Psychophysical parallelism The contention that bodily and mental events are correlated but that there is no interaction between them.
Rationalism The philosophical position postulating an active mind that transforms sensory information and is capable of understanding abstract principles or concepts not attainable from sensory information alone.
Reid, Thomas (1710–1796) Believed that we could trust our sensory impressions to accurately reflect physi- cal reality because it makes common sense to do so. Reid attributed several rational faculties to the mind and was therefore a faculty psychologist.
Spinoza, Baruch (1632–1677) Equated God with nature and said that everything in nature, including humans, consisted of both matter and consciousness. Spinoza’s proposed solution to the mind–body problem is called double aspectism. The most pleasurable life, according to Spinoza, is one lived in accordance with the laws of nature. Emotional experience is desirable because it is controlled by reason; passionate experience is unde- sirable because it is not. Spinoza’s deterministic view of human cognition, activity, and emotion did much to facilitate the development of scientific psychology.