PSYCH 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: East Los Angeles College, James Mill, Empiricism
Document Summary
Most notable part of our mental experience is that each person is conscious of their existence (our conscious mind controls our behaviour) Animism: the belief that all animals and all moving objects possess spirits providing their motive force: ex: rocks fell to the ground because they wanted to reunited with the earth. Model: simple system that works on known principles and is able to do some of the things a more complex system can do. Materialism: belief that reality can be known only through an understanding of the physical world (mind is matter: james mill (1773-1836, mind was not irrelevant; mind was as passive as the body; mind was equally the machine. Luigi galvani (1737-1798) proved descartes incorrect showing that muscles (contained e to contract) could contract when an electrical current passed through them (or the nerves attached) Experimental ablation: removing aspects of the brain to test its localized functionality, pierre flourens (1774-1867)
