Science of Human Nature Flashcards
Who are the 3 key philosophers in the 18th century?
Berkeley, Kant and Hume
Who wrote an essay about a new theory of vision?
Berkeley
What did Berkeley suggest in his new theory of vision?
Disagreed with Descartes that we have innate abilities to perceive differences in objects. Berkeley suggested we learn by experience and perception.
What were the two kinds of perception Berkeley suggested?
Direct- perception from sensory information
Indirect- perceive one idea by means of perceiving another
Berkeley also aimed to identify the differences between sight and touch in his New Theory of Vision essay. What did he conclude?
Sight and touch are distinctly different.
Berkeley believed that perception was the key to how we come to know the world and reality is mentally constructed. What would he be described as?
An idealist and immaterialist
Which philosopher said that psychology hadn’t progressed like physics because psychology was too speculative?
Hume- he saw the importance of empirical methods.
Hume was a believer in associationism, what is this in relation to learning?
Associationism-we learn by principles of connection. Once we learn the outcome in one situation we can predict the outcome in a similar situation.
Prior to Hume, humans were believed to be rational beings. However Hume believed that…
passions ruled reason.
Who said that our knowledge is limited to mathematics and the empirical natural sciences?
Kant
Who are empiricists from the 18th century?
Berkeley and Hume. Kant was neither. Kant stated that there are some concepts that you cant learn from experience and neither from rational deduction such as space and time.
Describe the Kantian Mind?
States that the mind is a complex set of functions.
Cognition required concepts as well as percepts.
The importance of inferring behaviour by analysing unobservable mental mechanisms.
