PSYC85H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Formal System, Social Environment, Sensory Threshold
Document Summary
Whatever he we get through in class today will be the last lecture stuff that will be on the exam. Everything can be reduced to one primary substance: 2. There is no underlying unity to nature: 3. There are no laws other than laws of physical science. Monistic (as opposed to dualistic: rejects mind/matter distinction, sees matter as fundamental. Everything is matter: explains all by physical laws. Atomistic: reduces complex to simple, reduces matter to small parts which are accepted as fundamental, looking at small parts of the material brain analytically instead of analyzing the experience. Reduces quality to quantity: qualities such as red & blue, sweet & sour, warm. & cold are reduced to wavelengths of light, chemical reactions in receptors and transmission of molecular motion. Instead of focusing on experience, we focus on the science behind it: qualities are secondary, to be restated eventually as quantitative differences in the behavior of a single primary substance.