Professor: Dr. Jennifer Mundale
Click here for her website, or click here to email her.
Just the typical introduction for the first day of class. As a side note: read chapter 1 in the book.
Descartes (1596-1650)
Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("Index"):
- This is known as the list of forbidden books that Catholics are not allowed to read.
Environmental (stimulus) = Activity (in nervous system) = Response
Descartes:
- "Cogito Ergo Sum." (I think, therefore I am)
- Ontologically a Dualist (mind/body)
- Epistemologically a Rationalist (How we come to have knowledge)
- He wrote Meditations and Discourse on Method
Covering Law Model of Explanation: (a.k.a. D-N or Deductive Nomological Model)
1) Laws
2) Initial conditions (explanans = explanations)
(Result) Explandum = The thing being explained.
Law: If a knee is hit in the right spot with an external stimulus, it will jerk.
Initial Condition: This knee was hit by an external stimulus in the right spot.
Explandum = This knee jerked.
Law: If a person decides to make his knee jerk, it will jerk.
Initial Condition: This person decided to make his knee jerk.
Explandum = This knee jerked.
(Premise) 1) I cannot possible doubt that I exist as a thinking thing.
(Premise) 2) I can doubt, however, that I have a body, and thus, that I exist as a physical thing.
(Conclusion) 3) Therefore, thinking is essential to what I am. And furthermore, I know my mind more easily
then I know my body.
Alpha (p.12) When an entity is known for certain to have property X, but not known for certain to have property Y, then X is essential to the entity, and Y is not.
Beta (p.13) When an agent knows for certain that it has property X, but does not know for certain that it has property Y, then X is essential to the agent, and Y is not.
Reflex Arc (for Descartes)
- A Reflex Arc is deterministic.
- It is predictible and based on what it is constituted of.
- The French Royal Gardens influenced Descartes' Reflex Hypothesis.
- The garden contained hydraulically controlled robots that were made to move by an invisible water flow.
- Humans reacting to stimuli the same way the statues were made to move or make a sound once activated.
- Deterministic = The robots could only do what they were designed and built to do, nothing more.
- Were humans designed the same way?
- Are we deterministic and do we have free will?
- Descartes got into trouble by saying that some of human behavior is similar to the robots. i.e. If someone taps
your knee with a hammer in the right spot, a reflex action occurs and your knee will move.
1) If the mind is non-physical, difficult to study from a scientific point of view.
2) The mind/body relation appears to violate the laws of science. (It initiates causal chains but is not subjevt to mechanical necessity. It has no mass, no extension, and it gives off ne energy.
3) There is the problem of Epistemic access. We have access to our own minds in a way that others do not.
Note Flanangan's comment on p.22 about trading in Metaphysical (Ontological) Dualism for Epistemological Dualism.
- Wrote "The Principle of Psychology" in 1890.
- James is considered the Father of American Psychology.
- He set up the first psychological lab in the U.S. at Harvard University.
- Struggles with the natural appeal of Dualism.
- But as a scientist, he is pulled toward a natural process.
- Naturalistic: Revolution in studying the mind.
- Studying the mind in a scientific point of view. (Mind = an evolved product of nature.)
- Understood what it has evolved to do and what demands are placed on it in an environment.
- Had a selection process that influenced our survival and this process has had an effect on our mind.
- The mind is what the brain does and its function. i.e. the mind is the function of the brain.
- States of mind are purposeful.
- How would one go about solving the problem of the freedom of the will?
- "Psychology is the science of mental life, both its phenomena and of their conditions." James (p.25)
Psychology has two jobs:
1) It must accurately describe mental phenomena.
2) It must explain the causal conditions that give rise to these phenomena.
(no metaphysically odd properties)
Naturalistic view of the mind (not the same as) the traditional materialistic reflex mech. view of the mind.
Method of introspection reliable?
| Attended | Unattended | |
| Group 1 | The officer put out the light to signal the attack | He extinguished the lantern |
| Group 2 | Same as above | Irrelevant sentences |
Both Groups:
- Reported what they heard in attended channel accurately.
- Could not report on what they heard in unattended channel.
Only Group 1:
- Favored sugessted reading.
- Even though they claimed they couldn't hear it, somehow they managed to process the information both acoustically
and semantically.
- Something is taking place that is influencing us that we are unaware of.
Below is a context experiment about salience:
In the above piture, we see that the observers see the 2 people conversing differently. Rather, they have a different salient experience.
OBS(b) see person B as the most influencial of the 2. OBS(a) see person A as the most influencial of the 2. And the two side OBS(c) see
neither A or B as the most influencial, but rather they see them as equally influential.
- When interacting with and observing others, behavior (people + their actions) is salient, whereas situational factors fade into the
background. i.e. What people do at a party and their behavior, not the color of the carpet or the lamps.
- When an audience observes actors, they tend to over attribute their actions to dispositional factors and not situational factors. i.e.
Something internal to the observer like character, personality, and inner traits.
- Dispositions are internal
- Situations are external
When we make attributions about our own behavior, situational factors are more salient, "My situation is your Disposition".
- This is known as the fundamental error of attribution. We tend to over attribute their dispositional factors when observing other people.
- We excuse our behavior more than we excuse other people's behavior.
Conscious Mental Life (CML)
- Purposefulness = Something that has a CML can have goals and a purpose.
- Intentionality = is "aboutness"
- Consciousness itself = The simple epistemic feature of sentience or awareness.
- Personl = It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
- Personal Change = It is impossible for a human to have the same thoughts, feelings, or the same
intentional state more than once because no event can ever recur identically.
- Personal Continuity = Here's an explanation, it applies to both the mind and the brain and cannot be reduced.
It is excited by the same features of the world, not by others.
- Selectivity = It is interested in some parts of these objects to the exclusion of others, and welcomes
or rejects - chooses from among them, in a world - all the while..
William James
- James is a Pragmatist
- The mind is a natural product of evolution for James.
- My first act of free will, will be to believe in freewill.
Pragmatism:
- Name for lots of different views.
- If it advances your purpose, then it is good.
- A belief in something to the extent that it further strengthens your belief in it.
- Perpetuating State. i.e. Flapping your arms.
Naturalistic Emergentism:
- The view that the world consists of natural objects, natural events, and natural purposes, as well as their properties
and relations.
- All novel features of the universe must emerge in lawlike ways.
Metaphysical Emergentism:
- The thesis that novelty may appear in non-lawlike ways, for example, miraculously.
- M.E. is the thesis that the universe is "open" in the same sense that non natural stuff might emerge from natural stuff.
- Neither N.E. or M.E. can be proven one way or the other.
Compatiblism or "Spft" Determinism:
- The types of causes our behavior has.
- Free will.
- Our actions are caused by our beliefs and choices.
Determinism:
- So long as our behavior is caused at all, there is no sense in which our actions are free.
- No free will.
- A being that has free will and the ability to make a choice is a being that has some sort of survival advantage.
- A primative form of deterministic. i.e. a sponge or a plant cannot make choices. They do only what they
were designed to do. There is no motive involved.
B.F. Skinner:
- Skinner is not just false.
- World War I was happening in the first part of the century.
- Let's not talk about things we don't know or can understand. Instead, let's talk about what we can observe.
- Skinner made psychology epistemologically safe by making it epistemically deficient.
- Psychology is input, output, and predicting human behavior.
Epistemological Conservatism:
- populations behave more conservative when they are affraid.
Heuristic: A rule or guideline that you learn. A discovered principle. Guidelines or principles that might be fallabe.
Heuristic Biases: Limited time, limited brain processes, a shortcut for people to base their actions upon.
William James:
- Wrote "The Principles of Psychology" in 1890
- Consciousness is selective
- The way we think about something depends on how we've absorbed things/experiences. Each one influences the
other.
- Whichever words come first, in a list of a person's characteristics, makes the difference to how a person sees
or judges a person. The first words are most effective.
- A positive word like warm has a halo effect around the other words. (Heuristic Bias)
- When you pick up one thing about a person, you tend to pick up the related words about them. i.e. Chris is a
warm, caring, intelligent person.
Why would it be advantageous to see the bad things in people? Because it would better prepare you.
Pessimists always see the bad in people.
Epistemology is how we learn and gain knowledge.
We make different judgements about ourselves then we would make about everybody else.
Altruism: Putting other people's needs first, above your own.
Bruner and Postman, Card Study:
1) Dominance Response:
- 96% of the 28 people who took the test showed this reaction at one point.
- When shown a black 3 of Hearts, it was normal for the people to either see:
a Red 3 of Hearts, which is form dominant and color assimilated, or
a black 3 of Spades, which is color dominant and form assimilated.
2) Comprimise:
- 50% with red cards
- 11% with black cards
- Saw the red 6 of Spades as a "Purple" 6 of Spades or "Purple" 6 of Hearts.
- Also reported seeing a black 4 of Hearts as a grey 4 of Spades.
Perceptions: 3 Elephants walk into a bar, the 4th one ducked.
3) Disruption Reaction:
- This was rare for people.
- People uncertain about what they saw, but disoriented.
4) Recognition:
- 6 out of 28 people recognized that something was wrong, but they weren't sure what was wrong.
- Might report that the numbers are backward.
This card study is a logical theory, not an empirical study.
Alcohol Studies:
Heart Rates: not affected by actual alcohol intake.
- Strongly believed they'd been given alcohol.
High sensation (risk) seekers: Believed they had been drinking.
- They tend to drive more risky.
Low sensation (risk-advers) seekers: They believed they had been drinking.
- They tended to drive more carefully.
Alcohol heightens qualities that you already have.
Motivational factors: One sees what one wants to see.
Dartmouth vs. Princeton Football game:
- The game was very rough and there were a lot of bruises and broken bones.
- The people from Princeton blamed Dartmouth.
- 86% said Dartmouth
- 11% said both.
- The people from Dartmouth said it was started by:
- 53% said both
- 36% said Dartmouth
(No one said that it was started by Princeton)
This suggests what we want to see shapes what we see.
The Recency Effect:
- The opposite of Primacy.
- The stuff you hear last is more prevalant to your memory.
- It stands out more to you.
Berkeley: To exist is to be perceived.
Context Dependence:
- The Ebbinghaus Illusion makes an object surrounded by similar
objects seem bigger or smaller depending on the size of the external objects, whereas the objects
in the middle are the exact same size. see below:
Interesting side note:
- When asked to pick up the center circle, the hands do not change their size.
- This concludes that the Ebbinghaus Illusion only affects our vision and not our motor control.
My Personal Belief:
- Vision is overloaded with data all the time and maybe our brains use short cuts when it processes what we see.
- This maybe why we see an illusion when the center circles are really the same size.
- Whereas motor funtions in the brain do not get a sensory overload and therefore don't have to use short cuts
when processing the information.
The Halo Effect:
- The extension of an overall impression of a person (or one particular outstanding trait) to influence the total
judgment of that person. The effect is to evaluate an individual high on many traits because of a belief that the
individual is high on one trait. Similar to this is the 'devil effect', whereby a person evaluates another as low
on many traits because of a belief that the individual is low on one trait which is assumed to be critical.
- Intelligence, physique, leadership, and character.
The 12 most powerful words in the english language are:
(1) You
(2) Money
(3) Save
(4) New
(5) Results
(6) Easy
(7) Health
(8) Safety
(9) Love
(10) Discovery
(11) Proven
(12) Guarantee
Will be updated soon.
Will be updated soon.
Will be updated soon.