Logged out
Access All our Essays in an Instant
Swap your work for FREE access, or pay £4.99 for instant access
Reductionism.
Member rating: No Rating | Words: | Submitted: Tue Feb 24 2004
Page Preview
On the left is an image preview of every page of this document, and below are the first 150 words with formatting removed:
Reductionism Assumptions Reduction involves explaining a phenomenon by breaking it down into its constituent parts - analysing it. Reductionism works on the scientific assumption of parsimony - that complex phenomena should be explained by the simplest underlying principles possible. Examples in Psychology There have been many reductionist attempts to explain behaviour in psychology, for example: * Structuralism- one of the first approaches to psychology pioneered by Wundt and Titchener involved trying to break conscious experience down to its constituent images, sensations, and feelings. * Behaviourism- assumed that complex behaviour was the sum of all past stimulus-response learning units. * Biopsychology- aims to explain all at the psychological or mental level in terms of that at the physiological, neurochemical or genetic level. Ultimately, psychology would be replaced by biology and the other natural sciences lower down on the reductionist ladder. A simple reductionist hierarchy of explanation: SOCIOLOGY PSYCHOLOGY BIOLOGY CHEMISTRY PHYSICS For * Reductionist explanations in psychology adopt a very scientific and analytical approach, which...
Get instant access
- Instant, unlimited access to our documents in full
- Swap your work for free access, or pay £4.99
- To see the full version of this document and 151,744 others
