October 3, 2024

·      What question about the reading for today did I prepare before class?

o   Why was Kant so focused on mental phenomena?

·      What key ideas did I hear in seminar today?

o   Kant argued that causality cannot be proven to exist in the external world but seems a part of our experience, it must be in the mind

o   Mental Phenomena consisted of the following
– Having no spatial dimension
– Too transient to pin down for sustained observation
– Cannot be empirically manipulated
– Can not be mathematically described or analyzed

o   Optical Illusions – one’s conscious impression of a visual
stimulus differs from obvious objective properties

o   Law of Specific Nerve Energies- asserting that each sensory nerve in the body conveys one and only one kind of sensation

o   He is a pioneer for Psychology for 2 things

§  1. Showed how neurological processes
underlying mental functions, could be
subject to rigorous laboratory
experiments

§  2. Developed a scientific conception of
the Kantian “mind” with his integrated
physical, physiological, and psychological
studies of vision and hearing

·      What substantive ideas or comments did I contribute in seminar today?

o   When we did the activity, I was at the front of the line and kept track of the time.

·      What did I learn today that contributed to my understanding of psychology?

o   Gestalt Psychology- focuses on how the mind
organizes experiences and perceptions into
organized wholes that are more than the sums
of the separate parts