Term
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Definition
| The belief that the laws of association provide the fundamental principles by which all mental phenomena can be explained. |
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Term
| Alexander Bain (1818-1903) |
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Definition
| The first to attempt to relate known physiological facts to psychological phenomena. He also wrote the first psychology texts, and he founded psychology's first journal (1876). He explained voluntary behaviour in much the same way that modern learning theorists later explained trial-and-error behaviour. Finally, Bain added the law of compound association and the law of constructive association to the older, traditional laws of association. |
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| Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) |
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Definition
| Said that hte seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain governed most human behaviour. Also said that the best society was one that did the greatest good for the greatest number of people. |
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| George Berkeley (1685-1753) |
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Definition
| Said that the only thing we experience directly is our own perceptions, or secondary qualities. Offered an empirical explanation of the perception of distance, saying that we learn to associate the sensations caused by the convergence and divergence of the eyes with different distances. Berkeley denied materialism, saying instead that our reality exists because God perceives it. We can trust our senses to reflect God's perceptions because God would not create a sensory system that would deceive us. |
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Definition
| Configurations of simple ideas. |
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| Auguste Comte (1798-1857) |
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Definition
| The founder of positivism and the coiner of the term sociology. He felt that cultures passed through three stages in the way they explained phenomena: the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific. |
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| Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714-1780) |
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Definition
| Maintained that all human mental attributes could be explained using only the concept of sensation and that it was therefore unnecessary to postulate an autonomous mind. |
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Definition
| The belief that all knowledge is derived from experience, especially sensory experience. |
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Definition
| J.S. Mill's proposed study of how specific individuals act under specific circumstances. In other words, it is the study of how the primary laws of governing human behaviour interact with secondary laws to produce an individual's behaviour in a situation. |
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| Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) |
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Definition
| Saw humans as nothing but complex, physical machines, and he saw no need to assume a nonphysical mind. He had much in common with Hobbes. |
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Term
| David Hartley (1705-1757) |
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Definition
| Combined empiricism and associationism with rudimentary physiological notions. |
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| Claude-Adrien (1715-1771) |
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Definition
| Elaborated the implications of empiricism and sensationalism for education. That is, a person's intellectual development can be determined by controlling his or her experiences. |
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| Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) |
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Definition
| Believed that the primary motive in human behaviour is the seeking of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. The function of government is to satisfy as many human needs as possible and to prevent humans from fighting with each other. Also believed that all human activity, including mental activity, could be reduced to atoms in motion; therefore, he was a materialist. |
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Term
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Definition
| Agreed with Berkeley that we could experience only our own subjective reality but disagreed with Berkeley's contention that we could experience our own subjective reality but disagreed with Berkeley's contention that we could assume that our perceptions accurately reflect the physical world because God would not deceive us. For him, we can be sure of nothing. Even the notion of cause and effect, which is so important to Newtonian physics, is nothing more than a habit of thought. He distinguished between impressions, which are vivid, and ideas, which are faint copies of impressions. |
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Term
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Definition
| A mental event that lingers after impressions or sensations have ceased. |
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Definition
| According to Hume, the power of the mind to arrange and rearrange ideas into countless configurations. |
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Term
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Definition
| According to Hume, the relatively strong mental experiences caused by sensory stimulation. For Hume, impression is essentially the same thing as what others call sensation. |
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Term
| Julien de La Mettrie (1709-1751) |
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Definition
| Believed humans were machines that differed from other animals only in complexity. He believed that so-called mental experiences are nothing but movements of particles in the brain. He also believed that accepting materialism could result in a better, more humane world. |
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Term
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Definition
| According to Hume, if in our experience one event always precedes the occurence of another event, we tend to believe that the former event is the cause of the latter. |
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Term
| Law of compound association |
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Definition
| According to Bain, contiguous or similar events form compound ideas and are remembered together. If one or a few elements of the compound idea are experienced, they may elicit the memory of the entire compound. |
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Term
| Law of constructive association |
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Definition
| According to Bain, the mind can rearrange the memories of various experiences so that the creative associations formed are different from the experiences that give rise to the association. |
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Term
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Definition
| The tendency for events that are experienced together to be remembered together. |
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Term
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Definition
| According to Hume, the tendency for our thoughts to run from one event to similar events the same as what others call the law, or principle, of similarity. |
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Term
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Definition
| An empiricist who denied the existence of innate ideas but who assumed many nativistically determined powers of the mind. He distinguished between primary and secondary qualities, which cause sensations that correspond to actual attributes of physical bodies, and secondary qualities, which cause sensations that have no counterparts in the physical world. The types of ideas postulated included those caused by sensory stimulation, those caused by reflection, simple ideas, and complex ideas, which were composites of simple ideas. |
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Term
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Definition
| Proposed a brand of positivism based on the phenomenological experiences of scientists. Because scientists, or anyone else, never experience the physical world directly, the scientist's job is to precisely describe the relationships among the mental phenomena, and to do so without the aid of metaphysical speculation. |
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Definition
| The process by which individual sensations can combine to form a new sensation that is different from any of the individual sensations that constitute it. |
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Definition
| Maintained that all mental events consisted of sensations and ideas (copies of sensations) held together by association. No matter how complex an idea was, he felt that it could be reduced to simple ideas. |
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Term
| John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) |
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Definition
| Disagreed with his father James that all complex ideas could be reduced to simple ideas. J.S. Mill proposed a process of mental chemistry according to which complex ideas could be distinctly different from the simple ideas (elements) that constituted them. J.S. Mill believed strongly that a science of human nature could be and should be developed. |
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Term
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Definition
| Locke's observation that warm water will feel either hot or cold depending on whether a hand is first placed in hot or cold water. Because water cannot be hot and cold at the same time, temperature must be a secondary, not a primary, quality. |
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Term
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Definition
| The contention that science should study ony that which can be directly experienced. For Comte, that was publicly observed events or overt behaviour. For Mach, it was the sensations of scientists. |
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Definition
| According to J.S. Mill, the general laws that determine the overall behaviour of events within a system. |
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Term
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Definition
| According to Locke, that aspect of physical object that has the power to produce an idea. |
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Definition
| According to Locke, the ability to use the powers of the mind to creatively rearrange ideas derived from sensory experience. |
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Definition
| The almost religious belief that science can answer all questions and solve all problems. |
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Term
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Definition
| According to J.S. Mill, the laws that interact with primary laws and determine the nature of individual events under specific circumstances. |
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Term
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Definition
| The rudimentary mental experience that results from the stimulation of one or more sense receptors. |
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Definition
| The mental remnants of sensations. |
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Definition
| For Comte, a study of the types of explanations various societies accepted for natural phenomena. He believed that, as societies progress, they go from theological explanations to metaphysical, to positivistic. By sociology, Comte also meant the study of the overt behaviour of humans, especially social behaviour. |
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Definition
| According to Bain, behaviour that is simply emitted by an organism rather than being elicited by external stimulation. |
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Definition
| The belief that the best society or government is one that provides the greatest good (happiness) for the greatest number of individuals. Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill all prescribed to this belief. |
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Definition
| According to Hartley, the vibrations that linger in the brain after the initial vibrations caused by external stimulation cease. |
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Term
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Definition
| According to Bain, under some circumstances, an organism's spontaneous activity leads to pleasurable consequences. After several such occurances, the organism will come to voluntarily engage in the behaviour that was originally spontaneous. |
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