Psych 397 Chapter 7

Front 1

Active Mind

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Refers to intelligent,self-organizing properties of mental processes. Contrast with the "blank slate" hypothesis encountered in empirical philosophies.

Front 2

Analytic a priori

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Refers to formal truths in which a predicate completely unpacks a subject. A statement such as "All bachelors are unmarried" is an example.

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Apperception

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Historically a term with many meanings, but it commonly refers to mental processes that are more complex than those involved in perception. It implies a high level or awareness and activity of the ind so that relationships are clearly understood. Contrasts with mere passive awareness.

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Apperceptive Mass

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A term employed by Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) to refer to the goal of education to produce not only knowledge of facts but also a higher level of awareness of relationships.

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Autonomy

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A term employed by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) that refers to self-government or the ability to act in a moral and responsible manner, not to please an authority but because the individual recognizes the inherent or intrinsic worth of certain actions.

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Categories of Understanding

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An expression employed by Kant to refer to inherent ordering principles of the mind that contribute to knowledge. For example, Kant believed that human beings have intuitive understandings of causality and temporal and spatial relationships.

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Commonsense Philosophy

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A term referring to the philosophical orientation of philosophers such as Thomas Reid (1710-1796) and his followers. The expression refers to a deeply held opposition to beliefs that are counter-intuitive or that do violence to our experience of the world.

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Deductive Argument

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Any argument in which the conclusion is claimed to follow necessarily from the premises. A deductive argument is valid if, and only if, it is not possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. Otherwise, the argument is invalid.

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Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

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French philosopher who is often regarded as the founder of modern philosophy. Descartes made extensive original contributions in a great variety of areas. He helped elaborate early scientific methodology, provided rich and often testable hypotheses about the relationships between behaviour and physiology, and is regarded as one of the key figures in modern rationalism.

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Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841)

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German mathematician, philosopher and psychologist. Herbart was among the first to attempt to quantify mental functions. He was also interested in the role of unconscious processes in human life and in the application of psychological studies to clinical and educational problems.

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Heteronomy

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A term employed by Kant to refer to the varieties of forces outside the organism (eg. rewards, punishments and authority) that often regulate behaviour

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Inductive Argument

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Any argument in which the conclusion is claimed to be more probable than not given the truth of the premises. Inductive arguments are said to be strong or weak, depending on whether the conclusion is or is not made probable according to the truth of the premises.

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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

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One of the great German philosophers, remembered for his attempts to reconcile empirical and rational approaches to knowledge. Kant believed that knowledge begins with experience, but in his view, there are meaningful connections in experience itself. Kant also advanced an early theory of moral development and was interested in problems associated with nationalism.

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)

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German rational philosopher and mathematician who sought ways to reconcile the legitimate claims of monism and pluralism. Leibniz advocated a universal language and a world united by reason and international government. Leibniz and Issac Newton independently discovered the differential calculus.

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Monad

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A term employed by Leibniz to refer to a principle of existence. Leibiz believed that the world consisted of many independent monads, but all monads are harmonious with all other monads. Thus, for him, there is a real mental world and that world is completely harmonious with a real physical or physiological world. Hence, mind and body are both real but completely harmonious and independent.

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Noumenal

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In Kant's philosophy, the term refers to a "thing in itself", an object or event independent of experience of perception.

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Petites Perceptions

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French term meaning small perceptions used by Leibniz to refer to small perceptions below the level of awareness. Leibniz believed that small perceptions in concert form the basis of perception. His concept of petites perceptions represents an early concept of unconscious processes.

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Phenomenal

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The term phenomenon is similar to the term appearance. In Kant's philosophy, the term phenomenal refers to the world as it appears in experience.

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Pre-established Harmony

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A concept employed by Leibniz to account for the congruence or harmony of different orders of reality. He believed that mind and body do not influence each other but that are always congruent. Leibniz believed that God had ordered the world in such a fashion as to permit the simultaneous and harmonious operation of many independent principles of existence.

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Rationalism

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A philosophical orientation deriving from the Latin ratio, meaning to reason or think. Rationalist philosophers typical emphasize a priori knowledge, deduction and the concept of an active mind that selectively organizes sensory data.

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Thomas Reid (1710-1796)

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Leader of Scottish commonsense philosophy that sought to reconcile the conflicting claims of empiricism and rationalism.

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Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632-1677)

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A key figure in the rationalist tradition, Spinoza sought to demonstrate the artificiality of many of the dualisms introduced by Descartes. For Spinoza, there is no gulf between God and the world or mind and body. He believed that most dualities results from problems of language, but different language systems may simply represent different ways of looking at the same reality.

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Synthetic a priori

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According to Kant, a synthetic a priori truth is known intuitively and is informative about the world. Descarte's statement "I think, therefore I am" may be regarded as a synthetic a priori truth. The truth of the statement is not a mere tautology; rather, it is informative about the world.

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Uniformitarianism

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The belief that evolutionary changes on earth occur gradually over vast stretches of time.

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Christian von Wolff (1679-1754)

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German philosopher and author of early books titled Empirical Psychology (1732) and Rational Psychology (1734). Wolff believed in both empirical and rational approaches to psychology, but argued that rational approaches would be more fruitful and lead to the discovery of principles by which the mind operates.