Kant's Objections to Psychology

• The mind wasn't a physical entity

• The mind could not be objectively observed since it was always changing and introspection would always reveal the mind in the process of introspecting itself

• The mind could not be subjected to mathematical descriptions and formulations

Some Precursors to Psychology• Johannes Müller c.1826

– Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies• Hermann von Helmholtz c.1850

– rate of nerve conduction: 50 m/sec– perception as "unconscious inference"– theories of color vision, hearing

• Ernst Weber c.1840– perceptual judgements are relative, not absolute

• Gustav Fechner c.1860– "psychophysics": absolute difference in psychological

experience is proportional difference in physical stimulus

• Franciscus Donders c.1865– subtractive logic in reaction time studies

• Wilhelm Wundt c. 1879; d. 1920 (Leipzig)– voluntarism: emphasizes volition, attention, will,

choice, purpose; more Locke than Hume

– use reaction time, "experimental" introspection, etc. to replicate and extend earlier findings

– first "paradigm" in psychology (in both senses)

– only lower level processes studied in lab; higher processes studied through "Volkerpsychologie"

• examine religion, customs, history, language, morals, art, law, etc. to reveal higher thought processes

– elements of thought organized by LAWS, but not empiricist laws of association

Early Psychology

• Edward Titchener c. 1899; d. 1927 (Cornell)– "structuralism": emphasizes static elements of

consciousness - structure, not function– study consciousness (mental experience at a moment);

mind was the lifetime accumulation of experience– used introspectors trained to avoid the "stimulus error"– catalog sensations and their laws of combination --

mainly association by contiguity– eventually "discovered" 40,000 sensations (30,000

visual, 12,000 auditory, 20 other)– all thought was image-based– ignored: applications, animals, abnormality, personality,

development, individual differences, evolution

Early Psychology

• Oswald Kulpe c. 1894; d. 1915 (Wurzburg)– Imageless thoughts arose in context of judgements

about "heavier than" or "lighter than"– ex.: no images accompanied thoughts of search, doubt,

confidence, hesitation– Titchener et al debated this issue, 1907-1915: arguments

about who was doing introspection better, more accurately, more reliably

– till finally…

• John Watson (1913)– "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It"

Early Psychology

• Functionalism– influenced by William James and Darwinian evolutionary theory,

which assumed mind had a function useful to an animal's survival– opposed to structuralism: instead of understanding elements and

structure of mind through introspection, study how mind and behavior better adapt an organism to its environment

– interested in both mind and behavior -- so methods included introspection, but also puzzle boxes, mazes, mental tests, etc.

– studied animal behavior as well as special human populations (children, mentally ill)

– interested in practical applications (in self-improvement, education, industry, etc.) as well as theorizing

– interested in motivation of behavior, whereas structuralism didn't depend on motivation

– interested in individual differences (e.g., in intelligence, motivation, etc.), instead of solely focusing on universal characteristics of mind

Early Psychology