Your paper must be formatted in APA style, and any sources you refer to must be cited in-text appropriately, and included in a References list after the end of your paper. The body of your paper (not including the References list) should be approximately 4 to 6 pages long (12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced). Focus on responding to each point thoughtfully and fully (devoting at least one paragraph to each of the points/questions in each section below), and if you do that the length of the paper should take care of itself.
Section 1: The Nature of the Mind and Human Freedom
In the first section of your paper, address the following:
1. A common typology of mental processes throughout Western history has been to distinguish between 1) cognition (including perception and thinking), 2) affect (feelings/emotions), and 3) motivation (including appetites, drives, desires, and will).
a. What do you think of this three-category scheme? How do you understand what is meant by each of these terms (i.e., what do the terms cognition, affect, and motivation mean to you as a student of psychology)? Do you agree that each term refers to a kind of mental state/process that is clearly different from what each of the other terms refers to? Are these the only types of mental processes – do all specific mental states/processes fit into these categories or reflect some combination of them, or do you think something is missing?
b. Which types of mental processes do you personally find most important and/or interesting? What makes those processes seem especially important to you? Discuss at least one example where you see that type of process having an important real-world impact.
2. As we have seen, the two most common metaphysical perspectives on the nature of the mind in the history of Western thought have been dualist perspectives (which say mind/mental is different from body/physical in some fairly fundamental way) and materialist perspectives (which say the mind can be completely explained in physical terms, e.g., what we call “the mind” either is the brain itself, or something the brain does).
a. Do your own personal views lean more towards dualism, or more towards materialism? What do you see as the main “pros” and “cons” of each broad perspective?
i. If you are more of a dualist: How would you respond to the problem of explaining mind-body or mental-physical interactions (i.e., how can mind and body influence one another; how can mental events and physical events cause one another)?
ii. If you are more of a materialist: How would you respond to the problem of explaining how consciousness exists (i.e., how does an “inner life” emerge out of the
PSY409: History & Modern Systems of Psychology
Reflection Paper Assignment 2 Views of the Psyche in the History of Psychology
physical structures of the nervous system; why are we conscious beings instead of unconscious biological machines/zombies)?
a. Which of the many specific “takes” on mind-body issues that we discussed in class (including views other than dualisms or materialisms) struck you as being most correct/closest to the truth of the matter? What makes you find that perspective especially compelling?
3. Over the course of Western intellectual history, psychologists have come to hold increasingly deterministic views of behavior (which say that all human actions result from cause-and-effect processes). Determinism is usually understood to imply that we don’t have free will – if all our actions are the effects of prior causes, then we could not have behaved differently in the past (either something about us or something about the situation would need to have been different in order for us to have acted differently – but given who we were and the circumstances we were in, what we actually did was the only possible thing we could have done).
a. To what extent do you agree with this kind of deterministic view of human behavior – is it true that everything we do is determined by cause and effect?
i. If you tend to agree, give at least two examples that seem to show that our behavior is causally determined. For each example, be as clear as possible in explaining the cause-and-effect processes leading to a behavior. After explaining your examples, discuss whether evidence like this conclusively proves that all behavior is produced via cause-and-effect processes.
ii. If you tend to disagree, give at least two examples that seem to show that our behavior is not causally determined, or that at least some of our behavior results from free choices. For each example, after explaining why you think it reflects free choice or independence from strict cause and effect, also give a determinist interpretation of the example (i.e., how would you explain each example in terms of cause-and-effect processes?).
b. A view that became somewhat popular during the Enlightenment (held by David Hume and John Stuart Mill, among other thinkers) was that an action can be considered “free” if it is caused by the actor’s desires (e.g., if I go see a movie as a result of wanting to see that movie, then I have acted freely). This is a compatibilist view, because it defines freedom in a way that is compatible with determinism – on this view, all behaviors are determined by causes, and even when we act “freely” on the basis of our desires, our actions are still part of a larger chain of causes and effects (since our desires also have causes).
i. To what extent do you agree with this definition of free action? Does “doing what you want” (i.e., acting on the basis of your desires) seem like a reasonable take on what it means to act freely?
1. If you tend to agree – can you think of a counterexample (i.e., a case where a person seems to have acted based on a desire, but you would not say the person has acted freely)? Would you add or change anything to this definition of freedom to make it work better in response to the counterexample?
1. If you tend to disagree – explain why you don’t think this is a good definition of what it means to act freely. What does it get wrong? Is anything missing? What seems like a better definition to you?
i. Are you at all troubled by the implication of this perspective that even when we feel most free, we are still “in the grip” of cause-and-effect processes?
Section 2: “Mind-Less” Approaches to Psychology
For the second section of your paper, read B. F. Skinner’s 1956 “Critique of Psychoanalytic Concepts and Theories” (attached to the assignment page on Moodle). Then, address the following:
1. What are the main points on which Skinner agrees with Freud or acknowledges that Freud had an important insight? What are the main points on which he criticizes or disagrees with Freud’s perspective?
2. Starting on pg. 79, Skinner discusses how Freud drew on a “traditional pattern” of thinking about the causes of human behavior. Explain in your own words what this “traditional pattern” is. Skinner also outlines an alternative view “which would have had no quarrel with established science.” Explain in your own words what Skinner’s alternative view is.
3. To what extent do you personally agree with Skinner’s views? Many of his criticisms are equally applicable to all “mentalistic” psychology, not just Freudian psychoanalysis – so consider his views in that light; Skinner believed that the same problems he identified with Freudian psychology exist to pretty much the same degree in any approach to psychology that relies on mental concepts.
