Psychology 11-12

Question 1

Descartes believed that the world consists of two completely different kinds of substances

Answer 1

Everything is either a physical substance (fundamentally quantitative) or a mental substance (fundamentally qualitative), and the two have nothing in common.

Question 2

What are physical substances characterised by?

Answer 2

Charactersied by extension: the measurable, spatial properties of things (e.g. length, area, volume).

Question 3

What are mental substances characterised by?

Answer 3

Characterised by ‘thinking’: perception, cognition, memory etc.

Question 4

How is psychology fundamentally Cartesian?

Answer 4

The mind is hidden/internal/private; we have direct access to it and we only have mediated access to the physical world.

Question 5

Who rejected the Cartesian (Descarte) view that some knowledge was innate?

Answer 5

John Locke (other than that, they seem to have some similarities)

Question 6

How did Watson define behaviour?

Answer 6

Complex system of reflexes which function in a serial order when the organism is confronted by certain stimuli. He called this a habit

Question 7

Problem with Watson’s definition of behaviour

Answer 7

If eating a meal, there are different bodily movements involved and these aren’t accounted for.

Question 8

How did Skinner define behaviour?

Answer 8

The whole class of bodily movements involved in ‘doing X’ can be defined “as any set of movements that bring X about (though the members of that class are potentially different)”

Question 9

Problem with Skinner’s definition of behaviour

Answer 9

Ignores the distinction between accidental and non-accidental consequences of bodily movements.