History exam 2 study guide (1)

Rationalism (Ch. 6)

Spinoza

• Equated God with nature, asserting that everything, including humans, consists of both matter and consciousness.

• Proposed double aspectism: the belief that material substance and consciousness are inseparable aspects of everything in the universe.

  • Emotional experiences are valuable when controlled by reason; passionate experiences are undesirable.

• Maintained a deterministic perspective on human cognition, facilitating the development of scientific psychology.

Pantheism

• Belief that God is present everywhere and in everything, eliminating the distinction between sacred and secular.

• Denied the existence of demons, revelations, and an anthropomorphic God.

Free Will

• Spinoza rejected free will, asserting that human thoughts and behaviors are lawful and determined by the laws of nature.

Leibniz

• Proposed that the universe consists of individual units called monads, which are indivisible and different in the degree of consciousness.

• Introduced psychophysical parallelism: the idea that bodily and mental events are correlated but do not interact.

• Described perception as a continuum, from vague, unconscious sensations (petites perceptions) to sharp, conscious experiences (apperception).

Key Concepts

• Limen: Threshold between conscious and unconscious experiences.

• Used the concept of apperception to mean conscious experience and clarified that experience involves both conscious and unconscious elements.

Reid

• Suggested that our sensory impressions can be trusted to reflect physical reality based on commonsense philosophy.

• Introduced faculty psychology, arguing that the mind consists of innate faculties (perception, memory, reason) that help understand reality.

Kant

• Asserted that experiences of unity, causation, time, and space arise from innate thought categories rather than sensory experience.

• Introduced the concepts of noumenon and phenomenon, categorized experience by what can and cannot be directly accessed.

Key Contributions

• Proposed the categorical imperative, emphasizing subjective morality based on universally applicable principles.

Hegel

• Viewed the universe as an interrelated unity termed the Absolute. He believed human intellect and history progress towards this unity through the dialectic process.

• Defined dialectic as the movement between thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Herbart

• Linked ideas to Leibniz's monads, suggesting ideas strive for consciousness, where repressed ones influence behavior even in the unconscious.

• Introduced psyche mechanics to describe the struggle of ideas for conscious expression.

Romanticism and Existentialism (Ch. 7)

Rousseau

• Considered the father of modern romanticism, he believed in essential goodness of human nature and in the general will over individual will.

• Differentiated between reason (associated with civilization) and feelings (authentic morality).

Key Concepts

• Noble savage: a human uncorrupted by society, living true to natural feelings.

• General will: collective interest for harmony among individuals.

Goethe

• Believed life consists of dynamic choices between opposing forces, which drive growth and transformation.

Schopenhauer

• Proposed the will to survive as the primary human motive, viewing life and existence through a deeply pessimistic lens.

Kierkegaard

• Argued for a deeply personal, emotional relationship with God and outlined stages of personal freedom:

  • Aesthetic Stage: Living for pleasure, avoiding responsibility.

  • Ethical Stage: Embracing duty and morality.

  • Religious Stage: Engaging deeply with faith.

Nietzsche

• Claimed individuals are responsible for defining life's meaning without relying on religious dogma. Introduced the concepts of the superman, the will to power, and differentiated between opinions and convictions.

Physiology and Psychophysics (Ch. 8)

Bell-Magendie Law

• Identified two types of nerves: sensory (to the brain) and motor (from the brain).

Johannes Müller

• Extended Bell-Magendie Law with the doctrine of specific nerve energies, positing that each receptor releases specific energy upon stimulation.

Helmholtz

• Investigated nerve conduction speed, estimating the rate at 25-40 m/s, challenging assumptions of instantaneous neural conduction.

• Proposed the Young-Helmholtz theory of color vision, recognizing three primary color receptors.

Ladd-Franklin

• Proposed an evolutionary theory of color vision with three stages: achromatic, blue-yellow, and red-green.

Gall and Phrenology

• Phrenology studied skull features to identify mental faculties, while physiognomy focused on facial characteristics to assess personality.

Flourens

• Demonstrated through brain ablation experiments that different brain regions have specific functions.

Broca

• Discovered Broca’s area in the left frontal lobe responsible for speech production.

Weber

• Established two-point threshold as a key concept in sensory psychology and introduced the just-noticeable difference.

Fechner

• Expanded Weber’s law, establishing methods for measuring thresholds of sensation including the method of limits and method of constant stimuli.

Early Approaches to Psychology (Ch. 9)

Wilhelm Wundt

• Founded experimental psychology, advocating for voluntarism, studying immediate and complex mental processes through experimental introspection.

Edward Titchener

• Established structuralism, aiming to describe the mind's structure through introspection, defined consciousness in terms of sensations, images, and affections.

Brentano

• Proposed act psychology, focusing on mental functions rather than elements.

Stumpf

• Advocated for the study of meaningful mental experiences in psychology, contributing to understanding perception.

Husserl

• Emphasized pure phenomenology to uncover the essence of subjective experience.

Külpe

• Developed systematic experimental introspection to examine imageless thoughts in problem-solving.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

• Pioneered the study of learning and memory with the retention curve, illustrating memory retention over time.