Psychology - Gray: BulletPoints
The three fundamental ideas of psychology come down to: Behavior and mental experiences have physical causes that can be studied scientifically; the way people behave, feel and think is shaped over time by their experiences in their environment; the body produces behavior and mental experiences, and is a product of evolution through natural selection.According to Descartes, the difference between humans and animals was the mind. He defined thoughts as conscious considerations and judgments. He suggested that the soul influences the body in a specific place: a small organ (pineal body) located between the two hemispheres of the brain. Descartes argued that thread-like structures bring sensory information through physical pathways to the brain (we now know as nerves or neurons). The soul receives the information and processes this information. On the basis of thoughts, the soul will then let movements take place and carry out its will by triggering physical actions in nerves that in turn act on the muscles. This opened the door to psychology as a science.Materialism was developed by Thomas Hobbes and included that the soul is a meaningless concept that consists of nothing but matter and energy. Hobbes argued that conscious thoughts are a product of the brain and therefore subject to natural laws. This philosophy does not impose any limitations on what people want to study in psychology.Darwin’s idea is that living things evolve gradually over generations through the process of natural selection. The individuals that are best adapted to their environments, are more likely to survive and reproduce than those less well-adapted to their environments. Random changes in genetics happen within each generation. These variations are passed on from generation to generation, especially when they increase chances of survival and reproduction. Because of this evolution, innate...
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