Cartesianism

n. the system of philosophy developed by René Descartes. The three fundamental tenets of the system are (a) that all knowledge forms a unity; (b) that the purpose of knowledge is to provide humankind with the means of mastery over the natural world; and (c) that all knowledge must be built up from a foundation of indubitable first principles, the truth of which can be known intuitively (see innate ideas). Many ideas and assumptions influential in psychology can be traced back to Descartes, including the notion of a rational self capable of knowing truth, the contention that the most trustworthy knowledge is of the contents of one’s own mind, and the idea that the deductive methods that have been successful in producing certainty in mathematics can be applied to produce equally valid knowledge in other fields of human endeavor. Of particular importance to the development of psychology are Descartes’ understanding of the ego (see Cartesian self) and his attempt to explain the relation of the mind to the body (see Cartesian dualism). See also modernism; rationalism. —Cartesian adj.

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Psychology term of the day

May 10th 2024

power

1. the capacity to influence others, even when they try to resist this influence. Social power derives from a number of sources: control over rewards (reward power) and punishments or other force (coercive power); a right to require and demand obedience (legitimate power); others’ identification with, attraction to, or respect for the powerholder (referent power); others’ belief that the powerholder possesses superior skills and abilities (expert power); and the powerholder’s access to and use of informational resources (informational power).

2. a measure of how effective a statistical procedure is at identifying real differences between populations: It is the probability that use of the procedure will lead to the null hypothesis of no effect being rejected when the alternative hypothesis is true. For example, if a given statistical test has a power of .70, then there is a 70% probability that its use will result in the null hypothesis correctly being rejected as false, with a corresponding 30% chance that its use will lead to a Type II error. Power ranges from 0 to 1, with values of .80 or above generally considered acceptable.

3. a mathematical notation that indicates the number of times a quantity is multiplied by itself.