PSYC85H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Great Chain Of Being, Potentiality And Actuality, Tabula Rasa
Document Summary
Aristotle (384-322 bce: plato"s student (who believed that we"re born with perfect, shared, universal knowledge. To work with this knowledge, we need disciplined reasoning. ) Ideas about mind and body: 3 types of psyche, each with own functions (ranked below from most basic to most complex, nutritive: plants (simplest structure in nature). It can grow, take in nutrients (slef-maintain), reproduce: sensitive: animals can do same things as nutritive but it"s more complex. Can sense world, feel pleasure/pain, can imagine, perform simple memory tasks, locomotion: rational: humans. 2 key differences between people and animals: there are emotions that are uncontrolled in animals. Humans have emotions but it is balanced by rationality: memory. Aristotle"s ideas about knowledge: sensory experience is imperative for knowledge, tabula rasa: we"re born as a blank slate and have to find our own knowledge, there are no universals. Sensation for aristotle: special sensibles (property of an object, discernible by only one sensory system.
