Psychological Egoism
Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest and selfishness, even in what seem to be acts of altruism. It claims that, when people choose to help others, they do so ultimately because of the personal benefits that they expect to obtain, directly or indirectly, from doing so. This is a Descriptive ethics, descriptive rather than Normative ethics, normative view, since it only makes claims about how things are, not how they "ought to be" according to some. It is, however, related to several other normative forms of egoism, such as ethical egoism and rational egoism. Subtypes of psychological egoism Psychological hedonism A specific form of psychological egoism is psychological hedonism, the view that the ultimate motive for all voluntary human action is the desire to experience pleasure or to avoid suffering, pain. Immediate gratification can be sacrificed for a chance of greater, future pleasure. Further, humans are not motivated strictl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Egotism
Egotism is defined as the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself and generally features an inflated opinion of one's personal features and Importance#Value of importance and desire to be important, importance distinguished by a person's amplified vision of one's self and self-importance. It often includes intellectual, physical, social, and other overestimations. The egotist has an overwhelming sense of the centrality of the "me" regarding their personal qualities. Characteristics Egotism is closely related to an egocentric love for one's imagined self or narcissism. Egotists have a strong tendency to talk about themselves in a self-promoting fashion, and they may well be arrogant and boastful with a grandiose sense of their own importance. Their inability to recognise the accomplishments of others leaves them profoundly self-promoting; while sensitivity to criticism may lead, on the egotist's part, to narcissistic rage at a sense of insult. Egotism differs fro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Epicurus
Epicurus (, ; ; 341–270 BC) was an Greek philosophy, ancient Greek philosopher who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy that asserted that philosophy's purpose is to attain as well as to help others attain tranquil lives, characterized by freedom from fear and the absence of pain. Epicurus advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends; he and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects at "the Garden", the school he established in Athens. Epicurus taught that although the gods exist, they have no involvement in human affairs. Like the earlier philosopher Democritus, Epicurus claimed that all occurrences in the natural world are ultimately the result of tiny, invisible particles known as ''Atomism, atoms'' moving and interacting in empty space, though Epicurus also deviated from Democritus by proposing the idea of Clinamen, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Punishment (psychology)
Punishment is any change in a human or animal's surroundings which, occurring after a given behavior or response, reduces the likelihood of that behavior occurring again in the future. Reinforcement, referring to any behavior that increases the likelihood that a response will occurs, plays a large role in punishment. Motivating operations (MO) can be categorized in abolishing operations, decrease the effectiveness of the stimuli and establishing, increase the effectiveness of the stimuli. For example, a painful stimulus which would act as a punisher for most people may actually reinforce some behaviors of masochistic individuals. There are two types of punishment: positive and negative. Positive punishment involves the introduction of a stimulus to decrease behavior while negative punishment involves the removal of a stimulus to decrease behavior. While similar to reinforcement, punishment's goal is to decrease behaviors while reinforcement's goal is to increase behaviors. Differ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Reinforcement
In Behaviorism, behavioral psychology, reinforcement refers to consequences that increase the likelihood of an organism's future behavior, typically in the presence of a particular ''Antecedent (behavioral psychology), antecedent stimulus''. For example, a rat can be trained to push a lever to receive food whenever a light is turned on; in this example, the light is the antecedent stimulus, the lever pushing is the ''operant behavior'', and the food is the ''reinforcer''. Likewise, a student that receives attention and praise when answering a teacher's question will be more likely to answer future questions in class; the teacher's question is the antecedent, the student's response is the behavior, and the praise and attention are the reinforcements. Punishment (psychology), Punishment is the inverse to reinforcement, referring to any behavior that decreases the likelihood that a response will occur. In operant conditioning terms, punishment does not need to involve any type of p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process in which voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition (or removal) of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior may increase through reinforcement or decrease through punishment or Extinction (psychology), extinction. Origins Operant conditioning originated with Edward Thorndike, whose law of effect theorised that behaviors arise as a result of consequences as satisfying or discomforting. In the 20th century, operant conditioning was studied by Behaviorism, behavioral psychologists, who believed that much of mind and behaviour is explained through environmental conditioning. Reinforcements are environmental stimuli that increase behaviors, whereas punishments are stimuli that decrease behaviors. Both kinds of stimuli can be further categorised into positive and negative stimuli, which respectively involve the addition or removal of environmental stim ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning (also respondent conditioning and Pavlovian conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent Stimulus (physiology), stimulus (e.g. food, a puff of air on the eye, a potential rival) is paired with a neutral stimulus (e.g. the sound of a Triangle (musical instrument), musical triangle). The term ''classical conditioning'' refers to the process of an automatic, conditioned response that is paired with a specific stimulus. It is essentially equivalent to a signal. The Russian physiology, physiologist Ivan Pavlov studied classical conditioning with detailed experiments with dogs, and published the experimental results in 1897. In the study of digestion, Pavlov observed that the experimental dogs salivated when fed red meat. Pavlovian conditioning is distinct from operant conditioning (instrumental conditioning), through which the strength of a voluntary behavior is modified, either by reinforcement or by Punishment (psychology), punishment ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Behaviorism
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understand the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex elicited by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, deriving from Skinner's two levels of selection: phylogeny and ontogeny. they focus primarily on environmental events. The cognitive revolution of the late 20th century largely replaced behaviorism as an explanatory theory with cognitive psychology, which unlike behaviorism views internal mental states as explanations for observable behavior. Behaviorism emerged in the early 1900s as a reaction to depth psychology and other traditional forms of psychology, which often had diffic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Quantity
Quantity or amount is a property that can exist as a multitude or magnitude, which illustrate discontinuity and continuity. Quantities can be compared in terms of "more", "less", or "equal", or by assigning a numerical value multiple of a unit of measurement. Mass, time, distance, heat, and angle are among the familiar examples of quantitative properties. Quantity is among the basic classes of things along with quality, substance, change, and relation. Some quantities are such by their inner nature (as number), while others function as states (properties, dimensions, attributes) of things such as heavy and light, long and short, broad and narrow, small and great, or much and little. Under the name of multitude comes what is discontinuous and discrete and divisible ultimately into indivisibles, such as: ''army, fleet, flock, government, company, party, people, mess (military), chorus, crowd'', and ''number''; all which are cases of collective nouns. Under the name of magni ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Eros (concept)
Eros (, ; ) is a concept in ancient Greek philosophy referring to sensual or passionate love, from which the term ''eroticism, erotic'' is derived. ''Eros'' has also been used in philosophy and psychology in a much wider sense, almost as an equivalent to "life energy". Psychoanalysis uses the term to describe the ''universal desire'' that drives all innate needs (of the ''Id, ego and superego, id''), which according to Freud is identical to Plato's conception. The Protestant philosopher C. S. Lewis posits it as one of the four Greek words for love, ancient Greek words for love in Christianity, alongside ''storge'', ''philia'', and ''agape''. In literature Classical Greek tradition In the classical world, erotic love was generally described as a kind of madness or ''theia mania'' ("madness from the gods"). This erotic love was described through an elaborate metaphoric and mythological schema (psychology), schema involving "love's arrows" or "love darts", the source of which ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Thanatos
In Greek mythology, Thanatos (; , ''Thánatos'', pronounced in "Death", from θνῄσκω ''thnēskō'' "(I) die, am dying") was the Personifications of death, personification of death. He was a minor figure in Greek mythology, often referred to but rarely appearing in person. His name is transliterated in Latin as ''Thanatus'', but his counterpart in Roman mythology is Mors (mythology), Mors or Letum. In myth and poetry The Greece, Greek poet Hesiod established in his ''Theogony'' that Thánatos has no father, but is the son of Nyx (mythology), Nyx (Night) and brother of Hypnos (Sleep).Hesiod, ''Theogony'' 758 ff, trans. Evelyn-White, Greek epic 8th or 7th century BC Homer earlier described Hypnos and Thanatos as twin brothers in his epic poem, the ''Iliad'', where they were charged by Zeus via Apollo with the swift delivery of the slain hero Sarpedon (Trojan War hero), Sarpedon to his homeland of Lycia. Counted among Thanatos' siblings were other negative personifica ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Id, Ego And Super-ego
In psychoanalytic theory, the id, ego, and superego are three distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus, outlined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche. The three agents are theoretical constructs that Freud employed to describe the basic structure of mental life as it was encountered in psychoanalytic practice. Freud himself used the German terms ''das Es'', ''Ich'', and ''Über-Ich'', which literally translate as "the it", "I", and "over-I". The Latin terms id, ego and superego were chosen by his original translators and have remained in use. The structural model was introduced in Freud's essay '' Beyond the Pleasure Principle'' (1920) and further refined and formalised in later essays such as '' The Ego and the Id'' (1923). Freud developed the model in response to the perceived ambiguity of the terms "conscious" and "unconscious" in his earlier ''topographical'' model. Broadly speaking, the id is the organism's unconscious array of uncoordinated i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |
|
Pleasure Principle (psychology)
In Freudian psychoanalysis, the pleasure principle () is the instinctive seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain to satisfy biological and psychological needs. Specifically, the pleasure principle is the animating force behind the id. Precursors Epicurus in the ancient world, and later Jeremy Bentham, laid stress upon the role of pleasure in directing human life, the latter stating: "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, ''pain'' and ''pleasure''". Freud's most immediate predecessor and guide however was Gustav Theodor Fechner and his psychophysics. Freudian developments Freud used the idea that the mind seeks pleasure and avoids pain in his ''Project for a Scientific Psychology'' of 1895, as well as in the theoretical portion of '' The Interpretation of Dreams'' of 1900, where he termed it the 'unpleasure principle'.''On Metapsychology'', p. 36. In the ''Two Principles of Mental Functioning'' of 1911, contrasting it with the reality prin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   [Amazon] |