HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS

THE LINES OF DEVELOPMENT FROM PHILOSOPHY (Summary Figure)

Critical question: How do we come to know

Early philosophers

Plato/nativism-all knowledge innate

Aristotle/empiricism-all knowledge acquired

More recent philosophical developments

Descartes (1588-1679)

Dualism

Implication of his dualistic position

Materialists (e.g., Julien de La Mattrie, 1748)

Argued that our mind may be machine

Suggests we can derive the laws of the mind

Lloyd Morgan's canon

British Empiricism

Locke (1632-1704)

All knowledge acquired

Built up through the association of ideas

Associationists

Principles of association

David Hartley (1705-1757)

Contiguity, Repetition

James Mill (1773-1836)

Vividness

John Staurt Mill (1806-1873)

Mental chemistry

 

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