Chapter 6-Rationalism

Réussis tes devoirs et examens dès maintenant avec Quizwiz!

Reid: Direct Realism

-The belief that the world is as we immediately experience (sometimes also called naive realism). -Reid did not believe that our conscious awareness of the world was formed by one sensation being added to another, experience objects immediately as objects because of our innate power of perception. -We perceive the world directly in terms of meaningful units, not as isolated sensations that are then combined via associative principles. -the intelligence we have of external objects were to be got by reasoning only -(not everyone knows how to reason therefore perceptions are important becuase without our understanding of them man wouldnt survive) -The information of the senses is as perfect, and gives as full conviction to the most ignorant, as to the most learned.

Mind—Body Relationship: how was the mind and the body for Spinoza, like two sides of a coin. what was his theory called and what did it combine?

-escaped the difficulties experienced by both dualists and materialists by assuming that the mind and body were two aspects of the same thing—the living human being. -combined physiology and philosophy into one unified system -psychophysical double aspectism, double-aspect monism, or simply double aspectism

What did Kant set out to do to prove Hume wrong?

Categories of Thought -by demonstrating that some truths were certain and were not based on subjective experience alone. -He focused on Hume's analysis of the concept of causation. -Kant agreed with Hume that nothing in our experience proves that one thing causes another. But, asked Kant, if the notion of causation does not come from experience, where does it come from? -Kant argued that thinking in terms of a causal relationship could not be derived from experience and therefore must exist a priori, or before experience. -he did not deny the importance of sensory data, but he thought that the mind must add something to that data before knowledge could be attained; that something was provided by the a priori (innate) categories of thought. -Kant included the following in his list of a priori pure concepts, or categories of thought: unity, totality, time, space, cause and effect, reality, quantity, quality, negation, possibility-impossibility, and existence-nonexistence. -the fact that we are willing at some point to generalize from several particular experiences to an entire class of events merely specifies the conditions under which we employ the innate category of totality, because the word all can never be based on experience. - Kant showed that, although the empiricists had been correct in stressing the importance of experience, a further analysis of the very experience to which the empiricists referred revealed the operations of an active mind. -ex: someone who writes messily unorganized papers. When considered later, and written as they are—among or even over other text—they may be unintelligible. Even if you can read them, you may not recall when you wrote them, or who they connect with. Contrast this with a person who uses the structure of the preprinted page of an adress book to neatly record a new phone number with names, dates, etc. -As we will see, for Kant, the categories—such as those of space and time—were like the preprinted pages in that address book. That is, they provided an organizing structure that allows us to sensibly take in and record our new information.

JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART from who was his work inspired by? who was he most like? what did his volume accomplish?

Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) -originally attracted to Kant's philosophy, Herbart criticized Kant and began developing his own philosophy, which was more compatible with Leibniz's thinking. -Herbart's volume appears to be the first textbook in which psychology is treated as an independent academic discipline.

What philosophy exist throughout Spinoza's philosophy?

Stoicism, dont argue with hwo things are, acceptance, Seneca compared human beings to dogs on a leash being led by necessity of life in range of direction, more they pull the mroe strangled, wise try and undertsand how things are then chnage direction accordingly

What was Spinoza's ultimate goal?

to discover a way of life that was both ethically correct and personally satisfying. -not going against what is but instead understand

Mind—Body Relationship: what did Leibniz beleive was the mind-body relationship and why did he disagree with his contemporaries? what metaphor does he give?

- experience was necessary because focused attention on the thoughts already in us + then allowed to organize our thoughts and act appropriately, but experience cannot cause ideas. - rejected mind—body dualism/Descartes's interactionism because it is impossible for something physical to cause something mental. -rejected Malebranche's occasionalism because not pssible for God's continuous intervention. -proposed a *psychophysical parallelism* based on the notion of *pre-established* harmony. -Leibniz believed that the entire universe was created by God to be in perfect harmony, and yet nothing in the universe actually influences anything else. -There is a correspondence between each monad's perceptual state and the conditions external to it, but those perceptions can be said only to "mirror" the external events rather than be caused by them. -imagine two identical, perfect clocks that have been set to the same time at the same moment. Afterward, the clocks will always be in agreement but will not interact.=all monads, including those constituting the mind and the body, are like such clocks. pre-established harmony form of psychophysical parallelism.)

why is reason necessary according to Reid?

-Reid thought that reason is necessary so that we can control our emotions, appetites, and passions and understand and perform our duty to God and other humans.

Besides considering Herbart as one of the first mathematical psychologists, many consider him to be the first educational psychologist. He applied his theory to education by offering the following advice to teachers:

1. Review the material that has already been learned. 2. Prepare the student for new material by giving an overview of what is coming next. This creates a receptive apperceptive mass. 3. Present the new material. 4. Relate the new material to what has already been learned. 5. Show applications of the new material and give an overview of what is to be learned next.

Spinoza embraced pantheism,

=the belief that God is present everywhere and in everything. By equating God and nature, Spinoza eliminated the distinction between the sacred and the secular

explain why the rationalists are said to have postulated a more "active" mind

The rationalists postulated a mind that interacts with information from the senses and gives it meaning that it otherwise would not have

what was Kant's critique of Hume's analysis of causation?

began as a disciple of Leibniz, - reading Hume's philosophy caused him to wake from his "dogmatic slumbers" and attempt to rescue philosophy from the skepticism that Hume had generated toward it. ----->-all reduced to subjective psychology. Therefore, nothing could be known with certainty because all knowledge was based on the interpretation of subjective experience. ---->For example, even if B (a billiard ball moving across the felt) always follows A (the cue ball striking the billiard ball) and the interval between the two is always the same, we can never conclude that A causes B because there is no way for us to verify an actual, causal relationship between the two events (that is, we do not see a force vector exchanged between the two balls). -Kant indicated that Hume's description of causation as perceived correlation depended on the concept of time. -That is, according to Hume, we develop the habit of expecting one event to follow another if they typically are correlated. -However, without the notion of before and after (that is, of time), Hume's analysis would be meaningless. -Thus, according to Kant, Hume's analysis of causation assumed at least one innate (a priori) category of thought (time)

the mind added something to sensory data rather than simply_____ organizing and storing it in memory

passively

through _______we can exceed to a divine eternal perscpective

reasoning

distinction of two ways of looking at life

subspecie durations (limited view) subspecie aternatarus (eternal totality)

The Apperceptive Mass also borrowed the concept of______ from Leibniz and then created his own concept called ____. what does this concept mean? what term did he use to explain how we maintain the separation of incompatible ideas?

- apperception -The Apperceptive Mass - compatible ideas gather in consciousness and form a group/apperceptive mass contains all ideas to which we are currently attending (pay attention to) -An idea outside the apperceptive mass (that is, an idea of which we are not conscious) will be allowed to enter the apperceptive mass only if it is compatible with the other ideas contained there at the moment. ( only way to gain conscious expression is to be compatible w/ the ideas in there) -if not compatible, the ideas inside will mobilize their energy to prevent the idea from entering. -used the term repression to describe the force used to hold ideas incompatible with the apperceptive mass in the unconscious -if enough similar ideas are repressed into the unconscious, they could combine their energy and force their way into consciousness, thereby displacing the existing apperceptive mass.

Herbart agreed in part with Kant's contention that psychology could never be an experimental science, HOWEVER, on what did he differ? what was the reason he denied that psychology could become an experimental science?

- he believed that the activities of the mind could be expressed mathematically; in that sense, psychology could be a science. -he believed experimentation necessitated dividing up its subject matter; and because the mind acted as an integrated whole, the mind could not be fractionated. opposed to physiological psychology for the same reason;

To whom is Spinoza's position similar?

- improve ourselves by clarifying our ideas through an analysis of them and by rationally controlling our passions comes very close to Freudian psychoanalysis. -replace the term passion with unconscious determinants of behavior, we see how similar Spinoza's position is to Freud's

Conscious and Unconscious Perception

- notion of "insensible perceptions" was as useful to psychology as the notion of insensible atoms was to physics. --->what is actually experienced consciously is explained in terms of events beyond the realm of conscious experience. -summarized this belief in his law of continuity (not to be confused with the law of contiguity): To demonstrate the fact that there are no leaps even in the realm of perception, Leibniz (1765/1982) used the example of perceiving the roar of the sea: To give a clearer idea of these minute perceptions, use the example of the roaring noise of the sea which impresses itself on us when we are standing on the shore. To hear this noise as we do, we must hear the parts which make up this whole, that is the noise of each wave, although each of these little noises makes itself known only when combined confusedly with all the others, and would not be noticed if the wave which made it were by itself. We must be affected slightly by the motion of this wave, and have some perception of each of these noises, however faint they may be; otherwise there would be no perception of a hundred thousand waves, since a hundred thousand nothings cannot make something. -perceptions that occurred below the level of awareness *petites perceptions* (little perceptions). their combined force is eventually enough to cause conscious awareness, = *apperception*. -Therefore, a *continuum* exists between unconscious sensation and conscious perception. -the first philosopher then to clearly postulate an unconscious mind. -introduced the concept of *limen*, or *threshold*, into psychology. - aware of experiences above a certain aggregate of petites perceptions, but experiences below that aggregate (threshold) remain unconscious. - had a strong influence on Johann Friedrich Herbart, implications of unconscious perception for the development of psychoanalysis are also clear. -With his notion of the hierarchy of consciousness,encouraged the study of consciousness in animals. -not until Darwin, however, that the study of animal consciousness and intelligence was pursued intensely.

why according to Hume is Sensations are all internal?

- that is, they exist in the mind alone. Why is it, then, that we experience objects as distributed in space as external to the mind and the body? Again, Kant's answer was that the experience of space, like that of time, was provided by an a priori category of thought. According to Kant, the innate categories of time and space are basic because they provide the CONTEXT for all mental phenomena, including (as we have seen) causality.

Motivation and Emotion: why was Spinoza conisdered a hedonist?

- what are commonly referred to as good and evil are "nothing else but the emotions of pleasure and pain -seek clear ideas becuase unclear ones bring pain and confusion, seek to replace them w/clear ones INSTRUMENTAL FOR SURVIVAL a) pleasure, = clear ideas," or having a clear purpose -->highest pleasure, then, comes from understanding God, because to do so is to understand the laws of nature (cause and effect) b) Pain= then the mind entertains unclear ideas---->overwhelmed by passion, it feels weak and vulnerable, and experiences pain and confusion because it lacks clarity. ----->dwells only on momentary perceptions or passions, it is being passive and not acting in a way conducive to survival.

Hegel's Influence -rejected art for arts sake was the sensuous presentation of ideas, learn from it -said need more instution: for ideas to powerful + effective in the world

-Because Hegel's philosophy meant to show the interconnectedness of everything in the universe, it did much to stimulate the study of art, religion, history, and science. -Outside of pure philosophy, many Protestant theologians adopted his doctrines, and his philosophy of history profoundly affected political theory" (p. 730). - two most led to influence Karl Marx (1818-1883) and evolutionary theory. -We also find Hegel's influences innumerous places within psychology. -Hegel strongly influenced Fechner and thereby the development of both psychophysics and the birth of experimental psychology. - The phenomenological tradition inherent in many of the early German psychologists \and which ultimately manifested itself in Gestalt psychology -Freud's early consideration of the human will was explicitly Hegelian, and some see Freud's concepts of the id, ego, and superego -And, the roots of self-actualization theory (Rogers and Maslow)

why is it said that Empiricst function according to mechanistic laws—what we might call a "bottom-up" approach and Rationalists accordng to a "top-down"

-Empiricist emphasized the importance of sensory information and postulated a relatively passive mind that tended to function according to mechanistic laws—what we might call a "bottom-up" approach. -The rationalist emphasized the importance of innate structures, principles, or concepts and postulated an active mind that transforms, in important ways, the data provided by the senses. As such, preexisting knowledge influences experience in a "top-down" way.

Reid: what is Faculty Psychology

-Faculty psychologists (or philosophers) are those who refer to various mental abilities or powers in their descriptions of the mind. -Frequently, it has been alleged that faculty psychologists believed that a faculty of the mind was housed in a specific location in the brain. this was seldom the case. -People perceive, for example, because they have the faculty of perception. -However, it was seldom the case that faculty theorists used the faculties to explain mental phenomena. Most often the term faculty denoted a mental ability of some type, and that was all: Locke used the word "faculty" freely, being careful to point out that the word denoted simply a "power" or "ability" to perform a given sort of action (such as perceiving or remembering), that it did not denote an agent or substance, and that it had no explanatory value. -Albrecht's observation that faculty psychologists used the term faculty only as a classificatory category may be generally true, but not of Reid. For Reid, the mental faculties = active powers of the mind; -the faculties were aspects of the mind that actually existed and influenced human behavior and thought. - All the faculties were thought to be innate and to function in cooperation with other faculties. -had referred to as many as 43 faculties of the mind, including abstraction, attention, consciousness, deliberation, generalization, imitation, judgment, memory, morality, perception, pity and compassion, and reason. -Reid's work became the foundation for what has been called the "Scottish School" of psychology.

Reid vs Hume

-For Hume then, knowledge of such things as God, the self, causality, and even external reality was simply unattainable. VS -Reid disagreed, If Hume's logic led him to conclude that we could never know the physical world, then something was wrong with Hume's logic, said Reid. -We can trust our impressions of the physical world because it makes common sense to do so. -We are naturally endowed with the abilities to deal with and make sense out of the world.

Denial of Free Will: why does Spinoza say that he murderer is no more responsible for his or her behavior than is a river that floods a village. If the causes of both were understood, however, the aversive events could be controlled or prevented. what is the highest pleasure?

-God is not cause of all things, but yet humans have no free will -The closest we can get to freedom is understanding what causes our behavior and thoughts: knowing that everything that is must necessarily be and everything that happens must necessarily happen. -LOGIC AND UNDERSTANDING -Nothing can be different because everything results from God. -To understand the necessity of nature results is the highest pleasure because one views oneself as part of the eternal.

-Spinoza's position on the mind—body relationship followed necessarily from his concept of god and how did he reach his conclusion?

-God's own nature is characterized by both extension (matter) and thought (which is nonextended) ----> because God is nature-------> all of nature is characterized by both extension and thought-----> Because God is a thinking, material substance------> everything in nature is a thinking, material substance ---->Humans being part of nature are thinking, material substances----> Mental activity was not confined to humans nor even to the organic world -everything had both mental and physical attribute

Dialectic Process

-Hegel believed that both human history in general and the human intellect in particular evolved toward the Absolute via the dialectic process. -learing from past mistakes -painful stepping form era ot era is inevitable, will find a new solution that synthesize the good qualities of previous -the term dialectic generally means the attempt to arrive at truth by back-and-forth argumentation among conflicting views -In studying Greek history, Hegel observed that one philosopher would take a position that another philosopher would then negate; then a third philosopher would develop a view that was intermediate between the two opposing views. ----> Hegel's version of the dialectic process involved a thesis (one point of view), an antithesis (the opposite point of view), and a synthesis (a resolution between the thesis and the antithesis). -When a cycle is completed, the previous synthesis becomes the thesis for the next cycle, and the process repeats itself continually. ----> the way human history and the human intellect evolve toward the Absolute.

How did relgious authorities feel about Spinozas work?

-His proposal ran contrary to the anthropomorphic God image of the Jewish and Christian religion -The civil authorities, acting on the advice of the rabbis and the Calvinist clergy, banished Spinoza from Amsterdam.

Causes of Mental Experience

-Kant agreed with Hume that we never experience the physical world directly, and therefore we can never have certain knowledge of it. -However, for Hume, our cognition's consist only of sense impressions, ideas, and combinations of these arranged by the laws of association. -For Kant, there was much more, believed our sensory impressions are always structured by the categories of thought, and our phenomenological experience is therefore the result of the interaction between sensations and the categories of thought. -Even when physical scientists believe that they are describing the physical world, they are really describing the human mind. -the mind prescribed the laws of nature. -more revolutionary than copericus: human mind became the center of the universe. it also creates the universe - the objects that constitute physical reality "things-in-themselves" or noumena, and it is noumena about which we are forever and necessarily ignorant. -We can know only appearances (phenomena) that are regulated and modified by the categories of thought.

what did Hegel think of Kant's views?

-Kant's explanation was that there is an a priori category of thought, which accounts for our tendency to structure the world in terms of cause and effect. -Hegel accepted all Kant's categories of thought and added several more of his own. -he raised an all-important question that Kant had missed: Why do the categories of thought exist? -Hegel began his philosophy by attempting to account for the existence of Kant's categories. -Hegel's answer was that the categories emerged as a result of the dialectic process and, for that reason, they bring humans closer to the Absolute. -For Hegel, then, the categories exist as a means to an end (moving closer to the Absolute)

Disagreement with Locke

-Leibniz's first work was a criticism of Locke's Essay -from Locke's mind as a tabula rasa (blank tablet), Leibniz formed there is nothing in the mind that is not first in the senses except the mind itself - Leibniz misread Locke as believing that if the ideas derived from experience were removed from the mind, nothing would remain. -Locke actually postulated a mind stocked with innate abilities. -Instead of the passive mind, Leibniz postulated active mind, -completely rejected Locke's suggestion that all ideas come from experience, saying instead that no ideas come from experience. - nothing material (such as the activation of a sense receptor) could ever cause an idea that is nonmaterial. -Leibniz was forerunner of modern computer science, and developed actual calculating machines. -cretaed Stepped Reckoner, imagined other machines that could be programmed to think like modern advances in artificial intelligence. -consider such a machine capable of thinking imagine that was so big we could enter it and look around. -our exploration would yield only interacting, physical parts. Nothing we would see, whether examining the machine or a human being, could possibly explain the origin of an idea. -Because ideas cannot be created by anything physical like a brain, the potential to have an idea must be innate. Experience can cause a potential idea to be actualized, but it can never create an idea.

GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL: The Absolute

-Like Spinoza, Hegel saw the universe as an interrelated unity, which he called the Absolute. -The only true understanding, according to Hegel, is an understanding of the Absolute. -progress not linear, take knowledge form the past, each has value/wisdom at every age ex: ancient greece-->idea of community that is lost in modern age -learn from ideas you dislike -True knowledge can never be attained by examining isolated instances of anything unless those instances are related to the "whole."

what according to Hume is Perception of Time?

-On the sensory level, we experience a series of separate events, such as the image provided by a horse walking down the street. We see the horse at one point and then at another and then at another and so forth. -Simply looking at the isolated sensations, there is no reason to conclude that one sensation occurred before or after another, - there is nothing in the sensations themselves to suggest the concept of time, the concept must exist a priori. -Similarly, no reason based on experience—that an idea reflecting a childhood experience should be perceived as happening a long time ago. cannot come from experience; -All there is in memory are ideas that can vary only in intensity or vividness; it is the mind itself that superimposes over these experiences a sense of time. -the experience of time could be understood only as a CREATION OF THE MIND

what is the name of Hebarts concept, what was the aim of this concept and from what viewpoint did he borrow it from and why did it reflect this viewpoint? Following Leibniz, however, he assumed what? why does he use the term self-preservation to explain the concept?

-Psychic Mechanics: ideas had the power to either attract or repel other ideas, depending on their compatibility. Ideas tend to attract similar or compatible ideas, thus forming complex ideas. Similarly, ideas expend energy repelling dissimilar or incompatible ideas, thus attempting to avoid conflict. -aim: to mathematize psychology -the empiricists - why empiriscm? because he viewed ideas as the remnants of sense impressions. -hat ideas (like monads) contained a force or energy of their own, and the laws of association were therefore not necessary to bind them -ideas struggle to gain expression in consciousness, and they compete with each other to do so. -never created or destroyed, conscious or not -can vary in intensity and force -intense ideas are clear ideas, all ideas attempt to become as clear as possible. -consciousness = bright + clear -unconscious = darker + obscure. -When an idea loses its battle with other ideas, rather than being destroyed, it momentarily loses some of its intensity (clarity) and sinks into the unconscious.

Common Sense Reid:

-Reid argued that because all humans were convinced of the existence of physical reality, it must exist. -used eyewitness testimony in court as an example, becuase it is highly valued: Can any stronger proof be given that it is the universal judgment of mankind that the evidence of sense is a kind of evidence we ought not to admit any reasoning; Reid described what life would be like if we did not assume that our senses accurately reflect reality: -----> I break my nose against a post that comes in my way; I step into a dirty kennel; and after twenty such wise and rational actions I am taken up and clapped into a madhouse.

THOMAS REID rationalism or empiricism?

-Reid represented rationalism instead of empiricism. -defended the existence of reasoning powers by saying that even those who claim that reasoning does not exist are using reasoning to doubt its existence. -The mind reasons and the stomach digests food, and both do their jobs because they are innately designed to do so.

what was the term alienation and which psychologists/theorists borrowed it later on?

-The concept of alienation, or self-estrangement, also plays a central role in Hegel's philosophy. By alienation, Hegel meant the mind's realization that it exists apart from the Absolute, apart from that which it is striving to embrace. Insofar as the mind has not completed its journey toward the Absolute, it experiences alienation. (Marxists later adapted the term alienation to describe the separation of people from their government or from the fruits of their labor.) Variations on Hegel's concept of alienation are to be seen later in the clinical theories of Erich Fromm and Carl Rogers. -Fromm used the term alienation to describe the separation of humans from their basic roots in nature, and he claimed that a major human motive was to reestablish a sense of "rootedness," or belonging. -Rogers used the term alienation to describe the separation of the self from the biologically based urge toward self actualization.

according to Spinoza what is the difference between passion and emotion?

-Unlike an emotion, which is linked to a specific thought, passion is not associated with any particular thought -Behavior and thoughts guided by reason are conducive to survival, but behavior and thoughts guided by passion are not. -By understanding the causes of passion, *reason gives one the power to control passion*, just as knowing why rivers flood villages allows the control of floods

what is Spinoza's psychic determinism:

-assumption of which leads to the scientific attitude that the processes of the mind, too, are subject to natural laws, and that these laws can be consequently investigated and studied. -combating the teleological notion that nature acts "with an end in view"

what are some criticism of monadology?

-because God created the world, it cannot be improved on. -In Voltaire's Candide, Leibniz is portrayed as a foolish professor who continues to insist, even after observing tragedy after tragedy, that "this is the best of all possible worlds."

what is Monadology and how and why did Leibniz create it?

-combined physics, biology, introspection, and theology into his worldview -One of Leibniz's goals was to reconcile scientific discoveries with belief in God. like, Spinoza eliminating friction between religion and science. - With the aid of the newly invented microscope, could see that life exists everywhere, shouldnt be a division living or nonliving - Instead, he concluded that everything was living. The universe consisted of an infinite number of life units called monads. -A monad (from the Greek monas, meaning "single") is like a living atom, and all monads are active and conscious. -There is a hierarchy in nature, however, similar to the scala naturae Aristotle proposed. -Although all monads are active and conscious, they vary in the clarity and distinctiveness of the thoughts they are capable of having. - monads differ in intelligence. -inert matter is made up of monads incapable of all but extremely muddled thoughts. - a scale of gradually increasing intelligence, come plants, microbes, insects, animals, humans, and God. Differences among all things in the universe, then, are quantitative, not qualitative. -All monads seek to clarify their thoughts, insofar as they are capable, because clear thinking causes pleasure. -Aristotle influnence Leibniz, because Leibniz viewed a monad as a potential seeking to become actualized. -*each monad, and therefore all of nature, was characterized by a final cause or purpose*. -Next to God, humans possess the monads capable of the clearest thinking. - humans consist of all types of monads ranging from those possessed by matter, plants, and animals, our thoughts are not always clear. -It is the nature of humans' dominant monad (soul) that provides them with intellectual potential inferior only to God's. -Monads, can never be influenced by anything outside of themselves. -Therefore, the only way that they can change (become clearer) is by internal development—that is, by actualizing their potential.

How did Descartes and Hobbes influence Spinoza?

-deeply impressed with the deductive method of geometry and it could be used to discover truth in non-mathematical areas as well -presented a number of "self-evident" axioms from which he proposed to deduce other truths about the nature of reality.

For Herbart, a student's ____ must be taken in account when resenting new material? why? theory of education comes very close to the more modern theory belonging to ____, who said that?

-existing apperceptive mass, or mental set -material not compatible with a student's apperceptive mass will likely not be understood. -Jean Piaget: for teaching to be effective, it must start with what a student can assimilate into his or her cognitive structure. If information is incompatible with a student's cognitive structure, it simply cannot be learned.

why according to Hume is Perception of Space?

-experience of space was provided by an innate category of thought. -Kant agreed with Hume that we never experience the physical world directly, but seems that we do. -For most, if not all, humans, the physical world appears to be laid out before us and to exist independently of us. In other words, we do not simply experience sensations as they exist on the retina or in the brain. -The sensations vary in size, distance, and intensity and seem to be distributed in space, not in our retinas or brains... THEREFORE, such a projected spatial arrangement is not provided by the sensory impressions themselves.

Spinoza showed how as many as 48 additional emotions could be derived from the interactions between these basic emotions and various situations encountered in life. A few examples show how the basic emotions interact with one another and how they can be transferred from one object or person to another

-if something is first loved and then hated, it will end up being hated more than if it were not loved in the first place. -If objects cause us pleasure or pain, we will not only love and hate those objects, respectively, but will also love and hate objects that resemble them

How did Spinoza feel about Descartes views

-intially impressed by Descartes, on contention that God, matter, and mind were all separate entities -BUT LATER ON for Spinoza, God, nature, and the mind were inseparable

How did Hebart agree and disagree with Empiricists?

-major departure from that of the empiricists because the empiricists believed that ideas, like Newton's particles of matter, were passively buffeted around by forces external to them—for example, by the laws of association. -HOWEVER, Herbart agreed with the empiricists that ideas were derived from experience, but he maintained that once they existed they had a life of their own. --->an idea was like an atom with energy and a consciousness of its own—a conception very much like Leibniz's monads.

what did Hebart mean by the term lime? It was Herbart's goal to mathematically express what? influenced most by who? first to apply a mathematical model to psychology what did he use calculus to quantify?

-meant threshold, describe the border between the conscious and the unconscious mind/ to describe the mind in mathematical terms just as Newton had described the physical world. -the relationships among the apperceptive mass, the limen, and the conflict among ideas -Leibniz and Newton. -complex mental phenomena -first to apply a mathematical model to psychology.

discuss the reviews Liebniz got on his theories?

-mixed reviews from historians of psychology. On the negative side, we have opinions such as Esper's (1964) assessment: -the classic example of what happens to "psychology" at the hands of a philosopher whose main interests and intellectual apparatus are theology, mathematics, and logic, and who uses the concepts of physical and biological science in the service of metaphysical speculation; -Leibniz is a seventeenth-century Parmenides. (p. 224) -On the positive side, Brett said it was often seemed to be the spontaneous birth of German philosophy" (p. 406). -dominated German rationalistic philosophy for many years. -"Leibniz emphasized the spontaneity of the soul; for him the work of the mind was something more than a mere arranging, sorting, and associating of the given; it was essentially productive, creative, and freely active" (p. 407). S -Similarly, Fancher and Schmidt (2003) say, "Leibniz offered a strong argument that the human mind cannot be understood simply as a passive reflector of the things it experiences, but rather is itself an important contributor to its experience" (p. 16). - Leibniz's pupil Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) was among the first to use the term psychology in a book title (Empirical Psychology, 1732; and Rational Psychology, 1734). Wolff's two books showed how empiricism and rationalism could be contrasted when applied to matters of psychology, and noted the different methods of inquiry concerning psychological phenomena that followed from each. first modern philosophers to describe the mind in terms of faculties, or powers.

Nicolas De Malebranche, what was his viewpoint?

-occasionalism. -accepted Descartes's separation of the mind and body but disagreed with his explanation of how the two interacted. -God mediated mind and body interactions. (For example, when a person wants to move an arm, God is aware and moves the person's arm. Similarly God is aware of injury and causes the person to experience pain). -In reality, there is no contact between mind and body, but there appears to be because of God's intervention. - can be referred to as a parallelism with divine intervention. VS Without divine intervention, the activities of the mind and body would be unrelated, and we would have psychophysical parallelism. - ideas are not innate and that they do not come from experience. come only from God, know only what God reveals to our souls

Although Kant's influence was clearly evident when psychology emerged as an independent science in the late 1800s, Kant actually did not believe that psychology could become an experimental science, why not?

1) First, Kant claimed the mind itself could never be objectively studied because it is not a physical thing. 2) Second, the mind cannot be studied scientifically using introspection because it does not stand still and wait to be analyzed; it is constantly changing and therefore cannot be reliably examined. 3) Also, the very process of introspection influences the state of the mind, thus limiting the value of what is found through such reflection. - to be a science, a discipline's subject matter had to be capable of precise mathematical formulation, and this was not the case for psychology. -Such a discipline, which Kant called anthropology, could even supply the information necessary to predict and control human behavior.

The process Hegel proposed for seeking knowledge was akin to the one Plato had proposed, explain it and what did it imply about the state

1) First, one must recognize that sense impressions are of little use unless one can determine the general concepts that they exemplify. 2) Once these concepts are understood, the next step is to determine how those concepts are related to one another. 3) When one sees the inter relatedness of all concepts, one experiences the Absolute, which is similar to Plato's form of the good. - Although Plato did not equate the form of the good with God, Hegel did equate the Absolute with God. -the whole is more important than particular instances led him to conclude that the state (government) was more important than the individuals that composed it. In other words, for Hegel, people existed for the state. ------>This is exactly the opposite of Locke's position, which stated that the state existed for the people.

Herbart influenced the emergence of psychology in multiple ways: Herbart's concepts of the unconscious, repression, conflict, and his belief that ideas continue to exist intact even when we are not conscious of them found their way into Freud's psychoanalytic theory. Also finding its way into Freudian theory was Herbart's notion that unconscious ideas seeking conscious expression will be met with resistance if they are incompatible with ideas already in consciousness.

1) his insistence that psychology could at least be a mathematical science gave psychology more status and respectability than it had received from Kant. Despite denial that it could be an experimental science, still encouraged the development of experimental psychology. 2) Herbart's (and Leibniz's) concept of limen was crucial to Gustav Fechner (see Chapter 8), whose psychophysics was instrumental in the development of psychology as a true science. also influenced Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of psychology as a separate scientific discipline. relied heavily on Herbart's adaptation of Leibniz's concept of apprehension. -With Herbart and Lotze, we conclude the coverage of the rationalists of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Like Bain (and his journal Mind) with empiricism, in Herbart (and his textbook), we reach the transition between rationalism as a philosophy and psychology as a science. - All theories that postulate the mind's active involvement in intelligence, perception, memory, personality, creativity, or cognition in general have their origins in the rationalist tradition. -scientific theory is a combination of empiricism and rationalism.

GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNIZ

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) was born in Leipzig, Germany, -mathematician - developed differential and integral calculus at about the same time as Newton - a contemporary of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke; -His early education included the Greek and Roman classics and the works of Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo. -doctorate in law at the age of 20.

The Categorical Imperative

Kant also attempted to rescue ethics from what the empiricists had provided—utilitarianism. For Kant, it was not enough to say that certain experiences are good and others are not; he asked what rule or principle was being applied to our feelings that made them desirable or undesirable. -He called the rational principle that governs (or should govern) moral behavior the categorical imperative, according to which, "Lying under certain circumstances is justified." If such a maxim were elevated to a universal moral law, the result would be widespread distrust and social disorganization. On the other hand, if the maxim "Always tell the truth" were made a universal moral law, social trust and harmony would be facilitated. ----->according to the categorical imperative, the result would be a community of free and equal members. Of course, Kant realized that he was describing an ideal that could only be approximated. -whereas the empiricists' analysis of moral behavior emphasized a sort of hedonic calculus—that the best option produced the greatest good—Kant's was based on a rational principle and a belief in free will. For Kant, the idea of moral responsibility was meaningless unless rationality and free will were assumed. We have here a clear example of the distinction between the reasons for, and the causes of, behavior. For the empiricists, behavior (moral or otherwise) is caused by feelings of pleasure and pain. For Kant, there is a reason for acting morally and, if that reason is freely chosen, moral behavior results. -essay rationally demonstrate God's existence. His argument diverged from a number of traditional arguments, such as the ontological argument Kant's argument for the necessity of God's existence was similar to Aristotle's argument for the necessity of an unmoved mover

Because Kant postulated categories of thought, he can be classified as?

a faculty psychologist. -postulated a single, unified mind that possessed various attributes or abilities. -The attributes always interacted and were not housed in any specific location in the mind and certainly not in the brain.

pantheism necessitated a panpsychism which means..?

because God is everywhere, so is mind

Kant Vs Descartes nativism

did not propose specific innate ideas, as Descartes had done. Rather, he proposed innate categories of thought that organized all sensory experience. Thus, both Descartes and Kant were nativists, but their brands of nativism differed significantly.

The rationalist assumed _____ mental structures, principles, operations, or abilities that are used in analyzing the content of thought

innate

what is the metaphor of the marble statue?

made this point with his famous metaphor of the marble statue: Reflection is nothing but attention to what is within us, and the senses do not give us what we carry with us already ... I have ... used the analogy of a veined block of marble, as opposed to an entirely homogeneous block of marble, or to a blank tablet—what the philosophers call a tabula rasa. For if the soul were like such a blank tablet then truths would be in us as the shape of Hercules is in a piece of marble when the marble is entirely neutral as to whether it assumes this shape or some other. However, if there were veins in the block which marked out the shape of Hercules rather than other shapes, then that block would be more determined to that shape and Hercules would be innate in it, in a way, even though labour would be required to expose the veins and to polish them into clarity, removing everything that prevents their being seen. This is how ideas and truths are innate in us—as inclinations, dispositions, tendencies, or natural potentialities. (pp. 45-46)


Ensembles d'études connexes

Chapter 19: Circulation Chapter Questions

View Set

nutrition test three STUDY!!!! 10-12

View Set

Family Dynamics Custom Adaptive Quizzes

View Set

Adding and Subtracting Polynomials

View Set

Civics: The American Party System

View Set