Programme: International Bachelor of Psychology (IBP)
Course: History of Psychology
This document covers important points of Lectures 1 to 5.
It also includes a summary / short recap of the exam material.
Good luck!
History of Psychology
Exam material:
• Ideas & theories (check out the notes!)
• Pioneers of Psychology book
• Examples are explanatory, summary and explanation of key points
Group sessions:
o Download Course Book Practical Sessions
1- Mind vs. body
2- Nature vs. nurture
3- Subject vs. object (cognition vs. emotion)
4- Debate
o Essay – 10 points per essay, final grade: average of the 3 essays
What are you going to argue and how
Explain the thesis
Make your argument
Anticipate and answer possible objections
Grade: 0.7 exam + 0.3 work group
CHAPTERS 1 & 2 (Lecture 1)
Cognition vs. Emotion
1- Antonio Damasio (1994):
Descartes’ Error: ‘I think, therefore I am’
Damasio: ‘I feel, therefore I am’
People are who they are because of their emotions, not only thinking.
❖ Case study: Phineas Cage – his mind was radically changed after the accident, so decidedly that his
friends and acquaintances said he was no longer Gage.
❖ Emotional processing has affects on your decisions.
Mind vs. Body
2- John Anderson: How can the human mind occur in the physical universe?
Dualism: Mind and body are separable, they constitute different substances -Descartes
Monism: Body and mind consist of one whole.
Realism: Everything consists of matter.
Idealism: Mind is the basis of everything.
Nature vs. Nurture: How do we attain knowledge? Are there differences between people?
Innate vs. acquired
Genes vs. environment
Instinct vs. thought
Rationalism: Knowledge is innate (same for everybody) -Plato
Empiricism:
Behaviorism: What you think isn’t important. If you don’t act on it we cannot measure it.
After 1600: End of Medievalism.
Medieval Society: • Patriarchical (ruled by a man)
• Fixed order Medieval Science:
• Natural place/rigid • Everything has natural position/relation to
• Traditions other things
, • Applies to objects on earth • And the entire universe
– Start of Mechanicism
Society: Mechanicism -> Free-market capitalism Science: ‘How does this work?’
Quantification: Making the important measurable
Atomism: Taking things apart to find out what things consist of.
Reductionism: If you really want to understand stuff you should study what it’s made of
Ex: Sociologists – psychologists- biologists- chemists- psychics
Epistemology: Philosophy of knowledge -what, how can we know?
Rationalism: Everything you can know comes from inside –rational thought
Empiricism: Everything you can know comes from outside -senses, perception.
Rationalism vs. Empiricism
Descartes: New knowledge through innate faculty Behaviorism: Knowledge is learned
Comsky: Language is innate associations (nurture)
Cognitive psychology
CHAPTER 3 (Lecture 2)
How do we attain knowledge?
René Descartes: (rationalist, mechanicist, dualist)
• Rationalist (methodological skepticism):
Origin of knowledge is reason and mind.
Measure of truth: Rational evidence (introspection) ‘Everything I consider to be clear and distinct.’
Innate ideas.
Doubt experiment: Start by doubting everything you know. He did this:
o to show that you can raise skeptical arguments against almost everything you know.
o Against: empiricism, foundation for rationalism: are all deducted premises (axioms) true?
o As a measure of truth against empiricism: ‘Cogito er sum’ is clear and distinct. So any idea that
is clear and distinct is true.
o Skepticism: All knowledge could be a deception so doubt everything. – Paradox: you should
doubt this info too. Descartes: There are some things that you cannot doubt.
• Mechanicist:
Material body is a machine that could be explained mechanically.
Important discovery: Blood circulatory system.
Liquids in nerves ‘animal spirits’
Reflexes: involuntary movements as a machine
• Dualist:
Matter: spatial substance –substance: what stands beneath and on it’s own. It’s mechanical and
analyzable.
Mind: Thinking substance, consciousness (cognition), free will, language, and religious experience.
Not analyzable therefore psychology is not a science. Because it’s immeasurable.
Directs the body (interactionism) happens at the pineal gland: It is unique so mind & matter is
interacting here.
• Mathematician –He invented the Cartesian coordinate system (defining the place of something with
numbers)
Thomas Hobbes: monist, empiricist
• Monism: Everything is matter. Mind is matter so it can be analyzed.
o There’s only matter. The mind is material.
o Human body equals human mind. Mechanical automaton: self operating machine
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