Topical Blog Week #3 (Due Wednesday)

Empiricism was the topic I decided to dig deeper into and research more. I wanted to explore three of the men that were talked about in the chapter a little more. These three men were John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. They all had different views on knowledge was derived from sense-experience.

John Locke was the leading philosopher of British empiricism; he created the Theory of Knowledge. According to Locke, at birth, the mind was a blank slate and that the ultimate building blocks of knowledge were simple ideas. These simple ideas were compounds, relations and abstractions. Locke is also known as the realist for he believed relativism is the view that no one can have a perfectly objective knowledge. He concluded that knowledge is restricted to ideas, ideas that are generated by objects we experience and because no two people will have the same experiences, they will never have the same knowledge. He also believed that nobody’s beliefs are better or “truer” than anyone else’s.

George Berkeley was the second empiricist I looked into. Berkeley had and idealist twist to his beliefs. He believed experience is the source of most knowledge, just like Locke, with the exception of knowledge of self and knowledge of God. According to Berkeley all experience is mental or conscious, so that our experiences are just merely ideas. Berkeley declared the following, “Let it not be said that I take away existence. I only declare the meaning of the word so far as I can comprehend.” In his Theory of Vision, he explained that all our knowledge depends upon actual vision and other sensory experiences. He also believed if there was no God then things would constantly be shifting in and out of existence.

David Hume is remembered for taking the empirical elements in Berkeley and Locke’s philosophical views and rejected some linear metaphysics from their thought and giving empiricism its clearest thoughts and formulations. He reduced the contents of the human mind to being either impression or idea, both of which make up human perception. The original stuff of thought is an impression and an idea is a copy of an impression. According to Hume the difference between the two is the degree of their dividends. Since impressions are far easier to know with certainty, Hume devised a test for the legitimacy of ideas: find the corresponding impression. According to Hume, if any idea had no corresponding impression, it would then be stated as not coming from our experience, but from imagination.

All of these men were philosophers, but in turn helped us in the field of psychology down the road. We now know more about the brain and empiricism because of the work done by Locke, Berkeley and Hume.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InO9xLuutuU
I picked this video because I wanted to watch something and this video seemed fun. It was short but it also talked about all three of the empiricists and the data was good and to the point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
I picked this site because I wanted a definition of empiricism and along with the definition I got more information about the three topics I was wanting to know more about within my topic.

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/LandB.htm
I picked this site because I found the format of this site quite interesting. It was broken up into bullet points and paragraphs. This made it easy to decipher the information and dig out what I really wanted to use in my post.

1a) State what your topic is.
My topic is Descartes.

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This topic relates to the chapter because Descartes was very influential and was a big part of this chapter.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in Descartes because I think it is amazing how he was in college when he was only a kid and became a star pupil. I also like the fact that he decided to go find things out for himself. I also think his views on truth and doubting are interesting to read about.

Rene Descartes was around 8 years old when he started studying at the College de la Fleche. While there, he studied things that kids now would never study at such a young age, such as Philosophy, Latin, Greek, and math. The only subject that Descartes found use in was math. That fact became the foundation for Descartes’s way of thinking. When he was done with school, he realized how little he knew about the real world.
When Descartes was done with school, he said this, “I found myself beset by so many doubts and errors that I came to think I had gained nothing from my attempts to become educated but increasing recognition of my ignorance.” I find that interesting because I think we all feel that wen ay at times. I know I wonder all the time about when I am ever going to need long division or something along those lines. After school, he spent a lot of his time in Paris trying to stay private. He did eventually come back out and he had very many ideas about truth and doubting.

“I now seem to be able to lay it down as a general rule that whatever I perceive very clearly and distinctly is true” (Descartes). For something to be considered truthful, it has to be clear and distinct and it has to be impossible for us to doubt it. Socrates found only god who is never untruthful. He said this because god has no falsehood and we are incomplete in our ability to recognize the truth. According to Descartes, who I completely agree with, god is absolute being and everything depends on god. For our existence we depend on god, who is complete and independent.

Like I mentioned a little before, Descartes doubted everything until it could be proven to be true. At first, that sounds reasonable but he wants to make sure it is a 100% for sure thing. Two things that were mentioned that he did not doubt were things that absolutely could not be doubted. One was the fact that he was doubting. He said that he couldn’t doubt the fact that he was doubting because obviously he knew he was doing it. He also said that he couldn’t say that god didn’t exist if he was thinking about god. Even though he was thinking about god, he still could have doubted him but it did not sound like he did. That is probably the one thing that confused about Descartes. Why would he doubt almost everything, and then be so sure of the one thing that is probably one of the most doubted things in the world (god/concept of god)?

Websites:
1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/
a.I chose this site because it talked about the early life and educations of Descartes. This website contributed the most to that part of this post.

2.http://www-history.mcs.st andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Descartes.html
a.I chose this website because it talked about his school life. It contributed quite a bit when I mentioned his school life, such as how old he was, what he studied, etc.

3.http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/descartes.html
a.I chose this website because it talked about how Descartes doubted. I got some of my information on this topic from the other sites, but most of my information on how he doubted everything and looked hard for the truth came from this website.

The topic I chose from the chapter was Descartes’s animal spirit theory. It relates to the chapter because there is a section, that talks about Descartes’s thoughts on reflexes and the interaction between the mind and body. This topic is interesting to me because I find anatomy to be interesting, and I liked how he took body movements and tried to explain why they happen.
Descartes was known for his work dealing with the mind and body. He did a lot of his work determining how/why reflexes occur and muscle movements. He was also known for writing a book called The Passions of the Soul. The book was published a year before he passed away. In this book, is where he gave a lot of insight to his studies about reactions to certain external stimuli. He proposed that exterior movements affect nerve endings that then move the central ends. When central ends are moved, it rearranges a certain space called the interfibrillar. This then leaves room for “animal spirits” to move into their appropriate positions within the nerves. After this study, he was credited the theory of reflexes.
Not only did he think nerves were connected in the disbursement of animal spirits, but he thought the pineal gland also contributed to this. Since Descartes did a lot of work dealing with the mind and body, it makes sense why he would consider this gland as part of his study. The pineal gland can be found in the center of the brain and its functions consist of “secreting a certain hormone called melatonin, regulating endocrine functions, converts nerve signals into endocrine signals, makes you feel tired or sleepy, and has an influence on sexual development.” Descartes thought the pineal gland consisted of animal spirits and that the animal spirits were disbursed through arteries. He believed that these animal spirits were thin and air like; therefore, they could travel through ventricles within the body and as they traveled, they would expand the ventricles. An example of this would be, when you fly a kite. When the air hits the kite, it goes along the fabric, then inflates the kite causing is to rise or fly. He thought that when these ventricles inflated, that was they reflexes occurred.
He talked about the origin of the movement of the body. He believed that it happened two different ways. One of those ways was through the pineal gland. He believed that the pineal gland could move the body in three ways. The first way is through the soul, the second way is through the animal spirits, and the final way is through stimulating sense organs. His thoughts on animal spirits flowing through the body consisted of the spirits moving freely through the nerves and ventricles. When they move through the ventricles, there is a chance they could come in contact with valves within the walls of the ventricles and then shove open these valves. They could then flow into the nerves causing valves within muscles to open and close. Muscle tension could then be relaxed or contracted causing a reflex to occur.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pineal-gland/
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Descartes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passions_of_the_Soul
http://biology.about.com/od/anatomy/p/pineal-gland.htm

J.P.

The topic that I selected to go do research on is the question of the connection of sound mind and sound body. There are different viewpoints that I read through the chapter with some psychologists stating that there is a connection between the two while others state that they are unrelated and they are two separate ideas. The point for me wanting to do the research is that I have always had a strong belief that they are highly related and the when one is being worked on the other is also benefiting from it whether it be the sound mind or body aspect.

In the first article that I read, which was out of a book written by Dr. Kenneth R. Pelletier titled “Sound Mind, Sound Body”, there was a statement between the connection of the mind and body that I have never thought of before. He talks about how meditating, an aspect of the sound mind, can help with your immunity to infections, sound body. I agree with this statement to a certain point because there are some diseases that I find to be unavoidable. The reason why I think this way is because the object to meditate is to escape the world. As you escape your surroundings and the annoyances of life you can find peace in your own world which then causes stress to go down. When stress is low any sickness that comes from people being overly stress is also reduced to a low, which does not make the meditator immune but more unlikely to receive the sickness. Also when one is less stressed they are overall healthier. Stress is also related to weight gain also, which is an aspect of the sound body, but also weight gain is related to cardiovascular diseases which overall can be related to the initial stress. I am not saying that meditating is the solution to the obesity and chronic illness problems, but more of being able to release stress and making life more enjoyable would allow someone to have less problems with their body.

In the second article that I read it had to deal with the connection of cardiovascular activity and brain activity. It stated that a study of military men was done, they compared men that did cardiovascular activity compared to those that did not and those that did have cardiovascular activity in their everyday schedules had more brain activity compared to those that did not have cardiovascular activity. Although the results could be biased, the men that did cardio could have been older and more mature, but the study did not state that there was any other difference in the men besides the amount of cardio done daily. I do agree with this article because I have experienced the same results with myself. My junior year was the first year at a university, I never did cardiovascular activity and all the time I felt too lazy to do homework and get things done on time. The last year and a half I started to do 30 minutes to an hour of cardiovascular activity daily, now I feel more energized and when I have homework I get it done as soon as I have time to do so. My GPA between last year and the year before was a difference of a 2.0, which could have been because of the extra blood flow to the brain and the extra energy giving me a higher motivation to be able to get all of my work done in a timely fashion. Although no one knows if they are directly related because there a few factors that have also changed since like I am older, more mature and I live off campus instead of on campus. Those could have tied into my motivation to do well in school, but I think that it is a cool topic to think that cardiovascular activity could have a connection to brain activity.

The third article is a short article, but it got straight to the point and made it valid enough to be informative. All the article stated was that the mind relies on the body, the body being exercising, through emotional purposes. If you are weak with your sound body aspect then you may not enjoy life and others around you. I have actually witnessed something like this happen which is why this article makes sense to me. One of my friends goes through stages where he will be sound with his body, and other times he is not. I can tell the difference in his emotions towards all of his friends when he is being sound with his body because he is a lot more generous and is wanting to be out with friends a lot more. When he is not being sound with his body he likes a lot of alone time, which we all like from time to time, but he tends to not want to do much and neglect hanging out with his friends when he is not treating his body in a sound way. I think this is because when he implements having a sound body into his weekly routine, he ends up feeling better about himself and it allows him to release any access stress that he has had. I think that this can apply to anyone, whether it be meditating or anything else that is distressing, if they are not treating their mind and their body the way that pleases themselves, then their actions and emotions effect everyone around them. Also, with more of a sound body they will have more energy which allows them not to be angry as much as to also want to do things with others than be by themselves.
Overall out of all the websites that I read about this topic, there is a strong connection between sound mind and sound body. Sometimes there may be other factors that may affect one or another, but from the studies that I read they all point in the same direction that there is a connection somewhere along the lines of each interaction between sound mind and sound body.
http://books.google.com/books?id=GdfbkdHnXV0C&pg=PA269&lpg=PA269&dq=debate+between+sound+mind+and+sound+body+connection&source=bl&ots=r3Tseh57BM&sig=Hu9ZgVaTkWpibXJRB_BiCvUU1ho&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TrQwUvX1PIn52AWnh4CwDA&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=debate%20between%20sound%20mind%20and%20sound%20body%20connection&f=false
I chose this site because it had an aspect that I have never thought of before, meditating to cure a sound body. I knew a lot about exercise relating to the blood flow to the brain, but this article was interesting because it was different but at the same time had the same meaning.
http://www.livescience.com/7990-sound-body-equals-sound-mind-study-finds.html
I chose this article because it was talking about something that I already knew with the brain being connected to cardiovascular activity. I also find it to be very interesting that there is a connection between the two because they are not in the same parts of the body, but at the same time cardio can relax your body and create blood flow to the brain.
http://100proverbs.blogspot.com/2010/10/8-sound-mind-in-sound-body.html
I chose this article because it reminded me of my friend, which is how I related myself to the article and relating myself to the article just makes it an interesting thing to read and reflect on.

J.A.

1a) State what your topic is.

John Stuart Mill

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
In this chapter it discusses how all the important issues concerning psychology has first been addressed by philosophers. John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher of the 19th century. This chapter summarizes Mill’s background, work, and ideas.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I became interested in John Stuart Mills after I read the Close-up in this chapter. I was curious to learn more about him after reading about his uncommon childhood. Mill’s father isolated him and made education his number one priority. I was also interested in Mill and Harriet Taylor’s love affair since Harriet Taylor made a significant impact on Mill’s life.

John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher of the 19th century who later becomes known as one the largest English thinkers of liberalism.

John Stuart Mill was born was born in London on May 20th, 1806. Mill was the oldest of nine children in his family. His father, James Mill was an advocate of Jeremy Bentham philosophy of utilitarianism. James Mill was a big influence on John’s education. If he was not working on his own duties, he was spending his time educating John. Mills was home-schooled by his father and was only allowed to worry about his academics. Mills never got to experience being a kid, and was never allowed to play or interact with other children his age. He began to learn Greek at age three and Latin at age eight. By the age of twelve Mill was studying the works of Thomas Hobbes, Plato, Jeremy Bentham, and more many. Mill was mainly interested in Jeremy Bentham’s work and strongly agreed with him.

By his late teens, Mill was still being directed by his father. Mill started editing Jeremy Bentham’s documents and become involved with philosophic radicals. During this time Mill was also writing for newspapers and journals. Some of the journals he wrote for were Morning Chronicle and Parliamentary History and Review. In 1823 Mill’s father held a position in the East India Company. During this time Mills exposed his commitment to women’s equality. His father on the other hand did not agree and argued women did not have the right to vote. Later on Mills ended up taking his father’s position of chief examiner. In 1826 Mills experienced a mental crisis. He had a nervous breakdown and was dealing with depression. He was experiencing stress from his education and being influenced by his father. While Mills was experiencing his mental crisis, he started to rethink his entire life’s work. He was now interested in changing theories he had previously before. This new change might have been influenced by the poetry he started to read. Later on Mill’s mental crisis went away and Mill began to express his new work and ideas.

In 1830 Mills became a close friend with Harriet Taylor. Mills was impressed with Taylor’s intelligence and asked her to read one of his books he was working on. Over time they started writing essays and working together. They both were secretly attracted to each other, but Taylor was married to John Taylor. Mills still spent time with Taylor and her husband, acting like nothing was going on. In 1833 Taylor assigned a trial separation from her husband. They secretly spent time together after the separation. During this time Mill’s major works started to appear. In 1842 Mill’s published A System of Logic, which describes beliefs about mental chemistry and the argument for the approach to the study of psychology.

Later on John Taylor heard the rumors about Mills and Harried being together and was heartbroken. After the death of John in 1849, Mill and Harriet Taylor got married. Later on Harriet disagreed with some of Mill’s views and worked on changing his mind. Harriet was a big influence on Mill’s views which later gave him power. In 1858 Harriet Taylor died from tuberculosis. In 1889 Mills marked the publication of On Liberty. In the book Mills discusses individual’s opinions and behaviors due to freedom. Mill always discusses how to decide either one’s behavior harms other or not. The book also provides defense of nonconformity, diversity, and individuality.

John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher of the 19th century who later becomes known as one the largest English thinkers of liberalism. Mill wrote the importance of the rights of individuals, especially for women and their equal rights. Mill will be remembered as one of history’s great thinker in regards to political theory.

http://www.biography.com/people/john-stuart-mill-9408210?page=1
I choose this website because it did a great job at explaining Mill’s mental crisis and major works.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRmill.htm
I choose this website because it gave more in-depth information about the love affair between John Mills and Harriet Taylor.

http://www.gradesaver.com/author/john-stuart-mill/
I choose this website because it did a good job at explaining Mill’s background

1a) State what your topic is.
Education and child rearing.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Locke had a lot of thoughts on how to raise a child and educate them.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Someday I would like to be a father and I will have to think about how I want to raise and educate my own child.

2) After looking into my subject I found different ways that people across the internet suggested to motivate your child. Looking into these I started to think about how you could use the suggestions in any number of ways and once your child starts becoming motivated to do something then with the use of classical conditioning hopefully they will keep feeling motivated to act in a more positive way. The ideas were great and made me think about my own childhood and how if some of these ideas were to have been used with me I may have had an easier time early on in my academic career. I want to touch on a few of the different ideas that really triggered me.

One that I saw that would help every child and I wish I could have had more experience with is to help your child organize their school papers and assignments. If parents and teachers can help children learn from a young age good technique to organize school work I feel like it would be a major step in the right direction for a child. Learning to use a planner every day and come up with some kind of acceptable filing system to help me store materials like homework would be great. Now I have taught myself by college but it took me a lot to get a good system down. I wonder however if this will all change with children having more access to computers and some school giving laptops to the children, I would be willing to guess it will make it easier to store different classes in different folders and have quick access to them.

A common one that many people share and I agree with is to simply celebrate with a child on any success. This helps a child feel better for that 100% and makes them want to drive more for it. If I think back to my childhood my parents both worked a lot and were not always there to give me that high-five for getting a 100% of something of similar success. I will admit that, that is something that I believe has hindered me when I was in middle/high school. If you don’t have someone there when your younger to show you that getting a good grade is a great thing then you may start to feel like it may not matter the grade you will be treated the same after. Well I eventually turned it into a drive for me to get better and better grade to prove something to myself more than anyone else.

Lastly I want to touch on a statement that I don’t totally agree with. The Idea is to focus on strengths and encourage developing talents. I will say I must agree that it is important to help a child by encouraging their developing talents, by doing this you can help them become that all-star athlete and a 4.0 student. You can help make things like academics and sports second nature to them. However I don’t agree with the idea of focus on just strengths. I did that when I was younger and when I started to do poorly at math I stopped looking at it. I am not very good at doing math and get a little anxiety when I have to take a math class. If you tend to look only at the things you are good at, yes you will feel better because soon you will become great at those things. What happens to the things that you did not do so well at? Well they will fall by the wayside and you may grow up to regret not spending that extra hour a day looking at the subject to become proficient at it.

http://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/motivate-school-success/10-ways-to-motivate-your-child-to-learn
http://www.wikihow.com/Motivate-Kids-to-Do-Well-in-School

These two sources where both great at giving a list and brief description of each of their ideas on how to better raise a child to be motivated in school as well as all aspects of life. Here is where I developed a good amount of my thoughts on this paper because they were designed for more of a parent to child relationship.

http://busyteacher.org/6943-teachers-top-10-ways-to-motivate-students.html

This sight was a great insight into teacher ideas on how to better manage a classroom and encourage children you may have under your leadership. I liked how this sight was easy to read this made it easy for a parent to see where a teacher may be coming from on some of their own tactics.

After reading the chapter, I wanted to learn more about John Stuart Mill. The little bits of information we were given about him I found fascinating, and I wish the author would have written more about his past. I think his childhood is very interesting, and I wanted to learn more about how that shaped him into the adult he grew up to be and how it influenced his philosophy about the world around him.

I think it is safe to say that Mill, Jr. was a genius. His father, James Mill, educated his from a very early age and did not allow him to play interact with other children his own age (besides his siblings, of course). His father believed in associationism, meaning that mental processes operate by the associations of one state with the following states. Because of this belief, James Mill did a bit of a social experiment with his son by keeping his nose so deep in reading. He wanted his son to be a leader among radicals in the field of philosophy. By the time he was eight, J.S. Mill had read more than I have read in my lifetime, and I am turning twenty-one soon. He had read all of Aesop’s Fables, many dialogues of Plato, read about history, and had been taught math, physics, and astronomy. He also learned Greek and Latin to the point where he was able to read in both languages.

By the time he was eighteen, Mill, Jr. was very influenced by Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of utilitarianism, and took on the task of revising all of Bentham’s manuscripts into a long and coherent treatise. His father helped land him a position with the East India Company, where he quickly moved up in rank to Chief Examiner.

Mill, Jr. was a strong advocate for freedom (i.e. of speech and of thought) and also did a lot of work for women’s rights. He argued that if everyone was free to make their own choices, society as a whole would be much better off. He also argued that for someone to develop as a whole person, they had to be free. In his essay, This Subjection of Women, one can clearly see how strongly he believe in equal rights for men and women. He fought for women to have equal rights, especially in the realm of education. His essay is still used today among feminists who are advocating for equal rights.

Mill, Jr. was raised without a religion forced upon him, and he never claimed a religion as his own, so many believed him to be atheist or agnostic. In his later essays, however, he writes about how religion is just a social construct to organize people and be able to control them. He goes on to say that religion is no longer needed and may be detrimental to society.
John Stuart Mill was very influential in his time, and is still influential in the worlds of philosophy and psychology (among others). The contributions he made during his life are astounding. He collaborated with many other philosophers to compose manuscripts and later revise those into essays and treatises. He was a very interesting man, and, needless to stay, extremely intelligent. It is amazing to me that he was born in the early 1800’s, but his intelligence seemed so ahead of his time. He always stuck to his beliefs, no matter the persecution. I think we can learn from J.S. Mill in more ways than one.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#Lif

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Mill.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRmill.htm

The three URLs above give links to websites that all provide great biographies of the life of John Stuart Mill. The Stanford Encyclopedia gives a very detailed account of his life, including all the different pieces of literature Mill read in the course of his lifetime and most of the people with whom he corresponded. The Spartacus Library also gives a pretty detailed account of all of Mill’s great accomplishments, and dives a little deeper into his relationship with Harriet Taylor. The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics gives a broad overview of who J.S. Mill was, so I used that site to have a general understand of him.

1a) State what your topic is. The topic I chose to do some research on because I was interested in it was geocentric and heliocentric theory. Geocentric view of the universe means that the earth is at the center of the universe. The heliocentric view of the universe proposed that the sun was at the center and earth moved around it just like other planets.

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter. This topic is related to the chapter because in the beginning of modern philosophy and science, Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus challenged the theory of geocentric view of the universe.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it. I am highly interested in this topic because I am a catholic and we do not believe in evolution. And on top of that I am very unfamiliar with the ideas of evolution and which idea is correct. Since there is different opinions and neither of them are false or true I am going to compare results relating to heliocentric views and geocentric views.
One of the explanations the geocentric ideal was so common for many years is because it did explain a lot of the explanations made by the Greeks. The geocentric model described that everything falls towards the earth (gravity) as well as why Venus seems to stay the same distance from earth based on its fixed illumination. As some astronomers saw complications with the geocentric theory, they decided to change it to account for these inconsistencies. Another popular reason why this notion was so popular was because it went along with the Roman Catholic Church.
As expertise was advancing, more snags raised fronting the geocentric model. Nicolas Copernicus fabricated on the work of previous experts and circulated his heliocentric theory in his book. He made some drastic variations such as declaring that the stars do not orbit the earth and stating that the globe’s spin is what makes it appear as if the stars orbit our world.
Here’s the kicker, after all these disagreements over the different theories, neither one actually is true. Einstein distressed both models, and new suggestion has revealed that the solar systems center of gravity is not the precise midpoint of the sun. This means that both models are satisfactory regardless of the important alterations between the concepts. Astrophysicists use both heliocentric and geocentric simulations for study depending on which theory makes their calculations easier. It certainly appears as if certain things are comparative after all.
http://www.universetoday.com/36487/difference-between-geocentric-and-heliocentric/
This website gave me a background on heliocentric and geocentric views. It also explained how each one was used and how it is still credible today even though there is no right or wrong explanation.
http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/geas/lectures/lecture11/slide02.html
This website provided a easy to read and easy to understand diagram of the heliocentric and geocentric set up in the atmosphere.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090830102509AACn4kx
I was curious to what people had to say in regards to the heliocentric and geocentric theory. And even though each theory is politically correct, people choose to follow the heliocentric model. Reading through opinions showed me that MOST people tend to say that heliocentric is the proven model and that geocentric is disproven.

1a) & 1b)
My topic is John Stuart Mill. There was a close-up about him in the chapter, which also talked about his unusual upbringing and his later work.
1c)
What most interested me about John Stuart Mill was his unusual childhood and upbringing. His father oversaw his education and isolated him from other children. He did not attend school and studied topics that were very advanced from a very early age. He also did quite a bit of self-teaching, with assistance from his father.

John Stuart Mill was born May 20, 1806, to parents James and Harriet Mill. I think it is important to understand James Mill in order to understand John Stuart Mill. James was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and was briefly a pastor. He was a well educated man who eventually published “The History of British India.” He also was friends with many of the great philosophers and intellectuals of the day. James Mill oversaw John's education exclusively until 1820, and he learned everything from Latin to geometry. He also studied political economics and taught his younger siblings. In 1820, he spent a year in France with a family friend and continued his studies. He became fluent in French and tackled advanced chemistry and math, as well as continuing to learn history.
In 1820 and 1821, Mill began to contribute to various periodicals and newspapers. He gathered friends within the intellectual community. He participated in various intellectual clubs and public debates, but in 1826, had what he referred to as a “crisis.” He fell into a depression and struggled with the idea that he disagreed with his father's beliefs and doctrines. Because of this crisis, he started to experiment with various European intellectual movements, including Romanticism. He started working on a new project, two articles that spoke about a new Radical philosophy, with the help of his wife, Harriet. She was a huge influence on Mill's life as well as his intellectual works.
Throughout his life, Mill worked on a great variety of projects. In 1823, he started to work at The East India Company, which he eventually became Chief Examiner of. In 1865, he was elected to the House of Commons. Throughout his entire life, he published various articles as well as other works, such as System of Logic, On Liberty and Utilitarianism, The Subjugation of Women, and Three Essays on Religion.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/382623/John-Stuart-Mill/10414/Public-life-and-writing
http://www.iep.utm.edu/milljs/
I picked all three sites because they were very detailed, and what I read in them agreed with what I already knew about John Stuart Mill in my textbook. The IEP is reviewed, which makes it more reliable than some websites, and has an .edu ending. This website provided information about John Stuart Mill's early life as well as information about James Mill. Encyclopaedia Britannica provided information about John Stuart Mill's studies as well as his crisis. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provided information about Mill's career as well as his works and publications.
NRS

Courtney Wiese
Week 2 Topical Blog
1. State what your topic is: Gottfried Leibniz
2. Discuss how the topic related to the chapter: The chapter discussed Gottfried Leibniz, as he was a philosopher or early psychologist who was against the British empiricist theory.
3. Discuss why you are interested in this topic: I wanted to find out more about Leibniz because I liked his approach to the mind. He agreed with Locke that experience was necessary to acquire knowledge, but he disagreed that the mind was “white paper”, instead Leibniz believed that a better metaphor was a block of marble, and it could be shaped in different ways. However, according to the text, “the way the marble is veined limits the number of shapes that are possible”(53). I liked this metaphor a lot more, than everyone having exactly the same mind to mold, but rather that everyone is different.
Liebniz was born in Germany in 1646. His father was a professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig, but he died when Gottfried was only six years old, and so he was raised mainly by his mother, who gave him a strict religious upbringing. However, his father did leave him his collection of books, and so along with attending school Gottfried read his father’s books and taught himself many subjects, including Latin. At the age of 14, he attended the same college his father taught at before he died. There he learned many subjects, including philosophy. He eventually moved on to get his doctorate of law at the University of Altdorf. Although he never married, he kept rather busy. He had various careers in his life, and one of the most important was becoming a diplomat, where he was sent Paris. Paris in the 17th century was the hub of learning at that time. IT was there he worked with many scholars, and where he worked with mathematics and learned more about philosophy. He is known for developing calculus and the binary system.
In philosophy he is known for many things, however he had no one major book that expressed his views. Instead his views are gathered through his many shorts works and unpublished writings. One concept he developed is the principle of sufficient reason, this means that nothing can happen in the world without a logical explanation for it. One of he biggest theories he developed was the theory of monads. Monads are ultimate elements of the universe; these monads are developed by the “ultimate monad” which is God. Monads follow their own rules and they are forever. Basically, it’s similar to believing the world is composed of energy. He believed that space, matter, and motion, basically anything one can see or touch, are simply phenomena. He is also known for helping to develop logic.
The articles did not focus much on his theory of awareness, unlike the textbook. Most of the articles focused heavily on his theory of monads, and two of the articles discussed monads but did not discuss perceptions at all. I found Leibniz a bit over my head, as I feel philosophy is to me most of the time. I used the following website for my research:
http://www.egs.edu/library/gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz/biography/ - This website worked well for his background information, but did not go into his philosophy in much detail.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/ - This website went in-depth into Leibniz and his work. It was useful, but at times it went WAY over my head.

http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_leibniz.html - I used this website for a little biography and a little more condensed version of his philosophy and work.

I also checked out Wikipedia to try and help with some of the more confusing ideas, including his work on monads, which I had problems completely understanding.

Jared Leppert

1a) State what your topic is.
Treatise of Human Nature
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
This essay by David Hume was mentioned and explained under Hume’s section of this chapter. After conducting some research on it I learned it had a lot more to do philosophically than human cognition. The essay also tackles ideas of space and time, human emotions, free will, and morality. Considering this is a psychology class I will keep it relative.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it
In the second paragraph of David Hume’s section the author describes Hume as “never modest”. I like knowing that this guy was smart, and that he knew he was smart. He could have been an arrogant jerk or really confident in his ability. Assuming the later, this means Hume truly believed and was confident in his philosophies, which gives his ideas a little more color.

2) A Treatise of Human Nature is 368-page essay containing three books that philosophically explores different aspects of the human experience, mainly perception and thought, along with moral and space-time philosophy. Modern historians consider this his most important writing, but his contemporary population did not think so. Once published it was a flop at best. Hume began this work’s inception when he was 16 and finished it ten years later. After the flop that was A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume decided it was unsuccessful because of style and not content so he published Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. This also did not do well but bent on making money off of his philosophical ideas he revamped in and published An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
A Treatise of Human Nature is comprised of three books: Of the Understanding, Of the Passions, and Of Morals. In order to buy into his philosophies one must buy into empiricism. Hume believed humans learned by a possible precursor to information processing models. The brain synthesizes impressions from information it receives via the senses. These impressions are then the backbone of simple ideas, and the combination of simple ideas becomes a complex idea. Every empiricist describes similar process to how humans learn and experience life. But Hume differs however by using empiricism by ruling out God. He states that God is a complex idea made up of simple ideas to impressions and because there is no direct experience of God there is not proof of his existence. This was obviously a controversial and unpopular idea, but the point of this post is not to argue God’s existence. Another aspect of his hierarchy of ideas is that impressions are infinitely divisible, but they become so small that humans do not have the ability to comprehend it, much like the size or the universe. In this section Hume describes his associations: resemblance, contiguity, and cause-and-effect. The book is the best source for these three I found, so I will leave them alone to avoid redundant.
In the second book, Of the Passions, Hume describes where human emotion is derived from. He states we have two types of impressions, primary and secondary. Primary or original impressions come from our environment and are received as either pleasurable or painful. Primary impressions or ideas built up primary impressions then create secondary impressions, which encase the human emotional spectrum. This can be exemplified using one of the tools of association, cause-and-effect. Cause-and-effect is a relationship between two items that one has taken notice to. The person presumably took notice to this relationship because it matters to them. How does it matter? Hume would answer this by saying that the relationship between these two items can be broken down into being pleasurable or painful.
Hume’s third book, Of Morals, is broken down into twelve, long-winded sections that do not have much to do with psychological philosophy. However, all his reasoning’s are deeply rooted in his ideas presented in the first two books.
Empiricist ideas are littered throughout Hume’s most important work A Treatise of Human Nature. He explains how humans learn and experience from his slight twist on British Empiricism. He also introduces his ideas on how humans associate impressions and ideas for one another. Essentially A Treatise of Human Nature was a poorly received, semi-controversial evolution of British Empiricism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_of_Human_Nature
I liked this source for the historical and social situations surrounding A Treatise of Human Nature and a little on David Hume. It also gave a simplistic understanding of each book of the essay.

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hume/section1.rhtml
This source was excellent because it had an in depth perspective of some of Hume’s ideas along with examples. Where it lacked in historical context it more than made up for simple yet thorough summary of A Treatise of Human Nature

http://www.uwplatt.edu/~drefcins/humeencyclopediaentry.html
This source included some historical influences of Hume. It also offered another perspective of the text which is important when discussing philosophy.

1a) John Locke
1b) John Locke is often considered the founder of the empiricism movement which the book which sets up the rest of the chapter that includes other leading British empiricists and associationists.
1c) The section on John Locke grabbed my attention since I was familiar with his name but couldn’t quite remember what exactly he did. However, soon as I got to reading about John Locke I found it extremely intriguing that he had a direct influence on the modeling of the Declaration of Independence.

It has been made clear from the second chapter, video I watched, articles I read that John Locke has made a great impact on society today. In fact, one article I read was even titled; “John Locke-A philosophical Founder of America” while the video went on to describe him as an honorary father of the United States, and the other article said that he was regarded as one of the prophets of the American and French revolutions. There has been no doubt that John Locke is one of the most important names of America’s history. However, both articles I read mention that his name is widely unknown.
Locke had submitted some of his works privately because they were against the views of the Anglican Church; which if one were to publicly state their views against would be persecuted. He was against to the idea of government establishing laws in specific church doctrines, and pushed for a religious toleration for people who were not for Anglican doctrines. He made an argument for separating the church from the state. He emphasized the importance of free and autonomous inquiry.

As all of my sources and the book mention, John Locke greatly placed high ideals on experience, one of my sources went on to mention this quote from John Locke, “No man’s knowledge can go beyond his experience”. He had this belief that every experience you have defines what you become and that experience shapes your character. This kind of thinking still is present today and is widely used throughout our culture.
Another great influence left by John Locke was his views on education and published Some Thoughts Concerning Education. This was originally from letters that Locke wrote to his friend, which included his suggestions on the best ways to educate children. Locke shared a great belied that education made the individual and said that “of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education”. This book became a best seller and printed in almost every language of Europe and made it through 53 editions in the next century. Some refer to him as the “founder of the Enlightenment in education as in much else”.
John Locke was a man filled with many talents and skills. He wrote about many other subjects, such as literature, medicine, poetry, economics, and agriculture. He has left a huge influence in our culture whether it is from ministers to presidents from the United States mentioning Locke’s ideals to even the television show Lost that includes a character named John Locke and has quite similar ideals to his infamous inspiration. It is unfortunate that John Locke is still somehow largely unknown to some people. Depending on what article you read, some people think that his work has been ignored in the modern day since it was religious while others think that it will become more widely recognized throughout the 21st century. Either way, we have to thank the radical thinkers of their time like John Locke as they have influenced the ways we think, act, and imagine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFqbwIzyvRM
I choose this link because it gave good information how John Locke has been tied directly into modern day as they compare his quotes with quotes from the character John Locke in Lost and gave good detail on his ideals.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/influence.html
I choose this link as it gave a good basis for all that John Locke has accomplished throughout his life and explained what it was like for Locke to grow up as a radical thinker for his time.

http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=99156
This site gave great detail and information on how John Locke has created such a great influence for modern times whether it is from mentions of his ideals in many presidential speeches to discussing his works in detail.

1a) State what your topic is.

Descartes animal spirits
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter. 

This relates to the chapter because it was one of the topics that were discussed.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested in this topic because it is such a far-fetched theory, and the thought of animal spirits controlling the muscles and things of that nature in the human body is very intriguing. Also prior to this class I had no idea that this was an actual idea that individuals had. I only knew that Native Americans had thought of animal spirits to have power.

After doing a little research of my own on the Internet I found some more information about animals spirits that I found to be really interesting. One of the first things I read was that Descartes was actually a mathematician, physiologist, and philosopher. He was also one of Descartes had thoughts on animal spirits and sleep in humans. The more spirits that were flowing throughout the brain meant that the individual was awake, and with that if there were a small number of animal spirits the brain decreased in size and the individual is sleeping. He also argued that these animal spirits were an actual liquid that ran throughout the brain. His theory was that tiny particles that were in the blood passed through the pineal gland on its way to the brain. In the brain these tiny particles turned into animal spirits

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/07/10/exorcizing-animal-spirits/

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Descartes.html
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/new_history/early_modern/descartes.html

1a) State what your topic is.
- Rationalist: Philosophical tradition emphasizing the use of reason and logic to arrive at truth; associated with Descartes.


1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
- This chapter covers the philosophical roots in which psychology has been founded; and who is a more widely recognized and studied philosopher than Descartes? Through Descartes processes of though psychology as a discipline was formed, and followed many of the same research guidelines set by Descartes.


1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
- This topic not only modernized the philosophical thought process, it also brought about changes in the field of philosophy that made it more scientific, eventually bringing about the change that gave birth to psychology. Because psychology is based in the scientific process, its evolution beyond the philosophical thought process, that used logic and reason. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8wh8C7lP7U ) Besides the terrible acting in this video, it really demonstrates the points that are influential in this concept. This video applies the theory of rationalistic though to the modern world, comparing it to the, hard science, thought process of empiricism. Why do we not use empiricism in psychology? Because as psychologists we are forced to perceive things beyond what are senses can feel, this gives psychology a bad rap to some hard core empiricists. Many of our theories about how the mind, and brain work cannot be directly observed, and therefore they would be considered hypothesis, and their existence would be questioned. Fortunately for us, and psychology, we can use the same scientific method empiricists use, and make generalizations based on observations, and measurable behaviors. Within the approach of rational thought we use three different theories inductive/deductive thesis; is what allows us to make theories based on intuition. The third is the innate concept thesis, where some of our knowledge is rational in nature; we apply this knowledge to questions in certain subject areas. Today there are multiple Rationalist Associations, that claim to fight irrational knowledge, religion, and science.

Terms: Rationalist, Descartes, Empiricist, inductive, deductive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8wh8C7lP7U
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/
https://rationalist.org.uk/history

posted for a. s.
1a) State what your topic is.
Broca's/Wernicke's area

b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Paul Broca was a French neurologist who was known for specializing in patients who suffered brain damage and how that damage affected one's speech impairments depending on where the damage was located. Broca's famous patient was known as "Tan." Tan had damage to his Broca's area, which is located on the left frontal lobe of the brain. In Tan's case, he had lost the ability to speak coherently. Broca's patient was literally unable to produce any type of speech. It wasn't because Tan was unintelligent or mentally delayed, but because he had damage to his left frontal lobe, which caused this speech impairment. Then, 10 years later, a German neurologist by the name of Carl Wernicke, discovered another finding about damaged brain areas and it's correlation to speech impairments. When Carl's patients had damage to the left temporal lobe, they had the ability to produce articulate speech, but it was usually nonsense. Patients who had damaged the Wernicke's area, were able to talk, but what they were saying made no sense; it was a bunch of jiberious. These two areas relate to the chapter because they are both areas of the brain that have been altered because of damage and their direct cause has been speech impairments. I think that both of these findings from Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke were huge break threw. These two discoveries are most definitely a part of the history of Psychology.

c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke and their famous brain areas is something that I am interested in because I have heard about both of these areas throughout my Psychology classes, but I have never really had the chance to learn about the areas in a deeper manner. For example, I wasn't even aware of the cases studies that brought these areas into play. I didn't know much about the doctors who found these parts either. I find the brain to be an extremely interesting organ. It's so insane to me that damage to certain and specific areas of the brain can dramatically change a person's actions, thoughts, speech, ect. Just knowing that the brain is able to preform different tasks from different parts of the brain is pretty amazing to me. Another reason I find this to be interesting is because my major is Special Education, so I will be working with children who could have speech impairments and even brain damage that could pertain to this information as well.

2) When a person has brain damage, depending on where the damage is located, it can affect a great amount of brain function. In Broca's and Wernicke's case findings, they found that when the left hemisphere is damaged, speech impairments can take place. In about 97% of all people, speech impairments take place because of damage to the left hemisphere. Language and speech was also discovered to be on the left side of the brain by these two neurologists. Both areas that were found seem to have another connection that would make sense on why language and speech would be disrupted if damaged. Broca's area and Wernicke's area are connected by a bundle of nerve fibers that are called "arcuate fascisulus."

Broca's area is located in the left frontal lobe which is ironically associated with the specific function of language. When a patients Broca's area is damaged they lose the ability to produce speech, properly form words, and their speech is slow and slurred if there is any. These patients have the ability to understand speech and language and all other mental capabilities. People who have this kind of aphasia, find life to be difficult and annoying because they are able to have the ability to want or need things, but they are unable to say anything. This could be comparable to children who are non-verbal, just imagine how frustrating it would be to know you want or need something, but you have no way of saying it. "Tip of the tounge" was a phrase that was soon used to describe a patient with damage to the Broca's area. They wanted to say it, and they knew what they wanted to come out, but nothing did.

Wernicke's area is located behind Broca's area in the left temporal lobe. This area of the temporal lobe is associated with the processing of words that we hear from others, and language inputs. When there is damage to the Wernicke's area, patients have the ability to talk, but their speech makes no sense. Their way of speaking is known as "word salad" because it is as if all the words are mixed up like the greens and vegetables in a salad. The patient is able to speak clearly, just not coherently. In most cases, these patients loss the ability to understand language unlike when there is damage to the Broca's area. It is very easy to see and hear when a person has damage to the Wernicke's area because everything they are saying, literally comes out as jumbled words. Patients with this also had a hard time repeating back words to a person, but they believe that they are making sense and doing what they are asked.

Even though Broca and Wernicke made their discoveries at different times, they were both two really big findings that explained a lot about the human brain, especially the left hemisphere of the brain. Both findings were huge in realizing where language and speech function was located in the brain, how damaged brain matter could affect different things, and also using new ways to find out more information. For example using the technique of ex aiming the brain once the patient has died to get a better understanding of how the areas worked internally instead of externally. I think these discoveries gave both of these neurologists opportunities to find numerous facts and connections about the brain. Broca's area and Wernicke's area are two terms that have made the history of psychology and they will most likely always be brought up in psychology setting.

3) Resources

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/lang.html

This website was very helpful in showing diagrams of where each area was located and it also did a great job of defining each term. This website is kid friendly and seemed to be beneficial in learning more about the autonomy of each area. It gave statistics which helped me visually understand how many patients with brain damage in that area would have the speech impairment. It also listed the different types of speech impairments each area could have.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTdMV6cOZw

This youtube video was of an older lady who had damage to Wernicke's area and it was clearly known because when shes talked, and repeated sentences back to the lady, they made NO SENSE! This video helped understand what a person with a damaged Wernicke's area would actually sound like. It proves how easy it is to notice when someone has damage to that area.

http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/d/d_10/d_10_cr/d_10_cr_lan/d_10_cr_lan.html

This website gave more diagrams and facts about each of the areas. It also gave a little bit of background on both neurologists. This website did a great job with giving information that correlated with actual brain anatomy that would help aid language procession. It also informed me that both areas are actually connected, which would make sense on why both of the areas have to do with speech impairment.

1a) State what your topic is.
Hermann Ebbinghaus memory studies

1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Hermann Ebbinhaus was the founder of experimental psychology of memory. Being a college student, I was interested in him and his study because there is every once in a while where I would forget something right away, that I just learned. This topi relates to the chapter because in Chapter 2 Ebbinghaus a talk about the long past that psychology has but a short history. This is because in the past, psychology was philosophy because there were not many experiments done, just thoughts. Ebbinghaus was one to study memory and learning and was part of the "new psychology" that came from philosophical roots.

1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I was interested in this topic because I recently did a paper on sleep on its effect on memory in my Research Methods class and in short, the more sleep, the better the memory. Ebbinghaus was very intrigued with memory and discovered many things about memory. The more I know about memory and the positive and negative effects of forgetting and learning, I think it will help me more in my studies. If I memorize something and then actually put it into use, it will resonate in my memory longer.

2) Take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it.

Hermann Ebbinhaus was born in Barmen, Germany. At 17 he began to study philosophy at Bonn University, but this was disrupted by the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. After the war, he began traveling and this is where he carried out research on memory. Ebbinghause tested the effect of association on memory, recording the results mathematical to see if memory follows verifiable patterns. He started by memorizing lists of words and tested how many he could recall. Ebbinghaus made an interesting use of words that he used to memorize. They were called "nonsense syllables" and used standard word format of consonant-vowel-consonant. He would test different lists and different learning intervals, writing down the speed of learning and forgetting.

Ebbinghaus results suggested that he could remember a poem ten times more easily than his nonsense lists. His evidence of forgetting, Ebbinghaus found that he tended to forget less quickly the lists that he had spent the most time memorizing. Ebbinghaus's memory experiments showed that forgetting is most rapid with the first nine hours and items forgotten can be relearned faster than new ones learned for the first time. He also found that material that is mastered is remembered longer and items toward the beginning and end of a series are most easily remembered.

http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pioneer-of-memory-research/

This site gave me information about his life and showed a list of his studies toward memory.

http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/ebbinghaus.shtml

This website gave me information about Ebbinghaus's career and his major contribution toward the field of psychology such as describing the learning curve, and developed the first scientific approach to study memory.

http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/hermann-ebbinghaus-on-memory-illusion-experiment-lesson-quiz.html#lesson

This website explained the different experiments that Ebbinghaus used to keep track of his memory and forgetting. It talked about the spacing effect and the serial position.

I chose to look more into Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He was a rationalist mentioned in the book who responded to the study of empiricism. Leibniz’s father was a professor of moral philosophy; however, he died when Leibniz was only six years old. His father’s third wife, who taught him guided by the moral and religious values of her own, then brought him up. His father had a significantly large library where he taught himself studies in theology and metaphysics, which he was interested in Aristotle and improving his logical systems. Entering the University of Leipzig at the age of fourteen, Leibniz studied philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. During this time he produced a thesis, On the Principle of the Individual, where he first introduced his notion of monad. The book explains how monad is elements of both mental and physical reality. Also known as a pre-established harmony. Monads are said to be arranged in a hierarchy and were infinite in number. By October of 1663, he was awarded his Master’s Degree in philosophy where he proposed his dissertation combining philosophy and law. Leibniz made important contributions to a number of classical topics of the philosophy of mind, including materialism, dualism, idealism, and mind-body interactions.
Monadology is one of Gottfried’s best-known works. Even though he did have a big part in establishing monad, Gottfried did not start using it until mid-1669. Leibniz said there were indefinitely many substances individually programmed to act in a predetermined way, each program being coordinated with all the others. It solves the mind body problem at the cost of declaring any interaction between substances a mere appearance. The work really begins with the explanation of what monad means. Then it transitions to their principle or creator, then uses it to explain the world. Monads are said to be simple substances, and God is also said to be a simple substance, but it is the only one, which is necessary and without a body attached. Leibniz believed that even if we could fully understand the universe we would discover it surpasses the wisest people and it is impossible to make it any better than it already is. This explains not only the world as a whole, but us as individuals as well.
Rational monads is said to account for consciousness. However, Leibniz believed consciousness wasn’t all or nothing kind of an affair. He distinguishes between apperception, perception, and petites perceptions. Apperception is known as consciousness, or the reflective knowledge of this internal state. It is a well known concept, but not necessarily easily understood. A common understanding is that for Leibniz apperception is distinctive of spirits, and is not present in even the highest of animals beneath humans. It is difficult to understand though because it seems as if he contradicts his views. He speaks of some higher forms having consciousness, but some not. This makes us believe he may or may not agree with the Cartesian principle, which states that beasts are not conscious, but only material automata. Petites perceptions are perceptions not apperceived. Leibniz identifies apperception and sensation by this thought. To a certain extent we can say that in the Leibnizian realm of mind there are indeed only perceptions and appetitions, but in these there is a fundamental divide between the realm of consciousness and unconsciousness.
This was a difficult topic to speak about; however, I feel after studying and reading more material on the subject I have come to a better understanding of what Leibniz was getting at when speaking of consciousness and unconsciousness. Interestingly enough I feel as if I dove into a deep form of philosophy without much prerequisites of the topic. I do believe I need to further investigate the topic to understand it. Obviously by reading a few websites doesn’t make me an expert, but I know more of why he was important to the psychology realm.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-mind/
I chose this website because it explains Leibniz’s philosophy of the mind. It speaks in great detail about exactly what he had in mind when speaking of apperception, perception, and petites perceptions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadology
I chose this website because it spoke of Leibniz’s work called Monadology, one of his most well known works.

http://www.egs.edu/library/gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz/biography/
I chose this website because of it’s background given about Gottfried. It was a quite complete biography of his life. Also, it was more thorough than the book was on his childhood years and his family background.

1a.) RENÉ DESCARTES and The Passions of the Soul

1b.) Rene Descartes and his contributions and discoveries were talked a lot about in the chapter. Also he wrote the book The Passions of the Soul.

1c) I am curious to find out more about this book, why it was written, and the purpose of this work.

In 1643, Descartes began a written communication with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, in which he answered her moral questions, about the topics of the nature of happiness, passions, and ethics. Passions of the Soul was written as a production of this conversation. The Passions of the Soul does not fully explain the mind-body union, but it does provide the definition Elisabeth asked for, a complex classification of the passions, a description of their bodily causes, effects and function, and an account of the “discipline of virtue” that addresses the means and extent to which we can control the passions. Descartes defines passions proper as “those perceptions, sensations or emotions of the soul which we refer particularly to it, and which are caused, maintained and strengthened by some movement of the spirits”. The "spirits" mentioned in this definition are "animal spirits," an idea essential to understanding Descartes' physiology. These spirits function in a way similar to what we identify as the nervous system. Descartes explains that these animal spirits are produced in the blood and are responsible for the physical stimulation which causes the body to move. The animal spirits "move the body in all the different ways it is capable of". Descartes identifies six primary passions; wonder, love, hate, desire, joy, and sadness. Descartes begins his investigation on their physiological effects and their influence on human behavior. Descartes said that nothing could be more harmful to the soul and therefore the thought-process, which is its primary function, than the body. He upheld that the passions are not harmful in and of themselves. To protect the individuality of the thoughts and assurance a man understands reality, he specified that it is essential to recognize the passions, and learn to control them in order to use them in the best. It is also needed for a man try to master the separation which exists between the corporeal body and the mind.

Sources:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotions-17th18th/LD2Descartes.html
-This site was important because it dissected the different parts of the book

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passions_of_the_Soul#Controlling_the_Passions
-this site gave good background and information on what is in the book

http://www.iep.utm.edu/descarte/#H9
-I used this site for background and also for his thoughts on the passions

The topic I chose to do was phrenology. I chose this topic because I have heard about it before so I kind of know what it is. I also chose it because it reminds me of a scene from the movie “My Girl” where she feels her friends head for bumps so she can tell him what his personality is. I also learned a little about it in another class so it is a topic I am familiar with. Phrenology is the process where you can read a person’s character by looking (and feeling) at the bumps on their head. They thought the bumps on the head meant that the brain in that area was larger so they would correspond it with what part of the brain that was and that meant they had more of what ever that part was, and they used it to define that person. That was the extent of the information I already knew on this subject, but it is more complex and has had a big effect on the phrenological movement today. It relates to the chapter because the chapter is about physiological context, and it is a faculty of psychology, a theory of the brain.

Franz Josef Gall, born in Germany, developed this idea of phrenology. He was born into a devoted Catholic family but his idea about the brain was considered to be antireligious. He earned his MD and became a skilled anatomist. His lectures and surgical demonstrations were banned for promoting materialism. Gall identified the fibers connecting the cerebral hemispheres and confirmed the concept of contralateral function which says that each side of the brain controls the opposite side of the body. He also compared brain structures of different species and correlated the size and complexity of the brain. His argument over this was very convincing. The idea of phrenology started at a young age for Gall. He thought he noticed that his schoolmates who had more protruding eyes had better memory. This experience led him to looking into that concept and studying it for the rest of his life. Gull had five main principles to phrenology: 1) the brain is the organ of the mind, 2) The mind is composed of a large number (about 3 dozen) of abilities or attributes called "faculties"; some of these faculties are intellectual and some are affective, 3) Each faculty is located in a specific area of the brain and that location is the same for everyone, 4) For a given faculty, some people have more than others, and those with more of a particular faculty will have more brain tissue in the corresponding location that those with less of that same faculty, 5) Because the skull corresponds roughly to the shape of the brain, the strength of various faculties can be inferred from the shape of the skull.
This led to the doctrine of the skull. There was a phrenological skull with faculties identified on it so you could compare someone’s real head to the fake skull. Phrenology was a good attempt to identify the localized functions of the brain. Science rejected phrenology quickly, proving that there was no correlation, but the public was amused by it and so it stuck around for a while. Phrenology was a big business in the late 19th century in America.

http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/overview.htm
I chose this site because it lays out details of the history of phrenology in a clear and lucid way. This site helped with some of the information that I gave you.
http://www.phrenology.org/intro.html
I chose this site because it had some extra facts on it. I used that information in my text.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw6x3Jhop4o
I chose this video because it demonstrates how they performed phrenology. It contributed to my understanding of the topic.

1a) My topic is John Stuart Mill.

1b) The topic relates to the chapter because John Stuart Mill was one of the people featured in the textbook this chapter. There \ are around four pages dedicated to Mill and his importance in psychology within the chapter.

1c) I am interested in John Stuart Mill because he wanted women to have the same rights as men. Being brought up in his time period, this is an extremely rare occurrence for a white male to have. In the eighteen hundreds, women had zero rights. It was nearly impossible to get a divorce. It sparked my interest that Mill seemed so far ahead of his time by wanting women to have the same rights as men.

John Stuart Mill was born in a small town just outside of London in 1806. His father who was a philosopher, economist, and senior official in East India Company was very hard on his eldest son. John Stuart Mill’s father, James Mill, was dedicated to John’s education. By the age of three, John began learning Greek. At eight years old, John began learning Latin, geometry, algebra, and began teaching his younger siblings. In 1821, John Stuart Mill started studying psychology. John’s father was determined that his son would do something with his life.
At the age of twenty, John Stuart Mill went through a nervous breakdown, and became very depressed. It persuaded him that there was more to life that devoting
himself to his studies and intellectual aspects.

One thing that Mill advocated was women’s rights, women’s suffrage, and equal access to education for women. Even though John had strong beliefs on the matter, his father deeply disagreed. James Mill thought it was unnecessary for women to vote because the males represent the income to the family. John, on the other hand, thought women’s suffrage is an essential step toward improvement of mankind. The essay he wrote about women’s rights, he argued that if freedom is good for men, it is good for women. John died in May 1873 in France, and was buried alongside his wife.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/
This source went into detail about John Stuart Mill’s thoughts on women’s rights.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/382623/John-Stuart-Mill
This website gave a details about what Mill was studying at each age, and it provided more of a timeline of his life.
http://www.utilitarianism.com/jsmill.htm
This source was the background of Mill, and gave great information regarding his background and upbringing.

1a) I chose to further research the philosophy of Leibniz and his ideas on perceptions and the mind-body interaction.
1b) This topic relates to the chapter firstly because there is a large section detailing the philosophy and history of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Beyond the obvious however, the philosophy is significant within the chapter in that it incorporated aspects from the philosophy of the English empiricists while at the same time assuming that innate ideas must be present within the human mind as well. This connection of the associationist ideas of the empiricist movement and the idea of innateness within the mind is important because it demonstrates the union of two ideas which were thought to be polar opposites. While the empiricists vehemently denied that the mind had innate constructs of perception, Leibniz suggested that their belief that the mind is shaped by experience and the ‘opposite’ innate construction idea are both necessary.
1c) While reading the chapter I found it difficult to choose just 3 things I found interesting for the first assignment so I decided ahead of time that I would take one of the topics and use it for this one. I decided to research Leibniz’ philosophy and history more in depth because of the significance of his response to empiricism, and because I found his concept of the continuum of awareness to be interesting. I also find that in particular the continuum of awareness in an important idea in the chapter which bridges the fields of philosophy and psychology, an example of this connection would be the importance of the continuum in modern psychology.
)Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was the son of a philosophy professor at the University of Liepzig, and while his father died at an early age his influence on Leibniz’ life was substantial because his father’s library allowed him to become versed in Latin and advanced philosophical concepts from an early age. He attended college and graduated with a degree in law but went on to study many various disciplines during his lifetime such as mathematics, physics, logic, and of course philosophy . He held many positions of esteem, such as serving as a courtier for the Brunswicks, and contributed to academic journals but his ideas were not often greeted with open arms. His affirmation in his unwavering belief in God influenced a lot of his research and speculation and I can imagine that it did not win him a lot respect from his more secular colleagues. His death in 1716 wasn’t recognized by any royal or scholastic society he had belonged to in life and his funeral was only attended by his secretary.
While Leibniz’ history is important in that it provides a background context for his philosophy, it is the philosophy itself that has earned him a spot in this textbook. Leibniz believed that God created the body to work for and in accordance with the soul (mind), and that these two entities were comprised of the same matter. He also theorized correctly that the mind and body are metaphysically distinct, or that they are of a separate nature of being, and operate independently. Another of Leibniz’ most famous philosophies are those of perception. Leibniz defines perception as ‘the expression of many in one’ and divides perception into the categories bare perception, sensation, and thought. These categories of perception make up the continuum of awareness; beginning with bare perception as the lowest level of perception, followed in order by sensation, thought, and the final level of awareness being apperception.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz
I decided to use this source because it provided a lot of information about Leibniz himself and also included information about his philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-mind/
This article had a lot of in depth information about Leibniz’ philosophy dealing with both the mind-body interaction as well as the principles of apperception and perception.

http://hume.ucdavis.edu/mattey/phi022old/leiblec.htm
I really enjoyed this source because it presented Leibniz’ reasons behind his philosophical ideas and had a lot of good information about Leibniz philosophy on various other topics as well as perception.

Rene Descrates was the first to describe the universe in terms of matter and motion. He felt that everything in nature could be explained through science. He was a French philosopher who spent most of his life in the Dutch republic. He published a few different books throughout his lifetime, one of those publications was The Passions of the Soul. In this bit of writing, Descrates tries to explain the reflex and he also discusses animal spirits. These animal spirits were described as what drives movement within the body. Descrates had other writings and these include Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, Meditations on First Philosophy, and Principles of Philosophy. All around, Descrates was an interesting individual in history and made a huge impact on Western philosophy.
http://www.renedescartes.com/
This website gave a brief summary on Rene Descrates life and writings.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/René_Descartes
I felt as if this website is easier to read along to, and it gives an in depth look at descrates life, writings, and theories.
AML

1a. My topic is dualism.
1b. Dualism is a concept presented in this chapter in regards to the section on Descartes’ contribution to psychology.
1c. I was very interested in Descartes and wanted to narrow down the topic. I chose to write on dualism because it was very intriguing idea, one that I have never really heard of and it caught my attention while reading the chapter.
2. Dualism is an old and revolutionary concept that is still debated to this day. It is a debate that’s roots extend into the realm of philosophy but also branch out into psychology. Dualism, before being firmly established by Descartes, had its beginnings in a concept called the hierarchy of multiple souls first thought of by Plato and Aristotle. They reasoned that plants, animals, and humans share a nutritive soul of growth and metabolism, they went on to say that just animals and humans share a perspective soul of pain, pleasure, and desire, and finally they came to the conclusion that only humans share the faculty of reason. This is important to dualism because what dualism says is that the mind (which reasons) and the body are separate entities. Mental capacity does not take up space and the physical body cannot reason. This type of dualism, whose main proponent was Descartes, is called Cartesian dualism. Descartes believed that the body without the mind was just a complex machine. He believed that the mind could influence the body to move but could not extend itself in physical space. He believed that these two things could be two separate entities, or in other words, one could exist without the other. Descartes often implied a religious aspect to dualism. He wrote in one of his texts called Meditations on First Philosophy, that his purpose for distinguishing distinct separation between soul and body was to, “Refute the irreligious”, the decaying of the body logically does not lead to the destruction of the mind or soul. Descartes’ description of dualism has led to a great debate in the realms philosophy and psychology throughout the years called the mind-body problem which is still debated today. If these two things are as separate and distinct as Descartes proposes, then how do both interact causally to produce a human being capable of voluntarily having bodily movements and sensations. Descartes reasoned that he is nothing but a thinking thing that doubts, affirms, denies, is willing, or unwilling, imagines and has sensations. He went on to say that it makes no sense to use these modes to describe a non-thinking like a rock. A rock is just a physical thing that is extended into space without the non-extended capacity to reason. On the flip side it makes no sense to ascribe physical attributes such as size, shape, and quantity to thinking things like the mind. The problem comes when the two interact, as they do all the time in human beings. Let’s take the example of raising a hand in class. The arm moving upward is the effect while the mind willing it to is the cause. In this example the non-extended mind creates extended movement in the body. How can two things that theoretically cannot interact (extended body vs. non-extended mind) produce this kind of action. Descartes responds that the assumption that two things of different natures not being able to interact is erroneous in itself, and that some union between mind and body must be at work. This issue is very complex and can be its own chapter in itself. It is none the less a very interesting topic to look at and I admit that is a lot more complex and hard to understand than I first thought!
http://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes

1a) I was interested in reading more about John Locke and his opinion on how children should begin their education at an early age.

1b) The chapter discussed Locke’s view on how children should be educated.

1c) The section of the chapter was interesting, but it wasn’t very detailed. I wanted to learn more facts about it. However, after looking at Fordham’s site, I found that Locke’s “Some Thoughts on Education” was really about how to educate and raise children. When reading the chapter, I assumed his writings were mainly about academic education, but you know what they say about assumptions...

With both of his parents being Puritan, John Locke was raised with strong values. His Puritan values really affected his ideas on education. Locke believed that humans are born without any innate knowledge. This is known as tabula rasa. He did, however, believe that people are born with natural tendencies. Because of this, starting a child’s education at a young age is crucial. By shaping the way a child acts very early on, parents can insure the child develops good habits.

Locke discussed the importance of being healthy. By being physically fit, a child will be able to develop a strong mind. If a child is unhealthy, he/she will not be able to progress academically or in life in general. Locke’s idea of being healthy was slightly abstract. He believed that childrens feet should be soaked in cold water and they should sleep on hard beds every night. He also said that they should wear thin shoes and clothing, despite what the weather was like. Locke believed that they would grow accustomed to it, and it would strengthen their bodies. He also talked about how children should be fed. Their meals should be plain, and children should not be given alcohol unless recommended by a doctor. The latter is a given nowadays, but back then it was totally acceptable for kids to drink.

According to Locke, when teaching children, it is important to use verbal rewards and punishments. If a child is physically punished when he/she is being taught, the child may lose interest. If this continues, the child may lose interest in learning altogether. This could then lead to the child developing negative habits. As for rewards, if a child is given a treat for doing a good job, they will, in turn, expect a physical reward every time they do something right. Locke believed that by using words in these cases would help the child to appreciate praise and avoid the uneasiness of being yelled at, thus shaping them into well-rounded human beings.

Locke believed that a child’s curiosity should be cherished, not scorned. When a child is curious, it enables them to learn and lose the ignorance they were born with. The parents must answer the child’s questions and guide them, not discourage them from learning the knowledge they may have gained. Locke also said that children should be treated rationally. By being rational and answering the child’s questions with truthful answers, the parents are helping the child mold into a rational adult.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=6&sqi=2&ved=0CEAQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.baylor.edu%2Fcontent%2Fservices%2Fdocument.php%3Fid%3D37670&ei=BxERVPChBYyQyATBx4CADg&usg=AFQjCNHRrw88D-dtow0feVQ_sLIDE5vt5g&sig2=dbHQRTCuzzl8FXwqAtoseg

This link is for a document, so hopefully it works. If not, just let me know and I can cite it differently.

I chose this as a source because it is credible, easy to read, and has a lot of good information about Locke’s take on early childhood education.

http://www.biography.com/people/john-locke-9384544#writings

I did not use this site for the information I typed above, but I did use it to get a better understanding of Locke’s life.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1692locke-education.asp
I used this site because it contains “Some Thoughts Concerning Education”. To learn more about a topic, there's nothing better than going directly to the source.

C.K.M.

1a) Early Childhood Cognitive Development
1b) I believe that this relates to the chapter when it comes to John Locke's section that talks about when a child is born there is basically nothing there, it is a blank slate. It is after experiences and being exposed to life and the different sensations and impressions that are made that help to create the ideas and memories that children pick up.
1c) I am interested in this because I have a child and I have always wondered why you can't remember when you were like 2 or 3 even though those are the ages at which you learn to talk, are able to communicate what it is that you want as well as do things on your own to a certain extent. During this time children are extremely impressionable as well as they are like sponges when it comes to picking things up such as language and the basic things they need in order to get their needs met.
I was interested in learning why it seems that people cannot remember back when they were a toddler or small child, such as ages 2-5. The fact that children are learning quite a bit at this time, they're starting school and are extremely impressionable. So looking further into this I found that it isn't really that they don't remember it's that they don't retain the memories as well, something that has been referred to as childhood amnesia. This is when the memories from early childhood start to disappear, this seems to happen more around the age of 7. The memories that were created at one point in early childhood begin to disappear in middle child and it tends to get over road by new memories. Children don't start to maintain knowledge until they are about 2 1/2 or 3, this is when they being to pick up on what their parents are doing, recognize faces and pick up on things that are in repetition because they are constantly reminded. It is through this repetition, interaction with others and the development of the frontal lobes as well as the cerebral cortex that lead the child to develop and begin to recognize as well and put things together. There was a study done to see just how this works; in the study children ages 4-13 were asked questions about some of the first things that they remember. It was found that many of the children that were between the ages of 4 to 7 when asked to return a few years later couldn't remember much of what they even said they remembered when they were previously. While the older group of children, ages 10 to 13 could remember a majority of the earliest memories that they had shared previously (webmd). It was found that around the age of 10 (webmd) is when children start to retain memories and keep them stored for recall. The difference though is that childhood memories are less likely to be of harsh or traumatic times but more of good times which is what begins to set them apart from adults. Memory is something that effects everyone and helps lessons of trouble to be guided and not repeated. Children begin learning and remembering at a young age of 2 1/2 to 3 but those memories will fade with time, they will become nothing put a piece of the past. Where as the child ages things begin to stick, adult memories are made and childhood memories are replaced, not lost.

http://www.webmd.com/children/news/20110511/when-do-kids-form-their-first-memories
This cite was useful because it showed an actual study that was completed and what was found about childhood memories and what is actually happening to them. It was helpful is beginning to break down the idea that there are memories that are formed at an early age but they disappear with time rather than remain as clear.

http://www.franklinis.com/memory-in-early-childhood
This cite was helpful because it showed a better breakdown of ages children are in when knowledge starts to retain as well as the different ways that knowledge is retained.

http://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-information-23/child-development-news-124/early-childhood-memories-may-fade-long-before-childhood-is-over-684227.html
This cite was helpful because it was more in-depth with the ages and how they relate to what a child remembers, how far back it was and when things actually begin to fade away.

My topic for this week is geocentric versus heliocentric models of the universe, because I am really fascinated by space and the new things that we are learning about the universe every day. Heliocentricism is briefly mentioned in the chapter with reference to Galileo, the astronomer who is most known for the creation of an improved telescope which was then used to confirm Copernicanism. Greek philosophers created the geocentric model of the universe thousands of years ago and it was the accepted model of the solar system for hundreds of years. Geocentric means “earth centered” and this model places Earth at the center of the universe with the sun, moon, and stars orbiting around it. This idea was most popular for so long because of gravity. It was believed that the Earth was the center of the universe because gravity pulled everything on it toward the ground, the center of the Earth. Why would this happen if it were not the case that the Earth was the center? Another concept that supported this idea was that Venus seemed to constantly be the same distance away from the Earth. The heliocentric model was introduced in the 16th century by astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. He proposed that the sun was actually the center of the universe and that everything orbited it. This idea did not go over very well with the Roman Catholics of the time because they believed that God’s greatest creation should rightfully be at the center. This idea was actually proposed as early as 200 B.C. but because it challenged too many concepts, it didn’t gain much popularity until Copernicus, and even then there was much doubt. Years later, Galileo took this idea and ran with it. He challenged the Catholic church, saying that heliocentricism did in fact follow the texts of the bible. In all of his arguments against the church he alienated himself from the Pope and had to face the Roman Inquisition. The result of the hearing with the Inquisition was that he had to revoke all of his statements saying that the Earth orbited the sun, was sentenced to formal imprisonment, and one of his works was banned and any future works of his could not be published. It is during his imprisonment that he creates his best works that were not published until after his death.

http://www.universetoday.com/36487/difference-between-geocentric-and-heliocentric/
I like this source because it explained exactly what I wanted to talk about.
http://www.chabotcollege.edu/faculty/shildreth/astronomy/geoanswers.html
This source is great at direct comparisons with the answers to questions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpuM2HLAmY
This source specifically talks about Galileo and that is what was mentioned in the text.

The topic that I choose to explore was materialism, and determinism. The chapter talks about how materialists believe that the only reality is physical, that everything that occurs in the universe. Even mental status involves measurable material object that move in space. Thinking back to chapter 1, in how we think about history. Should I view this concept with today’s ideology no, this theory would not make sense. I would like to know more how materialism was discovered and practiced and how is kept evolving. Materialism really challenged everything, it does not necessarily rule out religion and the belief of god but it sure questions it. This idea questions the concept that the church is putting out. It solely focuses on what is seen and felt, what materials are there. The first known idea of materialism is in 600 b.c, by the Carvaka school of Ancient Indian philosophy. It was not until the 17th century was the idea of materialism brought back by Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Hobbes, and Denis Diderot . The book briefly mentions Thomas Hobbes, so next I decide to learn more about him and his contributions. Thomas Hobbes firmly believed in the machinist perspective, that no one had a soul. He saw human beings as essentially machines. That even their thoughts and emotions are operating according to physical laws and chains of cause and effect. That there is an action and reaction. A good example of this is that humans are always trying to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. That humans are very interested or focused on the self. Thomas rejected both Francis bacon and Robert Boyle. He felt that the nature of observation was bias, making there scientific theories wrong. Overall in my quest of knowledge I feel like I keep finding new interesting topics. How my original interest lie in with materialism but in the end I find Thomas Hobbes more complex and intriguing.
This website, http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/materialism.htm breaks down the different types of materialism and how it could be applied in today’s world. It gives examples of the first notion of materialism. This website gave me a more detail history on how materialism came back to life. Both this website and book mention Thomas Hobbes, as a contributor. http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_materialism.html for the last website I choose http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hobbes/themes.html , it gave me a better understanding on who Thomas Hobbes was and how he came to his beliefs.
Terminology: materialism, determinism, Thomas Hobbes, machinist, Francis Bacon , Robert Boyle

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is the incredibly interesting “Father of Modern Philosophy”, Rene Descartes. In our textbooks, chapter two was all about the philosophical context. Rene Descartes was one of the men who began the era of philosophy and science (the psychology part) as we know it. He was a rationalist who believe true knowledge could be discovered through systematic reasoning. This is extremely interesting to me how he molded the transition of philosophy to become more scientific despite his religious upbringing.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I would like to talk about who Rene Descartes was, what he did throughout his life, and how exactly he has made an impact on psychology as we know it today.

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
Rene Descartes was born in the year 1596 to his father Joachim Descartes and his mother Jeanne Brochard. At the ripe age of ten years old (some would argue eight years old) he attended a Jesuit college. A Jesuit college was a “society of Jesus” community based education, a religious school. He attended this college until he turned eighteen years old. One interesting fact about Descartes is despite his religious upbringing, he kept a clear line between reason and faith. He’s quoted saying, “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” I wonder if he ever questioned aspects of his faith throughout his studies.
Throughout his life he did not stick to just one area of interest. He studied mathematics, physics and geometry. Law and biology. He even enlisted into the military. Throughout his life he had written several books and essays. You could go as far as saying he was motivated to learn, he was one curious cat. He was not afraid to questions previous ways of thinking. He was a rationalist in the idea that he believed the only way to discover true knowledge was to through systematic reasoning.
Today many people would call Rene Descartes the “Father of Modern Philosophy”. He believed in dualism, that there is in fact a clear separation between mind and body. He also believe in the Cartesian dichotomy which divides humans and animals. He believed humans’ bodies operate like a machine, making him a mechanist. Descartes believed that the body has a direct influence on the mind and vice versa, making him an interactionist. When it comes down to it, Descartes was a thinker. Again, despite his religious background, he refused to let his faith create a bias towards his work. He was one to follow a path to discover the truth and with absolute certainty.

4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
URL 1: http://www.philosophers.co.uk/rene-descartes.html I chose this specific link because it clearly explains Descartes’ most influential attributes to modern philosophy and psychology.
URL 2: http://www.egs.edu/library/rene-descartes/biography/ I chose this link because it gives a good timeline on Descartes work, what exactly he did and where he did it.
URL 3: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/36556.Ren_Descartes I chose this link because it contained many of Descartes quotes. It gave me an inside look at his work in brief segments and proved very interesting to read.

5.) Terminology: Rene Descartes, “Father of Modern Philosophy”, philosophy, rationalist, systematic reasoning, dualism, Cartesian dichotomy, mechanist, interactionist.

1) The topic I am interested in and expanding on this week is John Locke’s views on education. It was only covered briefly in the chapter but I was interested to learn more about some of the points that were mentioned
2) The three aspects of this topic that I am going to talk about are Locke’s theory about the tabula rasa, how his ideas still appear in the current school system, and what ideas of Locke’s I agree the most with.
3) Tabula rasa is a very well known theory and is covered in quite a few psychology classes. Tabula rasa is a theory of Locke’s stating that human beings are born with a blank slate of a mind and our knowledge is based on our experiences. There have been many different theories to challenge this and many people have not agreed on one way or the other. Many people find it hard to believe that babies are born with no ideas or thought processes. With the more technological advances, this theory is becoming more and more discredited in the opinion of many.
Despite that theory becoming more discredited, many of Locke’s views on education are still seen in the classroom in current society. For example, Locke stated that with a healthy body comes a healthy mind. Many people can still note, now especially with the Healthy Food Act and organizations like Play 60, that our culture focuses on the health and activity of children with the belief that it will lead to a better life for the child. I agree with Locke when he talked about developing good habits such as being healthy early in life is the best way to go in term of education. Locke also stressed the idea of practicing skills, a mindset that is seen in our classrooms today.
Locke is a very well known behaviorist who contributed a lot to the field of psychology. Some of his ideas are praised, while others are rejected. His theory that I agree with most that I did more research on was his Theory of Value. In this theory, Locke states that knowledge is the skills that are worthwhile to learn that can accomplish the goals of education. He stated that the goal of education was to develop creative thinking individuals who seek to better society. It talked about how he advocated education to be something more than just mindless memorization and how he wanted the curriculum to be focused around things that are important for everyday life. I loved his thoughts on the matter and really enjoyed researching this topic a little more to learn about his idea involving education.
4) URLs: http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Locke.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaWj0qBAUPo
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/influence.html
5) Terminology Used: tabula rasa, behaviorist

1) The topic I chose was John Locke and his contributions to Education. This chapter talked a lot about empiricism and Locke had a very empiricist way of thinking. Locke is known for his views on how knowledge is acquired, and how we as humans come to understand our world. This a a basis for philosophy which ties right into this chapter which discusses philosophical context. I’m interested in this topic because of my interest in educational psychology.
2) Three aspects of this topic that I want to talk about are John Locke’s background, what specific contributions he made to the field of education, and what other contributions he made to the fields of philosophy, psychology and education.
3) John Locke was an influential Philosopher and physician from England during the mid to late 1600’s. His father was a military man and because of his connections to the English government, Locke received an excellent education from Westminster School in London and Christ Church, Oxford. With a bachelor’s in medicine, Locke became a personal physician for the Earl of Shaftesbury, who became chancellor and made Locke his secretary of presentations. Locke’s duties shifted from solely personal physician, to assisting in many business and political duties. Shaftesbury had a large impact on Locke’s personal views, which were reflected in his writings, including his document which suggested revolutionary ideas such as natural rights of man and a separation of church and state.
While John Locke wrote many great works, most of them weren’t published until he was almost 60 years old. One of his most well known works was Some Thoughts Concerning Education, which is a brief document based on letters written to a friend about how to raise his son. While Locke is most well known for his contributions to politics and philosophy, but he also made some major contributions to the field of educational psychology. Locke believed that we are not born with knowledge, but acquire it through experiences and being given information. He also believed that character formation was the most crucial, and that a learning experience should be a pleasant one in order to gain the most from it.
Locke had a wide range of views on education but he emphasized four main pieces of advice. With a background in medicine, he believed that physical health was especially important. He stated that in order to have a healthy mind, children need a healthy and sound body. Children also need to develop good habits early in life, in order to avoid developing bad ones later on in life. Locke emphasized the importance of parents influence on their children’s education, especially since early in life, parents are the main educators in a child’s life. He also believed that children develop these good habits by doing things repeatedly, rather than just learning rules to follow. Locke very strongly believed that punishments only caused children to dislike education and learning. Repeated and severe punishment “breaks the mind”. On the flip side of punishment, Locke also believed that excessive rewards should be avoided. There needs to be a balance between punishment and rewards.
Education will always be a crucial part of our lives, Locke’s ideas are still having an impact on our educational system today, and are being used in our everyday lives. Locke not only contributed greatly to our understanding of educational psychology and human knowledge, but he also made great contributions to other areas such as politics and philosophy.
4)Sources used:
http://www.biography.com/people/john-locke-9384544#writings
I used this resource as my main source for the background information on Locke, as well as some of his contributions to politics. There was also a short video that re-stated the information written on the site and gave some illustrations of Locke and major milestones in his life.

http://history-world.org/locke.htm
This resource proved to be very useful when it came to finding his contributions to educational psychology. There was also a small amount of background information that help me validate the information from the first site.

http://redeemingeducation.blogspot.com/2011/03/john-lockes-some-thoughts-concerning.html
I didn’t use this site a whole lot, but mostly as a resource to see how Locke’s theories and ideas are still having an influence today.

Terminology used: empiricism, philosophy.

I decided to do some research on John Locke. This chapter had quite a few pages devoted to him and other people with the empiricist view. I thought that John Locke and his views on human understanding and education were very interesting. That is why I chose him as my topic for this assignment. I would like to talk about his background, his views on education, and how his views on education apply to schools today.
John Locke was born in England. He got part of his education at Oxford, where he studied medicine. He also studied metaphysics, logic, and language. He was even the personal physician for the Earl of Shaftsbury for a while. He ended up becoming a very influential philosopher who wrote about politics, education, and many other things. Locke’s wrote many books. The most famous ones are Two Treatises of Government and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The name of this second book is somewhat deceiving. Although it is called and essay, it is actually a series of four books that examine human knowledge. Some of his writings helped found modern philosophy.
Education was very important to John Locke. He believed that everyone is born with a mind like a white paper, or that we are born as clean slates. Since he thought our minds were blank at birth, he believed that people’s minds could be molded by proper education. He wrote “Some Thoughts Concerning Education” which was used in many places as the guidelines for education for over 100 years. One theory that Locke had was that people needed to be in physical health as well as psychological health. Locke also had a theory that children needed to be taught good reasoning skills, rather than just how to absorb and process information. Locke thought that it was the teacher’s responsibility to teach children these reasoning skills, and if the children didn’t learn them then they wouldn’t be successful. Locke’s third theory on education had to do with the curriculum of classes. He believed that children should be learning only things that apply to everyday life. He was the first to suggest that children should learn to read and write in their native language instead of in Latin. He thought that learning foreign languages should be for conversational purposes, and that children should be taught about what they are interested in. He thought that this would help them learn better. Locke also had some theories about how learning relates to play. He wondered why children hate to learn and love to play. He came to the conclusion that it was because children are forced to learn and not forced to play. This is why Locke had a theory that children should learn about things they enjoy, and should not be forced to learn about things that they don’t like.
Locke’s views on education can still be seen in classrooms today. His theory that we need to be in physical health is seen in things like recess and in physical education classes. We also see this in all of the changes happening with the food in schools. Some foods are being substituted for healthier foods (wheat bread and noodles, etc.). Locke’s second theory is also found in schools today. Reasoning skills are taught in critical thinking classes at many schools, as well as integrated into other classes. His third theory also applies to today’s education. Classes that are taught in schools today do apply to everyday life. I can’t think of any classes that I have taken that didn’t apply to my life in some way or another. Today, children do learn to read and write in their native language. They usually can learn another language at some later point in their education as well. Locke’s theories about being forced to learn can be seen in today’s education as well. This is seen in activities like free reading, where children get to choose the books that they want to read. Free writing activities show this as well, because the children get to choose what they want to write about and then expand on it. Locke also thought that children’s playing should not be discouraged.

http://www.biography.com/people/john-locke-9384544#later-years-and-impact
I got a lot of my information about John Locke’s background from this website.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaWj0qBAUPo
This is a YouTube video about Locke’s views on education.
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/lockethoughts/summary.html
This is a summary of Locke’s “Some Thoughts Concerning Education.”
John Locke, empiricist, human understanding, education, philosophy, medicine, white paper, reasoning, critical thinking, language

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
John Locke was the person to “topic” I choose for this week. John Locke is very interesting to me and relates well to the chapter. Locke was a man who was not just a philosopher but according to this weeks text he was also interested in things that contribute to modern psychology today. He wrote two important texts according to our reading these are An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Through out the reading there are various philosophers who are also key “players” and contributors to psychology and John Locke is a great example.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I would first like to talk about who John Locke is, after this I would like to explore the two novels he wrote: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Finally I would like to focus on how Locke contributed to psychology giving some specific examples and comparing it to experiments that have been done more recently.

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize* them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
John Locke was born August 26, 1632 in England he grew to be an admirer of Descartes and followed his works closely. He got his degree in medicine and then went on to practice. While practicing medicine he also became very involved in politics, religion, and freedom of speech. His career centered around two main texts that he wrote which is why he is important to the history of psychology today.
In his works An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was a writing that revolved around the concept of innate ideas. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that “we acquire knowledge through experience of the world.” (Conolly) This is a core idea in Social Psychology and even relates to many of the basic definitions we learned in my Social Psychology class last semester.
Locke was a contributor to the Nature vs. Nurture question that we so often ask in psychology. He believed that when people (children) learn at an early age they are more likely to change which is in fact something that we know to be true in psychology today. He also contributes to the theory of Social Learning a concept that we have a name for today. Locke believed that people would learned based on rewards and punishments. To me this was interesting to hear especially since my last writing focused around the Pavlov’s dog experiments which was a type of social learning where the dog learned to associate the sound of a bell with food.

4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post

http://www.iep.utm.edu/locke/

I used this for a quote from Locke. And used it to understand how he relates to social psychology.

http://web.csulb.edu/~kmacd/361history.html

I choose this website because it was a source that was short and to the point it gave a few direct quotes from Locke and I used it to establish some ways he connects or contributes to psychology today.

http://www.egs.edu/library/john-locke/biography/

This website was great because it gave a clear time line of Locke’s life and some of the things that he wrote. I used this to better understand when he was born and more about his early life and what he was interested in. I also used this to get more information on what An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was about.

Ren´e Descartes, born in 1596 and died at the age of 54 in 1650. He was the son of a French lawyer and received his education at the College de la Fleche, which was a school run by Jesuits. The way they taught Descartes to use careful reasoning skills influenced his research later in life…
I chose to do more research on Descartes because he seemed like an awesome person to study. He excelled as a student and even got special privileges, and EXEMPTIONS from regular class attendance and assignments? I don’t know a college student today who wouldn’t sell their soul (yes, that is a bad idea, don’t make a crossroads deal with a demon just for that) to get those kind of privileges. This guy walked away from that education though to get into the real world. I know we all can relate to that want, I just want to have my LISW certificate and actually be in a good job with good money and helping people.
Descartes saw a problem with the field he wanted to study and therefore sought about fixing it. He was the “first” thinker to emphasize the use of reason. Sure he had that block of time where we know not what he did, but he came back to the thing that was his true calling, because he heard the siren’s song like many of us do calling us to our destinies. His finally caught up to him in his dreams. Those dreams/visions though were probably hallucinations brought on by inhaling smoky fumes one night after locking himself in a room with an oven to stay warm, but hey who am I to judge the guy.
I loved his quote they used in the book about how he “resolved to seek no other knowledge than that which I might find within myself, or perhaps in the great book of nature”. There is so much we can learn from ourselves by just soul searching. We can reach enlightenment, sometimes the answers to what we seek come in those moments of quiet meditation or under the hot shower faucet. I have personally experienced this many times, hell my paper topics come from random thoughts I have… like “Would fostering childhood resilience cause a decline in PTSD for the next generation of kids, giving them copping skills at a young age” or “if we took warning labels off everything, and spread a rumor that mixing bleach and ammonia gets you extremely high, would that solve world overpopulation?” (yes I know how morbid the latter paper topic is, but hey ADHD thought). Then again others jump out at us from nature, like how the apple hit Isaac Newton in the head and made him come to the realization of gravity (not the whole story there but the kindergarten version, it’s easier). We just never know when the next realization is going to blindside us out of nowhere. In a way that is frightening, but in another way that is so amazing… someone could be walking home tomorrow and see something that has been right in front of us the whole time and boom we could discover something such as time travel, reanimation, or hyper space engines.
I also found it interesting how he blended science with his religious beliefs, in today’s world that seems like two opposite things, and some people refuse to see the overlap. His Dualist perspective was interesting, and his Cartesian dichotomy though it contradicts my belief that every living thing has a soul, I though his perspective on the subject, and especially in the time he lived, was extremely though out.
Now as for his Mechanist belief that the body works like a machine, that part is one of the soul reasons I picked to research the guy, he reminded me of one of my favorite book characters, Leo ValDez. Leo said in a book once that “I figure the universe is basically like a machine. I don’t know who made it, but it chugs along the way it’s supposes to most of the time. Sure, little pieces break and stuff goes haywire once in a while, but mostly… things happen for a reason”.
It was kind of sad that he was hired to tutor a queen and ended up dying because of pneumonia and her dank castle… or more likely she just had him assassinated because they disagreed of views and interests… she hated his mechanist belief and he hated her interest in Ancient Greece (which I totally can’t blame her for that interest personally)
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes#Visions
House of Hades

The topic I chose to research this week was John Locke. He plays a prominent role in this chapter as his ideas regarding epistemology contributed greatly to the field of psychology. I found Locke interesting because in the course of his work it appears he lent meaningful insights not just to psychology but to several other fields as well. Therefore, I would like to speak specifically about John Locke’s contributions to realms of religion, politics, and education.

During Locke’s time there were man disputes between those in science of any sort and the religious world. Many were challenging the authority of the church and its long held ideas about society which put many of Locke’s counterparts at odds with the church. Locke, however, took a different approach to religion. He did not dispute its legitimacy. He simply made the distinction between belief due to human reasoning in which one comes to believe through the use of natural faculties and belief due to faith in which one believes in something because they see it as a message from God. Yet, reason and faith are not unrelated. According to Locke, it is by reason that one can assess whether something is or is not a message from God and therefore if they can believe through faith. In The Reasonableness of Christianity Locke even asserts that it was not unreasonable to be a Christian and that there is good reason to believe that Jesus did indeed bring to earth the essential truths of the Christian faith. Interestingly enough, Locke also discusses salvation which he says one can attain by simply believing that Jesus is the Messiah. Although much more common now, the church during his time typically held that a set of rules must be followed for one to enter salvation upon death. Overall, Locke was unique in his general support in attesting to the reasonable nature of the church and its beliefs.

Locke also introduced revolutionary political ideas which would even go on to influence the creation of the Constitution of the United States. Locke believed both in the law of nature (one’s moral responsibility) and natural rights of the individual. He advocated for freedom, equality, and independence for all and government elected by the people. Locke even went so far as to say that government had a responsibility to respect the rights of the people and ascertained that a government failing to do so could be overthrown and replaced. However, as mentioned above Locke did not mean that our rights as individuals should supersede all other instincts. Instead, Locke emphasized exercising natural rights responsibly by respecting others at the same time.

Finally, as we briefly encountered in our textbook, Locke had an important impact on education. He believed as an empiricist that ideas came from human experience. He said that children were a “white paper” or a blank slate. This is not to say that they did not have any innate characteristics as they do have such things as personality, likes, and dislikes, but he contended that these must be activated through experience. Therefore, Locke advised a more hands-on learning experience for students and that this begin at a very young age when children are most impressionable. He also recommended that children be given some freedom to determine the course of their education and that corporal punishment, which was commonplace at the time, be removed as it would simply dull a child’s excitement for learning. Locke related his ideas on education in the his famous work Some Thoughts Concerning Education.

Overall, it is easy to see that John Locke made great contributions to many areas other than psychology. He was important in providing support for Christianity in a tense time for the church. He inspired many, especially those in the United States, in the area of natural rights but also natural law and moral duty. This would come to impact government and create a body of people elected by and serving the people. And Locke was able to offer some practical advice for the education of people. All of this was of course in addition to the many awesome work he did in the field of psychology highlighted in the textbook.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/locke/#H5
This website provided me with great information on Locke’s contributions to theology as well as supporting information regarding politics and education.

http://www.nlnrac.org/earlymodern/locke
Locke’s ideas surrounding politics were discussed at this website.

http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php?id=37670
Education and John Locke’s advice for educating the young children of our society were discussed in depth on this website.

1) The topic I chose was taken straight from the book: British Empiricism. I chose British Empiricism because I find it more reliable and believable than Rene Descartes ideals. I agree with many of its claims. I too believe we learn from experiencing the world. I love the idea of our minds being a blank white sheet of paper when we are born. I think our senses and experience in the real world is what brings us knowledge.
2) The three aspects I chose were obtained by a large topic search of British Empiricism. It narrowed down to a specific philosopher of the time, John Locke. I then topped my research off with a specific aspect of John Locke: His book the Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
3) I learned that all philosophers following Rene Descartes time, were in accordance with his idea that the one object of knowledge of which the subject is directly certain is his/her own ideas. However, empiricists proposed that all the ideas necessary for knowledge can be provided by our sensations. One important philosopher and believer of the British Empiricism was John Locke.
John Locke was among the most famous philosophers and political theorists of the 17th century. He is regarded as the founder of British Empiricism. Locke made foundational contributions to modern theories of limited, liberal government. Locke offered an analysis of the human mind and its acquisition of knowledge. He offered an empiricist theory that said we acquire ideas through our experience of the world. Locke said that the mind is able to examine, compare, and combine the ideas we get from experiencing our world in numerous different ways. His most important work is the Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
In Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he explains that everything begins with simple ideas of sensation. Most of our simple ideas are uniquely produced through the normal operation the organs of sense. Our ideas of colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and heat, Locke supposed, are acquired respectively through our eyes, ears, noses, tongues, and skin. . According to Locke, certain simple ideas are acquired by two different senses: sensation and reflection. Space, extension, figure, motion, and rest are all presented to us both in sight and in touch. They are among the most commonly received of all our ideas of sensation. All of them represent primary qualities of sensible objects and serve significant roles in science and ordinary life. Things that can be both seen and touched seem most obviously real to us. Even more special simple ideas are produced in us by reflection as well as sensation. These are ideas that are habitually present in the mind, no matter what its source. According to Locke, such ideas of both sensation and reflection include pleasure, pain, power, existence, and unity. With sensation and reflection existing and uniting, we are able to have clear concepts of reality.
4)http://www.iep.utm.edu/locke/ I chose this website because it is a philosophy “encyclopedia.” It had a very vast amount of information on John Locke. The information from this website gave me a little boost from what I learned about John Locke in the book.
http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/Empiricism.html I chose this website because it had classical British Empiricism information. Most of the other websites were very technical and too in depth for the type of information I was looking for. I used this information moderately.
http://www.philosophypages.com/locke/g01.htm#sens I chose this website because it gave me an overview of John Locke’s book. I used the information on this website to build on my blog a lot.

1. The topic I chose was about Helmholtz but more specifically one of his research topics, the problem of perception. This topic was stated in the chapter and I found it to be really interesting because I have learned some about vision and hearing in other classes and a few of the problems with it but did not know specifically about Helmholtz's research or what the actual problems are with perception.

2. The topics I want to focus on for this are visual processing, how accurate our perceptions really are, and how Helmholtz saw experience playing a role in vision.

3. Visual perception and processing is how we gather information about our environment and the things around us. We can see things in front of us and gain knowledge about our surroundings and process what we see. Spatial skills in vision allow us to see where we are in relationship to everything around us. Visual analysis can be used to organize or form categories with information we receive visually. This also involves remembering the information or categories formed and being able to recall them later. All of this information we receive visually combines to form what we see. The problem with all of this information, however, is that vision is not always as reliable as we may think. Helmholtz found that many of the structures in the eye and brain helping us see were not the best and had many problems. Light waves can be distorted and shapes or color are also changed when we see them. Perceptions often can change or look different depending on the situation or mindset a person is in, thus making it a very unstable process. Although we may see vision as being accurate and good, we can see the perceptions are different based on many factors. Much of what we see is not always saved or recognized right away so the brain fills in the gaps in order to create a whole. This has been shown when the eyes are positioned a certain way a gap in a line may appear to go away and the line becomes complete. This is due to our brain preferring a whole thing, rather than broken up pieces. Helmholtz also said that our perception is greatly related to past experiences. One way our brain fills in these gaps, or lack of visual information that we do not save, is to go off past experiences. Systems in our body act as a middle man between the eyes and what we actually see as well as the brain. We may see things but not actually understand them without our past experiences coming into play. Helmholtz said all of this occurs unconsciously and combines together to form our perceptions of our vision.

4. http://www.visionandlearning.org/visualperception08.html - This website helped show the different visual perceptions that occur and how that processing works and explained a little bit more into the actual processes behind vision.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/perception-theories.html - This website helped give some other views of psychologists on vision and the different perceptions as well as processes that were discussed in how vision worked. This website helped in combination with the book because I could combine Helmholtz with these other psychologists as well.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/helmholt.htm - This website also worked well in combination with the book because it was solely about Helmholtz and his ideas about this topic.

Terms: Helmholtz, visual processing, problem of perception

1) This week, I decided to go into depth on the term empiricism. The book mentions empiricism in this chapter, and I decided to choose it as my topic because it was interesting to me, and I agree with the thought that our experiences change and shape how we view and think about the world and our surroundings.

2) The three aspects I am going to discuss are the main ideas of empiricism, the different forms of empiricism, and empiricism versus rationalism.

3) The term empiricism, in philosophy and psychology is the view that our knowledge, beliefs, concepts, and principles all come from our experiences in life. We start out a blank slate, and the events from our life, shape how we understand the world around us. Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke are just some of the many supporters of the empiricist argument.
There are also different forms and degrees of empiricism, The early forms of empiricism were thoughts that everyone was born an empty slate, and experiences shaped people's ideas and understandings. Except for possibly a few certain common notions that everyone was born with. British empiricism came about and debated the existence of these inborn ideas. Then came logical empiricism, which kept the main concepts from British empiricism, but added in certain understandings from mathematical logic.
The different degrees of empiricism are interesting because with this type of argument, it's not always a black and white issue. Some people believe in different bits and pieces of the argument, and might not agree with others. Absolute, Substantive and Partial empiricism can distinguish between how much a person concurs with the belief.
The main difference between Empiricist and Rationalists in the belief of whether or not people are born with innate knowledge. The website that talked about the earlier forms of empiricism, said that they began thinking that both were true, the blank slate, and the little bit of inborn knowledge, but Locke's British empiricism says nothing about having any sort of innate knowledge. With Rationalism however, the main philosopher behind it all, Descartes, thinks that the idea of God, or a higher power, or infinity, and a person's knowledge of their own existence is inborn.
It's really interesting to think about both concepts, and examples that would back up both arguments. Unfortunately, after I did more research on the topic of empiricism which I thought I agreed with more, I am still unable to decide completely on which one I believe in. I think that I am still in the middle of both, not sure which one I actually think is true. Or maybe they are both right. Who knows.

4) Links:
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Empiricism
http://www.britannica.com/topic/empiricism
http://www.mesacc.edu/~davpy35701/text/empm-v-ratm.html

Terms: Descartes, Locke, Rationalism, Empiricism and all it's different forms, innate knowledge, ideas, psychology, philosophy

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
My topic is empiricism. While I was reading the textbook I stumbled upon the passage mentioning empiricism and John Locke. In previous history courses in high school I briefly learned about John Locke and Enlightenment principles. It was extremely vague and did not go into much detail about his accomplishments; only that he was a prominent figure during this time period. I strongly dislike philosophy because of its completely abstract nature. I appreciate the fact that there is not exactly a ‘wrong’ response to a philosophical question. I just do not understand how one evaluates philosophical thought processes. This chapter was a struggle to read and find something that ‘interested’ me because of my STRONG dislike of philosophical principles.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I want to discuss the definition of empiricism, I want to discuss prominent empiricist thinkers, and I want to compare it to another philosophical school—rationalism.
What is empiricism?
The History and Systems textbook author, C. James Goodwin, explains that empiricism is based on the idea that the world is made up of the experiences of human nature. Essentially empiricism is a school of thought that claims that knowledge is not something an individual is born with right away, rather, it is learned through life experiences, achievements and mistakes. In this way I view empiricism as sided with the nurture part of human development. In my developmental psychology course I remember that the nature vs. nurture debate is still a facet of development that is not clear. There are theories for and against nurture. With supporting evidence on both sides it is difficult to come to a single conclusion from a developmental standpoint.
How does it differ from rationalism?
When I was flipping through the pages of our textbook I noticed that there were two distinct trains of thought that were presented: empiricism and rationalism. Empiricism, as mentioned earlier, was based on experiencing the world using the five senses. Rationalism, on the other hand, was based on reasoning, using carefully thought-out arguments, an innate knowledge (Link 1). Rationalism was the prevailing thought process until John Locke introduced the concept of empiricism. Locke’s ideas led to the development of empirical testing. Today, scientists use an empirical method of research where they use the scientific method to gather data. This is a concrete display of empirical thought processes, while rationalism is more concerned with using logic (an intangible source of knowledge).

Who are the key individuals associated with empiricism?
As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, John Locke was a large proponent of empirical thinking. John Locke had medical training which might have influenced his theory that empirical thought processes were more valid than the popular philosophy of rationalism. He approached human understanding from a medical perspective. A few of his well-known works include: “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (sought to explain human knowledge and identity) and “Thoughts on Education” (sought to expand courses and encourage better conditions for students). (http://www.history.com/topics/john-locke). Another seminal work that Locke contributed to further empiricism and science was the analogy where he compared the mind to a blank sheet of white paper when humans are newborns. The “white page” refers to space that will be filled by experiences in the future; through using the five senses. From the rationalist perspective this would be a page covered in writing, as the individual would already be aware of the knowledge through reasoning.
George Berkeley is another famous empiricist who published influential works. One of these documents concerned the properties vision. This work was titled “The New Theory of Vision” and described the concepts of magnitude, figure and distance; essentially he was describing depth perception and near-sightedness versus far-sightedness (http://www.iep.utm.edu/berkeley/). In his work he argued that each of the five senses had distinct qualities, which he then set out to explain.

Link 1: http://www.mesacc.edu/~davpy35701/text/empm-v-ratm.html
I used this link to define as well as compare and contrast empiricism and rationalism. I wanted to understand the distinctions so that I do not confuse the two. It is always easier to discuss a topic in detail when there is a concrete definition to refer back to.

Link 2: http://www.history.com/topics/john-locke
I used this link to gain a better understanding of Locke, his works, and his influence. This link provided a nice background into why (some of) John Locke’s thought processes are still relevant.

Link 3: http://www.iep.utm.edu/berkeley/
Through this assignment I wanted to get a better idea of who were some of the most influential philosophers in history (other than Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, of course). John Locke was the first name listed under British Empiricism and then Berkeley was next. Although, I was somewhat familiar with John Locke’s name I had not heard of Berkeley in the past. This link was similar to the link I have listed for Locke in that it provided background on Berkeley’s works.

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.

The topic I have chosen to write about this week is John Locke’s position on innate ideas and what his stance contributes to the way we look at psychology today. This topic fits into the chapter we have read because John Locke brought forth the idea that we learn everything we know through some sort of experience and that is very important in the history of developmental psychology and I am interested in that.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?

I am going to talk about John Locke’s ideas about how we learn, some arguments against his thoughts on innate ideas and how his thoughts have changed what we now think of psychology.

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize* them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

John Locke wrote an essay that held some content about innate ideas, also known as nativism. Innate ideas are supposedly knowledge and facts that we are born with that came from thin air. Locke’s essay criticizes this theory saying that our minds are a blank slate when we are born. This is known as tabula rasa. He believed that everything we know comes from experience. The YouTube video I chose as an example of learning through experience shows a child fitting blocks into spaces. The child learns where the blocks go through trial and error. Locke believed that everything we know happens because we have learned it one way or another.

There are some arguments against Locke’s ideas that we learn everything. Some of these arguments would ask, “How did the child know he had to fit the blocks in place if he had never seen anyone do it before him?” Leibniz has three arguments against Locke’s claims and they are: A person can know something without being consciously aware that they know it, there is a definite distinction between necessary and contingent truths (necessary truths come from deductive reasoning), and innate knowledge exists because it is basically part of a persons character, natural ability and the action of preforming what they know. This is a debate that has been going on for a long time and there are truths to both sides of the argument that I find interesting.

Locke’s views have changed the face of psychology and philosophy because before him, people thought that some knowledge came from thin air. Locke changed the way we looked at how knowledge was acquired. It was mostly theory and he changed it to a scientific view. If no one came along to change our outlook from theory to scientific, our education system would possibly be completely different than it is today.

4)Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/locke/ : I used this website to give me a more understandable definition and outlook on Locke’s views and criticisms about innate ideas. This goes into more detail than the book does. This contributed the most to the post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3zCgi_BUmY : I used this video as an example of how we learn from experience. Just watch from the beginning to the 1 minute mark and that shows how the kid is learning. This just gave me a visual example of how we learn from experience.

http://www.alevelphilosophy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Locke-Leibniz-innate-knowledge.pdf : I used this for the arguments against Locke’s ideas. This helped and contributed a lot to my post. I probably learned the most from this article.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/influence.html : I used this source to find some good points as to how Locke’s ideas influenced our education system and philosophy. This contributed a small amount to my post.

5) Terms: John Locke, innate ideas, nativism, tabula rasa

1) My topic is John Locke on education. Chapter 2 discusses Locke's "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" and a few of his theories on raising and educating children using empiricist philosophy. I was interested in this topic because one of my major's is music education. Theories on the best way to teach intrigue me, those both past and present.

2) I will discuss 3 aspects of John Locke's "Some Thoughts Concerning Education," their validity, and how they relate to today's standards. These 3 aspects are clean slate, self-discipline, good character.

3) John Locke believed that every child was born with a clean slate. In other words, every child was born without any knowledge in their minds. He believed that knowledge was developed from experience, not innately. When applying this to education, students must not have other information in their minds when trying to learn something new. This includes fear or frustration. Keeping that in consideration, teachers must be aware of how they approach teaching. According to Locke, teachers must not be to strict in their teaching, for students will become fearful, which will prevent learning. I have been taught something similar in one of my education courses here at UNI. If students are fearful in class, they will not learn. Therefore, students must feel welcomed in the class, by both the teacher and the students, in order to learn. This idea of not being to strict is also relevant in self-discipline of students.

John Locke advises that students learn self-discipline. He disagrees with the memorization of rules because it clogs students' clean slates with unnecessary information that will soon be forgotten. In contradiction, Locke also believes that in order for a student to learn to be self-disciplined, they must be disciplined. Perhaps he is suggesting students be disciplined through a method other than rule memorization. In hopes to have self-disciplined students, Locke believes punishments and rewards should be avoided. If a student is punished for bad behavior, they associate the punishment with learning, resulting in an unmotivated student. If a student is rewarded for good behavior, they work towards the reward, not towards learning the content. I also find this to be true with students today. A good grade as a reward is an example of students working towards a reward, not learning. It is very common for students to ask what they have to do to receive an 'A,' rather than striving to learn the content. Locke suggests that if there are no rewards, students will actually learn the information.

Finally, John Locke believes that education should teach students good character. Another reason to avoid rule memorization is to encourage students to develop good character, according to John Locke. Establishing rules in the classroom is encouraged by UNI educational department because it helps lead students towards good character. However, Locke suggests that students be taught rules, leading to good character, by example, not by memorization. Despite this one example, many of John Locke's theories on education from his article, "Some Thoughts Concerning Education," coincide with what is taught in the educational department of UNI and reflect how students act today.

4) URLS
http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume2/june04/primsource.cfm
I chose this site because it narrowed down the article to the most important parts. It was useful but not as beneficial as my other two sources.

http://eepat.net/doku.php?id=john_locke_s_pedagogy
I chose this site because it clearly organized and summarized Locke's article. I was very beneficial in it's organization of content.

http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1692locke-education.asp
I chose this site because it included the full article, "Some Thoughts Concerning Education," which I thought would be beneficial to use when discusses Locke and education. I found it to be very beneficial.

*terms: John Locke, empiricist

The topic that I choose to explore was materialism, and determinism. The chapter talks about how materialists believe that the only reality is physical, that everything that occurs in the universe. Even mental status involves measurable material object that move in space. Thinking back to chapter 1, in how we think about history. Should I view this concept with today’s ideology no, this theory would not make sense. I would like to know more how materialism was discovered and practiced and how is kept evolving. Materialism really challenged everything, it does not necessarily rule out religion and the belief of god but it sure questions it. This idea questions the concept that the church is putting out. It solely focuses on what is seen and felt, what materials are there. The first known idea of materialism is in 600 b.c, by the Carvaka school of Ancient Indian philosophy. It was not until the 17th century was the idea of materialism brought back by Pierre Gassendi, Thomas Hobbes, and Denis Diderot . The book briefly mentions Thomas Hobbes, so next I decide to learn more about him and his contributions. Thomas Hobbes firmly believed in the machinist perspective, that no one had a soul. He saw human beings as essentially machines. That even their thoughts and emotions are operating according to physical laws and chains of cause and effect. That there is an action and reaction. A good example of this is that humans are always trying to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. That humans are very interested or focused on the self. Thomas rejected both Francis bacon and Robert Boyle. He felt that the nature of observation was bias, making there scientific theories wrong. That individuals see the world is very different ways, how could one person ‘observe and report one thing’ while someone else could be seeing the exact same event but have a different idea or theory on what had happened. He also felt that inductive reasoning was wrong too. He would argue that the results of ‘artificial’ experiments carried out by a few scientists can never be universally demonstrable outside of the laboratory. Artificial experiments meaning that the experiments they are conducting did not happen on their own or spontaneously. That they are conducting the experiments with a targeted results. Which in turn means how one would apply that to the real world. If it had to be ‘forced’. It is kind a of interesting finding out how Hobbes thought of science. Considering what we know now, and how science has evolved.
Overall in my quest of knowledge I feel like I keep finding new interesting topics. How my original interest lie in with materialism but in the end I find Thomas Hobbes more complex and intriguing. Next I am going to talk about determinism, determinism is the notion that everything including human action happens causes of events outside of their will. That no one should be held responsible for their actions due to the fact that it was already determined by some greater power. Through my research I have found that determinism can be broken down even further. That there is a pre determinism, which states that the idea that the entire past and the future was already determined at the origin of the universe. Now in an article by William James he stated the difference between hard and soft determinism. The article “The Dilemma of Determinism,” stated that soft determinists hold that all events, and human decisions, are determined, but that some form of freedom and moral responsibility exists. Now compared to the hard determinists, they hold that the ‘determination’ of human actions and decisions requires us to reject the concept of moral responsibility. William James contributed quite a bit to psychology, he was a famous philosopher. He conducted lectures on the pragmatic method and the various dilemmas it can have.
This website, http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/materialism.htm breaks down the different types of materialism and how it could be applied in today’s world. It gives examples of the first notion of materialism. This website gave me a more detail history on how materialism came back to life. Both this website and book mention Thomas Hobbes, as a contributor. http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_materialism.html for the last website I choose http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hobbes/themes.html , it gave me a better understanding on who Thomas Hobbes was and how he came to his beliefs.
This website gave me a better understanding on determinism.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/determinism.html
This gave me more of an insight on William James. http://www.iep.utm.edu/james-o/

Terminology: materialism, determinism, Thomas Hobbes, machinist, Francis Bacon , Robert Boyle, Willaim James, Soft and hard determinism

TB3
1) My topic is Thematic Apperception Test. In chapter 2 we read about Leibniz and his contribution to the perspective of modern psychology through philosophy. Leibniz shared his philosophies of mind and body and then created a theory of apperception which he tries to introduce the implication of his philosophy that the mind and body by showing the sensory perceptions of the body and the connection of the mind to those perceptions. This fits into the reading about Leibniz and his view on apperception, however Murray and Morgan two colleagues at Harvard psychology Clinic introduced thematic apperception test in 1935.
2) first, theory of apperception, second, Implementation of TAT, and finally, analysis of the results.

3. Theory, the TAT is used to find the personalities of an individual. This is done through a testing of taking a picture and explaining the image that you see. The facilitators of this test believe that they can ask questions that have a non-leading context and find a result that connects the story the participant provides with a connection to their life. This connection to their life is what gives them the perspective.

Implementation of the TAT puts a lot of the weight on the facilitator. The facilitator needs to make questions non leading towards an answer that they want to receive as well as remain open to hearing the story and following along. The facilitator tracts the information of the story that the participant gives as well as not the body language and facial cues presented. Not only does the facilitator need to have an accurate assessment of the body language cues but also they need to remain aware of the possible mental connections. I imagine this as a chess game; only difference is here you have the opportunity to ask your opponent what moves he plans on making. Here you can see that just conducting the test isn’t enough to get the results you want, you need to apply the conditions above to reach the conclusive result.

As we now look at the results we can see a pattern. That pattern is relevant of the client. This test can help in the understanding of a client and what they are going through. Context is extremely important in this study. However, the typical results show that if a person explains a story in a optimistic or pessimistic way it is because they were in a plausible or adverse situation prior to the testing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-IO3eQ-0sI
This YouTube clip shows the demonstration and the conclusion of the typical TAT. This video then covers the underlying factors and correlations of the test . This shows us the difference between individuals and why people respond they way they do when in a TAT

http://www.minddisorders.com/Py-Z/Thematic-Apperception-Test.html
This is a strictly informative site that tells the reader about the TAT testing History, Common results, and the conditions of the testing, and how they affect.

Chapter 2 ‘The Philosophical Context’ P. 45-46
These pages give the reader the knowledge of the rationalist responses to empiricists beliefs at the time. Kant and Leibniz

Terminology: Empiricists, Apperception, Rationalists, Thematic apperception test, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Leibniz,

REDO TB3

1. There are many different ways that we learn, but I am choosing to discuss the theory of associationism. This is the idea that we learn by weaving together existing knowledge. We associate together our experiences and ideas so we can get a better understanding of a certain topic or idea. The theory of associationism is discussed in great detail in this chapter as well as the men that are considered associationists that include: David Hume, David Hartley, and John Stuart Mill. The idea of learning by association is interesting to me because I believe that I learn best by doing this. Everyone had different ways that work best for them, but to me, I can't think of a better and more valid way that actually works for learning.

2. There are three major contributors to the theory of associationism, and I would like to discuss these three men and what they did exactly to contribute to psychology and this specific way of learning. First, I will discuss David Hume. He followed the British Empiricist tradition and thought that our understanding was due to our experiences.

Next, David Hartley took the approach of assciationism in a physiological way. He believed that we get a better understanding of concepts and ideas by experiencing things together which is the definition of contiguity.

Lastly, I would like to discuss John Stuart Mill. He believed that the mind was very complicated and complex, and that there were multiple elements that combine to make larger wholes. He too, thought that we learn by association, and I think it is important to discuss his ideas and theories as to why this is a good approach.

3. Many British Associationists such as Hume, Hartley, and Mills believed that knowledge is woven together by the associations among our experiences and ideas. That is one way to define associationism, but another is a theory that the mind is composed of elements, specifically these are referred to as sensations and ideas. David Hume believed that we learn from experience, and he tried to dissect the human experience to get a better understanding of this idea of associationism. He came up with the idea that the human experience was made up of two different aspects, these being impressions and ideas. Impressions are the basic sensations, or the “raw” data of experience. Ideas are considering the “faint copies” of impressions. This basically means that ideas are not vivid. Hume also came up with three different laws of associationism. These laws are; resemblance, which means that a certain object can remind us of another. The law of cause-and effect means that if one event follows another, we can associate the two events together. The last law of assocaitionism is the law of contiguity. This basically states that we learn by experiencing things together.

David Hartley was also an associationist. He came up with the theory of parallelism. He considered that psychological and physical events happen separately, but are somewhat comparable. They go hand in hand, but are also different. The mental aspects of a situation and the psychical aspect of the same situation are different, but we learn by associating them. Hartley. Like Hume also supported contiguity, that we learn by experiencing events together. He came up with both spatial and temporal contiguity. Spatial contiguity basically states that by thinking of one thing, can lead us to think of another because we associate these two ideas together. Temporal contiguity states that we associate actions with what we look like or what we are feeling at the time.

John Stuart Mill was a great philosopher that contributed a lot to psychology. He believed that if you though that something was right, that you needed to support it and take a stand for it. But, in terms of learning by association, he had three different methods that he used. First, the method of agreement stated that we learn by cause and effect, also an idea that Hume had. If one thing causes another, we can associate this. His next method was the method of difference. Yes, we can also learn by ruling something out, but this is also considered a method of association because we associate the difference rather than the similarities of a situation. The last method that Mill came up with was the Joint Method. This is basically the combination of both the method of agreement and difference. We can learn by both similarities and differences, and if we can find a cause and effect, we associate them together to find an answer to a certain question or idea.

4. www.iep.utm.edu/hume/
This website was very interesting and helped me to get a better understanding or Hume's ideas and thoughts of learning by association. It went into great detail about his theories, and I learned a lot more information than the text book provided.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/hartley/
This website was useful to me, because it had a better explanation of Hartley's theories of contiguity. There was a lot more of a discussion as to why contiguity is a good theory to follow when it comes to associationism.

Www.biography.com/people/john-stuart-mill-9408210
John Stuart Mill has contributed to so many other things other that psychology, and this website provided a lot more information of his contributions which was very helpful in understanding why he thought what he thought.

5. Associationism, David Hume, Impressions, Ideas, Resemblance, Contiguity, Cause and Effect, David Hartley, Parallelism, Spatial Contiguity, Temporal Contiguity, John Stuart Mill, Method of Agreement, Method of Difference, Joint Method

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it.
I decided to do this blog over empiricism which was covered in this chapter because I find it interesting to learn about it.

2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment?
I will talk about its history, the definition of, along with how it developed.

3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize* them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.

Empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory experience, in the formation of ideas, over the notion of innate ideas or traditions; empiricists may argue however that traditions arise due to relations of previous sense experiences. Most empiricists also discount the notion of innate ideas or innatism which is the idea that the mind is born with ideas or knowledge and is not a "blank slate" at birth. The term "empiricism" has a dual etymology, stemming both from the Greek word for "experience" and from the more specific classical Greek and Roman usage of "empiric", referring to a physician whose skill derives from practical experience as opposed to instruction in theory. The term "empirical" (rather than "empiricism") also refers to the method of observation and experiment used in the natural and social sciences. It is a fundamental requirement of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition or revelation. Hence, science is considered to be methodologically empirical in nature.

4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.britannica.com/topic/empiricism
basic information on the meaning of empiricism
http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_empiricism.html
in depth information on its origins and its meaning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
basic information on empiricism and where it’s derived

1) Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter we have covered this week, and why you are interested in it. My topic for this week is John Locke. Locke fits into this chapter covered this weeks because he is discussed as one of the earliest philosophers, a close cousin to psychology.on human understanding and education. I am interested in him because throughout my education I have heard his name once or twice but I do not think I have ever fully grasped what he contributed to the world and I would like to have a more rounded understanding on who he was and his work.
2) What are three aspects of the topic you want to talk about for this assignment? The three topics I want to talk about for this assignment are John Locke's life and education, his work on empiricism and human understanding, and his theories on education.
3) Next, I would like you to take the information you found from the various sources and integrate/synthesize* them into the three aspects of the topic, and then write about the topic.
John Locke was born in 1632 in Wrington, Somerset, England. He attended Christ Church University of Oxford where he studied medicine, but oddly enough never really practiced it, he enjoyed the science of it rather than the real life application. After making a close acquaintance of Lord Ashley he moved to London with the Lord to become his personal physician where he rose through the ranks to secretary of presentations. During revolutionary times Locke became a problem for the English government and was exiled to Holland where he wrote on of his most famous essays "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding". Locke was able to return to England in 1688 where he went on to write several more works before his death in 1704.
Locke was one of the founding father's of the revolutionary idea of empiricism, that our knowledge and understanding of the world around us are results of experiences that we have in our life time, and not due to an innate knowledge which had been the dominating theory before this. Locke went onto describe how we categorize our understanding of the world through primary and a secondary qualities. With primary qualities the objects intrinsic features are observed such as color, texture, size, where secondary qualities have to do with not the thing being observed but the thoughts they produce. While qualities went on to describe how we interpret our world, Locke's view on ideas explained on how we think about our world. There were two types of thought, simple and complex. Simple ideas are very similar to primary qualities, such as color, and shape, where complex ideas are a combination of many simple ideas that give birth to a new train of thought.
John Locke's ideas on education had influence from his work with empiricism. Locke believed that a moral education was far more important than a purely scholarly one. He believed that if a principle of virtue was instilled in the pupil then that pupil would have a desire for reason and learning. He goes onto describe how to instill this desire for learning in children. Learning should not be seen as a punishment to children, other wise they will never develop the desire for it. Punishment should be avoided in regards of learning. Locke also spoke of a fairly modern idea in teaching that the lesson should be tailored to the individual child and their learning style. He focused on good habit formation and minimizing rules that would only confuse and disinterest children from learning. Parents also had an important role to play in their child's education. A strict upbringing was Locke's suggestion, however once the child was old enough he was to be given free reign and his ideas and wishes should be respected because if the parents had instilled their will early enough as Lock suggested, the child will be driven by reason and a strong desire to learn. While psychology wasn't even in its infancy at the time of Locke and other philosophers of his kind, this is where the seed was planted and their ideas and works should still be considered an important part of the origin and history of psychology.
4) Finally, at the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/lockethoughts/summary.html This website summarized Locke's views on education
http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/4l.htm This website went into detail on a few of Locke's view points in psychology.
http://www.biography.com/people/john-locke-9384544#synopsis This website gave a brief bio over Locke's life.

Next make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post. : Locke, empiricism,primary qualities, secondary qualities, simple ideas, complex ideas.