PSYB51H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Venus Flytrap, Panpsychism, Psychophysics
Document Summary
Nativism is associated with the mind and body dualism. Psychophysics a technique developed in the 19th century, which essentially started psychology. The idea of what you perceive is actually an illusion. The idea goes back to plato"s the allegory of the cave . He argues that we are like prisoners, born and chained to a back wall of a cave. All we see is the back side of the cave. All we see on the back wall is the projections of objects; shadows of objects. If perception is a product of evolution, we can say that perception is sensing something going on in the world. We perceive depending on what type of energy (eg. light) is important, given the environment. We might not be sensing the entire reality, but we are sensing parts of the reality that are important to our survival. An example of this is the venus fly trap. The mechanical force is what triggers the closing mechanism.
