Physiological Psychology

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Physiological Psychology
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Consciousness and the Mind-Body problem

• Aristotles statement of the problem
• Two or one?
• Dualism Two kinds of stuff
• Cartesian dualism, or one-way interactionism
• Reciprocal interactionism
• Occasionalism (Nicholas Malebranche, 1638-1715)
• Psychophysical parallelism (Gottfried Wilhelm
  Leibnitz, 1646-1716)

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The mind-body problem Monism One kind of stuff

• Materialism Either mind does not exist
  (Descartes view of animals) or it depends for
  its existence on matter (Julien Offray de la
  Mettrie, 1709-1751)
• Mentalism or immaterialism
• Theological mentalism Berkeley
• Solipsism
• Mind-stuff theory (Morton Prince, 1854-1929)

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The identity position

• Double aspect theory (Spinoza) is still dualist.
• Dual aspect monism (George Henry Lewes,
  1817-1878)
• But Lewes insisted that mental and physical
  descriptions are not interchangeable, avoiding
  reductionism.
• Panprotopsychic identism (Rensch, 1971)

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Other points of view

• Emergent property position (Sperry)
• Epiphenomenalism
• Evolutionary psychology and the question of
  consciousness.

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Contributions from physiological psychology

• Penfield and brain stimulation studies
• Blindsight
• Split-brain studies
• Left hand bored with book
• Left hand makes obscene gestures
• Wife-beating/protecting
• Is consciousness based, then, in language?

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Biological roots of physiological psychology

• Andreas Vesalius(1514-1564)
• Christopher Wren (1632-1723) and tracing
• Thomas Willis (1621-1675), De cerebre anatome
• Emilio Golgi and Santiago Ramon y Cajal Staining

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The empirical assessment of Descartes

• Swammerdam and Archimedes principle
• Luigi Galvani and Allessandro Volta
• Hermann von Helmholtz
• But the reflex arc remains.

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Physiological roots

• Bell (1812) and Magendie (1823)
• Johannes Muller and the Doctrine of Specific
  Nerve Energies
• The neuron doctrine
• Pierre Flourens and Paul Broca Ablation
• Gustav Fritsch and Eduard Hitzig ESB
• Charles Sherrington and the synapsis

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De cerebri anatome

• One of Christopher Wrens drawings for Thomas
  Williss groundbreaking work on the anatomy of
  the brain, published in 1664. (Contrast enhanced)

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On the workings of the human body

• A famous illustration from Andreas Vesalius
  groundbreaking work on human anatomy, published
  in 1543. (Contrast enhanced)

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Bells anatomy

• Charles Bells neuroanatomy of the early 19th
  century adds color, but retains the realism of
  Vesalius. (Contrast enhanced, picture darkened)