically.

Question 4

“The soul of beasts is nothing but their blood”

Answer 4

This statement argued that animals could be understood completely in mechanistic terms, as automata.

Question 5

Descartes’ view of the rational soul

Answer 5

Descartes’ philosophy rated reason and the intellective functions of the conscious mind as more fundamental than, and potentially independent of, sensory experience.

Question 6

Evidence for the rational souls existence

Answer 6

consciousness and freewill.

Question 7

What the soul contains

Answer 7

Innate ideas, perfection, unity and God.

Question 8

Descartes method was to…

Answer 8

“doubt everything and then to take as axiomatic only that which proved to be indubitable.”

Question 9

How did Descartes’ method give rise to the famous axiom

Answer 9

In doubting everything he realized that doubting his own existence was evidence that he existed (according to Descartes). Thus phrasing, I think, therefore I am.

Question 10

Interaction between the body and soul

Answer 10

Descartes argued that a body without a soul would be an automaton (beast), completely under the mechanistic control of external stimuli and its interal hydraulic or emotional condition (without consciousness). A soul without a body would have consciousness, but only of the innate ideas; it would lack the sensory impression and ideas of material things that occupy human consciousness. Soul would have nothing to execute its will.

Question 11

What doe the body and soul “bring to the table” respectively

Answer 11

The body adds richness to the contents of the soul’s consciousness, while the soul adds rationality and volition to cause behavior.

Question 12

what the problem is about such an interaction and who first posed it to him;

Answer 12

The problem with this interaction is to question how a nonmaterial soul can possibly produce voluntary actions in the body. This was posed by Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia.

Question 13

How the body and soul interaction problem was solved.

Answer 13

by identifying the Pineal Gland as the single location in which the soul and body interact.

Question 14

Be able to list and describe the four areas in which Descartes influenced the subsequent history of psychology. 



Answer 14

a. Importance of the brain
b. Mechanistic terms of automata as reflex
c. Dynamic psychology (mind and body): Interactive dualism and the various ways in which the two entities interact.
d. Cartesian Dualism: Descartes emphasis on body and mind dualism that will later affect much of psychology and general language.

Question 15

Be able to describe the three-step inductive method by which the human mind, according to Locke, gained knowledge, and where he got that model. 



Answer 15

i. Observations
ii. Identifying regularities
iii. Deriving laws

Locke utilized this method from the scientific models of the time.

Question 16

Be able to describe how Locke viewed the human mind and what it is like at birth

Answer 16

Locke argued that the human mind was a blank slate (Tabula Rasa) that gained ideas through concrete sensory experience rather then by birth.

Question 17

where all knowledge comes from;

Answer 17

concrete sensory experience

Question 18

why Locke was not a nativist,

Answer 18

Locke was not a nativist because he argued that ideas and principles most often claimed to be innate do not occur in inexperienced or enfeebled minds.

Question 19

the process(es) by which simple ideas become complex ones.

Answer 19

With experience, simple ideas combine to become a complex idea. The example of the apple.

Question 20

Be able to compare and contrast Descartes and Locke in terms of their views of authority;

Answer 20

Descartes generally resisted authority but fell in line with the authority of the church.
Locke was involved with some governing authorities but ultimately rejected the role of one ruling power over an entire country.

Question 21

Descartes vs. Locke: respective styles on examining the nature of knowledge

Answer 21

When examining knowledge Descartes argued that examination should be done alone while Locke proposed that the only way to fully know if something is true is if a group of people examine it together.

Question 22

Descartes vs. Locke: their views on the mind (i.e., active or passive);

Answer 22

Descartes saw the mind as an active entity that manipulated the body to conform to its will; while Locke saw the mind as passively receptive to the concrete sensory experiences.

Question 23

Descartes vs. Lock: on how where knowledge comes from;

Answer 23

For Descartes knowledge comes from innate ideas that every human is born with while with Locke, knowledge comes from the perception and is nothing but the perception and connection and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of any of our ideas.

Question 24

Descartes vs. Locke: whether certain knowledge could be obtained

Answer 24

Descarte: certain knowledge through innate ideas and principles.
Locke: certain knowledge would be obtained through experience with the concrete world.

Question 25

Reason and intellective functions of the mind as more fundamental than sensory experiences.

Answer 25

Rationalist

Question 26

the mind arises primarily out of concrete experiences, or that there can exist no innate ideas independent of sensory experience

Answer 26

Empiricist

Question 27

Innate ideas existing prior to concrete experience.

Answer 27

Nativist

Question 28

A mind devoid of ideas at conception but passively receptive to sensation.

Answer 28

Tabula Rasa

Question 29

Locke’s Essay: Essential message

Answer 29

All knowledge comes from experience but that no one person’s expense can be sufficient to create a complete and error-free knowledge of the world.