Ψ-Φ
At the conference History of Philosophy of Science 2008
“Closing the Circle of the Sciences: On the Central Role of Psycho-Physiological Parallelism in Piaget’s Work”
John Michael (University of Vienna)
ABSTRACT
Although it is well known that Jean Piaget was interested in epistemological questions as well as the psychological issues he worked on, the connection between the two areas of interest has yet to be understood adequately. This connection can be made clear if we examine a notion that Piaget himself explicitly regarded as the cornerstone of his genetic epistemology—namely the philosophical principle of psycho-physiological parallelism.
Although Parallelism (in its various forms) was a highly influential position with respect to the mind-body problem from the late-nineteenth century until the Second World War, its influence within psychology and philosophy has often been overlooked. According to its first proponent, Gustav Theodor Fechner, parallelism is a heuristic principle according to which one should be able to find a physical concomitant for every mental event. This formulation does not address the issue of causality. A subsequent version proposed by Fechner seeks to interpret the principle by denying any causal relation between the mental and the physical and espousing a dual-aspect theory, which explains the difference between the mental and the physical as resulting from a difference between an inner and an outer perspective.
In his major theoretical work Introduction á l’Épistemologie Génétique, Piaget cites Théodore Flournoy and Harald Höffding as authorities on parallelism. He was in all likelihood also exposed to the notion while working under Théodore Simon in the lab founded by Alfred Binet, who subscribed to the version of parallelism espoused by Ernst Mach and Ewald Hering—namely psycho-physiological parallelism.
Piaget advocates parallelism definitively as a heuristic for psychology and offers a provisional interpretation of it. According to Piaget, motor-schemas of action are supplemented during the course of development by operational schemas, and these in turn by abstract-formal schemas. Since the latter are built upon and abstracted from motor-schemas, they are structurally isomorphic with them: the implicative relations at the psychologically characterizable level of the formal-abstract schemas are parallel to the causal relations at the physiologically characterizable level of the motor-schemas. Since the motor-schemas are assimilated to the rational structures characterizable only in psychological terms, physiology cannot do without psychology when it comes to explaining actions.
But psychology must also take into consideration the physiological origin that shapes higher-order thought processes. Piaget in fact goes so far as to regard science in general as rooted in thought processes that are progressively abstracted from motor-schemas. This link between scientific thought and physiology, according to Piaget, “closes the circle of the sciences” and provides the basis for his genetic epistemology.
In Objectivity, see PiagetV1N2 38–39, V1N5 32–33, 49, V1N6 2–3, 5, 7, 31–32, V2N6100–112.
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Behaviorism Bibliography– Roland Müller
"From Behaviorism to Neobehaviourism" (1975) – Patrick Suppes
"Intentional Systems Theory"– Daniel Dennett (Tufts)
The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner (1974) – Tibor Machan
ISBN 0-7618-3654-3
Positivism in Psychology (1991) – Charles W. Tolman, editor
At the conference History of Philosophy of Science 2008
“Psychology from Introspection to an Objective Science of Behavior: the Significance of Dewey’s Hegelianism and Holt’s ‘New Realism’” – Fred Wilson
ABSTRACT
This study aims to show how psychology was transformed from a science that introspectively analyzed consciousness into an objective science that dealt with behavior understood as serving functions in a biological organism. Darwin was in the background, but the transition was effected in large part by two philosophers. One was John Dewey, who insisted on the functional point of view, but who understood that perspective in teleological and essentially anti-scientific, Hegelian terms. The other was E. B. Holt.
John B. Watson showed how psychology could become objective but as he saw it the science remained atomistic in focus rather than functional. Holt, with an understanding of relations deriving from Russell, showed how psychology could be an objective science of human being which nonetheless eliminated psychological and logical atomism and became a science that dealt with structures and functions of behavior.
James and John Stuart Mill defended at length the idea that psychology was a natural science and, more specifically, that it was a science of mental phenomena. Its method was that of the introspective analysis of conscious states into their parts. Psychology remained essentially a science of mental phenomena until Darwin. He conceived of organic forms as wholes which are acted upon by the environment, and in turn act on the environment in ways that make them more or less fit for survival and reproduction. He conceived of consciousness as another organ functioning to generate adaptive behavior for the whole organism.
Two philosophers were also important in transforming psychology from the earlier science of introspection to an objective science of a functioning organism. One was John Dewey who broke with introspective atomism and insisted (in his essay on "The Reflex Arc Concept") that introspective parts are crucially related into wholes serving various functions. His concept of relation and of function was, however, hardly scientific, but was teleological, essentially derivative from Hegel and the British idealists. It was close enough to effect the introduction of Darwinian functionalism into psychology, though.
Dewey’s colleague at Chicago, J. R. Angell, took up the functionalism, arguing that consciousness as an organ was a problem-solving mechanism that enabled the biological whole to become a creature better fitted to its environment. But the science was not yet wholly objective; he did not eliminate completely the anti-scientific teleology deriving from Hegel via Dewey.
Angell’s student, John B. Watson, showed how to make the science wholly objective and how to eliminate the teleological dross. But in doing that, he reverted to a sort of atomism—now an atomism of bits of behavior rather than bits of consciousness, but atomism nonetheless. This is just the sort of atomism the Darwinian revolution established as inadequate, and which Dewey, for all his inadequacies, was trying to overcome. It was another philosopher, E. B. Holt, one of the anti-Hegelian “new realists,” who showed how psychology could be both an objective science and one in which the parts were seen holistically, as functioning to effect the ends of a biological organism.
Gary Hatfield’s contributions online:
“Introspective Evidence in Psychology” in Scientific Evidence, P. Achinstein, editor (Johns Hopkins 2005)
“Psychology Old and New” and “Behaviorism and Psychology” in Cambridge History of Philosophy, T. Baldwin, editor (Cambridge 2003)
“Perception as Unconscious Inference” in Perception and the Physical World: Psychological and Philosophical Issues in Perception, D. Heyer and R. Mausfeld, editors (Wiley 2002)
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Psychologism (1995) – Martin Kusch
A Border Dispute: The Place of Logic in Psychology (1986) – John Macnamara
At the conference History of Philosophy of Science 2008
“Empirical Psychology and Marburg School Neo-Kantianism on the Object of Psychology” – Scott Edgar (UBC)
ABSTRACT
Wilhelm Wundt, like other psychologists in the second half of the nineteenth century, wanted psychology to be independent of non-empirical, metaphysical questions about the nature of mind and its relation to physical bodies. To do this, Wundt proposed to that psychology should be a science of “inner experience”, in contrast with the other sciences, whose domain would be “outer experience.” Psychology would describe phenomenal experience without making any assumption that phenomena represent real minds existing, as it were, behind the experience. But this created a problem: having ruled out appeals to anything beyond phenomenal experience, Wundt lost his conceptual purchase on the distinction between “inner” and “outer”. Thus he had no principled account of what psychology is about. This, I argue, is the problem of defining the object of psychology, a major problem for the conceptual foundations of nineteenth-century introspectionist psychology. This paper will present the solution to this problem offered by the Marburg School Neo-Kantian Paul Natrop, and will argue that Wundt's eventual solution owed a great deal to Natorp's. The paper will thus suggest that despite the Marburg School's strict anti-psychologism, Natorp nevertheless made significant contributions to the philosophy of psychology.
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Ψ-Φ with Ayn Rand
The Evidence of the Senses– David Kelley
"Ayn Rand and the Cognitive Revolution in Psychology" [Thread] – Robert Campbell
"Capturing Concepts" [Iconic Representation (16–18) / Childhood Concepts (28–37)]
"Intricate Consciousness" [Subconscious Processes (51–64)] – Jay Friedenberg
"Formation of the Concept of Mind"– Paul Vanderveen
"Con Molto Sentimento" [Neuropsychology of Music] – Marsha Enright
"Mathematics and Intuition" [Perception (137–45)] – Kathleen Touchstone
“Universals and Measurement” [Genesis] – Stephen Boydstun
"The Comprachicos" – Ayn Rand
"The Stimulus and the Response" – Ayn Rand