Exam 2 - PSY 419: History & Systems

Why did Fechner paint his room black

eye injury and photophobia

When a Mesmer patient went into convulsions, what did Mesmer call it?

healing crisis --sickness coming out

What is life in a state of nature like?

"Life in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"

Franciscus Donders

(18 years after Helholtz) Applied his methods to actually trying to measure the speed of higher mental processes, using reaction time.

How did Hobbes feel about the possibility of democracy? Why?

- Was as antidemocratic and monarchist. -All men are by nature enemies and can only coexist by giving up their right of self-determination --We need strong leader to tell us what to do and when to do it --We will kill each other if left to democracy- want monarchy

How does Newton's first law of motion tie in with an empiricist view of ideas and knowledge?

-All events are matter in motion, including mental events. So, there is nothing in the universe that is incorporeal... --Meaning: we don't need to talk about the soul -An object in motion stays in motion, an object at rest remains at rest, until an outside interacts with it -Everything in the mind arises from sense experience

According to Kant, how are we able to recognize causal relationships?

-Apperception. -There are no innate ideas, but there are innate patterns--certain principles of logic don't have to be learned. --The dead end that we're lucky nobody carried forward: --Monads are impervious to outside influences, so...things in the universe can't actually influence each other. --God arranged it all ahead of time--all changes occur in pre-established harmony.

What was Spinoza's view of God?

-Believed that God had no existence apart from the world, that everything was itself an aspect of God.

How does the body work, according to Descartes?

-Bodies are spatially extended substances, incapable of feeling or thought; -minds are extended, thinking, feeling substances.

Locke came up with the phrase association of ideas.

-Complex ideas arise from combinations of simple ones --Exactly what Hobbes said --He coined the phrase "association of ideas, " and other ran with ---That is why he is remembered over Hobbes

Helmholtz was the one who started talking about sensation and perception as separate things.

-He spent 2 decades studying sensation and perception. -Measured the speed of neural transmission

Mesmer didn't call it hypnosis. Who came up with that term (at first, neuro-hypnology)?

-Mesmerism -James Braid identified it as a psychological process (neruo-hypnology)

How did Leibniz propose to solve the mind-body problem?

-Monads perceive each other--what appears to be physical matter is actually the way they perceive each other. --This fixes the mind-body problem! --If nothing is actually made of physical substance, then there's no inconsistency between body and soul!

Make sure you can clearly distinguish between empiricism and nativism (as philosophical approaches to where knowledge comes from).

-Nativism= innate knowledge -Empiricism= knowledge from experience

According to Berkeley, is our use of environmental cues to judge distance and depth innate?

-Perception is a cognitive process based on experience with the world. He specifically addressed judgments of distance: --It is by means of repeated experience with visual cues of distance, size, and shape that we learn to use them --We are not born with all of it, its learned -He also wrote about binocular convergence and judged, accurately, that that sort of cue may NOT require experience --We are born with this

Leibniz known for having 2 really preposterous philosophical ideas. Know all of these

-Philosopher known primarily for 2 preposterous ideas: --1. This is the most perfect of all possible worlds (basis for Dr. Pangloss in Candide). --2. Monads. Imperceptible, dimensionless, immaterial objects that the entire universe is made up of.

Synesthesia

-Sending signals at the wrong place --On Acid: hearing colors

Also according to Berkeley, it is possible that physical objects in the world only exist when perceived

-The only things we know come from our sensations-while were perceiving it, but It's okay because God is perceiving everything --We have no independent verification that things that we perceive actually exist --We have no way to test it --Maybe things only exist when perceived

What kind of a father was James Mill?

-Was either the indulging of a very precocious child, or child abuse. -Made a bet about his son - made him 4 or 5 hours/day devoted to lessons. -Started with Greek texts at 3 and Latin at 5, and worked through all the classics. -At 11 he published a work on Roman government focusing on class struggles.

If everything in memory is based on an actual sensory impression, how can we think of things that don't exist?

-We combine sense impressions we have experienced --Simple ideas and combining them

According to Descartes, where does the soul interact with the body? Why did he think that?

-believed that mind exerted control over the brain via the pineal gland -body and mind have to interact somewhere -because only one pineal gland

Can we ever really prove causality?

-causality is a habit of mind--we just believe in it, and in external reality, because we find the skeptical view too hard to live with. -We know certain events always seem followed by other events, but we cannot prove causality

What did Locke really compare the infant mind to?

-everything comes from our observations of the world (inner and outer world) -a sheet of white paper

Did Kant believe psychology would truly become a science?

-mental processes cannot be measured, and that therefore psychology can never become an experimental science.

What did Kant call the innate mental processes he says we all have? (and how many did he identify?)

-mental processes by which we can organize sense data and comprehend experience. -12 categories

Psychophysical parallelism...

-no interaction of mind and body o Apparent interaction arises from coincidence- its appearance only, not a reflection of reality o Thinking to walk across the room, just coincidence- was always going to do that --Everything happens for a reason --Nothing do, think, or decide will make a difference

John Locke's political thought to Hobbes's. How do they differ?

-similar in psychological thinking, different in political thinking -pro-government viewed as father of western democracy

How did spinoza disagree with Descartes?

-wasn't convinced in pineal gland -no interaction of mind and body -Didn't believe in free will,nothing do, think, or decide will make a difference (just a coincidence

What genuine neurological discoveries did Gall make (there are at least 3)?

1. Gray and white matter (cortex) --Figured out gray matter uses higher functions 2. Commissures (corpus callosum) --How hemispheres communicate 3. Contra laterality --Demonstrated how it works --Right side represented in left side of body (vice-versa)

Who established that all living creatures are made of cells (not just plants anymore!)?

1839: Theodor Schwann, established that living things were made of cells --Schwann cells

How does Descartes view of the soul differ from Aristotle's?

Aristotle believes that the soul is the form of the body, therefore without the soul the body would simply be piles of blood, skin and bone etc.

who really called it a tabula rasa?

Aristotle via Aquinas

Cartesian Rationalism

Based of Rene Descartes to lead the mind away from the senses (not away from god) -Descartes, a Rationalist, thinks that the idea of God, or perfection and infinity, and knowledge of one's own existence is innate.

How did Paul Broca determine which area of the brain is responsible for language production

Broca's area, one of the main areas of the cerebral cortex, is responsible for producing language

He didn't call it phrenology—what did he call it? While you're at it, be prepared to explain it

Called it "Craniology" -Discrete mental abilities are localized in small regions of the brain (makes sense) --BUT added: •Since these parts differ in size, the skull bulges over them. --Problem: •Brain tissue is really soft and not able to deform skull bone

Where is Wernicke's area, and what does it do?

Carl Wernicke discovered the area responsible for comprehension (in left temporal lobe) --Damage here produces difficulty with comprehension, but not production. --Wernicke's aphasia or receptive aphasia

Is Descartes a monist or dualist?

Cartesian dualism (or Mind-Body Dualism)

Cartesian Dualism

Descartes's view that all of reality could ultimately be reduced to mind and matter.

What are the implications of this for scientific research on animals?

Dissection shows the nerves traveling throughout the body, connected to the brain (full of CSF)--like the statues, we work by having fluid travel from a control mechanism to the extremities.

What other very crucial area of cortex is that area adjacent to? And who discovered that area?

Fritsch and Hitzig- discovered the reason why damage to Broca's area produces problems with language production —it's right next to motor strip (primary motor context)

How does he account for their permanence when nobody's looking, then?

He gives the universe some sense of permanence by pointing out that God perceives it all constantly

Fechner's bizarre insight did he have once he got better?

He thought that if he could show a consistent mathematical relationship between the force of a stimulus and the intensity of the sensation it produces, --he would solve the mind-body problem --(monism, this time--they're a unitary thing--this is how he thought he could show that other objects [plants?] have mental life too).

Leibniz is primarily known as the inventor of something

Inventor of calculus (unfortunately, so was Newton, and at the exact same time, too!).

What did Mesmer believe flowed inside us, and what did he call his own ability to influence it?

Magnetic fluid--the resulting force can become misaligned, and needs realignment. -animal magnetism

Whose work appeared to disprove Gall's idea that brain functions were localized

Pierre Flourens (1794-1867) --Wanted to prove Gull was wrong (not localized, evenly distributed)

Platonic Rationalism

Plato is a rationalist because he thinks that we have innate knowledge of the Forms [mathematical objects and concepts (triangles, equality, largeness), moral concepts (goodness, beauty, virtue, piety), and possibly color - he doesn't ever explicitly state that there are Forms of colors].

Cartesian rationalism and Platonic rationalism similar

Rationalists differ in that they choose different in focus of innate knowledge, but still both believe in innate knowledge -don't trust sense. The only thing certain is your own self-own thoughts

David Hume: what are the three principles by which ideas or objects become associated in our minds?

Resemblance, contiguity in time and place, and cause and effect

What did Lombroso call the facial features that indicated someone was untrustworthy or immoral?

Stigmata of degeneracy (obvious signs of degeneracy)

Know how he refined Weber's Law (thus producing Fechner's law).

That as the intensity of a stimulus increases, ever larger changes in it will be required to produce a change in the sensation

What analogy from chemistry did John Stuart Mill use to explain how complex ideas work?

The son's revenge: --He made associationism complicated again. --What he added: complex ideas are like chemical compounds, with properties beyond those possessed by the simple ideas they're made up of. ---So the laws of association can't tell us anything about complex ideas--we can learn about them only through experience and experimentation

James Mill simplified Hume and said there's only one principle by which ideas become associated. What was it?

There are only 2 classes of mental elements (sensations and ideas) and all association involves just one factor (contiguity).

Briefly explain Müller's doctrine of specific nerve energies.

What actually travels to the brain --Nerves of each sensory system carry only one kind of data

How did Helmholtz measure the speed of nervous transmission?

recording electrical stimulus on frog legs and measuring impulse

contiguity

the tendency to perceive two things that happen close together in time as being related

Young-Helmholtz Theory

the theory that the retina contains three different color receptors—one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue—which, when stimulated in combination, can produce the perception of any color.

One word: psychophysics.

the word Fechner coined for what he did. -It's still widely used by people who study sensation and perception, as are his experimental methods.

Why did this work prompt Gall to call him a "mutilator"?

•Used ablation on animals (removed bits of brain then observed) --Dog, then nursed back to health and trained it. ---Then when back in took brain cortex out then nursed it back to health (and repeat) ---Didn't matter where u take out it matters how much --He removed cortical tissue—when he removed enough animal lost capacity of voluntary action