History and Theory Exam 1
26. What did Kant believe about the prospects for psychology becoming a science?
"Psychology 'kant' (can't) be a science. Because it doesn't deal with physical materials."
What did Hobbes think?
"What if matter could think?"- change matter to body. What is between your ears? Answer: your mind... which is part of your body. (mind/soul thinks and body does not... in that day)
From last notecard what is the answer to C-A and B-C
(Baseline + Stimulus identification ) - (Baseline) = Stimulus identification (Baseline+Stimulus Identification + response selected) - (Baseline + Stimulus identification) = Response selected
9. Explain Descartes' idea about the function of the center brain structure called the pineal gland
(Pineal gland = is like wifi). Connection point between the mind (spirit) and the body (physical). This is where the mind and body interact/seat of soul and all thoughts are created
9. Describe how Helmholtz resolved to measure the speed of a nerve impulse and the competing ideas of the early 1800's. (FROM CLASS LECTURE)
(frogs) Put pins in the frog's legs and timed his reflexes. --He first measured the speed of the nerve impulse by stimulating a nerve at different points along the muscle and recording the time it too the muscle, to which it was connected, to respond. Rate (speed) = d(distance/t(time))
^^^
- "immaterialism", which is the idea that there are no material objects, only minds and what exists, or ideas, in the mind. His motto, "to be is to be perceived" - touch comes before vision when understanding object - visual ideas are only representations of ideas or objects a person already knows through physical contact with them. -for experience being necessary in vision concerning depth and distance because an object appears to change properties based on how close or far away it I, house example
12. Descartes made a clear distinction between humans and animals. Why?
- Animals are machines so they dont go to heaven bc they don't have a soul - bc people can think and talk and reason we have a soul
15. Describe Leibniz's position on the mind-body issue; Describe Berkeley's & compare them????
- He was fundamentally opposed to dualism. He held that there was one substance in the world and thus the mind and the body are made of the same substance but he also held that mind and body are. His idea of monads were the atoms of the metaphysics world. - "Monad" = your 1:1 "Spirit Self". What happens to you on earth is a product of the spirit world. There is a you in the spirit world that corresponds to you in the physical world. Whatever is happening to you in the physical world, is happening to you in the spirit world, and vice versa.
Why did he desire to teach animals language?
- If he could teach animals language then he could justify animals as thinking creatures and if animals dont have souls then why should humans?
6. What is "Rational Philosophy" (Rationalism)
- Through the use of pure reason, application of formal logic and mathematics, we can ascertain god's truth. Not authority.
18. Locke's tabula rasa was both a rejection of philosophical rationalism and religious reincarnation of the soul. Explain.
- You are born a blank slate. Everything you know is derived from experience (empiricism) so there is nothing such as an innate idea before you are born. -There is no innate truth reached through formal logic or math
19. Explain John Locke's thinking about the importance of the development of a personal identity and how that is related to the soul.
- Your self emerges through experience and so does your soul. Your accumulation of personal consciousness is what goes to the afterlife
23. Describe JS Mill's experimental methods for inferring causation - namely the one applying to modern experimental methods *(ask about this in class)*
- method of agreement: Similar effects are likely to arise from a similar cause. -method of difference: One prior circumstance was present in the first case but not in the second. - Joint method of agreement and difference: - method of concomitant variation: direct correlation between the degree to which the cause occurred and degree to which the effect occurred. - Method of residues: Many effects are shown to result from several causes, whatever remains of the effect must have been from whatever remains of the cause.
20. Do you tend to agree with Locke's view of the immortality of the soul? Why or why not? Do you have a pet animal that you cherish and 'love'? Would you be happy in heaven without Fido or Fluffy? According to Descartes and church dogma assimilated from Descartes, your pet cannot ascend to heaven and be with you because, unlike humans, it does not posses a soul. Or, what if your soul ascended to heaven, but your faithful significant other, your one & only true love was assigned to hell? Could you ever be happy in the heaven of the 17th Century Christians or Moslems? Considered by some an agnostic, John Locke did not think about what transcends the body after death like most Christians of his day.
- the afterlife is what u make it you get to make it what you want.
24. Explain the fundamentally different approach to the nature of 'causation' taken by David Hume and why it is 'empiricist'?
-Hume arrives at the conclusion that causation is a property of mind and cause-effect is what humans create depending upon the relation between objects in space. If causation as an event is a mental act rather than 'objective reality', is perception of cause-effect nothing more than a mental representation from accumulation of perceived relations. -Hume concludes that causation does not have objective reality but is a mental property
5. From Class - According to McDowell's tracing of the actual story, what is the moral of his article, "Restoring Phineas Gage 150 years later"; provide three of his examples.
1. They flipped the image so sometimes the rod is on the left through his face. So people think it's on the wrong side of the face. It goes through the right to the left. 2. They claim that his personality changed, but they don't know what he was like before the injury. 3. He wasn't able to work. But he had like 3 different jobs. 4. Points out errors from decades and decades to the next so there are many changes occuring to the story of Phineas Gage. He is going to ask what errors occurred on the test!
3. Fechner's student Weber is generally given more credit than Fechner as a pioneer in psychophysics and experimental methods in psychology. Using Weber's formula, solve for the upper and lower jnd's: The original stimulus intensity is 500 energy units. Using Fechner's Method of Limits, Weber notes that at 500, on average, the threshold is 20 units. When the stimulus intensity is now shifted to 2000 units, how much change (jnd) is now required, on average. What are these upper and lower threshold limits when the stimulus is 2000 units?
20/500 = 0.04 Jnd(new) = .04 x 200 = 80 Upper: 2000 + 80 = 2800 units Lower: 2000-80=1920
●The average physical stimulus that is either intially detected is called
Absolute Threshold
11. Descartes concludes that he knows that he can think rationally. How does he conclude that other humans also possess the capacity for rational thinking?
All humans have the pineal gland Humans can think not animals
13. What was the argument Julian de Ophrey LaMetterie presented in his famous book, Man as Machine?
Argument: humans are complex organisms, just as animals. Humans don't have souls, they react to situations naturally like "machines." -Since humans had no souls but could think and communicate then animals must be able to do the same.
4. Why was DESCARTES idea so novel for its time, forming the basis of all modern philosophy?
Bc he rejects and questions authority/church and is thinking for himself. Can only get truth of god through formal logic and mathematics leading the mind to innate ideas.
3. The Dream of Rene Descartes (1619) - Describe briefly the manifest content (scenes) of the Dream of Descartes and the later interpretation of the Dream, the latent content? There are 4 (4/4)
Book Page Manifest: A book at the end of the bed flies open to a specific passage which reads "What path shall I follow? Yes or no" Latent: Descartes sets his path to establish the following (a) unify all sciences using math as the common language (b) use a system of formal logic to deduce truth (c) leading to the birth of a new "Rational Philosophy."
4. Why were the case studies of Phineas Gage and Broca's analysis of "Ta" (a stroke patient without speech output ) important for the acceptance of Gall's theory of cerebral localization? Explain the relative speech functions of Broca's & Wernike's area.
Broca= language output. That's why the Ta guy couldn't talk, because he damaged the Broca/language area. You can understand but you can't speak. Wenike=language processing area. You can speak but you can't understand.
11. Describe the early neuroscience contributions of: Ramon Cajol as well as Golgi & Sherrington (CAJOL)
Cajol = improved that technique and found no evidence that cells touch.
3. The Dream of Rene Descartes (1619) - Describe briefly the manifest content (scenes) of the Dream of Descartes and the later interpretation of the Dream, the latent content? There are 4 (1/4)
Church Courtyard Manifest: A tempestuous wind keeps blowing Descartes from the door. Latent: The wind blowing him away from the church represents doubt about truth from authority. 2. Descartes sees a 'Man' leaving church- Manifest- Descartes fails to greet this man. Latent- man represents authority... distrust authority as a means of truth. Man is priest.
11, (From class) What was Donder's objective, e.g., to isolate and identify what components of reaction time ? Describe and explain Donder's Subtractive Method.
Donder's component of reaction time (rt) is an example of structuralism GOAL : to untangle 2 types of reaction times (he did this by measuring all 3 in same person) The 3 measures A (Simple) = Base Line B (Dual Stimulus- Dual Choice) = Baseline+Stimulus Identification + response selected C (Dual stimulus-Single choice) = Baseline + Stimulus identification
7. What is Descartes' "Radical Doubt", what did it lead him to question, and how did this approach eventually lead Descartes to his famous 'Cogito Ergo Sum ' - I think therefore I am?
Doubt everything unless proven otherwise. If you start with doubt about everything, how do you know you even exist? Clinical disorder this is called. He ponders about how does he know he even exists. Then he realizes that he is able to think and ponder (introspection), so he must exist.
8. Why does Descartes reject pure Dualism, e.g., Soul (mind) and Body (corpus) are completely separate?
Dualism = mind and body are separate entities, spiritual and physical worlds are seperate. He is a dualist, but not a pure dualist because he thinks there is an interaction through the pineal gland. He's an interactionist and a dualist. "How can immaterial substance (soul) influence Maternal substance (Body)"
13. Why did Ebbinghaus create nonsense syllables and why did he use serial learning as his basic task?
Ebbinghaus created nonsense syllables for his research because they did not carry any prior associations attached to them. Serial learning is reproduction of the syllable list in the exact order that it was presented. Nonsense syllable lean themselves to serial learning because associations are not as easily built up that would assist in the recall of the list.
What were 2 other research findings by Ebbinghaus?
Ebbinghaus first documented the relationship between longer lists and more repetitions. And He also found that performance is better if not crammed all together but spread out over time. -First to describe primacy and recency effects
6. Describe the evidence Gall & Flourens published that placed them at huge odds with each other with respect to both localized and global brain function.
Flourens knew there was seperate regions of brain but they had to be working together for the TOTAL functions of brain as whole Flourens accepts Gall's cerebral localization. How does the separate pieces of the brain work holistically together & communicate?-- Equipotential, which means if a particular region of the brain is injured, another part of the brain could take over.
2. Describe the contributions to our understanding of brain made by Willis. The textbook limits Thomas Willis' contribution to the fact Willis coined the terms that came to be called "neurology" and "reflex". There is much more. See. Tracs Notes on Willis. *(ask about this in class)*
Founder of Clinical Neuroscience and theorize a relation of brain cortex and behavior. He developed a technique for fixing & preserving brain tissue in alcohol so brain can be dissected... if you didn't, it would be mushy and undisectable. Scholars believed the brain was merely a muscle that pumped vital fluids from the ventricles - the 'fluids' caused emotions, motor action, triggered memory, etc. Willis compared the brains of sheep to humans trying to determine what structures were present in humans that were absent in sheep (what can humans do (think, plan, rationality) that sheep cannot do). The outer cortex convolutions of the human brain absent in sheep were responsible for human cognitive capacities absent in animals. He begins the tradition that human thought in physical (caused by natural brain structure & chemistry) rather than metaphysical (caused by supernatural soul). Why did he not get burned at the stake? It started off the book with God created the brain for humans with this particular body. Never doubts a prime mover in this.
11. Describe the early neuroscience contributions of: Ramon Cajol as well as Golgi & Sherrington (GOLGI)
Golgi = staining technique. Nerve cells touch.
2. Why was Fechner so obsessed with the study of sun afterimages, to the point where he burned retinas?
He wanted to observe, describe, and predict that psychology is a science. Fechner & Weber are trying to prove Kant wrong.
4. Give examples to show that you understand the difference Descartes made between innate and derived ideas.
Innate = your born with ideas. Derived ideas = you learn through experience.
6. What was the technique Wundt used called? Why?
Introspection Self Report Wundt had 3 successive process 1) Apprehension (sensory icons/thresholds) 2) Apperception (Selective attention) 3) Volunteerism (active process of shifting attention to 1 thing to another
Make up some numbers to show that you understand how Ebbinghaus used the method of savings in his memory research.
It is a measure that Ebbinghaus used to measure memory after the passage of time. He memorized a list of syllables and then tried to relearn them. He recorded the time total for original learning list and then the time for relearning. The formula he used was to take the original learning time minus relearning time and this gave a measure of savings. This was then divided by the time spent originally learning to make a percentage. ex: 20 minutes original learning - 10 minutes relearning = 10 10 / 20 = 50% So 50% of original learning time would be saved in this example. It is useful because it showed the rate of forgetting information already learned and led to his famous forgetting curve graph.
27. Kant believed what about prospects for psychology becoming a science?
Kant wrote about the thing on the horizon: psychology "the science of mind" back then. "It just 'kan't' be done" = There can't be a psychology that's a science because the mind is non-material Kant also wondered about the process by which we gained experience of the world, he concluded that there is something before experience (innate) like genes
7. In the 20th century how is the one aspect of the debate begun by Gall & Flourens rekindled by Karl Lashley & Wilder Penfield (From class)? What brain function was it that they debated and what were their positions?
Lashley is known as the founder of modern brain & behavior research. They worked together. Penfield is not given the credit he's due. Penfield becomes one of the founders of modern brain surgery. --Debate: Penfield was localization and Lashley was equiqy potential (same as Florens), and clashed on their findings when Lashley found that he can cut 20% of a rats brain away before they forget and when Penfield found that when the patients are fully awake during brain surgery they are fully aware of what happens when they are poked with a electric stimulation
3. The Dream of Rene Descartes (1619) - Describe briefly the manifest content (scenes) of the Dream of Descartes and the later interpretation of the Dream, the latent content? There are 4 (3/4)
Lighting Storm Manifest: A lightning and sparks scene in his dream. Latent: Lightning symbolizes an idea. The idea itself must be amazing, revealing something new.
Chalk board example from class
Locke: Chalk board is a blank slat Kant: It is a blank slat but only picks certain principles "yes experience is important but (locke) says says it has innate properties "
3. The Dream of Rene Descartes (1619) - Describe briefly the manifest content (scenes) of the Dream of Descartes and the later interpretation of the Dream, the latent content? There are 4 (2/4)
Melon Manifest: As the man passes Descartes, the man gives him a fine melon. But the melon makes Descartes sick to his stomach, so sick that he awakens from his dream and begs God to relieve him of this curse. Latent: Distrust your senses as a means of finding the truth.
Who was Mesmer and how was he a vitalist?
Mesmer : Magnets. He thought he could cure people by medially moving their fluids with magnets. Then he stopped using magnets and just used his hands (he took it too far). He threw his magnetic wands away and became a 100% vitalist and comes to believe that HE has the power to heal people with his hands. He was a materialist believing in natural forces and ended up a Vitalist.
What is Dualism?
Mind (Immaterial Soul) is Separate from Body (Material World). Mind is made in the image of God.
14. Why is dualism incompatible with the basic assumption of modern science, the dogma of naturalism (physical monism)?
Naturalism: Everything arises from natural properties and causes, not supernatural. There is a distinction between physical world and the spiritual world. -In the physical world, only forces can influence itself and we can only study the physical world. Dualists cannot study the spiritual world.
25. Kant was neither a rationalist or empiricist philosopher, yet his philosophy set the stage for the fundamental question for modern psychology. Kant wondered about the process by which we gain experience of the world. What did he conclude?
Not all nature and not all nurture. It's a combo of both. It's not just what Locke said (gaining through experience) and it's not just what Descartes said (There are few things we know at birth).
3. How did Franz Gall's 'organology' about brain get it both right and wrong?
Organology: science of the mind=Phrenology. Thought the parts of the brain were all separate organs, and they each have different functions that affects behavior (Cerebral localization). But he got it wrong by saying that you can tell the personality of someone by the shape of their skull.
In conjunction with these self reports of 'immediate conscious experience' what else did Wundt and later structuralist measure?
Reaction Time
Why is Hobbes considered a 'political psychologist' - What was his 'social contract' idea and why were his ideas so revolutionary for their times, predating the notion of democratic governance.
Rulers remain in power only so long as people allow them to maintain power. Social Contract must be maintained between the ruler and the ruled. The social contract is the idea that the rulers have expectations of the people and vice versa, so don't be a pig and take all our resources. We will let you rule, as long as it is fair and just and don't steal from us to give to yourself.
12. According to Locke and other empiricists, how do we come to develop our knowledge of the world? For Locke specifically, what were the two prime sources of knowledge? Distinguish between sensation and reflection as sources of ideas, according to Locke.
Senses Sensory Knowledge/ reflection of knowledge
11. Describe the early neuroscience contributions of: Ramon Cajol as well as Golgi & Sherrington (SHERRINGTON)
Sherrington = found evidence to support Cajol and coined the term "synaptic gap"
28. Thomas Hobbes - What is meant by the 'social contract'? Explain how Hobbes came to this conclusion about rulers and the ruled. Also See Hobbes on TRACS.
Social contract must be maintained between rulers and ruled Rules remain in power only as long as t heir people allow them to maintain power even though they are descendants of Jesus
5. What are 2 major reasons that Wundt is no longer called the founder of Structuralism?
Structuralism = breaking things down into parts (similar to atomism). He never mentioned structuralism in his writings. His students are the ones who talked about it, but not him. Titchener was the actual founder.
5. Explain this statement: Descartes was a dualist, a mechanist, and an interactionist, Why did he made a clear distinction between humans and animals. Explain his reasoning.
The problem that Descartes identifies: ? He likes dualism, but he doesn't like the inconsistently of dualism. He solved the dilemma with his pineal gland story.
16. Thomas Hobbes - (from class) Explain how the royal family's of Europe maintained power over their subjects for so long (vis a vis Dan Brown's 'Davinci Code' premise).
They said they were bloodline and descendents of Jesus In the time of Hobbes, peasant revolt, and royal court flees (Hobbes is with them), in exile in France.
8. Describe Helmoltz's trichromatic theory of color vision. What were the problems that Helmholtz could not explain?
Three different cones are sensitive to different wavelengths. -This theory provided a strong basis for the understanding of perception. However, it fails to acknowledge color deficiencies in people. For example, if a person has trouble discerning red and green, then they should, according to this theory, be incapable of perceiving yellow but this is not the case. This theory also has trouble explaining the phenomenon known as negative afterimages
10. Describe the Magendie-Bell Law and the vastly differing approaches of both arriving them at the same conclusions.
Ventral (action) and dorsal (sensation) streams that carry info to and from the brian. But, Bell was hypothesizing, and Magendie actually did the surgeries to prove it. Biologists printed it out and gave it to his friends, but Magendie put it in an actual journal. -One lane activates actions and the other lane activates sensations. Bell's incomplete surgery on animals only cuts one side of the spinal cord... they could still feel things, even though they were paralyzed. When you cut both, you can't move or see. It shows specificity that one is for motor and one is for senses--Magendie makes this right. Magendie publishes work for other scientists to read, not just for his friends (like Bell did)
15. Show how Berkeley applied empiricist thinking to the problem of depth perception.
Vision is secondary to touch. Depth perception comes with age. We are who we are through experiences. -The first way a baby does in order to learn about the world through experience is touch. Touch is primary. Start grasping, that is learned too, but all about touch. Vision comes along to accommodate for touch. Babies do not have depth perception, it is learned through experience. Through experience you have to learn to control your eye muscles so they are able to converge to a particular point.
*12. What is vitalism and how does this way of thinking about nature differ from modern science/psychology. Who was Mesmer and how was he a vitalist (this part of question on next notecard)?
Vitalism: is the belief that living organisms "contain some fluid, or a distinctive 'spirit'." They (things like voodoo dolls) have properties to do things... animate or inanimate. Different from modern science because it was proved wrong? Because science has to be physical with evidence to prove that it's right. Within Mesmer, he believes he contains some special power. He's trying to figure out some way to help people with natural forces (magnet).
13. Most of the British empiricists are said to be atomistic. What does this mean?
We can reduce everything down to its original parts
What was his basis for concluding that animals do not have souls while humans do have souls?
We can use language, which differs us from animals. Animals "don't have souls" and they "don't think or talk."
1. Both Fechner & Weber developed 'laws' of psychophysics. Describe some of the relevant, enduring aspects of their formulations.
Weber was the co-founder of psychophysics. The psychological science. "Psychophysics is the area of psychology concerning associations linking physical stimuli to psychological sensation..." Psychophysics was around before modern psychology -Measuring jnd (just noticeable difference). Absolute v.s. Difference threshold. "Suppose I show you a light at 100 units intensity (O) and it takes 5 units on average for you to report a difference in intensity, I (called the JND). 5/100=.05=k (k=the constant at any intensity)." or jnd= 50/1000=.05= k. There will be a questions like this on the test! To find the jnd.
1. How did Bischoff demonstrate that consciousness ended with decapitation?
Yelled at the decapitated head. Trying to convince people that what Locke said is true... Consciousness exists after death. He whispers you've just been pardoned to see if there is a reaction after decapitation.
1. What, exactly, did Galileo demonstrate (3 lines of physics/calculating describing objects in motion)?
a. A ball rolling down an incline gained momentum as it rolled by placing bells equal distances apart and listened as the ball rolled and rang the bells. Time intervals between ringing decreased. acceleration b. Dropped unequal weights and they landed on ground at same time c. Swinging pendulums come to rest at same time no matter arc
2. What, exactly, did Galileo do that was heretical? (what were the 4 things "never seen by another human except by me' "Starry Messenger"cosmology, now astronomy)
a. Milky Way: the 'cloud' visible in the night canopy must be comprised of many, many stars and very far away from earth. b. Moon: cratered and not a perfect sphere, it is imperfect. c. Sun: the sun is imperfect and sunspots move (also sees solar flares), implying that the sun rotates on its own axis, it is not fixed in space. d. Moons of Jupiter: objects rotate around Jupiter, contrary to ancient wisdom that all heavenly bodies rotate around earth.
10. Why is Descartes' approach to mind-body dualism is called 'interactionist'?
because they INTERACT Mind and Body Interact and the 'touch point for the interaction is the pineal gland.
5. Describe Descartes basic ideas (from the TRACS word doc)
he is a "interactionist do-ist", he believes in innate ideas (things that are just god's truth), founder of modern philosophy why? Because his philosophy begins with doubt, not certainty, doubt everything! He wants to unify all of the sciences with math. He had a dream where he figured out what he's going to do, and he's going to develop a new way to find the truth "formal logic" "Cartesian" he invents that. And he comes to know as the rational philosopher (logically resonating and clear thinking)
21. How did Berkeley apply empiricist thinking to the problem of depth perception? What was his argument & conclusion?
vision was secondary to touch in regards to understanding the reality of an object. He also noted that visual ideas are only representations of ideas or objects a person already knows through physical contact with them. Berkeley makes a case for experience being necessary in vision concerning depth and distance because an object appears to change properties based on how close or far away it is. He uses the example of a house or other large object being far awayand when he sees something that he knows is a large object at a great distance and it appears to be very small he knows from experience that a house is a large object and therefore it must be far away to appear so small
22. Berkeley was an odd empiricist which led him to his famous question about: "If a tree falls in a forest and yet you or others did not see or hear (empiricism) the tree fall in the forest, did a tree fall in the forest? What does Berkeley conclude?
● If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" ● God sees it. ● Yes it did fall and did make a sound even though I was not there to hear or see. There is an all-knowing God and seeing God. As long as He is keeping His eye on the ball, the ball is bouncing. If God takes his eye off the ball, everything ceases to exist. Eye always watching.
