Classics in the History of Psychology
An internet resource developed by
Christopher D. Green
ISSN 1492-3713
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By E. B. TITCHENER (1899)
First published in Philosophical Review, 8, 290-299.
Posted
December 2001
Professor Caldwell has recently devoted several pages of Discussion[1] to a consideration of my article The Postulates of a Structural
Psychology.[2] For this I am grateful. I should be more grateful, however, if
Professor Caldwell had rendered my meaning a little more accurately. After writing that "it would be unwise
to make any attempt" to exclude epistemology and psychogenesis entirely
from "a work meant to serve the purpose of instruction," since
"the attempt would involve a total disregard of historical
conditions," I am surprised to learn that I would have my readers infer
that my "own Outline deals
exclusively with the first of the six brands of psychology." I am still more surprised, remembering the
existence of works like Stumpf's Tonpsychologie,
to learn that I have somewhere dubbed the structural study of the higher
processes a "mere plan of arrangement" : I
cannot discover the passage.
Nevertheless, I am glad to take advantage of Professor Caldwell's
criticisms to work out certain phases of my argument that could not well be
embodied in my former article.
1. Professor Caldwell complains that it is: "difficult for the
reader" of my previous paper "to keep the 'structural' view
persistently in sight." This is no doubt true. It is difficult, even when
dealing experimentally with a special structural problem, to hold oneself rigidly to the anatomical
standpoint. But it is not, I believe, an
epistemological law that truth of thinking and ease of thinking are strictly proportional;
and it would, therefore, appear more profitable to cast round for the reason of
this difficulty, and thus to overcome it, than to urge difficulty as an
argument against the general position, and decline further effort. If a question is worth discussion at all, it
is worth discussion as well after its difficulty has been determined as before.
The reasons for difficulty in the present case are, as a matter of fact,
peculiarly obvious. The whole trend of
our thought-habits, and the whole of linguistic tradition, favor
a functional, and make against a structural consideration of mind. In our daily life and conversation, we have
no temptation to think or speak of our mental states and processes in any other
than a functional way. If Professor Caldwell
[p. 291] will jot down the phrases containing the word 'mind,' or referring to any
mental complex, that are employed by himself
or by those about him in the course of a day's non-professional talk, he
can easily assure himself that the fact is as here stated. It is true that certain of them, formulated
(as they will probably be) in terms of an associationism such as is represented
in the history of psychology by James Mill, may seem, at first sight, to
present a structural appearance. But a very little scrutiny will show that
these 'bits' of mind are really mintages, tokens with a meaning-value, and not
parts of a structure, removed from any kind of' functional relation.
Introspection, from the structural standpoint, is observation of an Is; introspection, from the functional standpoint, is
observation of an Is-for. Unschooled
introspection tends almost irresistibly, then, to the introspection of an Is-for. But there are
two extra-psychological functions that we are very apt to appeal to, in mental
reference: the Is-for-thought and the Is-for-conduct. In other words, unschooled introspection is
apt to be an introspection, not of psychological material
at all, but of meanings (logical function) or of values (ethical function). It is the latter that crops up as 'morbid
introspection' in fiction and in homiletic literature. The heroine who "is clever at introspection
and analysis," who "studies her own sensations and dissects her
moods," who is "mentally cross-eyed from turning her eyes inward so
constantly," -- such an one is not introspecting psychologically, not
observing mental facts; she is viewing her mind through an ethical glass which
furnishes distorted values. As for the former, introspection through the glass
of meaning, that is the besetting sin of the descriptive psychologist. Let us take a few instances.
Herbart was a man of considerable musical gifts. It is, therefore, not surprising that he
chose to work out his theory of ideational fusion in the concrete medium of the
tonal scale. Yet what an array of absurdities
do we find in his pages! The opposition
fraction of the second is 2/10, that of
the fifth 7/5: the second fuses seven times as well as the fifth! Moreover, the octave is the lower limit of
fusion; fundamental and first overtone are absolutely
dissimilar! Strike the octave, and you
have "zwei sehr leicht zu unterscheidende
Töne"! And Volkmann blindly follows the Master. "Grundton und Sekunde
unterscheiden wir im gleichzeitigen Vorstellen nicht mehr."
Such statements are palpably in conflict with fact; but I do not doubt
that Herbart and Volkmann made them 'on the ground of
introspection.' Yes! they were introspecting, not the Is,
but a logical Should-reasonably-be; the theory was ready, before introspection
began, and, when [p. 292] the time came for introspection, an idea
representative of the octave or fifth or second, a logical meaning, stood in
the path of direct vision, and they saw crookedly.
The same thing is true of all those psychologists who seek to force an
elementary will-process, a conation, upon the structure of mind. Anatomy fails
to reveal a will-element : the verdict of the
experimentalists is unanimous.
Nevertheless, the existence of such an element is, in not a few
psychologies, attested by 'an accurate introspection.' The discrepancy is
readily explained. Will is an admitted fact of functional psychology;
therefore, there should be some trace of it in structure. The 'accurate introspection' is observation,
not of the Is, but of the logical Should-reasonably-be;
meaning has, again, clouded fact.
It is needless to multiply illustrations. It is worth while, however, to differentiate
these cases of faulty introspection from the terminological confusions that
occur, alas! in all forms of psychological literature.
When the experimental psychologist speaks of a 'sensation of weight' or of a
'sensation of resistance,' he is, doubtless, speaking confusedly. The sensation
is neither a genetic nor a functional unit, but a unit of structure. 'Resistance' and 'weight,' on the other
hand, are functional terms. Such
collocations are, therefore, to be avoided, so far as language allows of their
avoidance. They need not, however,-- as a rule, they do not -- carry with them the real and
far-reaching errors that follow from perverted introspection.
2. 'But how,' it may be asked, 'do you propose to avoid perversion? You accept functional psychology as a
department of psychological science, and predict that it will some day fall
under the experimental method; you are, therefore, called upon to show how the Is-for can be rightly (psychologically) introspected.' Professor Caldwell, it is true, denies the
experimental psychologist any place in a conference upon mental function. But,
not to shelter myself behind this dictum, I reply: Introspection of the Is-for must be the introspection of the
Is-for-the-psychophysical-organism. What are the organism's mental tools? To
what simplest type or types may they be reduced? How delicate is their work and
how wide their limits of efficacy? These are, I think, psychological questions:
while the questions how and to what extent the tools are being and have been
employed for the procurement of results in the worlds of truth, goodness, and
beauty are questions of logic and ethics and æsthetics. The line will, of course, be hard to draw
with any degree of rigidity; the student of logic and ethics and æsthetics will
hardly fail of interest in functional [p. 293] psychology, and the psychologist
will not refrain from psychologizing till he has
traversed his domain of thought to its uttermost boundary. But there certainly
is a point at which the psychology of cognition, feeling, and will ends, and
the sciences of logic, æsthetics, and ethics begin; a point at which general
value, value for the organism, 'function' in the widest sense, is replaced by
special value, value for knowledge or conduct or art. And I am sure that, when psychologists have their
"Hermann's Handbuch," there will be a volume
devoted to the exposition of mind as a system of functions of the
psychophysical organism.
An appeal to the concrete may, perhaps, be of service in this connection. I offer the following instances as
approximations to the distinction that I have in mind, though I fully realize
that the edges of the distinction have been left rough in nearly every
case. We have, then, in Wundt's recent
theory of visual space perception (optical illusions) a piece of structural
psychology: in Lipps's theory, a piece of functional
psychology; in the æsthetic theory which follows directly from this last, the
change from general to special values. Külpe's
chapter on centrally excited sensations is structural, Ebbinghaus's monograph
on memory, functional psychology; the chapter on memory in Hobhouse's Theory
of Knowledge takes us over into logic.
Wundt's Bemerkungen zur Associationlehre is
written from the structural standpoint; the current association 'laws' of the
textbooks are functional; Bradley discusses association from the standpoint of
the logician. Or again: the analysis of
attention is anatomical work;
the doctrine of apperception belongs to a functional psychology;
while we see, e. g., in the first volume of Wundt's Ethics, the
application of the doctrine to the problems of the science of conduct. The line of division, I repeat, cannot be
rigidly drawn; I should myself regard some part of Bradley's and Hobhouse's
work as falling within the scope of functional psychology. But the fact that different men mark the
boundary-line at different places does not mean that there is no boundary-line
at all.
3. Professor Caldwell complains that I use the structural elements "as
if they were real things," after I have stated that they are ''artifacts, abstractions, usefully isolated for scientific
ends, but not found in experience save as connected with their like." I
had supposed that any reader who was bent upon understanding my paper would be
able to 'reconcile' these positions for himself, and so did not labor the point in my discussion. There is not the least contradiction between statement
and usage. [p. 294]
The structural
elements are abstractions, in the sense that they are obtained by abstraction
and analysis from concrete experience, from our immediate mental Erlebnisse. If they were not abstractions, there would
be no need of the delicate mechanical appliances and elaborate experimental
methods employed for their determination.
Were they genetic units, they might, on occasion, appear alone, even to
a superficial examination; we might find them, as we find the single-celled organism,
e.g., in the white blood-corpuscle of the living human body. Were they simplest 'bits' of mind, like the
atomistic sensations of the older associationism, they might also appear alone:
gold is found as pure
nugget, and not only in the quartz matrix. As Wundt
puts the matter: "Psychical elements, in the sense of absolutely simple
and irreducible constituents of the process of mind, are products not only of
an analysis but also of an abstraction, the possibility of which is due solely
to the fact that the elements are, in reality, variously interconnected.''
But these abstractions are " isolated for
scientific ends." The chief end is,
of course, furtherance of the understanding of the structure of mind. It is clear, then, that the elements must be
' real things ' in the sense (1) that they do not transcend mental structure,
do not contain anything not already contained in the concrete Erlebnisse, and
(2) that they do not fall short of mental
structure, do not omit anything contained in these Erlebnisse. The abstract tonal sensation, e.g.,
can serve no scientific end if it is not adequate, as elemental constituent, to
the structure of the musical chord: the 'sensations' of the doctrine of tonal
fusion must be identical with the 'sensations' of the doctrine of tonal
sensation. Otherwise there is no passage from the structurally simple to
the structurally complex. Or, to put
the same thing in a different way, the structural psychologist must be able to say:
"Give me my elements, and let me bring them together under the psychophysical
conditions of mentality at large, and I will guarantee to show you the adult
mind, as a structure, with no omission and no superfluity." Abstractions these elements are, but
abstractions from the real, and in so far participating in reality. Any argument that runs its course upon the
plane of structure has the full right to regard them as 'real things,' and to
pit them as real against rival claimants to the rank of structural
element. Professor Caldwell's
structural will-process, if it existed, would be just as much abstraction, and
just as much real thing, as are the acknowledged processes of sensation and affection.
4. Professor
Caldwell complains of my terminology. I
regret that [p. 295] this should have caused him trouble. Writing from page 457on, under the rubric of
structure, I had thought that the phrases 'elementary mental processes' (p.
457), 'last things of mind' (p. 459), and 'elements' (p. 462), would be
understood as strictly synonymous. They are to be thus understood. Some explanation is, perhaps, called for, as
to the use of the term 'process.'
Historically, the term 'process' was imported into modern psychology by
way of reaction against the preceding psychological atomism. It is one of Wundt's great services to
systematic psychology that he banished the 'idea' as unvergängliche
Existenz, and set in on place the 'idea' as Vorgang, that in every context he substituted
psychisches Geschehen
for psychisches
Sein. The
term 'process' has been so universally accepted by experimental psychologists,
that there is, certainly, some danger of its indiscriminate and unreflecting
use. My own employment of it, however, was
conscious and purposed. I count duration among the constitutive attributes of
sensation: the reason being that a sensation which should lack duration is not
adequate, in my opinion, to the structure of mind. The duration of sensation is not, of course,
a mere permanence, a Beharrlichkeit; it
is that temporal rise-poise-fall which is normal to each sensational quality,
and which occupies a longer or a shorter period from one sensation quality to
another. Unless our tonal sensations, e.g.,
possess a duration of this kind, we cannot obtain, by the bringing together of tones
under any conditions, the phenomena of clang-tint. What Stumpf calls
the "eigenthümliche Art und Dauer des An- und Ausklingens'' is
a characteristic which is reduced to its lowest structural terms in the
'duration' of tonal sensation. But such
a characteristic constitutes the element a process. If Professor Caldwell still finds it difficult
to think of a 'process' as a 'fact of structure,' I can only suppose that he is
pressing an unwarrantably literal interpretation upon a form of speech which I
have distinctly stated to be metaphorical (REVIEW, VII, 450), and conceiving of
mental 'structure' as strictly analogous to the 'structure' of the zoölogist or the architect.
It remains to mention,
under this head, that the element of the structural psychologist
is nothing -- does not exist -- apart from its constitutive attributes. Let any one of these assume the zero value,
and the sensation, e.g., ceases to exist; there is no sense-substance.
The attributes have been variously and at times not too happily named: I find
the expressions Empfindungsbestandtheil, Bestandttheil der reinen Empfindung, immanentes Moment, unabtrennbares
Merkmal, nähere Bestimmung der Empfindung unerlässliches Bestimmungsstück, qualitative [p. 296] (etc.) Beschaffenheit der Empfindung, 'attribute,' 'determinant,' 'characteristic,' 'aspect,'
etc., etc. All are practically synonymous,
though a writer not infrequently selects one rather than another to suit the
immediate context. I have made some
slight attempt, as Professor Caldwell may know, to simplify and standardize
psychophysical nomenclature. But he who
desires to have a voice in psychophysical questions must even take the
literature as it is, and not await the advent of a reformed terminology.
5.· How Professor Caldwell can have come to think that I differentiate
the subject-matter of functional and structural psychology -- as if there were
a structurally disposed mind, for one thing, and a functionally disposed, for
another -- I cannot imagine; unless, indeed, in 'purposely overlooking' some of
my statements, he has unconsciously overlooked others. On pp. 451, 462, and 465
are express indications of the fact, implied throughout, that one and the same
mind is to be examined by both the anatomical and the physiological methods. So far am I from any theory of bifid mentation, that a discrepancy between the results of these
methods would necessitate a revision of my whole psychological system. By functional analysis I am led to believe
that the root-function of mind is given with the simplest will-process
(impulse, Trieb); by structural analysis, that the morphological elements are given with the
sensation and the affection. The two beliefs
are absolutely congruent: two different lines of thought have converged at a
single point. On the other hand, I
suppose that those who accept Professor Muensterberg's
structural monism must, if they are consistent, represent a functional intellectualism. Unless one's thinking is to go on in
separate, argument-tight, mental compartments, one must seek to bring
functional psychology into line with structural, and psychogenesis into line
with both. Whether an ultimate synthesis
of fact and method in all three disciplines will be possible is a matter rather
for the metaphysician than for the scientific man to decide. But, at any rate,
there should be no more conflict among the various psychologies than there is
between the embryology, morphology, and physiology of biological science.
Here I take leave of Professor Caldwell, and (for the time, at least) of
psychological classification. It should
never be forgotten that the distinction of structural, functional, and genetic
psychology is based upon, imaged in, terms of biological analogy; and that
analogy is sure to halt somewhere, however far it may serve as guide to thought. I have myself found the distinction eminently
useful, and I think it may be useful to others also. As was hinted above, it throws some light [p.
297] upon the issue of intellectualism vs. voluntarism; it will be found
to throw still more upon the arguments urged for and against parallelism and
interaction. But it is, after all, no
more than a working schema, by which one's present knowledge may be temporarily
arranged -- a schema to be ruthlessly discarded so
soon as a better is proposed.
I turn to Professor
Herrick's paper on "Material vs. Dynamic Psychology."[3]
Professor Herrick, a neurologist, here urges upon the
psychologist the "frank adoption of a dynamic method," for the reason
that this is "an era of
dynamism in physical science."
Psychologists have been " narrow in their
preparation, and are consequently uninfluenced by the recent change of base on
the part of molecular physics and [by?] higher
mathematical concepts."
It is only too true that we are all 'narrow in preparation.' Few scientific men would refuse to admit that
they could do better work in their own field, if only they knew more physics
and chemistry, more mathematics, more biology and psychophysics. Life is short,
and science is wide. But I am a little comforted, on behalf of the psychologist,
when I turn back a few pages from Professor Herrick's article, and find
Professor Ladd saying that " the demand, or the hortation
for another step toward the ideal of unity, is generally issued at present by
some one of the particular sciences to those others which lie nearest its own
door.... All this reminds one of the current practical proposals to effect a
unity of the Church, which, in the thought of each particular denomination,
takes the form of an 'embracement' of all the other denominations, by that
particular one making itself the universal." True, Professor Ladd declares
that he has found more of scientific reserve and caution among the best men in
the physico-chemical and biological sciences than he
has among his fellow psychologists. But
I doubt whether this experience is to be elevated to the rank of a general
rule. If it is, Professor Herrick has now
furnished an excellent exception, whereby Professor Ladd may prove it.
For it is not the case that experimental psychology has given "admittedly
small" results, "so far as facts are concerned," during the last
ten years. On the contrary, the wealth
of new facts is so great that it is difficult for one mind to grasp them
all. Even the American output for the
single year 1898 -- to say nothing of the French and German -- embodies a
considerable number of new facts, some of which are of prime theoretical importance. Professor Herrick should be sure [p. 298] of
his data before printing his generalizations.
How, indeed, he can have read through even the single published part of
Ebbinghaus's Grundzüge, and still
maintain that our crop of facts is scanty, I fail to understand; just as I fail
to understand his ascription of complete consequence in the discrimination of
fundamental points to Jodl's otherwise admirable book
(cf. Martius's
Besprechung in the Zeitschrift). And
why must the experimental method furnish a 'point of view'? A point of view
lies behind every method, dictates the application of the method; and the point
of view is invalidated or confirmed by the results which the method brings to
light. But a method does not 'give ' a
point of view. What the points of view
are, which lie behind the various modes of treatment of psychological problems,
I have endeavored to indicate in this and in my
previous paper.
Professor Herrick goes on to raise the epistemological difficulty of the
substrate, the question of the matter-substance for physical forces, and of the
soul-substance for mental processes; and gravely calls the psychologists'
attention to Ostwald's Lübeck
address. Now, in the first place, it is
really a matter of indifference, for ordinary laboratory work in physics and
psychology, whether the investigator believes or does not believe in a
substantial matter and a substantial soul.
Moreover, although it may some day come to pass that the laws of the physical
universe submit themselves to formulation in terms of energy and of energy
alone, that day is certainly far distant (cf.
Bolt and Helm). We may
eagerly expect it: but it is not here.
And thirdly, it is at least open to discussion whether, even if we
unreservedly accept a theory of energetics as
furnishing the most satisfactory explanation of the physical universe, we are
thereby committed to an interpretation of mental process, the vehicle of our
knowledge of physical energy, as itself in some way a form of energy. Again, one wishes to be informed more nearly
as to Professor Herrick's conception of a dynamic psychology. How would a psychology work out, in energy-formula?
How would it differ from existing systems? For we have psychologists, as it is,
who speak much of 'psychische Kraft' and its limits
and distribution. Finally, the question
of dynamism apart, this difficulty of a
substrate in which processes shall inhere or reside is, thanks to Wundt and Avenarius among others,
a difficulty that no longer confronts us.
Professor Herrick is a day or two behind the epistemological fair. Similarly, his remarks on parallelism, so far
from seeming "obscure by reason of their unfamiliarity," seem to me
to be essentially commonplace, and obscure only by reason of their formulation
in terms of an unfitting analogy. [p. 299]
Professor Herrick
writes as a well-wisher to psychology, and his psychological aperçus have the value that criticisms from a
competent worker in a related field must always have for the professed student
of the mind. But we shall confess our
debt to him a great deal more willingly, if he will be a little less sure of
our general scientific ignorance, and a little less didactic in his manner of
addressing us.
E. B.
TITCHENER.
Footnotes
[1] Psychological
Review, March, 1899, pp. 189 ff.
[2] This
REVIEW, September, 1898.
[3] Psychological Review, March, 1899, pp. 180 ff.