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Beenfeldt - The philosophical background and scientific legacy of E.B. Titcheners psychology : understanding introspectionism

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Beenfeldt The philosophical background and scientific legacy of E.B. Titcheners psychology : understanding introspectionism
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This volume offers a new understanding of Titcheners influential system of psychology popularly known as introspectionism, structuralism and as classical introspective psychology. Adopting a new perspective on introspectionism and seeking to assess the reasons behind its famous implosion, this book reopens and rewrites the chapter in the history of early scientific psychology pertaining to the nature of E.B. Titcheners psychological system. Arguing against the view that Titcheners system was undone by an overreliance on introspection, the author explains how this idea was first introduced by the early behaviorists in order to advance their own theoretical agenda. Instead, the author argues that the major philosophical flaw of introspectionism was its utter reliance on key theoretical assumptions inherited from the intellectual tradition of British associationism-assumptions that were upheld in defiance of introspection, not because of introspection. The book is divided into three parts. In Part I, British associationism is examined thoroughly. The author here discusses the psychology of influential empiricist philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, David Hartley, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. In Part II of the book, Titcheners introspectionist system of psychology is examined and analyzed. In Part III, the author argues that Titcheners psychology should be understood as a form of associationism and explains how analysis, not introspection, was central to introspectionism. Read more...
Abstract: This volume offers a new understanding of Titcheners influential system of psychology popularly known as introspectionism, structuralism and as classical introspective psychology. Adopting a new perspective on introspectionism and seeking to assess the reasons behind its famous implosion, this book reopens and rewrites the chapter in the history of early scientific psychology pertaining to the nature of E.B. Titcheners psychological system. Arguing against the view that Titcheners system was undone by an overreliance on introspection, the author explains how this idea was first introduced by the early behaviorists in order to advance their own theoretical agenda. Instead, the author argues that the major philosophical flaw of introspectionism was its utter reliance on key theoretical assumptions inherited from the intellectual tradition of British associationism-assumptions that were upheld in defiance of introspection, not because of introspection. The book is divided into three parts. In Part I, British associationism is examined thoroughly. The author here discusses the psychology of influential empiricist philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, David Hartley, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. In Part II of the book, Titcheners introspectionist system of psychology is examined and analyzed. In Part III, the author argues that Titcheners psychology should be understood as a form of associationism and explains how analysis, not introspection, was central to introspectionism

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Part 1
Intellectual Background
Christian Beenfeldt SpringerBriefs in Philosophy The Philosophical Background and Scientific Legacy of E. B. Titchener's Psychology 2013 Understanding Introspectionism 10.1007/978-3-319-00242-2 The Author(s) 2013
Christian Beenfeldt SpringerBriefs in Philosophy The Philosophical Background and Scientific Legacy of E. B. Titchener's Psychology 2013 Understanding Introspectionism 10.1007/978-3-319-00242-2_1 The Author(s) 2013
1. Early British Associationism
Christian Beenfeldt 1
(1)
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 76, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark
Christian Beenfeldt
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Abstract
We begin our analysis by considering the philosophical school of empiricism in early modern thought. In a sentence, a central feature of this philosophical approach was the epistemological contention that all knowledge has its origin in simple sensory experience. This claim raises the following psychological question: given that complex mental phenomena (such as an abstract train of thought) obviously are not direct and simple deliverances of sense, what is their nature and where do they come from? Associationism was the name given to the increasingly elaborate account developed to answer this query.
1.1 The Psychology of Empiricism
We begin our analysis by considering the philosophical school of empiricism in early modern thought. In a sentence, a central feature of this philosophical approach was the epistemological contention that all knowledge has its origin in simple sensory experience. This claim raises the following psychological question: given that complex mental phenomena (such as an abstract train of thought) obviously are not direct and simple deliverances of sense, what is their nature and where do they come from? Associationism was the name given to the increasingly elaborate account developed to answer this query.
British empiricists are often called the British associationists, as George Mandler has put it, because their work is based on a fundamental principle of mental lifethe association of ideas (Mandler , p. 18). Titchener similarly observed that the
association of ideas itself came to be the guiding principle of the British school of empirical psychology. So well did it work, as an instrument of psychological analysis and interpretation, that Hume compared it to the law of gravitation in physics [a]ll the great names in British psychology, from Hobbes down to Bain, are connected with this doctrine of the association of ideas (Titchener , p. 374).
Let us begin our study of associationism with Thomas Hobbes (15881679), who was, at the dawn of the modern age, the fertile parent of so many influential intellectual offspring, and who has variously been called the father of empiricism, the father of empirical psychology, and the father of associationismall with good reason (Klein , p. 71). For most of his long life, he was tutor to the Cavendish family, and he only began to produce substantial original work in philosophy relatively late in life. Major influences on Hobbes thinking included Euclid and the deductive methodology of geometric proof in his Elements , as well as Galileos contemporary work in physics.
1.2 Thomas Hobbes
Hobbes offered a distinctive philosophical theory according to which all of reality (including human beings and their mental life) is to be accounted for in terms of matter-in-motion and the deductively demonstrated ramifications of this fact. As a distinguished historian of psychology has put it,
[w]ith Descartes, Hobbes identified matter with extension. Siding with the Gassendists, he insisted that only body can affect body and that only matter in motion can serve as the subject of scientific inquiry (Robinson , p. 305).
Hobbess masterpiece was the 1651 work Leviathan , we find in the first nine chapters of Leviathan a seminal account of knowledge and of the mind.
In the world of Leviathan the thoughts of man are either (1) sense data or (2) content derived from that original (Hobbes , p. 19).
Unlike the lower animals, human beings are capable of undergoing a law-like succession of one thought to another that may be termed a train of thoughts or imaginations (Hobbes , p. 12) So, for example, in
a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more impertinent than to ask what was the value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thought of the war introduced the thought of the delivering up the king to his enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the 30 pence which was the price of that treason; and thence easily followed that malicious question; and all this in a moment of time, for thought is quick (Hobbes , p. 12).
We can further differentiate unregulated trains of thought (such as a daydream) from trains of thought that are regulated by some desire (e.g. cause-to-effect reasoning), and this provides us with the basis for accounting for human language, inasmuch as the general use of speech is to transfer the train of our thoughts into a train of words (Hobbes , p. 16). The Hobbesian notion of human cognition as a law-like associative process working on what ultimately are sensory elements prefigures, as we shall see, the essence of associationism.
1.3 John Locke
The next high point in early associationism was the Essay Concerning Human Understanding completed by John Locke (16321704) in 1690. Locke was not only the central figure in British empiricism; he was also a pioneer of association psychology. Like Hobbes, he regarded the work in physical science of his time as a model of great achievement.
According to Locke, our minds begin as tabula rasa and our subsequent knowledge all derives from experience., pp. 1045).
Let us then suppose the Mind to be, as we say, white Paper, void of all Characters, without any Ideas; How comes it to be furnished? To this I answer, in one word, From Experience: In that, all our Knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives it self. Our Observation employd either about external, sensible Objects; or about the internal Operations of our Minds, perceived and reflected on by our selves, is that which supplies our Understanding with all the materials of thinking. These two are the Fountains of Knowledge, from whence all the Ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring (Locke
Sensation provides us with the ideas we have of yellow, soft, bitter, and so on.
These simple Ideas, the Material of all our Knowledge, are suggested and furnished to the Mind, only by Sensation and Reflection. When the Understanding is once stored with these simple Ideas, it has the Power to repeat, compare, and unite them even to an almost infinite variety, and so can make at Pleasure new complex Ideas (Locke , p. 119, italics removed).
In short, we have here a reductionist account of mind, in which mental content is reducible to various ideas of sensation or reflection.
The Other Fountain,, p. 105, italics removed).
We turn now to the mechanism of association itself. The famous chapter on this topic in the Essay On the Association of Ideas, p. 400).
Despite Lockes apparent lack of interest in providing a systematic account of the healthy human mind, David Hartley observed that the influence of association over our ideas, opinions, and affections, is so great and obvious, as scarcely to have escaped the notice of any writer who has treated of them, though the word association , in the particular sense here affixed to it, was first brought into use by Mr. Locke (Hartley , p. 41).
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