PSYC 3125 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Operant Conditioning, American Philosophical Association, Behaviorism
Document Summary
Lecture 6: early psychology in america: early 20th century, establishment of labs, different approaches and theories. Introspection: philosophical introspection, the faculties and contents of our minds: experimentation: the experimental introspection the wundt was using in his lab. James thinks consciousness was dynamic, fluid, like a stream: very artificial to try to break it into pieces. Wundt was trying to pin it down and break it up: comparison: a couple of things. Can use other species to understand other life in general. The emerging process of collecting large amounts of data: goal: we should study the mind to understand its function, not structure, how the mind helps us adapt to the world, mary whiton calkins, one of james"s students. Functionalism: flavour of american psychology in the early 20th century. Psychology is a nasty little subject, everything that one cares to know is outside james. James felt he sold his soul to this naturalistic psychology.