No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
... Instead, I first summarize the historical precursors of the presently known "hard problem." It turns out that the core of the argument has already been formulated by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646Leibniz ( -1716 in the 18th and Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896 in the 19th century (Leibniz, 1714(Leibniz, /2014Du Bois-Reymond, 1872). 1 This is then related to Wilhelm Wundt's (1832Wundt's ( -1920 view of experimental psychology and the problem of introspection, particularly the lacking stability of consciousness and the impossibility to observe it without changing it (Wundt, 1888). Decades later, John B. Watson (1878Watson ( -1958 and other behaviorists banned consciousness from scientific investigation because of its (alleged) vagueness and the unavailability of reliable instruments (Watson, 1913). ...
... This situation is different on Wilhelm Wundt's account, the founder of the first laboratory for psychological experimentation. Wundt sharply distinguished psychology as an experimental science from a broader perceived cultural psychology (Wundt, 1888;de Freitas Araujo, 2016). The former would require observation and not just perception. ...
... This explains why Wundt preferred to use experienced subjects intensively trained to respond as fast as possible to simple stimuli in order to minimize the likelihood of any distortions (Danziger, 1980). 3 Scientific self-observation (German: Selbstbeobachtung) would only be possible under such strict and simplified experimental conditions; otherwise there were only inner perception (innere Wahrnehmung) beyond the purview of science generally and psychological science in particular (Wundt, 1888). ...
Finding a scientific, third-person explanation of subjective experience or phenomenal content is commonly called the “hard problem” of consciousness. There has recently been a surge in neuropsychological research on meditation in general and long-term meditators in particular. These experimental subjects are allegedly capable of generating a stable state of consciousness over a prolonged period of time, which makes experimentation with them an interesting paradigm for consciousness research. This perspective article starts out with a historical reconstruction of the “hard problem,” tracing it back to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Emil du Bois-Reymond in the 18th and 19th century, respectively, and the problem of introspection as already acknowledged by Wilhelm Wundt in the 19th century. It then discusses the prospects of research on long-term meditators from a contemporary perspective and with respect to the neurophenomenological research program already advocated by Francisco J. Varela.
... In addition to a standard online survey that included the background items, SES-SFP, and open-ended follow-up items, we used a self-administered think-aloud procedure (audio recorded in Microsoft Teams) to assess participants' interpretations of and thought processes while responding privately to the SES-SFP items in real time within the Qualtrics survey platform. The think-aloud method has a long history in psychology, with roots in Wundt's (1888) introspection technique (Güss, 2018) and later development as a form of cognitive interviewing that involves asking respondents to think out loud while performing a specified task or, as in this case, responding to survey questions (with or without probing by an interviewer; Beatty & Willis, 2007;Ericsson & Simon, 1980;Willis, 2005). The purpose in survey research is to identify issues with survey questions, evaluate whether the questions are generating the intended information, and otherwise understand the decision-making processes that respondents "use to conceptualize what a question is asking, develop their answers, and convey them via a response" (Beatty & Willis, 2007;Krebs et al., 2016, p. 12;Willis & Artino, 2013). ...
The current mixed-method study examined gender differences in sexual violence (SV) perpetration behaviors and the validity of perpetration reports made on the Sexual Experiences Survey-Short Form Perpetration (SES-SFP). Fifty-four university students (31 women and 23 men) were asked to think out loud while privately completing an online version of the SES-SFP and to describe (typed response) behaviors that they reported having engaged in on the SES. Those who reported no such behavior were asked to describe any similar behaviors they may have engaged in. Integration of the quantitative responses on the SES and the qualitative descriptions of the events reported showed that men's SV perpetration was more frequent and severe than women's. The qualitative event descriptions further suggested that men's verbal coercion was often harsher in tone and that men more often than women used physical force (including in events only reported as verbal coercion on the SES). Unlike men, women often reported that their response to a refusal was not intended to pressure their partner or obtain the sexual activity. Two women also mistakenly reported experiences of their own victimization or compliance (giving in to unwanted sex) on SES perpetration items, which inflated women's SV perpetration rate. Findings suggest that quantitative measurement can miss important qualitative differences in women and men's behaviors and may underestimate men's and overestimate women's SV perpetration. Participants also sometimes misinterpreted or described confusion around the SES items, suggesting a need for updated language on this and other quantitative measures.
... It goes back to Wilhelm Wundt's technique of "Selbstbeobachtung" [30] (self-observation, often also called introspection). W. Wundt encouraged his participants to describe in detail their internal thoughts and experiences and to bring them to light. ...
Introduction . Today, the act of teaching has become increasingly intricate. Multiple fields of science now aid in comprehending this complexity, enabling instructors to support learners through-out their educational journey.
Aim . The main aim of this study is to determine cognitive and metacognitive thinking process of students and their teachers during a problem-solving situation.
Research methodology and methods . The authors used think-aloud protocol (TAP) in which students (12 participants at the same level) were asked to verbalise their thoughts during a learning activity (math exercise and written production). Similarly, during a pedagogical intervention, nine participants with varying levels of professional experience were required to articulate their professional practices as educators. It should be noted that our approach is purely qualitative following Ericsson and Simon’s approach, from data collection step to coding system and processing of these data.
Results and scientific novelty . The results showed that half of the students solved well what was asked in the problem-solving situation, contrary to the other participants who found particular difficulties in each type of situation proposed (in math and in written production). For the teachers, their verbalisations tend towards three aspects with a degree of dominance for each teacher. The authors consider hat their research is a first step towards a new approach of evaluation of the teaching-learning act that includes both the teacher and the learners simultaneously.
Practical significance. The results obtained can be used by pedagogical practitioners to better understand how their learners think on the one hand and develop their professional practices on the other.
... Their experimental tests have been carried out so promptly that they are jointly published with the paper. This was Wundt's (1888) aim when he laid the scientific foundations of psychology. Here is his trendsetting advice for downgrading and replacing introspection as a valid data source. ...
... Therefore, Wundt recognized that the critics addressed to introspection are legitimate, but that they concern the Selbstbeobachtung, a reflexive process crippled with known illusory phenomena. Thereby, his efforts were directed toward preventing innere Wuhrnehmung to become conscious Selbstbeobachtung by rendering it similar to immediate sensory perception Wundt, 1888;Danziger, 1980. Consequently, Wundt's methods aimed at minimizing the time interval between the internal perception and the report. ...
When we make a free choice, we feel conscious and in control of our decision processes. However, over the past decades, studies on introspection demonstrated that our self-knowledge faculties are crippled by illusory content. In the first part, we suggest that introspection can be framed as a hierarchically organized inference process and we proposed an innovative methodological approach to challenge this hypothesis. We used a free decision paradigm in which no high order nor low motor level processing were solicited. Further, we track in real time internal decision variables through a Brain Computer Interface (BCI), and probe both implicitly and explicitly participants' decision awareness. The present thesis investigates two main questions. First, what are the conditions for people to be aware of their impending decisions? Second, does people's introspections access genuine mental activity or are they pure retrospective illusions? Our results suggest that despite the general impression of a rich internal life, people are only partially aware of their impending decisions. If they can consciously track their upcoming decisions, they have no conscious access to those decisions’ content. Yet, when recalling their recent choices, people can access internal representation of the chosen alternative. However, our results suggest that introspection has no privileged access to internal decision variables but rather stem from an integrative process involving both endogenous and exogenous cues. Introspective illusions thus reflect an imbalanced integration process, where weak and noisy internal variables are dominated by deceptive feedback. Overall, the present thesis provides new insights and methodological tools for the study of decision awareness emergence. Our results converge toward the idea that self-knowledge of decision is a hierarchically organized Bayesian inference process involving multiple cues.
... At first, she was not admitted to her program of choice. Instead, in the fall of 1891, she studied quantitative chemistry and translated Wundt's long article on experimental methods in psychology (Wundt, 1888) published in Philosophische Studien, the first journal in experimental psychology, from German to English. She did so, she wrote, to become familiar with the vocabulary and methods of experimental psychology-one can see that the young Margaret Washburn did not shy away from challenging intellectual tasks! ...
A scientific discipline grows through the insights and labors of individual scientists, honed by their discussions among colleagues and the mentoring they provide to the next generation of scientists. Margaret Floy Washburn, president of the American Psychological Association in 1921, the founding year of the Journal of Comparative Psychology, was a large presence during the early years of comparative psychology. She was a consummate scientist in all the abovementioned dimensions: insights, labors, communicating with her peers (including, a century later, readers of her voluminous writings), and mentoring. This essay provides an overview of her professional life and, more importantly, a synopsis of her major theoretical work, Movement and Mental Imagery, published in 1916. Her theoretical insights are remarkably relevant to contemporary developments in comparative psychology and related subdisciplines in psychology. She is an admirable founding mother for the discipline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... Wundt was not a behaviorist, however, and his psychology did incorporate the results of subjective reports, though it was a limited form of introspection, if it can be described as introspection at all. He accepted the argument of Comte that we could not divide ourselves into two and compared the introspector to Baron von Münchhausen who claimed to have pulled himself out of a swamp with his pigtail (Wundt 1887). Wundt also did not accept the argument of Mill that introspection can operate by way of retrospection, arguing that we were unlikely to be able to remember something that we were incapable of observing in the fi rst place. ...
... The introspectionist [in the sense of self-observation], Wundt contemptuously likens to Baron von Münchhausen, who is famous in the German speaking world for his exaggerations and in particular, for his claim of having pulled himself out of the bog by his own pigtail. On the other hand, Wundt emphasized introspection [in the sense of internal perception, that is, Innere Wahrnehmung] as a heuristic resource of limited value (Wundt 1888). ...
This is the first chapter of a book-ms on methodology in grammar theory research. For theoretical linguistics, there is a notable discrepancy between its self-concept as a branch of cognitive science and the reality of its scientific underpinnings. The chapter focuses on potentially fatal neglects threatening the aspired scientific status of a school of theoretical linguistics, namely grammar theory in the Generative tradition. Grammar theory especially within the Minimalist program does not live up to the standards of scientific working, namely the continuous stress-testing of hypotheses by first deriving and then testing the testable consequences for empirical accuracy. Followers too often prefer the easy but unscientific way of aggregating merely confirming evidence (“cherry-picked results”), keeping counter-evidence off limits by means of auxiliary hypotheses that are not thoroughly tested either. What is missing is true stress-testing of the core hypotheses.This state of affairs leads on a direct way towards loosing rather than gaining any scientific status. This chapter addresses the following four areas of neglect: - Neglecting the scientific method in grammar theory - Neglecting data quality assessment - Neglecting the foundations of theory development – on the example of the EPP in particular and feature management in the MP in general - Neglecting the results achieved in the by far more productive period before the MP
... The question, then, was what kind of evidence someone like Wundt could produce in support of his research program. As Wundt was going to spell out in a later publication (Wundt 1888), he realized that under ordinary circumstances we do not have introspective access to the basic elements of sensations posited by his explanatory approach (i.e., he knew that the units of our ordinary conscious experience are typically 'larger' and more complex). However, he believed that it was possible to create highly controlled experimental conditions under which the supposed basic elements could be made accessible and introspectively reported (Hatfield 2005). ...
This paper provides an analysis of Franz Brentano’s thesis that psychology employs a distinctive method, which sets it apart from physiology. The aim of the paper is twofold: first, I situate Brentano’s thesis (and the broader metaphysical system that underwrites it) within the context of specific debates about the nature and status of psychology, arguing that we regard him as engaging in a form of boundary work. Second, I explore the relevance of Brentano’s considerations to more recent debates about autonomy on the one hand and theoretical and/or methodological integration on the other. I argue that Brentano puts his finger on the idea that an integrated research process presupposes the existence of distinct methods and approaches, and that he highlights the philosophical challenge of accounting for such distinct methods. I suggest that Brentano’s ideas offer unconventional perspectives on current debates, in particular regarding first-person methods and the investigative process in cognitive science.
... The introspectionist [in the sense of self-observation], Wundt contemptuously likens to Baron Münchhausen, who is famous in the German speaking world for his exaggerations and in particular, for his claim of having pulled himself out of the bog by his own pigtail. On the other hand, Wundt emphasized introspection [in the sense of internal perception, that is, Innere Wahrnehmung] as the foundation of an empirical psychology (Wundt 1888). ...
... Otherwise it would not be research and would not be known. The TPS-Paradigm therefore conceives of introquestive methods not only as methods of trained and/or guided self-observation as is the case in many previous lines of introspection (e.g., Bühler 1907; Burkart, Kleining & Witt 2010; Butler 2013; Wundt 1888) but as a much broader spectrum comprising all methods that rely on both guided or non-guided self-observation and selfreport , including standardised methods such as self-report questionnaires. ...
Scientists exploring individuals, as such scientists are individuals themselves and thus not independent from their objects of research, encounter profound challenges; in particular, high risks for anthropo-, ethno- and ego-centric biases and various fallacies in reasoning. The Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals (TPS-Paradigm) aims to tackle these challenges by exploring and making explicit the philosophical presuppositions that are being made and the metatheories and methodologies that are used in the field. This article introduces basic fundamentals of the TPS-Paradigm including the epistemological principle of complementarity and metatheoretical concepts for exploring individuals as living organisms. Centrally, the TPS-Paradigm considers three metatheoretical properties (spatial location in relation to individuals' bodies, temporal extension, and physicality versus "non-physicality") that can be conceived in different forms for various kinds of phenomena explored in individuals (morphology, physiology, behaviour, the psyche, semiotic representations, artificially modified outer appearances and contexts). These properties, as they determine the phenomena's accessibility in everyday life and research, are used to elaborate philosophy-of-science foundations and to derive general methodological implications for the elementary problem of phenomenon-methodology matching and for scientific quantification of the various kinds of phenomena studied. On the basis of these foundations, the article explores the metatheories and methodologies that are used or needed to empirically study each given kind of phenomenon in individuals in general. Building on these general implications, the article derives special implications for exploring individuals' "personality", which the TPS-Paradigm conceives of as individual-specificity in all of the various kinds of phenomena studied in individuals.
Introduction . Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is among the widely spreading disorders across the globe. Professionals in educational, sociological, and medical fields continuously investigate the effective ways to deal with individuals having ASD because they cannot be dealt in a similar way as others rather teachers have to immerse them in regular classes. Therefore, teachers should have sufficient training and developed competencies to deal with students with ASD Aim. This study aims to explore the extent to which teachers of students with ASD possess of the cognitive competencies and skills necessary from the perspectives of students’ parents.
Methodology and research methods . A quantitative method was adopted to analyse the data. The study sample included 45 parents. The tool used is a checklist of the socio-educational competencies needed for teachers of students with ASD developed by Mehidat et al. (2014). It consisted of 40 items, which determine the response rating scale for the estimation of parents’ perception about the importance of socio-educational competencies needed for teachers.
Results . The results showed that the parents’ estimation of teachers’ possession of socio-education-al competencies needed for teachers of students with ASD was average.
Theoretical significance . The current study contributes in enriching related literature as well as it may practically help in identifying the required competencies and highlighting the importance of teachers’ possession of socio-educational competencies and skills to deal with students having ASD. So, the study helps educationists, policy-makers and most importantly teachers to focus on these important competencies and skills and work on learning them, and eventually can enhance the learning of students with ASD. As the study focuses on parents’ perspective, it has a significant contribution in enhancing quality of education being provided to students with ASD and making them constructive individuals by enhancing their learning, because parents can evaluate the effect of these competencies and they can provide the best and most effective feedback.
Practical significance . There are different aspects of cognitive competencies and skills necessary for teachers of students with ASD to be addressed by special education stakeholders and policy-makers in the field of special education, particularly teaching children with autism spectrum disorders, when they consider and develop pre-service and in-service programmes for teachers of students with ASD. Most importantly, there is a dire need to develop awareness among teachers about the importance of their personal development for enhancing certain competencies and skills to enable them to identify autistic students and effectively deal with them to enhance their learning as well.
This paper provides an account of the debate between Wilhelm Wundt and Richard Avenarius on the definition of psychology. It shows that – despite the fame of the former as the founder of experimental psychology – it was the latter who first defined this science on the basis of the experimental method. Moreover, the paper reconstructs how Avenarius elevated physiological experiment to the rank of a paradigm, using it to define not only psychology but also the relationships between this science and knowledge in general. In so doing, Avenarius elaborated a groundbreaking conception of psychology that anticipated several topics of later debate on this science. Finally, we will show how Avenarius’ attention to the interactions between philosophy, psychology, and the concrete practice of science can still be instructive today.
Scientifically accessing and systematically approaching self-reports and a research subject’s reflection is a central task of psychological research. However, psychological research often fails to account for the sociality of the individual’s self-reports and reflection. In fact, addressing the complexity of the multi-faced reciprocal relations, how individuals get in touch with themselves through the encounter with the ‘other’ occupies psychology since its beginning up to the present day. A recently published volume edited by Gobodo-Madikizela (2021) delivers an in-depth analysis of the mutual encounters of second-generation descendants of perpetrators and survivors of the Holocaust and stresses the importance of “engaging with the past through second generation dialogue”, showing that the introspective, dialogical encounter offers fruitful insight to processes that frequently remain ‘invisible’ and under the surface of intergenerationally travelling trauma, shame and guilt. Using the example of Gobodo-Madikizela’s volume (2021), this article seeks to highlight contemporary applications of the introspectiv encounter and shows its value for locating psychology beyond a strict natural scientific discipline-understanding. By developing the notion of the introspective encounter ‘of the first and the second degree’, this article aims at showing how Gobodo-Madikizela’s volume immerses readers, not only showing how psychology can produce a scientific outcome by crossing the border of the classic subject-object separation (first degree), but also facilitating the reader to enter an introspective dialogue with herself (second degree). By this analysis, this article challenges the way we currently converse in psychological research.
Can the contemporary academic discipline of psychology, strongly relying on experiment as ideal way of psychological research, learn from Wilhelm Wundt’s strictly limited methodical understanding of the psychological experiment? Addressing this question, I firstly draw on Wundt’s early proposal of his research programme of experimental self-observation and then proceed with his methodical argument against the Würzburg school’s application of introspection on complex psychological phenomena. Centrally, Wundt aimed at showing the unprofessionalism of the Würzburg school’s introspective approach. Holzkamp’s early analysis suggested that this strong focus on showing the “wrongness” of introspective methods will in the long-term block addressing the more important underlying question regarding psychology’s research object(s)—what can and should be accessed by introspection? Against the backdrop of cultural theoretical approaches, this seems confirmed for today’s academic landscape of psychology: These approaches namely point to the fact that is exactly the relation between the researcher, the research subject and the research object that is still undetermined in answering this question. Beyond Wundt’s methodical approach that strongly limited the experiment’s scope to the objectifiable “simple” mental phenomena—and with it reducing the introspective encounter of the researcher and the research subject to a minimum—today, experimental, quantitative approaches encompass a much broader field of application, frequently working with self-reporting questionnaires that do not address the topic of introspection at all anymore. I therefore point to the fact that Wundt's objection against the Würzburg’s school’s research practice is more topical than ever: The question of a person’s relatedness with the (cultural) world seems to also demand that researcher understand psychological data that were quantified by questionnaire also as dialogical and not per se as a purely objectified third-person perspective on complex psychological phenomena.
Die historischen Wurzeln des Introspektionsverfahrens werden beschrieben, Definitionen von Introspektion zusammengestellt, Abgrenzungen gegen andere Verfahren, die sich auf innere Prozesse beziehen, vorgenommen sowie die Argumente aufgelistet, die die Verwendung dieser zentralen psychologischen Methode beendeten. Im Zentrum steht die Darstellung der gruppengestützten dialogischen Introspektion als Versuch einer Wiederbelebung der Introspektionsmethode und die Veranschaulichung an einem prototypischen Experiment. Hinweise auf erprobte und noch nicht erprobte Einsatzfelder sollen darüber hinaus die Möglichkeiten des Verfahrens zeigen.
In the early 20th century, scholars of the so-called Würzburg School departed from the conventional approach of psychological enquiry and developed a unique type of introspection that uncovered promising findings and paved the road for important developments in experimental psychology. Despite their early success, introspection was subsequently criticized and the Würzburg School disappeared soon after its protagonists had died or separated. The classical explanation for this development is that introspection has ultimately been a subjective and flawed endeavor. In the current paper we argue, by contrast, that the way the Würzburgers conducted introspection was in fact more of an extended type of third-person observation, not a genuine form of first-person research. Hence, their approach did not constitute a strong counterweight to the emerging third-person doctrine of the time and there was thus little need to maintain introspection as an independent paradigm. Such methodological aspects, as well as, biographical and historical factors contributed to the decline of introspection more so than the claim that introspection is a flawed approach per se. We suggest that a more direct form of introspection is needed to explore important phenomena within psychology which so far have been often approached one-sidedly.
The Phenomenological Method in Museological Research The phenomenological method is closely associated with the study of human consciousness. In museum studies the phenomenological approach is essential for gaining an understanding of why museum collections are established and how they may influence the museum audience. This article introduces the structure of human consciousness and the principles of the phenomenological method. The various stages of the phenomenological approach are put forward starting from an experiment carried out at the Art Museum in Esbjerg concerning how people are influenced by different kinds of introduction to art. Introspection and retrospection are first laid out as phenomenological strategies for observing what is going on within consciousness. Some of the major difficulties in studying the living stream of consciousness or an experience as it is later recalled in consciousness, are discussed. The following interview is defined as an explorative approach to a specific phenomenon. It is presented as a dialogue meant to inspire a person to describe the experience he or she has had and to make it possible for the researcher to grasp this experience through empathy. The aim of the final phenomenological description is to define the basic characteristics of the phenomenon in question. Epoché or phenomenological reduction is used in this context as a strategy for describing the phenomenon as it appears in consciousness, and the eidetic variation as a strategy for identifying the fundamental characteristics of the same phenomenon. Finally, the phenomenological description provides a basis for evaluating the influence of a specific phenomenon on human existence.
U ovom su članku sustavno izloženi razni izvori psihologijskoga znanja, na osnovi pomnaistraživanja Brentanove Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte (1874.), posebno prve njezineknjige, u kojoj su neki od tih izvora detaljno izloženi, drugi pak tek usput spomenuti. Pritomse pod izvorima misli, prvo, na spoznajne izvore, kao što su introspekcija, percepcija, razum,memorija i svjedočanstvo, drugo, na svu građu koju psihologija istražuje, od osobnih iskustavado društvenih normi, umjetnina itd. i, treće, na razne metode kojima se psihologija služi uistraživanju te građe. K tome, Brentanovi su nazori o pojedinim izvorima psihologijskoga znanjaizloženi, prvo, u širem povijesnom kontekstu problema introspekcije, kako su ga formuliraliKant i Comte, s rješenjima koja su ponudili J. S. Mill i Wundt i, drugo, u kontekstu tadašnjihLazarusovih i Steinthalovih te Wundtovih nastojanja oko utemeljivanja nove psihologijske grane,tzv. psihologije naroda.
In my rejoinder, I show how Brock’s and Burman’s replies to my article (Araujo, 2017) are based on a series of misunderstandings and misattributions. First, I argue that Brock ignores crucial passages of my article and my related book, and show not only that he misunderstands Wundt’s position on the introspective method, but also that his claim, according to which there is nothing new in my approach, lacks substance. Second, I argue that Burman’s text fails to make contact with the substantive thrust of my paper, and that his appeal to contextualism is vague and does not address the substantive questions I raise. Finally, I conclude that Brock’s rejection of my proposal, as well as his misunderstandings and misattributions, derives from a kind of methodological dogmatism, against which the best medicine is methodological pluralism, and that Burman’s worries are unjustified and can be avoided by a careful reading of my paper.
The article deals with a controversy between Wundt and Stumpf over the comparison of tone differences. The author maintains that behind the heated exchanges lay two very different views about the kind of expertise required to deal with this problem. Stumpf argued for his own observations as a trained musical expert, while Wundt argued for the observations that had been made in his laboratory using psychophysical methods. This situation arose because the precise nature of psychological expertise had yet to be clearly defined.
Araujo begins by criticising what he calls the “social turn” in the history of psychology. He singles out the work of Kurt Danziger for special criticism in this regard. He then outlines the emergence of an allegedly new field called, “History and Philosophy of Science” (HPS) and calls for a different approach which he calls a “philosophical” history of psychology. Here I examine his criticism of Danziger’s work and suggest that it is unjustified. I also point out that there is nothing new about the field of HPS and nothing original about the idea of relating history and philosophy of psychology. I conclude by suggesting that, although Araujo’s criticism is unjustified, it can give some insight into where his alternative path for the future will lead. It is an attempt to excise the sociology of knowledge from historical discourse and to return to a more traditional history of ideas.
http://www.suhrkamp.de/buecher/selbstbeobachtung-thomas_raab_12669.html
The version of the following chapter that appeared in the original edition of this volume required very few changes because the historiographic issues it was intended to address have not changed in any fundamental way.1 The chapter was intended to help fill some of the major gaps that existed in the English language secondary literature on Wundt. Although some progress has been made in filling these gaps, the contents of this chapter should still prove useful for readers without access to the primary German-language sources.
There has been a great deal of discussion about the role of introspection within psychology in recent years. It is generally held that introspectionist methods were once widely used and that the rise of behaviorism in the first two decades of the twentieth century led to their virtual disappearance from the discipline. The reason which is often given for the rejection of introspection by psychologists is that it deals with phenomena which are, in principle, accessible only to one person and hence “private” in nature. As one popular textbook on the history of psychology puts it:
When introspection by different persons gives different results, how can we tell who is right? Experiments using introspection, unlike more objective experimentation, do not ensure agreement among experimenters because observation is a strictly private affair. As such, disagreements cannot be settled by repeated observations (Schultz & Schultz, 1987, p. 69, my emphasis).
During the past half century, it has become traditional to consider Wundt’s theoretical contributions to psychology almost entirely in terms of problems of sensation and perception or, at most, in terms of general problems of cognition. This was a function of the historians’ biases and interests rather than any reflection of Wundt’s own position. For Boring (1942), who constituted the most influential source during this period, the area of sensation and perception was of supreme interest; it was the one area that merited a major historical text on the same level as the more general History of Experimental Psychology. However, this special concern with sensation and perception was not merely an expression of the particular research interests of one individual. More significantly, the concentration of historical interest on this area made it possible to use historical studies to project an image of psychology as an experimental discipline whose more recent historical development showed essentially the kind of cumulative linear progress that was accepted as the hallmark of the natural sciences (O’Donnell, 1979).
Introspection is not a single process but a plurality of processes. It's a plurality both within and between cases: Most individual introspective judgments arise from a plurality of processes (that's the within-case claim), and the collection of processes issuing in introspective judgments differs from case to case (that's the between-case claim). Introspection is not the operation of a single cognitive mechanism or small collection of mechanisms. Introspective judgments arise from a shifting confluence of many processes, recruited opportunistically. Introspection is the dedication of central cognitive resources, or attention, to the task of arriving at a judgment about one's current, or very recently past, conscious experience, using or attempting to use some capacities that are unique to the first-person case, with the aim or intention that one's judgment reflect some relatively direct sensitivity to the target state. Cases discussed include visual experience, emotion, and auditory imagery.
The latest volume in the Cambridge Histories of Philosophy series, the Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century brings together twenty-nine leading experts in the field and covers the years 1790–1870. Their twenty-eight chapters provide a comprehensive survey of the period, organising the material topically. After a brief editor’s introduction, it begins with three chapters surveying the background of nineteenth-century philosophy: followed by two on logic and mathematics, two on nature and natural science, five on mind and language (including psychology, the human sciences and aesthetics), four on ethics, three on religion, seven on society (including chapters on the French Revolution, the decline of natural right, political economy and social discontent), and three on history, which deal with historical method, speculative theories of history and the history of philosophy. The essays are framed by an editor’s introduction and a bibliography.
This paper examines Titchener's notion of stimulus error in the experimental study of mental experience. It places Titchener's introspective methods into the intellectual world of early experimental psychology. It follows the subsequent development of perceptual experimentation primarily in the American literature, with notice to British and German studies as needed. Subsequent investigators transformed the notion of a specifically stimulus error into experimental questions in which subjects' attitudes toward their perceptual tasks became independent variables to be manipulated experimentally. Ultimately, these manipulations supported a distinction between accessing phenomenal as opposed to cognitive aspects of subjects' responses to stimulus objects.
This article describes a multi-method approach for usability testing. The approach combines paper prototyping and think-aloud with two supplemental methods: advanced scribbling and a handicraft task. The method of advanced scribbling instructs the participants to use different colors for marking important, unnecessary and confusing elements in a paper prototype. In the handicraft task the participants have to tinker a paper prototype of their wish version. Both methods deliver additional information on the needs and expectations of the potential users and provide helpful indicators for clarifying complex or contradictory findings. The multi-method approach and its surplus benefit are illustrated by a pilot study on the redesign of the homepage of a library 2.0.
The findings provide positive evidence for the applicability of the advanced scribbling and the handicraft task as well as for the surplus merit of the multi-method approach. The article closes with a discussion and outlook. (http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2236)
Self-representational theories of consciousness hold that a mental phenomenon is conscious if, and only if, it presents, among other things, itself. But in conscious perception one may lose oneself in the object perceived and not be aware of one’s perceiving. The paper develops a Brentano-inspired response to this objection. He follows Aristotle in holding that one is aware of one’s perceiving only ‘on the side’: when one perceives something one’s perception neither is nor can become observation of itself. I argue that the arguments Brentano gave for this claim in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint are wanting. However, a promising argument emerges if one takes Brentano’s conception of noticing into account.
Christian Wolff (1679-1754) was a central figure not only in the German culture from the eighteenth century, but also in the historical development of psychology. However, his work remains largely unknown by most contemporary psychologists. The aim of this paper is to show Wolff's important role in the historical formation of psychology. We begin by offering a brief context of German Enlightenment in its historical-cultural aspects. Afterwards the close relationship between his psychological thought and his philosophical system will be shown. Finally, a few cases that illustrate Wolff's influence on the posterior development of psychology will be presented. We conclude that he deserves much more attention than he has received so far in the historiography of psychology in general.
Although Wilhelm Wundt is often praised in history of psychology textbooks as the founding father of scientific psychology, a large part of his work is ignored by contemporary psychologists, especially that concerned with the relationship between philosophy and his psychological thought. The aim of this article is to present an outline of the philosophical assumptions underlying Wundt's project for a scientific psychology. After a brief review of the context of his work and a presentation of some problems of interpretation in contemporary literature, his views on the subject matter and method of psychology are examined. Moreover, two fundamental principles of his psychological project are presented: the principle of psychophysical parallelism and the principle of creative synthesis. Finally, having cleared up some misunderstandings, the relevance of Wundt's thought for contemporary debates in psychology is suggested.
Die Introspektion wurde um 1900 von vielen noch heute renommierten Forschern als Standardmethode verwendet, von Brentano (1973
[1874]) und Wundt (1888, 1918 [1896]) bis zu Titchener (1907 [1886]) und der Würzburger Denkpsychologie (Bühler 1907). Schon
damals gab es viele Varianten der Methode, die entweder auf unterschiedliche Forschungsfragen zurückgingen oder die Schwachstellen
der Methode (siehe Abschnitt 3) zu kompensieren versuchten.
Christian Wolff (1679-1754) foi uma figura fundamental não só na cultura alemã do século XVIII como também no desenvolvimento histórico da psicologia. No entanto, sua obra permanece desconhecida por grande parte dos psicólogos contemporâneos. O objetivo do presente artigo é mostrar a importância de Wolff na constituição histórica da psicologia. Inicialmente, será feita uma breve contextualização histórico-cultural do Iluminismo alemão. Em seguida, mostraremos a íntima relação entre seu projeto psicológico e seu sistema filosófico. Finalmente, serão destacados alguns exemplos da influência de Wolff sobre o desenvolvimento posterior da psicologia. Conclui-se que ele merece maior atenção do que tem até aqui recebido nahistoriografia da psicologia em geral.
SUMMARY
The paper recaptures, on the basis of one of the central issues of the discussion, namely, the relationship between thought and speech, the psychlin-guistic controversy between Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), Hermann Paul (1846-1921), and Anton Marty (1847-1914) at the turn of this century. The basic tenets of all three theories are presented, their assumptions analysed, and their respective fruitfulness (or lack of it) put forward. After redressing the distorted picture of Wundt's position in the recent historiography of psycholingu-istics, it is shown that Wundt's model of an expression-oriented approach, which in effect identifies categories of linguistic surface structure with those of an inner psychological nature, remains circular and not amenable to fürther development. Hermann Paul, though making use of a similar procedure, is opposed to Wundt's (as well as Heymann Steinthal's (1823-1899) social psychology or Völkerpsychologie), favouring instead the individual as the locus of linguistic events (and hence linguistic analysis), thereby playing down the importance of linguistic intercourse and communication in language acquisition and historical development. Finally, in Marty's theories the contradiction between his reliance on 19th-century event-directed psychology and a rather modern functional conception of language is most evident. Marty wants, unlike Wundt and Paul, to distinguish clearly between genetic and systematic questions. But while recognizing the complementarity of event expression and control of comprehension on the part of the hearer, he does not do so in the case of the linguistic representation of 'objects and events'. In an attempt to escape from the naive homology of thinking and grammar, Marty argues in favour of a complete separation of the two mental activities. The paper argues that the common psychological premisses of these authors must be considered if the differences between them are to be understood, since it is just these particular premises that lie in the way of an adequate comprehension of problems of semantics and of communication.
RÉSUMÉ
L'article reconstitue la controverse qui s'établit en matiere de psychologie du langage entre Wilhelm Wundt, Hermann Paul et Anton Mary ä propos d'une de leurs problématiques centrales: la relation entre langue et pensée, dont chacun des trois eut une Theorie différente. Partant de l'accueil partial réservé aux auteurs par les historiographes les plus récents, l'article montre que le systeme d'expression psychologique adopté par Wundt ne pouvait que rester stérile au niveau scientifique puisqu'il se contente de considérer les catégories de la construction extérieure du langage comme étant également intérieures et psychologiques. Hermann Paul, lui, recourt certes ä un procédé similaire, mais son individualisme psychologique (et son aversion pour la psychologie des peuples) l'amenent, ä la différence de Wundt, ä tenir compte de la communication verbale et de la compréhension. Chez Anton Marty, la contradiction interne entre une psychologie événementielle introspective (qui appartient entierement au XIXe siecle) et une Theorie fonctionnaliste moderne qui veut que les questions génétiques soient nettement distinguées des questions systématiques s'exprime de la maniere la plus aiguë. Marty reconnaît donc l'expression événementielle et la maîtrise de la compréhension de l'auditeur comme fonctions langagieres complémentaires, mais pas la représentation langagiere d'objets et de situations. Marty se dégage du dilemne de la simple relation établie entre pensée et grammaire en acceptant une pensée entierement indépendante de la langue. L'hypothese de cette étude est qu'on doit plus fortement tenir compte des préalables psychologiques communs aux trois auteurs si l'on veut comprendre leurs différences, car les préalables qu'ils posent en matiere de psychologie événementielle empêchent une compréhension adéquate des problemes de signification et de compréhension.
Reexamines the psychology of Wundt on the occasion of the centenary of his influence in founding experimental psychology. Historical accounts of Wundt that arose in the early 20th century are considered as heavily in error, particularly concerning the issues of mind-body dualism, elementalism, and associationism. The central theme in Wundt's psychology is selective volitional attention. Modern cognitive psychology and research on human information-processing revives Wundt's work. Examples are given in 6 areas: cognitive control, psycholinguistics, abnormal behavior, emotion, information-processing, and cultural psychology. The influence of changing and conflicting Zeitgeists upon Wundt's psychology is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Examines the impact of cognitivism on the field of clinical psychology, and argues that certain criteria of scientific adequacy have been compromised. The introduction of information processing constructs to theoretical models of psychopathology has potential value, but the acceptance of mental events as dependent measures has severely undermined the scientific credibility of attempts to evaluate such models. It is suggested that cognitive explanations of psychopathology can only be tested adequately by evaluating the validity of the behavioral predictions they generate. Investigation of the cognitive characteristics of vulnerability to anxiety and depression demonstrates that adherence to this proposed constraint provides a far greater degree of understanding than could be attained through the use of alternative methodologies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The term “introspective psychology” is misleading in that it covers a variety of diverging positions on the theory and practice of introspection. From the beginning there was a basic discrepancy between the British and the German philosophic tradition, w77th the former relying more exclusively on introspection than the latter. Wilhelm Wundt's advocacy and use of introspection was extremely circumscribed and essentially limited to simple judgments tied to external stimulation. During the first decade of the twentieth century some experimental psychologists, notably E. B. Titchener and the Würzburg School, greatly enlarged the scope of introspection, ushering in the brief vogue of “systematic introspection.” The latter never gained wide support in North America and was supplanted in Germany by developments that do not constitute “introspective psychology” in any precise sense.
L'A. mesure l'influence de la psychologie de la perception de Brentano sur la theorie des qualites Gestalt developpee par Ehrenfeld. Etablissant un lien entre l'idee de gestalt chez Ehrenfeld et la notion de substance chez Aristote et Brentano, l'A. met en evidence une nouvelle source pour etudier la theorie des gestalts d'ordre superieur et des gestalts intermodaux chez Ehrenfeld
Wundt initiated the first systematic psychological research programme. This achievement occurred at the same time as his elaboration of a philosophy of science which was anti-inductivist and stressed the priority of explanatory motives. Specifically psychological explanations depended on concepts of psychological causality as manifested in apperceptive or volitional processes. The major differences between the Wundtian and other models of psychological experimentation can be understood in the light of this general approach. Thus experimenters and subjects had to be enlightened collaborators and the role of introspection was more significant in an explanatory than in a purely observational context. Wundt's special requirements for the psychological experiment led him to reject other early models as exemplified by the hypnotic experiment in which the experimenter-subject relationship was closer to what was to become the norm in the twentieth century.
I distinguish between naïve phenomenology and really existing phenomenology, a distinction that is too often ignored. As a
consequence, the weaknesses inherent in naïve phenomenology are mistakenly attributed to phenomenology. I argue that the critics
of naïve phenomenology have unwittingly adopted a number of precisely those weaknesses they wish to point out. More precisely,
I shall argue that Dennett’s criticism of the naïve or auto-phenomenological conception of subjectivity fails to provide a
better understanding of the intended phenomenon.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.