Psychology Module 1: Exam Prep

Module 1: Overview

• Grade based on two in-semester exams, a comprehensive final exam, and discussion questions
• The three exams contain multiple-choice (terms, concepts, and short answer) and essay questions
• Essays consist of 25% of each exam grade
• Essay questions in the study guide can be prepared in advance
• The essay question to answer on the exam will be determined randomly (dice roll) in-class on exam day
• Essays should be written in advance on .docx, 12 pt, double spacing
• Email the essay immediately after the dice roll, with a five-minute window to submit
• The comprehensive final exam is similar in format to the in-semester exams, with an additional essay
• 25% of the final grade is determined by written and oral presentation and discussion of short answer questions

Exam Weights

• Exam 1: 25%
• Exam 2: 25%
• Exam 3: 25%
• Discussion Questions: 25%

Example Study Questions for Exam 1

• Familiarize yourself with the listed individuals, their contributions, and personal history
• Know concepts/terms, their origin, how they relate to psychology's development, and who introduced them
• General background on individuals includes Popper, Kuhn, Heisenberg, and Stevens
• Terms & Concepts include personalistic and naturalistic history, Zeitgeist, Presentism, and paradigm (Kuhn)
• Example short answer questions include distinguishing views of science by Popper, Kuhn, and Stevens, and the Heisenberg uncertainty

Perspectives

• Psychology is the study of the mind
• Consider what it takes to "have a mind" and if insects qualify
• Determine when the mind first appeared
• Question if mind is just consciousness or self-awareness
• Explore if introspective mind study requires self-awareness
• Relate to AI

The Beginnings

• After roughly 900 million years of evolution, humans descended from great apes
• Humans are called the third chimpanzee"

Timeline

• Australopithecus appeared about 7 million years ago
• Upright posture developed 4 million years BC
• Primitive stone tools appeared with homo habilis by 2.7 million years BC
• Homo erectus appeared with about half our brain size
• Homo sapiens appeared about 500 thousand years BC
• Neanderthals had larger skulls and Neanderthals: buried their dead, cared for the sick, had rudimentary culture and primitive tools

Developments

• Speech/language development spurred culture in the last 40 thousand years
• Hunting and gathering gave way to supportive agriculture
• When, in the development, did organisms ponder the meaning of their existence, develop self-awareness
• The core questions frame psychology
• Core Issues are mind-body and nature vs. nurture, which did not originate in specific ancient civilizations
• Consider if they are unique to humans, products of language, or shared with other species

Course Overview

• This course will look at the last 4000 years of recorded history
• Briefly look from 2000 BC through 1500 AD
• Mostly look at the last 600 years

Statistical Context

• 4000 years is a small fraction (0.057%) of the 7 million years since Australopithecus
• This epoch is tiny compared to the 900 million years since primitive animal life
• Knowledge and culture expanded rapidly in the last 5000 years compared to the prior 6,996,000 years
• The course will consider the rapid pace of human technological evolution in the past 150 years.
• The roots of culture started 20,000 years ago, which equals 1000 generations
• Current humans are about code of Hammurabi (250 generations), Greeks (150 generations), high renaissance (50 generations), cars and aviation birth (6 generations), nuclear energy (4 generations)

Course Aims

• Study psychology and history to consider the nature of the organism controlling technology and AI

What is Psychology?

• Contemporary definition, science of behavior
• Literal definition, study of the mind (psyche)

Psychology's Subject Matter

• Mental activity or cognition (Mind)
• Physical or overt behavior (Body)

What triggers mental or physical behavior?

• Psychic determinism non-natural laws (Mind)
• Physical determinism or natural laws (Body)
• Both
• Indeterminism

Mind and Body

• Consider what and where the mind is
• Are the mind & body (& soul) separate or the same?

Philosophical positions on the mind/body issue

• Monism: Only one exists (singular reality)
  • Materialism: Only the body exists (materialism)
  • Idealism: Only the mind exists (idealism). The body is a figment
• Dualism: Both exist, but how do they relate?
  • Interactionism: Each influences the other reciprocally: [B<----->M]
  • Epiphenomenalism: Only the body determines behavior (physical and mental). [ B---->M]
  • Psychophysical Parallelism: Neither influences the other [E---->M] [E---->B]
  • Dual Aspectism: Inseparable, like sides of a circle: [E----> {BM}].
  • Pre-established Harmony: Exist independently [P--->M] [P---> B]
  • Occasionalism: God actively coordinates: [G---->M] [G--->B]

Roots in Greek Culture

• Epistemology: Contents of mind come from? Nativism or empiricism?
• Nativism says contents are natively endowed vs Empiricism = contents from environment
• Consider if we can trust senses since the mind is sourced by them

Key Psychology Issues

• Nature vs. Nurture
• Trusting senses vs. rationalism
• Free will vs. determinism
• Purpose and meaning of existence
• Morality vs. hedonism
• Passive vs. active mind
• Reductionism (molar vs. molecular view)
• Individuality

Major Schools of Thought

• Current schools - Behaviorism, Psychoanalysis, Humanistic, Gestalt, and Cognitive, address nativism vs. empiricism, active vs. passive mind, free will vs. determinism, and reductionism

Evolution of Scientific Thought

• Development of scientific thought tracked from the Greeks to the present

Popper's View: Deductive

• Theory guides observation and testing
• Non-science seeks to confirm rather than refute a theory

Kuhn's View

• Science is subjective
• Paradigms (theories and methods) govern science including unusual findings demanding shifts

S.S. Stevens' View

• Science flows from inductive to deductive periods
• Deductive periods lead to empirical periods
• Inductive periods lead to deductive change, schema-empiric approach

Module 2: Greek and Roman Philosophy and Science

• Watch knowledge source, movement animation, sensory trust, modern science origins, earth's origin, human/animal differences

Pre-Greek Animism

• Spirits (psyche) caused experiences and death was spirit loss
• Shifted from animism as the cause of experiences and movement to the environment

Ionian Federation in Miletus: natural scientific thinking

Thales (600 BC):

• Predicted solar eclipses
• The world consists of fire, water, air, and earth

Democritus (400 BC)

• World consists of atoms
• Mobile atoms animate living beings over immobile atoms in non-living

Empedocles (540 BC):

• All sensations enter through pores in the sensory receptors to the sensorium

Alcmaeon (500 BC)

• Life and activity seek body equilibrium

Hippocrates (400 BC)

• Spiritual/physical health requires body humor balance
• Humoral theory: Spiritual/physical health requires balance in blood, yellow bile, black bile & phlegm
• Brain seats the psyche, medical treatises for illnesses

Pythagoreans

• Math describes the universe via transcending senses

Pythagoras (540 BC)

• Math uses pure reason
• Humans/animals have feelings and soul, only humans have reason

Sophists

• Included traveling scholars advocating eclectic knowledge with some being avaricious

Protagoras

• Can't generalize beyond the observable
• Trust senses and study existing biology

Georgias:

• On Nature argued nothing exists beyond perception
• Pragmatism explains based on observation, skepticism, operationism.

Humanists

• Rationalism, dualism, and nativism/empiricism

Anaxagoras (440 BC)

• Higher plane exists for humans due to language+reason
• Nous oversees the world and connects humans despite their differences

Socrates (470-399 BC)

• Ethics+politics of humans attacked Sophists via saying morals are needed + based on the universal knowledgable

Pluto (380 BC)

• Math to reason out sensation is needed through mind/body dualism

Aristotle

• Empiricist using Plato's nativism via 20 years with Plato influencing Romans on rational soul knowlege

Roman

• A republic turned empire had applied, rather than theoretical, scientists where Alexandria scribes copied works

Stoics

• They said a rational person works with causality rather than choice for neither the soul is active/responsbile

Renaissance

• From the West's Islamic knowledge
• Islamic philosophy and contributions from China