History and introduction of psychology:
Chapter 1:
Socrates:
- Didn’t write anything down
- Asked people questions, idea of nativism: people have knowledge inside them, which is expressed by
someone questioning them.
Plato:
- Idealism: we experience the world outside of us through our senses, but our sensory input is
imperfect
- Appetites vs duty courage reason should guide these horses in the same direction
- Nativism + rationalism
Aristotle:
- Empiricism: knowledge = observation + classification (taxonomy)
- Taxonomy: organize the world in terms of relations
- The mind filters observations through categories of experience
o Substance (what)
o Quantity (how much)
o Quality (color, shape)
o Location (where)
o Time (when)
o Relation (bigger-smaller)
o Activity (what its doing)
- Soul that entities possess comes in different scales
o Vegetative souls (nourishment, reproduction)
o Sensitive souls (sensation, locomotion, memory)
o Rational souls (logical reasoning)
deviates from Plato, outside vs inside knowledge
Al kindi:
- Introduced Arabic numerals to our science system
Alhazen:
- Studied optics, including visual perception
- Eye works like a camera obscura
- Knowledge comes from the outside in
Avicenna:
- Extended Aristotle’s idea of functions of the soul
o Exterior senses: vision, hearing, smell, taste
o Interior senses: common sense, estimation, appetition
- Floating man though experiment
- Self-awareness
,Chapter 2:
Rene Descartes:
- Wanted true knowledge
- Method (only good way)
o Doubt everything
o Knowledge: thinking (deduction) above sensory experience (induction)
o Search for simple natures: phenomena you cannot doubt
- Primary qualities: true outside us (shape, quantity)
- Secondary qualities: only about experience (sights, sounds, feelings)
- Whole world is filled with particles
- Mechanistic physiology, body as a machine, nerves are hollow tubes in which animal spirits flow
- Reflex = stimulus (external world) + response (organism behavior)
o Automatic reflex fire pull back
o Acquired reflex things you learn
o Passions anger, sadness
- No soul needed
- Dualism: you can doubt your senses, but cogito ergo sum (I think therefore, I am). When you can
doubt, you can think innate ideas
- Concluded: body and mind two different things
o Material body
o Immaterial soul
- Where does knowledge in your mind come from
o Mechanistic physiology: mind is passive (Locke)
o Interactive dualism: mind is active (Leibniz)
John Locke:
- Soul (innate ideas, not necessary for knowledge)
- Memory: sensations + reflections
- Ideas combine because:
o Contiguity: they co-occur, so you associate them
o Similarity: they look alike, so you treat them alike
- Types of knowledge:
o Intuitive knowledge (color)
o Demonstrative knowledge: explain (mathematics)
o Sensitive knowledge: interacting with the world
Molyneux:
- Blind-person thought experiment, you have to learn how to see
Leibniz:
- Followed up on Descartes
- Inspired by:
o Spinoza: pantheism: god is all
o Van Leeuwenhoek: microscope
- Everything consists of living organisms (monads) living entities who have the capacity to perceive
things
- Hierarchy of monads:
o Bare monads: deep sleep
o Sentient monads: perception (automatic)
o Rational monad: apperception (consciously): aware of everything
o Supreme monad: God
- Minute observations: you have many perceptions at the same time, all these feelings influence your
behavior, what you now experience is not all you have, you also have unconscious experience.
, - Necessary truths: you see things, not because the world is in that way, but because you perceive it
like that.
Chapter 3:
Franz Josef Gall
- Described commissures: relationship between two sides of the brain
- People get strokes and lose functions on opposite side of the brain
- Cortex: outside of the brain
o Animals with large cortex display more complex behavior
- Phrenology: people with bigger brains more intelligent
- Physiognomy: how you can read personality from paces or the way people look
great research, but phrenology went to far
Willis:
- Teacher of Locke, studied brain anatomy
- Grey matter: cell body
- White matter: road from one nerve to the other
Flourens:
- Opposition of phrenology
- Ablation: systematically destroyed parts of the brain of animals and look at behavioral consequences
- Cutted parts of cerebellum: changes in locomotion not personality
Bouilland:
- Language located at certain parts of the brain, damage almost always front left side, not taken
seriously because phrenology was not accepted
Broca:
- Localization of language
- Aphasia: speech disorder because of brain injury
- Broca’s area: cannot speak (patient ‘tan’)
- First to describe motor aphasia
Wernicke:
- Wernicke area: region related to understanding speak but doesn’t make sense
o Motor aphasia: speak bad, understand good
o Sensory aphasia: speak good, understand bad
o Conduction aphasia: relation between the two
- Brain stimulation
o Neurons communicate through electrochemical ways
o Motor strip (top to bottom): where parts of the body get activated
o What part of the brain stimulates what part of the body (large part to hand and mouth)
Fritsch and Hitzig
- Certain brain areas stimulate certain body activation so there is localization
Ferrier:
- Ideas from Fritsch and Hitzig
- Started stimulating parts of the brain
o Output movement: motor movement
o Input movement: sensory movement
- Back of the brain: visual information
- Auditory part of the brain: where sound is stimulated
Penfield: studied epilepsy
Chapter 1:
Socrates:
- Didn’t write anything down
- Asked people questions, idea of nativism: people have knowledge inside them, which is expressed by
someone questioning them.
Plato:
- Idealism: we experience the world outside of us through our senses, but our sensory input is
imperfect
- Appetites vs duty courage reason should guide these horses in the same direction
- Nativism + rationalism
Aristotle:
- Empiricism: knowledge = observation + classification (taxonomy)
- Taxonomy: organize the world in terms of relations
- The mind filters observations through categories of experience
o Substance (what)
o Quantity (how much)
o Quality (color, shape)
o Location (where)
o Time (when)
o Relation (bigger-smaller)
o Activity (what its doing)
- Soul that entities possess comes in different scales
o Vegetative souls (nourishment, reproduction)
o Sensitive souls (sensation, locomotion, memory)
o Rational souls (logical reasoning)
deviates from Plato, outside vs inside knowledge
Al kindi:
- Introduced Arabic numerals to our science system
Alhazen:
- Studied optics, including visual perception
- Eye works like a camera obscura
- Knowledge comes from the outside in
Avicenna:
- Extended Aristotle’s idea of functions of the soul
o Exterior senses: vision, hearing, smell, taste
o Interior senses: common sense, estimation, appetition
- Floating man though experiment
- Self-awareness
,Chapter 2:
Rene Descartes:
- Wanted true knowledge
- Method (only good way)
o Doubt everything
o Knowledge: thinking (deduction) above sensory experience (induction)
o Search for simple natures: phenomena you cannot doubt
- Primary qualities: true outside us (shape, quantity)
- Secondary qualities: only about experience (sights, sounds, feelings)
- Whole world is filled with particles
- Mechanistic physiology, body as a machine, nerves are hollow tubes in which animal spirits flow
- Reflex = stimulus (external world) + response (organism behavior)
o Automatic reflex fire pull back
o Acquired reflex things you learn
o Passions anger, sadness
- No soul needed
- Dualism: you can doubt your senses, but cogito ergo sum (I think therefore, I am). When you can
doubt, you can think innate ideas
- Concluded: body and mind two different things
o Material body
o Immaterial soul
- Where does knowledge in your mind come from
o Mechanistic physiology: mind is passive (Locke)
o Interactive dualism: mind is active (Leibniz)
John Locke:
- Soul (innate ideas, not necessary for knowledge)
- Memory: sensations + reflections
- Ideas combine because:
o Contiguity: they co-occur, so you associate them
o Similarity: they look alike, so you treat them alike
- Types of knowledge:
o Intuitive knowledge (color)
o Demonstrative knowledge: explain (mathematics)
o Sensitive knowledge: interacting with the world
Molyneux:
- Blind-person thought experiment, you have to learn how to see
Leibniz:
- Followed up on Descartes
- Inspired by:
o Spinoza: pantheism: god is all
o Van Leeuwenhoek: microscope
- Everything consists of living organisms (monads) living entities who have the capacity to perceive
things
- Hierarchy of monads:
o Bare monads: deep sleep
o Sentient monads: perception (automatic)
o Rational monad: apperception (consciously): aware of everything
o Supreme monad: God
- Minute observations: you have many perceptions at the same time, all these feelings influence your
behavior, what you now experience is not all you have, you also have unconscious experience.
, - Necessary truths: you see things, not because the world is in that way, but because you perceive it
like that.
Chapter 3:
Franz Josef Gall
- Described commissures: relationship between two sides of the brain
- People get strokes and lose functions on opposite side of the brain
- Cortex: outside of the brain
o Animals with large cortex display more complex behavior
- Phrenology: people with bigger brains more intelligent
- Physiognomy: how you can read personality from paces or the way people look
great research, but phrenology went to far
Willis:
- Teacher of Locke, studied brain anatomy
- Grey matter: cell body
- White matter: road from one nerve to the other
Flourens:
- Opposition of phrenology
- Ablation: systematically destroyed parts of the brain of animals and look at behavioral consequences
- Cutted parts of cerebellum: changes in locomotion not personality
Bouilland:
- Language located at certain parts of the brain, damage almost always front left side, not taken
seriously because phrenology was not accepted
Broca:
- Localization of language
- Aphasia: speech disorder because of brain injury
- Broca’s area: cannot speak (patient ‘tan’)
- First to describe motor aphasia
Wernicke:
- Wernicke area: region related to understanding speak but doesn’t make sense
o Motor aphasia: speak bad, understand good
o Sensory aphasia: speak good, understand bad
o Conduction aphasia: relation between the two
- Brain stimulation
o Neurons communicate through electrochemical ways
o Motor strip (top to bottom): where parts of the body get activated
o What part of the brain stimulates what part of the body (large part to hand and mouth)
Fritsch and Hitzig
- Certain brain areas stimulate certain body activation so there is localization
Ferrier:
- Ideas from Fritsch and Hitzig
- Started stimulating parts of the brain
o Output movement: motor movement
o Input movement: sensory movement
- Back of the brain: visual information
- Auditory part of the brain: where sound is stimulated
Penfield: studied epilepsy
