Topic 6: Rationalism

Question 1

Passive Mind

Answer 1

a mind whose contents are determined by sensory experience

it contains a few mechanistic principles that organize, store, and generalize sensory experiences

the British empiricists and the French sensationalists tended to postulate such a mind

Question 2

Active Mind

Answer 2

a mind equipped with categories or operations that are used to analyze, organize, or modify sensory information and discover abstract concepts or principles not contained within sensory experiences

the rationalists postulated such a mind

Question 3

Rationalism

Answer 3

the philosophical position postulating an active mind that transforms sensory information and is capable to understanding abstract principles or concepts not attainable from sensory information alone

Question 4

Spinoza (1632-1677)

Answer 4

equated God with nature and said that everything in nature, including humans, consisted of both matter and consciousness

his proposed solution to the mind-body problem is called double aspectism

the most pleasurable life, according to Spinoza, is one lived in accordance with the laws of nature

emotional experience is desirable because it is controlled by reason, passionate experience is undesirable because it is not

his deterministic view of human cognition, activity, and emotion did much to facilitate the development of scientific psychology

Question 5

Pantheism

Answer 5

the belief that God is present everywhere and in everything

Question 6

Double Aspectism

Answer 6

Spinoza’s contention that material substance and consciousness are two inseparable aspects of everything in the universe, including humans

also called psychophysical double aspectism and double aspect monism

Question 7

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)

Answer 7

believed that the universe consists of indivisible units called monads

God had created the arrangement of the monads, and therefore this was the best of all possible worlds

if only a few minute monads were experienced, petites perceptions resulted, which were unconscious

if enough minute monads were experienced at the same time, apparition occurred which was a conscious experience

Question 8

Monads

Answer 8

according to Leibniz, the indivisible units that compose everything in the universe

all monads are characterized by consciousness, but some more so than others

inert matter possesses only dim consciousness, and then with increased ability to think clearly come plants, animals, humans, and finally, God

the goal of each monad is to think as clearly as it is capable of doing

because humans share monads with matter, plants, and animals, sometimes our thoughts are less than clear

Question 9

Psychophysical Parallelism

Answer 9

the contention that bodily and mental events are correlated but that there is no interaction between them

Question 10

Preestablished Harmony

Answer 10

Leibniz’s contention that God had created the monads composing the universe in such a way that a continuous harmony existed among them

this explained why mental and bodily events were coordinated

Question 11

Law of Continuity

Answer 11

Leibniz’s contention that there are no major gaps or leaps in nature

rather, all differences in nature are characterized by small gradations

Question 12

Petites Perception

Answer 12

according to Leibniz, a perception that occurs below the level of awareness because only a few monads are involved

Question 13

Apperception

Answer 13

conscious experience

Question 14

Limen

Answer 14

for Leibniz and Herbart, the border between the conscious and the unconscious mind

also called threshold

Question 15

Thomas Reid (1710-1796)

Answer 15

believed that we could trust our sensory impressions to accurately reflect physical reality because it makes common sense to do so

Reid attributed several rational faculties to the mind and was therefore a faculty psychologist

Question 16

Commonsense Philosophy

Answer 16

the position, first proposed by Reid, that we can assume the existence of a physical world and of human reasoning powers because it makes common sense to do so

Question 17

Direct Realism

Answer 17

the belief that sensory experience represents physical reality exactly as it is

also called naive realism

Question 18

Faculty Psychology

Answer 18

the belief that the mind consists of several powers or faculties

Question 19

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Answer 19

believed that experiences such as those of unity, causation, time, and space could not be derived from sensory experience, and therefore, must be attributable to innate categories of thought

he also believed that morality is, or should be, governed by the categorical imperative

he did not believe psychology could become a science because subjective experience could not be quantified mathematically

Question 20

Categories of Thought

Answer 20

those innate attributes of the mind that Kant postulated to explain subjective experiences we have that cannot be explained alone

for example, the experiences of time, causality, and space

Question 21

Categorical Imperative

Answer 21

according to Kant, the moral directive that we should always act in such a way that the maxims governing our moral decisions could be used as a guide for everyone else’s moral behavior

Question 22

Anthropology

Answer 22

Kant’s proposed study of human behavior

such a study could yield practical information that could be used to predict and control behavior

Question 23

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

Answer 23

like Spinoza, believed the universe to be an interrelated unity

Hegel called this unity the Absolute, and he thought that human history and the human intellect progress via the dialectic process toward the Absolute

Question 24

Dialectic Process

Answer 24

according to Hegel, the process involving an original idea, the negation of the original idea, and a synthesis of the original idea and its negation

the synthesis then becomes the starting point (the idea) of the next cycle of the developmental process

Question 25

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841)

Answer 25

likened ideas of Leibniz’s monads by saying that they had energy and a consciousness of their own

also, according to Herbart, ideas strive for consciousness

those ideas compatible with a person’s apperceptive mass are given conscious expression, whereas those that are not remain below the limen in the unconscious mind

Herbart is considered to be one of the first mathematical and educational psychologists

Question 27

Psychic Mechanics

Answer 27

the term used by Herbart to describe how ideas struggle with each other to gain conscious expression

Question 28

Apperceptive Mass

Answer 28

according to Herbart, the cluster of interrelated ideas of which we are conscious at any given moment

Question 29

What is rationalism?

Answer 29

empiricists describe a passive mind which acts in mechanical way

rationalists proposed an active mind that acts on information from the senses and gives it meaning

empiricists proposed that experience, memory, associations, and hedonism determine not only how a person thinks and acts but also his or her morality

for rationalists, there are rational reasons some acts or thoughts are more desirable than others; have to use knowledge and logic approaches to obtain truth, there are certain moral principles that exist, stress deductive approaches, Descartes is an early example

the two perspectives are not sharply dissociated

they blend together to become the perspective of psychology today

Question 30

Who was Baruch Spinoza?

Answer 30

important and tragic figure

his work was cast aside, in conflict with the Church

challenged Descartes, if we followed Spinoza we would have a different psych

Question 31

What was Spinoza’s idea of pantheism?

Answer 31

God is the unfolding of natural laws, God is in everything

denial of “human” understanding of God, we were not “created in his image”

proposed that God, nature, and mind were aspects of the same substance

God, nature, and mind were inseparable

God was nature, to understand nature is to understand God, God is present everywhere and in everything

Question 32

What was Spinoza’s idea of double aspectism?

Answer 32

the mind-body issue was dealt with by assuming that the mind and body were two aspects of the same thing

dualist and monism perspective

draws from pantheism; thought: non-extended aspect, extension: material

every object is a thinking, material being

mental thought is in every aspect of the world; panpsychism

Question 33

What was Spinoza’s idea regarding the denial of free will?

Answer 33

we really do not have free will

nature (God) is lawful

humans are part of nature

thus thoughts and behavior are lawful - determined

our “freedom” is realizing that everything that is must necessarily be and everything that happens must necessarily happen, because everything results from God

doesn’t mean we can’t intervene, can exert influence on the world

things happen for a reason

best life is when we do our best to understand God and what leads to certain things

Question 34

What were Spinoza’s views on motivation and emotion?

Answer 34

pleasure: obtaining or engaging with clear ideas or existing with clear purpose

clear ideas: increase chances of survival, makes aware of different causes

pleasure comes from entertaining clear ideas, which are conducive to the mind’s survival

when the mind entertains unclear ideas, it feels weak and vulnerable

pain: entertaining unclear ideas, lowers survival chance because we become confused

get clear ideas through reason or rational reflection; engage with sensory information to transform it to something clear

Question 35

What were Spinoza’s views on emotions and passions?

Answer 35

passion is a general upheaval not associated with a particular thought; emotions is linked to a particular thought; transformed through the application of reason

passions: overwhelming experiences, not associated with thoughts, very negative, freezes us, reduces survival

emotions derived from pleasure and pain; transfer emotions to people, objects, experiences; hate things that resemble objects of hate; tendency for humans to maintain a healthy existence

by rationally reflecting we control our passions

Question 36

What was Spinoza’s influence?

Answer 36

major influence on humanist, psychoanalytic

early psychic determinist; psychological aspects of the mind can determine behavior

Question 37

What was Leibniz’s disagreement with Locke?

Answer 37

disagreed with Locke, believing ideas did not come from experience

ideas are nonmaterial and cannot be caused by material activity such as sense activity

ideas must be innate, which means the potential for an idea

Question 38

What was Leibniz’s idea of monadology?

Answer 38

life is everywhere; everything is made of living atoms called monads

the universe consisted of an infinite number of life units called monads

a monad is like a living atom; all monads are active and conscious

monads differ in clarity of consciousness in a hierarchy; some are less clear; differ in intelligence

in general, the hierarchy goes from God, the highest, to humans, then to animals, followed by plants and nonliving mater

have a dominant system of monads that make up the human mind or soul

all differences are saleable, quantitative differences

monads are never influenced by anything, just actualizes the potential it already has

Question 39

Who was Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715)?

Answer 39

was a French priest and rationalist philosopher and theologian

accepted Descartes’ interactionism

refined his view via Occasionalism

Question 40

What is occasionalism?

Answer 40

God is the only causal agent in the universe

all entities provide occasions for divine interaction

the mind and body are separate, but our mental desires act as the “occasion” for God’s intervention

mind and body are separate, but mental desires and physical movements are mediated by God

Question 41

What was Leibniz’s view on the mind-body relationship?

Answer 41

Leibniz proposed a psychophysical parallelism with a preestablished harmony

monads never influence each other; it only seems that they do

the mind and body appear to influence each other, but they do not interact in parallel; they work in harmony because God planned it that way

mind and body are set by God to be in agreement, but are not determined by each other

this is the best of all possible worlds; because it was the one that was created

Question 42

What were Leibniz’s views on conscious and unconscious perception?

Answer 42

there are perceptions which are conscious and those which are below consciousness (petites perceptions)

as petites perceptions accumulate, their force causes apperception

Question 43

What was Leibniz’s view on the law of continuity?

Answer 43

all differences in nature are characterized by small gradations

there are perceptions that are too small to notice; pile up so we can see them

Question 44

What are limen, according to Leibniz?

Answer 44

threshold

when it exceeds the threshold it gets to our consciousness

petite perceptions: below the threshold

apperception: process of building up to the threshold

in unconscious, stuff is still sensed, even if we don’t recognize it

Question 45

What was Leibniz’s legacy?

Answer 45

beyond active mind, not as influential

early psychophysicists were heavily influenced by him

Question 46

Who was Christian von Wolff?

Answer 46

first person to use “psychology” in a book title

what psychology would look like when built upon British Empiricists

first faculty psychologist

Question 47

Who was Thomas Reid?

Answer 47

rationalist

rival of Hume

thought that we do have knowledge of the world because we act like we do

Question 48

What is common sense psychology?

Answer 48

because all humans are convinced of the existence of physical reality, it must exist

we can trust our impressions of the physical world because it makes common sense to do so

don’t need to deduce

have innate capacities to deal with the external world

Question 49

What is direct realism?

Answer 49

sensations are an accurate reflection of reality immediately, not after the mind has operated on them

no need to postulate different processes

innate power of perception

Question 50

What is faculty psychology?

Answer 50

reasoning powers of the mind include several faculties

more than a classification (as other faculty psychologists)

mental faculties were active powers of the mind

they actually existed and influenced people’s thoughts and behavior

could not isolate one faculty, all operate as a unified mind

they are innate

Question 51

What was Kant’s idea of a priori knowledge and analytic judgements?

Answer 51

in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant tried to extend the idea (rejected by Hume) of a priori knowledge (or knowledge achieved without sensory input)

this was in part the goal in order to address Hume’s skeptical ideas around causation

Kant argued that the very ingredients necessary for even thinking in terms of a causal relationship could not be derived from experience and therefore must exist a priori, or before experience

Kant argued that it (among other forms of knowledge) was actually the opposite of analytic = synthetic (e.g., it synthesized elements that were not tautologically related)

Question 52

What is synthetic a priori knowledge?

Answer 52

Kant thereby proposed a new (previously contradictory) category of knowledge; synthetic a priori knowledge

these are truths that are not logically required to be true and do not require any experience to verify (so a priori)

the Critique of Pure Reason is an attempt to answer the question of how such judgements are possible

Kant uses the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge to justify the claim that the mind does not conform to its contents

instead, the contents of consciousness conform to the structure and working of the mind; the mind has priority over experiences

in other words, the mind has priority over reality; it is the mind’s categories that determine our experience

Question 53

What were Kant’s views of categories of thought?

Answer 53

addition to our judgement that gives us our experience

categories of thought: unity, totality, time, space, cause and effect, reality, quantity, quality, negation, possibility-impossibility, and existence-nonexistence

Kant pushed the idea that the mind categorized its input based on its own organization

can’t make judgements without them because we wouldn’t understand it in a meaningful way

Question 54

What was Kant’s view on the causes of mental experiences?

Answer 54

always structured by the categories of thought

our phenomenological experience (mental experience) is an interaction of sensations and the categories of thought

can never know the true physical reality just appearances (phenomena) that are controlled by the categories of thought

phenomena: what we have access to
noumena: never have access to the things themselves

sense impressions + categories = phenomenological experience (conscious, meaningful)

Question 55

What was Kant’s view on the perception of time?

Answer 55

the mind adds the concept of time and space to sensory information

time is not an experience, but it is implied

they are both provided by an a priori category of thought

same with cause and space (what we experience is only what we take in through the mind)

Question 56

What was Kant’s view on the perception of space?

Answer 56

the mind adds the concept of time and space to sensory information

they are both provided by an a priori category of thought

Question 57

What was Kant’s view of the categorical imperative?

Answer 57

the rational principle which governs or should govern moral behavior

similar to older moral percepts such as the “golden rule”

lead to proper moral behavior of all people

difficult to uphold maxims all the time, but generally uphold universal principles

concerned with utilitarianism; goodness and badness are relative

rational principle at the core of all people, free will makes us accountable to others

Question 58

Why did Kant believe psychology couldn’t be a science?

Answer 58

the mind could never be objectively studied because it is not a physical thing

the mind cannot be studied via introspection because it does not make itself amenable to analysis

Question 59

What was Kant’s influence?

Answer 59

influence in cognitive psych; categories

perception in Gestalt psychology

J.J. Gibson and perceived cliff experiments in kids

Question 60

What was Hegel’s idea of the Absolute?

Answer 60

universe is interrelated unity; totality of all

true knowledge is attained by relating isolated instances to the “whole”

understand their place in the Absolute to gain knowledge of something

Question 61

What was Hegel’s ideas of the dialectic process?

Answer 61

our understanding progresses toward the Absolute by the dialectic process

first have a thesis (a point of view) and an antithesis (opposite point of view)

then have a synthesis (a compromise between the thesis and the antithesis), which is a new point of view

this new point of view now becomes the thesis for the next dialectic process

Question 62

What was Hegel’s influence?

Answer 62

Hegel proposed the concept of alienation (self-estrangement)

later used in theories of Eric Fromm, Carl Rogers, and the existentialists

minds are capable of realizing we are not apart of the Absolute

situated in societies where we are ripped from our animalistic nature

Question 63

Who was Johann Friedrich Herbart?

Answer 63

the first mathematical psychologist

talked about psych as separate from philosophy

Question 64

How did Herbart view psychology as a science?

Answer 64

did not believe psychology could be an experimental science; can’t separate parts of the mind

believed that experimentation necessarily divided up its subject matter

the mind acts as an integrated whole therefore it could not be fractionated

Question 65

What was Herbart’s view on psychic mechanics?

Answer 65

ideas had a force or energy of their own and the laws of association were not necessary to bind them

ideas have the power to attract or repel other ideas, depending on their compatibility

ideas attempt to gain expression in consciousness and compete with each other to do so

ideas can be created but not destroyed

can merge and connect with compatible ideas

most ideas are unconscious

push themselves to be clear and swell into conscious life, trying to maintain this conscious expression

Question 66

What was Herbart’s view on the apperceptive mass?

Answer 66

the group of compatible ideas that are in consciousness to which are attending at given moment

thought we are having right now

things need to be compatible to come into conscious

some ideas might disguise themselves to get in

ideas outside the apperceptive mass (incompatible ideas) will be repressed by the powers of the ideas in the mass

unconscious can form strongly and push the conscious out of the way to becomes new perceptive mass

limen: the threshold between conscious and unconscious

goal was to mathematically express the relationships among the apperceptive mass, the limen, and the conflict among things

Question 67

What were Herbart’s ideas regarding emotion?

Answer 67

Herbart also believed that ideas “resisted” repression, and that this repression was experienced emotionally

having unconscious ideas was emotionally unpleasant

having conscious (therefore consistent) ideas was pleasant

Question 68

What was Herbart’s idea regarding educational psychology?

Answer 68

applied his ideas to educational psychology by offering suggestions on how to teach effectively

review material already learned

prepare students for new material by giving overview of upcoming material

present new material

relate new material to what has already been learned

show applications of new material

give an overview of next material to be learned

set apperceptive mass up in the right way so they learn

goal: instill good moral character, set up right apperceptive mass

Question 69

What was Herbart’s legacy?

Answer 69

psych related to math

psychophysics: limen

influence on Freud; repression

Question 70

Who was Johann Gottlieb Fichte?

Answer 70

Fichte distinguished between the “realists” and the “idealists”

set the stage for Romanticism

influenced by Comte

helping people to overcome feudal struggles; lead to greater human rights

willing engagement with the world
have to hold each other responsible
justify why people want to overthrow unjust systems
individuals that gives thing meaning

Question 71

Who was Friedrich Eduard Beneke?

Answer 71

challenged Hebart; you need to incorporate the import of physiological data

all disciplines are derived from psych

fan of introspective methods

believed in categories of the mind

Question 72

Who was Friedrich von Schelling?

Answer 72

transition between Enlightenment and counter

importance of subjective experience

mind and matter are aspects of the same (Spinoza)

emphasis of subjective experience

Question 73

Who was Rudolf Hermann Lotze?

Answer 73

transitionary figure

taught a lot of people, so his ideas were influential

objective events act on senses through nerves to a central perspective

nervous system is a mechanical conductor of motion

challenged mechanistic and materialistic views

couldn’t reduce psychological to physiological

sense of self in psych