PSYA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Paul Broca, Luigi Galvani, Tabula Rasa
Document Summary
We are spiritual humans living in a material world - belief (and its erosion) is an important theme in psych. Need specific natural rules/laws to study science, things have to follow physical laws (i. e. material, not spiritual) souls don"t follow scientific laws because they are spiritual. Cartesian dualism: in humans, a biological machine part just like animals, but also a soul. John locke: mind is machine; the mind is the result of machinery: you"re born as a blank slate, experience changes you, you could become anything in life, but it depends on your experiences (pre-genetics) James mill: humans have no soul; completely physical and material. Luigi galvani: frog leg; used static electricity and touched frog leg and the leg would bend/twitch, etc: proves people are biological machines (the experiment looked mechanical, electricity, not hydraulics (descartes thought hydraulics made things moved) Johannes muller: saw nerve fibres, viewed them as wires: talked about electricity passing through these wires.
