PSYC 377 EXAM 1 Study Guide

animism - natural phenomena caused by animating spirits:

humans' earliest attempts to explain natural events involved projecting human attributes onto nature. for example, the sky or earth could become angry or happy, just as a human could. early humans made no distinction between animate (living) and inanimate objects or between material and immaterial things. another approach used to explain the world assumed that a ghost or a spirit dwelt in everything, including humans, and that these spirits were as real as anything else. events in both nature and human behavior were explained as whims of the spirits that resided in everything. the word spirit is in fact derived from the latin word for "breath". breath (later known as spirit, soul, psyche, or ghost) is what gave things life, and when it leaves a thing, death results. early humans believed that this vital spirit could leave the body and return. also, because one can dream of or think of a person after his/her biological death, it was assumed that the person must still exist, for it was believed that if something could be thought of it must exist (reification). with this logic, anything the mind could conjure up was assumed to be real; therefore, imagination and dreams provided an array of demons, spirits, monsters, and later, gods, who lurked behind all natural events. as a final note --keep in mind that the english word religion comes from the greek work relikous which means to "tie down" or "keep something in its proper place"--it is the opposite of empiricism or a true search for knowledge and understanding. the different religions of the world attempt to convince their adherents that "special" or "appropriate" words, objects, ceremonies, rituals, or human behaviors could influence the spirits or god(s).

the question of whether there is a mind and, if so, how it is related to the body is as old as psychology itself. every psychologist must address this question either explicitly or implicitly. through the years, almost every conceivable position has been taken on the mind-body relationship. generally the various philosophical approaches can be categorized as either a monistic or a dualistic position.

Monism so named for its attempt to explain everything in terms of one type of reality.comes in two flavors:

  1. Materialism states that matter (and energy) is the only reality underlying everything in the universe. the implication being that the laws of physics and chemistry will eventually explain the universe in its entirity-- there is nothing supernatural --god(s),souls, the spirit world, the afterlife, and even conciousness are illusions and cannot exist other than as phenomena rooted in the physiology of the nervous system etc.

  2. Subjective Idealism, takes the opposite extreme, saying that even the so-called physical world consists of ideas,spirit, conciousness, etc.. this view is also a monistic position because it attempts to explain everything in terms of consciousness and takes the position that everything explainable by science (laws of physics and chemistry) is an illusion. that which is unexplainable is the only reality.

most people in the western world, however, have beliefs about this that are products of ancient greek (post platonic) philosophy and/or the religious beliefs of Judaism, Christianity or Islamic faiths. these people accept the existence of both physical and mental(spiritual) events and assume that the two are governed by different principles. such a position is called dualism. the dualist believes that there are physical events and mental events. once it is assumed that both a physical and mental realm exist, the question becomes how the two are related. this is a problem--western philosophy alone has over 12 systematic forms of dualistic relationship. for the monist, of course, there is no mind-body problem. for students in this class --I will want you to know the following five (5) dualistic positions from western philosophy and the three major indiginous western religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Types of dualisms. 

  1. one form of dualism, called interactionism, claims that the mind and body interact. that is, the mind influences the body, and the body influences the mind. according to this concept, the mind is capable of initiating behavior. this was the position taken by descartes. note in your text the description of descartes-first physiological model of behavior as a hydraulic system controlled by the soul. the point of interaction is a non-symmetrical brain region which we now know as the pineal gland. according to descartes the soul acted on pineal body, which then tilted, moving fluid from cerebral ventricles to the muscles.

  2. a currently popular way of explaining mind-body relationships is through emergentism, which claims that mental states emerge from brain states. one kind of emergentism claims that once mental events emerge from brain activity the mental events can influence subsequent brain activity and thus behavior. because of the postulated reciprocal influence between brain activity (body) and mental events (mind), this kind of emergentism represents interactionism. Sperry, for example, accepted this kind of emergentism through his work with "split-brain" surgical procedures in epilepsy patients.

  3. another form of emergentism that is not interactionist is epiphenomenism. according to the epiphenomenalist, the brain causes mental events but mental events cannot cause behavior. in this view, mental events are simply behaviorally irrelevant by-products (epiphenomena) of brain processes.

  4. another dualist position is that an environmental experience causes both mental events and physiological responses simultaneously and that the two are totally independent of each other. this position is referred to as psychophysical parallelism.

  5. according to another dualist position, called double aspectism, a person cannot be divided into a mind and a body but is a unity that simultaneously experiences events physiologically and psychologically. just as "heads" and "tails" are two aspects of a coin, mental events and physiological events are two aspects of a person.

    BELOW: Illustration of the two types of monism and various dualisms

  1. Generalization - particular behaviors examples of general laws

  2. Reduction - phenomena explained by simpler phenomena

  3. physiological psychologists take both approaches.

the major question here is whether humans are qualitatively or quantitatively different from other animals. if the difference is quantitative (one of degree), then at least something can be learned about humans by studying other animals. this perspective also encourages the ethical treatment of any animals being studies because the a priori assumption is that the animals experiences are very similar to human experiences (e.g., pain, suffering, etc).

representing the other extreme are the humanists and the existentialists who believe that humans are qualitatively different from other animals, and therefore nothing important about humans can be learned by studying nonhuman animals. humans, they say, are the only animals that freely choose their courses of action and are therefore morally responsible for those actions. according to this perspective it makes sense to judge human behavior as "good" or "bad". they would not make similar judgments of animal behavior.

interestingly, the point of view that nonhuman animals are qualitatively different from humans was the view held by the roman catholic church during the era when modern experimental physiology was starting. because the church held that only humans had souls...other animals did not--the church had no problem with mistreating animals--"after all" they said, "animals don't have souls, so they cannot suffer or feel pain"...the irony is that the so called "heretics" (early scientists) were more humane than members of the church!