History and Systems Study Guide Chapters 5 through 8

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, theories, and definitions from Chapters 5 through 8 of the History and Systems Study Guide.

British empiricism

Knowledge develops through experience rather than innate ideas.

Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes believed government controls people’s natural aggression, selfishness, and greed.

Hedonistic theory of motivation

People seek pleasure and avoid pain.

John Locke

Locke believed ideas come from experience, but the mind has innate abilities.

Tabula rasa

Locke’s blank slate means the mind begins without innate ideas.

David Hume

Hume believed knowledge comes from experience, but we know our perceptions rather than physical reality directly.

Impressions

For Hume, impressions are strong, vivid experiences of sensations, emotions, and passions.

Ideas

For Hume, ideas are faint copies of impressions used in thinking and reasoning.

Simple ideas

For Hume, simple ideas come from corresponding simple impressions.

Complex ideas

Complex ideas combine simple ideas into more complicated forms.

Imagination

For Hume, imagination rearranges existing ideas into new combinations.

Associationism

Associationism explains how ideas become connected through experience.

Law of resemblance

One idea brings similar ideas to mind.

Law of contiguity

Events experienced together tend to be remembered together.

Law of cause and effect

For Hume, repeated sequences lead us to believe one event causes another.

Causation

For Hume, causation is an expectation learned from repeated observations rather than a logically necessary connection.

Custom

For Hume, custom makes us expect the future to resemble past experience.

Mind and self

For Hume, the mind and self are collections of related perceptions.

Passions

For Hume, passions are emotions that motivate behavior, while reason serves them.

Demonstrative knowledge

Demonstrative knowledge concerns relationships among ideas, such as mathematical truths.

Empirical knowledge

Empirical knowledge comes from experience and guides behavior in the world.

Hume’s skepticism

Experience cannot guarantee that past relationships will continue in the future.

James Mill

James Mill used associationism and utilitarianism to explain human nature and guide education and social reform.

Mental physics or mental mechanics

Complex ideas are combinations of simple ideas that retain their original elements.

John Stuart Mill

J. S. Mill proposed mental chemistry and argued that human thought and behavior could be studied scientifically.

Primary and secondary mental states

J. S. Mill called sensations primary states and their weaker mental copies secondary states.

Mental chemistry

Simple ideas or sensations combine to create something different from their individual parts.

Strength of association

For J. S. Mill, vividness and repetition strengthen connections between ideas.

Primary laws

Primary laws explain general patterns within a system.

Secondary laws

Secondary laws explain how particular circumstances change those general patterns.

Inexact science

An inexact science studies lawful events but cannot predict them precisely because some causes remain unknown.

Ethology

J. S. Mill’s ethology was a proposed science explaining how character develops under particular circumstances.

Utilitarianism

People should act to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

Auguste Comte

Comte believed publicly observable knowledge could help predict events and improve society.

Positivism

For Comte, reliable knowledge comes from experiences that other people can also observe.

Law of three stages

Comte believed societies progress through theological, metaphysical, and scientific stages.

Theological stage

Events are explained through superstition and mysticism.

Metaphysical stage

Events are explained through unseen essences, principles, or causes.

Scientific stage

Observable relationships are used to describe, predict, and control events.

Sociology

Comte’s sociology studies social behavior and societies’ development through the three stages.

Religion of humanity

Comte’s proposed religion replaced God with humanity and priests with scientists and philosophers.

Hierarchy of sciences

Comte’s order was mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology and biology, and sociology.

Introspection

Introspection examines one’s own mental activity, which Comte rejected as science because others cannot publicly observe it.

Ernst Mach

Mach believed scientists should describe relationships among mental experiences without metaphysical speculation.

Rationalism

Knowledge depends on the mind’s reasoning and its organization of experience.

Spinoza’s view of God and nature

Spinoza viewed God and nature as the same reality.

Double aspect view

Mind and body are two aspects of the same reality.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

Leibniz believed the mind has innate potential ideas and the universe consists of conscious units called monads.

Innate potential ideas

For Leibniz, experience brings out ideas already present as inborn possibilities.

Blaise Pascal

Pascal developed an early calculator and used probability and statistics to understand beliefs and social events.

Monads

For Leibniz, monads are indivisible, conscious units that differ in how clearly they think.

Dominant monad

An organism’s dominant monad is its soul or mind and determines its intellectual potential.

Psychophysical parallelism

Mental and bodily events correspond without directly interacting.

Preestablished harmony

Leibniz believed God arranged mental and bodily events to remain coordinated without causing one another.

Law of continuity

Nature changes through small degrees rather than sudden leaps.

Petites perceptions

Petites perceptions are small perceptions below conscious awareness.

Apperception

For Leibniz, apperception is conscious experience produced when small perceptions accumulate enough strength.

Limen or threshold

The limen is the boundary between conscious and unconscious experience.

Christian von Wolff

Wolff helped popularize psychology and explained the mind through faculties or powers.

Faculty psychology

The mind is explained through separate abilities or powers.

Thomas Reid

Reid believed sensory impressions could be trusted and that the mind has rational faculties.

Commonsense philosophy

Reid believed common sense justifies trusting the physical world and human reasoning powers.

Immanuel Kant

Kant believed innate categories organize sensory information before knowledge becomes possible.

Innate categories of thought

Innate concepts, including space, time, and causality, organize experience and make thinking possible.

Anthropology

For Kant, anthropology is a nonscientific study of how people actually behave.

Categorical imperative

Kant’s categorical imperative is the rational principle that should govern moral behavior.

Anterograde amnesia

Anterograde amnesia is the inability to form new memories.

Clive Wearing case

The class example describes profound anterograde amnesia, with new experiences forgotten within about 30 seconds.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Hegel believed history and intellect develop toward an interconnected whole through the dialectic process.

The Absolute

Hegel’s Absolute is the whole universe, which must be understood to truly understand its parts.

Dialectic process

A thesis meets its antithesis and produces a synthesis, which begins the next cycle.

Thesis

The thesis is the original idea or position.

Antithesis

The antithesis is the opposing idea or position.

Synthesis

The synthesis resolves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis.

Alienation

For Hegel, alienation is the mind’s sense of separation from the Absolute.

Enlightenment

The Age of Reason emphasized science, rational thought, and questioning traditional authority.

Romanticism

Romanticism emphasizes emotions, intuitions, instincts, and the whole person’s experience.

Existentialism

Existentialism emphasizes personal meaning, freedom of choice, responsibility, and individual uniqueness.

Subjective experience

Subjective experience is a person’s own interpretation and feeling about life.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau believed people are born good but society corrupts them, so true feelings should guide conduct.

Noble savage

Rousseau’s noble savage is a person whose natural goodness has not been corrupted by society.

General will

For Rousseau, the general will is the natural tendency to live harmoniously with others.

Private or individual will

The private will expresses selfish interests that can conflict with the general will.

Rousseau’s view of government

Government should permit freedom and the development of human potential.

Rousseau’s educational philosophy

Education should nurture children’s natural curiosity, abilities, and interests.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe believed people should embrace life’s opposing forces and live passionately while pursuing personal growth.

Phenomenology

Goethe’s phenomenology studies whole, meaningful experiences rather than isolated sensations.

Goethe’s shadows

A shadow may appear complementary in color to the colored light illuminating an object.

Faust

Goethe’s Faust presents human freedom as the ultimate source of happiness.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer believed the will to survive creates an endless cycle of needs and temporary satisfaction.

Noumenal world

The noumenal world means things as they are apart from conscious experience.

Phenomenal world

The phenomenal world is the world of conscious experience.

Universal will

For Schopenhauer, universal will is the blind, aimless force underlying reality.

Will to survive

The will to survive is the drive to preserve life by satisfying biological needs.

Cycle of needs and need satisfaction

Unmet needs cause pain, satisfaction brings brief pleasure, and new needs restart the cycle.

Sublimation

Irrational urges are redirected into pursuits such as art, music, and poetry.

Asceticism

Asceticism uses self-denial to resist bodily needs and irrational desires.

Nirvana

In Schopenhauer’s account, nirvana is freedom from irrational strivings.

Repression

Repression keeps undesirable thoughts in the unconscious.

Resistance

Resistance is the difficulty encountered when trying to recognize repressed ideas.