Unit #2

Question 1

Define British Empericism.

Answer 1

All ideas came from experience or from sensory experience.
Characteristics: Sensory experience constitutes the primary data of all knowledge, asserts that knowledge cannot exist until sensory evidence has first been gathered, all subsequent intellectual processes must focus on sensory experience in formulation propositions about the world.

Question 2

Describe the work of Thomas Hobbes.

Answer 2

Founder of British empiricism. Convinced that the universe consisted only of matter and motion and that both could be understood in terms of mechanistic principles.

Question 3

Materialism.

Answer 3

Believed all that exists is matter and motion. All mental phenomena could be explained by the sense experiences that result when the motion of external bodies stimulates sense receptors.

Question 4

Four parts of the Psychological phenomena.

Answer 4

1. Attention was explained by the fact that as long as sense organs retain the motion caused by certain external objects, they cannot respond to others.
2. Imagination was explained by the fact that sense impressions decay over time, as did memory.
3. Dreams have the same origin.
4. No place for free will.

Question 5

Define complex though process.

Answer 5

Explained trains of thoughts as events that are experienced together are remembered together and are subsequently thought of together.

Question 6

Describe the work of John Locke.

Answer 6

Shaped most of British empiricism.
Stated that somehow sensory stimulation created ideas.
Believed humans were not born with innate ideas, whether they be moral, logical or mathematical.

Question 7

What did John Locke believe about the following: Innate ideas, Emotions, primary and secondary qualities, education.

Answer 7

Innate Ideas: opposed the idea of specific innate ideas. Simple ideas vs. complex ideas.
Emotions: All derived from the two basic feelings of pleasure and pain.
Primary/Secondary: Referred to characteristics of the physical world.
Education: Important education took place both at home and at school. He believed that having children sleep on hard beds, exposing them to mild physical violence, and crying being discouraged should help education.

Question 8

Describe the following, according to George Berkeley: “to be is to be perceived”, primary/secondary qualities, principle of associationism, and theory of distance perception.

Answer 8

Attempted to demonstrate that matter does not exist and that all claims made my materialistic philosophy must therefore be false.
Referred to the former as the supposed attributes of physical things and to the latter as ideas or perceptions. Rejected the existence of primary qualities.
Only through experience that we learn that certain ideas are associated with a specific object. Accepted the law of contiguity as his associative principle. All sensations that consistently experienced together become associated.
Agreed that if a person who was born blind was later able to see, they would be unable to distinguish between a square and a triangle.

Question 9

What was David Hume’s goal?

Answer 9

Moral philosophy. To combine the empirical philosophy of his predecessors with the principles of Newtonian science and, in the process, create a science of human nature.

Question 10

What were the three laws according to David Hume?

Answer 10

1. Law of resemblance - our thoughts run easily from one idea to another.
2. Law of Contiguity - When one thinks of an object, there is a tendency to recall other objects that were experienced at the same time and place as the object being pondered.
3. Law of Cause/Effect - When we think of an outcome, we tend to also think of the events that typically precede that outcome.

Question 11

What are the three observations that need to be made in order to conclude that two events are causally related?

Answer 11

1. Case/effect must be contiguous in space and time.
2. The cause must be prior to the effect.
3. Same cause always produces the same effect.

Question 12

What is the analysis of the mind and self?

Answer 12

All beliefs result from recurring experiences and are explained by the laws of associationism. Mind is no more than the perceptions we are having at any given moment.

Question 13

What did David Hume believe about emotions/behaviors?

Answer 13

Passions motivate behaviors. All humans possess the same passions, but not to the same degree. Pattern of passions determine his or her character.

Question 14

What was David Hume’s influence on Psychology?

Answer 14

Increased the importance of psychology. Reduced politics, philosophy, religion, and science to psychology.

Question 15

What are three factors that determine the strengths of associations according to James Mills?

Answer 15

1. Vividness - sensations are more vivid than ideas.
2. Sensations and ideas associated with pleasure or pain are more vivid and therefore form stronger associations than sensations and ideas not related to pleasure or pain.
3. Recent ideas are more vivid and therefore form stronger association than more remote ideas.

Question 16

What are 5 things about associationism that John Stuart Mill believes?

Answer 16

1. Every sensation leaves in the mind an idea that resembles the sensation but is weaker in intensity.
2. Similar ideas tend to excite one another.
3. When sensations or ideas are frequently experienced together, either simultaneously or successively, they become associated.
4. More vivid sensations or ideas form stronger association than less vivid.
5. Strength of association varies with frequency of occurence.

Question 17

What did John Mill believe about the following: mental chemistry, science of human nature, ethology.

Answer 17

Mental Chemistry: Believes that an entirely new idea, one not reducible to simple ideas or sensation, could emerge from contiguous experiences.
Science of Human Nature: Attacked the common belief that humans thoughts, feelings, and actions are not subject to scientific investigation in the same way that physical nature is.
Ethology: Science of the formation of character. Would be derived from a more basic science of human nature.

Question 18

Describe Alexander Bain’s goal.

Answer 18

Often referred to as the first true psychologist.
Primary goal was to describe the physiological correlates of mental and behavioral phenomena.

Question 19

What are the laws of association according to Alexander Bain.

Answer 19

Mind has three components: feeling, volitation, and intellect. Law of contiguity applied to sensations, ideas, actions, and feelings.
1. Law of compound association - states that associations are seldom links between one idea and another. Rather, an idea is usually associated with several other ideas.
2. Law of constructive association - Inserted a creative element into associationism in much the way Hume had done. Mind has the power to form new combinations or aggregates different from any that have been presented to it in the course of experience.

Question 20

Define Voluntary behavior.

Answer 20

An important distinction between reflexive behavior and spontaneous activity. Reflexive occurred automatically in response to external stimulus. 2 ingredients: spontaneous activity and hedonism.

Question 21

What was Pierre’s goal.

Answer 21

Major goal was to denounce Descartes’s purely deductive and dualistic philosophy and replace it with an inductive science based on physical monism.

Question 22

What did Julian de La Mettrie believe about the mind?

Answer 22

Much more intimately related to the body than Descartes assumed.
1. Man as Machine: Man is made up of matter.
2. Human and Nonhuman Animals: Equated intelligence and some personality characteristics with the size and quality of the brain.
3. Accepting materialism as a worldview: humans are machines, and people should accept that.

Question 23

Briefly describe the work of Etienne Bonnet de Condillac. Describe his idea of the imaginary sentient statue and explain its relevance to human mental abilities.

Answer 23

Sentient Statue: Asked his readers to imagine a marble statue that can perceive, remember, and feel but has only the sense of smell. Statue does not have the capacity for attention because it will attend to whatever odor it experiences. All desire is based on the experiences of pleasure and pain. Dreaming is a form of imagination.

Question 24

What did Claude Helvetius do?

Answer 24

Did not contradict any of the major tenets of British empiricism, nor did he add any new ones. Explored control experience and you control the contents of the mind.

Question 25

Describe August Comte and the following: positivism, the law of three stages, religion, and sciences.

Answer 25

Positivism: The only thing we can be sure of is what is publicly observable. Equating knowledge with empirical observations.
What is the law of three stages:
1. Theological - explanations are based on superstition and mysticism
2. Metaphysical - explanations are based on unseen essences, principals, causes, or laws.
3. Scientific description is emphasized over explanation, and the prediction and control of natural phenomena becomes important.
Religion and Sciences: Discussing positivism as if it were religion. Science was all one needed and all that one should believe in.

Question 26

Define Mental Chemistry

Answer 26

Process by which individual sensations can combine to form a new sensation that is different from any of the individual sensations that constitute it.

Question 27

Paradox of the Basin

Answer 27

Locke - demonstrated the nature of ideas caused by secondary qualities. It is not safe to assume that objects in the physical world are hot or cold or somewhere in between.

Question 28

Define Vibratiuncles

Answer 28

Hartley - the vibrations that linger in the brain after the initial vibrations caused by external stimuli.