PHL 187 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Environmental Determinism, Experimental Psychology, Behaviorism
29 Jan 2016
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Document Summary
A dispositional analysis is when one looks at the content/behaviour that is provided to them and makes inferences/suggestions on what is possible to happen. For example, when a glass falls, it is disposed that the glass will shatter and break into numerous pieces. Environmental determinism also known as climatic determinism or geographic determinism is that the physical world is determined by culture rather than the social world. The problem of methodological behaviourism is the thought that human action is strictly based on stimulus-response mechanism. However, according to the third party behaviour study, data proves that it is inter-subjectively verifiable with no theoretical prescriptions. The principle of parsimony favours the identity theory over dualism because the identity theory is simpler than dualism, which is consistent with observations. The scientific method says that we prefer simpler theories over complex ones when both are consistent with observations.
