2500 quiz 1
example of an analytic statement
"A bachelor is an unmarried male" is analytic -- it contains no new information, but rather just takes apart the meaning of the word "bachelor": a married bachelor or a female bachelor would be a contradiction.
a priori
"before", usually in the sense of knowledge we can have before experience, because it's necessarily true (like an analytic statement).
1967
(an arbitrary date for the beginning of Cognitive Psychology:) Ulric Neisser publishes his textbook called Cognitive Psychology, outlining the areas of study (e.g., attention, memory, perception, language) that had begun yielding to investigation in the decade previous and presenting a consensus view of the new field that solidified its popularity and led to its rapid ascendance.
noumena
(kant) the "things-in-themselves" which give rise to the appearances we can sense, but which are themselves beyond our sensing and therefore completely and forever unknowable to us. For Berkeley, there is no logical ground for believing in such a realm
BF skinner
(operant)
Thorndike
(operant)
four definitions of psych.
1. the science of mind and behavior 2. the science of experimental epistemology 3. the science of knowing and experiencing 4. the science of things that move around on their own
1913
John Broadus Watson declares that to be a science, psychology must only study the observable and thus must be a science of behavior, rather than of mind; this inaugurates roughly six decades of dominance of American psychology by Behaviorism.
synthetic a priori
Kant's term for knowledge we have about experience (synthetic), before experience(a priori
synthetic statement/ example
Kant's term for what Hume called a statement about matters of fact. "A bachelor is mortal" is true, but not by definition -- the mortality of bachelors is a matter for observation. To say "A bachelor is immortal" is false, but not a logical contradiction --because if an immortal man never married, we'd call him a bachelor. The contradiction only comes up if we talk about a bachelor being married or female.
analytic statement
Kant's term for what Hume called a statement about the relations among ideas. Any statement whose opposite is a contradiction (not just a falsehood) is analytic -- it's necessarily true.
associationism
Plato: reminiscence of encounters with ideal forms; "rationalism" learn by connecting experiences in world Aristotle: principles of similarity, contrast, contiguity;
induction
Scientific laws are found by induction, and tested by deduction (e.g., experiments test to see if the consequences of a law are true: if a falling body's acceleration doesn't depend on its mass, and I drop two balls of different masses from the same height, then they should hit the ground at the same time -- and they do, so the law statement is supported). But Hume says it's merely habit or "custom" to believe inductive conclusions.
4 important terms in classical conditioning
US- unconditioned stim. CS- conditioned stim. UR- unconditioned response CR- conditioned response
1879
Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig, Germany, founds the first laboratory dedicated to psychology, separating psychology from philosophy for the first time.
phenomena
according to Kant, appearances or sensation -- all that is ever available to our senses, and therefore all that we may ever really know about. For Berkeley, this world of sensations is all that exists since any "real world" (beyond our experience of it) is unnecessary.
quantitative
accumulate more associations; emphasis on amount of experience
qualitative
acquire new concepts; emphasis on content of experience
mentalist
admits "mind" as an explanatory entity (where "mind" is given a physical interpretation) (cognitive)
physicalist / materialist
admits only physical processes in explanations ("mind" is considered to be illusory) (behaviorist)
a posteriori
after", usually in the sense of knowledge we can only have after experience, because it's contingently true -- that is, it just happens to be so and the only way for us to find out about it is through observation (like a synthetic statement).
classical conditioning phenomenon
all animals learn what leads to what, through experience
scientific materialism
all that exists is matter in motion, includes mass, length, etc. doesn't include color, sound, taste, etc.
why is knowledge decomposable into components
approach is atomistic (emphasis on basic components), analytic (study whole by breaking it down into parts), reductionistic (whole is best understood through understanding parts: whole equal to sum of parts)
deduction
argument proceeding from the general to the specific: "All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; Therefore, Socrates is mortal." This is necessarily true; in a sense, the conclusion is already contained in the premises.
what kind of psychology grows out of the empiricist/associationism view?
behaviorist
empiricism
born as clean slate ("tabula rasa"); experience is source of knowledge;
nativism
born with innate ideas, experience gives occassion knowledge
two types of conditioning theories
classical and operant
what kind of psychology grows out of the nativist/rationalism view?
cognitive
what is behaviorism based in?
conditioning theories
classical conditioning
create a new relfex/signal, how animals learn about regularities in their environment that are out of their control
secondary qualities
depend on the perceiver, ex. like color, sound, taste
classical conditioning model
describe phenomena in terms like CS, US, propose that their pairing close together in time creates an association, theorize about it if strengthens or weakens it
why isn't knowledge decomposable into components?
emphasis on holism (consider the whole rather than the parts), structure (relations among parts within the whole), irreducibility (whole cannot be understood through understanding parts: whole greater than sum of parts)
epistemology of empiricism
empiricism / behaviorism / learning / animal
top down processing
experience is interpreted by knowledge (cognitive)
peripheralism
external stimuli are essence of knowledge (behaviorist)
david hume
his view is like that of Berkeley but without even the mind itself as an active entity); he claimed all simple ideas are copies of sensations (which he termed "impressions"), and can be associated according to laws of similarity (or "resemblance"), contiguity, and causation to form complex ideas
operant conditioning
how animals learn about regularities in their environment that are in their control, get rewards for their actions/ reinforcement
centralism
ideas / brain processes are essence of knowledge (cognitive)
what is cognitive psych. based in?
in information processing theories
how is psych. scientific?
it makes models, pared down simplified idealized descriptions, uses physical representations, makes predictions, the mind is like a computer program, things get left out
bottom-up processing
knowledge built up from raw experience (behaviorist)
john locke
knowledge through experience, no ideas are innate, the mind combines simple ideas into more complex ones
rationalism
learn by operation of mind - manipulation of concepts and ideas Plato: reminiscence of encounters with ideal forms;
behaviorist
machine metaphor
two origins of knowledge
nativism and empiricism
two types of qualities that locke thought our senses present
primary and secondary
dualism
proposed by Descartes, idea that the mind and body are two different substances, with only the body subject to mechanistic laws of physics
two changes that occur during learning
qualitative and quantitative
primary qualities
qualities that are in the perceived object, ex. size, shape, solidity, motion, number
example of operant conditioning
rat presses bar in cage, then gets reward (reinforcement), dog training
how's knowledge arrived at?
rationalism and associationism
epistemology of rationalism
ratonalism/ cognitvism / memory/humans
classical conditioning procedure
ring bell for dog then give it food, this creates a new association
example of classical conditioning
ring bell → give dog food, dog learns to salivate at bell (pavlov)
concrete
study body's interactions with objects and events (behaviorist)
abstract
study mental representations of objects and events (cognitive)
natural science vs. social science
study of natural phenomena vs, human culture and institution. both are sciences, and use the scientific method
George Berkeley's argument
that Locke's distinction fails since our knowledge of primary qualities comes through the senses (mainly touch) as well; thus all we have evidence for are the sensations or ideas in our experience, not a world of real objects giving rise to sensation
Immanuel Kant
that instead of innate ideas we must have innate structuring and processing mechanisms which act as filters for experience, i.e., a means for the construction and interpretation of experience
descartes epsitemology
that the senses are unreliable and deceptive, so true knowledge must come from the mind's innate ideas (self, God, geometry, and some others) and its direct inspection of the world (which is occasioned by clues from the senses)
historical effect of descartes reasoning
to identify mentalism with dualism and hence to make talk of minds fall outside the purview of science
materialism
universe is made of one substance, physical matter which includes themind
example of a synthetic a priori
we are predisposed to interpret the events we observe in terms of cause and effect, a description that our minds impose -- so the cause and effect relation isn't observable itself, but is a necessary description of the events in our experience before we ever observe one event cause another. Thus Kant's response to Hume's argument is to say causation is a matter of observation that is also true by definition