[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
associate itself with the physical sciences. Thus, methodology took precedence over
subject matter, and the ideal of generating objective, scientific data displaced the
significance of the individual.5
In his illuminating essay The History of Introspection Reconsidered, focusing
on academic psychology during the period 1880 1914, Kurt Dan-ziger concludes that
the total rejection in principle of introspection was not a rational conclusion in the light of
the problems that the method encountered. Rather, it was due to a shift of interests among
psychologists, especially in America. Such interests, he points out, redefine the goals
of psychological research and hence produce a re-selection of the methods needed to
achieve these goals. Introspection was less a victim of its intrinsic problems than a
casualty of historical forces far bigger than itself. 6 Once again the truth of James s
attentional reality principle is illustrated: the knowledge that could be provided by means
of introspection no longer held the interest of modern psychologists; as a result they no
longer attended to it; and thus introspection lost its place in the psychological
understanding of the mind.
The external reason for the failure of introspectionism was the rising influence of
positivism in all sectors of science, as well as the humanities. The chief internal reason
for its collapse was the fact that the word of the subject was the final authority with
regard to mental data; and when different subjects reports turned out to be mutually
incompatible, the intro-spectionist movement found itself in a theoretical quandary from
which it was never able to extricate itself.
For all that movement s efforts to conform to the scientific tradition by reducing
introspection to a mechanistic mode of detecting primitive sorts of mental phenomena,
those methods proved incapable of producing reliable psychological data; and the school
of introspection was soon superseded by behaviorism. But behaviorism never
accomplished its goal of translating Cartesian mentalist accounts into behavioral ones,
nor did it ever cope successfully with the problem of privacy in general or the nature of
introspection in particular.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, behaviorism was supplanted by
neuroscientific methods of investigating the mind. Functionalist accounts have been very
prevalent in these recent brain-centered theories of the mind, but it is not clear what, if
any, information they provide as to the real nature of what humans do when we
introspect. Indeed, after behaviorism, mainstream theoretical psychology and philosophy
have had little to say about the nature of introspection. While theories have appeared that
depict introspection as a literal reporting on discrete brain states or processes, there is
little or no scientific basis for such views. The mental terminology normally used when
describing such introspective reporting bears only a very indirect relationship to actual
brain processes. Moreover, if introspection in this sense were to provide us with
immediate access to and knowledge of the brain, it would yield knowledge about
neuronal firings, the state of the neuron-protecting glial cells, and the intricacies of
cerebral processes and states; but this has not proven to be the case.
In both psychology and the brain sciences, theorizing about the nature of
introspection remains at a primitive level in comparison with theorizing about other
cognitive processes such as perception and memory. And while introspection continues to
be dismissed in psychology as a means of studying mental phenomena, it is still
marginally retained as a crude, unscientific appendage to serious scientific research.
Arguments Against Introspection
Ideological Objections to Introspectionism
The introspectionist school met its demise as a result of both ideological and
pragmatic, scientific problems. One ideological objection was that the principle of
objectivism demands of scientific observation a kind of independence of subject and
object that is impossible in introspection. Wundt acknowledged that subjective events can
be internally observed, but he argued that this does not imply that such events are
observable in any scientific sense. To get around this problem, he advocated a form of
internal perception (innere Warnnehmung), the conditions of which were manipulated
so that they approximated the conditions of external perception. Subjects trained in such
internal perception made observations and judgment-free reports on their
perceptions; while most mental phenomena, including thoughts and complex feelings,
were excluded from introspective study.
The kind of independence of subject and object that Wundt and many of his
contemporaries idealized can be traced back to the Scholastic era. As William James
pointed out,
in scholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established without our help,
complete apart from our knowing; and the most we can do is to acknowledge it passively
and adhere to it, although such adhesion as ours can make no jot of difference to what is
adhered to.7
The French philosopher Emile Boutroux, following James, argued that from the
philosophical standpoint no absolute divisions between the subjective and objective are
given of the sort that science imagines for its convenience. Continuity, he declared, is
the irreducible law of Nature. 8 Boutroux, however, took this a step further:
Here we encounter the real problem which is at the heart of this discussion: is there no
other experience than that which the duality of a subject and an object implies? May not [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl fopke.keep.pl
associate itself with the physical sciences. Thus, methodology took precedence over
subject matter, and the ideal of generating objective, scientific data displaced the
significance of the individual.5
In his illuminating essay The History of Introspection Reconsidered, focusing
on academic psychology during the period 1880 1914, Kurt Dan-ziger concludes that
the total rejection in principle of introspection was not a rational conclusion in the light of
the problems that the method encountered. Rather, it was due to a shift of interests among
psychologists, especially in America. Such interests, he points out, redefine the goals
of psychological research and hence produce a re-selection of the methods needed to
achieve these goals. Introspection was less a victim of its intrinsic problems than a
casualty of historical forces far bigger than itself. 6 Once again the truth of James s
attentional reality principle is illustrated: the knowledge that could be provided by means
of introspection no longer held the interest of modern psychologists; as a result they no
longer attended to it; and thus introspection lost its place in the psychological
understanding of the mind.
The external reason for the failure of introspectionism was the rising influence of
positivism in all sectors of science, as well as the humanities. The chief internal reason
for its collapse was the fact that the word of the subject was the final authority with
regard to mental data; and when different subjects reports turned out to be mutually
incompatible, the intro-spectionist movement found itself in a theoretical quandary from
which it was never able to extricate itself.
For all that movement s efforts to conform to the scientific tradition by reducing
introspection to a mechanistic mode of detecting primitive sorts of mental phenomena,
those methods proved incapable of producing reliable psychological data; and the school
of introspection was soon superseded by behaviorism. But behaviorism never
accomplished its goal of translating Cartesian mentalist accounts into behavioral ones,
nor did it ever cope successfully with the problem of privacy in general or the nature of
introspection in particular.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, behaviorism was supplanted by
neuroscientific methods of investigating the mind. Functionalist accounts have been very
prevalent in these recent brain-centered theories of the mind, but it is not clear what, if
any, information they provide as to the real nature of what humans do when we
introspect. Indeed, after behaviorism, mainstream theoretical psychology and philosophy
have had little to say about the nature of introspection. While theories have appeared that
depict introspection as a literal reporting on discrete brain states or processes, there is
little or no scientific basis for such views. The mental terminology normally used when
describing such introspective reporting bears only a very indirect relationship to actual
brain processes. Moreover, if introspection in this sense were to provide us with
immediate access to and knowledge of the brain, it would yield knowledge about
neuronal firings, the state of the neuron-protecting glial cells, and the intricacies of
cerebral processes and states; but this has not proven to be the case.
In both psychology and the brain sciences, theorizing about the nature of
introspection remains at a primitive level in comparison with theorizing about other
cognitive processes such as perception and memory. And while introspection continues to
be dismissed in psychology as a means of studying mental phenomena, it is still
marginally retained as a crude, unscientific appendage to serious scientific research.
Arguments Against Introspection
Ideological Objections to Introspectionism
The introspectionist school met its demise as a result of both ideological and
pragmatic, scientific problems. One ideological objection was that the principle of
objectivism demands of scientific observation a kind of independence of subject and
object that is impossible in introspection. Wundt acknowledged that subjective events can
be internally observed, but he argued that this does not imply that such events are
observable in any scientific sense. To get around this problem, he advocated a form of
internal perception (innere Warnnehmung), the conditions of which were manipulated
so that they approximated the conditions of external perception. Subjects trained in such
internal perception made observations and judgment-free reports on their
perceptions; while most mental phenomena, including thoughts and complex feelings,
were excluded from introspective study.
The kind of independence of subject and object that Wundt and many of his
contemporaries idealized can be traced back to the Scholastic era. As William James
pointed out,
in scholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established without our help,
complete apart from our knowing; and the most we can do is to acknowledge it passively
and adhere to it, although such adhesion as ours can make no jot of difference to what is
adhered to.7
The French philosopher Emile Boutroux, following James, argued that from the
philosophical standpoint no absolute divisions between the subjective and objective are
given of the sort that science imagines for its convenience. Continuity, he declared, is
the irreducible law of Nature. 8 Boutroux, however, took this a step further:
Here we encounter the real problem which is at the heart of this discussion: is there no
other experience than that which the duality of a subject and an object implies? May not [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]