Chapter 3 Flashcards
René Descartes (1596-1650) way of discovering truth
> Through reason.
> These ideas are treated as premises from which conclusions can be drawn by “simple and easy reasoning.”
> such a procedure is the hallmark of rationalism: provided our premises are correct, our ability to use reason is sufficient to provide us with the truth.
Describe the argument that is traditionally “known as Descartes’s Cogito, and the process by which it is reached is called Cartesian doubt
Descartes reasons that he cannot doubt the fact of his own thought, and therefore there must be a thinker who was thinking those thoughts.
The thinker is, of course, Descartes himself, and so the fact of his existence is beyond doubt. In Latin, the passage “I am thinking, therefore I exist” is Cogito, ergo sum.
What conclusions follow from Descartes’s Cogito?
> Clear and distinct ideas must come from God, since Descartes himself was too imperfect to have generated them on his own.
> Such ideas include the truths derived through mathematical reasoning i.e. the sphere.
Did Descartes propose dualism? What does dualism entail to Descartes?
> Yes, Descartes goes on to argue that the mind is quite separate from the body.
> Although a mind may interact with the body in which it is housed, each is of a different nature from the other.
Where did the mind and body interact for Descartes?
> From Descartes’s viewpoint, the mind comes from God and is immortal.
> By contrast, the body is mechanical and operates in the same way as a clock or any other machine.
> Descartes suggested that the interaction takes place via the pineal gland, a singular structure centrally located in the brain
> his model of the mind-body relation, often called interactionism, became so widespread as to be almost “common sense” itself.
> As one famous twentieth-century philosopher observed, Descartes’s view is that the mind is in the body as if it were a ghost in a machine
Because the Cartesian model has been so central to Western psychology, it is import-ant that we be absolutely clear about its most important features- what are they?
- Mind and body are separate.
- While the human body is subject to the same mechanical laws as any other physical body, the mind operates according to its own rules, which come from God.
- We know our own mind directly, through introspection. We cannot know other people’s minds directly, since we cannot observe them. All we can observe about other people is the state of their bodies.
What is introspection?
“the act of looking inward, the examination of one’s mental
experience” followed by “the report of . . . the mental contents of one’s consciousness”
What does the cartesian model say about introspection?
The Cartesian model suggests that introspection is the proper psycho-logical method,
Aside from his view on the mind, what else did Descartes contribute?
> conception of the body as a machine.
> example of the mechanical model
Another good example of the use of mechanical models may be found in the work of?
> eighteenth-century inventor Jacques de Vaucanson, who built not only a statue that played the flute, but also a duck that “stretches out its neck to take corn out of your hand, it swallows it, and discharges it digested by the usual passage”
Our discussion of Descartes’s views concerning the body points to three controversial issues - what are they?
- Can a machine be built that will simulate human behaviour in a way that makes its actions indistinguishable from human behaviour?
- Are there qualitative diff erences between humans and other organisms?
- Should we be able to do whatever we want with animals in our research?
Among the areas to which Descartes made strong contributions, what was another? (Separate from dualism and the mechanical model)
> the study of visual perception
What is the projective model in physics?
> The projective model represents the eye as being located at the apex of a visual pyramid.
> What the artist represents on the picture plane is a projection of the surface of an object.
> The result is that objects depicted in a picture appear to lie behind the picture plane.
> The picture plane is like a window through which you are looking at objects in the distance.
> Notice that the eye can only be at one place when the picture is constructed.
> That position is called the station point (Sedgwick, 1980: 40).
> The station point gives the spectator a point of view.
> Changing the station point changes what will be represented in the picture, just as moving in relation to a window changes what you see through it.
A great deal of research and theory in the psychology of perception is based on what model? What is a consequence of this model?
> The projective model.
> Over time, the projective model has become generalized far beyond its original context of painting. We now talk about individuals having different “points of view” no one’s is more privileged than the other
What is one consequence of taking physics as a model for psychology?
One consequence of taking physics as a model for psychology is that the subject matter of psychology is seen as essentially the same as physics.
> For example, in Newtonian physics the basic subject matter is the motion of objects; however, Kimble argues that motion is also the subject matter of psychology, but it is the motion of organisms—behaviour—rather than the motion of inanimate objects that the psychologist tries to understand.
What is Kimble’s threshold model?
> In the figure, “potential” refers to the readiness of a system to respond and “instigation” refers to the amount of a stimulus that is applied to the system.
> The threshold curve shows that the greater the potential, the lower the instigation required to elicit a response from the system.
What contributions did Goethe have for colour?
> Goethe is describing the phenomenon known as after-images.
> I.e., if you stare at a red patch and then a white wall, you’ll see a green patch.
How does empiricism differ from rationalism?
Rather than rely on reason to provide us with the truth (rationalism), the empiricist trusts only the evidence provided by our senses.
In Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, what did he argue?
> “there are no innate principles in the mind,” thus taking a position contradictory to Descartes.
> Part of Locke’s argument is that even if there were ideas that everyone believed in, that would not show them to be innate, since people could have arrived at this unanimity in some other way.
What did Locke mean by an idea? What are some examples?
> By an idea, Locke meant “whatsoever is the object of the understanding”
> The following are examples of ideas: “whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness”
Locke suggests that we get ideas from two different sources. What are they?
1) The first is sensory experience, which furnishes us with the experiences we need to have ideas such as “yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet and all those we call sensible qualities”
2) The second source of our ideas is reflection, by which he meant the “perception of the operations of our own mind within us” (ibid., 90). We can observe ourselves engaged in such operations as “perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, will-ing” (ibid., 90) and thus have some idea of these activities.
To Locke, what is the most important source of information about psychological concepts?
If we follow Locke, self-observation will be the most important source of information about psychological concepts.
What is the role of introspection in psychology?
> The role of introspection as a method in psychology has been a continuing source of controversy
For Locke and empiricists, what is our understanding a product of?
> the product of our experience, not of our reason. In fact, that is what it means to be an empiricist.
> Here Locke is suggesting that even basic concepts, such as those of colour, must be acquired, along with less common experiences, such as the taste of an oyster.
Locke attempted to demonstrate his empiricist orientation by means of a
> “thought experiment” that had been proposed by his friend Molyneux.
> A thought experiment is a device often used in science that involves considering the results of an imaginary experi-ment, which, if it could be performed, would yield important conclusions.
