Psychophysiology

Abstract

To begin a book with a definition of the key terms of its title is a commendable practice in many scientific works. However, a definition of “psychophysiology” and of “person” as well as “situation”, as understood in this treatise, amounts to articulating its thesis, which is not practicable in a one-sentence definition. Actually, this and the following chapters are devoted to attempts at clarifying what I understand under these terms. Evidently, they are embedded in a rich history of philosophical, meta-scientific, and psychological discourses, of which the mind-body enigma and the question of how we acquire knowledge (epistemology) remind us. Therefore, rather than beginning with definitions, in these introductory chapters of this book I will give an abbreviated and necessarily limited account of previous definitions, philosophical positions, and principal assessment procedures, which in sum provide an explication of the underlying assumptions of this treatise.