PSYC 387 EXAM | Verified

PSYC 387 EXAM | Verified Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle - Answer- Ancient Greek philosophers who laid the foundation for the contemporary studies of psychology as they addressed issues such as rational thought, how knowledge is acquired, and how the mind operates. Al-Kindi, Alhazen, Avicenna - Answer- Islamic scholars who translated many of the earlier Greek writings, introducing these ideas to their contemporaries. All three scholars made substantial contributions to topics such as consciousness, perception, and self-awareness. Al-Kindi - Answer- Promotes Aristotelian philosophy and introduced the system of Indo-Arabic numerals, which revolutionized computational mathematics and made possible most modern science. Alhazen - Answer- Refined classical theories about light and optical properties of the eye, laying important foundations for modern visual science. Avicenna - Answer- Codified medical knowledge and amplified Aristotle's conceptions of the soul while also showing they could be compatible with the monotheistic religion of Islam. Reflexive nature of psychology - Answer- As humans, psychologists are both the agents, and the objects of study; psychological study changes how humans think about themselves. Historiography - Answer- A collective term for the theory, history, methods, and assumptions of writing history. It can also refer to a body of historical work much like a discography refers to a musician's body of recorded music. Presentism - Answer- Involves viewing and analyzing a subject from the standpoint of the present. Presentism explains today's circumstances by emphasizing that it is because our predecessors challenged and overcame mistaken assumptions that we progressed to the present state of increased, or superior knowledge and wisdom. Historicism - Answer- Attempts to recreate the past as it was actually experienced by out predecessors, without distortions by present foreknowledge of how things turned out. Celebratory vs. Critical Approach - Answer- A celebratory approach reflects a positive bias toward a certain historical figure or event, whereas a critical approach reveals a completely different set of assumptions. Internalism vs. Externalism - Answer- Some historians might focus primarily on internal factors such as the development of major ideas and their intellectual and disciplinary context (i.e., internalism), while neglecting external factors such as the social and political factors that might have shaped them (i.e., externalism), and vice versa. Great Man Approach - Answer- Approach in which history is told through the contributions of eminent people whose ideas have shaped the field. Great Man histories are often celebratory and internalist in nature as they often neglect the external factors that may have surrounded individual contributions, such as the social, cultural, and political systems that may have influenced them. The premise of Great Man histories is that contributions arise from individuals who singlehandedly change the course of history. Zeitgeist Approach - Answer- Takes into account the fact that different time periods may have affected the ability of certain people, along with their ideas, to take hold and become as historically significant - if at all - as others. Socrates - Answer- Believed the most important sources of wisdom resided inside the psyches of his pupils, and that his task was to draw knowledge out of them in conversational question-and-answer dialogues, rather than impose it through lectures promoting his own ideas. By emphasizing capacities that lie innate within the mind, Socrates was the first great proponent of nativism as a philosophy of mind. Plato - Answer- Expanded on Socrates' approach when he differentiated between transient appearances (everyday sensations and conscious experiences we have of the external world), and the eternal and abstract ideal forms that lie behind appearances. He likened appearances to the shadows cast by a brightly illuminated object, reflecting only superficial and incomplete aspects of the true forms, whose qualities can only be comprehended following deep rational contemplation. Plato thought the human psyche has three components governing the appetites, need for physical gratification, courage, and reason, which occur in unequal proportions within different individuals. Aristotle - Answer- Plato's student, placed greater emphasis on empiricism, the observation and classification of those sensory experiences Plato has dismissed as mere appearances. Aristotle initiated the field of biological taxonomy by meticulously observing countless animal and plant specimens and organizing them into a hierarchy of groups and subgroups. In his work Peri Psyche (On the Soul), he attributed just the elementary functions of nutrition and reproduction to the psyches of plants, and further "higher" abilities to sense, to move themselves, and sometimes to remember and imagine experiences to animals. Rational souls, with the ability to think logically and to organize experience in terms of innate abstract categories, were presumably unique to human beings. As the leader of a school called Lyceum, Aristotle compiled and recorded virtually all available knowledge in subjects ranging from the arts through science and mathematics to all branches of philosophy, becoming the greatest intellectual authority of his age. Democritus - Answer- A contemporary of Socrates, proposed a radical but underappreciated atomic theory of the physical universe, holding that everything was composed of tiny, indivisible atoms moving randomly in otherwise empty space, and interacting with one another in unpredictable ways to create material bodies. Atomism remained a distinctly minority view and was widely condemned as atheistic because of its mechanistic emphasis on random causation. After the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity in Europe, classical Greek philosophy was regarded as pagan blasphemy and would have been completely lost had it not been preserved by a series of brilliant Islamic scholars.