Chapter 6 Rationalism

Compare and contrast rationalism and empiricism

 They both postulated in mind but they differed in the type of mind they postulated

The empiricists tended to describe a passive mind, a mind that acts on sensations
and ideas in an automatic, mechanical way. The rationalist tended to postulate a
much more active mind, a mind that acts on information from the senses and gives it
meaning that it otherwise would not have.

For the rationalist, the mind added something to sensory data rather than simply
passively organizing and storing it in memory. Typically, the rationalist assumed
innate mental structures, principles, operations, or abilities that are used in analyzing
the content of thought. And they tended to believe in the existence of truths that
could not be discovered through sensory data alone.

For the empiricist, experience, memory, Association, and hedonism determine not
only how a person thinks and acts but also his or her morality. For the rationalist,
however, there are rational reasons that some acts or thoughts are more desirable
than others.

The empiricist tends to emphasize mechanistic causes of behavior, whereas the

rationalist tends to emphasize reasons for behavior.

Whereas the empiricist stresses induction, the rationalist stresses deduction.

What did Bacon and Descartes have in common?

 Although Bacon was an empiricist and Descartes were a rationalist, both had the
same load of: to overcome the philosophical mistakes and bye sis of the past.
Mainly those of Aristotle and his scholastic interpreters and sympathizers. Both
thought objective truth that withstood the criticism of the skeptics, they simply went
about their search differently.
RATIONALIST:

Baruch Spinoza

 Equated God with nature and said that everything in nature, including humans,
consisted of both matter and consciousness. His proposed solution to the mind-body
problem is called double aspectism. The most pleasurable life is one lived in
accordance with the laws of nature. Emotional experience is desirable because it is
controlled by reason; passionate experience is undesirable because it is not. His
deterministic view of human cognition, activity, and emotion did much to facilitate the
development of scientific psychology.

Summarize Spinoza's philosophy with respect to the nature of God

 God not only started the world in motion but also was continually present
everywhere in the nature. To understand the laws of nature was to understand God.
God was nature. He embraced pantheism, or the belief that God is present
everywhere and in everything. With this, he embraced a form of primitive animism.

 Pantheism: The belief that God is present everywhere and in everything.

Describe Spinoza's philosophy with respect to the relationship between mind and body

 Assumed that the mind and body were two aspects of the same thing-the living
human being. The mind and the body were like two sides of the coin, even though
the two sides are different, they are two aspects of the same coin. The mind and
body are inseparable; anything happening to the body is experienced emotions and
thoughts; and emotions and thoughts influence the body. This is been called double
aspectism

Summarize Spinoza's philosophy with respect to free will

 He denied free will because God is nature and nature is lawful, and because
humans are part of nature, their thought and behavior are lawful or determined. He
insisted that the best life was one lived with a knowledge of the causes of things and
 that the closest we can get to freedom is understanding what causes our behavior
and thoughts.

Summarize Spinoza's philosophy with respect to clear and unclear ideas

 He was a hedonist because he claimed that what are commonly referred to as good
and evil or nothing else but the emotions of pleasure and pain.

My pleasure he meant the entertaining of clear ideas, ones that are conductive to
the mind's survival because they reflect an understanding of causal necessity, or a
knowledge of why things are as they are

When the mind entertains unclear ideas or is overwhelmed by passion, it feels weak
and vulnerable and experiences pain

Summarize Spinoza's philosophy regarding emotions and passions

 Starting with a few basic emotions such as pleasure and pain, he showed how as
many as 48 additional could be derived from the interactions between these basic
emotions and various situations encountered in life

He made an important distinction between emotion and passion: The experience of

passion is one that reduce is the probability of survival. Unlike an emotion, which is
linked to a specific thought, passion is not associated with any particular thought

Because passion can cause non-adaptive behavior, it must be harnessed by reason

because behavior and thoughts guided by reason or conductive to survival, but
behavior and thoughts guided by passion or not

Describe Spinoza's influence on the development of psychology

 Spinoza's belief in psychic determinism is a principal that stimulated a scientific

analysis of the mind, which assumes that the processes of the mind are too subjects
to natural laws, and that these laws can be consequently investigated and study

He thought had similarities with psychoanalytic thinking. And had a strong influence
on two individuals who were instrumental in launching psychology as an
experimental science: Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt.
 Thomas Reid

 Believed that we could trust our sensory impressions to accurately reflect physical
reality because it makes commonsense to do so. Attributed several rational faculties
to the mind and was therefore a faculty psychologist.

Describe Reid's views regarding common sense

 The position that we can assume the existence of the physical world and of human
reasoning powers because it makes commonsense to do so- common sense
philosophy. We are naturally endowed with the abilities to deal with and make sense
out of the world

 Direct realism: The belief that sensory experience and presents physical reality
exactly as it is. Also called naïve realism

Describe Reid's views regarding conscious and unconscious perception

 He did not believe that consciousness was formed by one sensation being added to
another or to the memory of others. Rather, we experience objects immediately as
objects because of our innate power of perception. He believed in direct realism,
because he believed that our sensations not only accurately reflect reality but do so
immediately.

 Faculty psychology: The belief that the mind consists of several powers or faculties

Describe Reid's views regarding faculty psychology

 In elaborating the reasoning powers of the mind, he discussed several faculties and
thus he can be described as a faculty psychologist. Faculty psychologists are those
who refer to various mental abilities or powers in their descriptions of the mind. He
believed the faculties were aspects of the mind that actually existed and influenced
human behavior and thought. All the faculties were thought to be innate and to
function in cooperation with other faculties. He referred to you as many as 43
faculties of the mind, including abstraction, attention, consciousness and so on.
 Immanuel Kant

 Believed that experiences such as those of unity, causation, time, and space could
not be derived from sensory experience and therefore must be attributable to innate
categories of thought. He also believed that morality is, or should be, governed by
the categorical imperative. He did not believe psychology could become a science
because subjective experience cannot be quantified mathematically.

Describe Kant’s Categories of Thought

 Those innate attributes of the mind that Kant postulated to explain subjective
experiences we have that cannot be explained in terms of sensory experience
alone-for example, the experiences of time, causality, and space.

Describe Kant's beliefs regarding the nature of phenomenological experience

 Our phenomenological experience (mental experience) is an interaction of

sensations and the categories of thought. Can never know the true physical reality
just appearances (phenomena) that are controlled by the categories of thought.

Describe Kant's beliefs regarding perceptions of time and space

 The mind adds the concept of time and space to sensory information. they are both
provided by an a priori category of thought.