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Example research essay topic: 19 Th Century Mind And Body - 1,337 words

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Much of the intellectual history of psychology has involved the attempt to come to grips with the problem of mind and body and how they interact. While the philosophical distinction between mind and body can be traced back to the Greeks, it is due to the influential work of Ren Descartes, (written around the 1630 's) that we owe the first systematic account of the mind / body relationship. When Descartes' friend and frequent correspondent, Marin Mersenne, wrote to him of Galileo's fate at the hands of the Inquisition, Descartes immediately suppressed his own treatise. As a result, the world's first extended essay on physiological psychology was published only well after its author's death. In this essay, he proposed a mechanism for automatic reaction in response to external events.

According to his proposal, external motions affect the peripheral ends of the nerve fibrils, which in turn displace the central ends. As the central ends are displaced, the pattern of interfibrillar space is rearranged and the flow of animal spirits is thereby directed into the appropriate nerves. This is the reason he has been credited with the founding of the reflex theory. Descartes was the first to talk about mind / body interactions, and thus had a great influence in later psychologists and thinkers. He proposed that not only body can influence mind, but that mind could also affect body. Years later, the work of Nicolas Malebranche was probably the most influential provider of occasionalism.

Occasionalism deals with the contradiction that if the nature of causality is such that causes and effects must have a necessary connection and be of a similar type, then mind / body interactions is unsound. He argued that both of Descartes's ub stances, mind and body, are causally ineffective. His belief was that G'd is the one and only true cause. There is no influence of mind on body or of body on mind. "In order to retain the notion of God as the one true cause without sacrificing the idea of causality as operative in both the mental and the physical spheres, Benedictus de Spinoza abandoned Descartes' two-substance view in favor of what has come to be called double-aspect theory. " Double-aspect theories are based on the notion that the mental and the physical are simply different aspects of one and the same substance. Nonetheless, he agreed with Descartes that the world of consciousness and that of extension are qualitatively separate. He believed that substance, G'd, is the universal essence or nature of everything that exists.

In other words he believed that mental incidents can determine only other mental incidents, and physical motions can determine only other physical motions, "mind and body nonetheless exist in pre-established coordination, since the same divine essence forms the connections within both classes and cannot be self-contradictory. " These dual-aspect theories go went through a resurgence during the 19 th century. Another view introduced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was that of psychophysical parallelism, which holds on to both the dualism of mind and body and the notion of a regular correlation between mental and physical events. This view, however, avoids any assumption of an underlying mind / body connection. It believes that mind and body are so different, that they cannot affect one another.

They do, however, recognize the fact that every mental event is correlated with a physical event. During the 18 th century, the problem of re-relating mind and body arose. George Berkeley talked about the view of immaterialism in which "he denies even the possibility of mindless material substance. For something to exist for Berkeley it must either be perceived or is the active mind doing the perceiving. >From this perspective, there is no mind / body distinction because what we think of as body is merely the perception of mind. While Berkeley had few contemporary adherents, immaterialism was to resurface in the later 19 th century in the guise of mind- stuff theory. " As the 19 th century progressed, the problem of the relationship between mind and brain became increasingly present. This is palpable especially in texts after 1860.

To a large extent, this directly reflected two major developments that converged to impress philosophers and psychologists with the centrality of the mind / brain problem. "The formal beginning of psychology as a modern science came in 1879 when Wilhelm Wundt founded, in Leipzig, Germany, the first laboratory devoted to experimental psychology. " Together with Hermann con Helmholtz and Gustav Fechner, they founded the school of psychology now labeled determinism. Determinism is based on the idea that behaviors have causes that can be investigated, and the causes of behavior are, to a certain extent, beyond the control of the individual. Determinism was proceeded by a school of psychology called structuralism, which focused on the structure or contents of the mind, and analyzed it in parts, in other words, events can be understood when broken down. Structuralism relied heavily on introspection. Edward Titchener led this school of thought. "Structuralism represented the early development of psychology. " The American John Dewey developed the school of psychology called functionalism, which gave utmost importance to learned habits which enabled organisms to adapt to their environments and function effectively, believing that an organism's goal is to adapt. Since then, psychologists have taken different approaches such as the biological approach, the psychodynamic approach, and the cognitive approach, amongst many others.

Psychology itself has grown in popularity and has been therefore analyzed to a fuller extent. An important issue directly related to the field of psychology is the development of an individual, which has been dealt with various approaches. Developmental psychology is "the branch of psychology that is concerned with the changes in physical and psychological functioning that occur from conception through an entire life span. " Developmental psychologists study physical, mental, and social changes occurring throughout the life cycle. Throughout life, there is never a period on which change does not occur. Something is always changing. Some psychologist view development as change is essentially continuous.

Other psychologists view development as "a succession of reorganizations: behavior is different in different age-specific periods, such as infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Thus, while development itself is continuous, particular aspects of it are discontinuous. " Because a great deal of who people are was determined since before they were born, in order to fully understand the development of an individual, we have to go back to the origin of that person, the time of conception. As soon as a zygote has been formed, it contains genetic information "that will determine not only the physical make-up, but many of the psychological characteristics of the new individual. For that reason, the study of behavior properly begins with the study of mechanisms of heredity, " which is why members of the same family have similar genes and traits, and why brothers and sisters will resemble each other as well as their parents.

Genes are what make each of us a distinctive human being, and yet they are also what determines the characteristics that make us human beings, rather than any other species. What human beings have in common, nonetheless, is an orderly sequence of biological growth processes predetermined by our genes. This process is called maturation. The genetic growth tendencies are innate. Although fraternal twins are no more alike genetically than ordinary siblings born at different times, their environments are more similar, and thus their development is more similar as well. All differences between identical twins are due to environmental factors.

Everyday experiences shape human development and maturation. It is still under discussion, however, how much of behavior is due to heredity, and how much is due to the environment. The British philosopher John Locke believed neonates are born without any knowledge or skills, as though they were born with a blank tablet which, throughout life gets filled with experiences which shape development. "What directs human development, Locke claimed, is the stimulation people receive as they are nurtured by experience and education. " The French philosopher, ...


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Research essay sample on 19 Th Century Mind And Body

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