Conceptual Issues in Psychology

ISBN-13: 9780415039253 / Angielski / Miękka / 1991 / 256 str.

Elizabeth R. Valentine

Opis

The new edition of Conceptual Issues in Psychology provides a comprehensive and up-to-date textbook available for advanced undergraduate courses in the philosophy and theory of psychology. It provides a broad treatment of the main conceptual issues in psychology, explains what they are, outlines the main approaches to them and shows their relative merits and demerits. In the first part of the book, the author covers the more substantive philosophical questions such as free will and determinism, consciousness, and the relation between body and mind. Empirical work in psychology which is relevant to these problems is considered and the methodological problems of introspection and sources of artefact in experimentation are discussed. In the second section Elizabeth Valentine deals with the different theoretical approaches and types of explanation within psychology, such as behaviourism, reductionism, computer modelling and purposive explanation.

Spis treści

Chapter 1 Psychology as Science; Chapter 2 Determinism and Free Will; Chapter 3 The Mind–Body Problem; Chapter 4 Consciousness; Chapter 5 Introductionspection; Chapter 6 Sources of Artefact; Chapter 7 Determinants of Scientific Advance; Chapter 8 Theories and Explanations; Chapter 9 The Problem of the Organism; Chapter 10 Models and Computer Simulation; Chapter 11 The Relation of Physiology to Psychology; Chapter 12 Teleological Explanation; Chapter 13 Alternative Perspectives; Chapter 14 Idiographic Psychology;

O autorze

Elizabeth R. Valentine is Lecturer in Psychology at the Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London.