Chapter 5 vocab Flashcards
(30 cards)
The belief that the laws of association provide the fundamental principles by which all mental phenomena can be explained
Associationism
The first attempt to relate known physiological facts to psychological phenomena; he also wrote the first psychology texts, and he founded psychology’s first journal (1876); he explained voluntary behavior in much the same way that modern learning theorists later explained trial-and-error behavior; finally, he added the law of compound association and the law of constructive association to the older, traditional laws of association
Alexander Bain (1818-1903)
Said that the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain governed most human behavior; he also said that the best society was one that did the greatest good for the greatest number of people
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
Said that the only thing we experience directly is our own perceptions, or secondary qualities. Offered an empirical explanation of the perception of distance, saying that we learn to associate the sensations caused by the convergence and divergence of the eyes with different distances. He denied materialism, saying instead that reality exists because God perceives it; we can trust our senses to reflect God’s perceptions because God would not create a sensory system that would deceive us
George Berkeley (1685-1753)
Configurations of simple ideas
Complex ideas
The founder of positivism and the coiner of the term “sociology”; he felt that cultures passed through three staged in the way they explained phenomena: the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific
Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
The belief that all knowledge is derived from experience, especially sensory experience
Empiricism
Saw humans as nothing but complex, physical machines, and saw no need to assume a nonphysical mind; had much in common with Hobbes
Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655)
Believed that the primary motive in human behavior is the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain; for this person, the function of government is to satisfy as many human needs as possible and to prevent humans from fighting with each other; he believed that all human activity, including mental activity, could be reduced to atoms in motion; he therefore was a materialist
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Agreed with Berkeley that we could experience only our own subjective reality but disagreed with Berkeley’s contention that we could assume that out perceptions accurately reflect the physical world because God would not deceive us; for this person, “we can be sure of nothing”; even the notion of cause and effect, which is so important to Newtonian physics, is nothing more than a habit of thought; this man distinguished between impressions, which are vivid, and ideas, which are faint copies of impressions
David Hume (1711-1776)
A mental events that lingers after impressions or sensations have ceased
Idea
According to Hume, the power of the mind to arrange and rearrange ideas into countless configurations
Imagination
According to Hume, the relatively strong mental experiences caused by sensory stimulation; for Hume, this is essentially the same thing as what others called sensation
Impressions
Believed humans were machines that differed from other animals only in complexity; this person believed that so-called mental experiences are nothing but movements of particle in the brain; also believed that accepting materialism would result in a better, more humane world
Julien de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
According to Hume, if in our experience one event always precedes the occurrence of another event, we tend to believe that the former event is the cause of the latter
Law of cause and effect
According to Hume, the tendency for our thoughts to run from one event to similar events, the same as what others would call the law, or principle, of similarity
Law of resemblance
An empiricist who denied the existence of innate ideas but who assumed many nativistically determined powers of the mind; distinguished between primary qualities, which cause sensations that have no counterparts in the physical world; the types of ideas postulated by this person included those caused by sensory stimulation, those caused by reflection, simple ideas, and complex ideas, which were composites of simple ideas
John Locke (1632-1704)
Proposed a brand of positivism based on the phenomenological experiences of scientists; because scientists, or anyone else, never experience the physical world directly, the scientist’s job is to precisely describe the relationships among mental phenomena, and to do so without the aid of metaphysical speculation
Ernst Mach (1838-1916)
The process by which individual sensations can combine to form a new sensation that is different from any of the individual sensations that constitute it
Mental chemistry (J.S. Mill)
Maintained that all mental events consisted of sensations and ideas (copies of sensations) held together by association; no matter how complex an idea was, this person felt that it could be reduced to simple ideas
James Mill (1773-1836)
Disagreed with James Mill that all complex ideas could be reduced to simple ideas; this person proposed a process of mental chemistry according to which complex ideas could be distinctly different from the simple ideas (elements) that constituted them; he believed strongly that a science of human nature could be and should be developed
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Locke’s observation that warm water will feel either hot or cold depending on whether a hand is first placed in hot water or cold water; because water cannot be hot and cold at the same time, temperature must be a secondary, not primary, quality
Paradox of the basins
The contention that science should not study only that which can be directly experienced; for Comte, that was publicly observed events or overt behavior; for Mach, it was the sensations of the scientist
Positivism
According to Locke, that aspect of a physical object that has the power to produce an idea
Quality
