Theory Compare And Contrast Essay

With heightened skepticism following Locke, George Berkley (1685-1753) questioned the assumption that matter exists at all by investigating perceptions (Flage, 2008). Berkley argued that one should not speculate beyond the limits of sensory experience. He paradoxically denied the reality of the physical world, begging the question if reality is perception, does reality cease to exist when one is not perceiving it (Associate Professor of Philosophy Desmond M Clarke, 2009). His research had a primary focus on physiology, which moved psychology even further into a scientifically based discipline. Accordingly, Quick (2014) states that perhaps the most pertinent example of the way in which physiological psychology actively participated in the constitution of a new

After the separation of psychology from philosophy, other key developments that have been critical to its advancement as a scientific discipline are evidenced throughout its juvenile history. One important progression in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the introduction of quantitative measures for mental processes (Michell, 2006). Most prominent for his influence in this introduction is Gustav Fechner. In his two-volume text, Elements of Psychophysics [Elelmente der Psychophysik], Fechner demonstrated that psychological phenomena could be studied experimentally and quantitatively (Robinson, 2010). Robinson (2010) states that Fechner went beyond the indications in this direction by his contemporaries, namely Ernst Weber—who proposed Weber 's law, influencing Fechner 's law—by proposing a new field of study, which he referred to as psychophysics (Robinson, 2010). This discipline undertook the empirical measurement and correlation of brain states with sensory experience (Hawkins, 2011). Robinson (2010) argues that since the publication of Elements of Psychophysics, researchers who investigate psychological processes not only have the Weber law at their