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f7f1a8e
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Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call 'soul' or 'spirit,' is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the 'soul' or the 'spirit' ceases likewise. I expressed these ideas long before the behaviorists, led by Pavlov in Russia and by Watson in the United States, proclaimed their new psychology. This apparently mechanistic conception is not antagonistic to an ethical conception of life.
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astronomy
behaviorism
behaviorists
consciousness
cosmology
determinism
dogma
environment
ethics
first-cause
goal
ivan-pavlov
ivan-petrovich-pavlov
john-b-watson
john-broadus-watson
john-watson
life
life-after-death
materialism
mind
naturalism
nature
pavlov
physics
psychology
religion
science
science-and-religion
spirit
stimuli
theology
universe
watson
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Nikola Tesla |
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472837d
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Signal learning (or classical or conditioning) is the simplest example [of learning without consciousness]. If a light signal immediately followed by a puff of air through a rubber tube is directed at a person's eye about ten times, the eyelid, which previously blinked only to the puff of air, will begin to blink to the light signal alone, and this becomes more and more frequent as trials proceed. Subjects who have undergone this well-known procedure of signal learning report that it has no conscious component whatever. Indeed, consciousness, in this example the intrusion of voluntary eye blinks to try to assist the signal learning, blocks it from occurring.
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classical-conditioning
consciousness
pavlov
signal-learning
unconscious-learning
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Julian Jaynes |