PSY 181 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Downward Causation, Materialism, Negentropy

• School: University of Rochester
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 181
• Professor: C H R I S T O P H E R N I E M I E C

Document Summary

Lecture 1: meta-theoretical consideration: theory and explanation in scientific psychology. Intrinsic motivation is the experience of doing an activity for sake of doing activity itself: example of untestable theory: life exists after death. Is falsifiable and parsimonious: falsifiable means one can reasonably collect data to refute or contradict the theory, parsimonious means the simpler theory. Theories of personality: (cid:862)gra(cid:374)d(cid:863) theories of perso(cid:374)ality i(cid:374) psy(cid:272)hology, macro-theories (cid:894)(cid:862)gra(cid:374)d(cid:863) theories(cid:895) attempt to explain a wide range of human experience while maintaining relatively parsimonious, are comprehensive. A scientific approach to personality: kuhn, american intellectual who wrote about philosophy and history of science, wrote the structure of scientific revolutions, argued that science does not progress through a linear accumulation of new knowledge. Rather, science establishes paradigms through which people view the world and conduct research: science is not a mere accumulation of facts, but rather includes competing ways of organizing facts into knowledge.