Abstract
Why did introspectionism fall? “The approach failed,” a typical philosophy of science explanation will inform us, “because its methodology lacked reliability.” In Pathways to Knowledge, for example, Goldman offers the following account of the failure of what he calls classical introspectionism:
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- 1.
As Schwitzgebel explains in his examination of Titchener’s Manual, the difficulties in achieving the desired effect “include maintaining consistent attention, avoiding bias, knowing what to look for, and parsing the complexity of experience as it flows rapidly past” (Schwitzgebel 2004, p. 61).
- 2.
Evans, “The Scientific and Psychological Positions of E. B. Titchener” (Evans 1990, p. 7). On the same page, Evans notes that “[e]ven in departments where the content of Titchener’s psychology was rejected, his Experimental Psychology was the standard text in the experimental course.”
- 3.
The four volumes are: Volume I Qualitative Experiments: Part I. Student’s Manual (New York: Macmillan, 1901); Volume I Qualitative Experiments: Part II. Instructor’s Manual (New York: Macmillan, 1901); Volume II Quantitative Experiments, Part II. Student’s Manual (New York: Macmillan, 1905); and Volume II Quantitative Experiments: Part II. Instructor’s Manual (New York: Macmillan, 1905). We here adopt the convention of citing these closely connected works as Titchener 1901–1905. Quotes in this book are from the Student’s Manual, Volume I Qualitative Experiments: Part I.
- 4.
Evans, “The Scientific and Psychological Positions of E. B. Titchener” (Evans 1990, p. 7).
- 5.
Berman and Lyons (2007, pp. 5-15) provide some details about Watson’s early work as an introspectionist experimenter, as well as his growing misgiving about this work. They also discuss the warm and long-lasting Watson-Titchener friendship.
- 6.
Volume I Qualitative Experiments: Part I. Student’s Manual (New York: Macmillan, 1901).
- 7.
This is from the section entitled “Introduction: Directions to students”.
- 8.
To be precise, the very first page of the main text in the Student’s Manual.
- 9.
In the next paragraph sensationism is introduced. “The sensation, then, is the structural unit or structural element of these consciousnesses … just as the cell … is the structural element of our bodily tissues” (Titchener 1901–1905, pp. 1-2).
- 10.
In his attempt to put forward the most plausible and commonsensical account of the introspectionist methodology, English explains in 1921—as the first rule of psychological experimentation—that one “describe the constituent features of the experience in terms that resist further analysis,” a description “in terms of the part-processes which cannot be thought of as being themselves made up of smaller or simpler part processes” (English 1921, p. 406). Here, again, psychological analysis is regarded as the bedrock of an introspection-oriented approach to psychological research.
- 11.
Though Titchener seems not to have minded being perceived as dogmatic. According to Boring, Titchener had an “invariable custom” of lecturing in an Oxford master’s gown because, he held, it “confers the right to be dogmatic” (Boring 1927, p. 492).
- 12.
More on the topic of different notions of introspection in the next chapter.
- 13.
- 14.
Schwitzgebel seems to view Titchener’s use of the stimulus error favorably, as a largely sensible caution against lapsing in one’s efforts to study sensory experience (Schwitzgebel 2005, “Concluding Discussion”). This favorable estimate is echoed in Schwitzgebel 2007, p. 52 and Schwitzgebel 2011, p. 148. The aim of the present discussion is to show a darker side of this Titchenerian strategy.
- 15.
As he also put it: “I am convinced, however, that the right way to approach the study of psychological method is to assume that it is, in all essentials, identical with the observational procedure of the natural sciences” (Titchener 1912b, p. 487).
- 16.
This is a state of affairs radically different from normal experimentation. Normally, the experimental setup and the interpretation of the experimental results are based on a number of theoretical presuppositions. However, and this is the crucial difference, these theoretical presuppositions are not themselves completely immunized from scientific disconfirmation.
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Beenfeldt, C. (2013). The Decline and Fall of Introspectionism. In: The Philosophical Background and Scientific Legacy of E. B. Titchener's Psychology. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00242-2_5
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