Chapter 3: Subjective Matter, Methods, and The Making of A New Science

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

a German philosopher who argued that there were serious impediments to a natural science of the mind, and that there are two separate domains of reality: noumenal and phenomenal world

noumenal world (Kant)

the external world consisting of objects in a pure state that have an existence independent of human experience (we can perceive it, but our perception is never a pure representation of the essence of the object because we filter it through our own mental and sensory apparatus

phenomenal world (Kant)

when the noumenal world encounters the human mind

psychophysics

a branch of study involving the physical measurement and quantification of psychological phenomena

Johann Friederich Herbart (1776-1841)

a philosopher who proposed that numbers could be assigned to psychological experiences of different intensities—presentations—which could be distinguished from one another as more intense or less intense and that the degrees of intensity would vary over time

Ernest Heinrich Weber (1795-1878)

a physiologist who discovered that heavier standard weights required that the second, compared weight be heavier by a proportion—which was constant and reliable—of the original, not by an absolute amount, to make an accurate sensory discrimination

just-noticable difference (jnd; Weber)

a measurement used to calculate the proportions for each sensory discirmination

Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887)

a physicist who discovered a mathematical law—Weber’s/Fechner’s law—allowing him to describe and predict the relationship between the physical world and our subjective experience of that world, which proved to him that man and mature are in harmony

Lehrfreiheit

the freedom to teach

Lernfreiheit

the freedom to learn

Wissenschaft(en)

science wasn’t determined by its subject matter, it was a way of looking at things

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)

founder of experimental psychology—the study of the process of sensation and voluntary movement; developed the thought meter, to test the assumption that when we’re exposed to two different sensory stimuli at the same time, we’re consciously aware of them at the same time

experimental introspection (Wundt)

the method used in Wundt’s laboratory in Leipzig that allowed him to enable subjects to be as passive, automatic, and accurate reporters of their own internal perceptions as possible—to separate the subject from the object

G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924)

one of the first Americans to study in Wundt’s laboratory.

James McKean Cattell (1860-1944)

devise a series of mental test including measures of reaction time that could be used to generate data about the distribution of individual differences

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911)

formulated the human scientific critique of experimental psychology

Théodule Ribot (1839-1916)

founder of scientific Psychology who incorporated the idea that normal and pathological states or experiences fall along a continuum

associationism (Ribot)

the complex contexts of consciousness were built from elementary sensations through several laws of association, such as contiguity, contrast, and cause and effect

Francis Galton (1822-1911)

focused on the distribution of psychological characteristics in large numbers of individuals in the population rather than focusing on understanding the processes of the individual human mind; promoted a eugenicist program to ensure the continued status of an educated elite in the face of a democratizing society

positive eugenics (Galton)

encourages the breeding of eminent individuals to improve the quality of the genetic shock

negative eugenics (Galton)

involves restricting the ability of so-called unfit individuals to procreate often through sex segregation or enforced sterilization.

William James (1842-1910)

one of the key figures in the development of scientific psychology in America; concluded that psychology should leave the metaphysical question of how we can report on the mind to the philosophers, and take it as a given that we have the ability to study conscious processes objectively.

mechanism (James)

the position that all natural phenomenon can be explained in terms of the causal interactions among material particles without any reference to an external supernatural force or agency

functionalism (James)

the point of scientific psychology was uncovered the functions of the mind and its contents or structure

pragmatism (Charles Pierce (1839-1914))

scientific ideas and knowledge can never be certain and therefore should be judged according to the work they do in the world according to their degree of practical effectiveness

Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927)

was credited with bringing Wundt’s psychology method to the United States but he distorted Wundtian introspection and ignored the half of scientific psychology that belong to Völkerpsychologie

John B. Watson (1878-1958)

father of behaviorism; contributed to the reconceptualization of the new psychology that brought it more fully in line with the progressive values of social order, control, and management.

anecdotal method (George Romanes (1848-1894))

collecting descriptions of animal behavior from many sources, and sorting through them to come up with reliable inferences about the functioning of the animal mind

Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949)

One of the first comparative psychologists who turned from the anecdotal to the experimental method

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

influential in dismantling intropsection in the American context partly because of its thorough objective, mechanistic, and materialistic orientation; founder of classical conditioning

Ralph Barton Perry (1876-1957)

argued that since the contents of consciousness are produced through experience, if someone is there to witness that experience, theoretically, they would know the contents of your mind—we have analogous experiences

behaviorism

a purely objective experimental branch of natural science with the goal of predicting and controlling behavior

Hugo Münsterberg (1863-1916)

argued that matching the right worker to the right job was essential to maximize sufficiency, and that psychology had the assessment tools to scientifically determine this match—psychotechnical method