Chapter 6 - Rationalism

Question 1

What do empiricists hold to?

Answer 1

Behaviour is based on experience, memory, associations and hedonism (also determines morality)

Question 2

What do rationalists hold to?

Answer 2

They reason that some acts or thoughts are more desirable than others

Question 3

What were some of Spinoza’s beliefs on

- God, nature and the mind?

Answer 3

• DIDN’T believe in free will
• God, nature and the mind were aspects of the same substance (pantheism)
• Nature is lawful…humans are a part of nature…therefore human thoughts and behaviours are lawful (determined)

Question 4

Who am I?

• ideas are nonmaterial and cannot be caused by material activity such as sense activity
• universe is made up of infinite number of monads (like atoms, but with a consciousness)

Answer 4

Gottfried Wilheim von Leibniz

Question 5

Who am I?

• proposed that the mind must add something to sensory data before knowledge can be attained
• the mind adds the concept of time and space to sensory information (they are both provided by an a priori category of thought)

Answer 5

Immanuel Kant

Question 6

According to Kant, what was our metal experience?

Answer 6

• always structured by the categories of thought
• our phenomenological experience (mental experience) is an interaction of sensations and the categories of thought
• we can never know the true physical reality, just appearances (phenomena) that are controlled by the categories of thought

Question 7

What is a categorical imperative?

Answer 7

the rational principle which governs or should govern moral behaviour (similar to the golden rule)

Question 8

What is anthropology?

Answer 8

a nonscientific way of studying how people actually behave

Question 9

Who am I?

• did not believe psychology could be an experimental science
• experimentation necessarily divided up its subject matter (the mind acted as an integrated whole and therefore could not be divided)
• physics mechanics:
  
  • ideas had a force of energy of their own and the laws of association were not necessarily to bind them
  • ideas attempt to gain expression in consciousness and compete with eachother to do so
• applied his ideas to educational psychology by offering suggestions on how to teach effectively

Answer 9

Johann Friedrich Herbart

Question 10

What is an apperceptive mass?

Answer 10

the group of compatible ideas that are in consciousness to which we are attending at a given moment
- ideas outside the apperceptive mass (incompatible ideas) will be repressed by the powers of the ideas in the mass

Question 11

what is Limen?

Answer 11

the threshold between conscious and unconscious

Question 12

What were some of Spinoza’s ideas on the mind-body issue?

Answer 12

Mind and body were two aspects of the same thing (double aspectism)

Question 13

What were some of Spinoza’s ideas on self-preservation?

Answer 13

Pleasure comes from clear ideas, conducive to the mind’s survival

Question 14

What were some of Spinoza’s ideas on emotion?

Answer 14

Passion is a general upheaval and are not associated with a particular thought (passion should be harnessed by reason)

Question 15

What was Leibniz’s view on the mind-body relationship?

Answer 15

• mind-body issue: proposed a psychophysical parallelism (mind and body influence each other but don’t work in parallel)

Question 16

What was Leibniz’s monadism?

Answer 16

Universe is made up of infinite number of monads - these never influence each other, it only seems like they do

Question 17

What was Leibniz’s “petites perceptions”?

Answer 17

below conscious perceptions - this idea was as important to psychology as insensible atoms was to biology - the belief that what is actually experienced consciously arises from unconscious experience (law of CONTINUITY)

Question 18

What were Kant’s categories of thought?

Answer 18

• unity
• totality
• space
• cause-and-effect
• reality
• quantity
• quality
• negation
• possibility/impossibility
• existence/non-existence

Question 19

What did Kant believe concerning time and space?

Answer 19

That the mind adds the concept of time and space to sensory information

Question 20

What was Herbart’s belief on psychology?

Answer 20

That it could not be an experimental science

Question 21

What was Herbart’s theory of physics mechanics?

Answer 21

• ideas had a force of energy of their own and the laws of association were not necessary to bind them

Question 22

What is an apperceptive mass?

Answer 22

the group of compatible ideas that are in consciousness to which we are attending at a given moment

Question 23

What contributions did Herbart make to educational psychology?

Answer 23

He offered suggestions on how to teach effectively

• review material already learned
• prepare students for new material by giving overview of upcoming material
• present new material
• relate new material to what has already been learned
• show applications of new material
• give an overview of next material to be learned

Question 24

What was the Absolute, according to Hegel?

Answer 24

The Absolute is the universe as an interrelated unity

- the only true understanding is an understanding of the Absolute

Question 25

What was Hegel’s theory of the dialectic process?

Answer 25

Hegel believed that human understanding was moved towards the Absolute via the dialectic process - meaning back and forth argumentation on opposing ideas until a conclusion is reached