Unit 1

Question 1

What are the reasons for studying history? Why study the history of psychology?

Answer 1

1

Question 2

What is Furomoto’s distinction between old and new history?

Answer 2

Old: Emphasizes ‘great’ psychologists and celebrates classic studies and major break throughs
New: more inclusive, scientists are more subjective, not objective - result of the current zeitgeist.

Question 3

Presentivism vs. Historicism

Answer 3

Presentism: asserting past in terms of present understanding, leads people to think that people in the past were less intelligent.
Historicism: evaluate the event in terms of what they knew at the time - this is a contextual approach

Question 4

Internal vs. External Approach

Answer 4

Internal: ignores the outside influences on psychology and believes that history is intierly written within the discipline of psychology
External: considers outside influences, makes reference to them and looks at the societal, economically factors

Question 5

Personalistic vs. Naturalistic

Answer 5

Personalistic: ‘Great man theory’ - sees actions of the individuals as prime movers of bringing about history
Naturalistic: emfatisch overal intellectual and cultural climate of the era - forces of history act on the individual.

Question 6

What are the dangers of presentism?

Answer 6

it can let us to believe that psychologists were unintelligent and that we are superior

Question 7

What is it meant by zeitgeist

Answer 7

the flavour of the time age and time - the spirit of the era or dominant school of thought.

Question 8

What is a multiple (as used by Boring and Merton)? Which concept and approach to history does a multiple support?

Answer 8

when two people make the same discovery at about the same time, but without knowing.

Question 9

What was the attitudes towards Church authority near the end of the renaissance?

Answer 9

it was beginning to be questioned, there were doubts about the geocentric view of the earth, especially with Galileo

Question 10

What does a rationalist believe?

Answer 10

only accept as truth that which could not be doubted - the rejected the evidence of the senses, which can deceive.

Question 11

What were Descarte’s rules for discovering truth?

Answer 11

the way to truth was through human’s capacity to reason:
(1) accept nothing as true, except if there was no reason to doubt it. (2) use analysis to break down into subproblems. (3) work form the simplest of these subproblems to more complex ones. (4) Carefully review conclusions, omitting nothing.

Question 12

Innate vs. derived ideas

Answer 12

Innate Ideas: ideas that do not rely directly on our experiences, but as a result from our native ability to reason.
Derived Ideas: Other concepts of truths that result form our experiences.

Question 13

What is Dualism?

Answer 13

the clear separation from the mind and body

Question 14

What is the Cartesian Dichotomy? What were the differences between humans and non-human animals?

Answer 14

Cartesian dichotomy: divides humans and animals. Animals were simple machines - lacking in mind. Humans combined a mechanical body and the ability to reason. therefore he believed that animals only consisted of the body and the humans had both a mind and body

Question 15

What does a mechanist believe?

Answer 15

people who believe that the body operates like a complicated machine

Question 16

What is an interactionalist?

Answer 16

Someone who believes that the mind can influence the body

Question 17

How did Descartes attempt to explain a reflex? What were the role of animal spirits?

Answer 17

animal spirits were found as tiny particles in the brain and nerves - so for a reflex the mend initiates the movement of animal spirits in the brain by acting the nerves controlling certain muscles and these muscles can react automatically to stimuli in the environment and thus a reflex occurs

Question 18

For Descarte’s what was the importance of the pineal gland?

Answer 18

this was were he proposed that this is where the animal spirits were controlled, and it was the link between the mind and body

Question 19

What is referred to as empiricism and associationism?

Answer 19

Empiristis: our knowledge of the world is constructed from our experiences and is tied to associationism because it is based on the belief that our knowledge is woven together by the associations among our experiences and ideas.

Question 20

What were Locke’s arguments against the existence of innate ideas?

Answer 20

he believed that we had intact ‘faculties’ such as the ability to think, and that there was no need for the innate ideas because it can be shown that ideas originate from other sources requiring only our mental faculties

Question 21

What did Locke consider to be like ‘white paper’?

Answer 21

the mind at birth - that is then filled with our experiences

Question 22

What did Locke consider the two sources of all our idea?

Answer 22

Sensation: information taken in by our senses from the environment
Reflection: mental activities involve in processing information both from senses and memory
Thus our idea of green comes from our experience with green objects and our reflecting on the greenness of green

Question 23

What are simple and complex ideas

Answer 23

Simple Ideas: resulted from experiencing basic sensory qualities and from making simple reflections
Complex Ideas: includes several other ideas, which can be combinations of simple or complex ideas

Question 24

What did Galileo mean by primary and secondary qualities?

Answer 24

Primary: are an inherent property in the object
Secondary: These depend on perception - the colour, smell, warmth, and taste.

Question 25

What issue was posed to Locke in a letter from William Molyneux?

Answer 25

That if our knowledge is based on experience, then our knowledge is determined by sensation. So those who have distorted senses will also have a distorted sense of the world.

Question 26

What is materialism and determinism?

Answer 26

Materialism: reality is only physical reality and that every event in the universe, including mental events, involves measurable events, material objects in motion in physical space.
Determinalism: all events have a prior cause - we are not free to choose, actions are determined by prior events.

Question 27

What did Berkeley attempt to show regarding judgment of distance, size, and location.

Answer 27

that they are based on experience - monocular cues of overlap, relative clarity, and relative size.
This is what we call convergence today.

Question 28

What is convergence and how is it related to the perception of depth?

Answer 28

when objects move closer to us or father away from us - we alter the way our eyes are (lessoning or widening the distance between the pupils). With wider - the object is further away, closer - object is nearer.

Question 29

What is the position of subjective idealism?

Answer 29

the only thing that has reality for us is in perception - the only certainty we have is that we are perceiving objects.

Question 30

Hume’s impressions vs. ideas

Answer 30

impressions = are basic sensations, raw data of experience. 
Ideas = 'faint copies' of impressions (are not as vivid of impressions)

Question 31

Law of resemblance?

Answer 31

An object reminds of another object because it is similar to it - has a resemblance to it

Question 32

Law of Continuity

Answer 32

experiencing things together.

Question 33

Law of cause and Effect

Answer 33

if one effect follows another with some regularity, it will develop an association between the two stimuli

Question 34

Can we be certain about the cases of events? Is absolute certainty possible

Answer 34

Hume believed that we could never have absolute certainty about the cause of events. We can never be absolutely sure about all the cause of events

Question 35

What is the role of a priori knowledge

Answer 35

that we needed some prior knowledge in order to help shape our experiences

Question 36

Did Kant believe that psychology could become a science? Why or why not?

Answer 36

No, because mental phenomenons can’t be observed. or defined and measured in mathematical ways

Question 37

How is the Bell-Magndig Law an example of a multiple?

Answer 37

two different researches discovered the same thing during the same historical era, but did so independently of each other - but the zeitgeist help to determine the activities and ways of thinking of scientists during a particular historical era

Question 38

What is the Bell-Magnedie law?

Answer 38

posterior roots of the spinal cord controlled sensation and the anterior roots controlled the motor responses.

Question 39

What idd Magendie discover as a result of his experiments on puppies.

Answer 39

the functions of the different nerve root endings.

Question 40

What is the doctrine of specific energies of the nerves?

Answer 40

In perception we are not directly aware of our external world - we are only aware o the actions of our nervous system

Question 41

Regarding perception, did Muller believe we were directly aware of the external world?

Answer 41

no he didn’t

Question 42

Vitalism vs. materialism

Answer 42

in addition to the physical and chemical properties of physiological systems there is also a ‘vital source’ that could not be reduced further. Had obvious religious connotations
Materialism - that everything is reduced to physical material

Question 43

What were the implications of measuring the speed of neural impulses

Answer 43

this would provide evidence for materialism and evidence against vitalism (which suggested that nerve impulses should be instantaneous)

Question 44

What did Helmhotz consider the problem of perception? How is the problem solved?

Answer 44

that the mechanisms for hearing and seeing are remarkably capable, yet on the other hand the structures that deliver the information is flawed

Question 45

What is unconscious inference?

Answer 45

we make unconscious inference about distance based on our past experiences of various cues - we know through experience that people don’t actually get bigger as they approach, so we infer that the person is getting closer - but we make all of this without our awareness.

Question 46

Regarding the brain, what is localization of function?

Answer 46

that each area of the brain is dedicated to a certain functions.

Question 47

What are the main principles are associated with phrenology?

Answer 47

that the bumps on skulls were related to different personality traits and that if a bump was more pronounced then that meant that the person has more developed trait - it was a way to try and connect with brain and behaviour

Question 48

Wha contributed to the failure of phrenology?

Answer 48

falsifiability, and that it relied heavily on anecdotal evidence - ignoring evidence that would reject their theory

Question 49

What is anecdotal evidence?

Answer 49

they looked for specific case examples to support their theory

Question 50

What is the method of ablation?

Answer 50

The creation of brain damage through surgical methods for research purposes

Question 51

What evidence did Flourens provide that rebutted phrenology?

Answer 51

Showed that specific areas that phrenologists thought served function X actually served function Y and that the cerebral cortex worked more as a whole unit rather than having specific areas that only serve a specific function

Question 52

Did Florins conclude that the brain was composed of distinct functions or that the brain functioned as a whole ?

Answer 52

he believed that the brain functioned as a whole and not a large collection of faculties.