Deck 5: Empiricism,Sensationalism,and Positivism

Question 1

Hobbes' approach to studying humans was:

A)inductive
B)Baconian
C)deductive
D)metaphysical

Answer 1

deductive

Question 2

Hobbes believed all of the following except:

A)humans were innately aggressive,selfish,and greedy
B)democracy was dangerous
C)it was the fear of death that motivated humans to form governments
D)it was human rationality that allowed humans to inhibit their animalistic impulses

Answer 2

it was human rationality that allowed humans to inhibit their animalistic impulses

Question 3

For classroom practices,Locke advocated:

A)mild punishment for undesirable behavior
B)a step-by-step approach to teaching complex topics
C)the recognition and praise of student accomplishments
D)all of these choices

Answer 3

all of these choices

Question 4

Hobbes' explanation of "trains of thought" relied on:

A)the existence of innate ideas
B)the ancient law of contiguity
C)Descartes' philosophy
D)free will

Question 5

Locke advised that children experience a process called hardening in order to:

A)sharpen their minds
B)prepare them for the inevitable hardships of life
C)punish them for evil deeds that had gone undetected
D)assure that their bodies were as fit as their minds

Question 6

For Locke,the safest and surest types of associations were those that:

A)were taught in school
B)reflected natural relationships in the environment
C)were learned by chance or custom
D)reflected the beliefs of a culture

Question 7

Locke's major argument against the existence of innate ideas was that:

A)no gene was available to transmit an idea
B)the French seemed to have more of them than did either the English or the Germans
C)if ideas were innate,all humans would have them,and they do not
D)the only way to prove their existence was by mathematical deduction

Question 8

All of the British empiricists following Hobbes used the concept of ____ to explain why mental events are experienced or remembered in a particular order.

A)free will
B)association
C)rationality
D)intelligence

Question 9

In Locke's philosophy the concept of association was:

A)used primarily to explain faulty beliefs
B)used only to explain moral principles
C)used to explain most mental phenomena
D)not used at all

Question 10

For Hobbes,choice was:

A)what distinguished human from nonhuman animals
B)nothing more than a verbal label we use to describe the attractions and aversions we experience while interacting with the environment
C)what government makes possible
D)impossible without innate ideas of morality

Question 11

All of the following were true of the British empiricists except:

A)they attempted to explain the functioning of the mind as Newton had explained the functioning of the universe
B)they denied the existence of innate ideas
C)they believed that all ideas were derived from experience
D)they denied the existence of mental events

Question 12

Concerning the mind-body relationship,Hobbes denied the existence of a nonmaterial mind;therefore,he was a(n):

A)interactionist
B)epiphenomenalist
C)psychophysical parallelist
D)physical monist

Question 13

According to Locke,a secondary quality was:

A)anything that had the power to cause an idea
B)any psychological experience
C)an aspect of the physical world that could only stimulate psychological experiences
D)essentially the same as a primary quality

Question 14

Of Locke's beliefs concerning the mind,which one is not true?

A)the mind neither creates nor destroys ideas
B)the mind can arrange existing ideas in an almost infinite number of configurations
C)the mind clarifies innate ideas
D)the mind combines simple ideas into complex ideas

Question 15

Locke believed that all human emotions were derived from:

A)sensory experience
B)the feeling of pleasure and pain
C)innate moral principles
D)despair and hope

Question 16

After visiting with Galileo,Hobbes became convinced that:

A)humans could not simply be described as machines
B)humans could be completely understood employing only the concepts of matter and motion
C)expressing one's true beliefs could be very dangerous
D)Descartes was correct about innate ideas in the universe

Question 17

Hobbes' theory of human motivation was:

A)teleological
B)based on the assumption that innate ideas exist
C)called physical monism
D)hedonistic

Question 18

Which of the statements listed below is not true of Locke's ideas and beliefs?

A)no specific ideas were innate
B)the mind was well stocked with innate faculties
C)only sensations were received and stored by a passive mind
D)most ideas were innate

Question 19

According to Locke,ideas:

A)can come from direct sensory experience
B)can come from reflection on the remnants of earlier sensory experience
C)can be simple or complex
D)all of these choices

Question 20

Which of the following statements is true?

A)most rationalists were interested in mental events and most empiricists were not
B)most empiricists were concerned with sensory information and most rationalists were not
C)most empiricists and most rationalists were concerned about both mental events and sensory information
D)for most rationalists,sensory information was of supreme importance for the attainment of knowledge

Question 21

According to ____,the best government was one that provided the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people.

A)empiricism
B)utilitarianism
C)rationalism
D)interactionism

Question 22

According to Berkeley,the physical world (external reality)existed because:

A)it made common sense to assume that it does
B)God perceives it
C)without it there would be no primary qualities
D)humans invented it

Question 23

Hartley believed that vibrations in the brain continued after the external stimulation that caused them had ceased.He called these lingering vibrations:

A)primary processes
B)secondary processes
C)vibratiuncles
D)cell assembles

Question 24

According to Berkeley,in order for something to exist it must:

A)be perceived
B)consist of primary qualities
C)consist of matter
D)exist spiritually

Question 25

According to Hume,the mind was:

A)perceptions that a person was having at any given moment
B)a nonmaterial entity that existed independently of the body
C)that part of a person that organized his or her experiences
D)responsible for human rationality

Question 26

With which of the following statements would Hartley have agreed?

A)behavior is guided by innate moral principles
B)we approach experiences that have been associated with pleasure and avoid experiences that have been associated with pain
C)unlike the behavior of nonhuman animals which is hedonistically determined,human behavior is governed by rational principles
D)human behavior occurs spontaneously and therefore cannot be explained objectively

Question 27

According to Hartley,if events A,B,and C are consistently experienced together,eventually experiencing event C alone will cause a person to:

A)recite the alphabet
B)experience the idea of C
C)experience the ideas of A,B,and C
D)wonder what happened to A and B

Question 28

What did Hume refer to as an "inexplicable mystery"?

A)Berkeley
B)philosophy
C)religion
D)innate ideas

Question 29

According to Hartley,as ideas or stimuli came to elicit behaviors not originally associated with them,____ behavior was converted into ____ behavior.

A)voluntary;involuntary
B)involuntary;voluntary
C)freely chosen;determined
D)determined;freely chosen

Question 30

Hume considered the ____ as a "gentle force" which created certain associations instead of others.

A)imagination
B)mind
C)self
D)laws of association

Question 31

Which of the following is not one of Hume's laws of association?

A)law of opposition
B)law of resemblance
C)law of contiguity
D)law of cause and effect

Question 32

Hume's goal was to combine ____ with principles of ____ to create a science of human nature.

A)rational philosophy;association
B)empirical philosophy;association
C)empirical philosophy;Newtonian science
D)innate ideas;Newtonian science

Question 33

In his explanation of distance perception Berkeley relied heavily on:

A)the process of association
B)"natural geometry"
C)intuition
D)Descartes' explanation of the same phenomenon

Question 34

For Hartley,the only process that converted simple ideas into complex ideas was:

A)abstract thought
B)reflection
C)association
D)imagination

Question 35

Hartley's account of association was different from those that preceded his because it:

A)emphasized the law of contiguity
B)attempted to correlate mental activity with neurophysiological activity
C)accepted the existence of innate ideas
D)attempted to do for a moral philosophy what Newton's work had done for natural philosophy

Question 36

Hume referred to knowledge that existed by definition,such as mathematical knowledge,as:

A)demonstrative knowledge
B)empirical knowledge
C)illusions
D)sophistry

Question 37

Hume believed all of the following about cause and effect relationships except:

A)they were beliefs
B)they may or may not occur in the future as they did in the past
C)they were learned
D)causation is a logical necessity

Question 38

Berkeley believed that ____ was responsible for the widespread religious skepticism and atheism of his day.

A)romanticism
B)materialism
C)idealism
D)rationalism

Question 39

What,according to Hume,were the ultimate causes of behavior?

A)ideas
B)impressions
C)passions
D)rational deliberations

Question 40

Hume distinguished between ____,which were strong,vivid perceptions,and ____,which were relatively weak perceptions.

A)innate ideas;ideas derived from experience
B)ideas derived from experience;innate ideas
C)ideas;impressions
D)impressions;ideas

Question 41

According to Helvétius,control ____ and you control the contents of the mind.

A)experience
B)animal desires
C)unconscious impulses
D)faculties of the mind

Question 42

Bain's explanation of voluntary behavior combined:

A)empiricism and rationalism
B)the notions of free will and determinism
C)constructive and compound associations
D)the notions of spontaneous activity and hedonism

Question 43

James Mill maintained that any mental experience could be reduced to:

A)primary qualities
B)neural mechanisms
C)vibratiuncles
D)the simple ideas of which it is constructed

Question 44

According to John Stuart Mill,meteorology,tidology,and psychology were inexact sciences because their ____ were not understood.

A)primary laws
B)secondary laws
C)first principles
D)essences

Question 45

Bain's law of ____ stated that although individual experiences may be too weak to revive a memory,several weak associations may combine and thereby be strong enough to recall it.

A)contiguity
B)frequency
C)constructive association
D)compound association

Question 46

John Stuart Mill's concept of ____ emancipated associationistic psychology from the strict mental mechanics proposed by James Mill and others.

A)free will
B)imagination
C)mental chemistry
D)utilitarianism

Question 47

Bain's goal was to:

A)show that a science of ethology was possible
B)describe the physiological correlates of mental and behavioral phenomena
C)show the compatibility between J.S.Mill's concept of mental chemistry and Cartesian philosophy
D)show that mental and behavioral phenomena could be explained without employing the law of contiguity

Question 48

All of the following were true of Gassendi except:

A)the mind could have no knowledge of extended things
B)he thought an immaterial mind was necessary to explain human activity
C)only physical things can influence and be influenced by physical things
D)he believed that humans consisted of nothing but matter

Question 49

All of the following were goals of the British empiricists and the French sensationalists except:

A)to explain the mind as Newton had explained the physical world
B)to show that metaphysical speculation could not be abandoned when attempting to explain human behavior
C)to minimize or eliminate metaphysical speculation while explaining human psychology
D)to explain mental events in mechanistic terms

Question 50

____ was the belief that the only valid knowledge was scientific knowledge,and that science could solve all human problems.

A)Scientism
B)Utilitarianism
C)Radical environmentalism
D)Natural religion

Question 51

Bain felt that the law of ____ accounted for the creativity that characterized poets,artists and inventors.

A)similarity
B)constructive association
C)compound association
D)mental chemistry

Question 52

For Comte,we can be certain only of things that are:

A)publicly observable
B)divinely revealed
C)logically deduced
D)experienced through introspection

Question 53

La Mettrie believed that:

A)humans were morally superior to nonhuman animals
B)religion had done much to improve the human condition
C)atheism had done much to worsen the human condition
D)accepting atheism and materialism would lead to a more humane world

Question 54

J.S.Mill believed that discrimination against women was:

A)justified because women are biologically inferior to men
B)justified because it was in accordance with church dogma
C)basically wrong
D)supported by the "sound psychology" he was creating

Question 55

It was the metaphor of humans as ____ that especially appealed to the French sensationalists.

A)statues
B)machines
C)animals
D)free-agents

Question 56

James Mill believed all of the following except:

A)associations among sensations are stronger than those among ideas
B)some complex ideas are different from the elements that make them up
C)the more often ideas and sensations are associated,the stronger the association among them
D)sensations and ideas associated with pleasure and pain are more vivid and stronger than those not associated with pleasure and pain

Question 57

La Mettrie believed all of the following except:

A)humans were qualitatively different from nonhuman animals
B)as brain size increases so did level of intelligence
C)if primates could be taught language they would be like humans in almost all respects
D)the smaller the brain the fiercer the animal

Question 58

La Mettrie believed that if Descartes had consistently and thoroughly followed his own method,he would have concluded that:

A)nonhuman animals have minds just as humans do
B)nonhuman animals have innate ideas just as humans do
C)both human and nonhuman animals are automata
D)intelligence and brain size are highly correlated

Question 59

Condillac felt that Locke:

A)was too materialistic
B)emphasized innate ideas too much
C)had given the mind unnecessary powers
D)should have been classified as a French sensationalist

Question 60

Condillac was convinced that all powers Locke attributed to the mind could be observed simply from the abilities to:

A)sense
B)remember
C)experience pleasure and pain
D)all of these choices

Question 61

Comte and Mach had in common the belief that:

A)only overt behavior could be studied objectively
B)only the immediate conscious experience of a scientist could be studied
C)metaphysical speculation must be avoided
D)the only valid tool available for studying humans was introspection

Question 62

If what is meant by psychology is the introspective analysis of the mind,then according to Comte psychology was:

A)metaphysical nonsense
B)a possibility
C)the only valid psychology
D)the groundwork from which a positivistic science could develop

Question 63

John Stewart Mill proposed a type of mental chemistry.

Question 64

Gassendi actively attacked the philosophy and ideas of Descartes.

Question 65

For La Mettrie,man was a machine and differed from animals only in degree.

Question 66

Bain's primary goal was to describe the physiological correlates of behavioral phenomena but disregard mental phenomena.

Question 67

Locke proposed that there were innate operations (faculties)in the mind.

Question 68

Because Comte believed that science should be practical and nonspeculative,his view of science was very similar to that of:

A)the Scholastics
B)Popper
C)Bacon
D)Descartes

Question 69

All of the following were true of Comte's proposed utopian society except:

A)humanity replaced God
B)scientists and philosophers replaced priests
C)it relied heavily on the natural selflessness and moral resolution of women
D)its political philosophy was utilitarianism

Question 70

For Hume,causation exists in the physical,mechanistic world.

Question 71

For Locke,important education took place only at school,not at home.

Question 72

Bain proposed that the interaction of spontaneous activity and hedonism produced voluntary behavior.

Question 73

Hartley described the nervous system as composed of hollow tubes and animal spirits.

Question 74

James Mill said that the factor that determines the strength of association was frequency.

Question 75

Comte used the term sociology to describe:

A)the study of how different societies compared in terms of his proposed three stages of development
B)the study of individual behavior
C)the introspective analysis of the mind
D)the emergence of positivism during the scientific stage

Question 76

Empiricism stresses the importance of experience in attainment of knowledge.

Question 77

Berkeley believed that reality consists of our perceptions.

Question 78

According to Comte's law of three stages,a culture at the most primitive stage of explaining things used ____ explanations.

A)theological
B)metaphysical
C)scientific
D)sociological

Question 79

Condillac used his description of the sentient statue to support Locke's powers of the mind.

Question 80

Hobbes did not agree at all with the Baconian inductive method.