Unit 2 - Chapter 6 - Rationalism

Question 1

passive mind, induction & bottom up approach used by:

Answer 1

Empiricists

Question 2

active mind, deduction, top down approach used by:

Answer 2

Rationalists

Question 3

Summarize Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy with respect to (a) the nature of God

Answer 3

• embraced pantheism: belief that God is everywhere and in everything.
• understand laws of nature = understand god

Question 4

Summarize Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy with respect to the relationship between mind and body

Answer 4

• double aspectism: material substance and consciousness are inseparable
• panpsychism: because God is everywhere, so is mind.

Question 5

Summarize Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy with respect to free will

Answer 5

god is nature –> nature is lawful –> humans are part of nature –> behaviour is lawful = determinism

Question 6

Summarize Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy with respect to motivation and emotion.

Answer 6

• pleasure = having a clear purpose,
• pain = lack of clarity

emotion is linked to specific thought

Question 7

Passion - Spinoza

Answer 7

• reduces probability of survival
• not linked to specific thought

Question 8

Describe Baruch Spinoza’s influence on the development of psychology.

Answer 8

belief in psychic determinism

Question 9

Describe the following aspects of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz’s philosophy: disagreement with Locke

Answer 9

• rejected Locke’s suggestion that all ideas come from experience

Question 10

Describe the following aspects of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz’s philosophy: monadology

Answer 10

Monads: indivisible units that compose everything in the universe.

1) all are active and conscious.

2) differ in intelligence, from plants to god.

3) characterized by a final cause.

4) change by actualizing potential.

5) seek to clarify thoughts

Question 11

Describe the following aspects of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz’s philosophy: the mind-body relationship

Answer 11

psychophysical parallelism: bodily and mental events are correlated but no interaction between them

preestablished harmony: b-m are coordinated by God

Question 12

Describe the following aspects of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz’s philosophy: conscious and unconscious perception.

Answer 12

law of continuity: no gaps in nature

• petites perceptions –> limin –> apperception

Question 13

Petites perceptions

Answer 13

occur below the level of awareness.

Question 14

Apperception

Answer 14

as petites perceptions accumulate, their combined force causes conscious awareness.

Question 15

Next to ____, _____ possess the monads capable of the clearest thinking

Answer 15

God; humans

Question 16

Describe Thomas Reid’s views regarding common sense

Answer 16

we can assume the existence of the physical world because it makes common sense to do so.

Question 17

Describe Thomas Reid’s views regarding direct realism

Answer 17

belief that the world is as we immediately experience it.

Question 18

Describe Thomas Reid’s views regarding faculty psychology.

Answer 18

faculties of the mind are aspects of a unified mind and never function in isolation

Question 19

Describe Immanuel Kant’s views regarding : (a) categories of thought

Answer 19

innate attributes of the mind that explain subjective experiences

Question 20

Describe Immanuel Kant’s views regarding: the nature of mental experience

Answer 20

mental experience = interaction between sensations & categories of thought

Question 21

Describe Immanuel Kant’s views regarding: perceptions of space and time

Answer 21

provide the context for all mental activity and produced by categories of thought

Question 22

Describe Immanuel Kant’s views regarding: the categorical imperative.

Answer 22

rational principle that should govern moral behavior

Question 23

Anthropology

Answer 23

a way of studying humans, by studying how people actually behave.

• Kant.

Question 24

A priori

Answer 24

before experience

ex: space and time

Question 25

According to Kant, the innate categories of time and space are ____ because they provide the context for all ____________.

Answer 25

basic; mental phenomena

Question 26

Specify Kant’s influence on the development of psychology.

Answer 26

influenced Gestalt psychology

Question 27

Did Kant believe that psychology could become an experimental science?

Answer 27

no

Question 28

Alienation - Hegel

Answer 28

realization that one’s mind exists apart from the Absolute.

Question 29

Describe Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels’ views with respect to The Absolute

Answer 29

the absolute is the totality of the universe.

knowledge of the Absolute constitutes the only true knowledge.

Question 30

Describe Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels’ views with respect to the dialectic process.

Answer 30

1) original idea
2) negation of the original idea
3) synthesis of the original idea and its negation.

• results in moving closer to the absoulte

Question 31

Summarize Hegel’s influence on the development of psychology.

Answer 31

• birth of experimental psychology & self-actualization theory.
• concept of alienation later used by Marx and Rogers

Question 32

Describe Johann Friedrich Herbart’s positions with respect to psychology’s status as a science

Answer 32

psychology could not be an experimental science because the mind could not be fractionated

Question 33

Describe Johann Friedrich Herbart’s positions with respect to psychic mechanics

Answer 33

compatible ideas attract each other, incompatible ideas repel

• conscious ideas = clear, intense
• unconscious ideas = dark, obscure

Question 34

Describe Johann Friedrich Herbart’s positions with respect to the apperceptive mass

Answer 34

at any given moment, compatible ideas gather in consciousness and form a group.

Question 35

Describe Johann Friedrich Herbart’s positions with respect to educational psychology.

Answer 35

Advice offered to teachers;

1) review already learned.

2) give an overview of what is coming next

3) present the new material.

4) relate the new material to previous.

5) show applications of the new material

Question 36

Self-preservation

Answer 36

an ideas tendency to seek & maintain conscious expression.

Question 37

Repression

Answer 37

force used to hold ideas incompatible with the apperceptive mass in the unconscious.

Question 38

Limen/limin

Answer 38

threshold between the conscious and the unconscious mind.

Question 39

Summarize Herbart’s influence on the development of psychology.

Answer 39

first to apply a mathematical model to psychology.