PSYC85H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Human Action
Document Summary
Chapter 1: touchstones: the origins of psychological thought a quest for an ideal is translated into science, quest for perfect discovery. Plato proposed there are perfect forms and appearances. I. e. way things appear and the way they are. Large influence may be ethnocentric (placing our own culture above others) His philosophyis a model for others, draws from pythagorean thought. For plato we can understand the perfect forms, but we usually aren"t aware of them. View was soul is immortal and knows all. Debates with socrates (469-399) helped advanced plato"s theories. The meno illustrated the debate of whether things are innate or learned i. e. intelligence. Therefore it is difficult to define what these concepts are. Socrates proposed we can"t know what part of something is unless we know the whole. I. e. we can"t give examples of something unless we know what it means. Gestalt psych. say we innately go towards good form.
