Please read chapter 2 (if you don't have a book yet, please let me know). After reading chapter 2, please respond to the following questions:
What were two things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? Which two things did you find the least interesting? Why? What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? Finally indicate two topics or concepts that you would like me to cover in more depth in class.
Note: Keep in mind that you will be allowed to bring in the blog posts to class with you when you take exams. Be sure to use the terms and terminology in your posts.
Let me know if you have any questions.
I found the reference to animal spirits to be quite interesting. I never really knew that Descartes believed that animal spirits were what caused movements in our bodies. Animal spirits are created by the “heat” of the blood and were thought to be the driving forces behind movement. I thought that it was really weird in a sense how Descartes felt that these animal spirits were how muscles got information to move. The reason I found this interesting was because I never really knew about this belief in animal spirits till I read this chapter.
I also found that the topic of primary and secondary qualities of matter to be interesting for me. I know that this is a pretty simple complex, but after reading more about this I found that I used to think these qualities were the same and that there wasn’t a difference between them. I thought that most of the qualities that we saw in matter all came from our senses. I didn’t really understand before that there are some primary qualities to matter, such as its shape, and motion. I thought that those things would also need to be perceived by the senses, but I learned that those are more inherent rather than the inherent attributes that are associated with secondary qualities, such as smell, taste, and color.
The two things I didn’t really find interesting was the topic of how psychology came out of the heliocentric and geocentric ideas. I mean this information is important, but I found it not so quite interesting to me because I learned about this topic many times in many different science classes. So I feel I have a somewhat good understanding about it, so reading more information about it was just uninteresting to me.
The most important thing I got from the chapter is that most of the things we learn and perceive all depend on our experiences. How we develop knowledge about things has to deal with the experiences we deal with or come across in life. Our experiences help us to get develop and understanding of life and how things work.
I found the topics of Method of Agreement and Method of Difference to be a little questionable for me. I just didn’t understand them that well, so maybe those are two topics that you maybe could go over a bit more. I understand the basic concept I feel, but maybe just need to discuss it a bit more.
One thing I found interesting was Locke’s views on education and how to raise children. He believed that children should sleep on hard beds and have leaky shoes because good things came out of suffering. I find this to be a little bit extreme and think it is interesting that his reasons for this were physical and that doing this would keep a child healthy. Today many people think that children should not be spoiled, but it is more because they should not grow up thinking they will always get whatever they want, not because it will help them fight disease. But it is easy to understand why he would think this since he was brought up as a Puritan and at the time people were still not sure how diseases were contracted. Another thing I found interesting was Mill’s view that women should be able to vote, but he did not think everyone should be able to vote. He thought only those who were educated should have the opportunity which is a very different viewpoint from what many people in America today believe. His idea that women should be treated equal was very different from the viewpoint of most others at the time.
I thought simple and complex ideas to be uninteresting. I know they are important to psychology’s history but I found them bland. It is all talk of different ways to think of things and how they come to be complex. It is not talking about concrete things, which is why I think I do not find it interesting.
Descartes idea of the reflex is important to understanding the history of psychology, He knew that sometimes the muscles move automatically without us thinking about it and he had some idea of how it worked.
I would like to hear to do into more depth about the animal spirits because I am a little confused about how that works. I would also like to go into more depth about materialism and determinism.
The first thing that I found that was interesting was Descartes Discourse on Method. This long list of things that he would do to prove is something was true, right, or wrong seemed just way to much to do. Such as First, he would accept nothing as true unless there was absolutely nothing to doubt it. Second, he would analyze problems and reduce them to be fundamental. Third he would systematically work from the simplest of elements to more complex. And fourth he would review his conclusions to be certain. It may seem like a lot but when the book summarized it basically all he was doing was saying to think clearly, logically and without bias. I think the biggest part of this that can relate to my learning of psychology is Descartes statement of all of this being the way to cast off authority completely. If you rely on other peoples reasoning it may not be true. When looking at our discussion of why we study history this could be one of the answers. Instead of saying, “so we can learn from the past” it is true but if we followed what happened in the past over and over again we would get nowhere!
The second thing that I found interesting in chapter 2 was Locke’s ideas about Sensation and Reflection. His meaning with Sensation is that everything that we experience through our senses compose this idea in our head for future occurrences. So meaning when we have ideas about something being hot, we know first hand by experiencing something hot what it would feel, taste, smell like. Reflection is using our brain to think differently about what we experience. Such as, doubting, reasoning, knowing, thinking. With this thinking there can also be Simple ideas and complex ideas according to the same person. Simple correlates with Sensory learning, and complex ideas correlate to reflection. I was interested in this topic was just realizing where our original ideas of something come from. We can be told something is hot or cold or sweet or sour but until we try it we would not have the idea we would have if experience first hand. This relates to psychology in that we could have theories about ideas but without proper explaining or influences there could be a bias between individuals.
Two topics to go over in class could be the rules of association, and subjective idealism.
The two things I found least interesting was Lockes ideas on Education, and the part on optics. Both I though could have been left out and seemed to just be fillers. It may be nice for some people to see how one person educates but there are a ton of different ways to educate different people. And the optics part about Berkeley describing the use of touch to identify an object I thought was out of place and boring.
What I found most interesting in this chapter were probably the earliest ideas within psychology, particularly quite a few of Descartes’ theories. I found the concept of innate and derived ideas to be influential because he was looking at how we come up with ideas and perceptions about everything in life. The concept of an innate idea is the theory that we are born with certain knowledge about various concepts like gods and deities, or the example Descartes used, extension (the idea that a palpable object exists in a space, and although it can or may change, it wont disappear). On the other hand there are also derived ideas, which would be ideas that we come to by experiencing the world. So basically, it is kind of a nature/nurture debate.
Another thing I found interesting was kind of an early form of understanding our conscious/unconscious mind and perception. Leibniz distinguished between three types of perception—Apperception which is our highest level of awareness, by giving it our full attention, and apprehending it to the full extent. Just regular perception is just below apperception, where we are aware of something by perhaps not giving it our full and complete attention, and petite perception would be the lowest level of perception, where we know something exists, but we are not fully and consciously being aware of it—however, it enables us to achieve higher levels of perception. The example Leibniz gave about petite perception would be realizing that an ocean wave is made up of an enormous amounts of tiny water droplets, which enable us to fully perceive the more obvious wave in front of us.
Two things I found less interesting were probably the concepts of convergence and accommodation. Probably because they were in reference to how our eyes work, which is boarders a little bit more on the physical biology side of sciences, which I just find less interesting in general, when compared with the mind.
A concept that I found to be important to the history of psychology was the idea of “animal spirits,” which is kind of early, early form of bio-psychology, and one of psychology’s first attempts to understand how our brain connects with the rest of our body and commands it to behave and move in certain ways. Descartes believed that they were tiny particles that lived in our brain, nerves, and muscles, that essential command us to move.
Some concepts that I didn’t fully understand were the methods of agreement and difference that I was just a little lost about.
First of all, I thought the entire chapter was interesting as well as thought provoking and it took me a lot of time to fully process everything discussed within the chapter. Since I thought basically everything was interesting it is somewhat difficult to narrow things down to what I found most and least interesting. However, since I do have to decide I would say the two things I found most interesting were David Hume and the Rules of Association as well as John Stuart Mill and his ‘methods’. I liked Hume’s theories that all of our understandings were in relation to our experiences. The idea that we all learn through experience rather than what we are told by someone is something that I have somewhat believed strongly in since I was younger. In fact I would always tell my mom when she was explaining her past experiences to me that I needed to live my own life and have particular experiences for myself and for my own learning purposes; it was nice to find something along those lines in a psychology history book. I also chose John Stuart Mill’s theories on methods of agreement, difference and the joint method to be interesting. I am not sure if there is a particular reason I found them interesting other than just the simple ideas that they were new and intriguing to me.
The things in the chapter that I found least interesting, and this is a stretch, would be the review of the happenings during the Renaissance and the section over Descartes. I think the reason I found these particular things to be not as interesting was because I’d heard the majority of it before so therefore it was a lot of review. The things that were not familiar to me just did not interest me as much as the ideas put forth by the men mentioned above. Descartes had some very controversial ideas for his time I’m sure and I am aware that without the thinking and doings of the people around his time period we would not have what we do today, but as I mentioned the ideas were not as striking as some of the others.
I feel that the majority the chapter, especially the men in the later parts of the chapter, were most useful to my understandings because everything had to come from somewhere. I am aware that this chapter was just a brief overview of where the things we are learning today have come from, so that is why I think most of it is important. I think that the more recent philosophers and psychologists are slightly more important than the earlier ones simply because they took the partially developed ideas and turned them into what we consider psychology today.
A few things I would like to go over more in class are just some of the terms/vocabulary used in the text. I feel that some of them were just briefly explained and I got somewhat confused while reading the rest of the chapter when those certain terms were referred to. Terms such as: innate idea, derived idea, epistemology, and primary/secondary qualities
I found the section on John Locke and epistemology (the study of human knowledge and its acquisition) to be very interesting. He disregarded many innate ideas and argued that we learn things from experience, even at an early age. Also, as a student looking to go into school counseling, I found the section on Locke and Education to really interesting as well. I like that he believed that children should be rewarded with praised rather than concrete awards and that punishment be avoided as an education strategy. However, it was a little extreme of him to believe that if good habits aren't established at a very young age, bad ones will develop.
The animal spirits that Descartes refers to are also very interesting. He thought that our reflexes were the movement of animal spirits in the brain that activated nerves controlling certain muscles. It's interesting that this is why he believed that the mind can influence the body.
The things I found least interesting in this chapter would have to be the David Hartley section and the lenghty section on Berkeley. The hartley section was boring for me just because while breaking down into their simplest parts might help us to understand things better, I think it's a little more complicated than that. The lengthy section Berkely was hard to maintain focus on because it was just that- lengthy. While the section contains a lot of great things to think about it just didn't keep my focus.
I do feel like majority of this chapter was helpful in my understanding of the history of psychology however. I believe that it is very helpful to understand where psychology came from, especially since it IS such a new psychology. Being a senior and getting ready to graduate, I feel slightly not prepared to graduate because I know so little of the history of the subject i'm about to claim I am educated in.
Things I would like covered in class more are probably the terminology/vocab words. While they are all bolded and clearly pointed out for us, sometimes they are hard to put into context and are definitely hard to judge if they will be on our test or not.
One thing in this chapter that I found very interesting was John Locke's ideas on primary and secondary qualities. The primary-secondary distinction interests me because it deals with our sensory system and how we understand objects and colors. Since we can see different colors, how do we KNOW the exact color we are seeing, and why? I've heard that animals cannot see color, and it's interesting to me on why we can. Locke and Molyneux did an experiment wondering what would happen if a man was born blind. He learned the shapes by touch, and they found that if he had gotten his vision back, he wouldn't know the shapes anymore, and would have to re-learn them again. I found this very interesting.
Another thing I found interesting in this chapter was Berkeley's judging of depth for objects that seemed closer or further away. He said we do not see objects directly, but that we perceive objects from our experiences and visual information. This topic interests me because I wear contacts, and without them, I have horrible vision. I do know that when I take my contacts out, and form a small circle with my hand (like binoculars), I can see as well as if I had my contacts in. Although Berkeley wasn't considered an experimental psychologist because he never really did any experiments on his theory of vision, he did raise questions on our perception for future psychologists.
One section I found uninteresting in this chapter was Kant's idea about space and time. This bored me because he also talked about cause and effect and how these were the most innate properties of the mind and it just seems pretty logic now a days. Another section that I was uninterested in was learning about Mill's Logic and his Methods of Agreement, and Concomitant Variation. The whole X and Y experiments confuse me, although I do believe this is the most used thing in history that has made psychology how it is today.
The two things I would like to go over more in class is the animal spirits that Descartes mentions and how the mind can influence our body, and also over Mills methods, considering I don't really understand it. Overall, I thought this chapter was somewhat interesting, learning about the different people who have influenced the history in psychology, making it what it is today.
I thought in general it was interesting to learn more about philosophers like Descart and Mills, who’s names I have heard and recognize but whom I know little to nothing about. It was also interesting to me to go though the years of philosophy and learn more about how psychology was a part of things even before it was really a practice and science in an of itself.
One thing that I realized while reading, is that I could never be a philosopher. The phrase “I think, therefore I am” drives me crazy. If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it, I want to leave a tape recorder so I know if it makes a sound. These questions with no real answer tend to drive me a little insane.
I also found it interesting that the general root of many different beliefs is that experience is the ultimate contributor I think this is particularly significant in the study of the history of psychology. Experience is still very important in psychology because we know experience can determine a lot of things. So the fact that years ago they already knew that it was this big deal is I think really interesting.
Decartes felt personal experience was necessary in order to know anything for sure. He demonstrated this in the four ways he had to determine doubt:
1. No reason to doubt because things were presented clearly
2. Analyze problems by reducing them to their fundamental elements
3. Systematically work up from simplest of elements
4. carefully review everything so as not to omit anything.
In order to follow these steps one would need to be able to experience a lot of things and really understand what it is they are trying to validate or discredit.
This belief that experience is the root of everything makes more of an argument for nature. I have been told by many of my psychology teachers that it is not nature or nurture but nature and nurture working together to create how people experience and perceive things. Descartes sort of had this idea with his two kinds of ideas. The first was an innate idea, which is knowledge that is native to ourselves, like blinking. The second is a derived idea which comes from our experiences with the world.
John Locke was a prime example of where experience is an important tool. He renamed the “blank slate” to the “White Paper.” This analogizes that children are born with a blank slate, or white paper, on which they can write, and the writing changes the way the paper looks, feels, acts, etc. This is why he felt children should be taught more at a younger age when they are more malleable.
What was really interesting about Locke were his views on punishing children. While it could be easily discovered that children can be conditioned to dislike anything for which they are often punished, he came out with this view at a time when women and children were still very often punished, and this way of life was very acceptable and reasonable. He also realized the need for internal motivation much before his time.
George Berkley was also bit on experience, and felt that what we see is a product of what we have experienced. We perceive things based on things we have encountered before.
David Hume made an experimental method that was based on experience. He felt all understanding is rooted in experience and had two elements of experience. The first was impressions which are basic sensations. The second was ideas which are ‘faint copies’ of impressions and derived from them.
He also had the three laws of association which were:
1. resemblance: which is what an object reminds us of another object
2. contiguity which is when we experience multiple things together
3. cause and effect which is when one event follows another often enough that we perceive one to cause the other.
He did not believe that cause and effect was ever for sure.
John Stuart Mill was another who felt experience was important. He felt nature was more important than nurture and that the mind passively accumulates experiences and elements to combine larger pictures. He is one that argued that psychology should be a science by itself.
I did not understand his methods for applying logic and that would be something I would like to go over in class, if that’s important. Also talking more about David Hartley because I didn’t see how important he was, other than the book he wrote, I guess I didn’t understand how he changed physiological psychology.
There were many interesting topics throughout this chapter but there were a few that stood out. One of these topics was Hume’s cause and effect law of association. The book states that if one event follows another with some regularity, we will develop a relationship between the two. The reason I find this interesting is because I am always looking for answers. I am always looking to know what events cause what results. It is important to think more in depth about this topic because nothing can ever be one hundred percent certain. I enjoyed reading this section because it made me think.
The second topic that caught my attention was John Locke’s thoughts on human understanding. I find it interesting that he believes everyone’s mind begins as a “blank sheet of paper.” Everything that we think of from then on comes from our ability to comprehend ideas through our senses and reflection.
Two topics that were less interesting to me in this chapter were convergence and accommodation. I can see how these two things are related to how we experience events through our senses but for some reason they are somewhat boring to me. They are simply optic principles that I have learned about previously in other classes.
The most important aspect that I believe to be useful in understanding the history of psychology is how our experiences shape our lives. Every single day we change as individuals through experiences. The fact that we have this knowledge allows us to learn.
I would like to go over the topics of Method of Agreement, Method of Difference, and Concomitant variation. I was able to gather some of the information about these topics, however they seemed a bit unclear and a more in depth discussion would be helpful.
One thing that I found interesting was the concepts of geocentric and heliocentric. Geocentric is the former idea that the earth was at the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. Heliocentric replaced this idea, and continues to be the current idea. This concept puts the sun at the center of the universe and the earth moving around it, along with the other planets. I found this interesting because it is now just common knowledge that we are not at the center of the universe, yet at one time that wasn’t something people knew. Those who discovered this information and wanted to make it known went against the authority of the Catholic Church, so by wanting to pass on this information they had to go against a huge powerhouse and challenge the authority of the Church. Another thing that I found interesting was thought that Descartes had, called “animal spirits.” I thought this was interesting because the book said that it traces all the way back to ancient Greece. This idea says that it is derived from the heat of blood and is the driving force behind all movement. Some things that I found to not be as interesting included the information about David Hume and the difference between simple ideas/complex ideas. I find a lot/most of this stuff very interesting, so the only way I can decide what I don’t find as interesting is to decide what readings I didn’t find as enjoyable or interesting. Some things that I found in this chapter that I think will be helpful in coming to understand the history of psychology would be the thoughts of geocentric versus heliocentric, the long past of psychology, the fact that we cannot understand psychology’s history without knowing philosophy’s history, and the different, interesting approaches to science; like inductive and deductive. One thing that I would like to learn and hear more about would be George Berkeley and all of his different ideas. He seems like he would have been an interesting man to have worked with and known! Another topic I would like to hear more about is Descartes’ model of nervous system.
The two things that I found to be the most interesting was about the background about the men who helped develop psychology. I found Locke to be the most interesting because he developed so many ideas about sensations. I also thought the sections about simple ideas and complex ideas to be interesting. With the simple ideas and how colors or physical feelings could create pleasant thoughts. The complex idea was a little more well, complex. In complex ideas more things go into making that one feeling or many feelings.
The two things that I found to be the least interesting was reading about Descartes. It just didn't grab my attention. A lot of things he did was about the human body and not necessarily the brain which I find more interesting than the human body. I also didn't like reading about how religion had a play in the development. It might just be me and my thinking, but with all the technology now which has helped us figure out how things work over the years gives better reasoning than religion does. I realize that back in the 1600's they didn't have the technology we have today so they had to have a reasoning for why things are they way they are.
The thing that I read that I think will be most useful will be learning about all the people that helped develop psychology in its beginning years. I love history so this is probably why I am so interested.
The two things that I would like to be covered more are sensations, primary qualities and secondary qualities. I find them interesting and would like to learn more about them.
One thing that I found interesting was John Locke’s view on raising children. He believed that training must begin early because children will develop bad habits if they don’t learn good habits early in their life. He also said that good habits come with practice and they do such by doing things repeatedly. I agree with Locke when he said that good habits come with practice because no child learns to do anything by only doing it once. As with anything in life, practice makes perfect.
Another thing I found interesting in the chapter was Descartes’ theory of animal spirits. I was surprised to read this and imagine that he actually believed this to be true. To think that there were animal spirits found in the brain, muscles, and nerves that were the driving force behind all movement is a joke by today’s standards.
Two things that I found uninteresting were convergence and accommodation. I understand it is important to our biology and create sensations in our brain but to me anything biology is just dry.
I think the most useful thing in the chapter to understanding the history of psychology is the fact that knowledge comes from experiences in our life. I also felt that having a brief background on philosophy would help understand why we do what we do today and how far we have gotten in the field of psychology.
I found the topics of Method of Agreement and Method of Difference to be a little confusing for me. I just didn’t understand them that well, so maybe those are two topics that you maybe could go over a bit more in class.
One thing I found most interesting was Hume's idea's and his rules of association. His belief's about causes and effects and on how they can never be proven perfectly agrees with my beliefs. His concept of idea's being composed of impressions is also very interesting. All ideas and objects are composed of the simplest impressions and descriptions. For example, you can describe an object or idea to someone that has never seen that object/idea by breaking down into components that they understand.
Another thing I found interesting was that even though Descartes was called a rationalist, his idea of the pineal gland and how animal spirits influence us is kind of contradictory. He has good ideas with the separation of mind and body, but the concept of animal spirits....I really just can't take seriously.
I didn't really find the beginning paragraphs very interesting. I understand that philosophy has a huge influence on the creation of psychology, but I just don't find philosophy that useful. Psychology at least tries to apply things for the betterment of humanity while philosophy is just a bunch of idea's without application.
I also didn't find Hartley very interesting at all. I think his idea of psychophysical parallelism as kind of dumb. I believe body and mind work with each other to give us our experiences, not as separate entities. His association through repetition makes sense though. If I always see someone wearing a certain shirt, when I see that shirt somewhere else, I will most likely thing of that person. I am also not a fan of his idea of Holism, the idea that you cannot understand the smaller components of things unless you stand the hole first. If I see some odd invention I have never seen before, how can I possibly understand it easily. I can break down the invention and look at the parts inside to get an idea of what it does, but asking me to know right away without knowing its components just seems foolish to me.
I found the most useful thing to understanding psychology here was how it showed the graduation integration of empiricism to describe how we think and feel. It starts with Descartes giving ideas but eventually lands to Berkeley who applied these concepts to vision, something physical. Philosophers eventually became psychologist in a way by wanting to understand the mind, and apply what they have found out into practical means.
I would like to talk more about Hume and Berkeley if possible. I just find them very interesting.
I found Descartes' idea of animal spirits to be the most interesting topic of this chapter. I found it interesting because at that point in time it made perfect sense. Today we look at it and laugh because we know it not to be true but given the resources he was back in his time, it is amazing that he thought up such a simple, yet complex way to view movement. It is interesting to me in the context of Descartes actually believing and "proving" this to be true in a sense that he felt there was no other explanation to the movement drive in a body.
The second thing I found interesting in the chapter is the great dispute between heliocentric and geocentric. It is interesting to me because in all actuality, who really gives a hoot? If the earth is the center or the sun is the center of the universe, it's not going to stop me from going to class, breathing air, or drinking beer. This single aspect that Copernicus challenged was the start to the reason why science was crippled by the church. Many of the philosophers, physicists, and psychologists in this chapter weren't able to publish their findings until after they were dead for fear of the church.
Two things that I did not really like or have any interest in were the discussion on the pineal gland and the ideas of convergance and accomodation. The pineal gland part was not interesting because I felt that it didn't really make logical sense, but obviously I am bias because I know more now. I did not find the convergance and accomodation section interesting because I litreally just didn't find it interesting. I found myself rereading and not really caring.
The part of the chapter that I felt most important to learning history was learning about the different types of thoughts and ideas that each of the early philosophers had. I felt that it layed down a nice foundation for making us understand early thoughts and how philosophy and physics merge to later become psychology.
I would like to learn more about the different topics like empiricism, associationism, materialism, determinism, etc. I think that although these labels are almost self explanatory, it would be interesting to learn some more about what people did who considered themselves each of these.
One of the things i found most interesting from CH 2 was Locke's idea's on human understanding. i like his strong ideas on the fact that we as humans learn more from our interactions with others (nurture) than from innate abilities (nature). Locke does have the idea that we are not entirely nurture. he felt that we had innate abilities to think. i tend to agree more with this type of an idea. that we have the ability to do many things, but we first must have people teach us or guide us to them.
The second thing i found interesting in the book again has to do with Locke and his idea on education. as a former teacher i find it interesting when i can apply things from others classes or subject areas that i can use in my future field of work. i like his ideas that children should be taught while there young because thats the time when they take in the most information. the second thing i liked about locke's idea was on rewards. i agree that children that are always rewarded for good things only want the reward and arn't looking to learn.
The two things that i found least interesting was animal spirits and the pineal gland. these two ideas seemed a little to far fetched and not really believable. the pineal gland idea seems to lack exact knowledge of the brian and seems to be somewhat of a guess.
Two things i would like to talk more about in class would be berkley's visual phenomenon and the idea of empiricism.
I found it interesting how the British Empiricists felt that the mind could be broken down into basic elements, just as matter could. Locke believed that association was what held the smaller components together and that these smaller components were the experiences of life. Locke’s take on education is also an interesting one. Children are best served through suffering, such as sleeping on hard beds and wearing leaky shoes as to toughen them and helping them build resistance to disease. Another aspect which seems contradictory at first was his argument that punishment should not be used repeatedly, especially as the child gets over. He believes that we do not want to develop aversions to learning in the child and punishment would accomplish this. Also, rewards were frowned upon because they gave a false motivation. Training must also begin early under Locke’s point of view which I find somewhat agreeable as in previous studying of critical windows and language children are able to pick up more and as Locke puts it, their minds are more malleable. I found Descartes original philosophies interesting, such as his view of finding truth through reason; however, I did not much enjoy reading on his theory of the pineal gland. I am not big on biology and especially biology that has been proven wrong. I didn’t care for David Hartley’s psychophysical parallelism view as physical and psychological acts according separately but parallel.
Psychology's history will best be served by the study of the philosophers who influenced the development of psychology and the process of the transformation of philosophical thought into psychological thinking. I would like to delve into Kant’s view a little more and also Berkley as I have an interest in perception.
One of the things I found interesting from the chapter was the genocentric and heliocentric theories and how they related to past society. Copernicus’s theories Genocentric being the earth is the center of the universe and the Heliocentric being that the sun is the center of the universe.
Another thing I found interesting as the Cartesian dichotomy and the views of animal spirits. The view that animals and human’s spirits are different and why struck me because I have never really thought about it. While thinking about this my mind went to several places. I kept reading and my mind went on another tangent when I started reading about Locke and his innate idea theory. This was when he started talking about why people always come up with some kind of deity and if it was an “innate” idea or not. He probably would have thought that because people all people tend to think about death and so each culture comes up with some way to think about what happens to people’s spirit’s when they die it isn’t an “innate” idea. Makes sense.
I guess the thing I found the “least” interesting is all the paragraphs about the people. It is hard for me to keep them straight because it isn’t like I know who they are and what they looked like. I wish I could put a picture on their so I could better associate what each one did . Like oh yeah that was the guy with the really big mustache. It goes pretty much like this: Catesian was the guy who did the Catesian dichotomy which is the animal human thing, Descartes is the animal spirits guy and also studied the pineal gland which he was way way wrong about. Locke wrote the Two Treatises on Government and made a social contract between the government and the citizens which baisically said they would cooperate with one another. He also studied epistemology, the study of human knowledge and its acquisition and the innate idea thing. And gosh look at that there are like 4 more. I guess I found it interesting, but I hated reading it because I knew it was going to be hard for me to remember who did what. I like the concepts but just not so much remembering the people who did them.
I guess the thing I found most useful to understanding psychology is that depending on the time period people are going to think about things differently. Like the Genocentric and the Heliocentric views. People were outraged by it because it went against the church. Depending on the current norm people are outraged by different things. We could look at issues now in our own society like gay marriage or abortion maybe that people get all fired up about that future generations may ask.. why was that such a big deal then? It all depends on the norms of society I guess.
Two topics for class: Berkeley- how cool is it that by the time he was 13 he completed his most important work… and Method of Agreement, Method of difference and Joint method… because I don’t really understand it.
2 interesting, 2 not interesting, most useful, 2 in depth
One thing I found really interesting in the chapter was the concept of association. I think it is really interesting that hundreds of years ago people were already forming the basis for our understanding of human knowledge and experience in the world. Although their ideas were rather basic for the most part, and some of their ideas were blatantly wrong, the concept still thrives today and has been expanded upon greatly. I particularly found Hume's laws of association to be very interesting. Contiguity, resemblance, and cause and effect are all things that have been continuously studied and examined. I always find it intriguing when we continue to study things that have been studied for hundreds of years, only to come to find that the ideas set forth so long ago were sometimes quite spot on.
Another thing I found very interesting in this chapter also dealt with Hume, and that is his idea that we can never really know what determines cause and effect. His beliefs about what could lead to a true knowledge of cause and effect are what now shape the 'rules' for determining cause and effect in empirical science. These 'rules' were that to be certain that A caused B, 1) when A occurs, B occurs regularly, 2) A has to occur before B does, and 3) B does not occur unless A occurs. It is because of these 'rules' of determining cause and effect that many 'hard' sciences do not consider psychology and other social sciences to be 'real' sciences. Similar to the first topic I found interesting, I think it is so amazing that this belief held by Hume has carried on to modern times and still effects how science is done.
The first thing I found least interesting in the chapter was all the political and personal information about John Stuart Mill. I know it probably helps to understand his work in the field of psychology a bit better, but it was not very interesting to read. Despite this I do understand and appreciate that he was a major figure in the beginnings of psychology as its own science.
I also found a lot of the information about Locke's theories to be a touch boring because I had learned a large portion of it in previous classes. Although many of his theories are intersting in their own rights, I just struggled to read through them because I had already learned the majority of this information.
The thing I think will be most useful is more of a broad thing than a specific topic in the chapter. The understanding of what Empiricism, Associationism, and Rationalism are is going to help me the most in understanding a lot of what we will maybe learn about the history of psychology. These schools of thought had a significant influence on what came to be known as psychology.
Things i would like to learn more about in class are Hume's laws of association and Hume's and Locke's theories on cause and correlation.
I've always enjoyed history so taking a look back at some of the forefathers and early trains of thought of Psychology was very interesting. It was truly amazing to see just how much power the Catholic Church actually held back in the day. They had such a monopoly on what was thought to be true about the natural world and they were so resistant to any kind of change. This was especially true when it came down to believing in a heliocentric or geocentric. Great thinkers such as Copernicus and Galileo had to keep their findings on the DL or else face possible persecution from the Catholic Church. They were brave me to take such a stance.
Another interesting guy to me was Descartes. Has the kind of name that is similar to Socrates...he's got to be a winner. He was especially diverse and was known for many accomplishments. He was unique in that he used the power and knowledge and wisdom of the Catholic Church along with a side of reason. I'm sure his main reasoning for taking this approach was because he was brought up in the Catholic Church's discipline and he had strong attachments to his upbringing. He was not seeking to undermine the Church's authority and yet at the same time he sought to use reasoning or just simple common sense. His famous writing, Treatise of Man, demonstrated his beliefs that our flesh is separate from our spirit. To Descartes the body was simply a sort of machine that our spirit used to get around. He had a great notion here and saw that there is much more to life than simply what our bodies experience. Although Descartes had a lot of good ideas and thoughts he had a doosie of an idea when it came to how our bodies moved. He believed that the Pineal Gland, part of the brain, controlled feeling, memory, and our ability to move. He also said that it was full of 'animal spirits' that made tubes in our body expand through which a tiny thread went through. When the threads were pulled it would control our body, and off we would move. Very interesting thoughts by this guy, but all in all he lived a fascinating life and contributed much to the early fields of Psychology.
I like Locke's ideas on Education. He talks about how children should sleep on harder surfaces because it will toughen them. If they sleep on soft surfaces it melts and dissolves the body and weakens it. He also talks about how kids need to start early in developing good habits otherwise they will develop bad ones. They are develped by practicing and not by learning rules that will will soon forget anyway. He said that children shouldn't be beaten if they didn't do homework because that would just teach them to hate learning. Giving the child candy as a reward for doing something good is also to be avoided. The child then is only interested in the candy and not what he/she is doing good.
I also enjoyed David Hume's 3 laws of association. The first being resemblance, which is when an object reminds us of another. If you saw a picture of the grand canyon, it might bring back images or even memories of a visit to the grand canyon. The next one is Contiguity, which is expericing things together. If someone eats corn only in Iowa, thinking about corn might bring the corn fields of Iowa to mind. The last one is Cause and Effect, which is when one event is followed by another one on a regular basis. When we are wounded it causes us pain. So when we examine the old would we are reminded of the pain and what produced it.
The two subjects I disliked the most were Mill's Psychology and Mill's Logic. I thought they were very boring and just kind of a space filler. The one thing I do wish you would go into more depth in class is about the Empiricism Applied to Vision.
I could easily say that I found a lot more than just two things interesting in this chapter. Starting with Descartes and what his beliefs were on the mind and body interaction. He spoke about really common things now that we never really thought about for example; reflex which was human emotions that are automatic in a stimulus response reaction. His idea on muscle reaction was really something I had to think about. “Little tubes, which all proceed from the brain, and thus contain like it a certain very subtle air or wind,” Descartes would call this theory animal spirits. The pineal gland was also very unique; he concluded that the pineal gland was a place where the flow of the animal spirits could be controlled. When reading up on the end of Descartes I really blew mind how smart the man really was when the Queen of Sweden specifically asked to be tutored from Descartes. When thinking of Queens you usually think royalty, but I guess Queen Christina lacked that in so many ways. A few things that I was somewhat confused on, was the empiricst. What is it, and is it still around today? Also the ideas of materialism and determinism, what was the difference in these two ideas and what impact do they have on us today.
The first thing I found to be interesting from Chapter 2 was the animal spirits theory. I found this to be interesting because I had never heard of it before. Descartes’ believed that traces of the ancient Greeks were derived from the heat of the blood and were the driving forces behind all movement. He believed these constantly moving animal particles were found in the brain, nerves, and muscles of human beings. Another reason I found this to be interesting, besides that fact that I had never heard of this before, but because of how absurd it would sound if someone suggested that idea to today’s society. I am sure there are people out there that believe in such a thing and perhaps it is more common than I am aware of.
The second thing I found to be interesting was how Locke viewed the way our minds develop ideas. He believed that all of our knowledge about the world comes from our experiences. This suggests that the mind, at birth, is an empty slate and can be thought of as a blank white sheet of paper. I have known of tabula rasa for quite some time and I enjoy relearning the concept. Personally, I believe that our ideas result from our life experiences of sensation and reflection. This is an easy concept for me to grasp because when we are younger we learn how to walk, talk, eat and so on. We are not born with these skills otherwise we would not be considered practically helpless as babies.
One thing I found to be not so interesting was the section on British Empiricism. This did not catch my attention because it seemed to focus more on politics which is important to know about but there were more interesting topics in this chapter. The second thing I found to be less than interesting was the section about Mill’s Logic. He had ideas that I could understand but the contents seemed a little too in depth and hard to follow.
Mill’s Logic might be easier to understand if it is discussed in class. I would also like to learn more about Kant’s contributions towards Psychology since he is mainly talked about in Ethic’s classes.
I believe that the two topics in the chapter that i found to be the most interesting were animal spirits, and Locke's history. I found the animal spirits so interesting because they seemed like such an absurd topic while reading about them, but it is easy to see how they would have to come up with ideas before we understood how the body actually worked, and animal spirits seems about as good as any of the others. The small part in the introduction about Locke had me intrigued because i had never heard about him helping overthrow a king, or being there when one was murdered.
The animal spirits, while wrong, are a very interesting way to explain the human body through the methods that people of the time understood, basically pneumatics or hydraulics.
Lockes life was very interesting to me because he had such a large impact on almost everything that we believe in terms of government to this day, and i had never read anything about his life before this. I have always had an interest for history, and i think that this is something that i will look further into.
I found the section going over the method of agreement and the method of difference to be the least interesting part of the chapter, not because the section is not interesting in its own right, but moreso because it was going over things i already understood. Had it not been for having taken a stat's class before, i may have found it more interesting though.
I believe that the most important part of this chapter will be remembering who thought of which concepts. Many of the concepts I've either already heard of, or don't seem incredibly important, but just knowing who did what will be helpful.
I believe that the topics i would be most interested in would be Locke's life and then possibly a little of Leibniz's work, but I'll just read his section again, and that should be enough.
I found "Locke on Education" to be pretty interesting because it matches how I feel about teach youth from many angles. The physical health aspect caught me because I have a cousin who has a weight problem which lead to her having severe heart problems. The condition itself didn't affect her learning but the days it caused her to miss school in the hospital and for doctors appointments did. Even without that happening in my family I know that good health and physical fitness is very important in youth to prevent childhood obesity which leads to other issues for kids such as being teased and causing low self-esteem.
I am a firm believe in starting to teach kids early. The instant they are smart enough to respond to what you tell them. This is how I was raised and I must say it served me well. Graduated high school with a good gap and doing decent in college. It will help school be much easier for them as they grow, and easier work makes school and learning more enjoyable and less stressful.
In a way I agree with his view on punishment. I do believe that kids should be whooped for certain acts to break bad habits. My family used this method and it works well. But I do agree that it should be used wisely because it can cause a kid to be timid and fearful if beaten too frequently. Locke believed in rewarding kids for good/positive behavior and progress. He felt that if you can get a child to love receiving credit and hate to receive negative feedback it will help them build a drive for success while knowing that there is no brutal punishment that will follow a wrong response.
I found Immanuel Kant's view on experience and Psychology as a Science. I definitely agree that experience comes from cause and effect. You can't really view something as an experience if you're unfamiliar with what just happened or haven't experience anything of it's nature. The effect of a cause leads to the next incident being considered an experience. And as far as Psychology being a science it makes sense why he feels it isn't. Science involves experiments and proof provided for claims that are physically visible. In Psychology claims are made but they're from a psychological sense that comes from the mind and it's hard to prove clearly that claims made in psychology are true. A lot of people will know that it's true but there will be those who in every situation says, "SHOW me the proof!" Which is something you can't do in psychology in most cases.
One of the sections I found least interesting was Descartes "Reflex and Mind-Body Interaction". It started off by giving good information on what he felt the connection was, but when he got into talking about "Animal Spirits" is when I kind of lost interest. It was very informative for what it was understood to be back then, but then it became a little difficult to understand when he went from using scientific terms to talking about spirits. I understand that it was back in the 1600's and I have to take that into account but I just couldn't find much interest int it. The final paragraph I feel was unnecessary and pointless and pretty much sold me on my disinterest. Maybe it's because I've been reading a lot.
I personally feel this entire chapter as a whole will help with understanding the history of Psychology simply because it tells you about the early Psychologists, what they claimed, and the corrections that followed later on down the line. You can get into minor details on little things that would help understanding but just reading through the chapter as a whole will help you out a lot.
One thing I found interesting in this chapter was Descartes and all his unique theories. He was a rationalist, which means he believed true knowledge was through the systematic use of reasoning abilities. He was also a nativist, because he believed come truths are universal and could be arrived at through reason and sensory experience. Finally he was both a dualist and interactionist. This means that mind and body were distinct essences but has direct influence on each other. I think it is amazing one person could be all these things without contradicting themselves somehow. Another interesting theory of Descartes was his attempt to explain reflexes, an automatic stimulus- response reaction and his attempt to explain mind-body interactionism. I found his idea of animal spirits, air or wind contained in nerves to be very unique but this was a great explanation for the time period the available science.
I also found the theories of the associationist and empiricist to be interesting as well. It allows us to compare and contrast views and look for some form of common ground. Empiricists believe that our knowledge of the world is constructed from our experiences. Associationists believe that all mental activity is based on connections between mental events, such as sensations and feelings. John Locke was one of the empiricists. He rejected nativist beliefs and thought people were blank slates that were changes by our experiences that come from two sources sensation and reflection. A very interesting aspect of John Locke was is ideas on education and the raising of children. His ideas on ways to keep children healthy and that firmness and softness of the beds they slept on could form their personalities seem so silly to me but it was the best rational for Locke's time. Another empiricist was George Berkely. His work mainly consisted of views on vision. He questioned the ability to judge depth with our eyes testing convergence, which is when objects are moved closer or farther away we alter our eyes disposition. He also worked with accommodation which is changes in the shape of the lens to keep things sharp. Another important position Berkely stood on was subjective idealism or immaterialism. He believed everything was a secondary quality. Another interesting person in this chapter was both an empiricist and an associationist. His name was David Hume. He decided to try and make distinctions between impressions and ideas. Also he identified the rules of association as resemblance, object that reminds us of other objects; contiguity, experiencing things together; and cause/effect, one event follows another with some regularity. Other important people in this section of the book include David Hartley who is thought to be the founder of associationism and John Stuart Mill. John Mill was influenced by the basic tenet s of empiricism/associationism. He was also a child prodigy. He wrote about logic and the methods that should be used to be able to determine the causality of science. These three method where the Method of Agreement, one looks for a common element in several instances of an event; Method of Difference in which one looks for evidence that the absence of an effect is always accompanied by the absence of a proposed cause; and the Concomitant Variation, one looks to see if changes in one thing are linked with predictable changes in another. All this was very interesting to me because it allowed me to see the gradual development of psychology and other interesting sciences. It allows us to take these ideas and build off them our own and to better be able to experiment with their thoughts.
David Hume’s three laws of association (understanding the mind through comparing and grouping complex ideas together): resemblance, contiguity (things that happen together) and cause/effect were very interesting. Cause/effect law was the most interesting of the three to me; it is placing two events together when on follows the other regularly. Hume’s made the point that you can never truly say that one things cause the another, and in today’s terms this is a lot like correlation doesn’t equal causation. Hume’s ideas show up later in Mill’s Method of Agreement, “if X, then Y”, but this does not mean that X caused Y to happen. This, also, fits in with Mill’s method of concomitant variable, though this works more with the degree in which X affects Y.
Locke’s views on education is interesting. Locke had four main views on education, on being children shouldn’t have it too easy; he believed that children should sleep on hard beds and wash their feet in cold water to build up resistance. Second ideal being that children should start learning early and through practice and repetition. Next Locke was against punishment, because it would cause children to completely stop trying. Lastly Locke was against giving physical rewards, but argued that reward should be given by parents’ approval. I think these are interesting, because at some point I would like to become a parent and it’s important to understand different ideas on children. I do not agree with the children should have it hard ideal, but I understand some of the logic behind it.
Descartes’ animal spirits and pineal gland is the least interesting, because it is unbelievable. Animal spirits being the force behind all movement. The mind can start the animal spirits to control the nerves. Animal spirits do not account for reflexes, which he thought were wire like “filaments” that travel to the brain and open “pores”, and move through tubes. Most of these actions are said to occur in the pineal gland, Pineal gland is a place for the animal spirits to run through and be controlled, it is also a place for the mind and body to interact.
I found Locke’s view on the white paper state of the mind at birth a little dull, but only because it is a concept that I have been taught for years. Locke believes that all ideas come from a processes of sensation and reflection. Sensation being the experiences we have through our senses, and reflection is how we process the information from our senses.
Descartes’ concept of innate ideas, knowledge we come to through our reasoning skills, compared to derived ideas, knowledge we come to through our experiences, is the most useful to me in understanding past psychology, because is continues to show up in other’s theories or ideas. Descartes’ concept focuses on the fact that it is one of the other in the way we get our knowledge. This concept is, also, important, because this is a base for the still continued argument of nature versus nurture. Descartes’ concept shows up in Locke’s ideas, but Locke believed that there were no innate ideas, knowledge only comes through experience. Descartes’ concept, also, shows up in Hume’s ideas, Hume’s believed that there were no innate only ideas and impressions.
I would be interested in learning more about Berkeley’s concept of determinism, and how he can still believe in a higher power with this.