Popper, Otto Selz and the Rise Of Evolutionary Epistemology

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Popper, Otto Selz, and the Rise of Evolutionary Epistemology This groundbreaking book is about Karl Popper’s early writings before he began his career as a philosopher. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate that Popper’s philosophy of science, with its emphasis on the method of trial and error, is largely based on the psychology of Otto Selz, whose theory of problem solving and scientific discovery laid the foundation for much of contemporary cognitive psychology. By arguing that Popper’s famous defence of the method of falsification and his elaboration of an evolutionary theory of knowledge are equally indebted to German psychology, Michel ter Hark challenges the received view of the development of Popper’s philosophy. He concludes the book with a reinterpretation of Popper’s theory of the mind-body problem, emphasizing its contemporary relevance. Michel ter Hark is Professor of the History of Philosophy and of the Cognitive and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Groningen.

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Popper, Otto Selz, and the Rise of Evolutionary Epistemology

MICHEL TER HARK University of Groningen

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published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011-4211, usa 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon ´ 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org c Michel ter Hark 2004

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2004 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeface itc New Baskerville 10/13 pt.

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A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Hark, Michel ter, 1953– Popper, Otto Selz, and the rise of evolutionary epistemology / Michel ter Hark. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn 0-521-83074-5 1. Popper, Karl Raimund, Sir, 1902– 2. Knowledge, Theory of – History – 20th century. 3. Evolution – History – 20th century. 4. Science – Philosophy – History – 20th century. 5. Psychology and philosophy – History – 20th century. 6. Selz, Otto, 1881– i. Title. b1649.p64h37 2004 192 – dc21 2003055135 isbn 0 521 83074 5 hardback

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For Karen In memory of Joost (2002)

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Jedes echte Problem ist eine Art Heimweh. Heinrich Avenarius, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung Originell ist das, was nicht traditionsfrei, sondern der jeweiligen Tradition gegenu¨ ber neu ist. Otto Selz, Letter to Julius Bahle

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Contents

page ix xi

List of Illustrations Preface 1

2

3

4

Tracing the Genesis of an Idea Philosophy of Science and Evolutionary Epistemology Between Autobiography and Reality Popper and Early German Psychology Psychology of Thinking, Evolutionary Theory, and Psychoanalysis The Würzburg School Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Cognition Personalistic Psychology and Psychoanalysis Popper and the Foundations of Pedagogy The School Reform Movement Heimat and the Pedagogy of Self-Activity The Inductive Method of Science Karl Buhler’s ¨ Child Psychology and Dogmatic Thinking Assurance and the Fear of the Unknown Conclusion Otto Selz and the Science of Problem Solving Life and Work The Assault on Association Psychology The Theory of Schematic Anticipations Psychology of Discovery and the Geisteswissenschaften Trying-out Behaviour and the Biological Turn

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1 1 11 16 24 24 34 45 53 53 55 64 70 74 84 87 87 90 98 104 110


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Contents

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Popper’s Psychology of Knowledge The Methodology of Denkpsychologie Theoretical Pluralism and the Evolutionary Approach The Bucket Theory, Otto Selz, and Pedagogy Otto Selz and Popper’s Deductive Turn A Philosophical Breakthrough? The Theory of the Searchlight Evolutionary Epistemology and the Mind-Body Problem Evolutionary Epistemology and the Theory of the Searchlight The Battle against Physicalism Karl Buhler ¨ and the Theory of Language Language, Searchlight, and World 3 A Cartesian Pluralist?

Notes Bibliography Index

115 115 119 129 136 145 148 153 153 156 164 171 180 191 225 237


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Illustrations

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 5.1 6.1 6.2

A system of diffuse reproductions The constellation theory James’s constellation theory Schematic anticipations of relational wholes Structure of a memory complex Schematic anticipation during the routine application of means Schematic anticipation during the operation of abstraction of means Trying-out behaviour Bühler’s theoretical pluralism and theory of language Bühler’s theory of language Meinong’s semantic theory

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Preface

Sir Karl Popper was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His contributions to philosophy of science, political philosophy, and epistemology are immense. The most visible signs of Popper’s importance are the countless references to him or his work in various media, including university curricula, throughout the world. Moreover, he has been second to none in earning as much respect outside the profession of philosophy as within it; Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Sir Peter Medawar, Friedrich Hayek, Sir John Eccles, and Sir Ernst Gombrich, to mention but a few, were ardent Popperians. Yet Popper’s work has not prompted that cottage industry of books and articles which surrounds, and often buries, the work of other equally influential philosophers, notably his countryman Ludwig Wittgenstein. This is partly due to his clarity of writing, inviting almost no questions of the precise meaning of what he says. Another equally important factor is Popper’s autobiography, Unended Quest, which tells the genesis of his ideas, again so clearly as to raise almost no further historical questions. But as his recent and first intellectual biography, by Malachi Hacohen, has demonstrated, providing a greater context may contribute to a better understanding of even Karl Popper. This book is not an intellectual biography. Its focus is on a specific aspect of Popper’s philosophy: the nature and genesis of his evolutionary epistemology. The use of the theory of evolution and more general biological considerations in traditional epistemology, philosophy of science, and metaphysics is often seen as one of Popper’s later contributions to philosophy. One of my two main purposes in this work is to argue for another, different view. Far from being a peripheral development, xi


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evolutionary epistemology is an integral and vital part of Popper’s philosophy. My second objective is to demonstrate that the genesis of Popper’s evolutionary epistemology, and hence his philosophy of science, is radically different from his own (and others’) account. On this received view, Popper’s initial philosophical impetus came from the logical positivism of the Vienna circle, a group of scientifically inclined philosophers and scientists who flourished in the 1920s and the 1930s. Before he got involved in his battle with logical positivism, however, the young Popper worked in pedagogy and psychology. About ten years ago, as I studied Popper’s Ph.D. thesis in psychology (1928), I was greatly surprised about the extent to which this work relied on the so-called Wu¨ rzburg school in German psychology, in particular the work of Karl Bu¨ hler and Otto Selz, but even more about the way the latter’s psychology of thinking had shaped his later philosophy of problem solving. It led me to write my first article in this unexplored area of twentieth-century philosophy and psychology: “Problems and Psychologism: Popper as the Heir to Otto Selz.” But it was only three years ago, on studying a slightly earlier manuscript in the psychology of pedagogy, that I began to realize that “heir” was perhaps not the appropriate expression for Popper’s indebtedness to Selz. I discovered not only that other pivotally important ideas of Popper’s official philosophy were initially formed in a purely psychological context but also that these ideas underwent a radical transformation mainly owing to his study of Otto Selz somewhere between 1928 and 1931, just before the start of his philosophical career. Reading Otto Selz, and to a lesser extent Karl Buhler ¨ and the biologist Herbert Jennings, brought about a significant change of perspective in this early psychology, one which would ultimately lead to his evolutionary stance in epistemology and philosophy of science. Because Popper never explains this formative role of Otto Selz in his published work, I even began to think of him as seriously distorting the historical record. Not to be credited for his scientific achievements seems to have been Otto Selz’s destiny (and fear). Selz was, I think, the greatest scientist to emerge from the brief but extraordinarily creative phase of German psychology at the beginning of the twentieth century in Wu¨ rzburg. If he is less famous than the leader of this school, Oswald Ku¨ lpe, or its most prominent member, Karl Buhler, ¨ it is not only because he was never a joiner but also because of his German and heavy, impenetrable style of writing. Like many important movements in science, the Wu¨ rzburg school was born of a revolt against the intellectual establishment of its time, notably


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association psychology and radical empiricism in epistemology. Almost simultaneously association psychology came under attack from another direction, by the Berlin school of Gestalt psychology. There had been a controversy over priority of ideas. Kurt Koffka, a leading contributor to Gestalt psychology, wrote a chapter on current psychology which, although incontestably drawing on Selz’s theories, never mentioned him at crucial places. Koffka’s article provoked the outrage of Bu¨ hler, who accused him of having taken his Gestalt theory from Selz. At the same time Selz responded by showing that Koffka had borrowed his key concepts from his own work and that his criticism of association psychology copied his own earlier rebuttal. By interpreting Selz’s theory in such a way as to make any similarity with Gestalt psychology almost impossible, Koffka finally sought to dismiss the accusations of plagiarism. Whatever the historical truth in this matter, Selz would lose anyway, his achievements being written out of history by the implacable propaganda machine of Gestalt psychology. Even his most loyal, and in fact only, pupil, Julius Bahle, was forced to refrain from mentioning his Jewish teacher in his book Eingebung und Tat im musikalischen Schaffen (1939), due to the Kristallnacht in Germany. In 1943 Selz was murdered by the Nazis. Had Popper not become a philosopher and instead continued to elaborate his psychological studies, he might well have been the first Selzian psychologist – preceding Julius Bahle and Adriaan de Groot, whose book on the psychology of chess was deeply influenced by Selz. But this is not the course history would take. In the early 1930s, Popper shifted from psychology to philosophy. Significantly, in the very same year, 1931, in which he started to compose his first philosophical work, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, his only Selzian article in psychology appeared, in a Viennese educational journal. On the other hand, in Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, he mentions Selz only twice, in passing, yet the psychology of knowledge elaborated in that book echoes in almost every detail German psychology of thinking, in particular Selz’s. What has happened, at least in my view, is that Popper ingeniously transformed important features of German psychology of thinking into a powerful philosophical theory of knowledge, providing him at the same time with the weapons for a frontal attack on then current alternative epistemologies, notably logical positivism. Although many aspects of Popper’s epistemology and philosophy of science fail to hold up, by general acclaim two central Popperian doctrines are surely correct: that, contrary to the empiricist tradition, scientific theories are not derived in any simple or mechanical way from observations but are “bold conjectures” of human


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problem solving; and that detecting and eliminating error is a sign of healthy theorizing rather than something to be avoided. Precisely these two features are the basis of Selz’s theory of problem solving. This study therefore is an attempt to reconstruct the immensely fruitful interaction that took place between psychology of thinking and epistemology in the early writings of Karl Popper and simultaneously to give Otto Selz the credit that he especially deserves. Although writing this book took less than three years, its theme was handed to me more than ten years ago when Professor Piet van Strien gave me a copy of Popper’s Ph.D. dissertation. I am still very grateful for this, as well as for his helpful comments on part of the manuscript. I am also very grateful to Professor Theo Herrmann and Dr. Alexandre Métraux, for their comments on Chapter 4. The Otto Selz Institute in Mannheim, headed by Alexandre Métraux, has provided a supportive setting in studying Selz’s (transcribed) manuscripts. Dr. Troels Eggers Hansen I thank for giving me invaluable bibliographical and historical details about the early writings of Karl Popper. I am grateful to Malachi Hacohen’s comments on an earlier version of Chapter 3, which has recently appeared in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. For other help and encouragement, I am grateful to my colleagues at the Department of Philosophy: Job van Eck, Lodi Nauta, and Detlev Pätzold. I am much indebted to Ronald Bulatoff of the Hoover Institution Archives, where the Karl Popper Papers are preserved, for always quickly providing me with relevant manuscripts. I thank the Hoover Institution Archives for allowing me to quote extensively from the Karl Popper Papers. Brian MacDonald deserves thanks for his excellent copyediting of the manuscript. Personally, I am most grateful to Karen and Anne for their love and lively conversation, and for their never complaining about the many stolen hours.

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1 Tracing the Genesis of an Idea

Philosophy of Science and Evolutionary Epistemology The idea that we acquire knowledge by a process of trial-and-error elimination has been one of the truly great ideas of the twentieth century. As no reader of his philosophical and autobiographical work could have failed to notice, Karl Popper credits himself for having invented this idea. In his work from the early 1960s onwards the theory of trial-and-error elimination turns out to be not simply a part of Popper’s comprehensive philosophy but rather one of its key features; it is at the bottom of some of his most spectacular achievements in methodology, epistemology, the philosophy of biology, and even political philosophy. Indeed, it is put forward at once as a model for the growth of individual knowledge (both human and animal), the growth of life (Darwin’s theory of evolution), and the growth of scientific knowledge (philosophy of science). As happens so often with innovative ideas, the theory of trial-and-error elimination derives much of its glamour from the theory it rejects: because the mind is a tabula rasa, sense perception is the origin of all (human) knowledge. Popper nicknames this empiricist view as the “bucket theory” because it conceives of the mind as nothing but the conduit for sense impressions, an empty bucket to be filled by the accumulation and storage of information.1 The bucket theory of knowledge and mind may be firmly entrenched in both philosophy and psychology (and even in common sense), yet it is roundly rejected by Popper. In his hands the bucket theory collapses under the strain of philosophical arguments and scientific facts and is replaced by a theory maintaining that our knowledge of the world

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Tracing the Genesis of an Idea

is partly drawn from our mind and constructed from the repertoire of knowledge dispositions we already possess. Most dispositions, Popper avers, are innate and, if not innate, acquired modifications of what is innate. For instance, speaking English or German is an acquired disposition, but the disposition to learn some human language is an innate disposition of the human species. Acquiring dispositions proceeds according to the method of trial-and-error elimination. This method, Popper contends, is essentially a three-stage model, which he takes to apply to animal learning as well as to the upper reaches of scientific research: forming a problem or expectation, trying out a number of solutions to the problem, and eliminating or discarding false solutions as erroneous.2 Individual organisms encounter problems as soon as they are disappointed in their (innate) expectations. Thus faced with a problem, organisms try out a number of solutions, which, in lower organisms such as amoebae, as well as in higher organisms such as chimpanzees, typically take the form of what Popper calls “testing movements.” Stimulating the shapeless bit of jelly protoplasm, which is what the amoeba is, prompts the organism to perform not a single definite movement but a series of varied movements which subject it to different internal and external conditions. The organism may be said to investigate its environment and to test all sorts of conditions, retaining some and rejecting others. Testing movements always contain a number of false trials. In the third stage these trials are subjected to a process of error elimination. Learning means that the false trials are gradually discarded so that finally the successful trial appears to be almost the only one left; the organism has formed a new expectation – namely, the expectation that the problem can be solved by the one trial that has not been eliminated. In humans testing movements typically take the form of mental testing or setting up hypotheses, but the basic procedure, Popper insists, is the same throughout life; All Life Is Problem Solving is the apt title of one of his books. This three-stage model, Popper suggests, has its counterpart in Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species. A problem here is a problem of species adaptation, and the species can survive only if it solves the problem through a change or a mutation in its genetic structure. Mutations correspond to what Popper calls attempted solutions. In the next stage badly adapted trials, whole organisms in this case, are eliminated and only the more or less well adapted trials survive, resulting in an increasing fit between organism and environment.

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Philosophy of Science and Evolutionary Epistemology

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Exploiting the biologically inspired notion of adaptive success, Popper equally considers scientific knowledge a tool, an organizing instrument in the organism’s struggle to maintain its existence, to invade and even to invent new environmental niches. Here too the three-stage model of trialand-error elimination is the fundamental mechanism of adaptation. At the scientific level dominant theories parallel the gene structure of the organism and the innate repertoire of behavioural dispositions. These structures, inherited by social tradition and imitation, are exposed to new theoretical problems which prompt new, often revolutionary solutions, leading to an increasing fit between theories and facts. Yet, Popper famously claims, scientific theories are and always will be hypotheses or conjectures susceptible to elimination. Eliminating false theories is the way science progresses or “learns.” A key feature of Popper’s theory of trial-and-error elimination is its insistence on problems or expectations taking precedence over observations. The place accorded to sense perceptions in the empiricist tradition is now reversed, for rather than being the origin of knowledge their role is limited to the second and especially the third stage. Assuredly, sense perceptions inform us about the external world, but from this, Popper argues, it cannot be concluded that they are the fons et origino of knowledge. Observations are always preceded by expectations, points of view, questions, or problems which, as a searchlight, illuminate a certain area, thereby enabling the organism or the scientist to know what to observe in the first place.3 Indeed, from an evolutionary point of view even our sense organs are the outcome of a series of biological problems and attempted solutions. Knowledge and experience, then, rather than being the passive outcome of the accumulation and association of sense perceptions, are constructed from the built-in repertoire of expectations and dispositions. Guided by preceding expectations, lower and higher organisms constantly and actively put forward trials or attempted solutions when faced with problems of any kind. The bucket theory of knowledge and mind of the famous British philosophers Locke, Berkeley, and Hume (and of a host of experimentalists in the pioneering era of psychology), Popper concludes, is a myth. Evidently relishing his position as the opponent, he triumphantly claims: “My theory of knowledge is thus quite revolutionary: it overturns everything my predecessors have said up to now. We are active, we are constantly testing things out, constantly working with the method of trial and error.”4 Yet Popper acknowledges the affinity of his theory with Kant. His epistemological notion of genetic a priori

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knowledge – that is, expectations preceding observations – like Kant’s notion emphasizes the role of inborn knowledge but, unlike Kant, conceives of this knowledge as tentative and fallible, always subject to refutation on empirical grounds. The psychologist Donald Campbell was the first to recognize Popper’s theory as contributing to what he called “evolutionary epistemology.” Quoting a passage from the autobiographical essay in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), in which Popper explains his idea of genetic a priori knowledge, Campbell comments that “this insight is the earliest and most frequently noted aspect of an evolutionary epistemology.”5 This pioneering role may seem surprising to those who know Popper primarily as a philosopher of science in the tradition of the physical sciences. Indeed, as W. W. Bartley III points out, his major work Logik der Forschung (1935), translated by Popper as, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), is almost exclusively dominated by physics, biology being hardly mentioned.6 Popper’s interest in evolutionary epistemology, Bartley contends, is a new episode in his career, yet not unrelated to the earlier philosophy of science because it would integrate the whole. To support his view, Bartley recalls that in The Logic of Scientific Discovery the problem of the growth of knowledge is the central problem of epistemology. And in Conjectures and Refutations, the solution to the methodological problem of demarcating science from nonscience is still called the key to most of the fundamental problems of science. On the other hand, in Popper’s later work the main task of the theory of knowledge “is to understand it as continuous with animal knowledge; and to understand also its discontinuity – if any – from animal knowledge.”7 There are, however, signs in Popper’s published work suggesting an earlier engagement with evolutionary epistemology than Bartley claims. The passage quoted and interpreted by Campbell as evolutionary epistemology is part of Popper’s autobiographical essay, which goes back as far as the 1920s. But the idea that expectations precede observations is there presented in the context of a criticism of David Hume’s psychological theory of the genesis of cognitive states and put forward as a psychological alternative; Darwin is not even mentioned. Roughly the same picture is sketched in Unended Quest, Popper’s intellectual autobiography from 1974, yet there are two differences. The central distinction around which he now organizes his philosophy is between the phenomena of dogmatic and critical thinking. Accordingly, the method of trial and error is called the method of “dogmatic trial and critical-error elimination.” This theory of dogmatic and critical thinking, Popper tells us, had been

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the topic of a thesis submitted to the Pedagogic Institute of Vienna in 1927, and although the theory concerned the development of young children, he now reconstructs it in terms of biological processes, thereby at least suggesting an intimate linkage between psychology and biology. In particular, he compares his early theory with the theory of imprinting of his countryman Konrad Lorenz, mentioned by Campbell as another early evolutionary epistemologist.8 Lorenz observed that when recently hatched birds such as goslings and ducklings are hand-reared for a few days, they strongly prefer the company of their human keeper to that of their own species. The animals, as Popper interprets Lorenz’s results, have an inborn mechanism for jumping to unshakable conclusions.9 The problem to be solved is inborn in the sense that the gosling is genetically conditioned to look out for its mother. The theory or expectation which solves the problem is also to some extent inborn because it goes far beyond the actual observation; the observed stimulus merely releases the adoption of an expectation. The animals behave dogmatically in the sense that without waiting for premises they jump to conclusions to which they stick even when faced with evidence to the contrary. Imprinting is not subject to change or revision, yet it is an essential part of the learning process. The critical phase of learning by trial and error, on the other hand, consists of giving up the dogmatic trials under the strain of disappointed expectations and then trying out other solutions. This readiness to test and, if necessary, to change expectations, although characteristic of the learning of most organisms, finds its most perfect expression in science. Thus Popper also equates the critical attitude with the scientific attitude. Yet the difference between science and prescientific problem solving is gradual. As Popper puts it vividly elsewhere, “The difference between the amoeba and Einstein is that, although both make use of the method of trial and error elimination, the amoeba dislikes to err while Einstein is intrigued by it: he consciously searches for his errors in the hope of learning by their discovery and elimination.”10 Both the essay in Conjectures and Refutations and Unended Quest therefore point to an earlier interest in evolutionary epistemology than its official defence with the publication of Objective Knowledge in 1972 suggests. Yet the specific relationship between the early work and the later evolutionary epistemology remains to be investigated in detail, for Popper’s thesis of 1927 seems to have been concerned with child psychology rather than biology.11 Indeed, it would take another thirty-five years before the theory of imprinting would originate from the mind of his boyhood friend Lorenz. Investigating the relation between Popper’s early psychology and

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his later evolutionary epistemology is not only important in its own right, contributing to a more complete picture of his intellectual development, but may also provide a deeper understanding of the nature of his solutions to a variety of philosophical problems. Perhaps the best, yet often overlooked, example of Popper’s bent on evolutionary reform of traditional philosophical problems is the cluster of problems referred to as the “mind-body” problem, to which Chapter 6 of this book is devoted. But even the epistemological problems he deemed fundamental, and which marked the beginning of his philosophical career, the problems of induction and demarcation, although initially approached from a purely logical perspective in The Logic of Scientific Discovery and the slightly earlier but later published Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (1979), are presented in his autobiography in the context of a discussion of his early psychology. In Conjectures and Refutations, he gives the following account of the genesis of his solution of both problems. In the 1920s and 1930s Popper had set himself the task to solve the problem of induction, stretching back to the eighteenth century of David Hume, as well as the problem of demarcation, a task made more pressing by some of the contemporary positivistic claims for the applicability of the verifiability criterion of meaning to the nature of real science. Indeed, Popper’s solution of the problems of demarcation and induction seems unerringly targeted on the logical positivism of the Vienna circle in the 1930s, especially on the book from which the circle drew its main ideas, Wittgenstein’s TractatusLogico-Philosophicus from 1921. Hume is almost universally credited (and Popper is no exception here) with discovering this problem of induction. Hume recognized that when we infer inductively the existence of an unobserved effect from an observed cause (or vice versa) on the basis of past experience, our conclusions have no rational support or justification. As Popper formulates Hume’s logical problem of induction, “Are we justified in reasoning from [repeated] instances of which we have experience to other instances [conclusions] of which we have no experience.”12 Our reliance on past experience rests on the assumption that instances of which we have had no experience must resemble those of which we have had experience. With respect to the future this amounts to the assumption that there will be no change in the course of nature. But what is the justification for this assumption of the uniformity of nature, Hume famously asked? As it is at least conceivable that the course of nature might change, and because what is conceivable is possible, no demonstrative argument can

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be given for the assumption of the uniformity of nature. On the other hand, probable arguments involving an inference from observed events to unobserved events via beliefs about causes and effects based on past experience presuppose that the course of nature will not change, and thus the attempt to justify induction is caught up in a circular argument. Accordingly, claims that transcend the available evidence, in particular general laws and predictions, remain unwarranted. Popper agrees with Hume’s answer to what he calls the logical problem of induction, but he reformulates it in the “objective or logical mode of speech,” a strategy he shares with logical positivism. Replacing “instances of which we have experience” by “test statements,” and “instances of which we have no experience” by “explanatory universal theories,” the problem now becomes: can the claim that an explanatory universal theory is true be justified by assuming the truth of certain test statements? In agreement with Hume, his answer to this question is no. But, he hastens to add, there is yet another version of the logical problem of induction, one arising merely by replacing in the preceding sentence “is true” by “is true or that it is false.” To this question Popper’s answer is positive: assuming the truth of certain test statements sometimes allows one to conclude that a scientific theory is false. Given the typical situation in which the problem of induction arises, with several explanatory theories offering competing solutions to the same problem, the latter outcome proves immensely fertile, because it enables one to distinguish between a good and a less good, or even a pseudoscientific theory. If the test statements happen to refute some but not all competing theories, it is entirely rational to prefer that theory whose falsity has not been established. Because the refutation or falsification of a theory through the refutation of its consequences is a deductive inference (modus tollens), Popper concludes, the proposed solution is purely logical. Where Popper parts company with Hume is over whether establishing a theory of the actual genesis of our knowledge of the future (and the past) means that “belief” must finally rest on induction. Having refuted the logical idea of induction, the question how we actually obtain knowledge becomes indeed an urgent one for Hume. Popper calls it the psychological problem of induction. As Popper sees it, there are two answers Hume can give: by a noninductive procedure, thereby retaining a form of rationalism, or by an inductive procedure and so conceding that some of our most important modes of inference are made in the complete absence of rational insight. Hume chooses the second route, and his psychological explanation of our inferences from the observed to the

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unobserved in terms of habit and irresistible association boils down to a form of inductive learning. According to him, the experience of a constant conjunction of ideas of causes and effects in individual experience ensures that the future occurrence of one idea (of the “cause”) would automatically evoke the other (of the “effect”) in the mind. Although at one place admitting to having found his solution to the psychological problem earlier than to the logical problem of induction, Popper’s overriding priority is again a purely logical argument.13 He had discovered that the idea that expectations and beliefs about regularities in the environment arise out of the repeated impingement of stimuli upon our senses is a myth, fostered by the bucket theory of mind, and had to be replaced by an alternative theory of mind explaining that sense experience is always preceded by the interests and expectancies of an active, explorative organism. That is, expectations arise in our mind without our having to observe the repeated succession of paired objects or events. Indeed, in human and animal psychology a situation counts as a repetition of an earlier situation only because organisms respond to it “by anticipating its similarity to the previous one.”14 Anxious to point out the purely logical basis of this “apparent psychological criticism” of Hume’s theory, Popper subsequently designs a different version of this argument.15 The kind of repetition envisaged by Hume, he argues, can never be perfect. The cases he has in mind can only be cases of similarity rather than perfect sameness. “Thus they are repetitions only from a certain point of view. . . . But this means that, for logical reasons, there must always be a point of view – such as a system of expectations, anticipations, assumptions, or interests – before there can be any repetition; which point of view, consequently, cannot be merely the result of repetition.”16 Popper’s reason for attaching so much importance to the logical nature of his solution of the psychological problem of induction is related to the dramatic consequence Hume’s own solution in terms of habit (repetition and association) has for our self-image as rational creatures; human knowledge, according to Popper, “is unmasked as being not only of the nature of belief, but of rationally indefensible belief – of an irrational faith.”17 The best way to safeguard the rationality of human cognition, he believes, is to refute psychological inductivism on logical grounds. The bridging principle he exploits here is what he calls “the principle of transference,” according to which “what is true in logic is true in psychology.”18 If, on the basis of this principle, Popper can transfer his logical solution to psychology, then there can be “no clash between logic and psychology, and therefore no conclusion that our understanding is irrational.”19 But

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whereas Popper speaks of the principle of transference, thereby suggesting a unique application of this idea, he in fact uses it in two different, albeit related cases. The principle is appealed to in transferring his solution of the logical problem of induction to the psychological problem of induction, thereby allowing him to formulate one of his main results thusly: “[S]ince Hume is right that there is no such thing as induction by repetition in logic, by the principle of transference, there cannot be any such thing in psychology (or in scientific method, or in the history of science): the idea of induction by repetition must be due to an error – a kind of optical illusion. In brief: there is no such thing as induction by repetition.”20 But the principle is also used, in the very same essay, in applying the logical argument to the effect that repetition presupposes similarity, and similarity presupposes a point of view, to the psychology of cognition and to scientific method.21 Indeed, because the discovery that induction does not exist is based on objective logical considerations, Popper feels confident in applying the method of trial-and-error elimination to the genesis of scientific knowledge, thereby safeguarding its rational basis.22 Rather than being a digest of observations, a scientific theory is put forward initially in uncorroborated trials or conjectures. Then predictions are compared with the actual observations to see whether they stand up to the test. If such tests turn out negative, then the theory is refuted, and the scientist has to concoct a new theory. With no negative outcomes forthcoming, scientists will continue to uphold their initial claims, not so much as a proven theory but as a nonrefuted conjecture. Science, then, does not rest on inductive procedures. On the contrary, the inferences that matter to science – refutations – are deductive. The second big problem, the demarcation problem, is closely related to the problem of induction. The demarcation problem is the problem of distinguishing between those statements or theories which can properly be counted as belonging to empirical science, and those statements and theories which have to be relegated to pseudoscience or to metaphysics. Bacon drew a line that was to become the standard criterion for many centuries: empirical science is characterized by its faithful and secure reliance on empirical facts, facts that have been carefully and patiently gathered by the method of induction. Pseudoscience and metaphysics, on the other hand, lack this “observational basis.” Popper never felt content with this inductive criterion of demarcation. Modern theories of physics, he recalls, are highly speculative and far removed from their empirical basis. On the other hand, astrologers have always supported their theories

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with a great wealth of inductive material, yet astrology is rejected by modern science.23 The example of astrology, however, did not prompt him to develop a different criterion of demarcation so much as new and revolutionary theories in physics, psychology, and sociology. As he recounts in his autobiography, after the collapse of the Austrian Empire he was caught up in the general intellectual turbulence precipitated by Einstein’s theory of relativity, Marx’s theory of history, Freud’s psychoanalysis, and Adler’s individual psychology.24 After a brief involvement with Marxism and individual psychology, he became more and more dissatisfied with the theories of Marx, Freud, and Adler. On the other hand, his admiration for Einstein, especially after Eddington’s eclipse observation in 1919, which confirmed the former’s theory of gravitation, only increased. What was wrong with Marxism, psychoanalysis, and individual psychology? he asked himself. Why were they so different from physical theories, from Newton’s theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?25 The main drawback of the theories of Adler and Freud, as Popper saw it, is their apparent unlimited explanatory capacity. Popper illustrates this point with two radically opposed cases of behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water intending to drown it, and that of a man attempting to save the child, thereby sacrificing his own life. Each of these cases, Popper goes on, can be explained easily by both Freudian and Adlerian theories. According to Freud, the first man would have suffered from repression, whereas the second man would have had achieved sublimation. But, according to Adler, the first man would have suffered from feelings of inferiority, and so would the second man.26 Marxists and psychoanalytic theories frame their theories in such a way, Popper contends, that “every conceivable case will become a verifying instance”; hence, no possible observations need ever make them adjust their theories. Scientists like Newton and Einstein, on the other hand, indicate beforehand which outcomes of a test will have to force them to adjust or even to abandon their theories. Unlike astrology, Marxism, and psychoanalytic theories, the theories of Newton and Einstein are falsifiable, even if not provable. Falsifiablity, then, is Popper’s criterion to distinguish science not just from superstitious belief systems but also from “pseudoscience.” He recounted his first experience with Einstein’s theory: Here was an attitude utterly different from the dogmatic attitude of Marx, Freud, Adler, and even more so that of their followers. Einstein was looking for crucial experiments whose agreement with his predictions would by no means establish his theory; while a disagreement, as he was the first to stress, would show his theory to be untenable.

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Between Autobiography and Reality

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This, I felt, was the true scientific attitude. It was utterly different from the dogmatic attitude which constantly claimed to find “verifications” for its favourite theories.27

Irrefutability, rather than being a virtue of a theory, is a vice. For a theory to count as truly scientific, it has to expose itself not to verification but to falsification. But although pseudoscientific, the dogmatic attitude is a prerequisite for the scientific or critical attitude: it provides the scientific attitude with the material to exercise its critical function. It is obvious that there is a close connection between the problem of induction and the problem of demarcation – indeed, so close that the solution to the latter is in fact the solution to the former – yet Popper initially did not notice this connection. The solution to the problem of induction occurred to him a considerable time after his solution to the problem of demarcation, and not until he had solved the former did he see the importance of the latter. What he realized in particular then was that inductivism, by clinging as tightly as possible to the empirical data, in fact allayed the fear for metaphysics that haunted the empirical scientist and philosopher. That is, inductivism was itself an answer to the demarcation problem – but a very bad one, according to Popper. Popper’s solution to what he deems the two fundamental problems of philosophy, especially in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, is logical and epistemological, yet, as his autobiography already makes clear, it seems somehow related to his early psychology. At the same time, Popper is also anxious to avoid relying too much on psychology for in the same essay he writes: “Provided you do not dogmatically believe in the alleged psychological fact that we make inductions, you may now forget my whole story with the exception of two logical points: my logical remarks on testability or falsifiability as the criterion of demarcation; and Hume’s logical criticism of induction.”28 Given the later prominence of evolutionary epistemology, as well as its connection with the psychology of dogmatic and critical thinking, and the biologically oriented method of trial-and-error elimination, an essential prerequisite for a balanced view of Popper’s oeuvre is precisely “the whole story.” As discussed in the next section, however, some serious defects exist in what Popper himself calls the whole story.

Between Autobiography and Reality The method of trial-and-error elimination is centrally important for Popper’s philosophy as a whole. So how and when did he come to it? The

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picture which emerges from his autobiographical essay, “Science: Conjectures and Refutations,” in his Conjectures and Refutations, and Unended Quest, is of a man who came quite independently, and remarkably early, to his core ideas. The year 1919, when Sir Arthur Eddington observed light apparently bending near the sun, thereby confirming Einstein’s theory of relativity, marked a kind of watershed in his intellectual life. Then, at the age of seventeen, he first grappled with the problem of demarcation and solved it.29 His earliest thoughts on the problem of induction stem from 1923.30 The logical criticism of Hume’s psychological theory of knowledge took shape in 1926–1927, immediately after his theory of dogmatic trial and critical-error elimination, which he elaborated, “in a clumsy terminology,” between 1921 and 1926.31 Thus at the age of twentyfour Popper had set out his core ideas, a stance to which he subsequently unwaveringly adhered. But how can Popper maintain to have developed his theory of dogmatic trial and critical-error elimination after the solution of the demarcation problem and simultaneously contend that his solution of the latter problem makes use of the former? As is clearly stated in Unended Quest, the insight that the dogmatic attitude coincides with the tendency to verify theories, whereas the critical attitude induces scientists to test and, if necessary, to falsify their theories, came to him in 1919. The difficulty is that no manuscripts or other documents definitively establish the nature of Popper’s solution of the demarcation problem in 1919.32 Moreover, Popper’s earliest manuscripts in the 1920s show no trace of the demarcation problem either.33 But perhaps Popper has been exaggerating when claiming to have solved the demarcation problem in 1919 for, as he also indicates, the awareness of a connection between this problem and the problem of induction came to him much later, at around 1928. It is not unlikely that his solution of the demarcation problem took (definitive) shape only after his becoming aware of its intimate connection with the problem of induction and, hence, with his theory of trial-and-error elimination. According to this scenario, his earliest two manuscripts, both of which were never published, and in one of which he elaborated his theory of dogmatic trial and critical-error elimination, take on a special importance as they might show us the genesis of his critique of the two ancient philosophical problems as well as the beginnings of his alternative evolutionary epistemology. Indeed, Popper refers to one of them as the source for his logical and psychological criticism of Hume’s psychological problem of induction.

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13

After having outlined, in Unended Quest, the psychological and logical criticism of Hume’s theory of induction, he adds in a footnote that the same ideas are to be found in his thesis “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung,” “which I presented (in an unfinished state) in 1927, and in which I argued against Hume’s idea that habit is merely the (passive) result of repetitive association.”34 This manuscript was a protothesis (Hausarbeit), which students following the two-year teachertraining program at the new Pedagogic Institute of Vienna had to submit at the end of their course. Perusal of this manuscript, to be discussed in detail in Chapter 3, however, proves beyond any question that Popper does not deny the existence of induction around 1927; quite the reverse, he himself endorses induction as a matter of course. Indeed, it is clear from the first sentences of the preface that induction is not a topic of (critical) discussion at all: “The work at hand, although in its main parts highly theoretical, has yet arisen out of practical experience and has finally to serve practice again. Its method, therefore, is essentially inductive” (emphasis added).35 This remark clearly conflicts with Popper’s autobiographical contention to have solved the problem of induction in 1926–1927. But perhaps this claim is too swift. In a section of Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (The possibility of a deductive psychology of knowledge), written between 1931 and 1932, and generally considered transitional to the book that would make him famous as a philosopher of science, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Popper speaks of a lost second part of “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’”: “This work is no longer to be found and must be regarded as lost. ‘Theory of the intellect’ was the theoretical part of ‘“Gewohnheit” und “Gesetzerlebnis” in der Erziehung: Eine pädagogisch-strukturpsychologische Monographie.’”36 (What Popper terms his “theory of the intellect” corresponds to his sketch of a deductive psychology of knowledge.) But in Unended Quest the thesis was called unfinished. A glance at the content of Popper’s thesis, however, shows that the claim that the thesis is unfinished is much more likely than that (part of it) is lost. “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung” reads as a carefully constructed and self-contained empirical-psychological investigation. The text falls into two main parts and nine sections. The first part (sections 1–6) contains a preface and an extensive introduction, which is concerned largely with an outline of the problem together with Popper’s methodological stance. The second part is called “The Psychology of the Gesetzerlebnis.” This part contains one section called “Phenomenology”

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and is further divided into three subsections encompassing eighty-three pages. Two other sections are also promised. Section 2 would be concerned with theory. In this section, Popper proposes to offer a causalteleological explanatory theory on the (inductive) basis of the phenomenological facts gathered in section 1. Section 2, however, was never written. A third section, also unwritten, would deal with applications of his theory to several areas of psychology. The impression that these two sections have not in fact been written is reinforced by the fact that the manuscript ends with a bibliography. The concluding sentences leave no doubt about the self-contained character of the manuscript: “With this we conclude our empirical-psychological investigation.”37 Given that two sections were not written, Popper’s thesis is clearly unfinished. The crucial question, however, is whether it is unfinished as regards his criticism of Hume’s logical and psychological problem of induction and the development of his own theory of trial-and-error elimination. His later comments on his thesis suggest that the proposed but unwritten causal-teleological theory would have been a deductive psychology of knowledge and, hence, akin to his theory of trial-and-error elimination. In the thesis itself, however, Popper proposes to construe this causal-teleological theory on an inductive basis, which is his methodology throughout the thesis. What is more, induction is still the path to knowledge for the young Popper, both in individual psychology and in science, one year later, in 1928, when he was finishing his doctoral thesis, “Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie,” at the Psychological Institute of Vienna under the aegis of his teacher Karl Bu¨ hler, now largely forgotten but ubiquitous in the 1920s and 1930s.38 Yet here, in embryo, is the concept of trial-and-error elimination which looms so large in Popper’s later writings. Both its rudimentary form and its embodiment in an inductive psychology and methodology, however, provide further evidence that the (deductive) theory of dogmatic trial and critical-error elimination was not yet formed before 1929. Accordingly, it looks very much as if Popper considered his thesis unfinished from the perspective of developments yet to come, which, assuredly, is something different from saying, as he does while claiming to have rejected Hume’s psychological theory and thereby to have solved the problem of induction between 1921 and 1927, that it is simply unfinished (or lost). On the contrary, the evidence suggests that much had to happen intellectually before he could “finish” his deductive theory of trial-and-error elimination. Perusal of “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung” provides further evidence supporting my view that Popper’s autobiographical comments on the genesis of his work have to be revised drastically.

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15

Popper by his own account claims that in his thesis he argued against Hume’s idea that habit is merely the (passive) result of repetitive association, and that this criticism was part of his theory of dogmatic thinking. Admittedly, dogmatic thinking is the main theme of the early thesis but in a way which differs significantly from the epistemological context provided by Hume’s problem of induction; it is the context of education in which Popper’s first thoughts on the concepts of habit and dogmatic thinking emerge. His main question in his thesis of 1927 is whether an education in which habit plays a prominent role is of any positive value. In particular, he seeks to provide the pedagogical distinction between a “stage of habit” and a “stage of self-determination” (spontaneity) with an exact psychological foundation. The thesis, then, is far removed from the abstract issue of Hume’s problem of induction and is about what would nowadays be called philosophy (or psychology) of education rather than philosophy of science or general epistemology. Admittedly, Popper provides a clue to this background in Unended Quest. The theory of “noninductive” learning, he there remarks, was initially a theory about young children. And, as he also recalls, he was inclined to consider dogmatic thinking a kind of neurotic aberration.39 The point is not elaborated upon further, but in an essay from Conjectures and Refutations a passage occurs in which he points to a similarity between his concept of dogmatic thinking and psychoanalytic accounts of neuroses. Dogmatic thinking, he argues, is the expectation to find regularities everywhere and the attempt to find them even where there are none.40 People stick to their expectations even when they are inadequate, and they ought to accept defeat. In this respect, he goes on, there is a “point of agreement” between his theory of dogmatic thinking and psychoanalytic theories, for a neurosis is a personal set pattern adopted very early in life and “maintained throughout, and every new experience is interpreted in terms of it; verifying it, as it were, and contributing to its rigidity.”41 Connecting this theory of dogmatic thinking with Hume’s theory of inductive learning, Popper, in the same retrospective essay, subsequently attributes to him the idea that the strength of a person’s beliefs, being the product of repetition, varies inversely with the degree to which he is a “primitive” person. Popper, on the other hand, observes that “dogmatic thinking, an uncontrolled wish to impose regularities, and a manifest pleasure in rites and in repetition as such are characteristic of primitives and children; and increasing experience and maturity sometimes create an attitude of caution and criticism rather than of dogmatism.”42 This discussion of psychoanalytic theories is clearly meant as an aside and not as part of the actual genesis of his ideas, yet it has its roots in

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“‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung.” Indeed, the view of neurosis outlined in Conjectures and Refutations echoes Popper’s analysis of dogmatic thinking. This analysis, as I explain in detail in Chapter 3, is a collage drawn from a number of German and Austrian pedagogues and psychologists, including the founder of “individual psychology,” Alfred Adler. Far from criticizing Hume – indeed, the father of empiricism is not part of the story at all – we see Popper relying on and exploiting some of the ideas of the neo-Humean, positivist, and empiricist epistemology of Heinrich Avenarius. What all this implies is that Unended Quest and the essay in Conjectures and Refutations contain a number of narrative errors. Not only is there no indication of Popper’s having solved the problem of induction before 1929; his epistemological account of the genesis of his theory of dogmatic trial and critical-error elimination is not borne out by the historical facts either. To judge from the close connection between his solution of the demarcation problem and the problem of induction, it is not to be expected either that Popper has made any progress with his solution of the former problem in his thesis of 1927. Indeed, the presence of Adler in the thesis makes such a hypothesis unlikely anyway, for how can the father of individual psychology, relegated to the area of pseudoscience in 1919, now have his share in Popper’s collage of the phenomenon of dogmatic thinking? Admittedly, Popper does raise a question of demarcation in his thesis, but both the occasion and the answer are radically different from what he urges his readers to believe in Unended Quest: far from arising as a broad methodological question concerning the scientific merits of, on the one hand, Einstein and Newton and, on the other, the demerits of Freud, Adler, and Marx, the problem setting is much narrower and the stance taken surprisingly more liberal; in 1927, the, or better, a question of demarcation centres primarily on the relationship between psychology as the science of human character – “characterology” or “personalism” – and the then ascending empirical psychology, Denkpsychologie, in Germany and Austria. The “problem of demarcation,” then, seems to arise as a problem within psychology and not as one between psychology and physics. Moreover, Popper’s answer to this demarcation problem is in terms of induction.

Popper and Early German Psychology These conflicts between, on the one hand, Popper’s autobiographical account of the genesis of his ideas on induction and demarcation and,

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Popper and Early German Psychology

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on the other, my preliminary reconstruction on the basis of his two psychological manuscripts are worthy of deeper investigation. Indeed, the indications that Popper’s philosophical odyssey began neither in 1919 nor in 1923, but a considerable time later, have important implications for our understanding of the historical origins of his ideas in epistemology and the philosophy of science. In the first place, the evidence implies that his involvement in psychology and pedagogy has been far greater, and far more important, for the development of his thinking than anyone would suppose from either Popper’s autobiography or the existing secondary literature; one of the chief aims of the present study is to demonstrate that there has been a persistent and unfortunate tendency in the reception of Popper’s philosophy to misconstrue and underestimate its significance.43 The evidence also suggests that his later philosophical ideas are much more indebted to psychology than he wishes to concede and that the latter left abiding marks on the former. As to the first point, a transition must have taken place in Popper’s psychological views, one which helped him steer away from a sensualistic and personalistic outlook on dogmatic thinking towards an increasingly biological or evolutionary approach, beginning with his doctoral dissertation of 1928 and culminating in the theory of dogmatic trial and critical-error elimination. In itself the theory of trial and error is familiar enough from both American and German psychology. In his autobiography, there are also some references to this tradition, notably to Herbert Spencer Jennings, Conwy Lloyd Morgan, Karl Buhler, ¨ and Otto Selz, yet the emphasis is mainly on the “I” and simply leaves no doubt about it that Popper considers himself the prime author of the method of trialand-error elimination. For instance, recounting his psychological years, he writes: “I found that my views were similar to those of Oswald Ku¨ lpe and his school (the Würzburger Schule), especially Bu¨ hler and Otto Selz. They had found that we do not think in images but in terms of problems and their tentative solutions.”44 It could be objected, though, that the idea of acquiring knowledge by trial and error was, as it is said, “in the air.” That Popper himself may have seen the history of his ideas on mind and knowledge in this way is suggested by the already mentioned passage in Unended Quest in which he proposed to illustrate his theory of learning, developed around 1922, by using Konrad Lorenz’s famous theory of imprinting: “Of course I knew nothing in 1922 of Konrad Lorenz’s theories (though I had known him as a boy in Altenberg, where we had close friends in common),” he adds, thereby clearly suggesting that at a certain stage of the history of science and philosophy the idea of learning

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by trial and error was circulating.45 Ideas being “in the air” is grist to his philosophical mill, for Popper is second to none at defending the existence of a sort of Platonic world of ideas, a world far surpassing in scope and objectivity the mundane world of ideas in people’s heads. From the perspective of this Platonic world it is entirely conceivable that the same or similar ideas become visible to different scientists having had no opportunity to read each other’s work and, hence, having no knowledge of their advancing the same or similar theories. Far from depreciating the history of ideas in this sense, “Platonic contacts,” precisely by ignoring the contacts and influences that have actually taken place, would lead to a misleading aggrandizement of the originality of Popper’s ideas on the method of trial and error. Rather, on the basis of his two manuscripts on psychology we may infer that he was caught up in the general intellectual turbulence precipitated by German Denkpsychologie, or psychology of thinking.46 William and Clara Stern, Karl Groos, Karl and Charlotte Buhler, ¨ Heinrich Avenarius, Oswald Ku¨ lpe, Felix Kru¨ ger, Karl Marbe, August Messer, Hans Volkelt, and Otto Selz have prepared the ground for, and shaped the conceptual course of, Popper’s outlook on dogmatic and critical thinking. Today most of these names, aside from those of Kulpe ¨ and Bu¨ hler, are largely or entirely forgotten. Yet there is little justification for ignoring or marginalizing these writers because scrutiny of their work shows that their psychological views have been innovative, prophetic of much of the naturalistic endeavours of epistemology in the twentieth century, notably Popper’s. This is specifically so as regards Otto Selz, closely allied to the Wu¨ rzburg school of Ku¨ lpe and Buhler. ¨ Himself a cogently innovative thinker, who preceded Popper in rejecting the empiricistic view of (scientific) knowledge and mind, and in outlining the rudiments of a biological and deductive psychology of knowledge, Selz exerted a formidable influence on many of Popper’s key thoughts and formulations.47 For this reason, another key objective of this present study is to redress the balance somewhat in his regard, too. This proposed historical reconstruction reveals a balance of forces in the crucial formative years of Popper’s intellectual life quite different from what his own few remarks on the role played by Selz suggest. In a passage from Unended Quest, in which he explains the reasons for his changeover from psychology to philosophy around 1928, Popper somehow alludes to this balance of forces and brings in Selz as a motive for abandoning psychology; still, he is eager to tip the scale for the benefit of his own originality: “Finding that some of my results had been anticipated,

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19

especially by Otto Selz, was, I suspect, one of the minor motives of my move away from psychology.”48 As becomes clear in Chapter 3, and especially Chapter 5, Popper’s results are in fact his gradual and increasingly effective insights into the architectonic cognitive theory of Selz, finally culminating in his project of evolutionary epistemology. There are then good reasons for doubting whether Popper, after having left psychology, ever abandoned his Selzian insights. To judge from the preceding quotation, however, the “move away” is meant to be understood as a radical break rather than a shift in perspective. Indeed, advertising his philosophy of science, Popper, in a famous passage in his first major publication after his turn to philosophy, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, emphatically claims that it is vital for his enterprise to draw a sharp distinction between, on the one hand, the psychology of discovery and, on the other, the logic of scientific discovery. He makes this point in the section, “On the Elimination of Psychologism”: [T]he question how it happens that a new idea occurs to a man . . . may be of great interest to empirical psychology; but it is irrelevant to the logical analysis of scientific knowledge. This latter is concerned not with questions of fact but only with questions of justification or validity. . . . I shall distinguish sharply between the process of conceiving a new idea, and the methods and results of examining it logically. As to the task of the logic of knowledge – in contradistinction to the psychology of knowledge – I shall proceed on the assumption that it consists solely in investigating the methods employed in those systematic tests to which every new idea must be subjected if it is to be seriously entertained.49

In the sequel to this passage he even goes significantly further; rather than drawing a line of demarcation between psychology and philosophy, his conception of the psychology of discovery makes it in fact into a nondiscipline: “[M]y view of the matter, for what it is worth, is that there is no such thing as a logical method of having new ideas, or a logical reconstruction of this process. My view may be expressed by saying that every discovery contains ‘an irrational element,’ or ‘a creative intuition,’ in Bergson’s sense.”50 As if Selzian psychology of thinking never has existed!51 Yet in his work from 1948 onwards, especially in Objective Knowledge (1972), The Self and Its Brain (1977), and the posthumous Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem (1994), he continues to elaborate on his early psychology, seeking to apply it to a host of philosophical problems. Now a philosopher, he supports his psychology, henceforth advertised as evolutionary epistemology, by logical arguments. He also claims that two specific logical arguments induced him, towards the end of the 1920s, to abandon psychology and

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turn to philosophy. The first argument comes from Unended Quest: Giving up the psychology of discovery and of thinking to which I had devoted years, was a lengthy process which culminated in the following insight. I found that association psychology – the psychology of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume – was merely a translation of Aristotelian subject-predicate logic into psychological terms. Aristotelian logic deals with statements like “Men are mortal.” Here are two “terms” and a “copula” which couples or associates them. Translate this into psychological terms, and you will say that thinking consists in having the “ideas” of man and of mortality “associated.” One only has to read Locke with this in mind to see how it happened: his main assumptions are the validity of Aristotelian logic, and that it describes our subjective, psychological thought processes. But subject-predicate logic is a very primitive thing.52

The association psychology of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume is the view nicknamed by Popper as the bucket theory of mind and knowledge. The preceding passage suggests that he came to reject this theory in the 1920s, the same period in which he would have discovered that induction does not exist.53 But as emerges from the manuscripts at the time, and especially from a largely ignored article on the role of mnemonic exercise in pedagogy, “Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit,” from 1931, Popper’s reasons for rejecting the bucket theory are explicitly based on Selz’s refutation of association psychology. This in itself is enough reason to cast doubt on the reliability of Popper’s autobiography, although it can still be put down to the lapses in memory of a man in his mid-sixties.54 Doubts about the reliability of Unended Quest increase when the following facts are taken into account. A manuscript from his Nachlass, “Bemerkungen u¨ ber Sprachtheorie und ihre Geschichte,” reveals a quite different dating of Popper’s logical arguments against the Bucket theory. This manuscript must have been written no sooner than 1963, for its opening sentence is: “My teacher Karl Buhler ¨ 1879–1963, has according to my view reached a very big step in the theory and philosophy of language.” After a discussion of Bu¨ hler’s theory, Popper embarks on a historical project, probably meant to be included in Unended Quest. Here he drafts for the first time his idea that association psychology is a translation from Aristotle’s subject-predicate logic. Even the layout of the draft bears this out: What was the actual historical course of events? Aristotle had: Knowledge: propositions, truth (categorical sentences) – Main word, adjective or main word: subjectcopula-predicate (Socrates is a human being, is mortal, a mortal). Locke made from this “Psychology”: Subject, predicate became: ideas = Vorstellungen. The copula became their tie = association.

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21

The sentence, knowledge, became the joining or separating of two ideas. “Truth is” . . . “a right joining or separating of Signs, i.e. Ideas or Words” (Locke, Essay, Book IV, Chapter V, 1,2). Comment: Locke Aristotelian Logic: Joining = Affirmation → Socrates is mortal. Separating = Negation → Socrates is not mortal. In this way, according to its genesis, association psychology (= psychology of knowledge) is a translation of the Aristotelian theory of language (categorical sentences) in the psychological language of Vorstellungen (ideas) and their affirmative or negative tie = copula. Concept = word (substantive or predicate) becomes image. Copula becomes associative tie.55

To claim, as Popper does in Unended Quest, that there were logical reasons for his changeover from psychology to philosophy is thus severely to distort the historical record because the logical argument in question was constructed at least thirty years later.56 It is also to create a misleading notion of the intellectual balance of forces at the time of his changeover, for the arguments which did induce him to abandon association psychology were not his but Selz’s. His second argument is the one already discussed in the first section; in the autobiographical essay of Conjectures and Refutations (1963) it is cited as another major motive for abandoning psychology: I decided that Hume’s inductive theory of the formation of beliefs could not possibly be true, for logical reasons. This led me to see that logical considerations may be transferred to psychological considerations; and it led me further to the heuristic conjecture that, quite generally, what holds in logic also holds – provided it is properly transferred – in psychology. (This heuristic principle is what I now call the “principle of transference.”) I suppose it was this result which made me give up psychology and turn to the logic of discovery.57

But the argument that repetition presupposes similarity, and similarity in its turn a point of view, is to be found in Popper’s work no sooner than 1959, in an appendix to The Logic of Scientific Discovery; hence, it cannot have been the reason for shifting from psychology to philosophy around 1929.58 Accordingly, the principle of transference as formulated in his later work is no reliable guide to the genesis of Popper’s alternative to psychological induction. What remains is the obvious empirical, psychological claim that expectations precede repetitions as a matter of fact. This claim does trace back to the early 1930s; indeed, it is one of the most important lessons the young Popper draws from Selz’s assault on association psychology.

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But in Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, when developing his outline of a deductive psychology of knowledge, Popper also claims that his deductive theory of knowledge has provided the blueprint for his psychological theory, thereby relying on what he later calls the principle of transference.59 As my historical reconstruction in Chapter 5 shows, however, the outline is a straightforward translation of Selz’s alternative to association psychology, his theory of schematic anticipations, a theory furthermore Popper took pains to fit into his own psychological thoughts between 1928 and 1931, hence before commencing Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie. “What holds in logic also holds in psychology,” therefore, seems to be less an asymmetric principle than Popper urges us to believe; quite the reverse, the historical facts show an immensely fertile interaction between psychology and epistemology and perhaps even reveal that the encounter with Selzian psychology has been the decisive factor contributing to Popper’s deductive epistemology. Interestingly, a much more symmetrical use of a similar principle relating logic and psychology occurs in Karl Bu¨ hler’s Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes (1918), a book directing Popper’s first steps in psychology: “With Stumpf I maintain: what is true in logic, cannot be false in psychology, and conversely.”60 Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) – pupil of Brentano, professor of philosophy in Wurzburg ¨ between 1873 and 1879, and later famous for his psychology of music, his Tonpsychologie – sought to find a course between the Scylla of Kantian criticism and the Charybdis of psychologism. Cricitism is the view which seeks to free epistemology from psychological presuppositions, whereas psychologism proposes precisely the reduction of all philosophical and in particular epistemological issues to psychological treatment. Although Stumpf proposes an interaction between epistemology and psychology, his main criticism concerns the one-sidedness of Kantian criticism. Kantians opposing psychology, Stumpf points out, have often formulated epistemological principles not only far removed from psychology but even hindering the further development of the science of psychology. Epistemology, he avers, “has to stand the test of psychology. Something cannot be true in epistemology, yet be false in psychology.”61 Popper’s principle of transference is clearly an heir to Stumpf’s; and even though the former emphasizes the priority of epistemology over psychology, one of the main contentions of this study is that the search for an epistemology alternative to the mainstream inductivism has profited immensely from the sweeping attack of Otto Selz on association psychology, as well as from his attempt to reshape both psychology and the sciences of man and culture, the Geisteswissenschaften, in the image of evolutionary

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psychology. Indeed, from the perspective of the new Denkpsychologie of schematic anticipations, inductive epistemologies must have appeared to the young Popper as wholly untenable. But this means that Popper, like Stumpf, must hold that psychology is relevant for epistemology. That he never says so much, even goes so far as claiming the opposite, can perhaps best be explained by the respect many contemporary German philosophers – even Selz and Bu¨ hler – felt for the distinction between, on the one hand, logic and, on the other, psychology, as well as by the reshaping of philosophy as an entirely logical discipline by the logical positivists. Downplaying his own psychological past, including his psychological manuscripts, is of course part of this enterprise. Although misleading as a guide to the genesis of Popper’s epistemology, the principle of transference does show Popper’s unwavering adherence to his early (Selzian) stance in psychology. The inevitable consequence of the historical record seems to be that Popper never abandoned his early psychological ideas when working in epistemology and the philosophy of science; the point is only that he never calls them psychological but rather logical or epistemological, and preferably evolutionary. In this study therefore I argue that any proper appreciation of Popper’s greatness has to concede that his centrally important evolutionary epistemology springs especially from early German psychology and psychology of knowledge, and especially Selz’s detailed, almost obsessive, assault on what Popper has called the bucket theory of mind and knowledge, and on his alternative biologically inspired theory of creative thinking, both in daily life and in science. To attain a complete overview of the genesis of this kind of evolutionary thinking in both psychology and epistemology initially requires a journey backwards, at least to the 1890s and 1900s, which shows the birth of Denkpsychologie, the demise of association psychology, and the ascendancy of child psychology and psychoanalysis. Not until this landscape has been sketched can the young Popper’s attempts to support pedagogy with the newest psychology, the subject of Chapter 3, be fully appreciated.

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2 Psychology of Thinking, Evolutionary Theory, and Psychoanalysis

The Würzburg School Only against the background of the prior history of psychology, with its development of sensualism and associationism by Wilhelm Max Wundt (1832–1920), Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), and G. E. Mu¨ ller (1850–1934), can the achievements of the psychology of thinking be properly understood. By the 1880s orthodox experimental psychology was the psychology of Wundt and, in his footsteps, Mu¨ ller and Ebbinghaus. Wundt had defined psychology as the science of immediate experience. In analysing experience into its ultimate elements and in formulating the laws in accordance with which these elements are combined, Wundt leaned heavily on sensationalism and associationism.1 The idea of knowledge as ultimately knowledge of sensations was, of course, one with a long, ultimately Lockean pedigree, just as the idea of the constant conjunction of two sensations in the past determining our future experience or thought was firmly located in the English associationist tradition in philosophy. It had become axiomatic in psychology that the principles connecting our thoughts are mechanical, and the Kantian idea that the mind proceeds from one object of thought to another by some rational path of connection was beginning to look like a form of naiveté discordant with the tendencies of scientific thought. William James mocked this Kantianism: “The trueness of this formula is only equalled by its sterility, for psychological purposes. Practically it amounts to simply referring the inquirer to the relations between facts or things, and to telling him that his thinking follows them.”2 Thinking, James avers, only sometimes follows rational paths, and all these so-called 24

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The Würzburg School

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transitions of reason are far from being reasonable. On the contrary, thinking seems to be determined by a principle which itself has no foundation in reason, the law of habit, or, as he also calls it, the principle of association by contiguity. Fully spelled out this principle says that “objects once experienced together tend to become associated in the imagination, so that when any one of them is thought of, the others are likely to be thought of also, in the same order of sequence or coexistence as before.”3 The most plausible explanation for this striking phenomenon, James goes on, is in terms of neural habits, nerve currents propagating themselves easier through those pathways which have been already most in use.4 In Germany the atomistic outlook of sensationalism and associationism was carried further, but in a strict experimental way, by Mu¨ ller. He was the successor of Hermann Lotze (1817–1881) to the philosophy chair at the University of Göttingen. But Mu¨ ller, rather than being a philosophical psychologist, was a natural scientist preparing psychological questions for experimental treatment and served as the guiding spirit in the foundation of the German Society for Experimental Psychology in 1904. His sophisticated form of association psychology, the so-called constellation theory, ¨ would become the main target of Selz’s painstaking criticism. In his Uber das Gedächtnis (1885), Ebbinghaus embarked upon a prolonged series of experiments designed to apply the laws of association to human memory.5 By ridding his stimuli from conventional meaning – so-called nonsense syllables – Ebbinghaus relied on material which consisted merely of complexes of optical and acoustic units of sensation, and by focusing almost exclusively on the effect of repeating lists of nonsense syllables, the father of the experimental study of memory firmly established the discipline in the tradition of associationism. Many of his results were replicated and in certain respects amplified by Mu¨ ller. Despite using introspection as a tool to substantiate sensationalism and associationism, many of Wundt’s notions are transitional to the psychology of wholes (Ganzheitspsychologie), which would take different forms in the work of Christian Freiherr von Ehrenfells, Wolfgang Köhler, Felix Krüger, William Stern, and Otto Selz. By invoking the concept of “creative synthesis,” Wundt sought to explain how combinations of sensory elements result in new properties irreducible to the properties of the elements themselves, thereby foreshadowing later theories of emergent properties, as well as the famous principle of Gestalt psychology that a complex experience is more than the sum of its parts.6 In his sem¨ inal work “Uber Gestaltqualitäten” (1890), von Ehrenfells showed that

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Psychology of Thinking

spatial and tone Gestalten (like the form of things and melodies) remained the same wholes even after all the parts having been changed. This work proved that Gestalten are more than the sum of their constituting parts. Moreover, Gestalten proved to be transferable. This idea was famously elaborated on by the Gestalt psychologists, who used it in their campaign against atomism, both in psychology and in physics.7 This campaign was undertaken by very skilful writers such as Köhler and Kurt Koffka, who, aided by many now classical examples in the psychology of perception, have pushed alternative but equally antiatomistic approaches, such as the work of Kruger ¨ (1874–1948), the successor of Wundt in Leipzig. Kruger ¨ coined the term “complex qualities” (Komplexqualitäten) in opposition to the tradition of von Ehrenfells. Whereas von Ehrenfells maintained that the quality of the whole is as it were, a property in addition to the sum of its parts, Kruger ¨ retorted that a whole cannot be said to “contain” the parts that are found upon analysis at all. The correlated terms “part” and “whole,” he argued, are taken from physics, where extensive wholes literally contain parts. But the total content of experience is not an extensive quantity, and for this reason the terms “part” and “whole” are inapplicable here. Kruger’s ¨ pupil Hans Volkelt, whose role in the formation of Popper’s psychological work is explained in Chapter 5, therefore reconstructs von Ehrenfells’s claim to the effect that the sum is more than its parts as saying (negatively) that a complex quality of a whole is not the sum of parts that would have been contained in the whole, and that the complex quality does not exist as a separate quality in addition to the sum of the parts; positively the claim means that only the complex quality of the whole possesses immediate psychological reality.8 The concept of a complex quality then points to the unique independence of the quality of a complex whole. Rather than assimilating psychological Gestalten to physical Gestalten, as in the Berlin school, Kru¨ ger and his followers emphasize their radical difference. Kruger ¨ also brings in another objection to Gestalt psychology, one that would prove important for child psychology. The physicalistic view of the Gestalt psychologists, he complains, has also led to a narrow focus on specific aspects of mental life at the neglect of others, such as the role of feelings, motor experiences, and play. Kru¨ ger even goes so far as to dismiss the leading thesis of Gestalt psychology to the effect that human and animal perception is determined by homogeneous and optical Gestalten as a prejudice.9 To be sure, Gestalten are more than the sum of their parts, and in that respect a welcome departure of the atomistic tradition in psychology, yet as long as the concept of Gestalten is modelled

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primarily on segments of spatial reality, insufficient justice is done to what is the most characteristic feature of living organisms: that they develop. In Köhler’s work on chimpanzees, Kru¨ ger sees many of the shortcomings of Gestalt psychology coming together. As regards the artificially constructed problem situations to which Köhler has subjected his animals in order to determine their intelligence – that is, their fastness of response and their technical handling of objects and instruments – Kruger ¨ notes the fact that chimpanzees often solve a “problem” while playing and often in one stroke, rather than in the interrupted sequences that dominate Köhler’s experiments. Köhler’s claim that the Gestalt experiences of chimpanzees conform to those of highly educated people only testifies to his misunderstanding of developmental psychology. The truth is, Kru¨ ger goes on, that even the life of young children is dominated by nonintellectual structures that differ not only in content but also functionally from the various structures in adult human psychology. ¨ die Vorstellungen der Tiere (1914), Hans Volkelt has put the In his Uber theory of complex qualities to work in the explanation and description of animal consciousness; I return to Volkelt in my discussion of Popper’s dissertation in Chapter 5. Krüger himself, influenced by Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie – the comparative study of peoples and their psychology as expressed in their myths, customs, and especially language – has attempted to draw analogies between the development of the mind among primitive tribes and young children. This parallelism between phylogenetic and ontogenetic development will be dealt with further in the next section of this chapter. Another transitional notion in Wundt’s work is his concept of apperception. His colleague Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776–1841), wholeheartedly in the tradition of atomism, still meant by apperception the mechanical coalescence of new and old mental images, but Wundt took the concept to refer to a voluntary activity that – as a sort of mental and unifying central force – gave order and direction to the course of mental images. His opponents ridiculed the concept of apperception as a return to the scholastic doctrine of mental powers, but one of Wundt’s most outstanding and successful students, Oswald Ku¨ lpe (1862–1915), elaborated on it. Külpe was born in Candau, Courland, one of the Baltic provinces, and now part of Lettland. After completing the Gymnasium, he studied history in Leipzig. There he came into contact with Wundt, who diverted him to philosophy. He finished his doctoral dissertation, “Zur Theorie der sinnlichen Gefuhle,” ¨ a theme handed to him by G. E. Mu¨ ller, in 1887,

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and his Habilitation, “Die Lehre vom Willen in der neuren Philosophie,” in 1888. He became Wundt’s assistant and in 1894 was called to Wu¨ rzburg as ordinarius for both philosophy and aesthetics to succeed Hans Volkelt, founding there, by 1896, a psychological laboratory which became, next to Leipzig, the outstanding institute of Germany. Because he would found two other laboratories, one in Bonn and one in Munich, Ku¨ lpe is considered the second founder of experimental psychology on German soil. After Kulpe ¨ departed for Bonn in 1909, it fell to Karl Marbe (1869– 1953), already the second governor of the institute from 1904 onwards, to assume the leadership. Especially for its first period the institute has become known as the Wu¨ rzburg school. During this “Ku¨ lpe period” the school was an intellectual powerhouse, issuing a number of publications of the greatest importance. Ku¨ lpe himself played a crucial role in the researches of the graduates from his school, yet his own statements about the psychology of thinking are limited to a more or less popular article, ¨ “Uber die moderne Psychologie des Denkens” (1912), published as an appendix to his posthumous Vorlesungen u¨ ber Psychologie.10 His broader epistemological and methodological outlook on science and psychology in particular has contributed to the program of the school. The principal aim of Ku¨ lpe’s methodology is to establish the object and methods of psychology on an empirical rather than a metaphysical basis. Like physics and chemistry, he contends, psychology is an empirical science concerned with studying a specific area of the empirical facts. Metaphysical psychology, by contrast, occupies itself with what lies beyond the empirical facts, namely, the soul. Psychology as an empirical science is above all “pure psychology” (reine Psychologie). Although the soul may not be an object of introspective observation, that we nevertheless have conscious experiences (Erlebnisse) is as incontrovertible a fact as can be. By confining the object of psychology exclusively to the processes and contents of consciousness, everything nonmental comes to lie far beyond the scope of psychology. Yet Ku¨ lpe admits of unconscious mental processes and, hence, countenances a broader conception of the object of pure psychology than those who equate “mental” and “conscious,” thereby embracing a pure psychology of consciousness (Bewusstseinspsychologie). He subsequently distinguishes two senses of the term “unconscious.” In its first sense the term refers to those mental phenomena that are not part of the actually present stream of experiences. The term can also be taken to mean the whole of “actually efficacious mental processes, respectively dispositions, that as such do not become conscious.”11 Dispositions regarding talent, character, the process of memory, and inspiration are

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examples of the unconscious in this second sense. The Freudian unconscious also belongs here, but Ku¨ lpe immediately raises objections against the exclusively sexual explanation of mental phenomena. Drawing on the empiricistic views of Richard Avenarius (1888, 1890), Külpe defines psychology further as the science which studies the dependency of facts of experience on a conscious subject, thereby taking issue with his teacher Wundt, whose definition included only the concept of immediate experience.12 In this way, Ku¨ lpe objects, Wundt has drawn the boundaries too wide because the object of physics, the complex of sensory experiences representing the outside world, is equally given in experience. On the other hand, Ku¨ lpe’s new definition has the advantage of allowing physics also to deal with experience, which is now taken as independent of the conscious subject. The method of research (Forschung), Ku¨ lpe proceeds, consists of description and explanation. In its first phase psychological research is focused on describing what is actually present in conscious experience. This phase is in fact a phenomenological enterprise, but, Ku¨ lpe warns, not in Husserl’s sense.13 Description reveals not just “complex” experiences but also, after more thorough analysis, elementary experiences, which, moreover, recur in various combinations, thereby forming the substance of the stream of experience. Thus the description of an acoustic impression typically takes the form of an analysis of its components, its character, the direction it comes from, its duration, and its relation with other psychological appearances. After the descriptive task has been accomplished, psychological research has to seek to explain the facts revealed by the descriptive analysis. Explanation is above all causal explanation. By transcending the phenomenological domain, causal explanation has to call in hypothetically physiological and unconscious factors. But even commonsense psychology, Ku¨ lpe notes, contains many mental processes transcending conscious experience, such as the concepts of talent, disposition, and character. The distinction between concepts serving purely descriptive purposes, such as the concepts of sensation, feeling, and act of willing, and explanatory concepts, such as the concepts of memory trace, association, reproduction, and disposition, is vital for psychology and should be clearly marked. Accordingly, the latter class is also referred to as the class of functional (theoretical) concepts. Denkpsychologie, or psychology of thinking, emerged in 1901 with the publication of papers by A. Mayer and J. Orth on the qualitative nature of association.14 Then Marbe’s experimental study on judgement followed. These researches of Kulpe’s ¨ graduates were given direction and point

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by his determination not only to show that it is impossible to analyze thought into sensory elements, thereby discrediting Mach, who refused to recognize any other form of existence than sensations, but also to contribute to the experimental analysis of thought as a category sui generis, thereby departing from Wundt, who believed thought was not amenable to scientific treatment. As Ku¨ lpe summarizes the first achievements of the school, these were largely negative: the traditional contents of consciousness, sensation, feeling, and images – the very substance of Wundtian psychology – proved inadequate to account for the intellectual processes of thoughtful association and judgement. In one of Marbe’s experiments a subject had to lift two weights and to judge which is the heavier. The subject reported that different sensations and images accompanied the task but that they were not the elements underpinning the judgement. The judgement simply came, and was usually right, but with nothing in the subject’s consciousness to indicate why they are judgements. According to Boring’s interpretation of these findings, “Now mind was turning out, by the introspective method, to be an irrational associative train of mental contents that nevertheless reaches a rational conclusion. Marbe had good observers, among them, Mayer, Orth, and Kulpe ¨ himself; nevertheless, it was possible that all of consciousness did not get into their reports.”15 Marbe had failed to find the psychological criterion of judgement, yet the subjects frequently reported that they experienced certain conscious processes which they could describe neither as definite images nor as acts of will. To these impalpable experiences, which could not be classified under any of the standard categories, Marbe gave the name states of consciousness (Bewusstseinslage). The next important publication came from H. J. Watt in 1905.16 Watt conducted experiments in which he demonstrated the role of the Aufgabe, or task, as a direct, conscious influence in the problem he set for naming superordinates for subordinates and parts for wholes. His newly developed method of fractionation divided consciousness during thinking into four periods: the preparatory period, the presentation of the stimulus word, the period of searching for the reaction word, and the occurrence of the reaction word. One of his most astonishing findings was that the thought process did not culminate, as expected, in the third period but ran off automatically at the presentation of the stimulus word, provided the task had been adequately conceived by the subject in the preparatory phase. Watt’s Aufgaben were the various publicly observable tasks that he set for his subjects, yet the huge importance of the preparatory phase in thinking, as Watt’s experiments showed, has led to the word Aufgabe

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gradually coming to refer to the conscious task, thereby turning into an introspective concept. As Edwin G. Boring puts it: “The Aufgabe may therefore be thought of as setting up in the subject an Einstellung or ‘set’; and the subject, in accepting an Aufgabe, as becoming eingestellt.”17 At the same time Narziss Ach (1871–1946), having graduated from Würzburg, finished his dissertation in Göttingen, where he conducted experiments on willing, which turned out to be also an investigation of thinking.18 Ach dubbed the term “determining tendencies” for the directive influence of the task on the outcome of thinking. According to Ach, determining tendencies explain the ordered and purposeful character of thought processes; they rule out irrelevancies and prevent chance stimuli from altering the course of thought processes. They accomplish this by favouring those reproductive tendencies which are in line with the purpose of the subject. For instance, if the instruction is given to add two numbers, the subject’s representation of this goal (Zielvorstellung) will influence the particular stimulus presented. Thus, given 6; 2, the answers 8, 4, or 3 will result according to the goal representations (corresponding to the instructions) of respectively adding, subtracting, and dividing. Ach also discovered something like a conscious content, which he referred to as Bewusstheit, and which, like Marbe’s Bewusstseinslage, was imageless. Karl Buhler ¨ (1879–1963), born in the village of Meckesheim near Heidelberg, after receiving degrees in medicine and philosophy, joined the Würzburg school around 1906, where he would stay until 1909, the year he followed Kulpe ¨ to Bonn. In Wu¨ rzburg he wrote his most important contribution to psychology of thinking, his Habilitation, “Tatsachen und Probleme zu einer Psychologie der Denkvorgänge.” A sequel to this paper followed one year later.19 In Bu¨ hler’s hands the methods of investigation of the school would take a decisive turn, deviating sharply from the canons of Wundt and provoking vigorous responses from the grand old man of psychology.20 His was an Ausfragemethode, a question-and-answer process, posing a problem to the subject and allowing him five or ten seconds or more to respond. By this method Bu¨ hler anticipated the later “open-ended” method of public opinion research as well as the “clinical interview” used by Jean Piaget. Subjects had to answer questions for which there could be no cut-and-dried answer. A typical problem was “Was the Pythagorean theorem known to the Middle Ages?” On examining the protocols, Bu¨ hler discovered that the reports of his subjects consisted in auditory and kinaesthetic images and feelings. Aside from these there are the peculiar stretches of consciousness that Marbe described as Bewusstseinslage: “It is exactly a consciousness of the

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process of thought, and particularly of the turning points of this process in experience itself.”21 Buhler ¨ continues: The most important bits of experience are something that, in all the categories through which these formations can be defined, are not touched at all. Something which before all shows no sensory quality, no sensory intensity. Something of which we may rightly predicate degree of clearness, degree of certainty, a vividness by means of which it arouses our psychic interest; which, however, in its content is quite differently determined from everything that is ultimately reducible to sensations; something for which it would be nonsense to try to determine whether it possessed a greater or less intensity, or even into which sensory qualities it could be resolved. These entities are what the subjects, using Ach’s term, have designated as awareness, or sometimes as knowing, or simply as “the consciousness that,” but most frequently and correctly as “thoughts.” Thought, that is also the term proposed by Binet. We shall retain it as the most natural and the most suitable.22

The process of thinking, Bu¨ hler argues, consists of thought elements which it is impossible to dissect further into sensory, imaginary, or affective elements; they may even exist without any sensory element at all. Sensualism’s “horror vacui” of “imageless thought” was explained, although not taken away, by its eschewal of the intentionality of thought; the content of thought, Bu¨ hler in a passage echoing Husserl, is constituted by its being intrinsically related to facts, a relation for which he coined the term “consciousness that.”23 Buhler’s ¨ subsequent classification of different sorts of thoughts, or “moments” of thought, also echoes Husserl. Of particular interest for our purposes is what Bu¨ hler calls consciousness of a rule (Regelbewusstsein). Consciousness of a rule, he avers, is one of the most frequently encountered types of thinking and is very easily remembered. Not simply thinking about a rule, it is rather thinking of a rule or in the form of a rule. Such thinking, he emphasizes, is especially important in scientific thought, for instance, when proving a mathematical proposition. Other examples are grammatical rules which come to mind when people are uncertain concerning their speech. When Kulpe ¨ left Wurzburg ¨ for the University of Bonn, the school essentially dissolved, but, in contrast to what some historians have supposed, the research program was not cut off.24 It is true that Bu¨ hler, once in Bonn, shifted from psychology of thinking to child psychology, but his seminal work, Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes (1918), clearly bears the stamp of his earlier work on thinking. Bu¨ hler’s book in developmental psychology was not the only work to profit from psychology of thinking; in the third edition of his Psychologie der frühen Kindheit (1914), William Stern (1871–1938) also draws on the school of Ku¨ lpe. Someone who

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would carry the program of the school further, but in its own way, is Otto Selz. Selz’s work, however, deserves separate treatment, which therefore is postponed to Chapter 4. Although the Wurzburg ¨ school still does not get the attention it deserves, there is, both in modern historiography and in the rhetoric of cognitive scientists and philosophers of cognitive science, a series of claims for the role of the school as a precursor of cognitive psychology after the cognitive revolution in 1956.25 Such claims are unquestionably in need of qualification and firmer placing in a historical perspective, which, however, will not be attempted here.26 But one crucial feature of Denkpsychologie, one by which it sets itself apart from recent cognitive science, is its peculiar partnership with philosophy, in particular epistemology. The foundation of psychophysics by Fechner as well as Wundt’s “physiological psychology” had promulgated the project of transforming philosophy as an empirical science with Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf, both in Wurzburg ¨ before the foundation of the psychological institute, as the most famous initiators. In their wake many “psychologists” strove to integrate their experimental findings into a broad epistemological agenda. Whereas the epistemologist had to be involved with the problem of the genesis of concepts, Stumpf, expressing the new partnership, claimed that the psychologist had to be simultaneously an epistemologist intent at achieving clarity concerning the foundations of knowledge.27 Külpe’s own career reflects this project of integrating epistemology and psychology quite well. Indeed, it was on the basis of his chair in philosophy that he was allowed to found the psychological institute. And even though his work after he left Wu¨ rzburg became increasingly “philosophical,” Kulpe ¨ himself never thought he was abandoning psychology for philosophy. Many of his pupils too considered their experimental work contributing to the solution of age-old epistemological problems, an aspect also reflected in the titles of their publications: “Attempts at Abstraction” (Kulpe), ¨ “Experimental-Psychological Investigations of Judgement: An Introduction to Logic” (Marbe), “On the Activity of the Will and Thinking: An Experimental Investigation with an Appendix: On the Hipp chronoscope” (Ach). The great epistemologists of the past, Locke, Hume, and Kant, always figured in the background of their experimental work, not so much as providing incontrovertible foundations for psychology but rather as advancing hypotheses awaiting experimental verification or falsification. Besides being an experimental science in its own right, early psychology of thinking has contributed to the project of

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what is nowadays called “naturalistic epistemology.” This project would be pursued further in the various attempts to apply psychology of thinking to child psychology, a partnership leading gradually to what I call evolutionary theory of cognition and finally, in Popper’s (and Piaget’s) hands, evolutionary epistemology.

Towards an Evolutionary Theory of Cognition The appearance of Wilhelm Preyer’s book Die Seele des Kindes (1881) is commonly marked as the beginning of child psychology. For the first time a child – the author’s own son – was made the object of systematic observation. Preyer’s work stimulated many purely psychological rather than physiological investigations and also pedagogy received a new impulse. Ten years after Preyer, the interest in child psychology had grown enormously. Many new international journals appeared, and institutes were opened. A main feature of this period is the attempt to conquer general psychology for child psychology and to establish fruitful interactions. One of the dangers, however, was that the young science, being absorbed by educational problems, would be unduly narrowed by practical problems pertaining to school and education. Against this background William Stern’s book Psychologie der frühen Kindheit has turned out to be the ministering angel for child psychological investigations. In this seminal work, Stern attempts to establish firm connections between theoretical psychology and child psychology. In it, and especially in the third edition of 1923, Stern exploits the insights from the psychology of thinking of Ku¨ lpe’s school which has established that thought processes cannot be derived from sensations, images, and their causal connections but, instead, have a nature of their own, one that is characterized by “the principle of meaningful, directed activity.”28 The most fundamental application of psychology of thinking upon child psychology, Stern avers, comes from Karl Bu¨ hler. In Bu¨ hler’s Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, it is shown not only that the higher cognitive achievements of young children have nothing to do with the mechanism of association but also that functions of other areas of mental life, such as perception, memory, imagination, and drawing, have a strong cognitive – in Buhler’s ¨ sense of that term – streak. Another important supply of general psychological insights to child psychology is provided by Gestalt psychology, but, as Stern hastens to add, the theory of “complex qualities” of the Leipzig school of Kruger ¨ and Volkelt is closer to his philosophy of “critical personalism,” elaborated

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in his three-volume Person und Sache (1906–1924), and which he sees as providing the philosophical support for his experimental work. In fact, Stern’s personalism is a blend of metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the person and epistemological views concerning the growth of individual and social cognition. Its epistemological outlook was soon to become a part of the evolutionary theory of cognition, but the metaphysics of personalism attracted less scientifically (read: causally) minded psychologists, notably Alfred Adler. The relationship between one of the founders of developmental psychology and the founder of “individual psychology” (Individual Psychologie) is fascinating in itself, but also, and especially, as regards Popper’s development. The next section of this chapter is about Stern’s metaphysical outlook, its affinity with individual psychology, as well as Stern’s more general attitude towards Freud’s psychoanalysis. The importance of Stern for the rise of developmental psychology, then, is uncontroversial, yet Bu¨ hler’s work would soon outstrip Stern’s own book in popularity and influence; for ten to fifteen years Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes was the most widely used text on child psychology in Europe; in 1958 the abbreviated edition of 1928 had reached its eighth revised form.29 Aside from the influence of the early Stern, especially his investigations in the psychology of language, other important influences on Bühler come from the then flourishing science of animal psychology. Indeed, the theory of developmental stages with which the book opens, and for which the author has become famous, could not have come about without Buhler’s ¨ consulting Karl Groos’s Das Spiele der Tiere (1907), Herbert Spencer Jennings’s Behavior of the Lower Organisms (1905), and C. Lloyd Morgan’s Habit and Instinct (1896). The book’s main theme is the sequence of stages leading from the helpless and completely passive newborn infant – indeed, more helpless than animals – to the three-year-old infant speaking a language, making judgements, drawing conclusions, and even having an idea of truth and falsity and good and bad, thereby surpassing animals in every intellectual respect. This process of becoming human (Menschenwerdung) is structured into three broad stages by Bu¨ hler: instinct, training (Dressur), and the intellect. Although Bu¨ hler does not mention Stern here, the place accorded to both innate factors and learning in cognitive development conforms to the epistemological tenets of critical personalism. Indeed, Stern’s principle of convergence (Konvergenzlehre) steers a middle course between the extremes of nativism and empiricism.30

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The radical opposition between nativism and empiricism, Stern contends, has had harmful effects not only on epistemology but also on psychology, biology, pedagogy, and even politics. By considering the person as a sort of “diamond” attempting to preserve its innate nature against the forces and pressures of the outside world, he contends, nativism endorses an essentially passive view of human nature. Accordingly, “practical nativism” has promoted a cultural outlook which seeks to restrict the role of political and educational measures for the protection of valuable innate capacities against decay and inhibition, as in Rousseau, and to prevent invaluable capacities from affecting the welfare of other people, as in Lombroso. Conversely, by considering human beings as “pieces of wax,” capable of being endlessly shaped by external conditions, practical empiricism has mistakenly believed that in order to achieve mental and physical happiness only certain educational measures and certain political and social constellations would suffice. In this way empiricism too endorses an essentially passive view of man. Despite the fact that both camps can appeal to impressive facts in support of their theories, Stern is convinced that the truth lies in the middle. Rather than being either the emergence of innate capacities or the accumulation of sense impressions impinging upon the organism from the outside world, mental development, he argues, is the result of a convergence of both inner and outer conditions. The relevant question concerning a specific cognitive function is not “Does it arise from the outside or the inside?” but rather “Which aspects come from the outside and which from the inside?”31 The idea that hereditary and acquired cognitive functions do not compete but rather are complementary is also basic to Bu¨ hler’s theory of stages. Following proponents of evolutionary psychology, Bu¨ hler calls instinctive those activities which are carried out without preceding exercise, and with great perfection, and are common to the species. Unlike adherents of evolutionary psychology, however, he does not consider the formation of reflexes and their inheritance the key to instinct in the sense that the latter reduces to the complexity of the former. On the contrary, the distinction between instinct and reflex action is pivotal for a psychological rather than merely biological understanding of mental life, Bühler, following George Stout, Morgan, and Jennings, insists.32 Reflex actions occur when the stimulus is applied, “as a loaded pistol goes off ” when the trigger is pulled, to quote Stout, but instinctive activities are prepared for by interest and attention and display variation of behaviour according to whether its results are satisfactory or not.33 The stages of

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instinct and of learning therefore overlap to a considerable degree. This second stage is called by Bu¨ hler the stage of associative memory, “or, what is the same, training.”34 Before Bu¨ hler, Stern already had made a similar distinction, but what is new in Bu¨ hler is the explicit comparison between the cognitive development of humans and animals. The view that even lower organisms are capable of learning was one that was deeply debated by the German American physiologist Jacques Loeb (1859–1924) and the protozoologist Herbert Spencer Jennings (1868–1947). Initially a student of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann but subsequently, upon reading Mach’s Analysis of Sensations, converted to positivism, Loeb sought to extend the physiology of plants to explain the behaviour of lower organisms and even higher organisms. In particular, Loeb compared the orienting movements of plants – generally conceded among botanists to be purely automatic responses, or “tropisms” – with the responses of insects and other lower animals to such external stimuli as light and chemicals. These responses were forced or automatic reaction and could be interpreted quantitatively so as to make any teleological notion superfluous. Carried away by his philosophical enthusiasm, he went even so far as to maintain that human psychology is comparable to the light instinct of “heliotropic” animals. Soon Loeb’s tropistic theory was challenged by Jennings. Bu¨ hler heralds Jennings’s “decisive victory of the theory of tropism” as the most significant feat of contemporary animal psychology.35 Against Loeb, and based on a wealth of observations and experiments, Jennings insisted that protozoan behaviour is much less simple than the theory of tropism would seem to require. He allied himself most explicitly to Lloyd Morgan, also mentioned by Bu¨ hler, and to whose evolutionary theory of trial and error his own important principle of the selection of overproduced movements is much indebted. In discussing the distinction between hereditary and acquired activities, Morgan notes that the latter often result from a “gradual limitation of what was first a varied and exuberant output of activity.”36 A young puppy learning to deal effectively with some obstacle in its environment typically tries to effect its object in a number of different ways, many of which are inadequate, and hence unsuccessful, but “gradually it finds that certain efforts are more satisfactory in their results than others; these are repeated, and thus by successive limitations of the originally numerous and relatively indefinite trials the exuberant efforts are narrowed down to those which bring success; these become habitual through repetition.”37 Likewise, Jennings observed that amoeba stimulation is often followed by varied movements, and the

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animal may continue to be active long after the external stimulus has ceased to impinge upon it. These varied movements subject the animal to varied environmental conditions. When in this way it reaches a condition that relieves it of the stimulation, the reaction movement ceases, because there is no further cause for it. Jennings calls this the successful movement, for it is the movement selected from the varied movements in virtue of the fact that it is successful in causing cessation of stimulation. However, Jennings argues, it would be more adequate to speak of the selection of proper conditions of the environment through varied movements, because the movements are only a means to the end of selecting proper environmental conditions. His reason for calling such behaviour “trials” is that the movements are not directly and unequivocally determined by the (localization of) the stimulus. That is, contrary to the view of Loeb, responses are variable to the same stimulus and, rather than being forced, are more often of the trial-and-error type. Jennings, therefore, rejects as utterly inadequate the tropism theory of Jacques Loeb and other purely mechanistic interpretations of animal behaviour.38 A notion of particular interest for a deeper historical understanding of the evolutionary theory of cognitive development, and one which will be invoked by Buhler, ¨ is what Jennings refers to as “reactions to representative stimuli.” Under some circumstances, he observes, organisms tend to display reactions to changes in the environment that cannot be considered due to any direct injurious or beneficial effect of the actual change itself. Thus, “Stentor may bend toward a small solid body when touched by it, this reaction aiding it to procure food, though there is no indication that the touch itself is directly beneficial. Or it may contract away from a light touch, this enabling it to escape from a possible approaching enemy, though the touch itself is not injurious.”39 In such cases, Jennings generalizes, “The actual change merely represents a possible change behind it, which is injurious or beneficial. The organism reacts as if to something else than the change actually occurring; the change has the function of a sign.”40 Jennings draws here a distinction between a reaction of the animal towards a stimulus as perceived – or, better even, as expected by the animal – and the objective situation, thereby introducing a psychological dimension in his biological theory.41 In his account of the stage of training, Bu¨ hler draws on Jennings’s and Morgan’s theory of trial-and-error learning, and hence this stage can also be referred to as the stage of trial-and-error learning. The surplus of movements that always accompanies training, Bu¨ hler avers, creates a

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scope for the most simple form of learning. If by chance a certain movement has led to a successful result, “the scope, by way of unambiguous associations, becomes again restricted and eventually removed.”42 Especially this result of trial-and-error learning has mislead scientists like Loeb into supposing that what is called learning is in fact no more than hereditary behaviour. But even though the distinction between hereditary and acquired activities is often difficult to make, Bu¨ hler contends, the distinction between the stage of instinct and that of trial-and-error learning is no less sharp. There is yet another factor inherent to the stage of trial-and-error learning that contributes significantly to the development of animals and children: play. Higher organisms and children need a long period of development before they are equipped with the necessary capacities for coping effectively with their environment. The higher the nature of the skills, the longer this period of youth takes. Education alone cannot accomplish this process; the animal or child has to do a large part of it on its own, and here the biological function of play lies. As Bu¨ hler puts it: “Play brings with it the long exercise necessary for the not-yet-ready and plastic capacities, or better, play is this exercise.”43 Buhler ¨ relies here on the important and influential theory of play of Karl Groos. The core of his Einübungstheorie of play is that higher animals and children play in order to become skilled in the exercise of future, vitally important activities. Groos has shown how, step by step, intellectual functions no less than bodily movements are exercised playfully by the child, and how, along this path, the child gradually acquires the skills required for survival. The motivating force for play, Bu¨ hler adds to the theory of Groos, is the pleasure coming from the activity itself (Funktionslust). In this way the activity itself, regardless of its result, becomes a source of pleasure.44 Only with the invention and use of tools is the stage of the intellect reached. Incorporating the stage of the intellect in a general evolutionary account is a pervasive feature of German psychology of thinking by which it sets itself apart from the program of evolutionary psychology as initiated by Herbert Spencer and elaborated further by George John Romanes, James Mark Baldwin, and E. L.Thorndike.45 To be sure, evolutionary psychology did not deny the higher centres of rational, deliberative, self-critical thinking, but by conceiving of these higher functions as self-correcting instinct, it envisioned a reductive account of the stage of the intellect, deemed unacceptable by most German psychologists. On this ground Buhler ¨ even objected that evolutionary psychology, although fruitful as an account of instinct and associative learning, simply did not

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address the question of the higher functions of mental life.46 Human beings, he argues, do not always solve problems by way of associative memory but also make discoveries on the basis of preceding considerations and insight. Buhler’s ¨ endorsing a discontinuity between this stage and the preceding two stages is evidenced by his contention that “Human beings create tools and use them; animals don’t.”47 At this point he finds himself immediately involved with Köhler’s spectacular investigations into the phenomenon of insight, as demonstrated by chimpanzees in the solution of simple problems. In The Mentality of Apes (1917, 1925), he recounts how at a certain stage in his experiments the animals ceased to solve the problem in a random way and, instead, after reflecting on the situation, proceeded in “a smooth, continuous course, sharply divided by an abrupt break from the preceding behaviour.”48 Famous is the case in which Sultan could only obtain a piece of fruit by joining two sticks together and finally succeeded in its attempt. Buhler ¨ is much impressed by these results, yet he refuses to concede that chimpanzees have insight in the strict sense of that term. To be sure, the problem solving of the animals seems to be due to what Bu¨ hler has dubbed an Aha-erlebnis, a sudden idea which restructures the whole behaviour of the organism, but, he goes on, in Köhler’s investigations it can be interpreted by a sudden stop of a jumble of associative processes and its replacement by a uniform, determinate process into one direction; in any case, they do not require the hypothesis of an insightful Aha-erlebnis.49 Insight in the strict sense, Buhler ¨ maintains, is reserved for verbal performance and language-bound intelligence; the language-free inventions of chimpanzees and preverbal children are only intermediate between, on the one hand, the stage of instinct and of trial and error and, on the other, the stage of the intellect. The first symptoms of this final stage are feelings of doubt and certainty in judgement, a theme to be pursued further in the next chapter. Another symptom has to do with the acquisition and comprehension of language, in particular the insight that “all things have a name.” The final stage of intellectual development is seen in the age of asking why questions, dated at around the age of four years. As regards these latter developments Bu¨ hler heavily leans on the genetic theory of the intellect of Stern and Groos. Because their views also figure in Popper’s thesis on psychological pedagogy, the topic of the next chapter, it is necessary to include a discussion of their work in this section on the genesis of the intellect. Changes in what Bu¨ hler calls the stage of the intellect especially important for us concern the psychology of judgement. In this theory the views of Stern, Groos, and Bu¨ hler converge to a

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large extent. The blending of general psychology and developmental psychology is especially evident here, for the genetic theory of judgements draws not only on logic but also on the theory of habit formation, motivational psychology, and the theory of emotions. Indeed, the first point to be emphasized by Groos, Stern, and Bu¨ hler is what can be called the affective basis of judgement. The idea of an affective basis is not a theory of emotions narrowly conceived but is rather intimately connected with both a theory of habit and the child’s attitudes towards what is unusual in the immediate environment. Stern’s introduction to this theme can serve as our point of departure. Urgent occasions for judging, Stern avers, are those in which easy means of acting fail – that is, new situations that cannot be coped with by means of usual ways of behaving. Finding oneself in such an epistemic predicament is not a psychologically neutral experience but rather one coloured with emotions. At the age of six to nine months this epistemic predicament manifests itself, as the pioneering work of Stern has shown, as a feeling of strangeness (Fremdheitsgefühl ); later, around the age of four years, this feeling comes as the emotion of surprise or even shock. As Stern put it, “the child is surprised either because what is new does not fit into the usual course of experiences, or because the child is at least uncertain about whether the old familiar ways of thinking hold. This emotion of surprise prompts the intellectual activity of thinking and thereby all the further intellectual activities of understanding, inferring, investigating, and so on: ‘To wonder is the beginning of the philosophical urge’ (Plato).”50 The connection between the genetic theory of judgements and a biologically grounded theory of habit finds its earliest, and clearest, expression in Groos’s Das Seelenleben des Kindes: Ausgewählte Vorlesungen (1923). Like Morgan and Jennings, Groos is concerned with the distinction between instinct and habit; however, he also approaches this problem from an educational point of view. In this emphasis Groos aligns himself with William James. Groos follows James in maintaining that the fundamental law for the acquisition of new activities is the law of habit or exercise ¨ (Gewohnheit, Ubung). A specific modification of this general law is what Groos calls the urge at repetition (Wiederholungsdrang). Tendencies to repeat certain activities, more prominent among children than among adults, lead to the acquisition of habits. A further modification of the first and general law consists of a “habitual attitude” (Einstellung). People can make themselves ready for a certain newly to-be-learned activity such as a game. “If we, however, have practised through frequent repetition,

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then the readiness follows involuntarily – indeed, even under certain circumstances, unconsciously.”51 With repetition becoming more frequent, Groos observes, and the corresponding physiological pathways becoming better established, while simultaneously completely switching off inhibiting side movements, reactions will follow increasingly more quickly. A final law leads to the mechanisation of the newly acquired activity: “By this is meant that with increasing exercise consciousness, which played a leading role during the first acquisition of the activity, fades into the background.”52 In this way acquired activities become fully mechanized. All acquired activities, Groos goes on, ultimately become linked to hereditary and hence instinctively exercised activities. With respect to the interactive play between hereditary and acquired activities, he speaks of a cycle: acquired activities proceeding from innate and mechanized activities, crossing the threshold of consciousness, and descending again to the level of mechanical and automated activities. Noteworthy, especially as regards the next chapter, is Groos’s emphasizing the importance of this (associative) cycle for education. He is not alone in this respect but is in the company of James and Stern. As the latter observes: “In no period of life are mere information and clarification less effective than they are precisely in early childhood. Here it has to be attempted to anchor new ways of behaving and new attitudes in the unconscious, that is, to complete the innate drives and instincts by a system of acquired reflexes – or, better, to fuse with this system. This is habit.”53 Habit formation, Buhler’s ¨ stage of trial-and-error learning, precedes the stage of the intellect, and hence the ability to make judgements, but this priority in time by no means implies that cognitive activities at the latter stage are independent of the former. On the contrary, judging is done at the background of what has become habit. Here the theory of the affective basis comes in, and here habit and judgement touch each other. Habit was seen to operate at the physiological level. Once acquired activities have been exercised frequently, they become fully mechanized, no longer requiring conscious attention. The cognitive effect of habit is what Groos calls a “potential concept.” Being no more than the effect of habit, a potential concept prompts very young children and even animals to group objects on the basis of a single attribute. Thus, hens can be trained to respond to one distinct attribute of an object, such as color or shape, if it indicates food. And in very young children, objects or situations that have some features in common evoke like responses. Potential concepts, then, lead very young children to expect similar situations to identical outcomes.54 Groos, however, speaks not of expectation

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but of a readiness (Bereitschaft) of the organism. The choice of this term is motivated by his theory of habit: the (habitual) readiness for certain things to happen in specific circumstances is typically not a conscious experience; rather only when something unexpected occurs are we surprised, and this very surprise betrays that we were prepared for what is habitual. On the other hand, if something that is unhabitual and unexpected pops up, one’s attention will be drawn to it automatically.55 Confronted in this way with something that is unhabitual, the child can be seen to follow three different courses. First, the new impression can be so far removed from the child’s experience that it is rejected as a Fremdkörper, and the child simply takes no notice of it. Second, if the usual course of events is interrupted in a lively manner, but not so as to disturb the child, it will evoke wonder and curiosity and induce the child to explore and investigate its surroundings in more detail. Third, if unexpected events suddenly encroach upon the child’s familiar surroundings and upset familiar attitudes to such a degree, adequate, new reactions will be precluded. As Groos describes this last reaction, “If what is unusual and unexpected suddenly enters the circle [Kreis] of consciousness, a form of attention is suddenly aroused which is called surprise. If surprise is accompanied by a reflexive contraction of the body, we wish to speak of a shock.”56 As this shock is closely related to fear and anxiety, Groos calls the resulting affective state “fear of the Unheimlichen.”57 Fear of what is unusual is a basic feature of the preconditions of cognitive development; indeed, it “seems to be more original than the fear for a familiar danger.”58 Rather than being an impediment to intellectual growth or an inevitable emotional appendix, both Groos and Stern contend, thereby clearly endorsing an evolutionary approach, that the fear of what is unusual has to accomplish a vital protective task; for precisely because children are so much attracted to what is new, they are also inclined to surrender themselves to it without any precaution or check, so that a “negative attitude towards the new,” therefore, is biologically as much in need as a positive attitude towards the new.59 The earliest judgements of the child, however, are mainly judgements about what is the case, with negative judgements occurring later. A conspicuous feature of these early judgements, noted by both Stern and Charlotte Buhler, ¨ is the child’s inability to distinguish between those which determine what is the case (what logicians call assertoric judgements), and those which determine what has to be so (apodictic judgements). As Stern puts it, “What the child determines to be the case, he conceives automatically as if it had to be so.”60 Likewise Charlotte Bu¨ hler observes

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that the young child’s mind is full of normative relations (Sollbeziehungen) inducing the child to impose all sorts of speculative regularities upon the world. Deriving regularities on the basis of the observation of facts (Seinsbeziehungen), characteristic of empirical and practical thinking, comes only later. Another development which takes place quite early in the life of the child is the one that proceeds from what Stern calls dogmatic thinking to problematic thinking. Initially every judgement bears the stamp of certainty, Stern observes; but soon doubt enters, and at the age of four years words that indicate the emergence of problematic thinking, such as “perhaps” and “probable,” are among those frequently used by the child.61 Perhaps the most important step in the cognitive development of the child is the ability to infer (Weiterdenken). The gradual genesis of this ability is discussed in detail by both Stern and Bu¨ hler, and apart from its intrinsic importance this theme will be one with which the young Popper will also be concerned. Bu¨ hler distinguishes two sources for the ability to infer. The first is analogical thinking. The child, after having learned a two-word sentence, for example, “Daddy sweet,” subsequently proceeds to predicate this sentence systematically to all those known to it. It operates with a certain scheme in which it joins all the other persons. In the next chapter I pursue this topic further. The second main type of primitive inference occurs at around the age of four when the child challenges those who surround him by endlessly questioning “Why?” It is in this period of why questions that causal thinking has its origin. Typical of the project of naturalistic epistemology is both Stern’s and Bühler’s challenging Hume’s genetic explanation of the belief in causal relations between different sorts of events. Indeed, child psychology especially shows how inadequate Hume’s genetic theory is, according to Stern. After having observed two events frequently succeed one another, Hume avers, a child associates them so much that upon observing the one the child expects the occurrence of the other. Stern retorts that, with events thus conceived, it becomes “inexplicable how the child succeeds in asking why when observing those facts which are not automatically followed by their associative completions.”62 Indeed, rather than expecting usual associations, the child, in its first causal enquiries, is focused on “new situations for which no expectations and habits are formed at all!”63 Relying on Groos’s theory of habit, Stern argues that when confronted with unusual situations, the child is shocked, and this experience then prompts further causal enquiries. For the first time in his life, Stern illustrates, the son of one of his colleagues has observed that his finger

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Personalistic Psychology and Psychoanalysis

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became rose-coloured when put into the sun for some time. Then he established a causal connection between these two impressions, “hence, between two impressions that have been associatively connected never before,” saying “The sun makes my finger bleed.”64 The correction of Hume’s views concerning causal thinking and the emphasis on the biological aspects of the affective basis of judging and inferring are not the only signs of a naturalistic, and evolutionary, approach to epistemological questions. Another sign is the attempt to apply the insights gained from studying the development of the child to the development of species, and even to one of the most spectacular products of the human species, science. Thus Stern endorses an “ontogeneticphylogenetic parallelism” as regards certain aspects of language development and causal thinking.65 Indeed, he argues, the view that causal inferences are occasioned by new rather than usual experiences seems to be a main feature of “mythological causal explanations.” These are typically prompted by unusual events that interrupt the ordinary course of events, such as earthquakes and fate.66 What is usual, Stern goes on, is taken for granted, and only at a later and higher stage of intellectual development do people recognize causal problems in the ordinary course of events. The special sciences, he observes, show a similar development, from an initial focus on abnormal phenomena to careful scrutiny of the riddles underlying normally functioning phenomena. The theory of three stages, then, far from being limited to the intellectual development of the child, as the title of Bu¨ hler’s influential book might suggest, was also seen to be part of a more encompassing project seeking to explain the genesis of cognition, thereby significantly contributing to what Jean Piaget later calls “genetic epistemology” and, as I argue in the next chapters, to what Popper calls “evolutionary epistemology.”

Personalistic Psychology and Psychoanalysis By the 1920s cognitive child psychology had gained an imposing general preponderance in Germany and Austria. In this decade, too, Freud had been quietly adding his ideas to child psychology. With its emphasis on the noncognitive and unconscious dimensions of the mind, psychoanalysis might have been complementary to psychology of thinking, yet the penetration of psychoanalytic ideas was fiercely contested. In particular Buhler’s ¨ relation with Freud’s ideas, both celebrities living for seventeen years (1921–1938) in the same city without ever meeting, was

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fraught with tension. In the final chapter of his Die Krise der psychologie, Bühler accuses Freud of being a Stoffdenker, one who sees in the psychic structures and processes only the content (das Stoffliche), the structural fabric of the mind.67 The accusation that Freud recognized only instinctual forces and denied the existence of thought was exaggerated, but there is enough in Buhler’s ¨ chapter to leave Freud vulnerable to his charges. For instance, by arguing that the playing child is concerned with the pleasure of drive satisfaction, Bu¨ hler objects, Freud simply overlooks the pleasure of sheer functioning (Funktionslust) and of creative activity (Schaffensfreude) brought about by play; in play the child is concerned with rhythm and rules and the completion of patterns. These and other charges, although justified, are simultaneously indicative of more basic intellectual differences, Bu¨ hler being more interested in the mind’s capacity for problem solving – the relevance of the study of thought for education – than in psychic conflicts or the use of psychology in therapy. Bühler’s general intellectual outlook and the ensuing criticism of Freudian ideas were undeniably crucial to Popper’s later notorious classification of psychoanalysis as a nonfalsifiable “science,” yet it is Stern’s (1914) earlier, and different, comments on the relation between cognitive child psychology and psychoanalysis that have been crucial in his formation in the 1920s, culminating in his “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung.”68 It is not just the methodological criticism of Freud which will find its way in Popper’s thesis; indeed, one of the most interesting, and surprising, aspects of Stern’s work, and unquestionably of great influence on Popper’s outlook, is its quite different appreciation of the work of Adler. Indeed, Popper’s attempt, in his thesis of 1927, to find a place for (Adlerian) characterology in empirical psychology echoes Stern’s partial appraisal of individual psychology. In the introductory chapter of his book, discussing the advent of psychoanalysis, Stern immediately makes a favourable exception for Adler’s individual psychology: “Fertile points of view for child psychology come from attempts of the school of Alfred Adler, who is to a certain extent opposed to Freud; the goal of this ‘individual psychology’ is not so much to discover onesided sexual directives in the child’s mind but general characterological ones.”69 Yet Adler too is vulnerable to Stern’s methodological charges, and, hence, before discussing the affinities between individual psychology and the philosophy of personalism, I deal with them first. Stern formulates his inductive guidelines in a separate chapter, yet it is difficult not to see in it an attempt to circumvent the methodological pitfalls into which child psychology would sink were it to follow the footsteps

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of psychoanalysis. Indeed, Stern’s main reason for writing out his prescriptions is the widespread inclination among students of child psychology to measure the mental life of young children against the standard of adult mental life, which dominates psychoanalytical explanations.70 The task of child psychology, Stern avers, should be to study developmental stages in their own right and their uniqueness. Methodologically sound observation of the behaviour and mental life of children, he contends, should always respect three basic rules. First, observing the facts and interpreting them should be kept separate as strictly as possible. Admittedly, in observation the line between fact and interpretation is never clear, and untrained observers too often report their own interpretations instead of describing what they observed, yet the distinction is vital for an empirical science. Moreover, interpretations always require justifications and may never be simply stated. Second, interpretations have to fit the mental life of the child. In virtue of the child’s greater simplicity and diffuse nature, interpreting the child’s mental life, Stern explains, must be distinguished from interpreting the mental life of adults. Third, formulating “general psychological statements, interpretations, explanations, for which no observational facts can be added as adequate evidence must be prohibited.”71 Psychoanalysis contravenes these rules in almost all respects, Stern complains. It violates the second rule by seeing in the child an adult in miniature.72 Indeed, psychoanalysis is foremost a theory of the adult (neurotic) mental life, and its focus on the child is mainly derived from its contention that infantile experiences are decisive for adult mental life. Assuredly, Stern goes on, this has led to many important and often unnoticed phenomena, yet – and this relates to the third rule – countless misinterpretations, exaggerations, and invalid generalizations of psychoanalysis force themselves upon the experts of child psychology and the “unprejudiced observer of the healthy infantile mind.”73 Persisting in such interpretations, Stern maintains, would make childish utterances of fantasy “a playground for arbitrary interpretations. For ultimately everything can be interpreted symbolically in terms of everything; a preconceived opinion concerning a specific hypothesis in this way easily fixes the roads of interpretation from the beginning.”74 The most striking examples of reporting preconceived interpretations rather than observed facts and of exaggerating a certain theoretical perspective, Stern contends, come from Freud and Freudians. Thus, interpreting psychoanalytically the children’s game “Fox in the Hole,” Freudians are no longer doing child psychology but rather deriving “deductively from the

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symbolic meanings of the fox, his limping, the hole, . . . etc., the repressed sexual impulses that have to be presupposed in the playing child.”75 Put otherwise, psychoanalytic explanations presuppose the theory for which they should first of all provide the inductive foundation. These methodological shortcomings notwithstanding, Freud’s focusing on the deep layers of consciousness is an interest shared by personalism. Like psychoanalysis, personalism is after the meaning of conscious experiences and is hence, to that extent, an interpretative enterprise. Rather than confining psychology to the study of consciousness, thereby turning it into “superficial psychology,” Stern urges, behavioural symptoms gain meaning only by relating them to what happens unconsciously.76 So far in agreement with psychoanalysis, Stern parts company with Freud when it comes to the nature of the unconscious. Freud’s view of the unconscious as a mere counterinstance to the conscious, an independent mental trickster availing itself of a complicated machinery in the games it plays with the conscious mind, is vehemently rejected by Stern. Splitting up the person in this way contradicts the personalistic outlook of the person as an integral totality whose defining property is purposive activity. The opposite of a person is not a body but a thing. A thing is a mere aggregate of elements, determined from without rather than from within. The person, Stern explains, is “psychophysically neutral,” and mind and body are abstractions from the original integral totality that a person is. To be sure, separate treatment of (cognitive) functions is admissible, even necessary, but only on methodological grounds, the functions themselves being no less independent of each other than physiological functions like digestion or the circulation of the blood.77 On this unitary outlook of personalism, the deeper layers of the mind are filled by the person himself, “in whose undivided and indivisible life unity conscious impulses are embedded no less than the impulses that head for their goal without the help of the conscious.”78 A second difference between personalism and psychoanalysis is that whereas the latter considers the content of the mind as made up of buried memories charged with sexual energy caused by traumatic events in the individual’s life, the former takes into account a multiplicity of drives, goals, and directions of pursuit. These differences between the concept of the unconscious deployed by Freud and Stern are largely due to the latter’s involvement with the evolutionary theory of cognitive development outlined in the preceding section. Invoking the latest discoveries in child psychology, in particular Groos’s and his own theory of habit formation, Stern argues that the unconscious, rather than being produced

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by repression of instinct in life, is created by a process of “regressive development through habit,” turning continually repeated experiences, such as acts of eating and speaking, but also the behaviour towards other people and the striving for order in play, into reflex responses to the familiar stimuli. Initially requiring conscious attention, these experiences and activities, in the individual and the species, after recurring frequently become automatized and, following Groos’s law, are turned into an unconscious system of “acquired reflexes.”79 Rather than a trickster playing games with the conscious mind, the unconscious on this view is indispensable as a tool for adaptation to the environment and, as we see in Chapter 4 when discussing Selz, the biological mechanism underpinning the concept of tradition. Another aspect of this evolutionary account of the unconscious is that the transition from the conscious to the unconscious is a completely smooth and gradual process rather than abrupt and forceful. Because abrupt, even violent, transitions splitting up the conscious and the unconscious characterize what Freud considers one of the most important principles of development, namely, repression, it is unsurprising to see Stern attacking this notion. While conceding that many things the conscious mind is not yet capable of achieving may be anticipated by the unconscious, Stern discards the idea of confronting the highly rudimentary consciousness with a fully grown unconscious as absurd. Just as consciousness, the unconscious emerges slowly and gradually.80 The relation between consciousness and the unconscious may be fraught with inimical tension, but not so at the beginning of development; in the young child’s mind conscious and unconscious events alike are primarily related to basic sensorimotor behaviour. Indeed, Stern goes on, before an inner world of conscious or unconscious experience can develop at all, the child needs frequent contact with external stimuli and has to exercise his motor capacities. On Freud’s view, instead, inner life would flourish in advance of development, and rather than being in intense commerce with practical life, it would not take part in it. A purely inner world of this sort, Stern concludes, is achieved not until puberty, and hence still far removed from early mental life. Like Freud’s, Adler’s tendency to reduce all mental life to one pervasive unconscious force is vehemently criticized by Stern.81 But despite these criticisms, Stern respects Adler and even believes that individual psychology provides further support for his personalism and developmental psychology. Indeed, one of the key features of his philosophy, the teleological idea that the person is a causa finalis, a living whole which

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continually seeks to realize goals, is emphasized by Adler too. As Stern puts this basic agreement, “Adler has an explicit teleological conception of the personality. A developmental goal is in any human being unconsciously operative, the so-called ‘directives,’ which colour all his actions and experience. Discovering this directive as the immanent determinant of every personality is the task of the doctor, the pedagogue, in short, of everyone working with human beings.”82 The appreciation was mutual, and Adler felt indebted to Stern “primarily for his great contribution of a philosophical foundation for finalism.”83 By defining the subject matter of psychology as the science of the unitary, goal-directed person, individual psychology is a variant of personalistic psychology. This personalistic outlook is at the root of the often underestimated differences between Adler and Freud. Being invited by Freud in 1902 to join the psychoanalytic circle, Adler soon became a prominent member and was eventually named the successor of Freud as president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Adler respected Freud and his scientific achievements but also became increasingly critical of him. Finally the differences increased to the point where both Adler and Freud regarded them as irreconcilable, and the former resigned from his positions in the psychoanalytic movements, establishing his own society of individual psychology. In 1914 Adler founded his own journal, the Zeitung für Individualpsychologie. Around 1920 he succeeded in founding an educational clinic at the Volksheim Ottakring, and in the years to come more than twenty clinics were opened. His lectures on Menschenkenntnis at the Volksheim Ottakring were immensely popular and attracted each semester more than five hundred auditors.84 Rather than appreciating the differences between Freud and Adler merely in terms of their emphasizing respectively the role of the libido and the striving for superiority, it has to be recognized that both psychologists nurtured antithetically different conceptions of the study of the personality. Freud considered causal explanation the only valid basis for a genuinely scientific attitude in psychology. By assigning such importance to the unconscious, he minimized the role of the subjective self as perceived by the individual in the explanation of behaviour. Indeed, by ultimately explaining the unconscious sex drive in terms of physiological drives, his was a straightforward deterministic psychology, radically opposed to the finalistic outlook of Stern’s and Adler’s personalism. Although Adler the psychoanalyst was profoundly interested in the unconscious, he nevertheless rejected a strictly dichotomous conception of the person, dividing the mind into three separate, discrete entities: the

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ego, the id, and the superego. Like Stern, he adhered to a view of the conscious and unconscious as different aspects of a unified relational system. And, like Stern, he viewed the person as constantly striving towards goals and seeking self-actualization and fulfilment, rather than indulging in the lost narcissism of childhood, as Freud believed. According to Adler, there is one basic dynamic force behind all human activity, a striving from a felt minus situation towards a plus situation, from a feeling of inferiority towards superiority. As he puts it: I began to see clearly in every psychical phenomenon the striving for superiority. It runs parallel to physical growth. It is an intrinsic necessity of life itself. It lies at the root of all solutions of life’s problems, and is manifested in the way in which we meet these problems. All our functions follow this direction; rightly or wrongly they strive for conquest, surety, increase. The impetus from minus to plus is never-ending. The urge from “below” to “above” never ceases.85

The striving receives its specific direction from an individually unique goal or self-ideal, a final cause, which, however, is only “dimly” envisaged by the individual. This unknown part of the goal is in fact Adler’s definition of the unconscious. The tendency to see in every psychic phenomenon the striving for superiority, Stern comments, is an exaggeration, mocking the canons of inductive enquiry; yet, he goes on, one need not concede such exaggerations to see the importance of Adler’s insight for developmental psychology. In particular, Adler’s idea that out of weaknesses forceful character traits can grow is admired by Stern. This idea, he contends, undeniably illuminates often unnoticed aspects of that key feature of personalism which emphasizes human spontaneity, namely actions essentially produced by the inner nature of the child. In his chapter on the childish self, Stern sketches the general developmental context into which Adler’s more specific views fit, thereby establishing intimate connections between individual psychology and developmental psychology. The life of the young child, Stern commences his outline, is surrounded by all sorts of events that severely limit the child’s desires. These restrictions manifest themselves in conscious experience as a disturbance of pleasure, a weakness of the self, and a feeling of inferiority. Orders and coercive measures from the outside weigh heavily on the child; helplessness, physical incapacities, and lack of understanding oppress him from the inside. One of the most direct outbursts of this experience of weakness, Stern contends, is the feeling of fear and the typically childish disposition of anxiety. According to Adler, Stern recalls, these very points

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of weakness can become junctions for the formation of the personality. Weaknesses occur in many different forms and variations, such as speech defects, incontinence, shyness, aversion to specific animals or sorts of food, all of which, but in particular the child’s sexual uncertainties, are a continuous source of distress. The difference between boy and girl, father and mother arouses the child’s curiosity, but seeking to understand these differences the child often fails, which contributes to a feeling of inferiority.86 The child’s primary reaction towards these obstacles to selfaffirmation, Stern maintains, is aversive. Yet, he emphasizes, the child does not surrender itself passively to the many inimical powers but, on the contrary, seeks actively to safeguard his individual unity. Thus the child can be seen as mobilizing forces of energy in order to meet the disturbing invasions. By a process of “masculine protest” – Adler’s urge from “below” to “above” – the child subsequently transforms his very weaknesses into powers. This manifestation of power is the attempted overcompensation for a weakness. Indeed, precisely because the child feels injured – and in the field in which he feels injured – he is disposed to mobilize forces, thereby overcoming the feeling of inferiority by the pleasure of the experience of power. As Stern puts it succinctly, “Because the child feels too weak for defence, he compensates through aggression; his revenge for having to obey continually is its inclination to tyrannize.”87 Adler’s general term for these dispositions is “assurance” (Sicherung). But the child’s means of assurance, Stern admonishes, are endless and can vary from adopting a proud attitude to exercising power merely in fantasy or to indulge in his weaknesses, illnesses, and anxieties, thereby becoming a despot for his environment. Adler’s inclination to see in every case of assertiveness a hidden attempt to overcompensate feelings of inferiority is pushed down by Stern on the evident grounds that there are aversive reactions stemming from strength rather than weakness. Moreover, Stern critically comments, it is unlikely that dispositions of assurance determine normal and abnormal personality to the same degree, as Adler extravagantly contends. Yet, despite these reservations, Adler’s key concept of assurance is taken over by Stern and embedded in the then current developmental theory of cognition and emotion, thereby giving it a firmer empirical and less one-sided interpretation. An amalgam of characterology and cognitive child psychology, this concept of assurance is seen to play a major role in Popper’s early attempt at analyzing the phenomenon of dogmatic thinking.

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3 Popper and the Foundations of Pedagogy

The School Reform Movement A crucial factor shaping Popper’s early thoughts on education and psychology was the impact of the school reform movement headed by Otto Glöckel, undersecretary of education in 1919 and president of the Vienna School Council between the two world wars in “Red Vienna.” After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire the Social Democrats were the leading party, but the upheaval of social reform proved temporary because one year later, in 1920, the coalition government of Social Democrats and Catholics fell apart. The socialists had to retreat, especially from rural areas, but in Vienna they won the municipal elections, and this urban milieu provided the chief breeding ground for radical ideas about education. Although the prewar Austrian school system had an excellent reputation throughout Europe, the prospects of attending university were dim for working-class children. After completing the elementary school, at the age of ten or eleven, they were submitted to an examination, the successful completion of which allowed them to go to the gymnasium. Those who failed had to go to the vocational schools, by which access to the university was foreclosed. By extending the period of uniform education and postponing career tracking to an older age, the school reform movement strove to encourage working-class children to enter the university and thereby to pursue higher professions, a project whose success was deemed essential for a truly socialist society to arise. Glöckel succeeded in transforming only twelve traditional secondary schools to comprehensive schools (Einheitsschule), offering uniform instruction to boys

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The Foundations of Pedagogy

and girls for eight years. In addition to secondary schools, the reform movement also established many centres for after-school programs (Horte). Seeking to adapt the educational program to the physical and mental development of the child, the school reform movement welcomed the recent advances in child psychology, discussed in Chapter 2. Indeed, Glöckel even ordered the department of philosophy in Vienna to consider candidates in experimental psychology for the then vacant chair in philosophy. A philosopher and an experimental psychologist, Karl Bu¨ hler was the perfect candidate for the chair, and in January 1923 the Psychological Institute of Vienna was opened. The institute was to maintain close ties with the Pedagogical Institute of Vienna, so that those following the teacher-training programs regularly attended courses in child psychology by Karl and Charlotte Bu¨ hler. Well aware of the prestige this partnership lent to the school reform movement, Glöckel, only a few months after the Buhlers ¨ arrived in Vienna, declared: “The entire school reform is, essentially, built on the results of psychological research into the mind of the child.”1 Bühler’s Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes shaped the school reform movement further and was introduced as a textbook in pedagogy in the teacher-training colleges. The reform movement’s psychological foundations were not confined to the Buhlers, ¨ though, psychoanalysis and, in particular, Adler’s individual psychology were equal contributors. Having acquaintances at the School Council of Vienna, Adler easily gained access to the school reform movement.2 Besides teaching regularly at the Pedagogic Institute, his influence on the centres for after-school programs was especially formidable.3 Adler’s at first sight curious role in a movement greatly inspired by developments in cognitive child psychology is further explained by the intellectual presence of William Stern. The movement’s campaign against the “drill school” (Drillschule) approach, in which children were treated as empty vessels to be filled with accumulated knowledge, was helped enormously by Stern’s “psychology of the subject,” or critical personalism, with its emphasis on the person as a living whole, continually seeking to realize goals. Indeed, one of the crucial notions of the socialist laboring schools (Arbeitsschule) with which it mounted an attack on the drill schools as well as the bourgeois learning schools (Lernschule), the idea of self-activity (Selbsttätigkeit), is based on Stern’s teleological notion of the person. This is especially clear from the comprensive work pedagogy (Arbeitspädagogik) of Eduard Burger, pedagogue and city councillor.4

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Heimat and the Pedagogy of Self-Activity

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As Burger, whose work explicitly relies on Stern, puts it: [T]he principle of work in a broad sense is the principle of spontaneity: this means nothing more than that the pupil has to be active himself as much as possible. Activity occasioned by external factors does not suffice; rather the activity must come from the pupil itself, i.e., it has to be spontaneous. . . . The general law of the work schools is: “Let the pupil be self-active!” or more specifically: “What the pupil is capable of should not be done by the teacher but by the pupil.”5

Education is not achieved by rote, by demonstration and imitation with prepared questions and answers; rather a process is not educative until “the pupil is self-active, observes himself, thinks himself, acts himself.”6 When the young Popper enrolled in the new Pedagogic Institute in Vienna, in 1925, to follow the two-year teacher-training program, he was already involved in the school reform movement. The year before he had been an educator in the after-school programs dominated by Adler’s individual psychology, and around 1919, after having withdrawn prematurely from secondary school, due to the financial problems of his father, he had worked with disadvantaged children in Adler’s child-guidance clinics.7 When submitting, in the summer of 1927, his protothesis “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung,” to the Pedagogic Institute of Vienna, he noted his experiences as an educator: My experiences as a pedagogue with children were the occasion: convinced of the importance of the principle of the self-activity of the child, I had to see soon that there are limits put to this self-activity, especially in social education. Since my goal was to determine these limits more precisely, certain psychological observations of the children forced themselves upon me again and again.8

Heimat and the Pedagogy of Self-Activity “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung” is not just a protothesis. As the subtitle, “A Structural-Psychological Monograph,” indicates, Popper’s ambition was to write a full monograph, which, however, remained incomplete. Writing monographs was an entirely new style of research in child psychology inspired by Stern. In these studies separate psychological functions of the child, during a very limited period of his or her development, were subjected to detailed observation and explanation. The best example of such monographs is Die Persönlichkeit des dreijährigen Kindes (1926) by Stern’s pupil Elsa Köhler. That Köhler’s book has served as a model for Popper’s project to write a monograph

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will become clear later in this chapter, when discussing his “phenomenology” of dogmatic thinking. Although submitted to the Pedagogic Institute, Popper’s thesis is above all a study of developmental psychology, the essentials of which were taught to him at the allied Psychological Institute of Vienna. In the same year in which Popper writes his thesis, his second article, “Zur Philosophie des Heimatgedankens” appeared.9 The essay resulted from a 1927 seminar on the idea of the homeland (Heimat) at the Pedagogic Institute, directed by the editor of the institute’s journal, Eduard Burger. Despite its dominant role in pedagogical theories, the meaning of the psychological concept of Heimat, Popper contends, is extremely blurred. The concept’s place in theorizing is merely motivated by the practical conviction that childish development is intrinsically tied to the Heimat. A philosopher-to-be, young Popper proposes to clarify matters and to give a logical analysis of the concept of Heimat. Popper argues that it is a relation concept, characterizing an object in virtue of its relations. The kind of relation in this case is purely subjective and psychological. Accordingly, the concept requires a psychological analysis. Typical of his pre-1930 conception of philosophy is the ease with which he shifts from a logical to a psychological analysis. The concept of Heimat, he thinks, needs both a “phenomenological” description and a “genetic” explanation. Because both are the subject matter of the thesis I do not explain them further here. A more interesting sign of his view of philosophy appears in his comments on the theory of knowledge, in which he distinguishes between an enterprise concerned with the validity and truth of knowledge and another concerned with the genesis of knowledge. In the former the concept of Heimat has a damaging effect, as testified by German philosophy’s naturally rooted inclination at speculation, rationalism, and the absolute. This dependency of epistemology on national character has to be combated forcefully, Popper admonishes. On the other hand, in its genetic variant epistemology can profit much from the concept of Heimat. In particular, Popper refers to the “empiricocriticism” of the positivist philosopher Richard Avenarius (1843–1896), who in his twovolume Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (1888–1890) developed a theory of knowledge closely resembling the positivistic and sensualistic program of Ernst Mach, also relied on by Popper. In this article, Popper recalls the importance of Avenarius’s attempt to reduce the whole of experience “to ‘acquaintance,’ ‘familiarity,’ ‘certainty’ . . . he refers to this kind of relation as Heimhaftigkeit.”10 Although Avenarius is only marginally mentioned in

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the subsequent thesis, it will become clear that his positivistic genetic epistemology provides the framework for Popper’s detailed phenomenology of the Gesetzerlebnis. From this it cannot be concluded that early Popper is a positivist philosopher, though. Indeed, obliterating the distinction between questions of validity and genetic questions is precisely what he will accuse logical positivism of in his later work. But in these early years Popper has no theory of epistemic validity and truth, and his main concern is in genetic questions.11 This answer to these genetic questions is in the inductive tradition of Avenarius and Mach. By distinguishing from the outset between a pedagogic and a psychological problem, the effect of the partnership between developmental psychology and pedagogy on Popper’s incomplete monograph is evident. His preliminary remarks about the goal of pedagogy follow Burger’s conception of work pedagogy in detail. He subscribes to Burger’s definition of work attested to by this quotation from Burger: “Work in a pedagogical sense is goal-directed human activity by means of which values of Bildung and indirectly also economical values are created.”12 Popper also takes over Burger’s indication of the goal of work pedagogy. Following Burger, he describes the specific goal of education as free self-finding (freie Selbstbestimmung). Education must be shaped by the goal of raising the child to the level of the individual requirements of such autonomy, and failing to meet these requirements was to be less than fully a man of “character.” The means to attain the level of free self-finding, Popper argues, are provided by Burger’s principle of complete education, “the principles of activity and spontaneity,” which emphasize the emancipation from prejudice in the creation of an autonomous character. It is at this point that Popper’s familiar distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking makes its first appearance: Free thinking, however, is critical thinking – dogmatic thinking is unfree: by free thinking one can only mean thinking “without prejudices,” that is, thinking which judges state of affairs, without presupposing the result (the judgement) of judging; critical thinking is also thinking guided by reasons; it is an active and spontaneous form of thinking [Selbst-denken], in contrast to dogmatic thinking, which does not touch the accepted (adopted) “judgement.”13

The pedagogical context in which this distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking is introduced for the first time differs significantly from the psychological and epistemological factors discussed by Popper in his later works. There he wishes us to believe that the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking was part and parcel of a psychological

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theory of trial and error and that this theory would enable him to supplant Hume’s inadequate inductive theory of habit by a deductive theory. As I argue now, it is not so much Hume’s problem but what I dub “Burger’s problem” that preoccupies Popper in his monograph. The distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking, says Popper, leads in particular to the pedagogical problem of an “education through habit.” The concept of habit (Gewohnheit) plays an important role in educational theories. Popper’s main question is whether an education in which habit plays a prominent role is of any positive value. A superficial consideration of the concept of habit reveals how problematic it is to combine an education through habit with an education that conforms to the ideals of Burger’s work pedagogy, in which self-finding is the goal; for inherent in the concept of habit, Popper claims, is “a strong passive element, a moment of automatism, the loss of insightful, active thought, and its replacement by ‘automatic’ association.”14 Rather than claiming that dogmatic thinking is a necessary stage before critical thinking can emerge – the leitmotiv of his later preoccupation with dogmatic thinking – the young Popper, wholeheartedly in the spirit of the school reform movement, is worried about the social effects of an education through habit: “It will be clear from the start that ‘habit’ etc. as a means of education may have only a narrowly confined scope if it will not run counter to the tasks of the educating generation.”15 Any pedagogy which is keenly aware of the difficulty and necessity of determining the scope of the role of habit in education is the very pedagogy which considers self-activity of the child to be of paramount importance. Thus the work pedagogy. In promoting the self-activity of children, Burger is well aware of the inherent dangers of his plea. In particular, those who wish to stimulate children to productive work take the wrong course, according to Burger. Productive work is not synonymous with work, for there is also reproductive work. Underestimating and bypassing reproductive work, he warns, is tantamount to ignoring the three distinct stages of self-activity: the stage of sensibility, the stage of habit (Gewohnheit), and the stage of free self-finding. Admittedly, there are transitions between these stages, and it sometimes happens that a pupil shows early talent for productive work, but about the productive capacities of young children, Burger says, one need have no illusions; what children of the lower schools “produce” is almost always reproductive. As Burger puts it, “Productivity is the final term, the conclusion in the education of labour, and we would contravene the pedagogical principle of development were we to require of the lower classes what can

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only be afforded by the higher or highest stages of teaching.”16 Burger’s pedagogy of labour, then, even though promoting the spontaneity and self-activity of children, clearly recognizes the force of the distinct and earlier stage of habit and urges teachers to adapt their way of teaching to this specific stage, that is, to opt for a dogmatic way of teaching. In the section “A Problem of the Work Pedagogy,” Popper elaborates on Burger’s view. A familiar problem of the pedagogy of labour, he points out, is to determine “where and when it is necessary to put limits to the free activity of pupils.”17 As he reminds his readers, the problem is noted at several places in Burger’s book – for instance, when he asserts that a teacher can be forced to apply the dogmatic way of teaching (dogmatische Lehrweise) as long as the pupil is not yet capable of independent work. Overlooking such limits can lead to grave problems, such as that of the child’s incapacity, due to insufficient knowledge, to meet the demands of drawing certain consequences. In this way the teacher teaches everything, “but he raises no character.”18 Providing the boundary between the “stage of habit” and the “stage of self-finding” (spontaneity) with “an exact psychological foundation,” Popper avers emphatically, is a central problem of his monograph. To this end, he focuses on the following questions: Is the road to independent thought and action practicable at every stage of the development of the child? How is the inclination to passivity, dogmatic thinking, and surrender to authority psychologically grounded in the nature of the child? When and how is the transition to independent thought, to spontaneity, possible? Are there cases in which the material requires a dogmatic way of learning on the part of the child? Finally, to what extent can the principle of spontaneity also be realized in cases where the preconditions of independent thought are not yet available? Popper proposes that clarity can be achieved in these matters only by a painstaking analysis of what he calls “the experience of regularity” (Gesetzerlebnis, virtually untranslatable, incorporating the double suggestion of lived experience and normative requirements). As will be clear from this historical sketch of the problem of Popper’s thesis, Burger’s practical problem is far removed from the abstract issue of Hume’s problem of induction. To the extent that Popper answers Burger’s problem, the thesis is about the psychology or philosophy of education rather than philosophy of science or general epistemology. In the preface to the thesis, however, there occurs a remark that seems to point to more far-reaching ambitions on Popper’s behalf than the solution of foundational problems in pedagogy: “The psychological and also philosophical consequences of the psychology of the experience of regularity

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proved to be so far-reaching that they surpass the pedagogical application, although they too transcend largely the problem, in importance; therefore they will also be indicated in the work at hand.”19 Despite the fact that Popper does not say explicitly what these consequences are, it is clear from the same preface that he must be alluding to his earlier quoted remark to the effect that habit implies the loss of insightful thought and instead results in automatic association. The newly coined concept of experience of regularity, he contends, arises from “an analysis of what one traditionally takes to be ‘habits’ [Gewohnheiten].” Furthermore, “It is known that the concept of ‘habituation’ [Gewöhnung] plays a decisive role in educational theories; by means of the investigation at hand it will have to undergo a revolutionary revision.”20 However, this claim is by no means substantiated in the thesis. Indeed, apart from the preceding quotations about habit, there is only one other passage in Popper’s thesis where he brings in his theory of habit. There it becomes clear that, in any case, one part of the revolutionary theory of habit promised in the preface in fact boils down to a theory of the mechanization of acquired activities in the manner of the psychologist Karl Groos. Indeed, a comparison of Popper’s theory of habit and Karl Groos’s theory of habit reveals similarities too great to be accidental.21 Popper’s claim that frequent repetition leads to automatic association and loss of attention is strongly reminiscent of Groos’s law of the mechanization of newly acquired activities. As we have seen in Chapter 2, Groos maintained that with increasing exercise consciousness, which played a leading role during the first acquisition of the activity, fades into the background. Another indication of Popper’s indebtedness to Groos is to be found in the paragraph on the phenomenology of the experience of regularity.22 Like Groos, Popper appeals to the fear of the unknown or the unfamiliar in his attempt to explain the role of the unhabitual in the formation of dogmatic thinking. Even though Popper does not refer explicitly to Groos by name in this specific context, it is impossible to miss the similarity with the latter’s explanation of the fact that attention is drawn to something that is unusual and unexpected. The evidence then for Popper’s reliance on Groos, a point to be dealt with in detail later in the chapter, is unanswerable. For now the important question is how this new and revolutionary concept of experience of regularity relates to more traditional views of habit. A passage in the autobiographical essay, “Science: Conjectures and Refutations” (1963), might provide a clue here. Discussing Hume’s psychological explanation

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of induction in terms of habit, Popper contends that his psychological theory would hardly be as revolutionary as he thought; indeed, it would be part of common sense.23 This remark seems to allude to the preface of the thesis of 1927, thereby showing the young Popper to be involved with Hume’s (psychological) problem after all. Yet it by no means follows that Popper would have applied his psychology to Hume’s problem in his thesis of 1927. The point is that what Popper discusses under the topic of Hume’s psychology in the 1963 essay consists of three different claims: one concerning the typical result of repetition, a second concerning the genesis of habits, and a third claim concerning the character of those experiences or modes of behaviour which may be described as “believing in a law.” The revolutionary revision of which Popper speaks in his thesis concerns only the first claim, repetitions leading to acquired activities becoming automated, but not the second one. Because Popper’s rejection of and alternative to the second claim – that habits do not originate in repetition, as Hume would have it, but begin, in the sense of expectations, before repetition can play any part whatever – is the core of his later deductive psychological theory, it follows that he had not taken his antiHumean stance in 1927. Further support for this view comes from the fact that rejecting the first claim is compatible with endorsing the second claim. This turns out to be the case not only in Popper’s own thesis but also in the work of those psychologists who have subjected the concept of habit to a painstaking analysis before Popper wrote his first work. Indeed, despite putting forward new hypotheses concerning the role of repetition, Groos takes the Humean explanation of the genesis of expectations (“potential concepts”) simply for granted. Like Hume, Groos maintains that expectations and beliefs result from frequent repetition and association. In this respect Groos is in good company, for the biologists Baldwin and Morgan are committed to a similar view. Furthermore, there is indirect evidence (I say indirect because there are no direct references to Hume in Popper) that Popper is still in the grip of the ordinary Humean genetic explanation of habit. In the bibliography of his thesis, Popper refers to Morgan’s Habit and Instinct, and in Unended Quest he is mentioned as one of the biologists who have influenced his thoughts on learning and the method of trial and error. Although neither Morgan nor the concepts of instinct and learning are discussed in the thesis, Morgan’s definition of habit may have been operative in Popper’s use of the term in 1927 and 1963. In any case, Morgan’s definition of habit comes very close to what Popper in 1963 calls the commonsense theory of the genesis of habit.

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In the opening chapter of his book, Morgan notes that in ordinary language the word “habit” is used to describe some action or mode of behaviour “which results from repetition in the course of individual experience. We should not speak of an act that is only occasionally performed under special circumstances as a habit.”24 Morgan’s own scientific description of habit follows the ordinary description: “[A] habit is a more or less definite mode of procedure or kind of behaviour which has been acquired by the individual, and has become, so to speak, stereotyped through repetition.”25 In his introduction to the main question of his book – Are acquired habits inherited in the form of inherited instincts? – Morgan even notes that the term “ready-made habit” is a contradiction because habits are “reached by repetition in the course of experience,” thereby reinforcing his contention that habits are activities the performance of which is the result of individual experience.26 His Humean stance becomes especially clear in his chapter “Intelligence and the Acquisition of Habits.” The essential feature of the distinction between habit and instinct, between acquired activities and inherited activities, according to Morgan, is related to association and suggestion. For instance, a chick’s first experience of a cinnabar caterpillar leads to an association between the appearance of the larva and its taste. On the second occasion the taste is suggested by the sight of the larva. As Morgan puts it: “It is through association and suggestion that an organism is able to profit by experience, and that its behaviour ceases to be merely instinctive and automatic.”27 The associative linkage of sentient states – which is the origin of the development of consciousness in the case of the birds – is further strengthened by repetition. The role of intelligence in the establishment of habits is specifically related to “selection and recurrent repetition.”28 Selected activities need recurrent repetition, “For those activities which are frequently repeated, become ingrained in the organic nature as more or less fixed habits.”29 Morgan, then, subscribes almost entirely to the view later dubbed and criticized by Popper as the bucket theory of the mind. Yet the young Popper takes this (traditional) part of the theory of Groos and Morgan completely for granted, as is also clear from his endorsement of induction as a matter of course. To understand Popper’s early theory of dogmatic thinking, then, requires that we see him as joining in the psychology of knowledge of Avenarius, the child psychology of Bu¨ hler, and, as I argue, of Stern, Groos, Morgan, Elsa Köhler, and even Adler. Against this historical background it will become clear that Popper’s analysis of dogmatic thinking cannot

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be credited with a great deal of originality, for it will be seen that he is largely casting into his own vocabulary conceptual distinctions found in the writings of the previously mentioned psychologists. Neglecting this historical background easily leads to an altogether different, even opposite, view of the development of Popper’s early thoughts, one which portrays him from the outset as a cogently innovative thinker, unimpressed by the authority of his teachers. This seems to be Hacohen’s view in his otherwise fine biography of Popper. Hacohen not only attributes to the young Popper many new and deviating insights but also claims that his practical experiences as an educator are their chief breeding ground. Admittedly, it is unlikely that Popper’s practical experiences would have had no effect on his thoughts about pedagogy, but the evidence for saying that they have shaped his theoretical reflections is simply lacking. Indeed, when describing his empirical observations supporting his theory of dogmatic thinking, Popper, rather than exploiting his own practical experiences draws on the observations in the child psychological literature. Furthermore, insofar as Hacohen does involve the work of Popper’s teachers, his account of their work is seriously flawed. For instance, by arguing that Popper would have criticized Burger for having neglected the dogmatic (and conservative) nature of childish thinking, a conclusion apparently based on the preface where it is said that the concept of experience of regularity displays a boundary of the child’s spontaneity overlooked by pedagogy, Hacohen ignores that the main proponent of the principle of spontaneity in education was keenly aware of the force of habit and consequently recommended educational practices suited to this specific stage of development. Admittedly, Popper’s application of a specific psychological concept to a pedagogical controversy over the role and scope of spontaneity in educational theories and practices is original, but what about his analysis of this specific psychological concept itself ? Again, Hacohen’s cursory description of Popper’s analysis of the concept of experience of regularity might give the wrong impression here. Aside from criticizing Burger and Bu¨ hler, Hacohen contends, Popper would also have offered an alternative theory: Psychologists and pedagogues had failed to distinguish . . . between dogmatic and critical thinking. Children were captive of dogmatic thinking. Bühler’s child psychology and Burger’s reform pedagogy treated children’s mental processes as if they involved a critical intellect, capable of forming judgements. They were wrong. Both philogenetically and ontogenetically, dogmatic thinking preceded critical thinking.30

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But as we have had ample occasion to see in the preceding chapter, study of the ontogenesis of dogmatic and problematic thinking, and pointing out its phylogenetic counterpart, formed a crucial part of the partnership between Denkpsychologie and child psychology.31 Including a passage on the “psychohistorical parallelism between phylogenesis and ontogenesis,” right after his introduction of dogmatic and critical thinking, Popper therefore is exploiting common knowledge in psychology. Indeed, like Stern, Popper maintains that dogmatic thinking is characteristic for both the history of science (i.e., phylogeny) and for the intellectual development of children. Every science, he maintains, has to undergo a dogmatic phase and in every science these phases return, even after they have been overcome. Similarly, “dogmatic thinking is not only typical for certain periods of the intellectual development of the child, but reoccurs at least vaguely in almost all periods in which human beings in the course of their development are confronted with something new.”32 On the other hand, Popper goes on, critical thinking is the decisive step forwards in science much as it is, ontogenetically, the decisive step towards “intellectual liberation, towards the formation of character [Persönlichkeit].”33 In the remainder of his thesis, Popper does not return to the parallelism between ontogenesis and phylogenesis, and the ontogenetic approach will prevail. The psychohistorical parallelism between phylogenesis and ontogenesis, however, will be a constant theme in Popper’s published works on epistemology and the philosophy of science. The discussion of this theme in his thesis supports my claim that pervasive elements of Popper’s epistemology and philosophy of science have grown out of his early preoccupation with the psychology and philosophy of education and child psychology. Moreover, as we will see soon, Popper’s main source for the psychological foundation of the contrast between dogmatic and critical thinking is to be found in the work of Karl and Charlotte Buhler, ¨ William Stern, and Karl Groos.

The Inductive Method of Science After observing that it is the task of modern Denkpsychologie to subject the phenomena of dogmatic and critical thought to a thorough investigation, Popper proceeds to a discussion of some “general methodological prefindings.” These remarks are his first steps in methodology and deserve our careful attention. The most surprising thing about these early methodological remarks is that they show no sign of Popper’s later deductive method of dogmatic trial and critical-error elimination. Even though

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The Inductive Method of Science

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the notions of dogmatic and critical thinking figure prominently in the thesis, no connection is established between these psychological notions and methodology. Instead Popper’s methodological stance is traditional. In other word, it is inductive. The immediate background of Popper’s inductive methodology is provided by Denkpsychologie. As Popper explains, the reason for including these methodological remarks resides in the fact that there is as yet no unitary school within Denkpsychologie and that disagreements about methods of research are numerous. Agreement exists only with respect to the idea that psychological research has to be strictly empirical. Before turning to the factual psychological investigations of his monograph, Popper feels obliged to formulate his methodological stance more precisely. A crucial condition on an empirical science is that “a rigorous distinction be made between descriptive and explanatory elements, between psychological phenomenology and psychological theory.”34 Accordingly, the target of Popper’s methodological considerations is twofold: to discern the task and scope of a phenomenological psychology from a general conception of the empirical sciences, and to show the importance of theory construction for psychology. Before he explains further what he intends by the idea of descriptive psychology, Popper turns to a discussion which seems to foreshadow his later problem of demarcation.35 Although one part of the dispute turns out to be psychoanalysis, the other part, rather than being played by Einstein’s physics, is played by empirical psychology, that is, Denkpsychologie and child psychology. Despite the fact that Stern is not explicitly referred to by name in this context it is impossible to miss the similarity between Popper’s general inductive position and Stern’s. Moreover, like Stern, Popper’s attitude towards Freud is much more unfavourable than his attitude towards Adler. Decisive for the character of an empirical science, Popper contends, is that a theory may only be formed inductively, through abstraction from empirical facts, and may never be projected into the facts. The following route is the result: 1. Unprejudiced description (phenomenology) of empirical facts. 2. Attempt at abstraction. 3. Ordered representation (from a theoretical perspective).36

The sequel to this passage demonstrates that Popper’s appeal to the inductive method, is made precisely in the context of distinguishing empirical science from other intellectual enterprises, which is the (later) demarcation problem. Popper points out an inherent danger of the

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inductive method, which lurks especially in the coils of psychoanalysis. His point is that the first phenomenological stage will always be fecundated by the third theoretical stage, provided that the facts are selected in such a way as to fill in certain gaps in the theory. The danger is that: The phenomenology, the description, which should be purely empirical, unprejudiced, gets influenced by the theory itself, which has as a consequence that she presupposes the theory for which she should have to deliver the inductively based evidence in the first place; this would clearly be what is called a circular conclusion, a petitio principii. This is precisely the mistake into which, for instance, psychoanalytical movements (Freud, Adler) have fallen.37

Although Popper’s later reservations as regards psychoanalysis are already present, he is still far removed from his well-known deductive criterion of demarcation and the attendant idea that there is no observation that is not theory-impregnated. Indeed, like Stern, he opposes the imminent danger precisely by keeping strictly separate the stage of pure phenomenological description of facts and the theory that is derived from such descriptions. Even more important, the danger of registering empirical descriptions, which have been contaminated by preconceived interpretations of the facts, turns out to be very real for Popper’s own project; for in his empirical description of the phenomenon of experience of regularity, Popper will draw upon concepts derived from the individual psychology of Adler and of characterology. It is not surprising that Popper at the very point of raising the question, “Which are the characteristics of the ‘class of empirical facts’ which form and demarcate the objects of psychology?” goes on in the following way: “We believe it to be very important to separate [trennen] psychology and the closely related, while operating mainly with psychological concepts, ‘characterology.’ We will return to this demarcation [Abgrenzung]; here we want only to determine briefly ‘characterology’ as that view (already science?) which we can adequately distinguish as the comparative theory of character from psychology.”38 Taking characterology to mean all the endeavours to make the “completeness of the ‘Ego,’ the character, into an object of scientific investigation,” Popper, like Stern, also reckons Adler among the characterologists.39 And, like Stern’s, his attitude towards Adler is both critical and sympathetic. Despite its failure properly to conform to the inductive method, and in particular to the attendant separation of theory and (unprejudiced) observation, characterology and individual

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psychology are not (yet) condemned by Popper as pseudoscience, as he will later do after having developed his deductive criterion of demarcation. Indeed, in the preceding passage Popper clearly hesitates to call characterology (empirical) science. Had he been completely converted to Denkpsychologie, the need to bring in the theories of Freud, Adler, and characterology would have been much less urgent. Ku¨ lpe, among others, has paved the way for a strictly empirical approach, concerning which there need be no worries about metaphysical trespassers. To be sure, the boundary between empirical and metaphysical psychology is not easily drawn, because the limits of what one calls “empirical” can, and have been, drawn often differently and loosely. In this way, many proponents of an empirical psychology have operated with concepts, the objects of which would have qualified as metaphysical if a more rigid boundary of the empirical had been used. (Concepts referring to the unconscious are an obvious example.) Within the Denkpsychologie of Ku¨ lpe and Bu¨ hler – the tradition in which Popper stands – the concept of the unconscious plays no role. Indeed, Buhler ¨ has even more reservations against Freud than Kulpe ¨ has. The context of what Popper in 1927 calls demarcation (Abgrenzung), then, is strikingly different from the context of the demarcation problem in his mature writings, even though Freud and Adler figure in both. For one thing, the discussion in 1927 is a discussion within psychology and not, as in 1963, between psychoanalysis (and Marxism) on the one hand and physics on the other. For another, the boundary lines are drawn very differently in 1927: rather than relying on a deductive method as a criterion of demarcation, as in 1963, the young Popper relies on the inductive method. A third point is that the (inductive) boundary lines are not drawn as rigidly as in 1963. Although critical of Freud, Adler, and characterology, the young Popper at the same time is indebted to them, especially to Adler and characterology. This tension between criticism and endorsement of characterology, rather than the much more general quest after a criterion distinguishing empirical science from nonempirical areas, seems to have been Popper’s main motive for considering the demarcation problem. Before he returns to the relationship between characterology or the theory of the character and psychology proper, Popper delineates in more detail the empirical object of the latter. His specific views about the object of psychology shadow those of Ku¨ lpe. Like Ku¨ lpe, Popper refers to the descriptive task of psychology as phenomenology, and like Ku¨ lpe, he warns against the confusion of this idea with Husserl’s phenomenology.

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The task of phenomenological psychology, according to Popper, is the study of “what is directly given to us only through inner experience, hence through the experience of self-observation.”40 But it must be noted here that Kulpe ¨ took over this definition of Avenarius. Psychology, according to him, is the science of stimuli and statements of experience which depend directly upon the mind or brain. This system is constantly undergoing metabolic changes, but it always tends to transform “vital differences” due to opposing influences into an equilibrium of “vital balance.” The genetic course by which vital differences are turned into an equilibrium is called a “vital series.” Independent vital series occur in the physical organism, its brain, and hence are physical. Dependent vital series are covariant with the independent series but depend on the latter. Dependent vital series are psychological. Kulpe, ¨ and Popper, use the term direct experience in the sense given to it by Avenarius. The influence of Avenarius on both Ku¨ lpe and Popper is also evident in their view of the self. Inner experience, Popper contends, always presupposes the concept of the self or Ego. The objects of self-observation are given to us in the flux of experience, the continuity of which constitutes the self. Yet the self conceived as the whole of experience can never become object of observation because self-observation is defined as encompassing experiences “within” the self. Rather selves exist as “fictions” in the specific sense given to that term by Hans Vaihinger, Popper concludes, and by serving the role of a regulative principle in the systematic development of psychology.41 Also like Avenarius and Ku¨ lpe, Popper endorses an analytical conception of the study of experience, dividing experiences into more elementary ones, such as impressions and images, and more complex ones.42 This distinction within the structure of experience, he contends, corresponds to a possible division of labour within psychology now explicitly taken as encompassing both characterology and Denkpsychologie. Outlining a conception of (the whole of) psychology in which both approaches have a place, Popper distinguishes between characterology as the comparative study of character and Denkpsychologie as the comparative study of experience. Whereas the former studies “typical characters, conceived as a whole,” the object of the latter are “typical experiences, impressions, images; experiences of judgements and of feeling; complex experiences (structures) and courses of experience.”43 The relationship between these two forms of psychology is explained further by a distinction between complex and elementary experiences. Lived experience (Erlebnis), Popper emphasizes, can always be described in either of two ways: as part of a whole; or analytically, in terms of its

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elementary parts. These are different descriptions in the sense that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Qua empirical science psychology ought to proceed from the bottom up by “describing first the elementary experiences [Elementarerlebnisse], then always the higher experiences, complexes or structures.”44 This bottom-up approach is much reminiscent of the positivistic approach of Avenarius who also distinguishes between “elements,” or simple contents of assertion – of sensation, such as green, hot, and sour – and more complex ones, so-called characters, subjective reactions to sensations. Popper’s only example of quite elementary experiences, the description of shades of light and shadow, although taken from Buhler, ¨ clearly is in the tradition of the sensualistic psychology of Avenarius.45 As Popper sees it, the heart of the method of modern psychology is this empirical description rather than theory formation. However, sometimes a top-down approach is also allowed. As Popper puts it: The phenomenological description of higher structural experiences as wholes can of course go on ahead of the closed structure [Aufbau] of science, that is, such descriptions can also be given (for instance, by “characterology”) when a precise analysis supported by a scientific substructure [Unterbau] of the concerning structure cannot yet be provided, as the constituting experiences of this higher structural experience are themselves structures.46

Characterology analyses the values of certain characters and their life history – hence, its method is as divergent as the methods of the Geisteswissenschaften – but because it operates with psychological concepts, it can benefit psychology by providing it with preliminary structural descriptions. As we will see, Popper’s very notion of experience of regularity or, as he also puts it, “the typical lived experience of dogmatic thinking,” is an example of a structural or complex experience. This means that his early distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking is related to a sensualistic and positivistic tradition, the rejection of which is one of the most conspicuous features of his later work. Ironically one of Popper’s criticisms of Freud and Adler, in 1927, derives from Hans Vaihinger, a philosopher who may have been brought to his notice by Adler.47 Vaihinger’s work Die Philosophie des Als Ob appeared in 1911. In the beginning of that same year Adler withdrew from Freud’s circle, and in the following year, when Adler published his im¨ den nervöse Charakter (1912), he acknowledged the influence portant Uber of Vaihinger: “Good fortune made me acquainted with Vaihinger’s ingenious Philosophy of “As If,” a work in which I found the thoughts familiar to me from the neurosis presented as valid for scientific thinking

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in general.”48 Vaihinger’s most important and relevant distinction is between hypotheses and fictions. Fictions are ideas which have no counterparts in reality. In contrast to hypotheses, which are constructed with the hope of verification, a fiction is a “mere auxiliary construct, a circuitous approach, a scaffolding afterwards to be demolished.”49 Fictions, albeit false, have a useful function of enabling us to deal with reality better than we could otherwise. In the concluding remarks of his methodological section, Popper draws on Vaihinger’s distinction between fictions and hypotheses. Maintaining, as does Ku¨ lpe, that causal explanations have to go beyond the data of experience, he contends that successful explanatory attempts come especially from developmental psychology with its emphasis on the genesis of cognitive functions. On the other hand, attempts at explanation in terms of the unconscious are deemed mythical by him. Neither Freud nor Adler, the accusation goes, distinguishes sufficiently between the phenomenological notion of subliminal consciousness (dunkle Bewusstsein) and the unconscious.50 The latter can only be “fictive” in the sense in which Vaihinger uses this term.51 The mistake of Freud and Adler, he concludes, is to have treated the unconscious as an experience besides the experience open to selfobservation. It is noteworthy that Popper’s reason for rejecting these theoretical attempts of Freud and Adler is straightforwardly verificationbased (and not based on a notion of falsification): the unconscious in the sense in which Freud and Adler intend this term is simply not given to self-observation. Mistakenly equating subliminal consciousness and the unconscious has had the additional consequences that theory formation concerning causal connections is disturbed by seemingly phenomenological contributions and that the “extraordinary important phenomenology of the ‘subliminal consciousness’” is prevented from arising. By thus treating an empirical phenomenon – subliminal consciousness – as transitory to a speculative and fictive unconscious, Popper concludes, thereby once again displaying an inductive stance, that speculative elements sneak in the phenomenology which should have to remain free from theoretical interpretations. This petitio principii is “the deathblow for a science.”52

Karl Bu¨ hler’s Child Psychology and Dogmatic Thinking The phenomenological and unprejudiced description of experiences typical of dogmatic thinking – the topic of the second part of Popper’s thesis – is preceded by some theoretical considerations. As Popper puts it, the only thing known about the object of investigation is that the

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typical experiences of dogmatic thinking display a very complex structure, a structure which he describes at the beginning of his thesis in the following way: We will use the terms “dogmatic” and “critical” in a more liberal sense than is often usual. By “dogmatic thinking” we wish to mean a type of thinking that is characterized by the mere acceptance and retention of certain principles. These principles are adopted, “blindly” taken for true, without even recognizing the possibility of their falsehood; that is, they are not investigated in particular as to their correctness on the basis of experience; one sticks to them – that is, one applies them stubbornly wherever they seem to be applicable. Critical thinking, by contrast, can be characterized by such questions as “Is it really true?” “Does it really have to be that way?” etc. Critical thought attempts to question the principles that are initially received blindly and maintained dogmatically. It asks for proof, above all on the basis of experience.53

Even so, to determine the object of investigation more precisely, theoretical considerations are unavoidable. Faithful to the inductive method, Popper hastens to add that these theoretical considerations may of course not go so far as to commit “the mistake of anticipating in a speculative way what has to be described empirically.”54 His theoretical perspective ensues from the theory of judgement in the tradition of Brentano and Meinong, the principal claims of which he summarizes thusly: 1. Judgements form a distinctive class of experiences and are not connections (sum) of images but structural experiences; thus one speaks of the function of judgement. 2. The core of the judgement experience is an “experience of certainty” [Gewissheitserlebnis]; this does not exist in and for itself but is only intentional, directed upon a state of affairs [Sachverhalt], hence a “Knowing that something is or counts” (Bühler, Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 9 [1907]: 367ff.). 3. The experience of certainty is characterized by the fact “that the awareness of correctness possesses a degree” (Georg Elias Müller, “Zur Analyse der Gedächtnistätigkeit und des Vorstellungsverlaufes,” 1913, part III, p. 265), or by the fact that there are different degrees of the experience of certainty, such as “to mean, belief, conviction, certainty” (Hume).55

Closer scrutiny reveals Popper primarily relying here on Bu¨ hler’s theory of judgement in his Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, in particular, in a paragraph called “Zur Analyse der Denkprozesse.” No longer active in Denkpsychologie, Bühler there sums up the results of the Wu¨ rzburger school, including his own important contribution. Invoking Brentano’s contention as to the incapacity of a sensualistic approach to thought, he

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cites the discovery of imageless thought as sufficient proof of the irreducible existence of thought. In his second point, Bu¨ hler indicates how close Denkpsychologie at the time gravitates to Brentano and Husserl, claiming that the imageless yet experiential structure of thought is intentional. The genetic conception of thoughts as on a par with motor operations, so characteristic of the work of Otto Selz, has not yet penetrated the received view of thought in which the emphasis is, as the young Popper’s summary clearly shows, on phenomenological description of the experiential structure of thought. Another difference between the received view within Denkpsychologie and the work of Selz is related to the third point, emphasizing the quantitative study of degrees of certainty, aligns Buhler, ¨ and hence the young Popper, to Hume. Indeed, elaborating upon the work of G. E. Mu¨ ller, the psychologist “who comes closest to Hume,” Buhler ¨ has not yet banned association psychology completely from the study of thought.56 Accepting these three tenets of the theory of judgement without any comment, Popper subsequently turns to the distinction between critical thinking and dogmatic thinking. Denkpsychologie, he complains, has focused mainly on the phenomenon of critical thinking, an exemplary example of which he deems this passage from Bu¨ hler: “Doubt and certainty, the intentional search for grounds and the grasp of connections of justifications or, as we might put it succinctly, consideration and insight, all belong to the same department of our mind, the core of which is the very knowing of facts and connections between facts.”57 Popper’s goal is to provide examples of Setzungen – findings or judgements – of facts which do not fit the preceding description in terms of critical thinking; hence, findings of dogmatic thinking.58 Dogmatic thinking, he argues, proves to be far more complex than a judgement in the sense of Brentano’s Existentialerlebnis, which is in itself sufficient for coining the new concept of experience of regularity, to be paraphrased as the complex experience of dogmatic thinking, or simply dogmatic thinking. Three different moments can be discerned in dogmatic thinking: attitude (Einstellung), finding (Setzung), and standing by one’s opinion (Festhalten). His own illustration is both helpful and indicative of the primarily social meaning of the term “law.” He sketches the situation in which a pupil studying to become a furniture maker enters the school for the first time. The duties and habits (Gewohnheiten) of the school are unfamiliar to him. The furniture workshop has usually quite complicated customs. Confronted with such unfamiliar laws (Gesetzen) the pupil often is shy. This attitude of shyness causes him to make clumsy acts characteristic of one

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caught in shyness.59 Moreover, the pupil discerns laws in what is merely a coincidental regularity. Eventually the pupil also recognizes the true laws. As soon as this happens, he will stick to them frenetically, dogmatically. If it turns out that it is not a law the pupil will stick to it, until experiences teach him that he has mistaken a coincidental regularity for a law. Popper contends that this complexity has been overlooked by Brentano; in addition, it has not been captured by the distinction between mechanical and insightful thinking, which plays such a prominent role in Denkpsychologie. These critical remarks notwithstanding, Popper’s indebtedness to Buhler ¨ is incontrovertible. One of the most conspicuous features of the Gesetzerlebnis, standing by one’s opinion, he derives from Buhler’s ¨ study of analogical thinking as expressed in the child’s linguistic behaviour, namely, its use of two-word sentences. Having mastered a two-word sentence, such as “Daddy sweet,” Bu¨ hler noted, the child typically continues to apply the same predicate to all the persons in his presence, thereby simply repeating his capacity of judging. The child, as he says in a passage emphasized by Popper, “retains its way of procedure and transposes it to other cases.”60 Comparing this way of thinking and acting with Buhler’s ¨ sketch of insightful and critical thinking, Popper comes to note the following striking differences: “In both cases we are dealing with ‘findings’; but in the one case with exclusive ‘insightful’ findings (critical judgement), in the other case clearly with findings which are completely uncritical, and which have come about by mere ‘sticking to a procedure and (uncritical) transfer to other cases’; no sign of ‘doubt and certainty, goal-directed search for grounds and so on.’”61 Popper concedes that his distinction between dogmatic thinking and critical thinking is very similar to the distinction made by the school of Meinong between mechanical thinking and insightful thinking, yet he contends that this distinction is not exhaustive and does not capture the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking. Again Popper takes his cue from Buhler ¨ when the latter observes that the formation of a new form of words by analogy with another form, while at first sight mechanical and associational, turns out on closer inspection to be highly methodical: “[W]e cannot pass by the evident fact that there are ‘methods’ behind this behaviour. What returns in all cases are particular ways of procedure applied to changing material.”62 Acknowledging his indebtedness to his teacher Popper comments: “As Bu¨ hler speaks at other places explicitly of a sticking to the ways of procedure, we can say that already Buhler ¨ has not only initiated our new antithesis: critical

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thinking–dogmatic thinking, but has even indicated accurately its most conspicuous phenomenon: standing by one’s opinion.”63 The third element of dogmatic thinking is what Popper calls the attitude towards the judgement (Einstellung auf die Setzung). Dogmatic and critical thinking alike, he contends, are preceded by the subject’s taking a specific interest in the topic of judgement. In the case of dogmatic thinking, Popper argues, echoing Groos and Stern, this preparedness takes the form of an “attitude towards the unfamiliar.” In the context of the pupil training to be a furniture maker, Popper, clearly using concepts pertaining to human character, explains this attitude as follows: “In the fearful attitude of desperation, in the shyness, and in his disposition to recognize ‘laws’ everywhere, . . . we see the typical forms of the attitude towards the unfamiliar.”64 As we discuss in the next section, Popper begins amassing empirical facts to correspond to his threefold distinction.

Assurance and the Fear of the Unknown In the tradition of child psychology Popper commences his empirical chapter with a few remarks concerning the method of observation. Soon it becomes clear that “observation” is not the appropriate term for characterizing Popper’s method. Instead of relying on his own observations of children during his work in Adler’s child guidance clinics, Popper derives his observations mainly from various sorts of literature, ranging from autobiographies to psychological studies, notably Karl Bu¨ hler, Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes; Elsa Köhler, Die Persönlichkeit des dreijährigen Kindes (1926); and Charlotte Buhler, ¨ Das Seelenleben des Jugendlichen (1922). His reason for this is ingenious and offers impressive testimony to his unconditional surrender to the inductive method. In these books, Popper argues, the very phenomena he is interested in are depicted without the authors realizing their connection with the concept of experience of regularity. Accordingly, this literature would contain “unprejudiced reports,” providing a solid and safe basis for an inductive generalization in terms of the notion of experience of regularity.65 Yet the extent to which these studies are free from theoretical interpretations of the facts is disputable. In fact, only Elsa Köhler’s study is an exercise in pure phenomenology, whereas the work of Karl and Charlotte Bühler often displays a blend of theory and observation. Moreover, as we saw in the preceding section, the notion of experience of regularity, although not mentioned as such, surfaces implicitly in Bu¨ hler’s theoretical chapter on Denkpsychologie. As we will see shortly, elements of this notion,

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in particular the “attitude towards the unfamiliar,” can be traced to the theory of the genesis of the intellect, as developed by Groos, Stern, and Karl Buhler. ¨ But as observed before, the general framework seems to be provided by Avenarius’s sensualistic psychology of knowledge. Complex experiences, or “characters,” he claimed, are subjective reactions to sensations, or feeling-like modes of apprehension. Among the three groups of characters he distinguishes, the class of adaptive characters especially bears a resemblance to the concept of Gesetzerlebnis. A subclass of adaptive characters, Avenarius explains, have the feature of Heimhaftigkeit, closely related to the more common concept of “familiarity.” Heimhaftigkeit is a subjective reaction of an organism to the experiences of the relatively constant environment, one that it is used to from birth, in which it “finds” (Setzung) itself as a Heimischer.66 A related but more encompassing notion is “what is usual” (das Gewöhnliche), or, a term that better conveys its genesis, das Gewohnte.67 Opposed to Heimhaftigkeit is what Avenarius calls the Unheimliche, or in more common terms, what is unhabitual. What Popper discovered then is how perfectly the psychological findings of the Bu¨ hlers, Groos, and Köhler fit the sensualistic framework of Avenarius. The first element of the complex experience of dogmatic thinking to be discussed in detail by Popper is the attitude towards the unfamiliar. The material is divided into three kinds of psychological phenomena: the Angst for strangeness, credulity and the need for order, and curiosity. For one familiar only with Popper’s later, exclusively cognitive, remarks on dogmatic thinking, the choice of these affective phenomena may seem surprising, but against the background of the history of child psychology and Denkpsychologie, as outlined in the preceding chapter, they appear quite natural. The notion of fear or anxiety was there seen to play a role not only in the psychoanalytic literature but also in the project of an evolutionary theory of cognition common to Bu¨ hler, Groos, and Stern, especially in what I called the affective basis of judgement.68 Despite the fact that Popper mentions neither of them in his treatment of the first component of the experience of regularity, his use of the expression “fear of the unfamiliar,” I argue, echoes Stern’s and Groos’s “fear of what is unhabitual.” However, there is also a psychoanalytic and characterological dimension, stemming from Adler, in Popper’s handling of the concept. Groos’s theory of the genesis of the intellect accorded an important role to the concepts of habit and the unhabitual. The (habitual) readiness for certain things to happen in specific circumstances, Groos contended, is typically not a conscious experience. Rather only when something unexpected occurs are we surprised, and this very surprise betrays that we

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were prepared for what is habitual. On the other hand, if something that is unhabitual and unexpected pops up, this will draw one’s attention involuntarily. When this surprise is accompanied by a reflexive contraction of the body, Groos spoke of a shock (Chok). The shock accompanied by strong aversive feelings he called, resonating Avenarius, “the fear of the Unheimlichen.” The following remark shadows this theory of habit and what is unhabitual, even if Popper is not consciously alluding to Groos: “The fear of the unfamiliar, the feeling of displeasure, crosses easier the threshold of consciousness than the feeling of pleasure, the pleasure about what is known, because repetitions numb the irritability.”69 Like Groos, Popper maintains that what is familiar, what is habitual, typically does not catch one’s attention. Against this background, his choice of the term “attitude” (Einstellung) is also significant, and reminiscent of Groos.70 And like Groos, Popper maintains that what is unknown or unfamiliar crosses easier the level of consciousness. Finally, like Groos, Popper maintains that this consciousness typically takes the form of fear or anxiety. Groos’s theory, as the preceding chapter made clear, was part of a larger project in which Bu¨ hler and Stern too had their share. Seeking to describe the fear of the unfamiliar in more detail therefore, one sees Popper drawing on various concepts and distinctions of these authors. A distinction especially relevant for a proper understanding of habit and fear of the unfamiliar is the one between “feeling of familiarity” and “feeling of strangeness,” made by Bu¨ hler and Stern alike, but also by Avenarius. Buhler ¨ explains the presence of anxiety – typically not before the first three months – in terms of the impression of strangeness. New and unhabitual impressions cause in the child negative reactions, according to Buhler. ¨ Popper sees Bu¨ hler’s view as agreeing with his own view of fear of the unfamiliar, but his remark that fear occurs especially when there is a certain differentiation between the feeling of familiarity and the feeling of strangeness makes him more an ally of Stern.71 His subsequent treatment of a series of fear phenomena, such as the fear of being left alone, regularly shifts from a purely phenomenological description to a theoretical explanation. For instance, he rejects Bu¨ hler’s genetic explanation of the fear of being left alone in terms of the lack of familiar sense impressions and suggests instead that the phenomenon can be more adequately explained in terms of fear of the unfamiliar. He illustrates his alternative explanation with the fear of other people, which he describes as “a subliminal feeling that strange people are to a certain

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degree always unfamiliar, unpredictable, uncontrollable.”72 The decisive feature of any explanation of fear, he maintains, is that fear is based on “the unfamiliar, the absence of findings,” or, as he also puts it, on the lack of control.73 Indeed, just as the familiar is what is under control of findings, he equates the unfamiliar with what is not yet under control of findings.74 At this point the influence of Adler’s individual psychology and characterology on the formation of Popper’s ideas on dogmatic thinking, mentioned in Chapter 1, becomes most evident. Like Popper, Adler especially emphasized the fear of being left alone as the most primitive form in which anxiety manifests itself in young children. This desire of the child, Adler avers, is fundamental and not easily satisfied when the mother joins the child again; on the contrary, the child exploits the return of the mother for other purposes. Were the mother to leave again, the child would call her back in fear, from which it can be concluded, according to Adler, that the presence of the mother is a fact irrelevant for overcoming fear: “Danger is absolutely out of the question; the child really desires to put the mother in his service, to control her.”75 Clearly alluding to this passage Popper remarks: “Perhaps here lies the root of an explanation for a series of neurotic phenomena, which, for instance, Alfred Adler characterizes aptly by the craving for controlling strange people.”76 That Adler’s theory is fundamental to Popper’s early description of dogmatic thinking, and not simply an illustration of it, is corroborated further by the appendix to this section, the title of which contains a key concept of individual psychology, the notion of assurance (Sicherung) and which reappears in his comparison between dogmatic thinking and psychoanalytic accounts of neuroses in his autobiographical essay of 1963 (see Chapter 1): The concept of “Sicherung,” which we take over from Alfred Adler’s “Individualpsychologie,” has, from our strict methodological perspective, the bad taste of a speculative-prejudiced interpretation of the phenomena: in Adler’s school the concept means roughly: a safety measure against a disagreeable experience; the bad taste of an interpretation comes from the fact that in the Adlerian school the “disagreeable experience” ultimately always amounts to a debasement (the “feeling of inferiority”), and this a priori, for nowhere do we encounter an unprejudiced phenomenology and empirically guaranteed theory.77

The critical message is clear, yet from this it can in no way be concluded that Popper only adopts Adler’s way of speaking into his own and different theory of dogmatic thinking.78 On the contrary, Popper’s strategy here shadows the route taken by Stern when discussing Adler’s notion of

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assurance. Stern, too, conceded the importance of the concept of assurance for the explanation of mental life but objected to Adler’s unfounded generalization of the concept. Popper’s criticism in the preceding passage parallels Stern’s when the latter objects that considering every form of self-defence and assurance compensating for feelings of inferiority is to overlook defensive reactions resulting from mere strength.79 Yet the concept of assurance was welcomed by Stern as providing an explanation of a number of conspicuous aspects of mental life and behaviour, especially neurotic behaviour. Similarly, when claiming “One takes safety measures because one is in fear,” the young Popper, rather than inventing a new theory of his own merely elaborates the intimate connection between fear and assurance emphasized by Adler (and Stern).80 On the other hand, Popper’s use of the concept of assurance does not concern so much the phenomenon of fear in itself as the fear of the unfamiliar. But despite this shift in focus Popper’s descriptions of the various ways in which forms of assurance typical of fear of the unfamiliar manifest themselves in human character align him to characterology and individual psychology and are still far removed from the later epistemological reflections on dogmatic thinking. Indeed, the concepts he discusses – cowardliness and mistrust – rather than belonging to the psychology closest to epistemology, Denkpsychologie, are typically used in making inferences about other people’s character characteristics. Cowardliness, according to Popper, is an assurance against the unpleasant experience of Angst: “[T]he coward wishes rather not to risk anything; he is constantly on the alert for the situation in which he really has to be afraid of something: in this way he spares and indulges himself (thus is ‘weak of will’).”81 He goes on: “For us this assurance is interesting since we can determine in this form of not risking a rejection of what is new”82 This rejection of what is new, although strongly reminiscent of what Stern and Groos (see Chapter 2) called the “negative attitude towards the new,” an innate self-protection of the young organism prompted by fear of the unfamiliar, is here embedded in that level of psychological investigation furthest removed from the base level of empirical psychology – that is, characterology. Yet this characterological aspect of Popper’s early view of dogmatic thinking especially resonates in his later views of the growth of (scientific) knowledge. Indeed, dogmatic trials, as dogmatic thinking is then also called, are ones which reject what is new and hold on to what is familiar. Even his opposite description of the critical attitude seems to be shaped by his early endorsement of Adlerian characterology; it is the attitude of taking (intellectual) risks by putting

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forward “bold theories.”83 In the thesis of 1927, however, the theory of trial and error has not yet made its appearance, and dogmatic thinking, far from being an indissoluble part of the process of learning, is a stage to be dispensed with as soon as possible, “if the decisive step to spiritual liberation, to the formation of character” is to be made at all. In 1927, then, the “superstructure” (Aufbau) of dogmatic thinking is still waiting for its “infrastructure” (Unterbau) in the form of an evolutionary theory of cognition (and learning). Even another Adlerian root of a distinction will play an important role in Popper’s earliest version of the searchlight theory, his sketch of a deductive psychology of knowledge in Die beiden Grundprobleme. It is the distinction between what is objectively and what is subjectively functional (objektiv zweckmässig–subjektiv zweckmässig). In 1931–1932 Popper attributes this distinction to Ernst Mach (and in his dissertation of 1928 Karl Buhler ¨ is also mentioned in this respect), but the earliest occurrence of the distinction in Popper’s oeuvre brings it into contact with Adler’s notion of assurance. Discussing the phenomenon of superstition, Popper forges a connection between the concept of assurance and subjectively functional behaviour. All cases of superstition, he maintains, such as the belief of the old Greeks in the oracle of Delphi and the belief in destiny, assume that destiny is a fact and subsequently replace the unfamiliar finding of destiny by another one (chance), in which people then believe.84 Playing such an important role in human life, these ways of thinking, Popper contends, contradictory to reason and experience, can only be explained by assuming their being expressions of an extremely strong urge for finding.85 From an objective biological point of view, he assures us, superstition is formidably dysfunctional, yet subjectively it can be extremely functional – indeed, he remarks in a footnote, as functional as the various forms of assurance to which superstition bears a striking (functional) resemblance. As is argued in Chapter 5, the distinction between objective and subjective functional behaviour is at the bottom of Popper’s view of the human and animal mind, and an important weapon in his criticism of behaviouristic and sensualistic theories that ignore the subjective contribution of the organism in the process of learning and acquiring knowledge, subscribing instead to a passive model of the mind. Once embedded in a biological context Popper’s later treatment of the distinction between objective and subjective functional behaviour eschews any reference to the concept of assurance; yet, as the passage from his thesis unambiguously shows, the importance of Adler’s individual psychology, which, unlike the objective psychology of Freud, laid

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great emphasis upon the subjective creation of goals by the individual, for the formation of Popper’s thoughts on the activity of the human (and animal) mind can hardly be underestimated. The third type of psychological phenomenon Popper discusses under the rubric of the fear of the unfamiliar is rather surprising.86 Indeed, curiosity (craving for what is new, as Popper also formulates it) even seems to be principally opposed to the attitudes towards the unfamiliar dealt with by Popper until now. The concept is also discussed by Karl Groos. According to Groos, two different emotional reactions can be prompted by what is unhabitual: fear or anxiety and curiosity. Popper instead wants to show that no such contrast is involved. According to him, the curiosity of the child often conforms to the following scheme: the child is already informed about the object of its curiosity (“I am curious to know what he has said about me,” “I am curious to know what kind of person he is”) and hence is not out to discover the existence of something not known personally; rather the child is merely disposed to know the object better, or to control it, which means, according to Popper, that “in this case too the need for finding is the criterion.”87 There is also a second scheme of curiosity: the child, although not yet aware of the existence of a specific object of his curiosity, is aware of the existence of such an object in general. The child’s attitude is not so much directed to the existence of something new but merely to its finding. The psychological study of why questions, as studied by Stern and Karl Buhler, ¨ provides Popper with many examples of this second scheme. On one occasion Buhler, ¨ quoted by Popper, observes that why questions despite their being raised upon meeting something new are subsequently directed to things with which the child is already familiar.88 Indeed, the child seems only to be satisfied with an answer which establishes a connection with what is already familiar, even if it is just the statement that it has always been that way. As Bu¨ hler also notes, by typically responding “always” (“Why is the pavement hard?” “Because the pavement is always hard”), parents in fact acknowledge the nature of the child’s mind, for “the urge to question gets bogged down in what is commonplace; in what is habitual every primitive further thinking [Weiterdenken] comes at rest.”89 Drawing on further examples from Elsa Köhler’s book, Popper interprets the answer “always” as expressing the experience of a finding, an experience he seeks to capture by the formula “Aha, that’s how it is, that’s how it must be.” Wholeheartedly agreeing with Bu¨ hler’s diagnosis of why questions, he concludes, thereby indicating the depth to which his theory is indebted to child psychology, as follows: “If we understand by

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‘commonplace,’ ‘what is habitual,’ ‘what is known,’ ‘what is fixed,’ then we can indeed say that the ‘urge to question,’ . . . the ‘primitive further thinking comes at rest’: the primitive dogmatic thinking poses no questions beyond the finding ‘That’s how it is and that’s how it must be.’”90 Proceeding next, in a section called “The Finding of Facts” (Die Setzung des Sachverhalts), to a discussion of the second element of dogmatic thinking, Popper again takes his cue from Bu¨ hler. Insightful thinking, Bu¨ hler contended, is directed upon facts. Always surrounded by feelings of certainty, Buhler ¨ calls this “thinking that something is the case or counts” and also “actual knowing.” But before the operations of doubting and making sure can exercise their proper function, Popper adds, the state of affairs thought about must somehow be fixed in the mind. If the finding of facts takes place without preceding operations of doubting and making sure, Popper speaks of a mere or dogmatic finding, to be distinguished from genuine judgement.91 As critical or insightful thinking always presupposes problematic findings, he argues, dogmatic findings also presuppose that there is a fact which can be fixed. In contrast to Bühler’s “actual knowing,” Popper speaks here of the latent or subliminal presence of facts in the mind. The transition between such subliminally present facts and actual knowledge of facts, Popper concedes, is almost impossible to describe, yet he believes that some examples in Bühler and Elsa Köhler can make this twilight state of the mind more perspicuous. However, I do not pursue this topic further, and it suffices to note that Popper’s explanation of the way such latent facts arise in the mind is straightforwardly in the tradition of association psychology, thereby making use of his earlier discussed notion of “subliminal consciousness.”92 With his descriptions of direct behavioural and verbal manifestations of the finding of facts, Popper finally comes to some crucial phenomenological features of dogmatic thinking. Findings, he begins, manifest themselves not only in typical ways of judging but can also be read off from expressive verbal exclamations (such as in responding “always” to a why question) and from holding on to one’s opinion. His example is a passage in which Elsa Köhler describes how the young girl she studies, Ann, behaves upon suddenly realizing something she had failed to understand before: “The illumination, the ‘Aha-experience’ coming suddenly, her look brightens up and then follows, partly spoken partly whispered, a ‘Yes!’ in a tone of voice really typical of amazement. To me it sounds as if she said: ‘Yes of course, it has to be this; how come that I did not find it myself.’”93

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Popper comments: “This portrayal comes from an observer, who is far removed from a theory of dogmatic thinking, one also who, despite her excellent observations, has never pointed at the nature of dogmatic thinking among children. It is significant that the choice of her words for her emphatic description of the experience agrees almost literally with our own formulations.”94 Put otherwise, as Elsa Köhler has no theory of dogmatic thinking, yet gives a description of the phenomena that strongly suggests dogmatic thinking, Popper welcomes her unprejudiced descriptions as inductive support for his theory of dogmatic thinking. Yet one crucial aspect of this experience, Popper goes on, remains too implicit in Elsa Köhler’s description. The child, he explains, not only states that something is the case but also typically assumes that what she has thus affirmed always has to be the case, as if it were a law of nature (“That’s how it is, that’s how it always must be”).95 This blend of experiencing a normative dimension and registering a fact Popper deems an essential feature of the Gesetzerlebnis. Indeed, normative claims and experiences are inseparably tied to primitive empirical thinking. Elaborating this point further Popper comes to the conclusion that “the marginal differentiation of the particular and the general, the individual and the typical,” is a related and equally basic feature of dogmatic thinking.96 Characteristic of the dogmatic thinking of children, he emphasizes, is the inclination to raise every judgement, even particular and individual ones, to the level of general and typical judgements. In this way particular cases are being put forward as representative of a whole class of cases. Popper buttresses his arguments by invoking Charlotte Bu¨ hler’s Das Märchen und die Phantasie des Kindes (1918), which would show the marginal differentiation of the general and the particular to be a conspicuous feature of fairy tales. An outstanding feature of fairy tales is what Charlotte Buhler ¨ calls the law of polarization. This law prescribes that the characters of the story have to be simple and typical. Moreover, characters have to be described in opposite relations. The law of polarization, in fact, appeals to the intellectual capacities of the child, as yet not capable of the sort of abstraction required for understanding more complex and varied characters. All the characters of fairy tales have to be extremely simple in the sense of having just one relevant property. There is no place for individual persons, only for stereotypes: “It is the diligent, lazy, good, bad child, the bad stepmother, the bad witch, the beautiful princess, etc.”97 Hence Popper’s conclusion that the fairy tale

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“is a way of representing which is precisely characterized by the fact that it functions on the level of ‘general formula’ (like ‘This is simply how one does it’).”98 His reliance on Charlotte Bu¨ hler goes even further than this short discussion of her analysis of fairy tales might suggest. Summarizing his description of various cases of finding, he introduces the notions “experience-of-is” (Seinserlebnis) and “experience-of-ought” (Sollerlebnis), both of which echo Charlotte Bu¨ hler’s pivotal distinction between “normative relations” (Soll-Beziehungen) and “factual relations” (Seinsbeziehungen).99 In all areas of the mental activity of young children, Buhler ¨ discovered, normative claims precede claims made on the basis of objectively registering the facts. Childish thinking, she contends, is characterized by high-handed speculation unafraid of stretching the truth. Eager to provide an interpretation for almost everything, the child proceeds in such a way as if everything in the world is made for and through human beings. Accordingly, everything has to adapt itself to the plans and wishes of human beings. Popper’s conclusion that dogmatic findings, rather than being simple fact-stating claims, usurp the facts, not only in terms of generalizations but also in terms of normative requirements, clearly shadows Charlotte Buhler’s ¨ basic distinction.100 Finally, Popper is capable of explaining why dogmatic thinking does not display the empirical features which have been held typical of insightful and hence critical thinking by almost all psychologists since Hume, namely, the degrees of certainty. For through the very formula, “What is, is necessarily so, must and always has to be that way,” “one is removed from any scruples of certainty, indeed [the formula] is the very prohibition of it.”101 In this way, too, it becomes understandable why dogmatic thinking not only strives after generalizations and general validity but also contains “a normative element that, above all, demands of all experience to subject itself once the judgement has been passed on it.”102 In the final and shortest paragraph, Popper discusses several forms of holding on to one’s findings and judgements, notably conservatism and pedantry. Conservatism, he explains, amounts to holding on to what is familiar and old, caused by the fear of what is new. Young children’s play displays many conservative features – for instance, the fact that the plays have been largely unchanged from antiquity until now. Following Karl and Charlotte Buhler, ¨ Popper describes pedantry as holding on to a regular course of the day, an order in games, and the like. Pedantry, Popper emphasizes, is not the same as habit, for on coming into a new

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surrounding, the child typically does not attempt to continue its customary way of behaving but rather sticks pedantically to it and seeks to impose it on that new surrounding.

Conclusion It is time to summarize and connect. Popper’s autobiographical outline of his earliest unpublished work was seen to differ in subtle but yet significant ways from his actual thesis, “ ‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung.” Already the English translation of this title is misleading as to its true content. Consider “On Habit and Belief,” as it is sometimes translated. The term “habit” does not capture the meaning of Heimhaftigkeit, especially not when the term is connected to Hume’s genetic theory of belief. Apart from this misleading later terminology, the thesis was seen to be involved in no way with the psychological problem of induction. To be sure, in the preface Popper announces a rejection of the traditional concept of habit, but this revolution has turned out to be no more than an adoption of Karl Groos’s theory of the mechanisation of habit. Moreover, his reliance on the sensualistic framework provided by Avenarius only further strengthens the idea that Popper is still far removed from recognizing the defects of a bucket theory of mind and knowledge. The problem of demarcation, as we know it from Popper’s published work, is equally absent. Yet a related discussion about the boundary between Adlerian characterology and empirical psychology, in the sense of Kulpe’s ¨ and Buhler’s ¨ Denkpsychologie, was touched upon by Popper. Rather than rejecting characterology as pseudoscience, Popper’s attitude was seen to be much more compromising. His own description of the dogmatic attitude even revealed clear traces of his affinity with characterology. Moreover, the thesis showed Popper subscribing as a matter of course to an inductive rather than a deductive criterion of demarcation. The point that Popper’s endorsement of an inductive criterion is not simply paying lip service to standard views about empirical science proceeding inductively from unprejudiced observation needs emphasising. First of all, the psychologists to whose work Popper’s views about empirical science were seen to be mostly due – William Stern, Oswald Ku¨ lpe, and Karl Buhler ¨ – adopt the inductive method. Second, an important later insight contributing to a deductive criterion of demarcation was seen to be lacking in the discussions of 1927. This is Popper’s point to the effect that there can be no critical phase without a preceding dogmatic

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Conclusion

85

phase, a phase in which an expectation is formed so that error elimination can begin to work on it. This view implies a much more positive appreciation of the role of dogmatic thinking than is to be found in Popper’s thesis. There his attitude towards dogmatic thinking was seen to be quite different and sometimes straightforwardly negative – for example, a phenomenon that stands in the way of an education in which the child reaches independence through self-activity. It is true that, like Burger, the young Popper acknowledges the force of the earlier stage of habit and sought to determine “where and when it is necessary to put limits to the free activity of pupils,” but this was seen to be more a psychological problem of determining when the transition from dogmatic thinking to self-activity could be made in education, than a philosophical claim to the effect that, because dogmatic thinking necessarily precedes critical thinking, Hume’s theory of learning and acquiring knowledge by induction would have to be discarded. To support my view that Popper not merely uses the predicate “inductive” to emphasize the danger of dogmatic thinking, and of selecting the facts to fit some preconceived theory, I finally refer to a passage in which he points out that dogmatic thinking is not only typical of young children but that even critical adults sometimes fall prey to it. This happens most often, according to Popper, when important decisions have to be made, when attention is focused on one particular fact at the cost of other equally relevant facts. An interesting class of such judgements are what he calls “interrupted inductive judgements.”103 Typical examples of such jumping to conclusions are to be found in the “widespread dogmatism of the judgement of persons, the well-known ‘first impression,’ that is ‘always the correct one.’”104 These dogmatically formed inductive judgements he contrasts with what he clearly takes to be the one and only correctly formed judgements: “critical inductive judgements.” The logical features of this class of judgements also leave no doubt about Popper’s endorsement of induction, both in methodology and in psychology: “[T]hey require time and inductive material.”105 The deductive criterion of demarcation therefore was not developed by Popper before 1927, but a theory of dogmatic thinking was. The most striking difference between this early notion of dogmatic thinking, and its occurrence in Popper’s mature and published writings, is the absence in the former of a (deductive) biological (evolutionary) infrastructure as exemplified in the latter by the notion of learning by trial and error. Because this latter feature also figures prominently in the deductive criterion of demarcation, it can safely be concluded that Popper’s

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elaboration of the latter had to await his elaboration of the former. As announced in Chapter 1, Popper’s reading of the work of Selz marks the real watershed in his intellectual life, because it ultimately leads him to abandon both characterology and inductive (sensualistic) psychology of knowledge. It is time therefore to enter the complex buildings of Otto Selz.

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4 Otto Selz and the Science of Problem Solving

Life and Work Otto Selz lived much of his life in seclusion, cherishing the tranquillity he needed to develop his epistemological, psychological, and pedagogical ideas. Only a passport photograph has remained of him. In his scientific work Selz was increasingly marginalized owing to his unremitting criticism of colleagues but also to his formidably complex style of writing. An evolutionist disguised as an introspective psychologist, Selz came into conflict with proponents of the sciences of mind and culture, the Geisteswissenschaften, who blamed him for endorsing a mechanist view of man. Seeking to reconstruct psychological phenomena on the basis of their elements, Gestalt psychologists considered him an atomist, whereas to the school of Kruger ¨ he was a one-sided rationalist. Closely allied to the Würzburg school he did not shrink back from launching frontal attacks on the ideas of some of its members. Aside from one pupil, Julius Bahle, who closely collaborated with Selz, and the Dutch scholars Adriaan de Groot and Frans Prins, who applied his ideas in psychology and pedagogy respectively, he never founded a school, and after 1933 his name disappears almost completely from the German psychological literature.1 Yet there are excellent reasons for rescuing him from oblivion if only for his role – unbeknownst to him – in shaping the formation of another pupil: Karl Popper. Selz was born on February 14, 1881, in Munich. His father, Sigmund Selz, was married to the Jewish Laura Wasserman, daughter of a rich vinegar factory owner.2 Sigmund founded a bank in Munich and finally lived off of his investments. Pressed by his father into a legal career, Selz studied 87

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The Science of Problem Solving

law and was admitted to the bar in 1908; however, he felt no vocation for an occupation as lawyer and asked for his name to be deleted from the list. During his studies of law Selz also studied philosophy with Theodor Lipps (1851–1914) in Munich and with Carl Stumpf in Berlin. In 1909 he took his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Munich. In this dissertation, “Die psychologische Erkenntnistheorie und das Transcendenzproblem,” Selz was concerned with the question, much debated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whether there is an objective world outside our consciousness and how to know this world.3 Commenting on this dissertation his supervisor, Lipps praises Selz’s painstakingly elaborated arguments against the empiricist view which derives the existence of the outside world from contents of experience immanent to the human mind.4 Ardently propagating what came to be called naturalistic epistemology, Selz insists that the metaphysical hypothesis of the existence of a transcendent reality is to be preferred above the alternative, idealistic hypothesis of empiricism, simply because the former enables us to explain satisfactorily a greater number of facts (e.g., facts pertaining to perceptual experience) than the latter.5 Selz did not pursue this philosophical theme after 1910, yet his critical reading of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume undeniably supplied his later attempt to overwhelm the bastion of association psychology of G. Mu¨ ller with a full-frontal assault with needful philosophical acumen.6 After taking his Ph.D., Selz went to Bonn to do experimental investigations in the laboratory of Ku¨ lpe. Both Ku¨ lpe and Bu¨ hler were among his subjects, and he probably attended some of their seminars.7 These inves¨ die tigations resulted in his first major work, his Habilitationsschrift, Uber Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs. Eine experimentelle Untersuchung (1913). Taking his cue from the theory of imageless thought, developed in the Wurzburg ¨ school, Selz, according to Ku¨ lpe, made a significant step in Denkpsychologie.8 In fact, the drift away from the program of the Wu¨ rzburg school was more radical than Ku¨ lpe would acknowledge. Already perceptible in 1910, the incipient rift among Selz and the Wu¨ rzburg school became more obvious in the wake of a devastating review of Ach’s book ¨ die Willenstätigkeit und das Temperament.9 Uber In the First World War, Selz served in the army at the western front, and after having been wounded, he was decorated with the Iron Cross in 1917. After the war he returned to Bonn and served for several years as Privatdozent. He lectured on the psychology of knowledge, the history of philosophy, and the theory of the genesis of cognitive functions. With his second major work in the psychology of thinking, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, appearing in 1922, its publication

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Life and Work

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being postponed owing to the First World War, Selz’s intellectual prestige was incontestably on the increase, and in 1923 he was called for the chair of philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy, at the Handelshochschule in Mannheim. The practical orientation of the Handelshochschule more or less forced Selz to work also on the practical applications of his psychology. In spite of the abstract nature of his psychology, he succeeded in pointing out its relevance to pedagogy and, in particular, to attempts at fostering intellectual achievements, a project undertaken with some of his pupils.10 From this period, too, stem two of his short philosophical essays, Oswald Spengler und die intuitive Methode in der Geschichtsforschung (1922) and Kants Stellung in der Geisteswissenschaft (1924), in both of which he attempts to bridge the gap between the natural sciences and the Geisteswissenschaften by means of his naturalistic and evolutionary epistemology. Having fought, and won, the battle with Mu¨ ller, Selz now found himself involved in a controversy over the priority of ideas. Kurt Koffka, a leading contributor to Gestalt psychology, wrote a chapter on current psychology in Dessoir’s Lehrbuch der Philosophie (1925), which, although incontestably drawing on Selz’s theories, never mentioned him at crucial places.11 Koffka’s article provoked the outrage of Bu¨ hler, who accused him of having taken his Gestalt theory from Selz.12 At the same time Selz responded by showing that Koffka had borrowed key concepts from his own work and that his criticism of association psychology copied his own earlier rebuttal.13 By interpreting Selz’s theory in such a way as to make any similarity with Gestalt psychology almost impossible, Selz being a behaviourist propounding a machine theory of cognition, Koffka finally sought to dismiss the accusations of plagiarism.14 Meanwhile, the psychological institute of Mannheim headed by Selz, who became rector of the Handelshochschule in 1929–1930, flourished, and after it received the Ius Promovendi, the first dissertations on Denkpsychologie and pedagogy began to appear, among them Julius Bahle’s cognitive psychological investigations of musical composing.15 All this came to a sobering halt after January 30, 1933, when Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. The Ministry of Culture and Education issued an edict in the spring of 1933 demanding that Otto Selz resign his post, the official reason being the maintenance of security and order in Baden.16 Selz was no longer allowed to continue his teaching activities and his research at the institute. October 25 the Handelshochschule was finally closed, and the institute became incorporated within the University of Heidelberg. Because Heidelberg had made no arrangements for Selz, the official reading goes, Selz was unceremoniously stripped of his career and livelihood.17 The truth of the matter was, of course, Selz’s non-Aryan status.

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Most expelled psychologists left Germany and migrated to the United States. Not so Selz. He led a withdrawn life in Mannheim. When the opportunities to do experimental work gravely diminished, he threw himself into purely theoretical work on the Aufbau of the phenomenal world. After the Reichskristallnacht he was caught and deported to the concentration camp of Dachau, from which he was released in December 1938. In May 1939 he finally migrated to the Netherlands, first to Bilthoven, then to Amsterdam, where he lived in a small apartment in the Cliostraat. The one desirable outcome of this shameful episode was that Selz came into contact with the Dutch pedagogues Phillip Kohnstamm and Frans Prins and A. D. de Groot. Selz taught at the Amsterdam Teachers Seminar (Nutseminarium) on psychology and pedagogy, and participated in scientific discussions at the Faculty of Psychology, hugely enriching the field of psychology. After the German invasion in May 1940 Selz corresponded with Kurt Koffka, who had emigrated to America, but despite Koffka’s efforts to help him, nothing came of it.18 He declined the offer of his Dutch friends to find a hiding place for him, replying that the Iron Cross he had won during the First World War would surely protect him.19 He would not be spared the horrors of the Holocaust, though. In July 1943 he was caught again by the Nazis and deported to the concentration camp of Westerbork. A postcard noting that he wants to give courses in Westerbork is the last sign of life. On August 24 he was put on train Nr. DA 703 to Auschwitz. He either “died” in transit from suffocation or exhaustion – he was suffering from heart problems – or was murdered by being sent to the gas chambers.

The Assault on Association Psychology The starting point of Selz’s first great experimental work is his insistence on the distinction between the continuous coherence of ordered thinking as opposed to flights of ideas (Ideenflucht) and reverie.20 By requiring that any psychological theory provide an explanation for this distinction, Selz simultaneously argues that explanations appealing to the principle of association are woefully inadequate to this task. With Ku¨ lpe and Bühler among his subjects, Selz conducted his experiments by presenting them with a word signalling a task (Aufgabe), and a stimulus word to which they had to respond in conformity with the task. The task was presented either before or after the stimulus word. For instance, the task “coordinate” meant that the subject had to search for a concept coordinate to the stimulus word. Other tasks most frequently used were those of

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finding a structure to a given part, finding a superordinate or a subordinate, giving an (informal) definition of a given concept, naming a part of a given structure, and naming an effect or cause or a function. Protocols were obtained in retrospect. Having given their solutions, subjects were asked to give careful retrospective descriptions after a “reflection interval” (Besinnungspause). Selz considered such a pause an important condition for a valid and more or less complete protocol; de Groot took this reflection interval over in his study of chess. In the process of solving a problem introspection was forbidden. Naturally, questions can be raised about the validity of Selz’s results, because he used highly sophisticated subjects, a nonrigid experimental setup, instructional variations, nonstandardized (though not unsystematic) item series, retrospective protocols and protocol interpretations with their inherent dangers. Selz himself based his claims about the validity of his results on the very considerable agreement among protocols.21 Although the experimental setup was in the tradition of the Wu¨ rzburg school, Selz’s theoretical work deviates from the school in two respects. The first difference is that Selz does not even adopt a modified version of associationism; indeed, one of the tasks he set himself was to demonstrate the inadequacy of the most sophisticated form of associationism – the constellation theory – as an explanation of ordered thinking. The second difference is that in Selz’s work the explanandum of psychology is shifted from the content of thinking to the process of thinking. Whereas the elder members of the Wu¨ rzburg school, above all Ku¨ lpe, set themselves the phenomenological task of describing and analysing thought experiences as a mental category sui generis, irreducible to sensations and images, Selz, without denying the importance of imageless thought, believes that the essence of thinking is to be found in a series of “operations” or “solving methods,” thereby initiating the study of problem solving. Selz, de Groot summarizes, “read protocols in a different way: he searched for the procedures (methods) by which the subject made progress.”22 Thus emphasizing the way in which operations and solving methods evolve, Selz increasingly came to develop a genetic and evolutionary perspective within Denkpsychologie. Outlining the essentials of his Denkpsychologie, in a series of lectures given in the Netherlands, Selz distinguishes five main questions: how does ordered thinking arise; how does productive rather than reproductive thinking arise; which processes lead to genial discoveries in science and art; how do objective cultural forms like law, science, and art arise; and, finally, how can teaching improve the level of intelligence.23

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To say that the Wurzburg ¨ school avoided the issue of how thinking proceeds is not quite right, though. In fact, it did provide an answer to this question and, moreover, one that differed from the orthodox answer given by association psychology. In order to appreciate the unparalleled character of Selz’s psychology therefore, it is necessary to have a closer look at association psychology and the Wu¨ rzburg school’s attempts to remedy its defects. Ever since Hume psychology had been in the grip of a theory of the mind modelled on Newton’s mechanics. According to nineteenthcentury association psychology, the mind is an unstable arena of sensations and mental images perpetually jostling for a monopoly of attention. None of the elements, however, ever achieves this monopoly finally, so that fleeting experiences remain subliminally present. Accordingly, a written word or heard sound a prompts all the mental images (or mental representations) R1–5, which were familiar to the subject from earlier experience. In his Kurzgefasste Darstellung of 1924, outlining his theory of reproductive and productive thinking, written in response to an invitation from a Chinese Lecture Association in Peking, Selz carefully represented this unstable structure in a diagram that was to become more widely known when Buhler, ¨ in 1927, included it in his Die Krise der Psychologie (see Figure 4.1).

R1 R2

a

R3

R4 R5 figure 4.1. A system of diffuse reproductions, after Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung.

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Assuredly, association psychology acknowledged that by no means all representations associated with the word a returned upon its recurrence. To explain this incontrovertible fact, the theory claimed that only the association most strongly linked to the initial mental image held permanent sway. This lawful repression of weaker associations by the then strongest associations, Selz concludes in his description of classical associationism, is the only directive factor in thinking that association psychology acknowledges.24 Dissatisfied with this in essence mechanistic explanation of especially insightful thinking, the Wu¨ rzburgers Watt and Ach supplemented the law of association with the role played by the task (Aufgabe) and “determining tendencies” (Determinierende Tendenzen). By favouring those associative bonds which are in line with the goal of the subject, determining tendencies were thought to rule out irrelevancies and prevent chance stimuli from distracting the course of thought processes, thereby giving direction to the course of thinking.25 This theory of determining tendencies prompted vigorous criticism of the most forceful defender of association psychology, G. Muller. ¨ In no way, Mu¨ ller irritatingly retorts, have Ach and Watt shown that, to the extent that “mysterious determining tendencies” are operative in problem solving at all, they rather than the underlying associative bonds do the real causal work.26 Indeed, everything suggests it, Müller argues, that determining tendencies prompt the solution of the problem only insofar as the associative bonds prompt this solution. Thus discarding determining tendencies as an epiphenomenon, Mu¨ ller feels confident in developing classical associationism into what came to be called the constellation theory. Having stripped determining tendencies of any causal work to do, the constellation theory now accords an important, amplifying role to the task. Attempting to retrieve an answer from memory, Mu¨ ller explains, the subject’s mental state consists not simply of associative links between the separate elements of his answer; in addition, all the elements will be drawn towards the question or task. By thus functioning as a “directive representation,” the task intensifies those associative bonds of individual elements which belong to the content of the task, while simultaneously inhibiting those associations which divert from it, the result being that all active representations correspond to it. In other words, the task effectuates a constellation, which favours associative bonds of elements appropriate to the task. Again, Selz provides an illuminating diagram of this constellation theory (Figure 4.2). In the first decade of the twentieth century, Selz devoted much time and energy to confronting association psychology and, in particular, the

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a

b

c

d

e

r figure 4.2. The constellation theory, after Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums. a, b, c, d, e are the associatively connected elements of the thought process, which are in addition associated with the directive representation r.

constellation theory, both of which he believed had not thus far been adequately refuted. Insisting on the need for this to be done comprehensively and convincingly Selz examined minutely every step in the reasoning of William James, who despite his rejection of classical empiricism still had recourse to associative principles, and of Mu¨ ller. Selz replaces association psychology by his own theory of complexes or structures (Komplextheorie), which, in emphasizing the overriding priority of the effect of groups of elements, bears a close resemblance to Gestalt psychology.27 His theory of complexes is built around a number of laws, the laws of “complex completion” (Komplexergänzung), the first of which is at the same time the starting point for his criticism of association psychology, initially conceived as a theory of perception. His first law, as Selz is the first to point out, is in fact reminiscent of the law of redintegration of W. Hamilton (1788–1856).28 Yet Hamilton’s explanation of this law, saying that any element of a certain complex is disposed to reproduce the complex, Selz complains, is associational. In like manner, he notes, many years later William James, while appealing to Hamilton’s law, seeks to explain the phenomena by means of a constellation theory.29 Accepting this law of redintegration, while simultaneously resisting the apparently strong temptation to invoke the laws of association, is proof of the seriousness and subtlety of Selz’s thinking. Rather than being associations between the elements of the complexes or structures, he contends, associations are mutual associations of structures.30 Suppose, he argues, that the word “seven” prompts the mental image of the written Arabic number 7. The standard associational explanation is as follows. Once the word “seven” has been learnt, the sound of each of the constituting syllables becomes associated with the written number 7. Despite these separate syllables having connections with innumerable other images, sounds, and words, their having a common final member – the sound 7 – prompts a reproductive tendency stronger than

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the tendencies of each of the separate syllables. The main defect of the constellation theory here, Selz observes, thereby affirming his (higher level) cognitive stance in psychology, is its reliance on a physiological model of the mind. Indeed, James’s, and also Theodor Ziehen’s, explanation is rooted in atomistic views concerning the physiology of sensations and mental images. As Ziehen puts it, from a physiological point of view mental images do not display the unitary structure they do have from a psychological point of view.31 Accordingly, an association of contiguity obtains not between two simple mental images a and b, but rather between the countless elements contained in, respectively, a and b. Associations between mental structures come about on the basis of a cooperation of the associations between separate, elementary physiological processes. But, Selz retorts, had the reproduction “7” really come about as the effect of a constellation of its separate constituting elements, a completely different temporal arrangement of the separate sounds should have no effect whatsoever on the production of the actual response “7.” Yet this is not the case. On the contrary, Selz claims, the response turns out to be different depending on the temporal arrangement of the sounds. Thus the reproduction depends on the specific temporal structure of the elements rather than on the elements themselves. Invoking temporal structure in the explanation of the reproduction of structures, Selz concludes, is tantamount to adopting a theory of relational structures, for the specific temporal arrangement of the sounds is a property of the relational structure, not of its elements. James’s explanation of parts of a structure having the tendency to reproduce the structure, Selz next avers, is one of the most consequently elaborated examples of a constellation theory. A superb writer, James first quotes two verses from the poem “Locksley Hall” – “I, the heir of all the ages in the formost files of time,” and “For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs” – and asks, “Why is it that when we recite from memory one of these lines and get as far as the ages, that part of the other line which follows, and, so to speak, sprouts out of the ages, does not also sprout from memory?” He then proposes the following explanation:32 When the processes of “I, the heir of all the ages,” simultaneously vibrate in the brain, the last one of them in a maximal, the others in a fading phase of excitement; then the strongest line of discharge will be that which they all alike tend to take. “In” and not “one” or any other word will be the next to awaken, for its brainprocess has previously vibrated in unison not only with that of ages, but with that of all those other words whose activity is dying away.33

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A

B

a

l

b

m

n

c

o

d

e

p

figure 4.3. James’s constellation theory, after James, The Principles of Psychology. A stands for a mental act, and a, b, c, d, e for its constituting elementary nerve tracts. B stands for another (mental) act prompted by B in virtue of the associative connections between the respective nerve tracts.

Thus, the tendency of every word to reproduce that word with which it has been associated most strongly at earlier occasions is James’s explanation for the fact that the structure gets completed. A striking illustration of this constellation theory, Selz contends, is James’s own schematic drawing (Figure 4.3). Selz objects with a thought experiment.34 Suppose, he says, a painting is cut into very small vertical strokes so that it is changed unrecognizably. A subject is asked to look at these strokes in their correct arrangement. Suppose also, he goes on, that the subject recognizes the whole painting after scanning the twentieth stroke. Another subject is asked to look at these twenty strokes, all of them differently arranged except the last one. Thus, the twentieth stroke is the only one that is at its correct place. Because the same brain processes corresponding to the elements of the twenty strokes are active, James’s theory predicts recognition in this case as much as in the first case. Yet it is evident, Selz argues, that the second subject will not be able to recognize the whole painting. Indeed, despite

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their having the same elements, as well as an identical final element, in virtue of the different spatial arrangement of the two pictures, the subject will complete the fragments in different ways. Again Selz has shown the priority of structures over their elements in the explanation of human memory. Perceptual structures, then, possess a sort of internal coherence in virtue of which the whole structure, after one of its parts having been prompted in a subject’s mind, tends to be completed almost effortlessly. This in effect is one of Selz’s key ideas. This idea, Selz maintains, is also the route to the explanation of truly cognitive processes, in particular what is nowadays called declarative memory, concerned with “knowing that,” and procedural memory, concerned with “knowing how,” including motor skills. In developing his theory of declarative memory Selz confronts Mu¨ ller’s constellation theory of the same sort of processes. The argument leading to the demolition of the constellation theory takes its cue from Mu¨ ller’s proposed explanation for the solution of tasks, requiring the subject to search for generic concepts from presented stimulus words, for example, “farmer.” Suppose, Selz says, a subject responds immediately with “occupation” to his reading the stimulus word. On Mu¨ ller’s account, Selz explains, the task “generic concept” operates as a directional representation preparing a wide range of subliminally present memories of names of generic concepts, among them the concept of “occupation.” From among this wide variety of concepts only the association “farmer-occupation” would be selected owing to the favourable constellation induced by the task. However, Selz avers, this explanation would be successful only if associations irrelevant to the task would not be triggered. Yet this is far from being the case. As he argues: Thus, in our example, among all generic names that have been put in readiness by the task, there is also the generic designation “tradesman.” The concept “tradesman” is furthermore also strongly associated with the stimulus word “farmer.” For example, farmer and tradesman are tied together in every tax form. Thus the constellation favours the reproduction of “tradesman” in response to “farmer” in exactly the same degree as the reproduction of “occupation.” A consistently applied constellation theory can offer no reason why the incorrect response “tradesman,” which represents a coordinate instead of a superordinate concept, does not appear just as frequently as the correct response “occupation.”35

Association psychology, Selz argues, eschews any reference to structural (i.e., semantic and logical) relations between associated items, and instead admits only relations of temporal and spatial contiguity or similarity. Selz concludes, therefore, that by definition association psychology

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cannot exclude irrelevant associations from arising. Indeed, there is no more spatial and temporal contiguity between a specific problem and its specific solution than between that problem and countless other problems and solutions. Accordingly, completely pointless errors should occur rather frequently during problem solving. The fact that such errors do not frequently occur is inexplicable from the point of view of the constellation theory.36 The cementing force between associated items then is not degree of similarity (or contiguity) but rather the respect in which items are similar. On this view, items strongly associated can still be counteracted by structural (logical or semantic) features of the task or problem. Conversely, items with a rather low degree of similarity may very well prompt one another if they fit into the structure of the problem.

The Theory of Schematic Anticipations Both declarative and procedural memory, Selz maintains, operate according to the principle of the actualization of knowledge (Wissensaktualisierung), which amounts to a process of structure completion. Trained in philosophy, and having defended a realistic theory of knowledge himself in his Ph.D. thesis, Selz argues that knowledge is always of facts or state of affairs, thereby drawing on the theory of objects (Gegenstandstheorie) developed by a number of philosophers, above all Alex Meinong, Ku¨ lpe, Husserl, and Stumpf, who coined the general term state of affairs (Sachverhalt).37 Aligning himself to this tradition, Selz coined the term Sachverhältnis by combining Sachverhalt and Verhältnis in order to bring into prominence the relational character of facts.38 Relational facts encompass both the objects of the relation and the relation and, hence, must be distinguished from the objects and the relation. Thus, “Julius Bahle is the pupil of Otto Selz” would be a relational fact to be distinguished both from “Julius Bahle” and “Otto Selz,” and from the teacher-pupil relation in which they stand.39 In the tradition of Meinong, relational facts not only obtain in the world of mental objects but also in the physical and mathematical realm, yet Selz focuses on the first category. Thinking, according to him, involves “structures” or “unities.” Knowledge of relational structures implies being aware of the objects that stand in a certain relation, and being aware of the relation. Indeed, he argues, just as relational facts do not consist of a mere side-by-side arrangement of objects and their relation, knowledge cannot be split into a side-by-side arrangement of two items of awareness, one of objects, the other of relations.

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The Theory of Schematic Anticipations

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Armed with a theory of relational structures Selz commences his critical discussion of the most simple cases of problem solving: so-called unmediated solutions (unvermittelte Lösungen). The distinguishing feature of such cases is that, for example, upon reading the stimulus word and the instruction, no visual or word images appear in the subject’s mind. Accordingly, upon understanding the meaning of the stimulus word and the instruction, the solution or response follows immediately. In Ach’s work, too, these unmediated solutions have a prominent place, and it is especially here, Selz avers, that the former’s explanation comes very close to a constellation theory. The great length at which Selz went to attack association psychology is attested by his claim that, even in cases in which an associative explanation forces itself upon one most naturally, the “laws of ordered thinking” turn out to be different from the laws of association. A stimulus prompting a response automatically, without mental processes in between, Selz admonishes, still does not prove that associative processes are at play. Indeed, in his own experiments he could show that such automatic solutions result from rather different processes. In one of these experiments the subject had to find out the coordinate concept to “Parson” (“Parson – Coordinate? Chaplain.”): “I read the words successively with understanding. Immediately came the consciousness that something coordinate was very familiar. Then came the word Chaplain, internally spoken. It is certain that the consciousness of the familiarity of a solution preceded the, as yet, unaffected appearance of the Word Chaplain.”40 As this protocol demonstrates, Selz explains, a relational and abstract cognitive process, expressed by the words “the awareness that something coordinate was very familiar,” clearly precedes the verbal response “Chaplain.” This vague awareness is a sign of the subject’s having “dispositional” knowledge of the relational structure “that Chaplain is coordinate to Parson.”41 This dispositional knowledge of a relational structure, Selz emphatically points out, rather than the associations attaching to the stimulus word, produces the correct response “Chaplain.”42 Structure completion on the basis of “schematic anticipations” is his next, and most important, form of problem solving. This notion of schematic anticipations was to contribute to the ascendancy of cognitive psychology in the 1950s.43 Yet both in the early days of Denkpsychologie and in contemporary cognitive psychology, Selz has not always been credited for his important discovery. Indeed, the first to recognize the importance of this notion for psychology, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, in the

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1920s, used it in their attempt to transform psychology to Gestalt psychology without mentioning Selz, thereby taking the credit for it. As Selz’s detailed response to Koffka painfully makes clear, his “law of Gestalt completion,” put forward as the alternative to the law of association, is in fact a copy of the law of structure completion.44 Other psychologists deploying Selz’s notion of schematic anticipations are Karl Duncker in Germany and Eduard Claparède and Jean Piaget in Switzerland, both of them running against the stream of the behaviourist ethos of the period.45 Yet they were ahead of their time because in the 1970s cognitive psychology reinstated the notion of schemata. Selz opens his discussion of schemata by noting that in many cases of memory retrieval subjects already know that the information at hand is a piece of a larger structure. Indeed, they even often know to what kind of structure the piece belongs. Being aware of this relational structure prompts the subject to anticipate schematically the answer to the question. Giving the example of a candidate in an oral examination trying to remember the Melanchton, and who is assisted by the examiner’s giving the first three letters Mel, Selz explains: “The awareness of the word sought is changed from the awareness of a not yet further specified concrete word to the awareness of a word beginning with Mel. . . . We have to conceive the genesis of this awareness like the way in which the empty scheme of a concrete word is partly filled out by the insertion at its beginning of the sounds spoken in anticipation.”46 Diagrams of schematic anticipations making clearly visible that the awareness of a problem relates to the relational structure to be realized as the scheme of a structure relates to the completed structure were published by Selz in 1922 and 1924 (see Figure 4.4).

Lösung γ

Zielbewustsein γ A

A

B

oder γ A

B

A

B

figure 4.4. Schematic anticipations of relational wholes, after Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums.

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Selz’s diagrams proved immensely fertile, inspiring both cognitive psychologists endorsing a view of intelligence as biological adaptation, like Piaget, and cognitive scientists, like Duncker, de Groot, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon, taking logic and computer models as their point of departure. Thus, discussing problem solving through “resonance-effect,” Duncker writes: “In agreement with Selz’s theory of ‘schematic anticipations,’ we can write the general formula of such problem-solving as follows: The problem is: ?Rb; aRb exists in the thinker’s experience; by reason of the partial correspondence with ?Rb, aRb and therefore a are aroused. Thus this finding of the solution takes place ultimately through a kind of ‘excitation by equality’ (Selz) or, better of resonance.”47 Piaget, criticizing the Wurzburg ¨ school for its logicism and the attendant lack of a truly genetic perspective on thinking, simultaneously praises Selz’s attempt to reveal the “dynamics of intelligence,” which has led to the discovery of “the structures which are characteristic for all thinking systems, and the importance of schematic anticipations in finding the solution of problems.”48 Newell and Simon, finally, reading Selz through the eyes of de Groot, comment thus on Selz’s notion of schematic anticipation: “Selz hypothesized that the presentation of a stimulus together with an Aufgabe caused the subject to form a relational structure resembling an equation with its unknown: ‘Stimulus word – Aufgabe – (Response?).”49 Besides schematic anticipations Selz discovered in his protocols another factor contributing to the coherence of problem solving. As the preceding protocols demonstrate, at a certain point in the process a sort of fusion occurs between, on the one hand, the task and, on the other, the stimulus word. Task and stimulus word, according to Selz, fuse into an autonomous whole (einheitliches Ganzes), a sort of organic whole, or, as he calls it, “total task” (Gesamtaufgabe). It is especially here that the difference with the constellation theory comes out, because, according to the latter, task and stimulus word are essentially separately operative, the task giving rise only to a constellation favouring the correct recall, but never guaranteeing it. It is also here that Selz’s theory radically departs from the empiricist view of the mind as a mere receptacle, for the integration of task and stimulus is clearly a sign of the constructive role of the process of thinking.50 The evidence for the formation of a total task came from direct reports of the subjects as well as from more indirect sources. Thus, before the Aufgabe was understood, Selz observes, subjects often took no more than cursory notice of the stimulus word; once the task was understood, the subject’s awareness of the meaning of the stimulus word took a more

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concrete shape; reports of mental images occurred only after the Aufgabe was understood.51 An example of one of his protocols illustrates this: “Coordinate? – Hunting.” A: “Rowing,” 12.8 secs. I read the two words in succession. Task and stimulus word understood. I remembered I’d discussed the meaning of the word coordinate with you and accordingly related the task to the stimulus word. Then I turned my attention to the meaning of the word “hunting.” I already knew – that is, in a general sense – what hunting is as soon as I understood the stimulus word. Then I tried to find a superordinate notion in relation to hunting and thence to arrive at a coordinate. I cast about for a long time, then I finally came up with the superordinate “sport.”52

Initially, Selz comments, task and stimulus word are understood in a general sense only. Then, recalling the experimenter’s instructions, the stricter sense of the task comes to the subject’s mind. He relates the task to the stimulus word “hunting,” and thereby grasps the total task: “Not until then does he consider more closely the meaning of the stimulus word.”53 Sometimes the meaning of both the stimulus word and the task proper may have to be adapted to one another. This, again, is a clear sign of the activity of the subject. Thus one observer, confronted with “Cancer (Krebs): cause or effect,” reported: As soon as I’d read the word “Cancer,” I conceived it in a zoological sense and had a weak mental image. I then went on and now read the task properly for the first time. Now the thing struck me as comical, because I was still thinking of the animal and also had this mental image. I told myself there must be a solution all the same. Cancer must have another meaning. Then I became conscious that in fact there is another meaning and eventually the meaning cancer as a disease came clearly to mind.54

As soon as the task is understood, Selz explains, the formation of the total task leads to a comical incongruity. What the total task appears to call for – the cause of the crustacean cancer – does not make sense. This predicament induces all sorts of control processes, which, in their turn, lead the subject to explore the possibility of a proper solution. The only possibility that presents itself is that the stimulus word has been misconceived. Initially the search for another relevant meaning of the stimulus word is guided by actualizing abstract processes, that is, the knowledge that there is in fact another meaning of cancer, which gradually gets replaced by more concrete processes: namely, retrieving the information that a particular disease is in fact designated by the name cancer.

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The integration of the stimulus word and the task proper, Selz urges, explains the occurrence of a number of “laws of ordered thinking,” or operations, which are otherwise mysterious. He distinguishes between two sorts of operations, both of which are specifically coordinated with the total task. The first sort comprises preliminary processes of critical appraisal of the combination of task and stimulus word. Such appraisal would show, Selz contends, that task and stimulus word have become interconnected and united into the total task.55 The subject’s realizing that his solution of the problem is correct is another type of operation which can only be understood if the formation of the total task is assumed.56 Selz relates this sense of correctness to a need for control and verification. Verification processes can also lead to the negative outcome that solution and task do not match. Awareness of this mismatch, Selz contends, prompts the subject to search for “a revision of that solution.”57 Not until control processes have set in has the structure of the problem to be solved become fully efficacious. The formation of these control processes therefore, Selz emphasizes, is one of the most important factors contributing to the development of intelligence. For a proper evaluation of Selz’s achievements it is necessary to bear in mind the intimate relation his work has to two other fields of enquiry: epistemology and pedagogy. Indeed, overlooking this context can lead commentators, such as Humphrey, and earlier Claparède, to raise irrelevant objections. One of the drawbacks of Selz’s rejection of the principles of association, Humphrey complains, is that it is left unclear what causes the process of thinking; because Selz offers no causal hypothesis, what he in fact proposes approaches more a logical rather than a psychological theory of thinking.58 Yet there is an alternative to the exclusively sounding distinction between the causal and the logical mode of enquiry: a developmental or genetic approach. Selz is not so much interested in the underlying and actual causes of thought processes as in the development and improvement of problem solving. The epistemological roots of his genetic approach are discussed in the final section of this chapter, but its pedagogical dimensions can be illustrated by the directing role accorded to errors. Selz’s protocols convincingly demonstrated that errors in problem solving, far from being due to factors contrary to the problem, and therefore senseless, as association psychology would predict, proved “to proceed from certain (fixed) intellectual operations, that serve as solving methods of the task.”59 Errors are always due to the problem’s being only partially operative. False solutions then are as much under the influence of the total task as correct solutions.

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The only difference is that in the former case not all aspects of the problem have become operative. Moreover, errors were frequently averted by “control processes,” which accompany every attempted solution of the problem and which “raise discrepancies between task and solution into consciousness and determine the appropriate correction of the original solution.”60 A good and, for our purposes, extremely interesting example of the intimate connection in Selz’s work between theory and practice, between (genetic) explanation and improvement, is his discussion of errors due to prejudices favouring positive or verifying instances only. For instance, a subject in one of his experiments held the view that machines were things bigger than tools. Guided by this notion he found the example of a steam engine. From this example he derived the definition: an object the function of which is to achieve things exceeding human forces. Evidently, this is an error, as there are machines not exceeding human forces. Psychologically, then, a certain prejudice favours verifying instances. In order to avoid these errors Selz proposes what is in fact a methodology of falsification: “to complete the search for positive instances with the search for negative instances, hence for examples that do not belong to the properties corresponding to the theory.”61 A one-sided search for positive instances has as a consequence that control processes that might lead to the detection of falsifying facts do not succeed. The example nicely shows psychology, while taking into account the autonomy of logic, might nevertheless develop practical norms furthering logically correct thinking.

Psychology of Discovery and the Geisteswissenschaften Having demonstrated that retrieving information from memory, or reproductive thinking, is an active and constructive process, thereby finishing off association psychology with its essentially passive view of the mind, Selz next seeks to apply his findings in Denkpsychologie to the explanation of truly creative, or “productive thinking,” a project culminating in his Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, a study which no other contemporary book could remotely equal in volume and laboriousness of construction.62 Especially in this area association psychology has made no headway, although various proposals to explain the emergence of new associations had been forthcoming.63 Aside from the inherent defects of such theories, Selz complains, the main problem is that their obsession with the question how something new can arise from associative

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processes bypasses the really important question how new ideas are shaped to such consistent structures as a symphony, a play, a scientific theory, or the design of machines. These products of human creation, Selz urges, are much too complicated structures to be understood from the narrow-minded perspective of association psychology.64 Invoking his recent scientific findings in Denkpsychologie in explaining productive thinking too, including discoveries in science and art, Selz not only outflanks association psychology but also significantly broadens the objectives of experimental psychology by encompassing an area deemed hitherto the exclusive province of the sciences of mind or culture, the human sciences. Indeed the very part of the human mind which is the breeding ground for products of culture, Wilhelm Dilthey, Oswald Spengler, and Eduard Spranger in Germany and Henri Bergson in France contend, is not subject to general laws at all. This antinaturalistic stance of the epistemology of the Geisteswissenschaften is challenged by Selz’s “nomothetic explanation” (gesetzeswissenschaftliche Erklärung) of directed mental activity. Also in this context he explicitly attempts to integrate psychology and biology, in particular evolutionary theory. Because Selz’s experimental psychology of productive thinking and his discussion with the philosophers of the humanities are tightly interwoven, the former provides at the same time the agenda for an evolutionary epistemology. Having excluded general laws from the study of mind and culture, Selz holds, Dilthey, Spengler, and Bergson are powerless to explain the development of mental activity, both in the individual and in science and art. Indeed, their view of the mind of great thinkers and artists as a sort of preformed system, containing the seeds of its own mysterious, inner development, is directly challenged by evolutionary theory and developmental psychology, both emphasizing the gradual formation of cognitive capacities. The developmental picture of the mind put forward by normal psychology, Selz emphatically maintains, also holds for genial achievements in art and science. Bergson’s claim that Spinoza, had he been born before Descartes, would still have designed a Spinozistic system, Selz avers, presupposes an outdated view of creative thinking, because the unique character of genial achievements is not explained merely by assuming inborn talent but rather by showing how it develops in its own scientific community and culture. “The question what would have become of Goethe, had he been born during the Thirty Years’ War or the migration of the German peoples is therefore pointless; for in this period a Goethe, who had absorbed the complete formation of his time during his individual development, could not have been born.”65

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Already in his preface to Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, Selz brings his biologically oriented stance face-to-face with the Geisteswissenschaften: The view defended here is diametrically opposed to the teaching of Bergson and of a philosopher who is close to him, Spengler. They conceive of life as a process, as a continuous stream in which nothing occurs twice, but in which continually new forms arise in a mysterious, causally inexplicable way. . . . By contrast, we have shown here that it is precisely the constant, systematic linkages of cognitive operations and the recurrence of the same conditions of elicitation which constitute the preconditions for progressive development, for the growth of new operations and the generation of new products of the mind. . . . Perhaps our era is witnessing the beginnings of a “biology of the inner.” Psychology thus enters the ranks of the biological sciences.66

“Biology of the inner” is not meant as a reductive proposal, ultimately leading to the disappearance of psychology as an autonomous science, but rather a reminder of the functional, organic organization of adapted mental activities. By treating adapted mental activities on a par with a system of “functional bodily movements” (zweckmässigen Körperbewegungen) of whole organisms, or a “system of specific responses” (System spezifischer Reaktionen), Selz explicitly draws the analogy with the organization of motor skills and reflexes. Although it is common wisdom now in psychology, mainly owing to Piaget, Selz has been the first to make and explore this analogy, as Claparède emphasizes.67 Like reflexes and motor skills, mental activities are composed of a chain of reactions or operations coordinated to specific (vitally important) internal and external conditions.68 And like the triggering of reflexes and the exercise of motor skills, cognitive operations typically proceed gradually, in a stepwise fashion. Indeed, much like hunger elicits crying in young infants, their expressive movements elicit the attention of mother or father, their seeing milk elicits grasping movements, and so on, cognitive operations, Selz explains, are built up as an “uninterrupted chain of both general and specific partial operations which at times cumulatively (A + B + C) and at times alternatively (B after failure of A) impel the solution of the task.”69 This biologically inspired “model” of adapted mental activities, Selz believes, also explains the highest achievements in art and science. Indeed, the very start of productive thinking takes its cue from failed reproductive attempts to solve a particular problem. Productive thinking in its turn is an uninterrupted chain of cumulative or alternative operations. However, confronted with a new problem, Selz argues, actualizing dispositional knowledge is no longer an option, yet actualizing familiar solving methods is (Mittelaktualisierung). The key to his explanation of

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µ G1

107

χ M

R1

figure 4.5. Structure of a memory complex resulting from application of a solving method. µ stands for the general relation between goal and means. χ stands for the causal relation between the means and the intended partial result. After Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung.

µ G2

χ R1

figure 4.6. Schematic anticipation during the routine application of means, after Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung.

productive thinking therefore is his concept of a “solving method,” a technique or a heuristic. Applying familiar solving methods to new problems, to changing material, or in different situations, he avers, is the route to understanding creative thinking. He distinguishes two main cases of heuristics: methods used for the “finding of solving methods” (Mittelfindung) and “methods for applying solving methods” (Mittelanwendung). The Mittelfindung group consists of three chief cases: the “methods of routine actualization of solving methods,” “abstraction of solving methods,” and “productive use of previously established abstractions.” The dynamic of productive thinking proceeds along the same general principles as was the case in reproductive thinking. Thus, in both cases a total task is formed which brings about a schematic anticipation of the solution. This anticipation results in the cognitive operation aimed at completing a structure. Thus, supposing that in realizing a given concrete goal (G1 ), a solving method (M) has been applied to bring about the partial result (R1 ), the memory resulting from this application displays the structure as depicted in Figure 4.5. If at a later time a goal G2 is formed, the attainment of which requires again the actualization of R1 , the schematic anticipation displays the structure as depicted in Figure 4.6. In this case of routine application of solving methods on the right side of the diagram relates to the right side of the diagram of Figure 4.5 as the scheme of a structure relates to the complete structure. The solving methods M for which the subject is looking, therefore, can be realized by an operation of completion of structures.

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It would be a grave mistake, Selz goes on, to think that routine application of solving methods would play a secondary role only in science and art, as if it were merely a sort of technical resource. On the contrary, one of Selz’s most distinctive and challenging ideas is that cultural progress rests on the basic principle that whatever solving methods of accomplishing cultural achievements have been won by the efforts of earlier generations are thenceforth available for routine actualization. The methods of science, which – like the solving methods and stylistic devices of the arts – were slowly and laboriously evolved by our ancestors, not least through the outstanding achievements of a few, are to later generations routinely actualizable components of the creative process. This is why in cultural history geniuses appear not as isolated, randomly distributed monoliths but as landmarks along continuous lines of development.70

What we are dealing with here is in fact a generalization of Groos’s law for the explanation of know-how to the concept of tradition. Just as behavioural responses of the individual become automated due to continually repeated experiences, the growth of science is enormously helped by the heritage of specific solving-methods interiorized, as it were, in the unconscious mind of the scientific species. Selz’s proposal therefore amounts to an evolutionary model of (scientific) tradition. The second major category of productive thinking, the “method of abstraction of solving methods,” is called for as soon as previously developed methods have proved inadequate. This method prompts alternative operations designed to lead to the discovery of new solving methods. By anticipating the outcome of the abstraction schematically, Selz explains, the direction of the process is guaranteed. More specifically, the outcome is schematically anticipated as a still unknown solving method which will effect a familiar aim (G), namely, to bring about a determinate partial result (R1 ). Anticipating recent psychology of scientific discoveries, Selz illustrates this method by the method the physicist Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was looking for in order to bring down lightning from the clouds.71 Franklin, Selz recounts, had conceived the plan to draw off the electric charge of a thundercloud by using the principle of arc discharge. His goal (G) was to bring down the lightning from the clouds. He knew that in order to realize this goal he had to make a connection between the cloud and the earth (R). His problem was to find an M, which would establish the required connection. In his chapter on Selz, Humphrey diagrams the relevant schematic anticipation as shown in Figure 4.7.72 From the sight of kites being flown, Selz explains, Franklin abstracted the fact that a kite may form a connection between the earth and clouds, and

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Relation m AIM

(To bring thundercloud-electricity to earth)

109

Relation c X

R1 (X makes cloudearth connection)

figure 4.7. Schematic anticipation during the operation of abstraction of means, after Humphrey, Thinking.

this abstraction of solving methods may have led him to actually sending up a kite on a wire. Anticipating the objection that these explanations of scientific discoveries are unduly rationalistic, and in no way do justice to the sudden character of revolutionary insights of famous men, as often described in their autobiographies, Selz invokes his third method, the “method of coincidental abstraction of solving methods.” In fact this method simultaneously acknowledges and explains the unique experience of great scientists. According to Selz, the way Faraday was led to his discovery of the principle of induction might well have been an example of the method of coincidental abstraction of solving methods. Faraday, Selz recounts, had long but in vain been trying to generate electricity by solving the methods of magnets. Finally chance gave him a hand. The moment he pushed the magnet, which was inside the wire coil he was using, into place or took it out, he observed on the galvanometer connected to the coil a deflection of the needle. This trifling occurrence, Selz argues, sufficed to make him see that in the closed but uncharged circuit a current must have been generated by the movement of the magnet.73 Anticipated long before, a specific event, when occurring by accident, prompts the scientist to abstract the means-end relationship obtaining between the event and the preexisting goal. Accordingly, the fact that insights appear suddenly does not mean that they are uncaused at an explanatory level. Indeed, the undeniably passive character of sudden insights is best explained by assuming their being caused by “the stubborn persistence of engrossing problems.”74 It is important to note that Selzian problem solving is not just a matter of completing preexisting complexes.75 Such a view would do no justice to the differences Selz was anxious to point out, as emerges from his extensive correspondence with his pupil Bahle, between his theory and Gestalt theories which equally emphasize the role of the whole in determining its parts.76 It would furthermore do no justice to the way Selz’s work has been applied by Bahle to musical composing. Indeed,

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it is especially when seeing his work applied outside the lab, to creative processes extending over a much longer period of time than his own experimental investigations of necessarily quite short thought processes, that Selz came to realize a pervasive interaction between whole and parts. What this interaction in particular shows is that Selzian anticipations, in establishing tentative relations between wholes and still unknown parts, have essentially the character of hypotheses. An immediate consequence of this tentative nature of schematic anticipations is that they not only determine their parts, that they are not just completed, but that they receive feedback (Rückwirkung) from their parts, their structure thereby being changed quite substantially and sometimes even radically. In his study of chess, A. D. de Groot could equally trace this interaction between schematic anticipations and the outcomes of partial elaborations.77

Trying-out Behaviour and the Biological Turn Selz’s theory of problem solving is not limited to a theory of performance, but has also something to say about how problem-solving techniques, especially routine solving methods, are acquired. Obviously aware of the discussions in developmental psychology, Selz also deduces the consequences his theory of learning has for Karl Bu¨ hler’s theory of stages discussed in Chapter 2. Routine solving methods, Selz explains, are gradually acquired by what he calls “trying-out behaviour” (probierendes Verhalten).78 Significantly, Selz discusses this form of problem solving for the first time in his detailed interpretation of Köhler’s famous study of chimpanzees at Tenerife in 1917, a study by the way which makes use of Selz’s earlier ideas on human thinking.79 As Selz recalls, Köhler’s results confirm his own idea that directed thinking is ultimately based on the application of partly insightful and partly automatic solving methods acquired in phylogenesis.80 Like the method of trial and error familiar from Thorndike, Morgan, and Jennings, trying-out behaviour is a form of learning. But this is in fact the only similarity. Indeed, it is especially the reliance of behaviourism on repetition and association that is rejected by Selz. Automatic learning, as Selz also calls the fruit of trying-out behaviour, is a process equally initiated and guided by schematic anticipations. His main argument for the selecting role of schematic anticipations upon automatic learning, however, comes not from animal biology but from his study of the acquisition of skills in sport and aircraft.81 A beginner at ninepins, Selz explains, seeking to hit a particular pin, will initially try out deliveries of varying force, trajectory, and spin within a range

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Trying-out Behaviour and the Biological Turn

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N1 N2 N3 R N4 N5 N6 figure 4.8. Trying-out behaviour, after Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung.

circumscribed by previous bowling experiences.82 Among these “tryingout movements” a small group will lead to a positive result (R), the others will produce negative results (N1, N2, N3 . . . ). In later attempts the subject cannot anticipate the exact movement which has led to R as a solving method to achieve his goal, yet, Selz emphasizes, anticipating R prompts only those memory traces of earlier attempts which actually have led to R. Indeed, he recalls, it turns out to be more efficient to concentrate on the goal of the movement than on the movement itself, awareness of the goal heightening the selective effect of the anticipation of the correct movement. Finally, successful movements will be made with great precision owing to the process of routine application of solving methods. This selective role of schematic anticipations is depicted vividly in Figure 4.8, the historical importance of which will become clear in the next chapter. The most important difference, then, between blind trial and error and trying-out behaviour is that in the latter case attempts are based on a partial insight into the situation. Always showing a clear sense of direction, the organism tries out within a preset, goal-determined, and limited domain of solution possibilities; in Selzian terms, schematic anticipations codetermine the where and what of search and trying. With this alternative to the associational theories of trial-and-error learning, Selz also takes issue with Bu¨ hler’s theory of stages. In particular, he seeks to revise Bu¨ hler’s developmental model which assigns an irreducible place to the intellect while at the same time resisting its reduction to a self-correcting instinct as espoused by evolutionary psychology of, for instance, Spencer. According to the nonreductive model, recognizable in Buhler’s ¨ theory of stages, the higher centres of deliberative

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and self-critical consciousness emerge from reflex and instinct, and the increasing multiplicity of associatively acquired reflexes, or habits. Selz, instead, points out that even the simplest form of habit cannot be explained in terms of associative learning. On the contrary, “acquired reflexes” too are guided by schematic anticipations. Thus conceived, the study of the genesis of habits is relevant for the study of the development of intelligence for, rather than being a qualitatively different and older stage, as Buhler ¨ maintains, cognitive operations are, as he puts it, “a developmental integration of intellectual actions into an existing, more primitive system of specific responses.” Accordingly, a theory of stages would then be concerned only with “different developmental stages of a single system of specific responses. In this manner the automatic acquisition of novel modes of behaviour, Bu¨ hler’s ‘stage of training,’ demands no system of diffuse reproduction.”83 Selz also parts company from Bu¨ hler as regards the latter’s view of insight, the highest, typically human stage of cognitive development. In particular the widespread attempt to explain the actual distance separating humans and animals in terms of the phenomenon of insight, Selz contends, is as misplaced as the analogous attempt to explain the obvious difference between geniuses and ordinary mortals in terms of inspiration.84 As we have seen in Chapter 2, Buhler ¨ refused to concede that Köhler’s primates displayed really insightful behaviour. By limiting insightful behaviour to the awareness of rules typical of the scientific enterprise, so Selz diagnoses the mistake, Bu¨ hler is blinded to the far more primitive forms of insight displayed by young children and primates.85 In fact, Selz points out, the best explanation of the primate’s behaviour as observed and described by Köhler is in terms of operations and solving methods found among humans.86 Another highly interesting consequence of Selz’s developmental integration of cognitive operations into a more primitive system of “specific responses” is his nonassociational explanation of the genesis of basic anticipatory mechanisms, such as causal beliefs. As we have seen in Chapter 2, both Stern and Bu¨ hler objected to Hume’s explanation that, rather than the expectation of familiar associations, surprise about the extraordinary lies at the root of the awareness of causality, yet neither of them provided an alternative genetic explanation of the belief in causality. In particular, they had no objections to Hume’s inductive and associative explanation of causal beliefs. The grim logic of his rejection of association psychology forced Selz to rethink Hume’s explanation of causal beliefs as well and in a few stray passages, although the term “induction” is not

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Trying-out Behaviour and the Biological Turn

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used, he in fact provides an alternative noninductive explanation. Thus, reflexlike coordinations between conditions of elicitation and motor or cognitive operations are said to differ from associations “in that the coordination is not established by the experienced succession of stimulus and operation, but can precede it.”87 Coordinations between conditions of elicitation and operations, far from being gradually cemented through frequent repetition, Selz wants to say here, are fixed from the start. That Selz opposes here the Humean associative explanation of the genesis of (causal) beliefs with an evolutionary and functionalistic theory is borne out by another highly interesting passage. Recounting some of his experiments establishing how difficult it is for humans merely to think of events contradicting the usual course of experience, Selz hypothesizes the existence of tightly fixed coordinations which automatically prompt corresponding anticipations – for instance, the anticipation that an object will fall if its support is moved away, or the completely different anticipation of the meaning of the next word while reading a text. The fact that these mechanisms of anticipation occur precisely where they facilitate the well-organized course of cognitive processes, he concludes, makes it extremely unlikely “that they can be completely deduced from the general law of association, in the sense of Hume’s explanation of the anticipation of causality. Rather, the possibility of special goal-directed mechanisms, of intellectual operations occurring automatically under specific conditions of elicitation, is to be considered – operations which develop in the course of phylogeny and ontogeny.”88 The rejection of Humean inductive and associative explanations of basic cognitive operations, the guiding role of schematic anticipations in thinking, the establishment of tentative or hypothetical relations between existing knowledge and sought-for elements – all this justifies the claim that Selz’s psychology of knowledge is a noninductive one. It is therefore interesting to see that in his few observations of the methodology of science Selz draws the consequence of his noninductive psychology of knowledge for questions pertaining to scientific explanation. Rejecting induction, but now explicitly, Selz, in 1922, defends what later, mainly owing to Popper, came to be called the hypothetically deductive approach to scientific explanation. The following quotation stems from his essay on Spengler: It must not be forgotten that the natural sciences have not grown via “induction,” consisting in a careful generalization on the basis of individual conclusions, but via bold theories which in the first place emerged – often at the occasion of a

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single observation – according to psychological laws and subsequently acquired a logically sufficient justification by their enabling us to explain a structure of a diversity of individual facts and laws and in this way making possible a unification of our knowledge.89

In the next chapter we see Popper gradually zooming in on Selz’s cognitive revision of association psychology and ultimately transforming the latter’s evolutionary psychology of (scientific) discovery into the evolutionary epistemology of the searchlight.

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5 Popper’s Psychology of Knowledge

The Methodology of Denkpsychologie With fewer than 250 copies sold two years after its publication, Selz’s Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums was soon destined to become forgotten completely. The short summary of his main ideas did not succeed in warding off this gloomy scenario, for the book was translated only into Chinese but not English, which was to become the official language for psychology, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. Yet those who had taken the trouble to plough their way through Selz’s bulky work were richly rewarded. Indeed, members of the Gestalt movement, orchestrating their campaign against association psychology with consummate skill, profited much from his holistic theory of schematic anticipations. Much later, in the 1940s, the Dutch psychologist A. D. de Groot would apply the main ideas of Selz’s psychology of reproductive and productive thinking to the analysis of problem solving during chess, published in his Het Denken van den Schaker (1946), a book which in its turn would stimulate the pioneering work in artificial intelligence of Allen Newell and Herbert Simon. Roughly in the same period Jean Piaget, by then a famous child psychologist, would exploit Selz’s evolutionary revision of psychology and epistemology for his own project of a genetic epistemology. Reading Selz somewhere between 1926 and 1928, and using his ideas in analyzing first the foundations of pedagogy and psychology, and later in transforming epistemology, the young Popper therefore showed precocious yet consummate discernment in interpreting new scientific developments, preceding de Groot and Piaget by almost two decades. Indeed, 115

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Popper’s Psychology of Knowledge

as will be argued in this chapter, upon encountering Selz’s thought, Popper’s early reflections on habit formation and dogmatic thinking will undergo a radical transformation, finally culminating in his searchlight theory of mind and knowledge. In his second writing on psychology, his Ph.D. thesis “Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie,” this transformation has not yet come about; nevertheless, the incipient influence of Selz is clearly discernible. At first sight, however, the author of the dissertation seems to be fully under the influence of his promotor, Karl Bu¨ hler, and to elaborate views put forward in the latter’s recently published Die Krise der Psychologie (1927). In this most important but much neglected book, based on his famous course in general psychology at the University of Vienna, Bu¨ hler discusses the methodological problems implicit in the many different approaches to psychology at the time. Although coming from German Denkpsychologie, Buhler, ¨ by visiting the United States several times as guest professor, became cognizant with the behaviourism of John B. Watson and Thorndike. Working in his own city, at the same time, was Freud. Although Buhler ¨ never had direct contact with Freud during his sixteenyear stay in Vienna, he could not have missed the ideas of psychoanalysis, even if he had wanted to. Aside from behaviourism and psychoanalysis, Die Krise also expounds and evaluates the theories of Gestalt psychology and of the Geisteswissenschaften, notably the work of Spranger. The “crisis” of which Buhler ¨ speaks therefore is not indicative of a painful lack of ideas and theories but rather of an embarras de richesse. The drawback of this multiplicity of theories, as Bu¨ hler sees it, is that some of the schools, notably behaviourism, the humanities, and psychoanalysis, are inclined to overplay their hands and to claim a monopoly of truth. Bu¨ hler’s “crisis” has to be understood in this sense. In its constructive phase the book seeks to establish the partial truth of each of the different schools and to show how their different points of view are complementary. No school is rejected in toto, and Buhler ¨ sorts out and selectively accepts distinctive contributions of the various schools. His main point of criticism is that no school is capable of doing justice to what are the three basic characteristics of human conduct: lived experience (Erlebnis), meaningful behaviour (sinnvolles Benehmen), and their relation to culture (Gebilden des objektiven Geistes). A unitary science of psychology, Bu¨ hler maintains, is the science of the triad experience-behaviour-culture. Bu¨ hler derives this pluralistic methodology from his earlier work in the psychology of language, a part of his work I consider in more detail in Chapter 6; I confine myself here to some preliminaries only.

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The Methodology of Denkpsychologie

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SE

Psychology

AL

GN

SI

ND

R:

ER

VE

EI

:S IG

Culture

C RE

N

Bühler distinguishes between three different linguistic functions: the expressive function, the announcement function (Kundgabefunction), and the descriptive function (Darstellungsfunktion). The expressive function is the lowest one and shared by men and animals. Facial gestures and the like may be regarded as signs of inner states. As soon as another animal reacts, the expression becomes a signal (the announcement function). A function that is typical for human language is the descriptive or symbolic function. This function enables humans to utter statements that describe a state of affairs and that can be either true or false. Language is not just a phonetic system as studied by physicists and physiologists, Bu¨ hler emphasizes; it is also expressive of the thoughts and feelings of the speaker and receiver. Finally, linguistic signs have an objective content, one that has to be studied by the methods of the Geisteswissenschaften. Sign, signal, and symbol, then, are all involved in the psychology of language, and they correspond roughly to the aspects of experience, behaviour, and culture. Putting his arguments into the form of a syllogism, Bu¨ hler concludes that if language has the three irreducible aspects, and if language is wholly a psychological phenomenon, then psychology as a science must be broad enough to handle all three aspects.1 His student Peter Hofstätter has represented Buhler’s ¨ theoretical pluralism in psychology and linguistics as shown in Figure 5.1.2 It is from this comprehensive point of view that Bu¨ hler criticizes the various psychological schools. Behaviourism is criticized for its exclusively external, almost phonetic, study of human conduct, as well as for ignoring

Experience

Behaviour

OBJECT: SYMBOL figure 5.1. Bühler’s theoretical pluralism and theory of language, after Hofstätter, Psychologie.

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the meaning of behaviour. The intuitive psychology of Spranger, which seeks to achieve a wholly structural understanding of the mind is criticized for its steering clear of causal mechanisms, the function of which is precisely to bridge the gap between experience and culture. In Chapter 2 we have already met Buhler’s ¨ general criticism of Freud. In general terms still, this is the intellectual setting in which the young Popper writes this dissertation. His first goal is to defend Bu¨ hler’s pluralistic methodology against the objections of contemporary physicalism. As this topic is relevant for Popper’s view of the mind-body problem, I pursue it in Chapter 6. More relevant here is his second goal, which is to demonstrate the indispensability of Bu¨ hler’s pluralistic methodology for Denkpsychologie, and in this context a separate problem is the biological or evolutionary theory of cognitive development.3 For in the course of his discussion of Denkpsychologie it becomes clear that he is no less interested in the evolutionary theory of cognitive development than in the topic, which not only (formally) deserves but also receives the most extensive treatment, namely, the importance of Bu¨ hler’s methodological pluralism for Denkpsychologie. Bühler’s pluralism of aspects, Popper avers, has to be understood as an “evolutionarily oriented method in the broadest sense of that term, as a continuation of the methods which bear their stamp on the ‘intellectual development of the child.’”4 Yet again Avenarius seems to provide the general philosophical framework. This time his essentially evolutionary approach to the mind-body relation is wholeheartedly embraced by Popper. At the end of the first part of his dissertation he quotes Avenarius, saying that, whatever the specific relation between mind and body, given the eminent organizing role of mental processes in the struggle for life, the functional nature of the mind is beyond question.5 Rather than seeking to reconstruct a priori the area of Denkpsychologie in terms of Buhler’s ¨ triad of linguistic functions, Popper proposes to proceed in a methodologically more sound way and to investigate critically the actual methods of then current positions in psychology. This proposal reflects his general remarks about methodology in the introduction of the dissertation. Unfolding there his ideas on the relation between methodology and empirical scientific research, Popper closely aligns himself to Moritz Schlick (his second Ph.D. examiner), Heinrich Gomperz, and Kulpe. ¨ After quoting a passage from Schlick’s Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918), in which he explains that much as physiological knowledge can only explain and make intelligible how our limbs move rather than moving them, “epistemology can never pass judgement on the possibility or impossibility of a piece of scientific knowledge,” its task being only to clarify and to interpret, Popper contends that this view

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is applicable to all cases in which a theory corresponds with a certain practice: “It is, as I believe, essentially the relation between methodology and practical research.”6 The views of Gomperz and Ku¨ lpe, Popper goes on, agree to a large extent with the proposed view concerning the relation between methodology and scientific research. According to Gomperz, quoted approvingly by Popper, epistemology is a “secondary science,” absorbing but also fertilizing other sciences.7 Establishing next a point of contact between Gomperz and Ku¨ lpe, he argues that the method followed by such secondary sciences is a transcendental method.8 This use of the concept of “transcendental method” does not cover completely its use by its founder, Immanuel Kant, yet, Popper holds, what Külpe calls the “‘transcendental method’ (that is, starting from the facts of other sciences, which Gomperz and Ku¨ lpe too believe to be essential for theoretical philosophy)” is unmistakably a crucial part of Kant’s method.9 He concludes that methodology is a transcendental and critical science which always has to take its cue from the actual methods of the sciences: Well, in this sense the method of the methodology is also transcendental and critical. Methodology can never proceed in such a way as to prescribe a scientific practice to follow a certain method. She can only compare the methods used by the sciences and investigate them critically, she can stimulate, tentatively transpose a method from one area to another, she can assist in avoiding methodological mistakes, orient scientific research more functionally and so on. In all this, however, she always has to rely on the experiences of practical research, that is, finally on the analysis of the methods used by science.10

It is hard not to recognize in these early remarks traces of Popper’s later views of the relation between methodology and science. Indeed, in Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, for instance, the transcendental method is put forward as the most important method of epistemology: “The theory of knowledge is science-science: she relates to the empirical sciences as the latter relate to experience; the transcendental method is analogous to the empirical method.”11 And: “The theory of knowledge is a science-science, is a secondary science, a science of a higher sort.”12 Significantly, in this early work methodology relates exclusively to empirical psychology rather than to physics, as in Die beiden Grundprobleme and The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

Theoretical Pluralism and the Evolutionary Approach Popper’s preoccupation with an evolutionary theory of cognitive development is also reflected in the sequence with which he deals with Buhler’s ¨

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three aspects, for rather than starting to discuss the aspect most relevant to Denkpsychologie, the aspect of experience, he considers the one furthest removed from the traditional study of thought, but firmly rooted in the evolutionary sciences which receives credit for being the first in line: the behavioural aspect. Indeed, involved in the shift from introspective psychology to American behaviourism was a banishment of thinking from scientific investigation. Having absorbed Die Krise der Psychologie, Popper is well aware of the defects of American behaviourism, and before discussing the behavioural aspect further, he first quotes approvingly Bühler’s criticism of American behaviourism, saying that to observe animal behaviour is always to interpret it in intentional terms.13 Thus not so much American behaviourism is covered by the behavioural aspect as is Buhler’s ¨ intentionalistic notion of “meaningful behaviour” (sinnvollen Benehmen). Another sign of Popper’s engagement with an evolutionary theory of the intellect is his proposal to substitute the expression “functional behaviour” (zweckmässiges Verhalten) for “meaningful behaviour,” by virtue of its being more entrenched in biology. A related notion of zweckhaften Verhaltens, more than the notion of functional behaviour, is at the centre of Popper’s reflections on the behavioural aspect and reflects his earlier distinction between objectively and subjectively functional experiences. Popper’s explanation of this distinction is as follows. Functional behaviour is highly adapted to a specific situation. Were an animal to show maladjusted behaviour – for instance, a dog barking at a locomotive – it does not immediately follow that such behaviour is completely pointless; if it can be shown that the animal’s behaviour would have been functional in another situation, it is, although not objectively efficient, subjectively functional (zweckhaft). Subjectively functional behaviour, Popper avers, plays an important role in what he aptly calls “behaviouristic Denkpsychologie.”14 Initially he explains this role by means of a passage of Ernst Mach in his article “Der Begriff,” published in Die Principien der Wärmelehre (1896), in which he seeks to define knowledge as the stabilizing and abridging of the actual memories of past sensation in concepts, thereby creating useful tools for the organism’s adaptation to life. Mach observes that under different circumstances, which have nonetheless something in common, animals react in the same way. A young animal, for instance, typically grasps at a physical object which seems to it like food, licks at it, and puts it in its mouth. These activities, according to Mach, “produce new decisive sensual properties (smell, taste) . . . which in their turn produce further behaviour like throwing the object away.” He concludes: “I

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consider these similar activities as well as these similar sensual properties produced thereby, both of which somehow become conscious, as the physiological foundation of the concept ”; and then follows the passage quoted by Popper: “That which is reacted upon in the same way falls under one and the same concept.”15 According to Popper, Mach would have explained maladapted yet subjectively functional behaviour in the following way: the situation in which the animal behaves (objectively) ineffectively means the same to the animal (“falls under the same concept”) as that in which the same reaction would have been functional. The animal has made a “mistake,” it has “confused” the one for the other. Given the close kinship between the ideas of Avenarius and Mach, Popper’s appeal to the latter is unsurprising, but is also a sign of his not yet being emancipated from the sensualistic psychology of knowledge. It is noteworthy therefore that when resuming this theme in his sketch of a deductive psychology of knowledge, in 1933, the reference to Mach will be accompanied by critical comments on his sensualism and associationism. In 1928 Popper does not abandon Mach, yet the seeds of his later critical and dismissive remarks of sensualism and associationism are sown in the discussion of the behavioural aspect. Subsequent to the reference to Mach follows a discussion of the views of some authors, one of which is explicitly against Mach: the animal psychologist Hans Volkelt. Popper’s immediate reason for calling in the views of Volkelt, as well as the similar, but much less detailed, views of Gomperz and Kru¨ ger, is that there are two points to which Mach’s theory does not provide an answer. The first is that Mach does not explain further what is meant psychologically by the phrase “means the same to the animal”; the second is that the connection between Mach’s theory and the behavioural aspect of psychology is far from evident. The role of Volkelt’s theory in the genesis of Popper’s ideas on mind and knowledge, however, is much greater than its providing an answer to just two of these questions. ¨ In his much neglected Uber die Vorstellungen der Tiere (1914), Volkelt seeks to understand animal consciousness, how the animal sees and conceives its environment, in a way which differs from both behaviourism and unrestrained anthropomorphism. Far from calling the conscious life of animals into question, Volkelt nevertheless acknowledges the uncertainty of many inferences leading from the observation of the animal’s behaviour to its thoughts and feelings. In order not to fall prey to easy anthropomorphism therefore, he proposes to confine his investigations to those cases in which an animal, despite being in need of and confronted with a recognizably vitally important object, does not eat or even

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approach it. Because one knows for sure how the animal would have had to behave itself were it to recognize the object, the fact that it does not behave as it should is evidence for saying that it does not know or recognize the object. For were it to know or recognize it, it would have had to behave differently. Hence one can conclude safely from his behaviour to certain mental states.16 Under different circumstances, on the other hand, one can conclude from the animal’s behaviour towards the same, vitally important object, that it knows the object. Volkelt’s main question now is how it has to be explained that the animal, placed in the same situation, and receiving the same visual information, the one time is well adapted to the situation, and the other time not. A pupil of Kru¨ ger Volkelt proposes to explain this difference in behaviour in terms of complex qualities.17 One of the most striking features of animal behaviour, he observes, is its being adapted to a very limited scope of situations, and that it is more or less maladjusted to facts outside of this circle. For evolutionary reasons of thrift it is completely implausible to assume that the animal’s perception is of separate things, or even of atomic constituents of things in its environment when these things, as is this case, are nowhere operative in the perception of the animal but in those specific circumstances.18 Because the total situation (Gesamtsituation), rather than its elements, seems to determine the animal’s behaviour, animal consciousness somehow effects a synthesis of the sensory material. Put otherwise, animal consciousness consists of complex qualities. The coalescence of a multiplicity of situations into complex qualities is not the only cause of the finely tuned conduct of animals. Only on the further assumption that complex qualities are tied (Zuordnung) to specific ways of behaving, thereby becoming effective, is a full-fledged explanation of the adaptation of animal behaviour accomplished.19 The relevance of this theory for Denkpsychologie is emphasized by Popper when he quotes Volkelt’s comment: “In primitive consciousness complex qualities – despite their lack of structure – have the place which logical processing has in developed consciousness.”20 Much as humans react the same in different situations, for example, by concluding that different impressions inform them about the same danger, animal behaviour shows similar coordinations between, on the one hand, complex qualities, encompassing a huge number of different situations and, on the other, specific ways of behaving. The answer to Popper’s question, What can it mean psychologically that different situations have the same meaning for the animal? – and now I paraphrase Popper’s summary of

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the views of Gomperz, Kru¨ ger, and Volkelt – is that its visual impressions of both situations are embedded in the same complex qualities.21 It is only Volkelt, Popper goes on, who provides an evolutionary explanation of such exchanges. The extent to which complex quality and reaction are effectively coordinated, Volkelt contends, is proportional to the vital importance of the current situation.22 The animal organism is highly adapted to vitally important situations, and only in “vitally indifferent situations,” situations to which it is not adjusted, can the animal make “mistakes.”23 Thus Popper’s conclusion: “To the objective observer this reaction is a failure, but not to the animal: the animal acts subjectively functional.”24 By thus having shown that the introspective theory of Mach is confirmed by the behavioural observations of Volkelt, Popper believes to have demonstrated the indispensability of the behavioural aspect for Denkpsychologie. But, he goes on, a few additional remarks may not be left out. It is at this point that for the first time the emphasis is shifted from a methodological defence of Bu¨ hler’s pluralism of aspects to initiating an evolutionary theory of cognitive development, and it is here that the seeds of Popper’s deductive theory of mind and knowledge are sown. The following remark indicates Popper’s awareness of a conflict between, on the one hand, Mach’s sensualism and associationism and, on the other, the evolutionary approach of Volkelt. As Popper says: “On the basis of experimental observations of animals Morgan interprets the beginning of experience, of the ‘intellect,’ completely similar to Volkelt, even though, and like Jennings, by appealing more to the principle of association.”25 No further discussion of Volkelt follows, but, given the importance of the principle of association for Popper’s intellectual development, it is necessary to consider Volkelt’s dismissal of it. Under the heading of further consequences of his theory of complex qualities, Volkelt tackles the issue of inherited and acquired activities of animals. Like Morgan (and Bu¨ hler), Volkelt considers changes of inherited connections between sensory receptions and motor reactions the most primitive form of learning, but unlike Morgan he proposes to explain changes in terms of a theory of assimilation. Explaining Morgan’s view, Volkelt recounts that chicks, pheasants, and other birds have an instinctive tendency to strike at first indiscriminately at anything of suitable size – grain, small stones, breadcrumbs. There does not seem to be any inherited discrimination between nutritious and nonnutritious objects, or between those which are nice and those which are nasty. This distinction has to be learned.

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In one of his experiments, Morgan threw out cinnabar larvae, distasteful caterpillars marked by alternate rings of black and golden yellow.26 Although seized at once by the birds, they were dropped uninjured and seldom touched a second time. According to Volkelt, an associative explanation, as put forward by Morgan, fails to do justice to the facts and, instead, has to be replaced by one in terms of complex qualities and assimilation. Having had a distasteful experience, the next time the chicken sees a caterpillar this second impression is completely different from the impression before having had the nasty taste. Having disturbed the initial experience (complex quality) of the caterpillar completely, like a stone on the surface of the water, the distasteful experience can no longer be conceived as an associated image in addition to the impression; rather the two have become coalesced, indissoluble. Upon a subsequent occasion the caterpillar, rather than inducing an impression which becomes connected with a distasteful experience by association, and which in its turn induces aversive reactions, at once prompts the earlier total experience. That is, this second experience of the caterpillar arises not by association but by becoming assimilated by the earlier experience. As Volkelt concludes: “Instead of an association between a multiplicity of elements therefore we assume a total assimilation.”27 By putting forward his theory of complex qualities Volkelt, then, not only takes issue with Mach’s sensualism but also with association psychology as still endorsed by Morgan. Although Volkelt’s book appeared a year after Selz’s first book, there is no evidence for Volkelt’s having read Selz, yet the similarity between their views is striking. Indeed the concept of assimilation seems to do much the same work in the acquisition of motor capacities as the concept of anticipation. It is therefore interesting to see that Popper, after having discussed Volkelt, and still concerned with an evolutionary theory of cognitive development, turns to Selz’s interpretation of animal behaviour as well as Bu¨ hler’s theory of stages. As Popper observes: [Selz] finds a connection only with certain outstanding intelligent achievements of chimpanzees. This has to do with the fact that he builds his fully introspectionbased theory from the higher end of the developmental row. Although Selz is clearly strongly biologically oriented, his theory of the operations of thinking does not yet establish a connection with the most primitive ways of behaving. This gap is bridged by Bühler’s “theory of three stages”: instinct-training-intellect.28

Especially the reference to Bu¨ hler will be welcomed by those who believe that Popper’s later work is much indebted to his theory of stages, yet it

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seems to have been made more out of respect for his teacher than on purely intellectual grounds. For it must be remembered that Bu¨ hler’s stage of training is straightforwardly associative and, in that respect, closer to Morgan than to the views of those with whom Popper seems to sympathize most: Volkelt and Selz. Popper’s familiarity with Selz’s nonassociative theory of trial and error is beyond dispute, for in the very chapter of Selz’s Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums to which he refers, the one about Köhler’s study of chimpanzees, his notion of trying-out behaviour is centrally important. Moreover, as we will see soon, Popper even refers to Selz’s idea of trying-out behaviour. As one who had at least an inkling of the overall scheme of Selz’s Denkpsychologie, Popper, at this juncture, could have derived Selz’s criticism of Buhler’s ¨ theory of stages. As we saw at the end of Chapter 4, Selz objected to Buhler ¨ not just for his appeal to an inadequate, because associative, theory of learning, but also to his proposing a nonintegrative view of development. In Buhler, ¨ Selz avers, the nonassociative stage of the intellect, or insight, is a developmentally later stage superimposed on the older stage of training. By conceiving intellectual reactions as a system, of specific responses, Selz’s theory allows for the integration of intellectual responses into an already existing, more primitive system of specific responses. In that respect the intellect is not a new and different system, as Bühler maintained. This idea, admittedly without referring to Bu¨ hler, is expressed by Selz in a passage quoted by Popper in his dissertation: “At least for a limited area we have demonstrated that new modes of response of organisms arise systematically from previously developed effective (i.e., life-supporting and life-enhancing) modes of response, and can thus be made comprehensible.”29 One of the consequences of this integrative theory of developmental stages is that it enables Selz to bridge the very gap which, according to the young Popper, is left by his theory: the one between higher cognitive processes and primitive ways of behaving. Indeed, it is Buhler’s ¨ theory of stages, Selz concurs, which creates a gap. In his treatment of the remaining two aspects of psychology it becomes increasingly clear that Popper comes to adopt Selz’s, rather than Bühler’s, evolutionary theory of stages. The discussion of the second aspect of psychology, lived experience, is the least original part of Popper’s dissertation. He commences this topic by noting that Denkpsychologie is haunted by methodological problems. First, there is Comte’s methodological complaint that self-observation during thinking is impossible. Second, there is the enormous heterogeneity of schools and approaches within Denkpsychologie ; Popper distinguishes

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at least ten different schools. Unsurprisingly, he prefers the “Ku¨ lpean school” of Ach, Buhler, ¨ and Selz. As to the problem of self-observation he expects that the experimental method of self-observation developed and practised by the Wurzburgers ¨ will be capable of circumventing Comte’s problem.30 However, even excellently designed experiments will have to take care not to fall prone to one of the following three sources of methodological errors in the handling of the protocols of self-observation: individual differences, the expertise of the subjects, and the prejudices of the subjects. Despite these perennial methodological problems Popper concludes that a theory of thinking that does not verify its views via the method of experimental self-observation will always be a failure. In the final part of this section, resuming the thread of an evolutionary theory of cognitive development, Popper makes some comments which simultaneously show the formative influence of Selz and the still rudimentary phase of his thoughts in this area. Emphasizing the theoretical importance of an evolutionary approach to the study of experience on the grounds that it would enable investigators to connect the most subjective aspect of psychology with the two more objective aspects – namely, behaviour and culture – Popper mentions especially Selz: “Both the attempts and the results of Otto Selz agree perfectly with this program. He attempts with success to interpret biologically the observed operations of thought [Denkoperationen]. At the end of his Kurzgefasste Darstellung, he formulates his views on this point with the following words.”31 Then follows the passage already quoted in Chapter 4, in which Selz announces the “biology of the inner.” Indicative of the still rudimentary character of Popper’s evolutionary theory is that it is precisely in this passage that Selz at the same time dismisses “the senseless play of associations” as an adequate explanation of cognitive development and proposes his integrative theory of stages, which not only supplies important correctives to Bu¨ hler’s theory but also accords no autonomous place whatsoever to the intuitive method favoured by the Geisteswissenschaften. As we will see in the next section, Popper’s later repeated attacks upon association psychology, and his alternative view that all acquired knowledge consists of the modification of previously existing, evolutionarily important forms of knowledge, owes much to Selz’s announcement of a biology of the inner. Foreshadowing this later antiempiricist project, Popper concludes this section by pointing out that Selz’s criticism of the “meaningless principle of association” still has to earn its place in theory of meaningful thought processes. The section on the objective products of the mind, or culture, shows the same pattern as the preceding ones: a rather obligatory and cumbersome theoretical discussion arguing for the need of the aspect of culture

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for Denkpsychologie suddenly shifted towards the project of an evolutionary theory of cognitive development. Popper recalls Bu¨ hler’s attempt to derive the indispensability of the third aspect from the representative (Darstellung) function of language. Investigating the role of thought in relation to the aspect of objective products of the mind means, according to Popper, to enquire about the achievement of thought in relation to representation and to confront this achievement with the achievement of language. Two approaches to this question are discussed. The first position draws a contrast between thinking as the act of representing or coordinating, and language as the means of representing. The discussion of this position, which Popper relates mainly to Schlick, is complicated and obscure, yet there are some interesting points foreshadowing clearly his later views of world 3 (which are taken up in Chapter 6). In general Popper deems the prospects of this approach for Denkpsychologie rather dim.32 As Popper sees it, much better prospects for psychology come from raising the question about what the representational function of thought achieves in an evolutionary sense. The most striking example of the evolutionary value of representation, according to him, are the natural sciences. Wundt is credited with having pointed out the importance of the study of the objective products of the mind (Völkerpsychologie) for Denkpsychologie. In his footsteps, Volkelt and Karl and Charlotte Bu¨ hler have investigated autobiographies, fairy tales, and child drawings.33 As far as science is concerned, Popper goes on, the following phylogenetic stages can be discerned: magical ritual, dogmatic speculation, and critical science. Alluding to his thesis of 1927, but not referring to it, he concludes that especially dogmatic and critical thinking manifest themselves psychologically clearly in the objective products of the mind, as well as in conduct and experience. Typical of the hasty and sketchy style of the dissertation, Popper suddenly leaves the discussion of the representational function of thought and shifts again to the project of an evolutionary epistemology. Having argued that a parallelism of structure between, on the one hand, subjective experiences and, on the other, objective cognitive structures as revealed by logic has to be discarded as wildly implausible, he now turns to the method of scientific research (Forschungsseite). His contention is that the Forschungsseite of science does have a counterpart in Denkpsychologie. It is here that the earliest traces of his later method of trial-and-error elimination are to be found. Perhaps there are important parallels in the methods and operations of the scientific and the “prescientific” induction?

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To give just one example: the Selzian concept of trying-out behaviour [probierenden Verhaltens] seems to me to have important parallels in objective scientific research. Science tries out its methods, its “models” (as Bühler puts it), and in such a way as to correspond completely with the Selzian scheme [dem Selzschen Schema]. As is well known the actual ways of scientific research [Forschungswege der Wissenschaft] in no way correspond with the logical principles of the representation [den logische Prinzipien der Darstellung]; as little as the operations [Operationen] described by Selz correspond with the objective logical operations. Despite the fact that science is in the end clearly driven by tasks [aufgabegesteuert], the determining tendencies [determinierenden Tendenzen] come clearly to the fore. Selz himself has several times made use of the example of scientific research; although not in the sense in which we here propose. His analysis encompasses not the objective cognitive forms, not objective scientific research; rather he analyses certain scientific discoveries under the aspect of experience. Yet, not until we have adapted the semasiological area, in which a sharp demarcation between epistemology and psychology becomes possible, can our proposal to compare the scientific and prescientific operations of induction, precisely because it intervenes in the realm of epistemology, be carried out.34

The earliest sign of his concern with the nature of scientific research, this passage, with Selz calling the tune, unmistakably shows Popper’s ideas on the logic of scientific discovery emerging in the context of the psychology of scientific discovery. To be sure, as the passage also shows, Popper is fully aware of the threat of psychologism for his own methodological project of scientific discovery, yet in the postwar years he will unwaveringly adhere to his proposal to compare individual and scientific cognition and use the (Selzian) method of trial and error as a measure.35 Indeed, he will give the (Selzian) method of trial and error the highest general sense possible, incorporating not only individual psychology but all the sciences, including the Geisteswissenschaften, and evolution. On the other hand, the promise to explore the “semasiological area,” a term adopted from Gomperz, will not be fulfilled, either in the dissertation or in the The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Hacohen therefore is surely right when he says that the “ambitious program” of semasiology was finally completed in the 1970s, when Popper formulated his principle of transference, allowing a three-stage model of learning or problem solving applicable to animal learning as well as to the upper reaches of all scientific research.36 But what he fails to see is that this later solution of the semasiological questions raised in his 1928 thesis is a direct consequence of his adopting a Selzian stance in epistemology. Indeed, it is precisely his adherence to the pluralistic methodology of Bu¨ hler and Gomperz, sensitive to the different perspectives and disparate explanations of the various sciences, including epistemology, that the young

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The Bucket Theory, Otto Selz, and Pedagogy

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Popper is unable to answer the semasiological problem. The rejection of any Geisteswissenschaft, along with the attendant proposal of the methodological unity of the sciences, is, as we have seen in Chapter 4, part of Selz’s ambitious plans of the “biology of the inner,” but at this juncture Popper seems not that far advanced. His own explicit rejection of any Geisteswissenschaft, as well as the extension of the model of the natural sciences into the social sciences, will have to wait another sixteen years when writing, respectively, “The Poverty of Historicism” and The Open Society and Its Enemies. Another indication of the still rudimentary grasp of the depth and implications of Selz’s work at this juncture is his repeated use of the term “induction,” from which we may definitively conclude that, in contrast to what the autobiographical sketches in Unended Quest and Conjectures and Refutations urge us to believe, Popper, as late as 1928, still endorses an inductive methodology. For, as was pointed out in Chapter 4, Selz’s detailed and frontal assault on association psychology and his defence of a theory of schematic anticipations in fact boiled down to a view of the animal or human organism as an active cognitive subject constantly putting forward tentative proposals or hypotheses rather than as a passive recipient, patiently waiting for the accumulation of information to be inductively safe. Fully embracing what he calls the “Selzian scheme” of problem solving therefore means that the material for building a deductive, and problem-driven, methodology and epistemology is already available to him in 1928, yet the inductive paradigm has such a strong hold on him that it prevents him from drawing the revolutionary implications of Selz’s work. In the next section we will see how Popper makes a move nearer in the direction of a deductive theory of knowledge and science by first discarding, again within the framework of Selz’s Denkpsychologie, the bucket theory of knowledge and science.

The Bucket Theory, Otto Selz, and Pedagogy “Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychology” was Popper’s second piece of writing in psychology, yet it was seen to contain no thematic overlap whatsoever with the manuscript on dogmatic thinking one year earlier. Indeed, the analysis of the Gesetzerlebnis, carefully laid out in 1927, is conspicuous by its absence in the dissertation, which, as I have attempted to show, contains the roots of Popper’s method of trial and error. Yet the method of trial and error is a theory of the interplay between dogmatic thinking and critical-error elimination, so the question is how and

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when Popper came to transform his earlier theory of dogmatic thinking into his evolutionary theory of cognitive development, conceived both as a theory of individual and scientific development. To appreciate the enormous difficulty of integrating the early view on dogmatic thinking and the later theory of trial and error, it is important to note that their respective basic assumptions are fraught with considerable tension. The early theory of dogmatic thinking is primarily a theory of a stage of human character, which, because of its prejudiced nature, its inclination to hold on passively to what is familiar, and its fear of the unknown, has to be overcome and replaced by the active engagement through self-activity (Selbsttätigkeit) typical of critical thinking. In the later theory of trial and error, by contrast, dogmatic thinking, in every phase of the growth of (scientific) knowledge, is an indispensable route to objective knowledge. Not only is critical thinking active; dogmatic thinking too is now conceived as an active process of putting forward trials or hypotheses, thereby changing from an inductive and associative process to a form of noninductive or deductive learning. How did this reversal come about? The ensuing development of Popper’s thoughts on psychology shows that the transformation from the early view of dogmatic thinking into an evolutionary theory of cognitive development takes shape only gradually and, by first returning to the psychological questions raised in the thesis of 1927 concerning pedagogy. In a short publication, “Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit,” in the monthly journal of pedagogical reform, Die Quelle, edited by Eduard Burger, Popper again proposes to deal with a pedagogical controversy from a psychological point of view. By now his stance in psychology has shifted definitively from a blend of Denkpsychologie and personalistic, individual psychology to the work of Selz. In particular, he attempts to show how Selz’s theory of schematic anticipations, which is at the same time a theory of thinking and memory, can help to resolve a debate between, on the one hand, the Lernschule and, on the other, the Arbeitsschule of Burger concerning the role of rote memory in education. To the extent that the article is about pedagogy, and especially about certain psychological presuppositions of pedagogy, it is a continuation not of the dissertation but of the thesis on dogmatic thinking, yet it seems that the article could not have been written without a more thorough examination, and assimilation, of (Selzian) Denkpsychologie than has been the case in the thesis of 1927. Indeed, by focusing in particular on the defects of association psychology Popper in fact resumes and elaborates his earlier suggestion that Selz’s repudiation of association psychology “still has to earn its place in psychology.”

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The debate between the Lernschule and the Arbeitsschule concerning the role of memorization in education is the immediate occasion for Popper’s article. The labour schools attempted to steer education away from a drill-school approach, typical of the Lernschule, towards seeking children’s active engagement through self-activity and critical thinking. In fact, Popper notes, the battle between these two camps has already been decided in favour of the Arbeitsschule, but, he goes on, certain onesided developments within the labour school movement have neglected to confront what is in fact the strong point of the Lernschule: the role accorded to memory. He concedes that the emphasis laid upon the accumulation of dictated knowledge by the Lernschule has been too strong, yet Popper, following Burger, warns that this objection can easily invite the Arbeitsschule to neglect the role of memory in favour of the education of purely intellectual functions (e.g., Bu¨ hler’s stage of the intellect). His goal is not simply to redress the balance between purely intellectual functions and memorization but rather to defeat the Lernschule in its own area and to show that its view of memorization itself is mistaken. Having a huge amount of knowledge at one’s disposal is the ruling principle of the Lernschule (Stoffprinzip). This principle demands a lot of memorization. Mnemonic exercise is achieved, according to the school, by accumulation of knowledge and frequent repetition of this material. While approving of the pedagogical importance the Lernschule attaches to memorization, Popper sees the weak point of the school’s program in the way it believes that mnemonic exercise is achieved – that is, the problem with the Lernschule is not pedagogical but psychological. The ensuing description of the psychology underlying the pedagogical program of the Lernschule shows Popper using for the first time a metaphor which will figure prominently in his later writings: “To the Lernschule memory is nothing but a container of material, a sort of bucket of knowledge.”37 The essence of memory, on this view, is to let in and store knowledge. Indeed, the only properties of the bucket are its more or less reliable storage of knowledge, and its having a certain space. The consequences for pedagogy, Popper concludes, are that mnemonic exercise can only be achieved by repeating the process of storing and retrieving of information as much as possible and by an accumulation of dictated knowledge which will enlarge memory space. Popper’s subsequent use of the metaphor of the bucket occurred in 1948, in the article “The Bucket and the Searchlight Theory: Two Theories of Knowledge,” which was not published in English until 1972, in Objective Knowledge. One of the striking differences between these two

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articles is that whereas Popper, in 1931, introduces the bucket theory as a purely psychological theory, the emphasis in 1948 is on epistemology throughout. Furthermore, there he not only hides the psychological roots of his genetic epistemology from view, but the pedagogical context in which his criticism of association psychology initially arose is totally absent.38 A third difference is that in 1931 the Bucket theory is not yet overturned by what Popper regards as one of his great achievements: a searchlight theory of the mind. The theory that does replace the bucket theory in 1931, however, is the theory of Otto Selz. As Popper goes on, This view of the psychology of memory, which I have elaborated here in a rather rough form, is more or less the same as the outlook of association psychology. Unfortunately, association psychology, even though its very complete breakdown has been the main result of psychological research at the turn of the century, is still widespread. This decisive turn in the psychology of thought (and of memory) was initiated by Kant and carried through, according to strict experimental methods, by the school of Külpe, especially Bühler and Selz.39

The fundamental mistake of association psychology, Popper argues, is its attempt to derive the whole of human memory, even the whole of intellectual capacities, from a single and simple form of associative memory (what he calls the bucket). Popper’s alternative account of the genesis of the different functions of memory follows Selz’s Denkpsychologie in detail. The role of associative memory, he observes, is restricted to the processing of nonsense syllables in the laboratory, but even in such rather artificial situations, Popper argues, subjects often establish meaningful connections between stimuli. With this understanding of meaning, Popper concludes, thinking enters memory and “The laws of the mechanisms of association are replaced by the ‘laws of ordered thinking’ (Selz).”40 And a few lines further: “Selz has coined the name ‘intellectual operations’ for the functions of thinking.”41 That Popper’s alternative account of memory and memorization wholly depends for its conception on ideas he takes over from Selz is corroborated by a further passage in which the latter’s theory of schematic anticipation is put forward as providing the Arbeitsschule with the required notion of psychological activity underlying even rote memory: Selz has shown that “reproductive thinking” is an extremely active process, a production process [Arbeitsvorgang]. The important method, the important tool of this production process, is the scheme of thought [Denkschema]. In this scheme an unoccupied space [Leerstelle] takes the place of lacking thoughts (or pieces of thought), thoughts that have to be reproduced. The systematic completion of

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these unoccupied spaces of the scheme (the “determined complex completion”) leads to reproduction.42

Rather than being a passive and mechanical process, Selz has taught, human memory turns out to be a systematic reconstructing of schematic anticipations and their gaps. Denkpsychologie has clearly demonstrated, Popper explains, that forgotten information has not simply been overlooked but has left “an unoccupied space in memory, analogous to the unknown x in a mathematical equation, which prompts the urge to fill it in (complex completion).”43 Retrieving information from memory thus becomes a process of “methodically reconstructing schemes of thought.”44 In this way inculcating information can be changed from a dull mechanical process into a conscious and methodical procedure evoking the child’s interest and giving it pleasure. “Inculcating, then, becomes a process of thinking [Denkarbeit].”45 It is this psychology of memory, Popper believes, that can help steer education away from the Lernschule, in which children are treated as empty buckets to be filled by the accumulation of knowledge, towards seeking children’s active engagement through thinking, without neglecting the role of memorization in favour of the exercise of purely intellectual functions. Selz’s Denkpsychologie, as Popper sees it, is a natural psychological foundation for Burger’s pedagogical idea that education is the systematic development and perfection of teaching methods (“learning to learn,” what is called the Kraftprinzip in contrast with the Stoffprinzip). To fight the drill schools, therefore, Popper summons pedagogues to abandon not the exercise of memory but the appeal to associative memory. He professes even deep scepticism as to the question whether associative memory is capable of developing at all. Perhaps, he says, associative memory is a primitive and rather fixed disposition of the human mind. Yet abandoning teaching methods based on associative memory, Popper avers, need not imply a division of labour with, on the one hand, the Lernschule inculcating elementary facts of mathematics, language, and history, and, on the other, the Arbeitsschule, focusing on the exercise of higher intellectual operations. On the contrary, even getting rows of numbers and words firmly into one’s head may profit from the new view of intellectual operations as developed by Selz. Although the article in no way refers to the thesis of 1927, its line of reasoning clearly fits in Popper’s early project, in particular his attempt to revolutionize the concept of habit, a project advertised by him in 1963 as his overthrow of the bastion of Humean inductive thinking

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in epistemology. Having noted that the bottom-up attempt of compiling the higher forms of thinking from the mechanisms of association, so characteristic of association psychology and the related constellation theory, has completely failed, Popper is anxious to point out that memorization guided by “the laws of ordered thinking,” although equally mechanical, is yet completely different from associative memory; he dubs it “automatized insightful memory” (mechanisierte judiziöse Gedächtnis). The difference turns out to be less an ontological one, as suggested by his categorizing of associative memory and automatized insightful memory in two different layers of the mind, respectively, training and intellect, than a matter of genesis. Indeed, automatized insightful memory is defined by opposition with the (failed) bottom-up approach of association psychology, its genesis proceeding the other way round: This one consists in a reduction of certain processes, certain reaction chains [Reaktionsketten] of ordered thinking, by way of a continual repetition of the course of reactions; indeed, it is even possible that the awareness of the middle parts of the chain completely fades away, and that finally only the part at the beginning and the one at the end of the chain appear immediately connected with one another. (The criterion distinguishing between a mechanical, associative memory, and automatized insightful memory is therefore the fastness of the abbreviation.)46

The key distinction is that in a theory of ordered thinking the process of mechanization sets in later than in an associative theory. Only after the pupil has familiarized himself with the relevant piece of memorial knowledge by means of the intellectual operations as described by Selz can mechanization be initiated. The result in both cases seems to be the same, yet the difference is as big as that between a skilled “piano player and a gramophone record.”47 As this analogy indicates, insightful memory becoming automatic is a process on a par with the development of skills, of know-how. It is here that the relevance of the thesis of 1927 comes in. Seeking to revolutionize the traditional concept of habit, Popper, in 1927, appealed to Groos’s law of mechanization, which was in fact an explanation of the genesis of know-how. In Groos, however, mechanization was seen to be a purely associative process. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Popper no longer relies on Groos in his article of 1931 but instead on Selz. Indeed, his specific wording that repetition induces the “chains of ordered thinking” to become reduced to such an extent that “only the part at the beginning and the one at the end of the chain appear immediately connected with one another” echoes Selz’s explanation of unmediated problem solving and skills.48

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Scrutiny of “Die Gedächtnispflege under dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit” then has unmistakably shown that Popper’s rejection of association psychology had nothing to do with his insight that this traditional view, to which he himself had subscribed several years, “was merely a translation of Aristotelian subject-predicate logic into psychological terms.”49 On the contrary, his arguments for rejecting the bucket theory of memory were seen to be straightforwardly empirical, for it was Selz’s integrative theory of cognitive development, with its emphasis on the reconstructive role of schematic anticipations, even in those departments of the mind usually considered to function entirely passively and associatively, which made him realize the total bankruptcy of association psychology. Accordingly, his reasons for shifting from psychology to philosophy in 1931 cannot have been logical either. Moreover, Popper’s contention that he shifted from psychology to philosophy because he found that Selz had anticipated his theories is not supported by the historical facts either, for rather than elaborating a psychological theory of his own, Popper, in 1931, draws completely on the antiassociative implications of Selz’s theory of schematic anticipations. Moreover, there are other, more intrinsic, reasons for assuming it quite unlikely that Popper’s career as a psychologist came to a halt with his discovery of Selz and marked the transition to his work in philosophy in which, by his own account, he began from scratch, that is, without somehow elaborating his earlier psychology. For one, his project of an evolutionary theory of cognitive and scientific development, commenced hesitatingly in his thesis of 1927, and increasingly taking hold of him in his dissertation of 1928, despite being delayed for almost sixteen years, is taken up by him in 1948, when elaborating his searchlight theory of mind and knowledge as an epistemological theory pivotal for understanding the growth of individual and scientific knowledge. But it is precisely before his changeover to philosophy, between 1928 and 1931, that this project takes a decisive turn when, for the first time, Popper abandons association psychology and aligns himself with Selz. Because, again by his own account, discovering that induction by repetition did not exist has been the key to his solution of the epistemological problem of induction, discovering Selz’s revising the laws of association by “the laws of ordered thinking” is intimately bound up with this epistemological revolution. For another, both in his dissertation and in the just discussed article on pedagogy we see Popper, although by then still a psychologist and pedagogue, operating in a way characteristic of his later conception of the job of a philosopher of science. Assuredly, he has not yet developed his criterion

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of falsification or replaced induction in psychology and science by deduction, yet the idea that the fate of epistemological and methodological proposals is sealed by their corresponding to the actual methods of scientific research, an idea explicitly defended in Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, is already there.50 In this respect the discovery of Selz may have been again a decisive turning point. As we have seen in the preceding section, Popper came to believe that the “Selzian scheme” of problem solving was not only valid for prescientific induction but also for scientific (inductive) research. In the article of 1931 he was further convinced of the adequacy of Selz’s theory as a theory of human memory (and thinking) and of the complete failure of association psychology. Given his lifelong belief that there is one basic cognitive procedure for individual cognition and scientific problem solving, his earlier contention that science is clearly directed by problems (Aufgaben) was thus further corroborated by Selz’s theory of the nature of human memory and thinking. With the bucket theory underlying association psychology corresponding neither to individual cognition nor to scientific research, Popper therefore, on the basis of Selz’s findings, concluded that it can safely be discarded as inadequate. The searchlight theory is not yet formulated in the article on pedagogy, yet Popper’s fully embracing Selz’s theory of schematic anticipations prompts him, immediately afterwards in the second half of 1931, to outline the contours of a deductive psychology of knowledge in the book which marks the beginning of his philosophical career, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie. In the next section it will be argued that the early version of the searchlight theory, Popper’s deductive psychology of knowledge, is a continuation of Selz’s theory of schematic anticipations as outlined in the article of 1931, thereby providing further support for my contention that Popper transformed the latter’s evolutionary theory of cognitive development into philosophically more adequate terms.

Otto Selz and Popper’s Deductive Turn Inspired by a meeting with Herbert Feigl in 1929 or 1930, Popper conceived the plan to write his first philosophical book, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, a project he finished in the summer of 1932. Two fundamental issues were the problems of induction and demarcation. The first volume of Die beiden Grundprobleme is devoted to a thorough discussion of the first problem, but the second problem, although also touched upon, had to be postponed to a second volume. According to the

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editor of the book, Troels Eggers Hansen, however, it is still an open question whether Popper also completed the second volume.51 The dialectic of Die beiden Grundprobleme strongly suggests a philosophical development zooming in on the problem of induction and finally resulting in the discovery of the importance of the problem of demarcation. Yet Hansen contests this picture of Popper’s development in Die beiden Grundprobleme and argues that the problem of demarcation came first. In particular, he claims that the discovery of the importance of the problem of demarcation was “not the outcome of the work on the problem of induction; but this work proved decisive [in achieving] a cogent solution of the problem of demarcation.”52 Although Hansen also takes the early manuscripts of Popper into account – indeed, his claim is largely based on the occurrence of the demarcation problem in “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’” discussed in Chapter 3 – he fails to involve in the discussion Popper’s shift in psychology. But it is precisely the shift from an inductively based psychology of lived experience to an evolutionarily oriented theory of problem solving which slowly prepares Popper’s deductive stance in the psychology of knowledge (Erkenntnispsychologie). The problem of induction therefore does seem to have been the first real problem for Popper in the psychology of knowledge, and the interesting question remains how this psychology is related to the equally deductive philosophical theory of knowledge. If it is true that the philosophical theory has arisen largely in interaction with the psychology of knowledge, thereby profiting from the evolution taken place in the latter, then of course Hansen’s claim becomes problematic. At first sight, Popper’s outline of the problem field in the first chapter of Die beiden Grundprobleme provides a difficulty for my view. In it Popper draws his implacable distinction between, on the one hand, the theory of knowledge focused on questions of validity and, on the other, psychology of knowledge concerned with the genesis of knowledge. Psychology of knowledge, he adds, is discussed only to dissolve and eliminate it from the proper philosophical questions. Moreover, Popper explicitly claims to have constructed his own genetic theory by “transferring” his deductive theory of knowledge to the psychology of knowledge, thereby simultaneously justifying the predicate “deductive” in the area of psychology and emphasizing the (historical) priority of his philosophy.53 But there are cogent historical reasons for urging a different view. In fact, Popper himself gives a clue to this alternative view when referring to his thesis of 1927. After concluding his sketch of a deductive

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psychology of knowledge, he assures us that his theory is supported by empirical research but promises that these results will be published later under the title of a “Theory of the Intellect.”54 As already remarked on in Chapter 1, this theory has been identified by the editor of Die beiden Grundprobleme as the second, and lost, part of the thesis of 1927. As also observed in Chapter 1, it is equally plausible to assume that this second part has never been written. In any case, neither the thesis of 1927 nor the dissertation of 1928 showed any sign of Popper’s abandoning the inductive paradigm, in psychology and in methodology. But then Popper cannot have constructed his deductive psychology on the basis of his deductive theory of knowledge between 1927 and 1928. It is only in 1931, in the article on mnemonic exercise, that he definitely breaks with association psychology and its “bucket theory” of memory. Significantly also, his initial inductive stance in psychology finally gives way under the load of the empirical findings and theoretical explanations of Selz’s noninductive theory of schematic anticipations. Although this development does still not exclude Popper’s having used his deductive theory of knowledge – the first appearance of which is in Die beiden Grundprobleme – as a blueprint for his deductive psychology, the almost simultaneous occurrence of his Selzian article and his writing Die beiden Grundprobleme makes an interaction between psychology and epistemology a far more likely assumption. More evidence for this latter view comes from Popper’s sketch of a deductive psychology of knowledge itself and its relation with the article on mnemonic exercise. Still subscribing to the associative theory of Stern, Buhler, ¨ and Groos, Popper, as we have seen in Chapter 3, had not yet reached that part of his alternative theory of habit which is in fact the core of his deductive epistemology – namely, anticipations preceding repetitions. Now having changed association psychology for Selz, is there any indication of his making progress as regards this crucial part of his epistemological project? His main concern in the article of 1931 is practical and so epistemological reflections are not expected to be forthcoming, yet some passages signal a burgeoning deductive psychology of knowledge and mind. Having repeated that associative memory and automatized insightful memory are fundamentally different processes, he goes on to say that the latter consists merely in an abbreviation of reactions. That is, rather than creating something new (knowledge, belief ?), mechanization only makes something disappear. His subsequent remark, “Where these reactions, these processes of reconstruction, are not shaped yet, there is nothing which can be abbreviated,” is, in the context of

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the article, a pedagogical warning not to let the process of mechanization begin too soon, but at the same time can be seen as conveying the “deductive” epistemological message that, because learning (mechanization of skills) can take place only on the basis of already shaped intellectual operations, these intellectual operations have to precede empirical knowledge acquisition. Indeed, in the outline of a deductive psychology of knowledge in Die beiden Grundprobleme, Popper, without referring to his 1931 article, will repeat this point but now by adding that “according to deductivism repetition can never lead to something new; on the contrary it can only make something disappear.”55 This contention will be elaborated further by Popper in his sketch of a deductive psychology of knowledge. Popper opens in a way congenial to my preceding interpretation: “In psychology of knowledge properly so called (or Denkpsychologie) deductive lines of thinking are to be found primarily among biologically oriented psychologists.”56 While expecting here the names of Bu¨ hler and Selz, Popper surprisingly mentions Mach, who is clearly not in the tradition of deductive Denkpsychologie but in the opposite camp of “inductive sensualism,” his new title for a psychology of knowledge drawn from association psychology and (British) empiricism. Quoting again Mach’s claim, “What is reacted upon similarly falls under one concept,” he now contends that it “contains . . . a view concerning our mental apparatus which distinguishes between a reactive side and a receptive side, and that for the processes of knowledge and thinking the reactive side is of decisive importance: knowing is connected with coordinations [Zuordnungen] between reactions and receptions.”57 This idea, Popper goes on, can be used for the construction of a deductive psychology of knowledge. Already surprising in the dissertation, here, in the context of designing a deductive theory, the appeal to Mach is scarcely convincing. For Popper and Mach nurture antithetically different conceptions of the evolutionary genesis of knowledge, respectively, a deductive and cognitive theory, and an inductive and sensualistic view. So how can Popper contend that Mach’s claim contains the building blocks for a deductive psychology of knowledge.58 It is one thing to say that in Mach’s explanation a distinction is made between a reactive and a receptive side of the physiological system, but it is another thing to say, as Popper does, that the reactive side is of decisive importance. This latter claim, crucially important for a deductive theory, is precisely what is denied by Mach: it is the new sensations of smell and touch produced by activities which are said to be decisive. Only in the antisensualistic work of Volkelt and especially of Selz does

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the idea of our knowledge of the external world being drawn from our mind, from its anticipatory schemes, and, initially, from behavioural anticipatory schemes, reach its clearest expression. The step from these ideas to a deductive psychology of knowledge is quite straightforward and largely a matter of rephrasing, whereas transforming Mach’s inductive sensualism to a deductive Denkpsychologie would be an intellectual tour de force sharply raising the intellectual prestige of its designer. Admittedly, Popper does drop the name of Selz later but in so parenthetical a way as to be out of all proportion to his real indebtedness to him. After having examined his reliance on Selz in his manuscripts of 1928 and 1931 therefore, every commentator has to concede that the former’s theory of schematic anticipations provided Popper with the blueprint for construing his deductive psychology of knowledge. For the evidence for this is undeniable. The allusions and parallels are simply too numerous to be denied. To begin with, his conception of cognitive processes exactly parallels Selz, who, as was recounted by Popper himself in 1931, coined the expression “intellectual reactions.” As Popper now, but without mentioning Selz, says: “Our knowledge and thinking are not to be conceived as a combining or associatively ordering of sensory experiences, of receptions; rather our thoughts have to be characterized as intellectual reactions.”59 That his reliance on Selz extends itself far beyond the terminological level, and in fact amounts to a complete assimilation of the “Selzian scheme,” is further testified by Popper’s emphasizing, and elaborating, the analogy between intellectual operations and motor operations, which was a key element in Selz. Like Selz, Popper contends that “Physiological reactions in general (not only intellectual ones), although naturally elicited by a stimulus (a reception), are as far as the specific form of the course of their reactions concerned exceedingly dependent upon the subjective conditions of the reacting apparatus itself.” This raises the question how (intellectual) reactions, drawn from the mind rather than from the world, nonetheless prove themselves adaptive in objective circumstances.60 In answering this question he drops the name of Selz, but only after first crediting Jennings with the finding of a solution: “To this question the theory of trial movements of Jennings for instance can provide an answer.”61 Popper here refers to what in Chapter 2 was discussed as Jennings’s principle of the selection of overproduced movements. This principle meant that animals learning to deal effectively with some obstacle in their environment typically try to effect their object in a number of different ways, many of which are inadequate and hence unsuccessful, but gradually

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find that certain efforts are more satisfactory in their results than others; these are repeated, and thus by successive limitations of the originally numerous and relatively indefinite trials the exuberant efforts are narrowed down to those which bring success; these become habitual through repetition. Echoing his earlier pedagogical work in the tradition of Groos and Selz, but now referring to Jennings, he points out that exercise and repetition merely abbreviate the series of trials and reactions rather than creating something new. Thus restating his earlier contention that repetition only leads to increasingly skilled performance, Popper, at this juncture, is no further in elaborating a deductive theory than he was in his earlier pedagogical and psychological works. Moreover, his reliance on Jennings, rather than providing further support for a deductive psychology of knowledge, only leads to eroding this basis because at the bottom of his theory of trial movements rules the principle of association. Indeed the cornerstone of Jennings’s theory is what he calls the law of the resolution of physiological states, saying that the resolution of one physiological state into another becomes easier and more rapid after it has taken place a number of times. This associative law, Jennings maintained, accounts not only for trial-and-error behaviour but even for associative memory. Selz, on the other hand, not only outflanked and discredited association psychology but also provided an alternative theory for both trying-out behaviour and “associative” memory which shifts the emphasis from the passive reception of sensory impressions to the active restructuring and completing of schematic anticipations, or, hypotheses. But this seems not to be the reason why Popper drops the name of Selz. Rather Selz seems to be named as further supporting the view of Jennings as just outlined by Popper. Subjectively preformed reactions, as the remark in question goes, “could adapt themselves through ‘trying-out behaviour’ [probierendes Verhalten] (Selz), through failure and finally fitness, to the objective situation.”62 Only in outlining how this adaptation comes about is full justice done to the deductive features of this process of knowledge acquisition, but in that phase of the sketch Selz is no longer mentioned, and it is clearly the author of the sketch who wishes to be credited for elaborating the theory. But here it is also manifest that he is in effect advancing Selz’s position. Thus, his remark that the structure of intellectual reactions, like the belief in causality, can be modelled on the structure of physiological reactions echoes Selz’s integrative theory of cognitive development.63 Likewise, his use of the centrally important concept of anticipation exactly parallels Selz’s contention that coordinations

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differ from associations in that the coordination “is not established by the experienced succession of stimulus and operation, but can precede it.”64 Indeed, the following passage is no more than a reworking of Selz: If the coordination [Zuordnung] between intellectual reactions and objective situations is established via trying-out behaviour, then the coordinations always precede their adequacy [Bewährung] in time. The coordinations therefore are as regards their adequacy anticipatory (as long as the reaction has not proved itself adequate, it can be called an “unfounded prejudice”). The fulfilment will also often fail to occur: the anticipatory coordination between reaction and stimulus is tentative. Therefore I dub the subjectively preformed intellectual reactions shortly “Anticipations.”65

This is almost an attempt to freeze Selz’s theory of schematic anticipations into oblivion by eschewing all mention of him; indeed, Popper even takes credit for having invented the concept of anticipation.66 Having earlier, in 1931, while explicitly referring to Selz’s theory of memorial knowledge, discarded the idea of the mind being nothing but the conduit for sense impressions, he now has finally come to appropriate his alternative psychological theory according to which our knowledge of the external world is drawn from our mind, from “trying-out anticipations, which are coordinated tentatively to the ‘material’ of receptions.”67 This theory of anticipations finally enables him to achieve his “revolutionary revision” of the concept of habit (Gewohnheit) announced in his thesis of 1927, for by equating still unfounded anticipations with unfounded prejudices (or dogmas), the early theory of dogmatic thinking is incorporated into the new evolutionarily oriented theory of problem solving, thereby transforming the Gesetzerlebnis from an essentially passive and conservative phenomenon, fearfully resisting what is new, into the initial and indispensable phase of an ultimately critical learning process continually exploring new territory.68 The core of what he called the Heimatgefühl is still recognizable in his new conception of unfounded anticipations, both notions emphasizing the importance for the shaping of (childish) character of the close-knit nucleus of what is familiar; however, by abandoning the early sensualistic restriction to what is directly given to self-observation, and opting for a theory of active trying-out behaviour, Popper believes to do better justice to the way this nucleus gradually broadens itself, ultimately prompting the child to transform and change his initial dogmatic thoughts. Perhaps the most important consequence of the new theory is its inherent denial of what is at the bottom of the mainstream, positivistic psychology of knowledge of Mach and Avenarius, and to which Popper

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felt attracted in 1927: induction and association. Aided by Selz’s theory of schematic anticipations and its correlate at the level of learning, the method of trying-out behaviour, Popper now comes to defend the view that before repetition can even set in, the organism already actively has put forward dogmatic trials which, like schematic anticipations, operate in a limited search domain and are ultimately defined by their serviceability to life. Drawing on the insights of contemporary Denkpsychologie therefore, Popper concludes that psychologically induction does not exist. The (psychological) problem of induction therefore has been a genuine problem to the young Popper, prior to and independent of the “two fundamental problems of epistemology.”69 Failing to recognize the autonomy of this psychology of knowledge almost automatically leads one into overlooking its role in the genesis of Popper’s philosophical rejection of induction, and hence in the denial of an inductive criterion of demarcation. For rather than having laid the blueprint for an as yet nonexistent deductive psychology of knowledge, Popper’s theory of knowledge clearly emerges in the process of appropriating and integrating Selz’s theory of anticipations into the deductive operations of philosophical reason. Indeed, only in shaking off his earlier sensualistic psychology of knowledge and replacing it by a theory of anticipations does Poppers also abandon his inductive stance in methodology and develop his well-known deductive theory. Accordingly, it is not so much the psychology of anticipations which is new in Popper as the specific linkage he establishes between, on the one hand, the classical epistemological notions of synthetic a priori knowledge and, on the other, the (Selzian) notion of anticipation. Anticipations, he claims, are forms of synthetic a priori knowledge, but a priori in a genetic sense only; anticipations can be refuted a posteriori.70 Precisely this (psychological) notion of a priori knowledge, of anticipations, Popper appeals to in his attempt, in the philosophical section preceding the sketch of a deductive psychology, to force a breakthrough in the deadlock between classical rationalism and classical empiricism, thereby making room for one of his most characteristic (and valuable) ideas, namely the hypothetical and fallible nature of all human knowledge. As he puts this idea there, the most general axioms of natural science are formulated without logical or empirical justification, but “in contrast to rationalism they are not accepted as a priori true (in virtue of their evidence), but as merely problematic, unfounded anticipations or tentative hypotheses. Their verification or refutation proceeds, strictly empirical, only on the basis of experience: by deducing propositions

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(predictions) which can immediately be checked empirically.”71 This “deductive empiricism” is clearly a synthesis of the Selzian emphasis on the genetic priority of tentative and risky anticipations in problem solving and the epistemological requirement that justifying proceeds on the basis of experience, and hence an unmistakable sign of the interaction between Popper’s psychological and philosophical theory of knowledge in the early 1930s.72 What all this strongly suggests therefore is that Popper, rather than transferring his deductive empiricism to an unexplored field in the psychology of knowledge, recognized the deep analogy between Selzian anticipations and (scientific) hypotheses, and in particular its enormous potential for criticizing alternative epistemological theories in philosophy. One of the first things it made him see now more clearly than ever before was an improper (reductive) form of psychologism common to the positivism and inductivism of Avenarius and Mach, the “Kantian” program of Jakob Fries and contemporary logical positivism.73 What these different versions of positivism share, according to Popper, is that sense experience is at the basis of all knowledge. Seeking to ground (scientific) knowledge in immediate sense experiences, or their linguistic correlate, “protocol sentences,” together with the elimination of all metaphysical ingredients which man, through “introjection” (Avenarius) imports into experience, these theories claimed to have found a safe haven for knowledge. Adopting Schlick’s terminology, Popper argues that this “philosophy of immanence,” fails to see that every judgement (Darstellung) transcends the immediately given sensory material.74 As he himself notes, transcending the immediately given is precisely what is to be expected from a nonsensualistic “psychology of intellectual reactions,” according to which anticipatory schemes function as hypotheses establishing a system of tentative connections between preexisting knowledge and unknown elements.75 Moreover and more important, conceiving natural laws to be merely summarizing descriptions, immanent epistemology holds an otherworldly view of scientific practice. The distinguishing feature of scientific practice, Popper claims, is rather the hypotheticodeductive method allowing scientists to make risky predictions transcending the bounds of immediate experience. To be sure, Popper partly adopts Schlick’s criticism of positivism here, but his characteristic view of scientific practice navigates towards what he, in 1928, called the “Selzian scheme” of problem solving. As we could observe at the end of the preceding chapter, Selz too endorsed a (deductive) view of scientific method consonant with his problem-oriented psychology of discovery.76

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Given this intimate connection between Popper’s development in the psychology of knowledge and his solution of the philosophical problem of induction, his solution of the problem of demarcation, based on the insight that induction does not exist, had to await the outcome of his emancipation from sensualistic psychology. The problem of demarcation may have occurred to him before the philosophical problem of induction, but given the span of about three years he needed to become aware of, and solve, the psychological problem of induction, it could equally well be said that both philosophical problems arouse simultaneously – in the early 1930s when writing Die beiden Grundprobleme. Also in virtue of this dependency of Popper’s solution to the problem of demarcation on his development in the psychology of knowledge, one has to be careful not to treat his discussion of “demarcation” in his thesis of 1927 on a par with the one in Die beiden Grundprobleme. Further evidence for my claim that Popper’s solution of the two fundamental problems of epistemology is dependent on his progression in the psychology of knowledge towards a Selzian evolutionary outlook, finally, comes from yet another early manuscript.

A Philosophical Breakthrough? The main philosophical question in “Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie” (1929), Popper’s thesis qualifying him to teach mathematics and physics, concerns the validity or truth of the axioms of geometry.77 It is the first time Popper speaks of a methodological (wissenschaftstheoretische) question, and in that sense Hacohen correctly speaks of a philosophical breakthrough.78 The topics discussed by Popper will be taken up again in Die beiden Grundprobleme and in The Logic of Scientific Discovery.79 Yet this continual preoccupation with problems raised in “Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie,” I argue, does not make it a breakthrough. It is not just – as Hacohen himself admits, thereby following Popper’s own account – that the manuscript is far from original, merely an exposition of secondary literature, but more important, to the extent that it is original it is still far removed from the position defended in his two later sequels. The crucial differences between these later discussions and the thesis of 1929 is that in the latter Popper is still in the grip of the Kantian notion of a priori valid knowledge, and the unbridgeable gap it creates with a posteriori knowledge. The idea of genetic a priori knowledge is not yet there, but it was precisely this notion which forced a breakthrough in the deadlock between classical

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rationalism and classical empiricism, thereby making room for the crucially important idea of the hypothetical and fallible nature of all human knowledge. In particular, Popper’s deductive empiricism, partly drawn from the psychological theory of anticipations, is conspicuous by its absence in the thesis on geometry. As a consequence, Popper’s methodological stance towards especially applied geometry gravitates much closer to conventionalism than in his later work. Part III of the thesis, especially sections 35–38, provides material most relevant for my contention. Popper’s discussion there takes its cue from “the problem of Helmholtz.” Hermann Helmholtz (1821–1894) disputed the Kantian claim that the axioms of (Euclidian) geometry were synthetic a priori principles necessarily true of space.80 Spaces for which the axioms of Euclidian geometry do not obtain are perfectly conceivable, and only experience, says the empiricist Helmholtz, determines which geometry to apply to reality. This conjecture was further confirmed by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which, as Schlick and Popper observed, compelled scientists to attribute non-Euclidian properties to space.81 Opposed to this empiricistic view is the conventionalist view put forward by Henri Poincaré. According to him, also discussed at length by Popper, discoveries in physics cannot dictate to us what form of geometry we must accept for describing the world. It is always possible, Poincaré maintained, to reinterpret physical theories in the light of different forms of geometry. The choice of a geometry is free, determined by convention, and the only reason for clinging to a certain convention – in Poincaré’s case, Euclidian geometry – is its greater mathematical simplicity. In contrast to his remarks on geometry in Die beiden Grundprobleme, Popper largely agrees with Poincaré, yet raises the question, “Why did contemporary physics after Einstein’s investigations on general relativity theory operate with Riemann’s non-Euclidian geometry?”82 This scientific development, Popper argues, shows that Poincaré’s observations are in one respect mistaken; the choice of the simplest (i.e., Euclidian) theory is in no way always practical and, under specific circumstances, can even be quite impractical: “Indeed, one can imagine physicalistic relations which will lead to a grotesque world view when retaining Euclidian geometry.”83 Popper subsequently describes a model of a non-Euclidian world, the interpretation of which in terms of Euclidian geometry would require the introduction of many ad hoc hypotheses concerning physical reality. But by means of such ad hoc hypotheses, Popper concludes his thought experiment, one can always prove what one wishes to prove, which is why science requires the greatest parsimony in the use of hypotheses.84

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Then Popper comes to his evaluation of the views of Helmholz and Poincaré. In claiming that discoveries in physics can dictate to us what form of geometry to adopt, Helmholtz is correct, but, as Popper hastens to add, it is not so much experience which forces us to do so – for, as Poincaré has shown, experience can always be interpreted differently – as the parsimony in the use of hypotheses. Yet Popper does not embrace empiricism, because Poincaré’s contention that the introduction of a specific geometry is merely a matter of convention and hence, a priori, is also correct.85 His mistake, Popper avers, is to prefer a simple geometry, leading to a complicated physics, to a (slightly) less simple geometry (i.e., non-Euclidian geometry), leading to thorough simplification of physics as established by Einstein’s general relativity theory.86 Thus accommodating both conventionalism and empiricism, Popper concludes by paraphrasing Einstein’s famous dictum, “Insofar as mathematical propositions relate to reality, they are not certain, and insofar as they are certain, they are not related to reality,” by substituting “not strictly valid” for “not certain” and “strictly valid” for “certain.”87 The history of Popper’s use of this dictum is already indicative of important differences between his thesis of 1929 and his later reflections on methodology, for in Die beiden Grundprobleme he proposes to replace “certain” and “uncertain” by, respectively, “nonfalsifiable” and “falsifiable.” This shift is subtle yet profound, for it marks Popper’s transition from the Kantian and conventionalist meaning of a priori in the sense of absolutely valid or certainly true, to the fallibilistic notion of genetic a priori knowledge, initially (in Die beiden Grundprobleme) formulated as “problematic, unfounded anticipations.” By the early 1930s Popper has not only navigated close to (deductive) empiricism, but the notion of genetic a priori knowledge, of anticipation, also enabled him to criticize conventionalism in a new and more radical way. Still seeing, in 1929, the difference between Poincaré’s notion of simplicity in relation to Euclidian geometry, and the empiricistic use of the same notion related to non-Euclidian geometry, as a gradual difference only, the latter being slightly less simple than the former, from Die beide Grundprobleme onwards, and most explicitly in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, he feels forced to distinguish between two different notions of simplicity. As he puts it now: “What the conventionalist calls ‘simplicity’ does not correspond to what I call ‘simplicity.’”88 The reason is that by now Popper equates the concept of simplicity with the concept of falsifiability.89 On this new view simple statements and theories are to be preferred to less simple theories “because they tell us more; because their empirical content is

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greater; and because they are better testable.”90 Not treating theories as falsifiable theories, the conventionalist, Popper insists, must mean something different by simplicity. Indeed, from Popper’s new perspective what the conventionalist calls a simple theory now appears as the converse, as “complex in the highest degree.”91 Holding on, in good conventionalist practice, to a certain system by introducing more and more ad hoc hypotheses, reduces its degree of falsifiability to zero. This consequence, Popper now realizes, is the reason for prescribing parsimony in the use of hypotheses. What was merely a recipe in 1929 is now embedded in a sophisticated logical argument. But as the history of these reflections on geometry has shown, not until first revising the classical notion of a priori knowledge, for which evolutionary epistemology provided the blueprint, could Popper have developed the logical argument. What this historical reconstruction also shows is the role of Einstein. In contrast to what Popper tells us in Unended Quest, Einstein’s revolution stimulated him in writing about methodology as late as 1929. Moreover, the demarcation problem is then not solved by him; it is not even raised. To be sure, the foundational problems concerning pure and especially applied geometry are connected with the demarcation problem in Popper’s later work, but in 1929 they merely provided a context for his first steps in methodology. The decisive step would be taken by him when he finally succeeded in revising traditional epistemology by means of the notion of genetic a priori knowledge – in short, anticipations.

The Theory of the Searchlight In a lecture delivered at the European Forum of the Austrian College in 1948, published as “The Bucket and the Searchlight: Two Theories of Knowledge,” Popper takes up the theme he first elaborated between 1928 and 1931, but without referring to his earlier work.92 Yet the resemblance of his description of the bucket theory with his 1931 account is obvious, the only difference being a shift in application: from a psychological theory underpinning certain educational theories to an epistemological view, inducing empiricistic and positivistic philosophy of science. Just as he observed in 1931 that “To the Lernschule memory is nothing but a container of material, a sort of bucket of knowledge,” inducing the educationally disastrous view that mnemonic exercise can only be achieved by repeating the process of storing and retrieving of information as much as possible, and by an accumulation of dictated knowledge, he now writes that empiricistic philosophy of science conceives of the mind as “a kind of

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bucket in which perceptions and knowledge accumulate,” inducing the equally disastrous view of inductivism.93 What is new is the “searchlight theory” of mind and knowledge. As a brief comparison with the article of 1931 and the sketch of a deductive psychology of knowledge reveals, however, the searchlight theory is merely a different, yet attractive and more adequate, name for the clumsy terminology of Popper’s early writings. The term “searchlight,” Popper explains, is meant to emphasize the priority that expectations, hypotheses, or theories have over observations in the process of acquiring knowledge. Much as what a searchlight makes visible “depends upon its position, upon our way of directing it,” observations are always “preceded by a particular interest, a question, or a problem – in short, by something theoretical.”94 The idea of a searchlight turns out to be an overarching one, stretching far beyond scientific discovery. Indeed, just as in his sketch of a deductive psychology Popper now explains his epistemological ideas by way of “a few biological remarks.” In a passage reminiscent of Selz’s theory of specific responses, he recalls that “We know that all living things, even the most primitive, react to certain stimuli. These reactions are specific; that is to say, for each organism (and for each type of organism) the number of possible reactions is limited. We can say that every organism possesses a certain innate set of possible reactions, or a certain disposition to react in this or that way.”95 Echoing his 1931 contrast, he goes on to explain that learning is to be conceived as a modification of these dispositions to react and not, as the bucket theory has it, as an accumulation of memory traces deposited by past sensual experience. That he is indeed advancing Selz’s position is evident from the sequel to this passage where Popper argues that his view of learning is closely connected with the notion of expectation or anticipation: “We may characterize an expectation as a disposition to react, or as a preparation for a reaction, which is adapted to [or which anticipates] a state of the environment yet to come about.”96 Disappointed expectations, he concludes, force us to correct them, and hence learning consists largely in the elimination of certain expectations. Thus rephrasing his Denkpsychologie, in the 1940s, as the searchlight theory of mind and knowledge, Popper has succeeded in erasing all the traces of Selz, yet it can be argued that even this brilliant metaphor is prompted by his reading, and especially his seeing, of Selz’s diagrams. Indeed, Figure 4.8, after Selz, not only functions as a searchlight but also looks as one. Although his philosophical work in the 1930s and 1940s shows an overriding priority of the philosophy of the natural and social (historical) sciences, including political philosophy, there are also traces of Popper’s

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searchlight theory of mind and the attendant rejection of a bucket theory of mind. Indeed, even in his perhaps most antipsychologistic book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, there occurs a passage which echoes his deductive psychology of knowledge of Die beiden Grundprobleme. Discussing the relation between theory and experiment, and arguing that the task of the latter is not to provide the former with the building blocks for inductive generalizations, he emphasizes that it is impossible to learn anything by unprejudiced and unguided observations, and that before one can observe anything at all one needs to have a theory telling one where to look. “A science needs points of view.”97 But now an implacable antipsychologist Popper carefully avoids an appeal to this psychology of knowledge in his rejection of inductive methodology or his defence of the falsificationist criterion of demarcation, and instead attempts to derive his methodology by means of the principle that it is to be “constructed with the aim of ensuring the applicability of our criterion of demarcation.”98 Yet, as he himself concedes, the connection between methodology and the demarcation principle is not a strictly deductive or logical one. On closer inspection even these logical arguments fail to conceal their dependence on the deductive psychology of knowledge. One way in which Popper attempts to derive his methodology from his demarcation criterion is in advocating the priority of theory to experiments. Rather than patiently accumulating evidence, he urges, we should first zoom in on the problem, propose various theories and only then develop experiments to test which is the best solution. Having repeated his claim that basic statements are accepted as a result of agreement, he goes on to argue: Thus the real situation is quite different from the one visualized by the naive empiricist, or the believer in inductive logic. He thinks that we begin by collecting and arranging our experiences, and so ascend the ladder of science. Or, to use the more formal mode of speech, that if we wish to build up a science, we have first to collect protocol sentences. But if I am ordered: “Record what you are now experiencing” I shall hardly know how to obey this ambiguous order.99

An important rule serving to establish a linkage between his view of the secondary role of experiments and the demarcation criterion is the one which says that one should not accept logically disconnected basic statements but only statements “in the course of testing theories, to be answered by the acceptance of basic statements.”100 As Berkson and Wettersten point out, this is not enough to establish the main point of contention, that is, the importance of first investigating alternative theories rather

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than gathering facts.101 Accordingly, that we should look for facts only as a test does not follow either. But from the perspective of his repudiation of the bucket theory of mind and his adopting the theory of anticipations, Popper’s plea to consider experiments only as a means of testing and criticizing theories appears logical. Being convinced that mind and memory actually operate as a “system of specific responses,” constantly trying out anticipations and learning from the resulting errors, he believes that the inductive method typical of the bucket theory of mind is pointless. In a later passage, bearing a close resemblance to the preceding quotation, this connection between psychology and methodology comes out quite clearly. For seeking to convince his audience in Vienna of the primacy of problems, he in fact has recourse to a (parody of ) a Selzian experiment to illustrate this claim. He gives his students the instruction “Observe!” which immediately makes them ask “what I wanted them to observe. Clearly the instruction, ‘Observe!’ is absurd. . . . Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task [emphasis added], an interest, a point of view, a problem.”102 The parody is that Popper offered his students a stimulus without an Aufgabe. The indispensability of the Aufgabe, or problem, was simply shown by this very reaction of the students. The purpose of another logical argument is to underpin the positive value Popper places on refutation in scientific practice. There are two aspects to this positive attitude towards refutations. The first is the prohibition against introducing ad hoc hypotheses in order to rescue one’s theory from refutation, the historical dependency of which on the theory of anticipations we already saw in the preceding section; the second is the recommendation to learn as much as possible from refutation, because it “has opened up new vistas into a world of new experiences.”103 To begin with the latter point, there is no reason to assume refutations to open new vistas of reality given solely the criterion of demarcation.104 On the other hand, if we assume that errors are always related to the structure of the problem and serviceable to the development of further solution methods, then the linkage is less unclear, but then also the dependency is the other way round. Despite his attempt to eliminate psychologism, Popper’s methodology remains intertwined with his Denkpsychologie. This does not mean that his campaign against psychologism is mistaken, though. The problem is that his definition of psychologism is ambiguous. If he means by it, as he in fact does, “the doctrine that statements can be justified not only by statements but also by perceptual experience,” then his dismissive

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attitude is quite understandable. But what he has in mind here is the use of the bucket theory of mind in the realm of epistemology as espoused by Mach, Avenarius, and the early Popper; Carnap’s project to base scientific knowledge on sense data may have served as another target for his campaign against this sort of psychologism. In the famous passage of The Logic of Scientific Discovery, “Elimination of Psychologism,” however, the science of psychology rather than psychologism in the preceding sense is at issue. But here Popper’s arguments for keeping psychology and epistemology apart fail, for we have shown that the latter significantly rests on the former. In his later work he came to realize this. Although he holds onto antipsychologism – psychologism always conceived in its reductive and subjective form – he in fact puts forward his Selzian program, now advertised as epistemology, then as evolutionary epistemology.105 Popper may well have been right in preferring the Selzian theory over the bucket theory of mind, yet, on his own puristic standards, using a supposedly true psychological theory in epistemology is as rampant a piece of psychologism as using a supposedly false one.

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6 Evolutionary Epistemology and the Mind-Body Problem

Evolutionary Epistemology and the Theory of the Searchlight When Popper in a talk on evolutionary epistemology triumphantly claimed that his theory of knowledge, with its emphasis on the method of trial-and-error elimination, overturned everything his predecessors had said up to now, his target was not only the British empiricism of Locke and Hume but also the attempts of his boyhood friend Konrad Lorenz to apply evolutionary theory to traditional epistemology.1 Popper was surely correct in distinguishing his theory from Lorenz’s, yet the distinctive features of his evolutionary stance are not as revolutionary as he claims but are firmly rooted in German Denkpsychologie. The fundamental distinction between Popper and Lorenz revolves around their relation to Kant’s notion of a priori knowledge. Whereas Lorenz (like Herbert Spencer did much earlier) uses evolutionary theory to reshape a priori knowledge in the image of Locke’s empiricism, Popper retains the original Kantian idea that there is, genetically, an a priori element in all forms of knowledge, including perceptual knowledge. His specific view of this a priori element clearly shows the heritage of the – Kantian – programme of German Denkpsychologie, notably Selz. To put this view briefly: (perceptual) knowledge is always preceded by anticipations, problems, or theories. Before explaining these differences between Popper and Lorenz in more detail it is instructive to have a look at Jennings’s earlier attempt to apply evolutionary theory to epistemology. In his later work on evolutionary theory, Popper points to the influence of the philosophy of “emergent evolution,” defended by Baldwin and Morgan.2 Not mentioned by him 153

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but arguably even more important is the view of Jennings. In an article in Science (1927), a copy of which is in Popper’s papers, Jennings eloquently and passionately argues for the doctrine of emergent evolution both as a program in biology and as a philosophy of science and life.3 He opposes the then prevailing mechanistic view of evolution as “the working of a great machine that never alters its mode of action nor the nature of its product.”4 The method of science based on this mechanistic and deterministic view of evolution, Jennings explains, is mainly rationalistic and, to but a minimal extent, empirical. On this view the task of (biological) science is merely to compute from a few elementary observations of the constituent particles their distributions and motions. Against this view the doctrine of emergent evolution holds that new things, not thus computable, emerge as evolution progresses: “It holds that with these emerge new methods of action, following new laws; methods not before exemplified; methods that falsify the results of computations based on former methods of action.”5 This emergence of new things distinguishes the living from the nonliving, Jennings maintains. From this standpoint of emergent evolution Jennings pleads for a radical experimentalism in science. Because there is always the possibility that new things or properties have emerged, he avers, they cannot be discovered by ratiocination but only by observations and experiment. Wholeheartedly embracing John Hunter’s maxim, “Don’t think; try!” Jennings concludes that thinking is a (fallible) instrument only for helping to decide what to try, “but the last word must be try.”6 Thus radical experimentalism as a philosophy of science and emergent evolutionism as a philosophy of biology are mutually supportive. The (inductive) method of trial and error is not only the method of science but also of evolution itself. Indeed, the only possible method for progress in emergent evolution is by trial and error, Jennings goes on. “In such progress by trial and error will indeed be found free play for the utmost sharpness of vision as to what it is best to try . . . but in the end a trial it must be, with no antecedent certainty as to results.”7 The similarities between Jennings’s advertisement for emergent evolution and Popper’s thoughts on evolution from the 1960s onwards are too great to be accidental. In putting forward the method of trial and error as the fundamental mechanism for progress in science, Popper, like Jennings, endorses the view that emergent evolution and the empirical method in science are the obverse side of the same coin, and that this radical experimental nature of science obliges one to a sceptical stance

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concerning knowledge. But, unlike Popper, Jennings is an inductivist and his notion of trial and error associationist. In this respect Jennings is closer to Lorenz than to German Denkpsychologie. The lesson Lorenz draws from evolutionary theory is that socalled a priori knowledge is a priori only ontogenetically; phylogenetically it is a posteriori.8 As Peter Munz aptly puts it, this distinction in fact amounts to a “Darwinization of Locke,” for where Locke simply assumed the reliability of our senses, Lorenz, by arguing that as a species evolves those of its sense organs which reliably indicate information about the world are selected, explains this reliability.9 According to Popper, this attempt at explaining a priori knowledge in terms of perceptual knowledge is completely misguided and simply another, evolutionarily inspired, form of the bucket theory of mind: true knowledge derived from the evolutionary accumulation of observations. What Lorenz misses, according to him, is Kant’s – and one should add, Selz’s – “hugely important fundamental insight” that observation is impossible without prior anticipation, hence the theory of the (animal) mind as a searchlight.10 As he puts this priority forcefully, “there is no sense organ in which anticipatory theories are not genetically incorporated.”11 Without genetic a priori anticipations, Popper goes on, what our senses tell us can make no sense. Thus, “The eye of a cat reacts in distinct ways to a number of typical situations for which there are mechanisms prepared and built into its structure: these correspond to the biologically most important situations between which it has to distinguish.”12 For this reason too, association psychology is doomed to failure. Indeed, besides Selz no philosopher in the twentieth century is so much opposed to association psychology as is Popper. As he self-assuredly claims, “there is no such thing as association or conditioned reflex. All reflexes are unconditioned; the supposedly ‘conditioned’ reflexes are the results of modifications which partially or wholly eliminate the false starts, that is to say the errors in the trialand-error process.”13 And in his most explicit psychological book, The Self and Its Brain (1977), coauthored with Sir John Eccles, his criticism of association psychology echoes not only Selz but also Volkelt’s notion of assimilation, discussed in his Ph.D. thesis: “Pavlov has to assume that all biologically important regularities to which the organism can adapt itself consist in coincidences. . . . But the structure of our environment to which we must adapt ourselves . . . has no similarity with Hume’s constantly conjoined impressions. . . . for something to be a stimulus, it must relate to the action programme of the animal.”14

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The searchlight theory of mind and knowledge, then, is the central doctrine around which Popper, in the 1960s and 1970s, organizes his version of evolutionary epistemology. The amoeba and Einstein alike, Popper famously argues, act as a searchlight, but it is only the latter organism that expresses his problems and solutions in language, thereby subjecting them to self-consciously critical scrutiny. Popper’s theory of language is another sign of his Wu¨ rzburg heritage, for it is Bu¨ hler’s theory on which he mostly relies. As was noted in Chapter 5, Buhler’s ¨ theory of language and the attendant theoretical pluralism in psychology form the first part of “Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie,” which was concerned with the mind-body problem. The extent to which The Self and Its Brain, and related work on the body-mind problem, is shaped by Popper’s Denkpsychologie has been severely underestimated in the literature, not to say completely overlooked. Perhaps owing to this historical negligence, Popper’s The Self and Its Brain has been badly received in current philosophy of mind. Written in a period in which various sophisticated forms of philosophical materialism reigned supreme, Popper’s book, despite his explicitly holding aloof from ultimate questions of ontology, has been interpreted and discarded as a variant of Cartesian dualism. In order to gain a more adequate historical perspective on Popper’s later theory of three worlds and the body-mind problem, therefore, it seems necessary first to return to his dissertation. The goal of this chapter is not so much to defend Popper’s theory of mind and body as to show that it grew out of a different intellectual soil; it was the late bloom of a typical European psychological and philosophical tradition that has been almost extinguished by history.

The Battle against Physicalism As was noted in Chapter 5, the first part of “Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie” is concerned with a defence of Bu¨ hler’s theoretical pluralism in psychology. These reflections unambiguously show that Popper’s early approach to the mind-body problem is epistemological and methodological rather than ontological. The leading question of this part of his dissertation is whether the introspective method is a viable method for achieving a scientific study of experience.15 In dialectical fashion Popper distinguishes three types of answer to this question: unconditional affirmation or denial, conditional affirmation or denial, theoretical pluralism. The first type of answer, in the sense of a

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denial, is perhaps only given by August Comte, who sought to replace the introspective method by a phrenological physiology. The second type of answer is spread over four groups of psychologists. At the one extreme there are defenders of the aspect of lived experience, like Wundt and Müller. At the other extreme three groups oppose the place and role of lived experience in scientific psychology: behaviourists, like Watson and Jennings, defending exclusively the aspect of objective behaviour; the more culturally inclined psychology of Dilthey and Spranger, emphasizing the interpretation of the achievements of the human mind; a physicalist and physiologically oriented group proposing “psychophysical parallelism” as a working hypothesis for scientific psychology. To this latter group Popper reckons the Gestalt psychologists Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler as well as Schlick. A third type of answer resolves the dialectical contradictions of the former two types of answer. It is in fact the answer which Buhler ¨ gives, and to which the young Popper wholeheartedly subscribes: “The third point of view, finally, can be characterized by its principal acknowledgement that an exhaustive description of the mental can only arise through a cooperation of the three aspects, including the aspect of lived experience.”16 According to this Bu¨ hlerian view no aspect can claim from the start a dominating position; the aspects of lived experience, of behaviour, and of the objective products of the human mind are necessary in order to describe the realm of the mental. Depending on the area of investigation a certain aspect may of course dominate, but only by the interaction of the different aspects is a satisfying description of the mental achieved. Popper’s main goal in the first part of his dissertation is to defend Bu¨ hlerian theoretical pluralism in psychology against the reductive proposals of Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) and Wolfgang Köhler.17 Because Schlick’s views on introspective psychology are a direct corollary of his general epistemology, it is necessary to outline the latter first. At the time Schlick composed his Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1925), he was not a strict positivist or empiricist as he was to become after incorporating Wittgenstein’s early philosophical ideas. And although his views navigated towards Kant in some respects, he forcefully rejects the possibility of Kantian synthetic a priori knowledge. As Michael Friedman has made clear, Schlick’s epistemological views diverge from (his) later positivism and empiricism in two respects.18 First, the conception of knowledge is explicitly “holistic,” in the sense of a system of interconnected judgements deriving their meaning from their mutual

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relationships within that system. Knowledge or cognition (Erkennen) is sharply distinguished from acquaintance (Kennen) of the “given.” Knowledge, Schlick insists, always implies subsumption under concepts and is therefore always propositional in nature. Bertrand Russell’s “knowledge by acquaintance” is therefore rejected by Schlick as incoherent.19 Second, Schlick firmly rejects Mach’s and Avenarius’s phenomenalism, which, seeking the elimination of all unobservable entities, equates what is real with what is given in experience. Schlick, by contrast, argues that science deals with real unobservable entities (“transcendent objects” as he also calls them). Refusing to recognize any other form of existence than experienced sensation, he argues, is to conflate knowledge and acquaintance. Atoms and the like may not be observable, but this does not prevent them from being knowable. Here Schlick’s views of knowledge as requiring only a relation of coordination (Zuordnung), or designation, between concepts and objects comes in. This view straightforwardly leads to a strong form of scientific realism, not only eliminating forms of subjective idealism but even giving the objects of immediate experience a provisional floor in the edifice of knowledge, with facts described by modern mathematical physics as existing in objective, mathematicalphysical space and time outside of our consciousness and constituting its basis.20 Schlick explains how the relation of coordination between concepts and objects is set up in detail in a section called “Quantitative and Qualitative Knowledge.”21 The process of coordination, he assures us, begins with the spatial-temporal ordering of the data of immediate experience, but what is primarily knowable by this process is the quantitative structure of mathematical-physical space. More specifically, we construct this transcendent ordering on the basis of coincidences in our various intuitively given sensory fields. For instance, to borrow Schlick’s example, I see the tip of my pencil touching my finger in my visual field and simultaneously feel its touch in my tactile field. Seeking to bring these entirely different spatialities into relation, I construct a single, nonintuitive spatial ordering containing both the pencil and my finger, where a single point in objective space corresponds to both singular points in the two previously independent sensory fields. This constructive process abstracts completely from the qualitative properties of my sensory fields and focuses exclusively on their topological features – the presence or absence of a singularity.22 As it is precisely on the basis of such coincidences that the technique of numerical measurement proceeds, this procedure is vitally important for science. As Schlick says, “all measurement, from

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the most primitive to the most sophisticated, rests on the observation of spatial-temporal coincidences.”23 By this method of coincidences, then, a numerical model is constructed for an abstractly specified axiom system for mathematical physics. Yet the method is ultimately based on our perceiving measuring instruments and hence on immediately given coincidences in our various sensory fields. As Friedman concludes Schlick’s example, “In this way, an abstractly specified axiom system acquires a relation of designation to quantitatively structured objective reality by way of the immediate data of consciousness, and the objective or ‘transcendent’ spatial-temporal ordering of realities described by modern mathematical physics thereby becomes a genuine object of knowledge.”24 Yet it does not follow that the purely qualitative data of the flux of experience thereby become themselves objects of knowledge as well. “On the contrary, precisely because they are not yet describable in truly quantitative fashion, such purely qualitative intuitive data are not yet objects of knowledge.”25 The immediate consequence of this epistemological picture for Schlick’s view of the role and status of introspective psychology is that “[t]he life of consciousness is thus only completely knowable insofar as we succeed in transforming introspective psychology into a physiological, natural-scientific psychology, ultimately into a physics of brain processes.”26 To be sure, Schlick concedes that the current state of psychology and physiology does not allow a reduction of the former to the latter, yet refraining from psychophysical parallelism would be “the proclamation of an Ignoramibus, and one should be careful not to declare it prematurely.”27 Because there is as yet no proof of one-to-one correspondences between psychological and physiological processes, what remains for a psychologist eager to advance the science of psychology is banishing introspection from his lab and opting for physiologically based methods of investigating the mind. This epistemologically motivated psychophysical parallelism between, on the one hand, mental processes and, on the other, a system of quantitative physicalist concepts is a bone of contention to Popper. Indeed, from Schlick’s perspective Bu¨ hler’s theoretical pluralism must appear as a surrender to a premature Ignoramibus. This explains why Popper devotes so much time in discussing Schlick’s position, which he, following Bühler’s use of that term, calls “physicalism.”28 In particular Popper questions whether Schlick’s ideal of quantitative knowledge is valid for psychology, and even for biology. In such a discipline as anatomy, Popper

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maintains, a reduction to physics is not attainable and, above all, not practical: A contemporary student of anatomy is surely not at all interested in indicating the differential equations by which the molecular movements inducing a scoliosis can perhaps be expressed; for him it is important to identify the scoliosis as such (that is, to coordinate the anatomical facts to this concept) and perhaps also to measure it. This measurement is (according to Schlick) certainly not real quantitative knowledge, for it does not allow one to express the facts by means of a quantitative conceptual system of physics.29

Instead, the student of anatomy will be much more interested in a reduction of his science to laws of heredity. Popper’s lesson is clear: many scientists do not consider the reduction of their discipline to physics as an ideal of knowledge. Were a philosopher of biology, on behalf of Schlick’s ideal of scientific knowledge, to require the reduction of biology to physics, a practicing biologist might surely object that dogmatically holding on to this postulate would as much block scientific progress as a premature Ignoramibus.30 Indeed, Popper emphatically claims, the very project of reduction requires that the higher-level science is given enough time to elaborate its program and to achieve a certain stability in its theoretical and experimental results.31 Popper subsequently confronts Schlick’s physicalism with the following three theses. First, Schlick’s proposed elimination of the introspective method, neglecting to raise the problem of reducing biology to physics, has as yet no consequences whatsoever for psychology. Second, until psychology has matured sufficiently, its methodology is left untouched by physicalism, for reduction requires the existence of exact psychological laws. Third, a more viable form of reduction than physicalism is achieved by investigating the relation between psychology and biology. As to the first thesis, Popper’s point is that with the reduction of biology to physics failing to come off, seeking to establish one-to-one correspondences between psychological facts to exact, quantitative concepts is a futile enterprise. Popper’s conclusion is almost the converse to Schlick’s, for where the latter fears the stagnation of psychological research as long as no reduction has been accomplished, the former argues that waiting upon a successful reduction of biology to physics would be detrimental to the advance of psychological research. As to the second point Popper comments that the prospects for a practical application of physicalism in psychology are dim. With only the requirement of one-to-one correspondences between quantitative concepts and psychological phenomena, nothing has been said about more

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specific connections. Indeed, as Schlick himself admits, it is possible on this conception of physicalism that psychological elements constituting a specific psychological concept (e.g., the Self ) belong to quite heterogeneous physical complexes, and the converse may be true as well.32 This extremely liberal conception of parallelism, Popper concludes, thereby foreshadowing recent criticisms of the so-called multiple realizability of mental states as defended by computationally oriented forms of functionalism, provides the psychologist with no workable guidelines at all. It is therefore not surprising to see, Popper goes on, that psychologists embracing physicalism disagree with Schlick especially as regards his liberal conception of parallelism. The psychologists Popper has in mind come from the Gestalt school headed by Köhler. By arguing that perceptual Gestalten in the phenomenal field are related to one another as their cortical correlates are related to one another in the brain, Köhler clearly restrains Schlick’s liberalism. As he puts the idea of isomorphism vividly: “An observation of the brain is in principle conceivable which would show in respect of Gestalt – and, hence, essential properties – a similarity between physiological processes and how the subject’s phenomenal experience is.”33 This clearly conflicts with Schlick’s methodological receipts, Popper concludes, for “from the perspective of Schlick it is not understandable why sign and signified should have to be similar or akin in one or another respect.”34 Does Köhler’s new kind of physicalism have any better prospects for psychology? Popper finally asks. Fully aware of the animosity between the Berlin school of Gestalt psychology and the Wu¨ rzburg school of Denkpsychologie, Popper unreservedly sides with the latter, taking Bu¨ hler’s criticism of the new physicalism as his cue. His main and highly significant contribution to this discussion is what might be called the “methodological primacy” of psychology, which at the same time is a thesis concerning the minor role of physical-physiological theories. According to this view, psychological hypotheses, theories, and regularities turn out to be heuristic for physiological theories rather than the other way around.35 The most that physiological theories in the tradition of physicalism do is “to make regularities, which have been observed in a different way, physiologically comprehensible, but by themselves they are incapable of contributing to discovering such regularities.”36 Discussing the new physicalism in more detail, Popper subsequently convincingly shows that its program in fact boils down to this minor role, and that Köhler “searches indeed for physiological correlates of conscious processes only on the basis of already established psychological knowledge.”37 Ironically, the clearest

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confirmations of the minor role of physiology are precisely those passages in the book in which Köhler is unaware of its minor role and seems to be convinced of the primacy of his hypotheses, which induces him to infer from the latter specific psychological claims. Here, Popper warns, “physicalist prejudices lead to a deformation of psychological facts.”38 The pivotal role Köhler attributes to perceptual Gestalten makes him, according to Popper, especially vulnerable to this charge. Here we find the earliest expression of Popper’s allergy for essentialism. Indeed, Popper comments, far from limiting the application of the concept of Gestalt to perception, Köhler takes it to be the essence of all of experience, even the area of thought. As Köhler says: “The main objection against the assumption of physical correlates of thinking has always been that ‘unities of specific structure’ do not actually occur physically. Since by acknowledging the dynamical-supra-geometrical structures or Gestalten, this objection is completely removed, one immediately sees what Gestalt theory can mean for the higher processes, and specifically for the psychology of thinking, in the future.”39 Appealing to Bu¨ hler, Popper considers this exclusive focus on perceptual Gestalten one-sided, and the imperialistic claim to assimilate the whole of experience to the structure displayed by perception to be refuted by Kru¨ ger’s (and Volkelt’s) discovery of complex qualities, referred to in Chapter 2.40 Only a physicalist presumption rather than empirical facts leads Köhler into supposing that Gestalt psychology might one day solve the problem of the psychological study of cognition. Popper concludes: “Köhler first transfers psychological considerations (from the area of the theory of perception) by analogy to physical processes, and then transfers the thus obtained considerations back again to other physical areas, without taking into account how far these areas are removed from the starting point.”41 How far is shown by Bu¨ hler who, according to Popper, sees in the new physicalism an illegitimate equation of meaning (Sinn) and dynamical (self-regulating) properties of (physical) systems.42 To be sure, the concept of structure or Gestalt is an important one for psychology, yet it by no means answers questions which pertain to the area where psychology and the humanities overlap, and for which the aspects of lived experience and objective or cultural products of the mind are vitally important. Emphasizing that his criticism has been “immanent” in the sense of pushing back the radical claims of physicalism without rejecting the idea of parallelism, Popper proceeds to his third, more constructive thesis, namely the reduction of psychology to biology: “Perhaps conscious

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processes are coordinated with precisely those physical processes that are characteristic for ‘living organisms’ in contrast with dead physical structures?”43 Evidently sympathetic towards biology, Popper avoids endorsing a radical standpoint and demands of biology too that it acknowledge its minor role only. But if these restrictions are taken into account, he believes that a psychobiological parallelism can prove very fruitful, as shown by E. Kretschmer’s research on body and personality types and by the James-Lange theory of emotions.44 As regards this latter theory Popper’s attitude has changed somewhat since his thesis of 1927. There James’s insight, although “staggering,” was called a typical case of a theory exceeding the boundaries set by inductive methodology, but in 1928 these problems are set aside and the emphasis is on the theory’s potential for contributing to a biologically oriented psychology. Despite the interactionist flavour of some of James’s formulations of his theory, especially his famous “We do not cry because we are sad, but we are sad because we cry,” Popper believes that the essence of the theory is to be found in its definition of emotions as those lived experiences that proceed in parallel with (organically conceived) behavioural expressions. Precisely by refraining from ideal knowledge (as filled in by the physical sciences), Popper believes, James’s theory tolerates both interpretations. Indeed, a psychobiological parallelism has lost “any aggression towards a hypothesis of psychophysical interaction,” for what counts are the practical methodological consequences. From this perspective the question whether conscious experiences are correlated with organic processes, or are rather causally dependent upon them, must appear as a matter of taste, interesting in itself but relatively unimportant for empirical research. His ultimate answer to Schlick therefore is that his fear of a premature Ignoramibus, his decisive motive for physicalism, is unsupported by actual empirical research in psychology and biology. Moreover, Schlick’s postulate may not even be allowed to determine the actual course of psychology, for rather than furthering the advance of this science, it will only lead to dogmatically pressed and one-sided physical models. Bu¨ hler’s theoretical pluralism incorporating the three aspects of behaviour, lived experience, and cultural products therefore proves itself as the best and most practical methodology for psychology, one furthermore which can easily accommodate physiology as a fourth aspect. What is especially excluded by theoretical pluralism, Popper insists, is an a priori assumption of parallelism. Taking Bu¨ hler’s criticism of Wundt’s a priori assumption of a pervasive parallelism between observable behaviour and inner states and feelings as his cue, Popper claims that a similar axiom of parallelism

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underlies Schlick’s physicalism. He concludes, thereby foreshadowing his later empiricism, albeit still uncritical, that a decision between parallelism and interaction of the mental and the physical is at best reached on a posteriori grounds.45 A further advantage of a biologically oriented program in psychology, Popper adds, is its explicit focus on the organism as a whole. Precisely the physiological aspect receives a radical shift in a biologically oriented psychology, one which steers it away from an exclusive focus on the narrow sphere of sense impressions towards processes of assimilation, in the sense of Volkelt, and towards the expression of mental states, as for instance displayed by James’s theory of emotions.46 Although the rejection of an empiricist view of the mind is not yet there, it is not difficult to recognize in these remarks the germs of Popper’s uncompromising criticism of the bucket theory, which, as was made clear in Chapter 5, gradually took shape in the Selzian article on mnemonic exercise published three years later, in 1931. Together theoretical pluralism and biologically oriented psychology lay the fundament for Popper’s mature approach to the mind-body problem. Acknowledging this background is important, as it is indicative of an inseparable gulf between a physicalist ontology combined with an empiricist epistemology, as defended by Popper’s contemporaries Herbert Feigl and J. J. C. Smart, and an evolutionary epistemological approach seeking to accommodate the whole of mental life, and embedding it in a view of the (human) organism as a problem solver always actively engaged in exploring its environment.

Karl Bu¨ hler and the Theory of Language Popper picks up again the problem of mind and body in The Self and Its Brain (1977), but preceding this work are his thoughts on the objective mind. In his lectures “Epistemology without a Knowing Subject” (1968) and “On the Theory of the Objective Mind” (1968), he provocatively added a “third world” to an ontology already top-heavy to some by including a world of mental states besides the mundane world of physical science.47 His main motive in these two lectures is to counter subjectivist theories of knowledge and to safeguard the objectivity of knowledge. In The Self and Its Brain, and the posthumously published lectures, Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem (1994), he explains the importance of the third world, the world of the products of the mind, for our understanding of the world of subjective experience. On his pluralistic theory of mind and body, subjective mental phenomena have an intermediary role in the causal interplay between the third world and the physical world.

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Karl Bühler and the Theory of Language

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Neither in the two essays nor in his work on the mind-body problem does Popper refer to his early reflections in this area, yet the similarity between the Buhlerian ¨ theoretical pluralism of 1928 and the pluralism of worlds is too great to pass unnoticed. To be sure, Popper does refer to Bühler’s theory of language, but the Fregean emphasis on the objectivity of the third world, especially in the two essays, has led to a role less prominent than the theory deserves. It is only in Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem that Popper gives Bu¨ hler’s theory full credit. With the biological approach elaborated in much more detail than in his other work, this book shows not only the systematic importance of Bu¨ hler’s theory but also provides clues for the role of this theory in the genesis of Popper’s pluralism of worlds and his campaign against reductionism. Indeed, I argue that the structure of Popper’s arguments for a pluralism of worlds is modelled on Bu¨ hler’s arguments for theoretical pluralism in psychology, and that in both cases the theory of language is pivotal. Yet, as we will see in due course, an equally important role seems again to be accorded to Selz, for it is only in conceiving of language as a searchlight that Popper is capable of transforming Bu¨ hler’s theoretical pluralism into an evolutionary epistemological program, explaining not only the growth of individual organisms but also, and above all, of objective knowledge. But first I turn to a discussion of Bu¨ hler’s theory of language (see Figure 6.1). The most direct proof of the importance of Bu¨ hler’s theory of language is given by Popper himself when he, in 1928, summarizing the main point of Die Krise der Psychologie, attributes a crucial role to Bu¨ hler’s mental experiences of the speaker

mental experiences of the hearer express

linguistic signs

induce

represent

states of affairs

figure 6.1. Bühler’s theory of language. After Krug, “Zur Sprachtheorie,” with slight modifications.

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theory of language: “The centre of the book is the proof that a psychology of language and with it at least ‘something more which belongs to psychology’ [Buhler, ¨ p. 58], are ‘possible’ (in the sense of Kant) only through the cooperation of the three aspects, which can be designated by E (lived experience), B (meaningful behaviour), G (forms of the objective mind).”48 The claim that none of the three aspects of lived experience, behaviour, and products of the mind can be dispensed with in a science of psychology, Bu¨ hler derives from the study of language. As Popper summarizes Bu¨ hler’s results: “The scientific study of the ‘expressive function’ [Kundgabe] requires the ‘aspect of experience’; the ‘inducing function’ [Auslösung], the ‘aspect of behaviour’; and the ‘descriptive function’ [Darstellung], the ‘aspect of the objective products of the mind.’”49 Thus having shown language to possess these three irreducible aspects, and furthermore subsuming language under psychology, Buhler ¨ concludes that theoretical pluralism may be indispensable also for other areas of psychology.50 From this comprehensive point of view, as we have seen in Chapter 5, he criticized the various psychological schools which overplayed their hands by seeking to reduce the whole of psychology to only one of the three aspects. Likewise the young Popper maintained that “an exhaustive description of the mental can only arise through a cooperation of the three aspects.”51 Given this formidable role of the psychological study of language in elaborating a comprehensive and nonreductive view of psychology as theoretical pluralism definitively is, it is necessary to have a closer look at Bu¨ hler’s theory which he elaborated over a span of fifteen years culminating in his Theorie der Sprache (1934). The version of the theory with which Popper was acquainted in 1928 stems from Die Krise der Psychologie.52 Using slightly different terms than in Die Krise der Psychologie, Buhler ¨ (1934) summarizes his theory thusly: “The (complex) linguistic sign is a symbol in virtue of its coordination with objects and facts, symptom (sign, indicator) in virtue of its dependency upon the sender, whose inner experiences it expresses, and signal in virtue of its appeal to the hearer, whose outer and inner actions it controls like other traffic signs. . . . Threefold is the achievement of language: expression, signal, and representation.”53 Two features of Buhler’s ¨ theory distinguish it from other then current approaches to language. The first is that it attempts to incorporate three aspects or dimensions of language rather than two or simply one. The second is the emphasis on the serviceability of language to life, both in a biological and social-psychological sense of that term, and in the sense in which life can be said to transcend itself. In virtue of its being grounded

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in both the biological sciences and the humanities, Bu¨ hler increasingly came to believe, psychology has to accommodate the biological and the transcendent notion of life. The tool of language provides psychology with the best and most natural means for achieving its own Janus-faced nature. To understand the full psychological meaning and scope of language, Buhler ¨ maintains, traditional views focusing on one dimension only have to be discarded. Thus follows a critical discussion of Wundt and Darwin who both sought to explain language exclusively from the perspective of lived experience. Basic to Wundt’s enterprise is the already discussed axiom of a pervasive parallelism of inner experience and outward (facial and gestural) expressions.54 On Wundt’s view the complete human and animal mind can be understood by reading the observable manifestations of expressive movements. Initially human language has developed out of this nonverbal language. Under the pressure of communal life, language has been emancipated from its nonverbal ancestor. Hence, it is only in passing, Bühler complains, in order to explain the emancipation of language, that Wundt accords a role to the community. Here Bu¨ hler’s criticism sets in. The community, according to him, rather than being a secondary stage in the genesis of language is constitutive of semantic development.55 Indeed, the very logic of the concept of expression requires the presence of a receiver: “Only in relation to an actual or imagined receiver, a bodily movement becomes an expression [Kundgabe] in the specific and only practical meaning of this word; expression and reception [Kundnahme] can only be defined as correlative concepts.”56 The basic problem with the views of Wundt and Darwin is therefore that no distinction is made between the logical-semantic features of the expressive and the inducing functions of language, and hence that the role of the community in the development of language comes in only at a later, and less basic, stage. To be sure, Darwin’s emphasis on the biological serviceability of language is welcomed by Bu¨ hler, yet his more specific explanation of the ratio of expressive movements as rudiments of former goal-directed activities runs up against the same difficulties as Wundt’s theory did. A clenched fist, Bu¨ hler objects, can still fulfil a purpose, assuming that there is a receiver who reacts upon this sign. Perhaps many other behavioural expressions have arisen because of such specific effects on perceiving congeners. At any rate, even if Darwin is correct in claiming that expressions initially had a different, directly adaptive, function, they have not, as purely semantic movements, become pointless, but rather their function has changed (Funktionswechsel). To explain this

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linguistic structures

express

mental experiences (act + content)

mean

objects relate to

figure 6.2. Meinong’s semantic theory, after Krug, “Zur Sprachtheorie.”

change, however, a much more pervasive role has to be attributed to the receiver of expressions and hence to the community. To see the distinctive features of Bu¨ hler’s theory more clearly, a detailed comparison with the, at first sight, closely resembling theory of ¨ Meinong might be fruitful (see Figure 6.2).57 In his Uber Annahmen, Meinong develops a theory of language maintaining that the expression (Ausdruck) and meaning (Bedeutung) of linguistic signs are correlated concepts. Ultimately this semantic correlation is based on an intentional relation obtaining between psychological experiences (the act and content of consciousness) and their intentional objects. Linguistic signs always express a conscious experience and have the object grasped by this experience as their meaning. Despite the similarity with Bu¨ hler’s distinction between the expressive and representing functions of language, Meinong is closer to Wundt. Like Wundt, Meinong seems to endorse the axiom of parallelism, cementing observable, (non)verbal expressions and experiences indissolubly. And, like Wundt, Meinong is in the tradition of introspective psychology, mainly attributing to language the function of expressing inner experiences. On this view, expressed (non)verbal signs have meaning even in absence of (potential) receivers. Indeed, Meinong seems to treat language as an appendix to the far more important inner experiences: “Whether the speaker also wishes to express his thoughts, or betrays them against his will, whether finally there is someone in his presence, who really takes notice of the meaning of his words, these are details that can be safely left aside.”58 By contrast, Buhler’s theory of language is a dynamic and biologically oriented theory, emphasizing the serviceability of language to life. Thus, (non)verbal symptoms serve to express one’s own feelings, as signals to

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induce the behaviour of other organisms, and descriptions to penetrate the structure of the objective world and to attempt to represent it in thought. Put otherwise, symptom, sign, and description correspond to the three main stances an individual can adopt, towards itself, the other, and the outside world. The expressive and inducive functions of language are present in both animal and human life, Bu¨ hler avers, thereby relying on K. von Frisch’s work on the language of bees.59 Echoing his theory of stages, in particular his view of the intellect, Bu¨ hler refuses to concede animal language the third, descriptive function: “Nowhere in animal life do we encounter the third function, language or gestures as means of representing objects and facts. And this third semantic dimension forces us to consider it under the aspect of the sciences of mind or culture [geisteswissenschaftlichen Psychologie].”60 With the descriptive function truth and falsity enter language, and these values, Bu¨ hler insists, have to be distinguished categorically from the values attaching to the expressive dimension. As the example of a witness declaring before the court, against his own conviction, a true state of affairs thereby foreswearing himself, shows, the two semantic dimensions attaching to the same utterance are nevertheless independent of each other. The utterance first of all “expresses the conviction of the speaker and, secondly, describes a state of affairs. The expression may be real or unreal, the description correct or incorrect.”61 In daily life now the one, now the other dimension may prevail, but it is only in science that language “achieves its function purely in the dimension of representation.”62 With language used as a means to describe facts, the distinction between truth and falsity, vitally important for science, emerges. Language therefore is fused with “a certain area of the ‘objective mind,’ the area of knowledge, of science, of logic.”63 Although Buhler ¨ does not mention a specific theory of truth, it is evident from the way he believes descriptive language to be related to the facts that he would subscribe to the correspondence theory of truth. Taking his cue from Wundt’s claim that a descriptive sentence is directed upon what is factual and objective, Bu¨ hler argues that “Every word which functions as a name is ‘directed upon what is objective [aufs Objektive],’ that is, coordinated with the object referred to.”64 In virtue of this function of words, descriptive sentences get coordinated with facts. The capacity to speak a language in the full sense of that term, to have “access to the domain of symbols,” Bu¨ hler considers an “attribute,” or a constitutive property, of the human species.65 Owing to this feature

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human life achieves a form of transcendence quite unlike animal life. To be sure, Buhler ¨ avers, animal life reveals a similar form of transcendence. Indeed, as various very distinctive forms of breeding behaviour show, animals are concerned with the state of affairs reaching far beyond their own particular life.66 Similar behaviour is displayed by humans, yet it is especially in communal life, permeated by the three dimensions of language, that individual interests are broken through. This in essence is the theory Popper inserts in his heroic attempt to resist the tendency in philosophy to see the options of monism and dualism as exhaustive and to develop a “pluralistic philosophy,” first in objective epistemology, later in philosophy of mind. The main thesis in the early articles on objective knowledge, the existence of an objective and autonomous world 3, Popper claims to derive from a tradition in philosophy initiated by Plato and continued by Bolzano and especially Frege. Indeed, Popper’s world 3, as he himself confesses, “resembles most closely the universe of Frege’s objective contents of thought.”67 Despite this impressive background I argue that Popper’s objectivist epistemology developed within a much more insular and, particularly, a Bühlerian and Selzian, intellectual tradition. So it is worth emphasizing that Popper’s involvement with Bu¨ hler’s program of theoretical pluralism in psychology, as outlined in the preceding section of this chapter, by no means ceased with his changeover from psychology to philosophy around 1929. On the contrary, Popper continued to derive arguments for a pluralistic world picture from the theory of three semantic dimensions first defended in “Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie.” In the manuscript on the theory of language and its history, written in 1963 or shortly thereafter, Buhler ¨ is still Popper’s measure when airing his preference for an objectivist epistemology: “In my view, my teacher Karl Bu¨ hler (1879–1963) has achieved significant progress in the theory of language and the philosophy of language. He considered language biologically: as an organ, comparable with the hand; and he departed from the biological functions of this organ.”68 And in an earlier article we see Popper for the first time using Bu¨ hler’s division of the various semantic dimensions in his criticism of a physicalist approach to the mind-body problem. It is also in this article that the earliest antecedents – in his published work – of world 3 are to be found. In a concluding section defending an interactionistic theory of body and mind he writes: It is true that the presence of Mike in my environment may be one of the physical “causes” of my saying, “Here is Mike.” But if I say, “Should this be your argument, then it is contradictory,” because I have grasped or realized that it is so, then

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Language, Searchlight, and World 3

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there was no physical “cause” analogous to Mike; I do not need to hear or see your words in order to realize that a certain theory (it does not matter whose) is contradictory. . . . Logical relationships, such as consistency, do not belong to the physical World. They are abstractions (perhaps “products of the mind”).69

In the next section we will see in more detail how Popper’s pluralism of worlds is modelled on Bu¨ hler’s theoretical pluralism in psychology and the study of language, and how at crucial junctures the epistemology of the searchlight is inserted into it.

Language, Searchlight, and World 3 In “Epistemology without a Knowing Subject” Popper groups his defence of a pluralistic philosophy, supporting the idea of objective knowledge, around three theses. The first thesis sounds familiar by now: traditional epistemology of the “belief philosophers” Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Russell, is irrelevant to the study of objective scientific knowledge. His second thesis says that what is relevant for epistemology is the study of scientific problems and problem situations, of scientific discussions and arguments. These, Popper contends, are the inhabitants of a largely autonomous world 3. His third thesis recalls his early involvement with the issue of psychologism and his preference for a form of logicism. An objectivist epistemology, he claims, contributes to a study of the subjective thought processes scientists are engaged in in their world 2, but “the converse is not true.”70 The existence of problems, arguments, and the contents or ideas conveyed by language naturally has been recognized by the belief philosophers, Popper concedes, yet, he hastens to add, they have usually been mistaken for subjective ideas belonging to world 2.71 This conflation is due to a reductive approach to language which Popper sees exemplified in almost the whole tradition of philosophy: “Strangely enough, the most important of the higher functions have been overlooked by almost all philosophers.”72 Yet one only has to be reminded of the influential picture theory of language of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus-logico-philosophicus (1921) to see the grossly exaggerated nature of this claim. On closer scrutiny the object of Popper’s outrage turns out to be much more specific, though. In his manuscript on the history of the theory of language the bucket theory of Locke, above all, is getting blasted: “Especially the ‘idea-psychologists’ [Vorstellungspsychologen] for whom there is nothing but idea-cum-association (perhaps also feelings) were never able to look further than (1) [the expressive function or its counterpart the inducing

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function].”73 The failure of such theories therefore is not simply their reductive view of language but primarily their mistaken subjective theory of mind, knowledge, and truth. Indeed, this confusion and the attempt to clear it up is the core of Gottlob Frege’s work to whom Popper feels most indebted. In his “Der Gedanke. Eine logische Untersuchung,” Frege seeks to prove that a thought is neither an object in the physical world nor an object in the mental world.74 His ontology of this latter world is built up exclusively of ideas (Vorstellungen) in the sense of the British empiricism of Locke and John Stuart Mill. However, far from rejecting this theory as inadequate in itself, Frege investigates its logical features so as to make the difference between subjective ideas and thoughts in the objective sense absolutely sharp. Ideas, Frege explains, constitute the content of someone’s consciousness and are in need of a bearer, and the same idea cannot be shared by two bearers.75 On the one hand, when two persons may recognize the truth of the same thought – for instance, a Pythagorean axiom – this thought “does not belong to my consciousness, I am not its bearer and yet it can be acknowledged as true by me.”76 On the other hand, if it is not the same thought which is conceived by me and the other person as the content of the Pythagorean axiom, then one is really not allowed to speak of “the Pythagorean axiom,” but only of “my Pythagorean axiom” and “his Pythagorean axiom.” But in that case, Frege goes on, my thought belongs to the content of my consciousness and his thought to his, which means that the application of the words “true” and “false” is restricted to a private area of consciousness. Accordingly, there can be no science of thoughts common to many, but only private sciences, and hence no contradictions between the one private science and the other. As a kind of protecting shield against invading subjective mental processes Frege invents a “third realm” of existence, distinct from both physical reality and the mental world of private experience, where thoughts are timelessly true, independent of whether someone takes them to be true. Precisely by assuming psychology (of knowledge) to be the science of subjective and private ideas, Frege therefore, while explaining the tendency to mistake objective ideas (Gedanken) for subjective ones (Vorstellungen), at the same time succeeds in drawing categorical boundaries between psychology and logic. The other side of the coin is that, by extruding thoughts from the mind, Frege seems to deprive his theory of a means to apprehend thoughts. To be sure, Frege does speak of the process of grasping a thought, a kind of intellectual vision somewhat analogous to

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sense perception, yet thoughts being no contents of consciousness, there is not some impression of that thought mediating the process of understanding them. As Michael Dummett has put it, thoughts are presented directly to the mind, yet are not a content of the mind, and this clearly is inconsistent.77 In spite of his appeal to Frege, Popper’s own account of objective knowledge is quite different. Failing to recognize this difference, even though largely owing to his own formulations and examples, has been quite detrimental to the reception of Popper’s ideas. For instance, taking world 3 analogous to “the myths and imagery of Judaeo-Christian theology,” a metaphysical system bringing news of “mysterious realms and uncommon types of things,” has led some to “demystify” Popper’s claims. For instance, on David Bloor’s view, much of what Popper says in terms of world 3 can be spelled out more plainly in terms of the social world and social processes.78 Bloor’s sociological reading has not been left unanswered, yet in general Popperians, although correctly accusing sociologists of making a travesty of the idea of objective knowledge, equally have failed to point out the differences between the more classical Fregean account and Popper’s evolutionary approach to world 3.79 But merely Popper’s wholesale rejection of “idea psychology” as a philosophical myth ought to be convincing proof of the differences between him and Frege. As he puts it in the manuscript on the history of the theory of language: “But that is really no tenable psychology: there are neither ideas [Vorstellungen] nor associations in our world of experience (including the unconscious). . . . The theory that these (very artificial) ideas are the elements from which all our intellectual experiences are built up is utter mythology.”80 It is not difficult to recognize in this passage the bucket theory of mind. In what is obviously a preliminary sketch for his discussion of the bucket theory in Objective Knowledge, Popper lists the main steps leading to the empiricist view of mind and knowledge, first attacked by him in its psychological version in his article on mnemonic exercise:81 1. Automatically we think of the mind [die Psyche] as a sort of content in our head; especially so when we take mind in the sense of knowledge. 2. But this is of course a mistaken picture (metaphor). 3. Thus we project our grammar in our skull (or mind) – for we know nothing about the actual processes in our intellect [Verstand].82

Against this background, Popper might have concluded that even Frege, although correctly arguing for the objectivity of knowledge,

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precisely by assuming “idea psychology” to be psychology, is in the grip of the mythology of the bucket theory, and consequently that his arguments for the need of postulating a third (Platonic) realm ought to be seriously reassessed. Yet he never draws this conclusion. Instead, he puts forward an alternative and empirically realistic psychology of knowledge, thereby at least suggesting to be interested in the process of understanding after all. As the first passage about the mythological picture goes on: “What does exist are (for instance) expectations; disappointed expectations; desires; ‘Aha!’-experiences.”83 Expectations, as we have seen, are the core of the searchlight theory as formulated by Popper in his article of 1948. There expectations were conceived as dispositions to react which anticipate states of the environment yet to come about. As was shown also, the searchlight theory is a further elaboration of the sketch of a deductive psychology of knowledge of 1933 in which dispositions to react were called “intellectual reactions” or simply “anticipations.” In the article on mnemonic exercise of 1931 finally it turned out that Popper’s earliest conception of what he later calls expectations is the Selzian notion of schematic anticipation. But as the sequel to the preceding passage shows, rather than accurately tracing the course his ideas on the searchlight theory have taken, Popper distorts the historical record and simply claims that the latter has arisen from projecting his ideas of world 3 to world 2: 4. I too project my biological world 3 theory in our mind: but it is a slightly better theory. Example: I consider expectation the psychological correlate of knowledge (of a theory). Animals too have expectations; a theory is a world 3 form of [an] expectation.84

As the preceding chapters on the history of Denkpsychologie and evolutionary epistemology have shown, the psychology of expectations (Selzian schematic anticipations) has been the blueprint for Popper’s epistemology of hypothesis formation. Like his methodology discussed in the previous chapter, therefore, Popper’s objectivist epistemology is fraught with tension caused by his forced attempt to keep logic and psychology radically disjointed, and to make use of Denkpsychologie at the same time. Unlike Frege whose concern with thoughts or the sense (Sinn) of an expression eo ipso meant holding aloof from any involvement with the process of grasping a sense, Popper is actually interested in the process of understanding, which significantly is interpreted by him as an active and creative process. Indeed, the most distinctive feature of his theory of objective knowledge is his attempt to explain world 3 as a product of human activity, thereby stripping the former of the divine status it

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acquired in Frege and setting himself the task of explaining the process leading to this product.85 The key to this attempt to explain the objective world 3 as a product of human inventiveness is to enrich the ontology of the “third realm” with a category, which because of its very psychological connotation, would never have been allowed there by Frege, namely, problems.86 Thus the following frequently used scheme of problem solving, in which P stands for problem, TS for tentative solution, and EE for error elimination, is conceived by him as entirely a world 3 process.87 P1 → T S → E E → P2 To be sure, there is a crucial difference between problem solving in the sense of a critical discussion among scientists about linguistically formulated problems and the same process conceived as proceeding in the scientist’s (unconscious) mind, yet it is the psychology of discovery which has provided Popper with a blueprint for the former. Indeed, the preceding scheme is virtually the same as Selz’s original diagram of trying-out behaviour, and hence Popper’s theory of the searchlight. Even what is new about this scheme, the notion of P2 , as we will see in due course, traces back to Selz’s (and Wundt’s) psychology. With a category of world 3 objects therefore so much dependent on the notion of a psychological process, how can Popper live up to an epistemology “without a knowing subject”? At this point the importance of the distinction between the bucket theory and the searchlight theory becomes again pivotally important. Despite their being both psychological theories, Popper, at crucial places, never deals with them symmetrically in this respect. On the contrary, when arguing against psychologism, and insisting upon a categorical distinction between world 2 and world 3, psychology is almost exclusively taken by him in the sense of the bucket theory. For instance, when discussing the activity of understanding objective problems, Popper points out that we always have to describe world 3 objects of problem solving and that the subjective processes, such as feelings of excitement or disappointment, world 2 components, have no bearing whatsoever on the problems discussed.88 On the other hand, explaining world 3 as a product of the human mind, and maintaining that an objective analysis of problems is at the same time “an analysis of what we are doing in our subjective world when we try to understand,” he clearly relies on the searchlight theory of mind, which is then explicitly advertised as a biological or evolutionary theory.

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A clear and perhaps early example of this asymmetrical treatment of the bucket and the searchlight theories is to be found in the manuscript on the history of the psychology of language, in a passage in which he, probably for the first time, accords a role to the (evidently psychological) notion of problems in his philosophy: All organisms are problem solvers (survivors of the most skilled problem solvers). But what is essential to the problem-solving human intellect is that it is not just like other organisms conservative and revolutionary (= inventive), but, although language is a product of our psyche (our mind), [that the mind] can understand the historically given solution attempts (= theories), and not so much as psychological products of others but as objective solving attempts; can understand critically, that is, look for their objective weaknesses (what leads to an understanding of their strengths in the first place); can improve them inventively (as other organisms are also capable of); can in its turn criticize these improvements in competition with others. And all this independent of what happens psychologically in us because only the objective content of thought is what is important. More precisely, it is of course true that personal idiosyncrasies play a great role in all this; but as regards our intellectual (= critical) judgement of the degree of truth of our theories, psychology does not matter at all; and not in the least that pseudopsychology which speaks of “ideas” [Vorstellungen] and “associations.” (Put otherwise: our intellect, which depends on the critical-argumentative use of human language, is our capacity to understand theories [= explanations; also: expectations], and to judge [them] critically; hence to understand a part of world 3, and to criticize [it] critically.) This is therefore a purely functional theory of the intellect: independent of how all this goes on psychologically (= world 2) (from which we know very little).89

Were he to mean in the final sentence “idea psychology,” or bucket theory, his account of the nature of his theory would be correct, but because in the same manuscript ideas were replaced by him by anticipatory schemes or expectations, his theory does draw on a view of world 2, that is, on the searchlight theory.90 His notion of problems is no exception to this for, as we have seen in Chapter 4, Selz came to use the concept of schematic anticipation analogous to the concept of a problem. (Comparing Selzian schematic anticipations to mathematical equations with one or more unknowns, Popper, in 1931, clearly showed awareness of this analogy.) This Selzian background in Denkpsychologie also explains why Popper feels so confident in saying that his analysis of problem solving as a world 3 process is at the same time an analysis of problem solving as a world 2 process, because it was originally conceived as a world 2 process. Yet given the formidable degree of abstraction of Selz’s psychological theory – abstraction from the judging person – it in fact approaches a

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world 3 description of problem solving, providing almost no insight into the working of particular acts of thinking of a particular scientist at a particular time. Popper’s talk of a purely functional theory of cognition in the preceding quotation therefore perfectly fits into this Selzian approach. As was pointed out in Chapter 4, even though Selz invoked the concept of determining tendency as a sort of mechanism prompting the process of problem solving, once he stripped this concept of its original associational (and causal) meaning, it was left unclear what causes the process of thinking, because in fact what he had proposed was a “task-dynamic” theory, one according to which the sole moving principle of mental processes must reside in the problem. To be sure, Selz did elaborate the analogy between higher cognitive operations and lower, reflexlike operations of trying-out behaviour, but this part of his theory belonged to what the early Popper aptly called “behaviouristic Denkpsychologie,” and hence involved no theory of the internal processes underlying problem-solving behaviour either. Paradoxically therefore precisely in drawing on a psychological theory Popper has been capable of avoiding the semblance of providing himself a psychological theory of problem solving. Thus fluctuating between being a psychological and a logical theory of problem solving, Selz’s theory turned out to be the best of both worlds for Popper: a theory of world 2 cast in terms of world 3 processes, or a theory of world 3 assumed to be valid also for what happens in world 2. No other psychological theory therefore could equal Selz’s in also serving as a theory of objective knowledge, of an “epistemology without a knowing subject.” Indeed, for several reasons Popper’s attempt to supplement his early psychology of knowledge or Denkpsychologie with a theory of objective knowledge appears quite natural from the perspective of the program of Selz and Bu¨ hler. For one thing, the crucial idea of the theory of world 3, that knowledge is inescapably conjectural rather than (potentially) certain, occurred to Popper after incorporating Selz’s theory of trying-out behaviour. For another, the likewise crucial idea of knowledge as an intersubjective and criticizable notion, rather than a subjective phenomenon in the mind, is almost a corollary of Bu¨ hler’s and Selz’s finding that (linguistically formulated) problems or tasks are the vehicle of thinking. A third idea, not discussed so far, concerns the autonomy of problems. This idea too, at least so I will argue, is rooted in early German psychology, especially Selz’s psychology of scientific discovery and Wundt’s Volkerpsychologie. Although the idea of the autonomy of problems does not occur in Popper’s work until the 1960s, it has its ancestry in an earlier article

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defending a rationalistic view of scientific tradition. Written in the same period in which the essay on the bucket and searchlight theories first appeared, he conceives of scientific tradition as a searchlight pointing the direction to future research, owing to its heritage of specific solving methods. Thus acknowledging the importance of tradition in explaining the growth of scientific knowledge is reminiscent of Selz’s biologized version of the concept of (scientific) tradition and its role in mediating problems and their solutions.91 Just as behavioural responses of the individual become automated due to continually repeated experiences, Selz maintained, the growth of science is enormously helped by the heritage of specific solving methods interiorized, as it were, in the unconscious mind of the scientific species, thereby avoiding the need to reinvent the wheel and hence explaining the difference between the human animal and all the other animals.92 In his work on creative thinking, he even proposed a rational explanation of spectacular scientific discoveries (the method of coincidental means abstraction), such as Faraday’s discovery of the principle of induction, in terms of the persistence of earlier problem situations, thereby eschewing any reference to an explanation in terms of a miraculous eureka. We have seen Popper in his dissertation applauding this rational, problem-oriented approach and positively referring to Selz’s method of coincidental means abstraction. Observing, twenty years later, that the proposed defence of the role of scientific tradition is not in conflict with the well-known phenomenon of chance discoveries, because “even these very often turn out to be made under the influence of theories,” is therefore an unmistakable sign of his Selzian heritage.93 Important to note is that Selz not only proposes to investigate the role of chance in the genesis of ideas of individual scientists, but also in the genesis of the “objective development,” or products, of art and science, thereby taking his cue from Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie. In his view the role of problems is sometimes even more clearly traceable in the objective than in subjective development of art and science.94 When Popper, in the preceding quotation, refers to the distinctive feature of human cognition in understanding historically transferred solution attempts, and when he later (Objective Knowledge) maintains that, in giving a historical account of the creative development of science, problems rather than the discoverer’s personal inclinations and emotions are what matters, he continues the course initiated by Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie and elaborated upon by Selz. Indeed, his criticism of Collingwood’s method of subjective reenactment of the experiences of a

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historical character echoes Selz’s criticism of Spengler and, more generally, the methodological role of intuition in the historical sciences. Also in this context of objective knowledge Selz discusses a further role of chance, which clearly foreshadows Popper’s later view of the autonomy of problems. Besides its role in providing the artist or scientist with new means to approach or solve his problem, Selz explains, the unintended yet valuable effects prompted by chance may also consist of setting oneself a new goal, one focused on intentionally fabricating the initially unintended effect.95 Taking his cue from Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie, Selz points out that the development of the objective products of art, more than the subjective genesis of ideas of individual artists, is often explained by the occurrence of initially unintended, hence coincidental, aesthetic effects. Thus Dutch landscape painting has arisen in three stages: as a background to historical and religious themes, as a historically decorated landscape, and finally as a pure landscape; hence, “in order to be discovered and gradually become an object of independent artistic endeavour, the emotive value first had to occur as a side-effect of historical representations.”96 The objective development of the arts, Selz concludes, confirms the creative role of chance first postulated in the area of Denkpsychologie, in particular the operation of coincidental means abstraction. The third crucial aspect of Popper’s theory of objective knowledge, the idea that world 3 objects, although products of the human mind, are also autonomous, existing independently of anybody’s awareness of them, seems to be a philosophical consequence he draws from Selz’s and Wundt’s theory of the role of unintended effects. The point needs emphasizing, because it is sometimes said that he owes his theory of intended effects to Friedrich Hayek, who in his article “Scientism and the Study of Society” (1942) and the essay “The Results of Human Action but Not of Human Design,” uses the notion to account for a non-Cartesian theory of the social world.97 In the latter essay, Hayek notes that Popper would have adopted his theory in “The Poverty of Historicism” and The Open Society and Its Enemies.98 But, as Popper retorts, he wrote “The Poverty of Historicism” before the publication of Hayek’s first article on the subject.99 Popper’s reading of Selz’s elaborations (in 1922 and 1924) of Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie seems to support his claim not to have adopted the theory from Hayek.100 Whereas Popper uses the theory of unintended effects in his two earlier works especially in the context of social and political philosophy, the emphasis is shifted towards problem solving in his theory of mind. Indeed, what he calls autonomy is explained by him in terms of the unintended

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consequences of problem solving. Thus, as Popper illustrates his idea, in the visual arts a painter may put a speck of paint on the canvas and look at the effect and evaluate it. The effect may be intended or unintended, and if the latter, he may correct or remove it, but it “may also suggest to him a new idea: it may suggest to him, for example, a new balance of colours, more striking than the one originally aimed at . . . far transcending his starting point.”101 Like Bu¨ hler, Popper’s view of human psychology is Janus-faced, incorporating both biology and the world of ideas and values, but it is Selz’s theory which provided him with a model of how in particular science achieves this transcendence. This philosophical consequence of the theory of Selz and Bu¨ hler has been overlooked by both sociological and Fregean readings of the idea of an epistemology without a knowing subject. The crucial epistemological notion of transcendence is rooted in a theory of creativity and, as such, is far removed from Bloor’s sociological reading to the effect that objective knowledge is simply a property of a group transcending the individual knowing subject.102 On the other hand, those opposing this sociological reading, like J. Grove and A. Grobler, have failed to see the double sense of psychology at work in Popper’s epistemology, and have wrongly concluded from his rejection of the bucket theory to the irrelevance of world 2 in accounting for world 3. Yet in Popper’s hands, being a product of the human mind and being autonomous are inseparably connected aspects of the same, underlying theory of human creativity. Indeed, this is also why the scheme of the method of trial and error is put forward by Popper as an account of the way individual organisms learn and evolve, and the way science grows. Aptly describing the humanistic importance of world 3, Grove, without realizing it, in fact refers to this underlying theory common to Selz and Bu¨ hler: For the most part, it can be said, living things exist simply to perpetuate themselves. . . . Man differs, however, in one profound and utterly unique respect – in his ability not only to perpetuate himself but to deliberately and self-consciously memorialize himself, to leave his mark on the world for posterity, to create a world outside himself, a world of art and music, a world of philosophical thought, a world of science, a world of artificial objects. He does these things not merely to amuse, or instruct, or delight himself. He has an eye on the future. It is because of this that we talk about a “third world,” a conceptual realm of objective ideas.103

A Cartesian Pluralist? By the time Popper began to lecture on the classical mind-body problem, emergentism, which flourished during the first half of the twentieth

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century, was steadily receding and being replaced by the escalating conflict between behaviourism, physicalism, and, in the wake of the cognitive revolution in psychology, functionalism. In The Self and Its Brain, both behaviourism and physicalism are subjected to criticism, but the theory which attributes a central role to problem solving is conspicuous by its absence. But it would be an illusion to expect Popper to be much interested in functionalism. For one thing, functionalism, especially in the form defended by David Armstrong – who is discussed by Popper – is merely a transitional stage to physicalism. For another, functionalism’s key notion of “realization,” although a denial of the idea that mental properties and neural properties are identical, is the “exact complement of the concept of emergence.”104 Yet Popper’s most ponderous argument against functionalism, especially the variant exploiting the analogy between computer programs and the human mind, is not ontological but rooted in his evolutionary outlook on psychology. Commenting on Alan Turing’s belief that one day machines can be built that can think, he retorts: “But computers are totally different from brains, whose function is not primarily to compute but to guide and balance an organism and help it to stay alive.”105 Unlike contemporary criticisms of functionalism focusing on the specific physical makeup of computers and its supposed incapacity to produce what is deemed characteristic of the mind, intentionality and consciousness, Popper does not touch such ontological questions at all and instead points to the misleading analogy between the input to computers and the stimuli biological organisms encounter on their way. In a series of notes, after first making his by now familiar point that for organisms problems arise mainly because of disappointed expectations, he argues that “the computer does not search its environment for new programs,” although he concedes that this feature could be built into the computer. Yet fundamental differences remain: Problems mean something different to organisms than to computers. A computer can be built to any specification. Present computers only work with specified problems, that is to say, the programs must not be too unexpected. To a certain extent this also holds for organisms. But although it will be possible to produce or specify a program, which the computer “considers” as a disappointed expectation, the program with the entailed problems will always have to be set to the computer. Only organisms have their own problems and are able to develop some initiatives in answer to problems. Life may be said to be the simultaneous emerging of problems and structures.106

It is not its capability of being stimulated which makes the biological organism, Popper wants to say here, but it is the other way round: the

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built-in expectations, the anticipatory trial movements are what makes the stimulus. His main point of criticism therefore is again based on the contrast between the bucket theory and the searchlight theory, and especially the many shapes in which the former keeps on surfacing in psychology and philosophy. The organism is not a bucket, passively waiting for whatever stimulus impinges upon its receptors, but a searchlight actively exploring its surroundings in need of a solution for some vitally important problems. In order to be perceived or classified as a stimulus at all, it has to be a function of the organism’s (immediate) concerns. Animals have their own problems in the sense that the ecological niche they live in is prestructured in terms of their aims and needs, and what counts as a stimulus is already a function of those aims and needs. As the animal psychologist of his youth, Volkelt, explained, outside its web flies are not even recognized by the spider as edible objects.107 With biological organisms relevance is built in. Popper’s earlier-mentioned criticism of Pavlov’s theory of the conditioned reflex to the effect that there are no naturally repeatable stimuli which the organism cannot fail to recognize as being the same, therefore can be generalized to computational systems that, not living in an ecological niche, have to treat all facts as possibly relevant for solving their problems. Despite their common emphasis on problem solving then, the searchlight theory and the computational theory of mind differ fundamentally in their view of the nature of problems and their meaning for the organism. Seeing and discussing these differences, Popper shows awareness of the gulf between the tradition of German Denkpsychologie and the cognitive revolution of the 1950s in a way some of its leading revolutionaries have not. This background in early Denkpsychologie and evolutionary epistemology urgently impels a reading of Popper’s The Self and Its Brain other than the received view of the book as a failed attempt to restore a variant of Cartesian dualism. It must not be forgotten that the book appeared in a period in which not only philosophical materialism reigned supreme, but also one in which the various ontological positions took the physical sciences, rather than biology, as their paradigm. Thus Carnap’s logical behaviourism was an attempt to force psychological language into the mould of a universal physicalist language.108 Soon convinced of the insurmountable difficulties of translating different languages, and seeking to accommodate the explanatory model of contemporary physics in which unobservable processes were not shunned, Herbert Feigl’s forceful and influential version of physicalism argued that mental processes are

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identical with a certain subclass of the physical processes that occur in our brain.109 The fact that Feigl continued the program of physicalism initiated by Schlick only further explains Popper’s eagerness to attempt anew to lead the discussion about mind and body in another, biologically inspired, direction. Yet precisely this aspect of Popper’s approach to the classical mindbody problem has been either ignored or misrepresented. Admittedly, Popper has not always been as clear about his real motives either, sometimes challenging the physicalist orthodoxy by advocating the highly nonbiological view of the mind known as Cartesian dualism. But much as his notion of world 3 was seen to differ from Frege’s, his notion of world 2 is decidedly non-Cartesian, in spite of his occasionally provocative flirtations to the contrary. An admirer of Jennings, Popper rejects the Cartesian idea that consciousness arises only with humans, arguing instead that there are lower and higher stages of consciousness, and that animals are not inanimate automata.110 What he seems to adopt from Descartes is the idea that mind matters, that psychological phenomena “interact” with behaviour, but this he had better put forward without referring to a theory which he on other grounds almost completely rejects. Indeed, the appeal to interaction is in fact no more than a defence of the evolutionary searchlight theory of mind, and what worries him above all is the supposed implication of materialism that the activity of the mind, the self, is an illusion.111 On the other hand, the vexed problem how to conceive philosophically of an interaction between nonphysical states and physical states seems to bother him much less, and in fact Popper never develops an ontological theory answering this problem. The idea that mind matters is in fact a basic tenet of Jennings’s theory of emergent evolution referred to earlier in the first section of this chapter. According to Jennings in his article on emergent evolution, banishing any a priori reasoning or assumption from biology and scientific method in general can have a wholesome effect on the disturbed relation between being a man of science and being human. Mechanistic science teaches not only determinism but also materialism, leaving no role whatsoever for “ideas, ideals, purposes, beliefs. . . . They ought not to exist.”112 The method of trial and error can contribute to reconciling science and our self-image not by giving up determinism and opting for indeterminism. Indeed, indeterminism itself is in conflict with science for only in depending on the results of previous trials can one discover what is an error.113 Jennings’s way out of the problem is to distinguish between mechanistic determinism and what might be called “experimental

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determinism,” which is what remains when the former has been stripped of its a priori assumptions, such as that causality can only obtain between “particles of matter moving by immutable laws,” and that the future is predictable from what has occurred in the past. The latter assumption is in conflict with evolutionary history and the former with inductive, cumulative evidence from experiments in all the areas of nature, showing that the mental determines the physical and vice versa. As Jennings puts it, “Thought, purpose, ideals, conscience, do alter what happens. That is, a man with an idea behaves diversely from a man without one.”114 By allowing for (experimental) determinism and mentalism, therefore, Jennings’s doctrine of emergent evolutionism can be said to combine the advantages of mechanism and vitalism without at the same time sharing their ineptitude. Despite the differences as regards induction and association between Popper and Jennings, the force of the latter’s evolutionary plea for the experimental method in science, and especially the attempt to show that evolutionary science need not conflict with “the manifest image of man,” seems to have been a crucial factor in shaping Popper’s philosophy of mind. In particular the supposed fatalistic implication of the biological sciences, described by Jennings as “the extinction of all stimulus to effort, of all man’s attempts to guide the course of events,” must have challenged the former teacher and propagator of work pedagogy, apprehensive about dogmatic tendencies impeding critical thinking, in developing a view of evolution incorporating German Denkpsychologie with its emphasis on active problem solving. Popper’s later distinction between passive and active Darwinism is the fruit of this integrated treatment of evolutionary theory and Denkpsychologie. His systematic remarks on the nature of world 2 unambiguously reflect the tradition of Groos, Bu¨ hler, and Selz. Challenging the dominant empiricist view of consciousness as a form of (passive) self-observation, modelled on sense perception, he proposes to compare conscious experiences with the experiences prompted by all sorts of problem-solving activities, thereby recalling the experiments of the Wu¨ rzburg school. Indeed, to say that conscious experiences are due to our “trials and rejections, when reading, re-reading, interpreting and re-interpreting a difficult passage of some ancient book,” echoes Selz’s theory that mental images and sensations appear only after the subject’s grasp of the “total task” when confronted with a difficult problem. This alternative view of consciousness as a searchlight is also evident in Popper’s view of the biological function of consciousness. Far from being a self-justifying and transparent given, as

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both rationalists and empiricists believe, consciousness is an organizing instrument or tool in the struggle for life. Consciousness is serviceable to life insofar as it helps the organism anticipate how to adapt to its environment. To be sure, much of our purposeful behaviour happens without the intervention of consciousness, but, Popper goes on, its serviceability to life is especially evident when “problems of a non-routine kind” have to be solved, or when a certain aim can be achieved “by alternative means, and when two or more means are tried out, after deliberation,” as happened in the case of Köhler’s chimpanzee Sultan.115 A third function of consciousness relates to Popper’s early endorsement of Groos’s cyclic theory of the acquisition of habits and the resultant “fear of the Unheimlichen,” when confronted with things unusual and unknown. Consciousness, he claims, is needed to select new expectations, but once they have become invariably successful, they will turn into a matter of routine and become unconscious, yet “an unexpected event will attract attention, and thus consciousness.”116 Popper’s “metaphysical conjecture” of active Darwinism is this searchlight theory of consciousness applied to evolution.117 Unlike passive Darwinism, active Darwinism assumes that “very early in the history of life living organisms acquired, by way of mutations organised by selection pressure, certain behavioural, traits: they became active explorers, actively and curiously searching for new environments . . . and especially for trial behaviour.”118 Trial behaviour implies that there are alternative ways of behaviour, evaluations of chosen courses of behaviour, and the gradual development of preferences on the part of the organism. With the emergence of exploratory behaviour, “mindlike behaviour,” as Popper calls it, thereby recalling his early expression of “behaviouristic Denkpsychologie,” begins to play an increasingly active part in evolution. In its turn mindlike behaviour is assumed to turn into conscious behaviour, although “at which stage we cannot say.”119 It is noteworthy that by accrediting lower organisms with conscious experiences, Popper dissociates himself not only from Descartes but also from those who, like the epiphenomenalists, merely cross out one of the causal arrows admitted by Cartesianism to run between the material and mental substance, thereby sticking to his mechanistic outlook on animal behaviour. According to epiphenomenalism, eloquently defended by Thomas Huxley (1825–1895), animals are conscious automata and the working of their bodily mechanism is unaffected by their mental activity.120 It is not surprising therefore to see Popper devoting so much time and patience to rebutting epiphenomenalism; the theory’s

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psychological assumptions are in flat contradiction with the empirical findings of the animal psychology of Morgan and Jennings. Why this historical background is so important becomes clear when we finally proceed to consider some of the early reviews of The Self and Its Brain. Popper’s criticism of epiphenomenalism there centres around the theory’s incapacity to accommodate the facts of Darwinism. While admitting the existence of a world 2, epiphenomenalism denies it any biological function, and this, Popper contends, implies that the theory cannot explain that mental processes are the product of evolution by natural selection. As he puts it, “The mental system has, clearly, its evolutionary and functional history, and its functions have increased with the evolution from lower to higher organisms. It thus has to be linked with the Darwinian point of view. But epiphenomenalism cannot do this.”121 In his review of The Self and Its Brain, with the telling title “Interaction revived?” Frank Jackson replies that Popper does not distinguish between traits conducive to survival and traits unavoidably accompanying those so conducive.122 By holding that consciousness falls into the latter category, epiphenomenalism, Jackson maintains, can circumvent Popper’s criticism. What is significant about Jackson’s reply is that no mention is made at all of Popper’s view of the mind. Indeed, his comparison of traits unavoidably accompanying those conducive to survival with having a heavy coat unavoidably accompanying the evolutionarily significant feature of having a thick coat (of polar bears) leads one to suspect that Jackson has failed to take notice of Popper’s searchlight theory of mind. Like Huxley’s sound of a steam whistle, Jackson’s having a heavy coat seems to take sense perceptions as a standard example of conscious experience. But this view of consciousness, established by British empiricism, is precisely what is at issue.123 Arguing therefore that epiphenomenalism can be made ontologically consistent with the Darwinian point of view is besides the point because the crucial premise of this argument, the classification of conscious experiences as unavoidably and causally impotent by-products of properties conducive to survival, will be rejected by Popper as resting on a false, even mythical, psychological theory.124 It is by no means certain that Popper’s alternative epistemological theory of consciousness would not raise ontological questions in its turn. Indeed, saying, as Popper does, that mental images, sensations, and feelings appear only after the subject has solved a problem merely seems to postpone the ontological question. His refusal to answer this question might be indicative of his having no answer at all, but at the same time shows that his abiding interest – from his dissertation onwards – is in

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the psychological and epistemological rather than the ontological aspect of the body-mind problem.125 Significantly, in his more biological articles and essays, ontologically loaded terms like mind and consciousness increasingly yield to biological and psychological notions, such as organism and trying-out behaviour. In one of those essays Popper’s involvement with the classical mind-body problem is even completely motivated by his epistemological urge to argue that the growth of knowledge and mind can only be explained satisfactorily by turning traditional Darwinism upside down, and then to assume that the organism is active and the environment passive, which, of course, proceeds parallel to his replacement of the bucket theory of knowledge, and its contemporary version in the form of stimulus-response psychology, with a theory which maintains that our knowledge of the world is (partly) drawn from our mind and constructed from the repertoire of knowledge dispositions we already possess.126 Unlike the ontological questions raised by both dualism and physicalism therefore, Popper’s approach to consciousness and the mind-body problem seems to be mainly concerned with its role in the growth and development of cognitive and sensorimotor processes, in the sense of world 2, and in what it achieves in a more objective sense: the creation of “tools, of instruments, of languages, of myths, and of theories.”127 To say therefore, as John Watkins does, that Popper has merely complicated the mind-body problem by bringing in world 3 is in one sense true but in another, more important, sense deeply mistaken.128 From a strictly ontological point of view, Popper’s idea that understanding the interaction between worlds 2 and 3 helps towards understanding of the interaction between worlds 1 and 2 is indeed not much help at all, because world 3 never causes or initiates any world 2 process in the way in which dualism assumes mental processes to cause or initiate bodily or other mental processes. Yet from Popper’s evolutionary epistemological view it is precisely the ontological approach, whether in its dualistic or physicalist version, which leads to a simplification of the mind-body problem. Conceiving of the mind as an organism always searching for means and inventing tools to solve its problems, essentially implies giving an account of the most refined and powerful tool of the mind, namely, language, and this, Popper believes, thereby following Bu¨ hler, can only be done by including the objective achievement of language: truly or falsely representing facts.129 To the extent that they have bothered to consider language at all, Popper complains, behaviouristic and physicalist theories have taken a

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reductive course in the explanation of language, the former by treating language essentially as a form of communication (Bu¨ hler’s inducing function) and the latter by providing a causal, physical explanation, interpreting language as merely expressive of the state of mind of the speaker (Buhler’s ¨ expressive function).130 But in this way physicalists have failed to see what is, according to Bu¨ hler, a constitutive feature of the human mind. Unlike animal languages, serving only the two lower linguistic functions, human language is also capable of producing true and false statements, and valid and invalid arguments. A pupil of Bu¨ hler, Popper emphasizes the serviceability of language to life, rather than the “logical syntax” (Carnap) or “deep structure” (Chomsky) of language.131 Using language is a biologically useful activity of the speaker, and its three main functions – expression, signal, description – correspond to the three main attitudes of the organism towards, respectively, itself, the other, and the surrounding world. Among the biologically useful effects of especially the evolution of the descriptive function of language, Popper lists such things as a more flexible and conscious anticipation of future events; the formulation of questions, and hence the beginnings of an objectification of problems; the development of imagination; a further development of the method of trial and error by an increase of trials supplied by the imagination; the traditional rather than genetic embodiment of these newly invented forms of behaviour.132 From an evolutionary perspective therefore descriptive language itself appears as a searchlight enabling organisms to investigate and cope with their environment much more finely than organisms possessing only the two lower linguistic functions. Not only the methods of selection and anticipation get vastly improved by the development of descriptive language but also the methods of discovery. To take Popper’s standard example, the number system (a form of language) is an invention of men, but with the invention of the natural numbers the existence of odd and even numbers arose as an unintended consequence. And the same holds for the prime numbers.133 It is unsurprising, therefore, that Popper attaches so much importance to the descriptive and argumentative functions of language in the context of his discussion of world 3: the main “creator” of world 3 is language itself.134 There is still another, though related, reason why world 3, contrary to Watkins’s opinion, is essential to Popper’s view of the body-mind problem: his account of the emergence of the self. In most discussions of Popper’s theory of the body-mind problem, no mention is made of his theory of the self, yet both his historical background and his epistemology of dogmatic

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and critical thinking make his discussion of the self an integral part of his philosophy and psychology. As noted in Chapter 3, towards the end of the nineteenth century the denial of the existence of an enduring self through the irreversible flux of sensory experience and images was quite fashionable. Prompted by Mach’s epistemology, selves, like things, were considered fictions. In the twentieth century both epistemology, first of logical positivism and later of so-called ordinary language philosophy, and psychology, especially behaviourism, continued to exercise their disintegrating effect on the concept of the self. Although the young Popper was seen to agree with Mach’s demolition of the concept of a substantial self, selves remained important as a “fiction” in the specific sense given to that term by Vaihinger, serving the role of a regulative principle in the systematic development of psychology. When he much later exclaims that selves exist, without qualifying the concept of existence by means of Vaihinger’s distinction, it looks as if he has finally adopted a more ontological stance, thereby challenging behaviourism and Gilbert Ryle’s exorcising of the ghost in the machine.135 On closer scrutiny, however, it turns out that he has substituted the psychological concept of “character,” or “personality,” for the notion of the self. As he puts it: “Hume’s official theory (if I may call it so) is that the self is no more than the sum total (the bundle) of its experiences. He argues – in my opinion, rightly – that talk of a ‘substantial’ self does not help us much. Yet he again and again describes actions as ‘flowing’ from a person’s character. In my opinion we do not need more in order to be able to speak of a self.”136 Of course, this is not an inconsistency on Hume’s part, for the concept of the self under attack is a purely philosophical notion, fostered by a mistaken metaphysical outlook, whereas the concept of character belongs to Hume’s moral psychology. Rejection of the former notion in no way entails the illegitimacy of postulating character, in order to explain how the moral value of a person is best assessed. Popper therefore characteristically skirts the purely ontological discussion and instead pursues his own epistemological program firmly rooted in Denkpsychologie and pedagogy. Indeed, the psychological concept of personality was seen to play an important role in his thesis on pedagogy of 1927, in which he introduced his distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking for the first time. Following Burger, Adler, and Stern, he maintained that education had to be shaped by the goal of raising the child to the level of the individual requirements of autonomy, and that failing to meet these requirements was to be less than fully a man of “character.” The means to attain the level of free self-determination, the

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early Popper argued, are provided by Burger’s principle of complete education, “the principles of activity and spontaneity,” which emphasize the emancipation from prejudice in the creation of an autonomous personality. Providing the boundary between the “stage of habit” and the “stage of self-determination” (spontaneity) with “an exact psychological foundation,” was the central problem of his thesis of 1927, which finally, after his biological turn, prompted by Bu¨ hler and Selz, received its by now familiar solution in terms of the balancing requirements of dogmatic trial and critical error. When he later maintains that higher animals may have a personality, virtues or vices, but that only man “can make an effort to become a better man: to master his fears, his laziness, his selfishness; to get over his lack of self-control,” Popper is closer to the theme that concerned him in his pedagogical-psychological thesis than to the philosophical mind-body problem as it was discussed in the 1950s and 1960s.137 Relying now, in 1977, on his fully developed theory of the searchlight as well as his theory of worlds 2 and 3, Popper argues that the self is anchored in world 3 and cannot exist without it. The question how the mind or self cannot exist without world 3, while at the same time world 3 is the product of the mind, is solved by his view of the constant interaction, or feedback (Rückwirkung) between the developing self and its products which he first encountered in Selz (Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums) and later in Bahle (Der musikalische Schaffensprozess).138 Essential to learning to become a self – another sign of his divergence from the Cartesian tradition with its emphasis on a prefabricated self – is the immersion in the cultural achievements of the mind (of others), in world 3, that is. Language plays a constitutive role in this interplay between worlds 2 and 3, for it is only due to the descriptive and argumentative functions of language, Popper believes, that we can become objects of our own critical judgement.139 From the perspective of an ontological theory of the self this concentration upon the critical use of language may seem surprising, but not so from Popper’s background in Adler’s characterology and (Selzian) Denkpsychologie. Rather than the gradual but, in a sense, no more explicable appearance of an enduring entity, the emergence of the self is the hard-won view of ourselves from the outside, achieved in an endless learning process of dogmatic trials and critical-error elimination.

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Notes

Chapter 1 1. Karl Popper, “Naturgesetze und Theoretische Systeme,” in Gesetz und Wirklichkeit, ed. Simon Moser (Vienna: Europäisches Forum, 1949), pp. 43–61, translated by Popper as “The Bucket and the Searchlight: Two Theories of Knowledge,” in his Objective Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 341–362. 2. This method is described at numerous places, but see especially Popper, (“The Bucket and the Searchlight”); Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem (London: Routledge, 1994); All Life Is Problem Solving (London: Routledge, 1999), chap. 1. 3. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge, 1945), 2:260. See also “The Bucket and the Searchlight.” 4. Popper, All Life Is Problem Solving, p. 53. 5. Donald Campbell, “Evolutionary Epistemology,” in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, ed. Paul A. Schilpp (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1974), pp. 413–463, reprinted in and quoted from Evolutionary Epistemology: Theory of Rationality and the Sociology of Knowledge, ed. G. Radnitzky and W. W. Bartley III (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1987). 6. W. W. Bartley III, “Philosophy of Biology versus Philosophy of Physics,” in Radnitzky and Bartley, Evolutionary Epistemology: Theory of Rationality and the Sociology of Knowledge, pp. 7–46. 7. Popper, “Replies to My Critics,” in Schilpp, The Philosophy of Karl Popper, p. 1061. 8. Konrad Lorenz, Evolution and Modification of Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965); On Agression (London: Methuen, 1966). 9. Popper, Unended Quest (London: Routledge, 1974), pp. 44–45. 10. Popper, Objective Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), p. 70. 11. The two most detailed studies of Popper’s development have failed to investigate this relationship. John Wettersten, in his The Roots of Critical Rationalism (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992), only notes that Popper’s evolutionary 191

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12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33.

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Notes to Pages 5–12 epistemology, in particular his three-world view (discussed in Chapter 6), “is that metaphysical view which had been defended, developed and used as a theoretical foundation for a new scientific psychology by Külpe and Selz” (p. 231), but does not explain or defend this claim any further. Moreover, by relating Popper’s theory of three worlds exclusively to Külpe, Bühler, and Selz, Wettersten fails to note the influence the biologists Lloyd Morgan and H. S. Jennings have had on German psychology, and how their role was initially mediated by largely unknown figures as Hans Volkelt and Karl Groos. About their role, see Chapters 2 and 3 of this study. Malachi Hacohen, in his Karl Popper, the Formative Years, 1902–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), mentions Popper’s evolutionary epistemology only as part of his philosophy from the 1960s onwards, thereby implicitly endorsing the “received view” as put forward by W. W. Bartley III. Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 4. The essay “Conjectural Knowledge: My Solution of the Problem of Induction,” pp. 1–31, is yet another attempt to sketch the development of his own thought. More than the other essays, this one clearly shows that Popper reconstructs his “context of discovery” in terms of his later logical and epistemological achievements. Ibid., p. 25. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 44. Ibid., pp. 44, 46, 50; Popper, Objective Knowledge, pp. 6, 24. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 45. Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 5. Ibid., pp. 6, 24, 67n. An earlier use of this idea is to be found in Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie, ed. Troels Eggers Hansen (Tübungen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1979), p. 29n. See also note 59 (this chapter). Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 6. Ibid., pp. 6–7. Ibid., p. 24. In Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, the same application occurs (p. 46). The importance of these two different applications becomes clearer later on. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 46. Popper, “The Demarcation between Science and Metaphysics” (ibid., p. 256). Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 34. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., p. 35. Popper, Unended Quest, p. 38. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 52. Popper, Unended Quest, p. 38. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 42. Popper, Unended Quest, p. 52; Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 23. Yet there is a passage suggesting that he wrote something on paper: “I had earlier (in the winter of 1919–20) formulated and solved the problem of demarcation between science and non-science and I did not think it worth publishing” (Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 1n.). As will be shown in detail in Chapters 3 and 5. See also later in this chapter.

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Notes to Pages 13–17

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34. Popper, Unended Quest, p. 209, n. 55. 35. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung: Eine pädagogisch-strukturpsychologische Monographie,” submitted as Hausarbeit to the Pädagogisches Institut, Vienna, 1927, Karl Popper Papers, box 12, file 11, p. 3, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, Calif. 36. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme, pp. 28–29, n. 23. According to the editor of this book, the version of the first volume, which has been preserved, seems to have been written between February 1931 and the summer of 1932. There was also a second volume, of which only a few fragments have been preserved, and which were published together with the completed first volume, in 1979. See Troels Eggers Hansen, “Which Came First, the Problem of Induction or the Problem of Demarcation?” paper presented at the Karl Popper Centenary Congress, Vienna, July 3–8, 2002. 37. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 127. 38. Popper, “Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie” (Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna, 1928). 39. Popper, Unended Quest, p. 45. 40. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 49. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. The pioneering book of William Berkson and John Wettersten, Learning from Error (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984), is the first to investigate Popper’s psychology systematically and was an important stimulus for my own first article on Popper and Otto Selz (see ter Hark, “Problems and Psychologism: Popper as the Heir to Otto Selz,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 24 [1993]). Yet their work is more an attempt at evaluating Popper’s psychology and methodology and pointing to the importance of their integration for current philosophy and psychology, than a detailed historical study of all the manuscripts of Popper before 1932, including the psychologists and philosophers that figure prominently in his manuscripts. Wettersten, The Roots of Critical Rationalism, is a continuation of Berkson and Wettersten, Learning from Error, yet the historical background of Popper’s discussions on psychology and methodology is significantly broadened, dating back to the 1830s. Popper’s Ph.D. thesis is also discussed, as well as his largely unknown article on mnemonic exercise, “Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit,” Die Quelle 81 (1931): 607–619. In the first half of his book, Wettersten describes the debate between inductivism and deductivism in philosophy and psychology in the second half of the nineteenth century. Then follows a discussion of the founder of the Würzburg school, Oswald Külpe, and of Karl Bühler. The first part of the book is not concerned with actual influences on the young Popper. Moreover, his treatment of Popper’s dissertation is rather summary, and the preceding manuscript of 1927 was not yet available at the time. Accordingly, Wettersten has failed to see that Popper was not a deductivist from the start but rather the opposite, namely, an inductivist, and that the direct influences as far as inductivism is concerned, came from the positivistic philosopher Heinrich Avenarius, the German child psychologist Stern, and the biologists Jennings and Morgan.

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44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53.

54.

55.

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Notes to Pages 17–21 Although Hacohen, The Formative Years, deals with all the manuscripts, he concentrates more on the “Methodenstreit” in the economic and legal sciences as background for Popper. Psychology gets scant treatment by contrast. However, I comment on Hacohen’s reading of Popper’s psychological manuscripts at several places in this book. Popper, Unended Quest, p. 76. Ibid., p. 45. The differences between early German Denkpsychologie and contemporary psychology are too large to justify the use of the term “cognitive psychology.” Some of them preoccupy us in Chapters 2 and 4. See ter Hark, “Problems and Psychologism: Popper as the Heir to Otto Selz,” for a first detailed historical comparison. Selz is discussed briefly in Berkson and Wettersten, Learning from Error, yet he is not presented as a figure read by the young Popper but simply as one important figure at the time bearing some resemblance to the problems Popper wrestled with. Moreover, their main point in these short passages is that “Popper’s and Selz’s views are different” (Berkson and Wettersten, p. 10). Wettersten, The Roots of Critical Rationalism, now claims that Popper “defends the views of Selz” ( p. 140) and that he “attempted to translate the (deductivist) psychology of Selz into a deductivist methodology” (foreword, p. 9). It is noteworthy that despite the author’s claim for the importance of Selz, no substantial attention is given to his work. Selz even gets no separate section and the scattered remarks about his work remain at a general level only. See, for instance, his remarks at p. 128. Popper, Unended Quest, p. 76. Popper, Logik der Forschung: Zur Erkenntnistheorie der moderne Naturwissenschaft (Vienna: Julius Springer, 1935), translated by Karl Popper as The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959), p. 31. Ibid., p. 32. Indeed, Popper’s endorsement of a Bergsonian view as regards the psychology of discovery is a return to a pre-Selzian period. See further Chapter 4 (this volume). Popper, Unended Quest, p. 76. In Unended Quest he tells us that in the 1920s he had access to the psychological laboratory and that he “conducted a few experiments which soon convinced me that sense data, ‘simple’ ideas or impressions, and other such things, did not exist: they were fictitious – inventions based on mistaken attempts to transfer atomism (or Aristotelian logic . . . ) from physics to psychology” (p. 76). This seems to be the favourite interpretation of Popper’s biographer Hacohen. Writing about the relationship between Popper’s psychological theories and his philosophy of science, he says: “However, he did not recall precisely his intellectual development, and read back to the 1920s problems and solutions of later years” (Hacohen, The Formative Years, p. 132). Popper, “Bemerkungen u¨ ber Sprachtheorie und ihre Geschichte,” Karl Popper Papers, box 4, file 8, p. 3, Hoover Institution Archives. The passage is originally in English.

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56. It is obvious that Popper’s remarks about the devastating effects of Aristotelian logic have to be seen in the light of his own mastery of the new logic of Frege and Russell. John Wettersten also points to this passage, yet fails to observe that it has been conceived almost thirty years later than the moment Popper shifted from psychology to philosophy (Wettersten, The Roots of Critical Rationalism, p. 143). Accordingly, Popper’s mastery of the new logic does not explain his shift from psychology to philosophy. A possible counterexample to my claim is a passage in Popper’s doctoral dissertation of 1928 in which he rejects a principle of transference, arguing that it leads to an unwelcome “logicism” in psychology. Thus: “As ‘psychologism’ has to some extent been defeated, one should expect that the belief in a parallelism between both areas has been affected, yet the danger of a ‘logicism’ in Denkpsychologie seems to me to be as actual as ever” (Popper, “Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie,” p. 65). What worries Popper in this passage is the tendency among some psychologists to “logicize” psychology of thinking, which means to suppose that subjective experience would display a structure similar to the structure of concept and judgement in logic. However, his point here is not that one cannot translate logic into psychology because the logic is defective, because Aristotelian, but rather because cognitive processes are simply different from logical ones. The argument therefore is independent of Popper’s stance towards Aristotelian logic. Indeed, supposing otherwise, that is, supposing that Popper was aware of the disastrous impact of Aristotelian logic on psychology, would imply that he should have to reject association psychology already in 1928, because it is the result of this impact. But this is not really the case. Moreover, as I point out in Chapter 3, Popper explicitly subscribes to Humean association psychology in his “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis’ in der Erziehung.” 57. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 26. 58. Popper, Logik der Forschung, appendix x. 59. Popper, Die beide Grundprobleme, p. 29 and n. Attempting to remove doubts about the deductive nature of his psychological sketch, he argues that the former has been constructed by transferring his unmistakable deductive theory of knowledge to psychology. 60. Karl Bühler, Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, 3d ed. ( Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1918), translated as The Mental Development of the Child (New York: Harcourt, 1930), p. 219. 61. Carl Stumpf, “Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie,” Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologische Classe der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften XIX, Band, II. Abteiling 1891 (Munich: Verlag der Akademie, 1892), pp. 481–482. I thank Troels Eggers Hansen for drawing my attention to this passage.

Chapter 2 1. Wilhelm Max Wundt, Grundriss der Psychologie (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1896). 2. William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover Publications, 1890), 1:551.

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3. Ibid., p. 561. 4. Ibid., p. 563. James points out that this idea also goes back to Locke who said: “Custom settles habits of thinking in the understanding, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions in the body; all which seem to be but trains of motion in the animal spirits which, once set going, continue in the same steps they have been used to, which by often treading are worn into a smooth path, and the motion in it becomes easy and, as it were, natural” ( John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975], bk. II, chap. xxxiii, § 6). ¨ 5. Hermann Ebbinghaus, Uber das Gedächtnis (Leipzig: Dunker & Humbolt, 1885), translated as Memory (New York: Dover, 1964). 6. Wilhelm Wundt, Physiologische Psychologie (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1881), pp. 492–554. 7. Köhler also argued that Gestalten in the sense of unitary processes not only occur in mental life but also in physics. Wolfgang Köhler, Die physische Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand (Erlangen: Verlag der Philosophischen Akademie Erlangen, 1919). ¨ 8. Hans Volkelt, Uber die Vorstellungen der Tiere (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1914), p. 87. 9. Felix Krüger, “Komplexqualitäten, Gestalten und Gefühle,” in Neue Psychologische Studien, vol. 1 (Munich: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1926), p. 96. ¨ 10. Oswald Külpe, “Uber die moderne Psychologie des Denkens,” Internationales Monatschrift für Wissenschaft und Technik 6 (1912), reprinted in O. Külpe, Psychologische Vorlesungen, ed. K. Bühler, 2d ed. (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1920), pp. 297–331. 11. Ibid., p. 27. 12. The “empiricocriticism” of Avenarius, as well as its influence on Külpe and the young Popper is discussed in Chapter 3 (this volume). Richard Avenarius, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, 2 vols. (Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1888, 1890). 13. Ibid., p. 22. 14. A. Mayer and J. Orth, “Zur qualitativen Untersuchung der Association,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane 26 (1901): 1–13. Horst Gundlach discusses the tense relationship between Marbe and Külpe, as well as the question whether the genesis of the Würzburg school is really due to Marbe and Külpe. Horst Gundlach, “Oswald Külpe und die Würzburger Schule,” in Hundert Jahre Institut für Psychologie und Würzburger Schule der Denkpsychologie, ed. Wilhelm Janke and Wolfgang Schneider (Göttingen: Hogrefe, Verlag für Psychologie, 1999), pp. 107–127. 15. Edwin Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology (New York: Appleton, 1929), p. 395. 16. H. J. Watt, “Experimentelle Beiträge zur einer Theorie des Denkens,” Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 4 (1905): 289–436. 17. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology, p. 397. ¨ die Willenstätigkeit und das Denken (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck 18. Narziss Ach, Uber & Ruprecht, 1905).

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19. Karl Bühler, “Tatsachen und Probleme zu einer Psychologie der Denkvorgänge,” Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 9 (1907): 297–365; 12 (1908): 1– 23, 24–92, 93–123. The final section includes Bühler’s response to Wundt’s criticism. ¨ 20. Wilhelm Max Wundt, “Uber Ausfrageexperimente und u¨ ber die Methoden zur Psychologie des Denkens,” Psychologische Studien 3 (1907): 301–360. 21. Buhler, ¨ “Tatsachen und Probleme,” p. 315. 22. Ibid., pp. 315–316. The following protocol report illustrates the imageless nature of such thought: Is this correct: “The future is just as much a condition of the present as of the past”? Answer: “No.” (10 secs.) First I thought: that sounds correct (without words). Then I made the attempt to represent it to myself. The thought came to me: Men are determined by thoughts of the future. Then, however, immediately the thought: that the thought of the future should not be confounded with the future itself – that such confusions, however, constitute a frequent dodge in philosophical thought. (Of words or images there was throughout no trace.) Thereupon the answer: No. (Ibid., p. 318)

23. Indeed, as Martin Kusch observes, one of Bühler’s contemporaries has “accused” him of checking and confirming Husserl’s phenomenology in an experimental way. Martin Kusch, “The Politics of Thought: A Social History of the Debate between Wundt and the Würzburg School,” in L. Albertazzi, The Dawn of Cognitive Science: Early European Contributors (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), 69. 24. See T. H. Leahey, A History of Psychology: Main Currents in Psychological Thought (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1987), p. 197; R. M. Odgen, “Oswald Kulpe ¨ and the Würzburger School,” American Journal of Psychology 61 (1951): 4–19. 25. See, for instance, H. A. Simon, “Otto Selz and Information-Processing Psychology,” in Otto Selz: His Contribution to Psychology, ed. N. Fryda and A. D. de Groot (The Hague: Mouton, 1980), pp. 147–163; Albertazzi, The Dawn of Cognitive Science pp. 1–29; and Allen Newell, “Duncker on Thinking: An Inquiry into Progress in Cognition,” in A Century of Psychology as a Science, ed. Sigmund Koch and David E. Leary (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), pp. 392–419. 26. See Mitchell G. Ash, “Die Würzburger Schule – Kontext, Praxis, Rezeption,” in Hundert Jahre Institut für Psychologie und Würzburger Schule der Denkpsychologie, ed. Wilhelm Janke and Wolfgang Schneider (Göttingen: Hogrefe, Verlag für Psychologie, 1999), pp. 57–75. I am much indebted to Ash’s account. 27. “The psychologist must be at the same time a theorist of knowledge . . . as anyone must for whom science is more than artisany.” Carl Stumpf, “Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie,” Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologische Classe der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften XIX. Band, II. Abteilung 1891 (Munich: Verlag der Akademie, 1892), p. 508. See also my discussion of Popper’s principle of transference and the issue of psychologism in Chapter 1, section 3, and note 61. 28. William Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit (Leipzig: Verlag von Quelle & Meyer, 1914), p. 7.

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29. J. F. T. Bugental et al., “Symposion on Karl Bühler’s Contributions to Psychology,” Journal of General Psychology 75 (1966): 183. 30. William Stern, Die menschliche Persönlichkeit, 2d ed. (Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1923), pp. 97–101. Stern has been vehemently criticized by L. S. Vygotsky (Thought and Language), ed. E. Hanfmann and G. Vakar [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962], pp. 25–32), who argues that the principle of convergence, although perfectly unassailable in itself, in fact has released Stern from the task of analyzing the social and environmental factors especially in speech development. Stern’s explanation of how meaning in speech emerges greatly overrates the role of internal organic factors. These critical comments notwithstanding, Stern did contribute to a biological theory of development. 31. Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, p. 27. 32. Karl Bühler, “Die Instinkte des Menschen,” in Bericht u¨ ber die IX. Kongress für experimentelle Psychologie in München vom 21.–25. April 1925, ed. Karl Bühler ( Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1926). 33. George Fredrick Stout, A Manual of Psychology, 3d ed. (London: W. B. Clive, 1899), p. 344. 34. Buhler, ¨ Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 5. 35. Karl Bühler, Die Krise der Psychologie (Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1927), p. 35. 36. C. Lloyd Morgan, Habit and Instinct (London: Edward Arnold, 1896), p. 22. 37. Ibid. 38. This does not mean that on Jennings’s account animal behaviour would not be determined by certain factors. On the contrary, animal behaviour is determined by factors within the organism rather than by external stimuli. 39. Herbert Spencer Jennings, Behavior of the Lower Organisms (London: Indiana University Press, 1905), p. 296. 40. Ibid., p. 297. 41. As noted in Chapter 5 (this volume), in discussing Popper’s second manuscript on psychology, Mach made a similar distinction. 42. Buhler, ¨ Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 6. 43. Ibid., p. 9. 44. Ibid., p. 458. 45. See for an overview Roger Smith, The Fontana History of the Human Sciences (London: Fontana Press, 1997). 46. Buhler, ¨ Die Krise der Psychologie, p. 21. 47. Buhler, ¨ Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 10. 48. Wolfgang Köhler, Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden, Abhandlung der Preusische Akademie der Wiss. Physik.-Math. Klasse Nr. 1 (1917), translated by Ella Winter as The Mentality of Apes (New York: Humanities Press, 1925), p. 189. 49. Buhler, ¨ Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 21. 50. Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, p. 347. 51. Karl Groos, Das Seelenleben des Kindes: Ausgewälhtc Vorlesungen (Berlin: Verlag von Reuther & Reichard, 1923), p. 52.

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52. Ibid. 53. Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, p. 400. 54. Groos, Das Seelenleben des Kindes, p. 197. See als Vygotski, Thought and Language, pp. 77–78, for a positive account of potential concepts. 55. Ibid., p. 270. 56. Ibid., pp. 270–271. 57. Ibid., p. 284. This concept is also, and earlier, used by Avenarius; see Chapter 3 (this volume). 58. Groos, Das Seelenleben des Kindes, p. 284. 59. The expression “negative attitude towards the new” stems from Stern in his description of the theory of affective states of Groos. Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, p. 455. 60. Ibid., p. 350. 61. Ibid., pp. 350–351. 62. Ibid., p. 354. 63. Ibid. Similarly Bühler explains: “The first stimulus for further thinking, for explanations is provided not by what is regular, what always recurs, but what is exceptionable and what inspires amazement [das Wunderbare]” (Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 406). 64. Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, p. 356. 65. As to language development, see Clara Stern and William Stern, Die Kindersprache (Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1907), pp. 310–313. 66. Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, p. 357. 67. Buhler ¨ quotes Freud saying: “I have often noticed that I am more attracted by the content of a work of art than by its formal and technical characteristics which the artist values” (Bühler, Die Krise der Psychologie, p. 165). According to Bühler, this comment could be put as a motto over Freud’s whole life work. 68. In fact, some of Bühler’s most tenable criticisms of Freud come from Stern, such as the charge that Freudian notions about early infantile life rely too much on reconstructions from the analysis of adults. 69. Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, p. 12. Conversely, Adler was in sympathy with Stern’s work: “William Stern, in a different way, has arrived at results similar to mine.” Alfred Adler, “Die Individualpsychologie, ihre Voraussetzungen und Ergebnisse,” Scientia 16 (1914): 74–87, reprinted in The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927), p. 1. 70. Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, p. 11. 71. Ibid., p. 15. 72. Ibid., p. 11. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., p. 251. 75. Ibid., p. 253. 76. Ibid., p. 394. 77. Ibid., p. 28. 78. Ibid., p. 394. As Vygotsky (Thought and Language, pp. 31–32) points out, Stern’s metaphysical conception of personality, emphasizing personal teleology, ignores the social dimensions of developmental processes. 79. Ibid., p. 400.

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200 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

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Notes to Pages 49–56 Ibid., p. 428. Ibid., p. 426. Stern, Die menschliche Persönlichkeit, p. 240n. Alfred Adler, “Der nervöse Charakter,” Beihefte Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie 59 (1931): 1. Gerhard Benetka, Psychologie in Wien (Vienna: WUV-Universitätsverlag, 1995), p. 219. Alfred Adler, “Individual Psychology,” in Psychologies of the 1930s, ed. Carl Murchinson (Worcester, Mass.: Clark University Press, 1930), p. 398. The specific position of the child within the family can also restrict it in typical ways in making itself felt. Adler’s colleague Rühle – referred to by Popper ‘“Gewohnheit” und “Gesetzerlebnis’” – has shown that membership of a particular class can also be a source of feelings of inferiority, especially among proletarian children. O. Rühle, Die Seele des proletarischen Kindes (Dresden, 1925). Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, p. 436.

Chapter 3 1. Quoted from William. W. Bartley III, Wittgenstein (London: Cresset Library, 1973), p. 128. 2. Benetka, Psychologie in Wien, p. 219. 3. Hacohen, The Formative Years, p. 92. 4. The idea of the pedagogy of labour goes back to the eighteenth century, to the work of Anna Pestalozzi (1738–1815) and Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852). A number of factors abetted the further development of the pedagogy of labour and of various schools of labour. Industrialization and the attendant separation of home and work called for new ways of teaching children to work. Consequently, work became a decisive factor in school education. Developmental psychology was a second factor in the development of the labour schools. Psychologists acknowledged the importance of activity for the mental and physical development of the child. Wundt, for instance, emphasized the indispensable role of the motor system in the development of the imagination of children. Gradually the insight emerged that mind and body were of equal importance in the child’s development. Moreover, special attention was given to manual labour. 5. Eduard Burger, Arbeitspädagogik (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1923), p. 457. 6. Ibid., p. 445. 7. See for an account Hacohen, The Formative Years, p. 112. 8. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 3. ¨ 9. Popper, “Zur Philosophie des Heimatgedankens.” His first article was “Uber die Stellung des Lehrers zu Schule und Schüler. Gesellschaftliche oder individualistische Erziehung?” Schulreform 4 (1925): 204–208. 10. Popper, “Zur Philosophie des Heimatgedankens,” p. 907; Richard Avenarius, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung. See also note 40.

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11. In Die beiden Grundprobleme he will narrow his description of epistemology to questions of validity, relegating genetic questions to the psychology of knowledge which, moreover, he takes to be irrelevant for epistemology proper. See, for instance, p. 350. 12. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 12; Burger, Arbeitspädagogik, p. 440. 13. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 10. 14. Ibid., p. 11. 15. Ibid. 16. Burger, Arbeitspädagogik, p. 453. 17. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 12. 18. Ibid., p. 13. 19. Ibid., p. 4. 20. Ibid., pp. 3–4. Although Popper mentions no names here, the educational views of both Groos and James might be the target. The circular process which starts with mechanical activities and finally returns to mechanically exercised activities via conscious and attentive processes is, according to Groos, also “the road of every complete education” (Groos, Das Seelenleben des Kindes, p. 56). Even moral education has to proceed according to these lines, Groos maintains. In this respect, Groos joins the pedagogical views of William James. Quoting a phrase of the duke of Wellington, “Habit a second nature! Habit is ten times nature,” James contends that habit is the “fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent” ( James, The Principles of Psychology, 2: 121). And: “Habit alone is what keeps us within the bounds of the ordinance. The great thing in education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher processes of mind will be set free for their own proper work” (p. 122). 21. Popper also mentions Groos explicitly both in the text and in the bibliogra¨ phy. In the text he refers to Groos’s theory of exercise (Ubung) in the context of a discussion of the role of playing for the development of the child’s intellectual capacities. “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” pp. 105–106. 22. See the section on assurance in this chapter. 23. See Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 43. 24. Morgan, Habit and Instinct, p. 1. 25. Ibid., p. 1. 26. Ibid., p. 17. 27. Ibid., p. 151. This view is, of course, similar to Bühler’s notion of associative memory, his so-called second stage. See Chapter 2. 28. Ibid., p. 159. 29. Ibid., p. 158. 30. Hacohen, The Formative Years, p. 143. 31. Moreover, it is one of the two axioms of Avenarius’s psychology of knowledge. See further Chapter 5 (this volume). 32. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 16. 33. Ibid., p. 17. 34. Ibid., p. 18.

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35. For further discussion, see Chapter 5 (this volume). 36. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 20. Külpe, on whose distinction between description and explanation Popper seems to rely, endorses induction too. In his Vorlesungen u¨ ber Logik, ed. Otto Selz (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1923), he devotes a special section to the relation between logic and Forschung. Science is not only Darstellung but also Forschung. As examples of this Logik der Forschung, Külpe discusses the methodological rules proposed by Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Mill, Wundt, Windelband, and Rickert. For our purposes the most interesting point of this discussion is Külpe’s acceptance of the inductive method as a matter of course. It is noteworthy that Popper’s inductive stance concerns also, and even preeminently, physics. In accordance with this inductive stance, Popper claims that causal laws are verifiable (“‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 32). 37. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 21. Stern’s critical discussion of Freudians who would have derived deductively from the symbolic meanings of terms like “fox” and “hole” the supposed sexual impulses of the child might have served as an example here (see Chapter 2, this volume). 38. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” pp. 21–22. 39. Ibid., p. 21n. 40. Ibid., p. 22. 41. Decisive arguments for the importance of the concept of the Ego are to be found, according to Popper, in Richard Avenarius, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, and Ernst Mach, Analyse der Empfindungen. His own source for these ideas, as he indicates himself, is Külpe (Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” pp. 23, 27). 42. I emphasize these points because they clearly conflict with Popper’s autobiographical announcements to the effect that his own psychological work soon (i.e., before 1928) would have convinced him that “sense data, ‘simple’ ideas or impressions, and other such things, did not exist” (Popper, Unended Quest, p. 76). 43. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 28. 44. Ibid., p. 26. 45. Ibid., p. 29. 46. Ibid., p. 26. 47. Popper seems to have taken no notice of Vaihinger’s Darwinian view of thought as only a means in the struggle for existence. ¨ den nervösen Charakter, 4th ed. (Wiesbaden: J. F. Bergmann, 48. Alfred Adler, Uber 1912), translated as The Neurotic Constitution (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1926), p. 22. 49. Hans Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als Ob (Berlin, 1911), translated by C. K. Odgen as The Philosophy of “As If ” (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1924), p. 12. 50. With subliminal consciousness he seems to have in mind the idea of the unconscious in the tradition of Stern and Groos. In Chapter 4 we will see that Selz also makes use of this notion. 51. But even Vaihinger, Popper warns, seems to be guilty of equating the two notions. 52. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 32.

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Notes to Pages 71–77 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68.

69. 70.

71.

72.

203

Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., pp. 34–35. Buhler, ¨ Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 387. Muller ¨ deviates from Hume to the extent that he does not identify the experience of certainty with Hume’s degrees of the “force and vivacity” of impressions and ideas, but an explicit answer to the question what this experience consists of is not given either. As will become clear in Chapter 4, Selz launches a frontal assault on Müller, thereby attempting to eradicate the last remnants of association psychology. Buhler, ¨ Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 372. Popper uses the generic term “finding” (Setzung) in the sense of a general Existential-Erlebnis, whereas he reserves the term “judgement” for critical thinking. Setzung is regularly used by Avenarius to express his basic naturalistic idea of a principal coordination between organism and environment, each organism making assertions about the environment expressing a “finding” (Setzung). See Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 40. Buhler, ¨ Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 403. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 37. Buhler, ¨ Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 403. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 38. Ibid., p. 40a. On the contrary, as he puts it, it is not allowed that theoretical presuppositions amount to a “theoretical interpretation of the material headed for the induction of the experience of regularity” (ibid., p. 44). Richard Avenarius, Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, 2:31. Ibid., p. 34. Popper commences his description of fear with Kierkegaard’s well-known distinction between fear and anxiety (“‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 47). Approving this distinction, Popper nevertheless proposes to apply the concept of fear rather loosely. Except for this reference to Kierkegaard, as well as some references to Dostojewski and August Strindberg, the emphasis is on psychological theory. Ibid., p. 54. Even his later characterization of “expectations” as a “preparation for a reaction” recalls Groos. As Popper puts it then: “[W]e become conscious of many of our expectations only when they are disappointed” (Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 344). As Stern explains, surprise about new impressions is especially unlustbetont when the impressions of the familiar and the unhabitual become fused. In such cases the feeling of familiarity is as little pushed back as it is satisfied. This situation leads not simply to “the fear of the unfamiliar as to the fear of the Unheimlichen” (Stern, Die Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, p. 109). Popper also uses twice the expression das Unheimliche (“‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’”) pp. 51, 53), but, in contrast with Stern, was familiar with Avenarius’s use of that term. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 53.

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73. Ibid., p. 61. 74. Ibid., pp. 49, 61. 75. Alfred Adler, Menschenkenntnis (Leipzig: Verlag Hirzel, 1926), translated as Understanding Human Nature (New York: Chilton 1927), p. 192. 76. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 53. 77. Ibid., p. 62. 78. This is suggested by Hacohen’s brief description of Popper’s thesis. Hacohen, The Formative Years, p. 146. 79. Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, pp. 436–437. 80. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 64. 81. Ibid., p. 65. 82. Ibid. 83. As I agree in Chapter 5, note 76, Popper may also have taken the expression “bold theories” from Selz. On Selz’s use of this expression, see Chapter 4, note 89. 84. Popper also refers to astrology as an example of superstition. His discussion of superstition draws on a little but at the time influential book by Ferdinand Boll, Sternglauben und Sterndeutung (Leipzig: Teubner, 1919), in which it is argued that astrology is both science and religion. Especially its religious aspect, Boll maintains, has given astrology its unshakable resistance through the ages. Indeed, to the extent that astrology is religion, it is the expression of a fundamental urge of human existence. See Boll, p. 96. 85. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” pp. 76–77. 86. I pass over the second phenomenon, credulity. 87. Ibid., p. 80. 88. Buhler, ¨ Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 407; Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 82. See also Stern, Psychologie der frühen Kindheit, pp. 354–356. 89. Buhler, ¨ Die geistige Entwicklung des Kindes, p. 410. 90. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 90. 91. Ibid., p. 94 92. For instance, he approvingly cites Ebbinghaus’s description of a child that takes a white piece in his hand and puts it in his mouth and tastes its sweetness. All the elementary experiences, Ebbinghaus avers, such as the visual impression of the piece of sugar, the movements of hands and arms, the intensive taste, and the sucking movements are so close together in time that they become associated with one another. Popper comments that despite the fact that nothing has been fixed yet, the child will (later) distinguish what is familiar and what is unfamiliar. As soon as the child recognizes this situation for the first time, what until now has been a merely latent and associative fact will be fixed in his mind: “It will, even though subliminally, realize: ‘Aha, this is how it is, this is how it has to be’” (ibid., p. 99). 93. Elsa Köhler, Die Persönlichkeit des dreijährigen Kindes (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1926), p. 142; Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 108. 94. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 108. 95. Ibid.

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96. Ibid., p. 110. 97. Charlotte Bühler, Das Märchen und die Phantasie des Kindes, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Angewandte Psychologie 17 (Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1918), p. 15. 98. Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 115. 99. See Karl Bühler, Die Uhren der Lebewesen und Fragmente aus dem Nachlass (Vienna: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., 1969), p. 205. 100. The full German sentence is: “usorpiert von einem bloss existentialer, besonderen Seinserlebnis aus Allgemeincharakter (Musseerlebnis) und Normcharakter (Sollerlebnis)” (Popper, “‘Gewohnheit’ und ‘Gesetzerlebnis,’” p. 116). 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid., p. 118. 104. Ibid., p. 119. 105. Ibid., p. 118.

Chapter 4 1. H. Seebohm, “Otto Selz. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Psychologie” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Heidelberg, 1970), p. 278. In more recent literature, Selz is not remembered as one of the great psychologists either. As Piet van Strien and Erik Faas (“How Otto Selz Became a Forerunner of the Cognitive Revolution,” in The Life Cycle of Psychological Ideas: Understanding Prominence and the Dynamic of Intellectual Change, ed. Th. C. Dalton and R. Evans [New York: Kluwer/Plenum Publishers, 2003]) note, although Selz’s name can be found in Boring and Watson’s list of 538 important psychologists since 1600 (R. I. Watson, “Important Psychologists, 1600–1967,” in R. I. Watson’s Selected Papers on the History of Psychology, ed. J. Brozek and R. B. Evans [Hanover: University of New Hampshire, 1977]), neither Boring’s own History of Experimental Psychology nor Watson’s The Great Psychologists (New York: Lippincott, 1978) even spend a footnote on Selz. Allen Newell, finally, avoids discussing Selz in his “Duncker on Thinking: An Inquiry into Progress in Cognition,” and gives Duncker the credit for having anticipated current cognitive science. 2. In fact, Laura Wasserman was converted to Catholicism, probably before marrying Selz’s father. If one takes the Torah literally, Selz was not a Jew. Yet there are also passages in the Torah allowing one to say that he was Jewish, even though his mother was converted (Alexandre Métraux, email correspondence). See also Alexandre Métraux, “Otto Selz,” in Illustrierte Geschichte der Psychologie, ed. H. E. Lück and R. Hiller (Munich: Quintessenz, 1993), pp. 56–59. 3. Otto Selz, “Die psychologische Erkenntnistheorie und das Transzendenzproblem,” Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 16 (1910): 1–110. 4. Seebohm, “Otto Selz,” pp. 12–13. 5. Selz here not only anticipates contemporary naturalistic epistemology, which concludes with the existence of the external world on the basis of

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6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

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Notes to Pages 88–90 an “inference to the best explanation,” but also Külpe, who, a few years after publication of the dissertation developed his much more widely known and influential critical realism. See, on this point, Theo Herrmann and Steffi Katz, “Otto Selz and the Würzburg School,” in The Dawn of Cognitive Science, ed. Liliana Albertazzi (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), pp. 225– 235. ¨ die But see also Müllens’s critical review of Selz: “Literaturebericht zu: Uber Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie 82 (1919): 102– 120. Alexandre Métraux, email correspondence. Quoted in Seebohm, “Otto Selz,” p. 15. Otto Selz, “Die experimentelle Untersuchung des Willensaktes,” Zeitschrift ¨ den Willensakt und das für Psychologie 57 (1910): 241–270; Narziss Ach, Uber Temperament (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1910). Selz, “Versuche zur Hebung des Intelligenzniveaus. Ein Beitrag zur Theorie der Intelligenz und ihrer Erzieherischen Beeinflussung,” Zeitschrift für Psy¨ chologie 134 (1935): 236–301. H. Kindler, “Uber die bedingenden Faktoren und die Erziehbarkeit von Aufmerksamkeitsleistungen,” Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 72 (1929): 179–302. This was the first Ph.D. thesis once the Handelshochschule turned into a university. Kurt Koffka, “Psychologie,” in Lehrbuch der Philosophie, vol. 2, Die Philosophie in ihren Einzelgebieten, ed. Max Dessoir (Berlin: Verlag Ullstein, 1925). See further note 44 (this chapter). Karl Bühler, “Die ‘neue’ Psychologie Koffkas,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie 99 (1926): 159. Otto Selz, “Zur Psychologie der Gegenwart,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie 99 (1926): 162–163. Kurt Koffka, “Bemerkungen zur Denkpsychologie,” Psychologische Forschung 9 (1927): 163–183. Julius Bahle, Zur Psychologie des musikalischen Gestaltens, eine Untersuchung u¨ ber das Komponieren auf experimenteller und historischer Grundlage (Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1930). This was the Ministry of the Land, not the central government (Alexandre Métraux, email correspondence). Selz received a regular pension, but the accumulated fortune of his father dissolved during the first inflation crisis in the early 1920s, hence he lived very modestly (Alexandre Métraux, email correspondence). H. Beckmann, “Selz in Amsterdam. Der Denkpsychologe Otto Selz (1881– 1943) im niederländischen Exil,” Psychologie und Geschichte 9 (2001). On the basis of Selz’s correspondence, Beckmann has shown that the reasons why Koffka could not help Selz had to do with his being too old and with his being relatively unknown among psychologists in the United States (pp. 13–15): 3–27. Ibid., p. 6. The term Ideenflucht stems from the psychiatrist Hugo Liepmann in his ¨ Uber Ideenflucht: Begriffsbestimmung und psychologische Analyse (Halle: Verlag von Carl Marhold, 1904). Liepmann, mentioned by Selz, argued that the

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22.

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24. 25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

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principle of association, although ruling the mind of the mentally deranged, cannot explain the coherence of thought of normal people. To explain the latter, Liepmann introduced his notion of a “dominant representation” (Obervorstellung), which somehow anticipates Selz’s idea of schematic anticipation. See further note 43 (this chapter). As de Groot concludes his discussion of Selz’s experimental method: “I think that Selz’s arguments, taken together with his protocols and analyses, are convincing” (Otto Selz: His Contribution to Psychology, ed. Nico Frijda and Adriaan de Groot [The Hague: Mouton, 1980], p. 79). Adriaan de Groot, Thought and Choice in Chess (The Hague: Mouton, 1965), p. 51. This is a translation of his Ph.D. thesis, Het Denken van den Schaker (Amsterdam: N.V. Noord-Hollandse Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1946). This summary is taken from his Dutch lectures at the pedagogic seminar of the University of Amsterdam between October 1939 and June 1940. Otto Selz, “Holländisches Kolleg vom 28. 10. 39–1. 6. 40,” in Seebohm, Otto Selz, appendix G, pp. 96–141. Otto Selz, Die Gesetze der produktiven und reproduktiven Geistestätigkeit. Kurzgefasste Darstellung (1924; Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1981), p. 35. See George Humphrey, Thinking (London: Methuen, 1951), pp. 83–84. Muller, ¨ “Zur Analyse der Gedächtnistätigkeit und des Vorstellungsverlaufes.” Quoted from J. M. Mandler and G. Mandler, Thinking: From Association to Gestalt (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964), p. 217. But, as was noted in the first section, Selz claimed that Gestalt psychology took over his main ideas rather than the other way round. As he says in this regard: “My Komplextheorie is itself a Gestalt theory” (“Zur Psychologie der Gegenwart,” p. 168). W. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logics, ed. Mansel and Veitch (London, 1865), 2:238. ¨ die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs, p. 129. Selz, Uber I translate Selz’s Komplex by “structure” and occasionally by “unity.” The Engish “complex” does insufficient justice to the structural implications of the German original, in particular to the semantic and logical features of Selz’s examples of Komplexe. At the same time, “structure” also captures the features of perceptual problem solving. The same translation is proposed by J. M Mandler and G. Mandler in their Thinking: From Association to Gestalt. See further note 35. Theodor Ziehen, Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie in 14 Vorlesungen ( Jena: Fischer, 1891), p. 203. James, The Principles of Psychology, 1:567. Ibid., p. 568. ¨ die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs, p. 107. Selz, Uber Otto Selz, “Die Umgestaltung der Grundanschauungen vom intellektuellen Geschehen,” in VIIIth International Congress of Psychology (Groningen), pp. 413–414, reprinted in Kantstudien 32 (1927): 273–280, translated by J. M. and G. Mandler as “The Revision of the Fundamental Conceptions of Intellectual Processes” (1964), p. 227.

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36. This criticism is taken over by Karl Duncker in his Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens (Berlin: Springer, 1935), translated by L. S. Lees as “On Problem Solving,” Psychol. Monograph 58, 5 (1945), whole issue. ¨ 37. Selz refers to the following sources: Alexius Meinong, “Uber Gegenstandstheorie,” in his Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie (Leipzig: Barth, 1904); Oswald Külpe, Die Realisierung. Ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung der Realwissenschaften, vol. 1 (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1912); Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 1 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1900); Carl Stumpf, “Erscheinungen und psychische Funktionen,” Abhandlungen der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Abhandlungen (1907): 3–40. ¨ die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs, p. 34. 38. Selz, Uber 39. Humphrey, Thinking, pp. 133–134. ¨ die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs, p. 32. 40. Selz, Uber 41. Elaborating the doctrine of imageless thought, Selz calls these abstract elements in thought processes simply “forms of knowing” (Wissen). 42. Unmediated problem solving has to be distinguished from cases in which the actualization of knowledge is achieved only in a stepwise fashion. These “successive” knowledge actualizations are discussed later in this section. (See also note 53.) 43. There are a few precursors of Selz’s schematic anticipations. Karl Bühler speaks of a “sentence scheme” (Satzschema), which designs in advance the sentence to be spoken (“Tatsachen und Probleme zu einer Psychologie der Denkvorgänge,” 1–12). Moskiewicz’s notion of a dominant representation (Obervorstellung), also used by Liepmann (see note 20, this chapter), is similarly in terms of schemes which have to be filled by representations (“Zur Psychologie des Denkens,”Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 18 [1910]: 347). But as Selz correctly observes, their work is not based on experiments. 44. Koffka, according to Selz, not only borrows his explanation of coherent thinking but also his diagnosis of the inadequacy of association psychology to provide such an explanation. Scrutiny of Koffka’s specific wordings seems indeed to support Selz’s suspicion of plagiarism. For instance, Koffka argues that it is impossible for association psychology to explain how from a “chaos of reproductive tendencies,” “a cosmos of ordered thought processes,” arises, even if the goal of problem solving is added to this chaos as another reproductive tendency, bringing about a specific constellation. See Koffka, “Psychologie,” p. 516. Selz is (merely) mentioned at pages 568, 569, 571, and at one place followed by the comment that his theory differs only slightly from the theory of Watt and Messer (p. 569). 45. Eduard Claparède, “Genèse de l’Hypothèse,” Archives de Psychologie 24 (1934): 1–135. Another work often referred to as the first to have introduced the notion of schemata is Frederic Bartlett’s Remembering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932). Bartlett’s book is a thorough revision of his Ph.D. thesis written during the First World War. Unfortunately I am not acquainted with this manuscript, but one undeniably interesting difference with Remembering is that in it Bartlett is also involved with German psychology, especially the Würzburg school. Hence there may have been an influence from German psychology upon the “founder” of the theory of schemata in the English-speaking world after all. See for information on Bartlett, R. C.

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46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65.

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Oldfield, “Frederic Charles Bartlett, 1886–1969,” American Journal of Psychology 85 (1972): 133–140. ¨ die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs, p. 114. Selz, Uber Duncker, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens, quoted from Mandler and Mandler, From Association to Gestalt, p. 264. Jean Piaget, Psychologie de l’intelligence (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1947), p. 42. Herbert Simon, “Otto Selz and Information-Processing Psychology,” p. 155. Yet Selz’s view of this organizing activity seems to have been “mechanistic,” requiring no separate postulation of an active subject, or a sort of homunculus. Indeed, he explicitly has drawn the analogy between reflexlike operations of motor skills and thought processes. See further this and the following sections of this chapter. I thank Professor Theo Herrmann for pointing this out to me. ¨ die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs, p. 219. According to A. D. de Selz, Uber Groot, Selz’s very explicit and precise expositions, substantiated by numerous protocol fragments, have unambiguously demonstrated the genesis of the total task (Thought and Choice in Chess, p. 50). ¨ die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs, p. 203. Selz, Uber Ibid., p. 203. What this protocol also shows is that the solution is reached only stepwise, with abstract knowledge preceding more concrete knowledge. Ibid., p. 222. Krebs means either “crab” or “cancer.” ¨ die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs, pp. 247–248. Selz, Uber As Selz puts it succinctly: “Thus we find that the awareness of correctness often accompanying the emergence of the response word (really or supposed) relates to the stimulus entity in the manner required by the total task” (ibid., p. 255). Ibid., p. 261. Selz speaks here of the law of revision (Gesetz der Berichtigung). Humphrey, Thinking, p. 148. Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums (Bonn: Verlag von Friedrich Cohen, 1922), p. 1. In the first part of his big book, Selz launches a frontal attack upon the widespread view that errors during problem solving would result from reproductive tendencies stemming from the stimulus words alone. Demonstrating the meaningfulness of such errors, therefore, is of vital importance in the consideration of task-determined versus associative tendencies in thought processes. Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung, p. 43. Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, p. 281. In contemporary cognitive psychology, Gestalt psychology, in particular Max Wertheimer and Duncker, are sometimes credited for having coined the term “productive thinking” in contrast to “reproductive thinking,” whereas they took the distinction from Selz. See Otto Selz, “Die Gesetze der produktiven Tätigkeit,” Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 27 (1913): 367–380. Ibid., p. 370. Otto Selz, “Der Schöpferische Mensch,” Zeitschrift für pädagogische Psychologie 32 (1931): 229–241, reprinted in Wahrnehmungsaufbau und Denkprozess.

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66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75.

76.

77.

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Notes to Pages 105–110 Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. A. Métraux and T. Herrmann (Bern: Verlag Hans Huber, 1991), p. 166. Ibid., p. xii. See also Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung. Claparède, “Genèse de l’Hypothèse,” p. 46. By analogy with reflexes, Selz calls the coordinations between conditions of elicitation and intellectual operations reflexoidal or reflexlike coordinations (Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, p. 570). In one the few reviews of his work by the Gestalt psychologist W. Benary, Selz has been accused of replacing association psychology by a “machine theory,” an accu¨ sation much welcomed by Koffka. Benary, “Selz, Otto: Uber die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs. II. Zur Psychologie des Denkens und des Irrtums,” Psychologische Forschung 3 (1923): 417–426. By a machine theory any explanation was meant that sought to reduce goal-directed and meaningful events to a sum of, in itself, meaningless parts of events. See Koffka, “Psychologie,” p. 521. According to Koffka only Gestalt psychology would have broken with this tradition, whereas those schools which also opposed association psychology, like the functional psychology of Stumpf and the Würzburg school of Kulpe, ¨ have only succeeded in adding different explanatory factors to the unassailable principles of association. In his reply to Koffka, however, Selz correctly points out that in contrast to the theory of the Würzburg school, in particular the theory of Ach, his own theory of specific responses “breaks completely with the [associational] view of intellectual processes” and is in fact itself a Gestalt theory (“Zur Psychologie der Gegenwart,” p. 168). Selz, “The Revision of Fundamental Conceptions of Intellectual Processes,” p. 231. Ibid., p. 47. Selz bases his description on an earlier account of this case by Ernst Mach in his Erkenntnis und Irrtum (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1905), translated by Thomas J. McCormack as Knowledge and Error (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1926). Humphrey, Thinking, p. 141. See Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, p. 549, n. 3; Kurzgefasste Darstellung, p. 59. Ibid., p. 57. Given the neglect of his work, to speak of a received view of his psychology is surely besides the point, yet most commentators, such as Humphrey, and recent authors writing on Popper and Selz, such as Berkson and Wettersten, and Hacohen, have contributed to this misleading picture of Selz’s theory of problem solving. The main bulk of this correspondence has been published in Seebohm, Otto Selz, appendix B, pp. 10–62. See, for instance, Max Wertheimer, Productive Thinking (New York: Harper, 1945). De Groot, Thought and Choice in Chess, pp. 74–76. What de Groot fails to note is that Selz was already aware of this feedback character of problem solving in 1922. Criticizing Spengler’s static conception of the mind, Selz goes on to argue that “Scientific psychology of our time knows that the mind by means of its own products [Gestaltungen] receives again influences backwards [rückwirkend], and by means of which it may develop further” (Oswald Spengler

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78. 79.

80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87. 88. 89.

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und die intuitive Methode in der Geschichtsforschung [Bonn: Verlag von Friedrich Cohen, 1922], p. 25). Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung, pp. 48–49. Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, pp. 645ff. Köhler ¨ die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs,). acknowledges his debts to Selz (Uber See Köhler, The Mentality of Apes, pp. 150, 174. Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, p. 610, n. 1. During the First World War Selz was invited to study the psychological causes of flight accidents, a study which also contributed to his insights into the ¨ nature of skills. Otto Selz, “Uber den Anteil individueller Eigenschaften der Flugzeugführer und Beobachter an Fliegerunfallen,” Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologie 15 (1919): 254–300. Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung, pp. 48–50. Selz, “The Revision of the Fundamental Conceptions of Intellectual Processes,” p. 229. Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, p. 678. Selz, Wahrnemungsaufbau und Denkprozess, p. 97. Thus he seeks to interpret the animal’s behaviour as displaying both the methods of immediate abstraction of solving methods and of reproductive abstractions of solving methods. Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, p. 570. Ibid., p. 644, n. 28. Ibid., p. 28.

Chapter 5 1. Buhler, ¨ Die Krise der Psychologie, pp. 57–58. 2. Peter R. Hofstätter, Psychologie (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Bücherei, 1957). 3. The terms “biological” and “evolutionary” are used interchangably by me and refer in particular to the (hotly) debated relation between animal psychology and general psychology, or, more generally, to the question concerning the continuity between the animal and the human mind. This is also the way Popper uses these terms both in his early and his later work. 4. Ibid., p. 5. 5. Ibid., p. 45. Heinrich Avenarius, Philosophie als Denken der Welt gemäss dem Prinzip des kleinsten Kraftmasses. Prolegomena zu einer Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (Leipzig, 1876). Despite this tribute to Avenarius, his epistemology, like Mach’s, precisely because of the foundational role given to sensations, is, in Popper’s later terminology, “pre-Darwinian,” or “Lamarckian.” Lamarckian epistemologies typically defend an inductive and justificationalist account of knowledge, according to which knowledge is constructed out of sensations by a relatively passive process of association and repetition (induction). The true Darwinian point of view, Popper will argue, sees the growth of knowledge as a deductive process of selection and critical-error elimination. It is this latter dimension of an evolutionary approach to knowledge that Popper will find in Selz and, to a lesser extent, in Bühler. See on Lamarckian epistemology Popper, Unended Quest, pp. 167–168. For a more detailed account, see “Of Clouds and Clocks,” in his Objective Knowledge, chap. 6.

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6. Moritz Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, 2d ed. (Berlin: Naturwissenschaftliche Monographien und Lehrbücher, 1918), translated by A. Blumberg as General Theory of Knowledge (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1985). Quoted in Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” pp. ii–iii. 7. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. iii. Heinrich Gomperz, Weltanschauungslehre, 2 vols. ( Jena and Leipzig: Diederichs, 1905, 1908). 8. See Külpe, Vorlesungen u¨ ber Logik, p. 153; Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. iii. 9. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. iii. 10. Ibid., pp. iii–iv. 11. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme, p. 7. 12. Ibid., p. 424. 13. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 49; Buhler, ¨ Die Krise der Psychologie, p. 47. 14. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 49. 15. Ernst Mach, Die Principien der Wärmelehre (Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1896), p. 416; Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 51. For no one will be able to deny the animal, which behaves as described, the germ of the concepts of food and nonfood. ¨ die Vorstellungen der Tiere, p. 10. 16. Volkelt, Uber 17. As was made clear in Chapter 2, complex qualities, although similar to Gestalt properties in being more than the sum of their constituting parts, have a phenomenological immediacy absent from the standard examples of (physical) Gestalten as described by the Gestalt psychologists. ¨ die Vorstellungen der Tiere, p. 62. 18. Volkelt, Uber 19. Ibid., p. 106. 20. Ibid., p. 105; Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 53. 21. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 52. ¨ die Vorstellungen der Tiere, p. 98. 22. Volkelt, Uber 23. Ibid., pp. 36–37. However, Popper hastens to add: “To the objective observer this reaction is a failure, but not to the animal: the animal’s actions are subjectively goal-directed [zweckgesteuert]” (Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 54). 24. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 54. 25. Ibid. 26. Morgan, Habit and Instinct, p. 41. ¨ die Vorstellungen der Tiere, p. 119. 27. Volkelt, Uber 28. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” pp. 57–58. 29. Selz quoted in Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 77. Although Popper may not have been aware of these implications of the Selzian approach for a theory of stages in 1928, later formulations of his theory of trial and error betray the influence of Selz in this respect. His later radical refusal to admit the principle of associationism in both psychological explanations and epistemological theories equally supports this interpretation. 30. Its “method of ‘experimental self-observation,’ initially hard-won, has persisted by the cogency of its practical results” (Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 72). 31. Ibid., p. 77.

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32. It is in this context that Popper warns for “logicism” in Denkpsychologie, referred to in Chapter 1 (this volume). 33. Ibid., p. 68. Hans Volkelt, “Fortsschritte der experimentellen Kinderpsychologie,” in Bericht u¨ ber den IX. Kongress für experimentelle Psychologie ( Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1926), pp. 81–135. 34. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” pp. 69–70. 35. The idea that scientific knowledge does not possess any forms and means essentially different from those of prescientific knowledge is also one of the two axioms of Avenarius’s empiricocriticism. See his Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, 1: preface, p. vii. 36. Hacohen, The Formative Years, pp. 162–163. 37. Popper, “Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit,” p. 610. 38. Popper does not refer to his article in his later discussions of the bucket theory. Ibid., pp. 607–619. 39. Ibid., p. 610. 40. Ibid., p. 613. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., p. 616. Popper’s speaking of a determinierte Komplexänderung rather than Komplexergänzung is surely a mistake of spelling since the former term does not occur in Selz’s work. Troels Egger Hansen agrees with me on this point (private conversation). On the other hand, the term is not completely inadequate because Julius Bahle used the idea of a change of schematic anticipations in order to do justice to creative problem solving stretching over a long period of time. See Chapter 4. 43. Popper, “Die Gedächtnispflege unter dem Geschichtspunkt der Selbsttätigkeit,” p. 616. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., p. 614. 47. Ibid., p. 613. 48. Selz discusses unmediated problem solving in the first chapter of his Die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs. He criticizes Ach and Watt for giving an associative explanation and argues, on the basis of his protocols, that from the fact that subjects are not aware of intermediate (cognitive) processes occurring between problem and solution, it in no way follows that the mechanism is associative. On the contrary, he concludes, unmediated problem solving is a process of skilful actualizing dispositional knowledge structures. See also Chapter 4 (this volume) 49. See the quotation in Chapter 1. 50. See the opening remarks of Die beiden Grundprobleme. See also p. 424. 51. Troels Erggers Hansen, “Which Came First, the Problem of Induction or the Problem of Demarcation?” Hansen tells us that there must also have been a first version of the first volume of the book, but that probably nothing has remained of these first drafts. 52. Ibid., p. 11. 53. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme, p. 29.

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59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73.

74.

75. 76.

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Notes to Pages 138–144 Ibid., p. 28. Ibid. (emphasis added). Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 24. This idea of Mach parallels Avenarius’s distinction between “characters” and sensations. See Chapter 3 (this volume). In a later added footnote (ibid., p. 24, n. *1), Popper seems to realize that his appeal to Mach is fraught with tension for, as he now observes, Mach’s claim is in direct opposition with his sensualistic theory of knowledge as defended in his Analyse der Empfindungen. To this we may add that Mach’s sensualism is not only an inductive theory but also one in which the mind is merely a receptacle, a bucket, and knowledge the passive accumulation of sensory impressions. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme, p. 24. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 24–25. Ibid., p. 25. In a footnote he refers to Selz’s three books on Denkpsychologie. Ibid. Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, p. 570. Also quoted in Chapter 4. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme, pp. 25–26. Given Popper’s mentioning Selz’s method of trial and error in his dissertation, his referring now to the literary author Bernard Shaw, in particular to his Back to Methuselah: A Metaevolutionary Pentateuch (London: Constable, 1921), as a source of his theory of learning seems to be more an attempt to suppress his own psychological past than to be historically accurate. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme, p. 26. See Chapter 1 (this volume). It must not be forgotten that Popper’s so-called logical basis of his criticism of Hume is totally absent in these early writings. See also Chapter 1 (this volume). Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme, pp. 30–32. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 106. Ibid., pp. 350–352. Moreover, discovering that Rudolf Carnap, in his Die logische Aufbau der Welt (Berlin: Weltkreis, 1928), appeals to the principle of association by similarity, thereby subscribing to a theory of mind and memory, the falsity of which was amply demonstrated by Selz’s Denkpsychologie, further convinced Popper of the viability of his war against positivism. Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, p. 182. Schlick is extensively quoted by Popper in Die beiden Grundprobleme, in chap. 4. Popper formulates his principle of transcendence in the same chapter and also in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, chap. 5, pp. 93–95. Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme, p. 46. Even if Popper had not been familiar with Selz’s essay on Spengler he may have noticed the former’s emphasis on the primacy of “bold theories” in the formation of science in an article published in a volume which also contains Felix Krüger’s article “Der Strukturbegriff in der Psychologie,” quoted by ¨ Popper in his Ph.D. thesis. Selz’s “Uber die Persönlichkeitstypen und die

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Methoden ihrer Bestimmung” is the opening article of the VIII Kongress für experimentelle Psychologie in Leipzig 1923, ed. Karl Bühler ( Jena: Fischer, 1924). Selz critically discusses the personality psychology of Dilthey, Spranger, and Stern. His main criticism concerns the radical inductive methodology of their research: “Fruitful problems [Problemstellungen] have arisen from collecting data, the excess of which already wrecked Bacon’s induction, only when the question [Fragestellung] was preceded by an adequate theoretical foundation or went hand in hand with it” (p. 12). 77. Popper, “Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie,” 2 vols., Karl Popper Papers, box 4, file 6, Hoover Institution Archives. 78. Hacohen, The Formative Years, p. 175. 79. See especially Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme, sec. 30, pp. 204–219; Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, chap. 4, sec. 20, and chap. 7. ¨ 80. Hermann Helmholtz, “Uber den Ursprung und die Bedeutung der geometrischen Axiomen,” in Vorträgen und Reden II, 5th ed. (Braunschweig, 1903), pp.1–31, translated by M. Lowe in Helmholtz, Epistemological Writings, ed. R. S. Cohen and Y. Elkana (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1977), pp. 1–26. 81. Moritz Schlick, “Helmholtz the Epistemologist,” in Philosophical Papers, (1909–1922), vol. 1, ed. Henk L. Mulder and Barbara F. B. van de VeldeSchlick (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978). 82. Popper, “Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie,” 2:133. 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid., p. 135. 85. Ibid., p. 137. 86. Ibid. That the combination of non-Euclidian geometry and the new theory of physics is simpler is also the view of Einstein himself. 87. Albert Einstein, Geometrie und Erfahrung (Berlin: Julius Springer, 1921), p. 3. Quoted in Popper, “Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie,” p. 145; Popper, Die beiden Grundprobleme, pp. xx, 10, 219. With the phrase “propositions that are certain” Einstein, according to Popper, was alluding to Poincaré’s conventionalism (ibid., p. xx). 88. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 144. 89. Ibid., p. 140. 90. Ibid., p. 142. 91. Ibid., p. 145. 92. Instead, he refers to his The Open Society. As Hacohen notes, early uses of this distinction occur in Popper’s 1941 course in the history of philosophy while in New Zealand (Karl Popper Papers, box 366, file 24, Hoover Institution Archives). Hacohen, The Formative Years, p. 388, n. 20. 93. Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 341. 94. Popper, The Open Society 2:260; Popper Objective Knowledge, p. 342. 95. Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 343. 96. Ibid., p. 344. 97. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 106. 98. Ibid., p. 54. 99. Ibid., p. 106. 100. Ibid.

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Berkson and Wettersten, Learning from Error, p. 70. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 63. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 80. This point is made forcefully by Berkson and Wettersten, Learning from Error, pp. 68–70. My argument, drawing on the role of Selzian psychology, is slightly different. 105. In fact he was well aware of this distinction between, on the one hand, psychologism in the sense of a program within philosophy and, on the other hand, empirical psychology in “Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie.” Drawing on Heinrich Gomperz, he vehemently rejects psychologism in mathematics and geometry as a mythical and armchair search for the origin of knowledge. Popper (pp. 30–35) relies on Gomperz, Weltanschauungslehre, 1:312–318. Following Gomperz, Popper calls subjective psychologism a myth and an “idealization of the origin” (Popper, “Axiome, Definitionen und Postulate der Geometrie,” 1:31). On the other hand, again following Gomperz, he emphatically distinguishes this sort of speculative genetic philosophy from empirical developmental psychology.

101. 102. 103. 104.

Chapter 6 1. Popper, All Life Is Problem Solving, p. 53. See also Chapter 1 (this volume). Given the contemporary rise of the discipline of evolutionary psychology, which is clearly in the tradition of Lorenz, a comparison between the former and Popper is not only of historical interest. See, for instance, the work of L. Cosmides and J. Tooby, especially their “Introduction: Evolutionary Psychology,” in The Adapted Mind, ed. J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 3–15. 2. Popper, All Life Is Problem Solving, p. 12. 3. Herbert S. Jennings, “Diverse Doctrines of Evolution: Their Relation to the Practice of Science and of Life,” Science 65 (1927): 19–26. 4. Ibid., p. 20. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., p. 21. 7. Ibid., p. 22. 8. See his “Kants Lehre vom Apriorischen im Lichte gegenwärtiger Biologie,” Blätter für Deutsche Philosophie 15 (1941): 94–125; “Gestaltwahrnehmung als Quelle wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis,” Zeitschrift für experimentelle und angewandte Psychologie 6 (1959): 118–165. 9. Peter Munz, “Popper’s Darwinism,” paper presented at the Karl Popper Centenary Congress, Vienna, July 3–5, 2002. 10. Popper, All Life Is Problem Solving, p. 46. 11. Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 72. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., p. 67. 14. Popper and Eccles, The Self and Its Brain, p. 137. 15. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 1.

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16. Ibid., p. 2. 17. Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre; Schlick, “Naturphilosophie,” in Die Philosophie in ihren Einzelgebieten, ed. M. Dessoir, Lehrbuch der Philosophie II (Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, 1925), pp. 395–492, translated by Peter Heath as “Outlines of the Philosophy of Nature,” in Schlick, Philosophical Papers (1925–1936), vol. 2, ed. Henk L. Mulder and Barbara F. B. van de Velde-Schlick (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978), pp. 1–91; Köhler, Die physische Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand. 18. Michael Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 18–19. 19. Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, sec. 11. 20. See Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism, pp. 36–37. 21. Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, sec. 31. I closely follow Friedman’s account here. 22. See Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism, p. 37. 23. Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, p. 275. 24. Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism, p. 38. 25. Ibid. 26. Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, p. 288. 27. Ibid., p. 299. 28. Buhler ¨ himself also rejects physicalism in psychology. The following passage is also quoted by Popper (“Denkpsychologie,” p. 5): “Nowadays nobody needs to attack the older physicalism in psychology any longer. With a few exceptions biological thinking is taken for granted by the leading young scientists of today” (Bühler, Die Krise der Psychologie, pp. 70–71). In one breath Bühler points to the cooperation with biology: “And if the expression scientific psychology is to refer to something existent, one must have biology and no longer physics in mind as the science against which this research tradition leans” (ibid.). 29. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” pp. 11–13. 30. Many biologists, Popper recalls, who oppose the naive vitalism of Hans Driesch and Bergson, are nevertheless convinced that organic processes cannot be explained in terms of mechanical processes. Popper quotes C. Lloyd Morgan to support this claim. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 16. 31. Ibid., p. 17. 32. Ibid., p. 20; Schlick, Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre, p. 295. 33. Köhler, Die physische Gestalten, p. 193. 34. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 22. 35. The role of Bühler is evident here for in this minor role physiology is quite indispensable for psychology, yet, according to theoretical pluralism it is an aspect only, which therefore has to interact with other aspects without dominating them. 36. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 23. 37. Ibid., p. 26. 38. Ibid. 39. Köhler, Die physische Gestalten, p. 192, n. 1.

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40. Popper refers to Karl Bühler, Die Gestaltwahrnemungen (Stuttgart: Spemann, 1913), and to Krüger, “Der Strukturbegriff in der Psychologie,” pp. 31–56, reprinted in Krüger, Zur Philosophie und Psychologie der Ganzheit, pp. 125–146. 41. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 30. 42. Karl Bühler, Die Krise der Psychologie ( Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1927), pp. 112–115. 43. Popper, “ Denkpsychologie,” pp. 34–35. 44. Significantly, and clearly a sign of his further emancipation from characterology, Popper mentions Kretschmer’s ideas as real psychology in contrast to characterology. E. Kretschmer, Körperbau und Charakter, translated as Physique and Character (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1925). 45. Popper, “ Denkpsychologie,” p. 43. For the criticism of Wundt, see Bühler, Die Krise der Psychologie, p. 31. 46. Popper also quotes Volkelt in this respect, saying that the English and American animal psychologists Morgan and Thorndike have taught us the importance of the motor and visceral functions for understanding the ani¨ die Vorstellungen der Tiere, p. 61n. mal’s total experience. Volkelt, Uber 47. Popper, “Epistemology without a Knowing Subject,” in Proceedings of the Third International Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, ed. B. van Rootselaar and J. F. Staal (Amsterdam, 1968), pp. 333–373, reprinted in Popper, Objective Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 106– 153; Popper, “On the Theory of the Objective Mind,” in Akten des XIV. Internationalen Kongress für Philosophie, vol. 1 (Vienna: Verlag Herder, 1968), pp. 25–53, reprinted in Popper, Objective Knowledge, pp. 153–190. 48. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 4. 49. Ibid., p. 47. 50. Karl Bühler, Die Krise der Psychologie, pp. 57–58. 51. Popper, “Denkpsychologie,” p. 2. 52. Buhler’s ¨ earliest publication on the theory of language is “Kritische Musterung der neueren Theorien des Satzes” in Indogermanisches Jahrbuch ¨ 6 (Berlin, 1919), pp. 1–20. Then appear “Uber den Begriff der sprachlichen Darstellung,” Festschrift für Joh. V. Kries, Zeitschrift für Psychologische Forschung 3 (1923): 282–294; and Theorie der Sprache (1934; reprint Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1982). Another source on which Popper relies is Die Zukunft der Psychologie und die Schule (Vienna: Deutscher Verlag für Jugend und Volk, 1936), a copy of which is in the Karl Popper Papers, box 431, file 4, Hoover Institution Archives. 53. Karl Bühler, Theorie der Sprache, p. 28. 54. Buhler, ¨ Die Krise der Psychologie, p. 31. 55. Ibid., p. 39. 56. Ibid., p. 33. 57. In fact, Bühler was aware of this resemblance. See his Die Krise der Psychologie, ¨ p. 61, no. 3. Alex Meinong, Uber Annahmen (Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1902). I draw here on Josef Krug’s “Zur Sprachtheorie,” in Beiträge zur Problemgeschichte der Psychologie. Festschrift zu Karl Bühler’s 50. Geburtstag ( Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1929), pp. 225–258. ¨ Annahmen, p. 24. 58. Meinong, Uber

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¨ 59. K. von Frisch, Uber die Sprache der Bienen: Eine tierpsychologische Untersuchung ( Jena: Fischer, 1923). 60. Buhler, ¨ Die Krise der Psychologie, p. 48. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., p. 49. 64. Ibid. 65. Buhler, ¨ Die Zukunft der Psychologie und die Schule, pp. 4–5. 66. Ibid., p. 17. 67. Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 106. 68. Popper, “Bemerkungen u¨ ber Sprachtheorie und ihre Geschichte,” Karl Popper Papers, box 4, file 8, p. 1, Hoover Institution Archives. 69. Popper, “Language and the Body-Mind Problem,” in his Conjectures and Refutations, pp. 293–298. Originally published in Proceedings of the 11th International Congress of Philosophy, 7 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1953) pp. 101– 107. 70. Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 112. 71. Ibid., p. 156. 72. Ibid., p. 120. 73. Popper, “Bemerkungen u¨ ber Sprachtheorie und ihre Geschichte,” p. 1. In “Language and the Body-Mind Problem,” the heirs of the bucket theory in contemporary philosophy of mind, notably behaviourism and physicalism, are accused of either ignoring the difference between the higher and lower functions of language or forced to the self-defeating conclusion that the former are nothing but special cases of the latter. Conjectures and Refutations, p. 295. 74. Gottlob Frege, “Der Gedanke. Eine logische Untersuchung,” Beitrage zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 2 (1918–1919): 58–77, reprinted in Gottlob Frege, Logische Untersuchungen, ed. Günther Patzig (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986), pp. 30–54. 75. Ibid., pp. 41–42. 76. Ibid., p. 42. 77. Michael Dummett, Origins of Analytical Philosophy (London: Duckworth, 1993), p. 136. 78. D. Bloor, “Popper’s Mystification of Objective Knowledge,” Science Studies 4 (1974): 65–76. D. Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976). 79. See, for instance, J. W. Grove, “Popper ‘Demystified’: The Curious Ideas of Bloor (and Some Others) about World 3,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 10 (1980): 173–180. 80. Popper, “Bemerkungen u¨ ber Sprachtheorie und ihre Geschichte,” p. 4. 81. Especially in the chapter “Two Faces of Common Sense.” As he puts it there, according to the bucket theory: 1. Knowledge is conceived of as consisting of things, or thing-like entities in our bucket (such as ideas, impressions, sensa, sense data, elements, atomic experience, or – perhaps slightly better – molecular experiences or “Gestalten”).

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Notes to Pages 173–178 2. Knowledge is, first of all, in us: it consists of information which has reached us, and which we have managed to absorb. 3. There is immediate or direct knowledge; that is, the pure, unadulterated elements of information which have got into us and are still undigested. No knowledge could be more elementary and certain than this. (Objective Knowledge, p. 62)

82. Popper, “Bemerkungen u¨ ber Sprachtheorie und ihre Geschichte,” p. 5. 83. Ibid., p. 4. This passage is reminiscent of Bühler’s early article on thought in which he makes a similar connection between the tradition of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume and the tendency of many philosophers and psychologists to equate the task of determining the content of thought with the attempt to trace its origin in terms of sensations and images. On the sensualistic assumption that thoughts are nothing but “digested sensations,” Bühler argues, this view is quite understandable, but with the discovery of imageless thought the irreducibility of thought has been convincingly demonstrated. Karl Bühler, “Tatsachen und Probleme zu einer Psychologie der Denkvorgänge, I,” p. 323. 84. Popper, “Bemerkungen u¨ ber Sprachtheorie und ihre Geschichte,” p. 5. 85. Popper, Objective Knowledge, 159. 86. On only one occasion Popper relates the notion of problems to the tradition from which he actually takes it, that is, the Würzburger psychology of Bühler and Selz. See Popper, Unended Quest, p. 76. 87. The similarity with Selz’s diagram of trying-out behaviour becomes especially clear if one considers that there is always a multiplicity of tentative solutions and hence many arrows issuing from P. 88. Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 165. Similarly, a defender of Popper, J. W. Grove, writes: “We may be delighted, relieved, etc. that we have ‘solved’ the problem (or got rid of our mental cramp), but these mental states must be distinguished from the solution itself which now ‘exists’ in World 3” (“Popper ‘Demystified,’” p. 175). Another proponent, Adam Grobler, bases his arguments for the irrelevance of psychology on the same, extremely subjective and noncognitive view of psychology. Adam Grobler, “World 3 and the Cunning of Reason,” in The Significance of Popper’s Thought, ed. Stefan Amsterdamski (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 25–35. 89. Popper, “Bemerkungen u¨ ber Sprachtheorie und ihre Geschichte,” appendix, pp. 2–3. 90. See Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 166. 91. As well as to Groos’s view of the effect of habit endorsed by Popper in his thesis of 1927. 92. As Popper puts this point: “If we start afresh, then, when we die, we shall be about as far as Adam and Eve were when they died (or, if you prefer, as far as Neanderthal man)” (Conjectures and Refutations, p. 129). 93. Further evidence is provided by the following passage: “[Y]ou should study the problem situation of the day. This means that you pick up, and try to continue, a line of inquiry which has the whole background of the earlier development of science behind it; you fall in with the tradition of science” (ibid., p. 129). 94. See Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, pp. 686–688.

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95. See Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung, pp. 58–60; Selz, Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, pp. 685–688. 96. Selz, Kurzgefasste Darstellung, p. 59. 97. Friedrich Hayek, “Scientism and the Study of Society, I,” Economia 9 (1942): 267–291, reprinted in his The Counter-Revolution of Science (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952); “The Results of Human Action but Not of Human Design,” in his Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), chap. 6. 98. Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, p. 100, n. 12. 99. Popper, Objective Knowledge, p. 160, n. 9. According to Bruce Caldwell, the major impact that Hayek had on “The Poverty of Historicism, I, II, III,” Economica 11–12 (1944–1945): 86–103, 119–137, 69–89, is in causing Popper to change the manner of presentation of especially the last two chapters (“Popper and Hayek: Who Influenced Whom?” paper presented at the Karl Popper Centenary Congress, Vienna, July 3–5, 2002). See also his “Hayek the Falsificationist? A Refutation,” Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology 10 (1992): 1–15. 100. It is even possible that Hayek has been influenced by German psychology. In the preface of his The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), he tells us that his ideas on theoretical psychology trace back to the psychology he read in Vienna in the early 1920s. Although Selz is not mentioned, Wundt is. 101. Popper, Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem, p. 31. Popper initially explains this idea in terms of discoveries in mathematics. This example will be discussed later on in the next section. 102. Bloor, “Popper’s Mystification of Objective Knowledge,” p. 72. 103. Grove, “Popper ‘Demystified,’” p. 180. 104. See Ansgar Beckermann in, A. Beckermann, H. Flohr, and K. Kim, eds., Emergence or Reduction? (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1992), p. 18. 105. Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 208. 106. Popper, “Organisms and Computers vis-à-vis Problems,” August 1969, Karl Popper Papers, box 104, file 5, Hoover Institution Archives. 107. Popper uses the example of David Katz: “A hungry animal divides the environment into edible and inedible things.” David Katz, Animals and Men (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1953). Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 46; Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 92. 108. R. Carnap, “Psychologie in physikalischer Sprache,” Erkenntnis 3 (1932): 107–142, translated by G. Schick as “Psychology in Physical Language,” in Logical Positivism, ed. Alfred Ayer (New York: Free Press, 1959), pp. 165–197. 109. Herbert Feigl, The “Mental” and the “Physical” (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1967). 110. See Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 29. Moreover, Cartesian psychology and epistemology are deemed fundamentally mistaken in assuming a bucket theory of mental processes (pp. 88–89) and in overlooking the role of language (p. 49). 111. “Activity” both in a biological and physiological sense of anticipating incoming stimuli and in the – typically human – sense of performing the

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112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117.

118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123.

124.

125.

126.

127.

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Notes to Pages 183–187 descriptive and argumentative functions of language in the service of inventing and criticizing theories. Jennings, “Diverse Doctrines,” p. 23. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 25. Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 126. Ibid. Both systematically and historically. As to the latter, it has to be noted that the searchlight theory, especially in its preliminary form, was developed in the early 1930s. A very similar theory, developed by the biologist A. Hardy, was developed much later. This, of course, does not mean that Popper may not have been influenced by Hardy as well, only not, as some have supposed, exclusively. See A. Hardy, The Living Stream (London: Collins, 1965). Popper, “The Place of Mind in Nature,” in Mind in Nature, ed. Richard Q. Elvee (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982), p. 39. Ibid., p. 45. Thomas Huxley, “On the Hypothesis That Animals Are Automata,” in Methods and Results: Collected Essays, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1898). Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 74. Frank Jackson, “Interaction Revived?” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 10 (1980): 317. According to Popper, to take sense perception as the paradigm of conscious experience is a “bad philosophical habit” owing to the influence of the bucket theory of mind. Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 124. In his review of The Self and Its Brain, D. O. Hebb seems to take the same mistaken psychological theory of consciousness for granted as Jackson. D. O. Hebb, “The View from Without,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 10 (1980): 309–315. In his discussion of Huxley’s theory, Popper significantly is more worried about the dim prospects of this theory for intentional agency, leaving no room for arguments or reasons to influence our behaviour, than by its problematic ontological thesis how states of an extended substance can affect states of a nonextended substance. And although he is sympathetic towards David M. Armstrong’s A Materialist Theory of the Mind (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), it is the second, nonontological part of the book which receives his praise. This is quite unsurprising, for Popper’s theory of the genesis of unconscious mental phenomena, due to frequent repetition of stimuli, is compatible with Armstrong’s proposal to analyze psychological phenomena from “a biological point of view,” stressing the importance of (non-Freudian) unconscious states in the explanation of behaviour and proposing to identify them with brain states and processes. Popper, “Critical Remarks on the Knowledge of Lower and Higher Organisms: The So-Called Sensory Motor Systems,” in Sensory-Motor Integration in the Nervous System, ed. O. Creutzfeldt, R. F. Schmidt, and W. D. W. Willis (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1984), pp. 19–31. Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 73.

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128. John Watkins, “World 1, World 2, and the Theory of Evolution,” in The Significance of Popper’s Thought, ed. Stefan Amsterdamski (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), p. 10. 129. The emphasis on the descriptive and argumentative use of language is also what distinguishes Popper’s evolutionary epistemology from that of Campbell. See Popper, “Campbell on the Evolutionary Theory of Knowledge,” in Evolutionary Epistemology, Theory of Rationality and the Sociology of Knowledge, ed. G. Radnitzky and W. W. Bartley III (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1987), pp. 115–120. 130. Sometimes, Popper complains, language is not dealt with at all in a theory of mind. Popper mentions Armstrong. 131. See for a short but stimulating elaboration of Popper’s view of language, emphasizing the differences with mainstream analytical philosophy and linguistics, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, “Experience or Innateness? Sir Karl Popper on the Origins and Acquisition of Natural Languages,” Los Forum 20 (1995): 16–26. 132. Popper, Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem, p. 89. 133. Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 40. 134. Compare such remarks as this: “[E]ven the number system is a linguistic affair. It is a method of finding new names for more and more and more real numbers. So language is really fundamental somehow to the whole thing” (Popper, Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem, p. 38). 135. Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 101. 136. Ibid., p. 103. 137. Ibid., p. 144. 138. See Chapter 1 (this volume). Significantly in his manuscript on the history of the philosophy of language Popper uses the term “feedback” and wonders what its German equivalent is, suggesting Rückwirkung, the term used by Selz and Bühler. 139. Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 144.

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Ach, N., 31, 32, 33, 93, 126, 210 on consciousness, 31 Selz’s critique of, 99, 213 Selz’s review of, 88 acquired reflexes, 112 Buhler’s ¨ associative theory of, 112 guided by schematic anticipations, 112 Adler, A., 10, 16, 35, 46–52, 62, 75, 77–78, 79, 84, 189, 190, see also individual psychology; striving for superiority child guidance clinics, 74 differences with Freud, 50 fear of being left alone, 77 masculine protest, 52 Popper’s attitude towards, 65–67 Popper’s critique of, 69–70 Aha-experience, 40, 81 amoeba, 37, 156 Angst, see fear anticipation, 141, 143, 146, 149, 151, 153, 174, 188, see also expectation; hypotheses; problems analogy with hypotheses, 144 difference with association, 141 genetic a priori, 143, 155 prior to observation, 155 tentative, 142 Aristotelian logic, 20–21 criticized by Popper, 135, 195 Aristotelian theory of language, 21 Armstrong, David, 181, 222, 223 aspects of psychology, 119, see also Buhler, ¨ K.; psychology behaviour, 117, 120–125, 157, 166, 211 culture, 117, 126, 162, 166, 211

experience, 117, 120, 125–126, 157, 162, 166, 211 association, 8, 15, 25, 58, 61, 62, 95, 110, 175–176, 184 laws of, 99, 100, 113, 132 association psychology, 20–21, 23, 24–25, 81, 121, 139, 203 critiqued by the Wurzburg ¨ school, 92–93 and pointless errors, 98, 103 Popper’s endorsement of, 81 Popper’s rejection of, 126, 130, 132–136, 138, 141, 155, 212 Selz’s rejection of, 20, 21, 22, 89, 90–98, 99, 103, 104–105, 126, 129, 135 and trial and error, 111 associationism, see association psychology assurance (Sicherung) Adler on, 52 Popper on, 77–79 Stern on, 52, 77–78 astrology, 10, 204 attitude towards the unfamiliar, 75, 80, see also attitude towards what is unusual; experience of regularity attitude towards what is unusual, 41, 74 Aufgabe, see task Austrian empire, 10, 53 Avenarius, H., 16, 18, 29, 56, 62, 75, 76, 84, 121, 144, 152, 158, 202, 203, 211, 214 on adaptive characters, 75 on characters, 75 empirico-criticism, 56, 213 on the mind-body problem, 118 on psychology, 68, 201 on what is usual, 75

237

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Bacon, F., 9, 202, 215 Bahle, J., 87, 98, 190, 213 dissertation of, 89 and explanation of musical composing, 109 Baldwin, J. M., 39, 61, 153 Bartlett, F., 208, see also schemata reading of the Wurzburg ¨ school, 208 Bartley, W. W., III, 4 on Popper’s evolutionary epistemology, 4 basic anticipatory mechanisms, 112–113 Selz’s nonassociational explanation of, 112–113 Beckmann, H., 206 behaviour objectively functional, 79–80, 120 subjectively functional, 79–80, 120, 123 behaviourism, 100, 116, 120, 181, 182, 189, 219 and language, 187 behaviouristic Denkpsychologie, 120, 177, 185 belief philosophers, 171 Benary, W., 210 Bergson, H., 19, 105, 217 Selz’s critique of, 105–106 Berkeley, G., 3, 20, 171, 220, see also empiricism, British Selz’s reading of, 88 Berkson, W., 150, 193, 194, 210 Binet, A., 32 Bloor, D., 173, 180 Boll, F., 204 Bolzano, B., 170 Boring, E. G., 30, 31, 205 Brentano, F., 22, 33, 71–73 bucket theory, 1–2, 3, 8, 20, 23, 62, 84, 129, 138, 148, 155, 164, 171, 173, 178, 180, 187, 213, 214, 219, 221, 222 and association psychology, 136 as an epistemological theory, 132, 148 and inductive method, 151 Popper’s definition of, 220 Popper’s first use of, 131–132 Popper’s reasons for rejecting, 135 as a psychological theory, 132, 148 and searchlight theory, 175–176 Buhler, ¨ C., 18, 43–44, 64, 74, 82–83 on fairy tales, 82, 127 Seinsbeziehungen, 44, 83 Sollbeziehungen, 44, 83 Buhler, ¨ K., 63, 89, 92, 189, 199, see also aspects of psychology; psychology of language analogical thinking, 44 associative memory, 201

Ausfragemethode, 31 conflict with Wundt, 31 on consciousness of rules, 32 and crisis of psychology, 116 feeling of familiarity, 76 feeling of strangeness, 76 Freud critiqued by, 45–46 Funktionslust, 39, 46 Hume accepted by, 112 Hume critiqued by, 44–45, 112 mentioned by Popper, 132, 170 Popper’s defence of, 118, 156, 211 Popper’s promotor, 116 Selz’s’s critique of, 112 and sentence scheme, 208 on thought, 31–32 Burger, E., 54–55, 56, 63, 85, 130, 133, 189 influence on Popper, 57–59 See also dogmatic way of teaching; education through habit; self-determination; work pedagogy Burger’s problem, 58–59 Caldwell, B., 221 Campbell, D., 4, 5, 223 on Popper’s evolutionary epistemology, 4 Carnap, R., 152, 182, 188, 214 endorsing associationism, 214 Cartesian dualism, 156, 170, 182–183, 187 causal thinking, 141 Buhler’s ¨ critique of Hume, 44–45, 112 Hume’s explanation of, 44–45 Selz’s critique of Hume’s explanation of, 112–113 Stern’s critique of Hume, 44–45, 112 and why questions, 44–45 character, 57, 59, 64 characterology, 4, 16, 52, 66–69 and Adler, 77–78, 84, 190 Popper on, 66–69 child psychology, 5, 23, 34–35, 45–52, 54, 55, 64, 65, 74–75, 80, 110–111 and Buhler, ¨ 34, 35–45, 74–76 and Charlotte Buhler, ¨ 74 Chomsky, N., 188 Claparède, E., 103 Selz’s’s appraised by, 106 cognitive psychology, 209 Collingwood, R., 155, 178 computer programs, 181–182 and bucket theory, 182 and expectations, 181–182 and problems, 181–182 and searchlight theory, 182 and stimuli, 181, 182 Comte, A., 125–126, 156–157

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Index consciousness, 32, 99, 181, 183 Popper’s biological approach, 184 Popper’s epistemological theory, 186 subliminal, 70 constellation theory, 91, 99, 134, see also task and James, 94, 95–96 and Muller, ¨ 93 Selz’s diagram of, 93 Selz’s refutation, 94, 101 conventionalism, 146, 147 Popper’s critique of, 147 and simplicity, 147–148 critical attitude, 5, 11, 12, 78 critical thinking, 4, 11, 57–58, 71–74, 83, 127, 184, 189 Popper’s early theory, 62–64, 69, 130 Darwin, 4, 167 and theory of evolution, 1, 2 darwinism, 186, see also evolution active, 184–185 passive, 184–185 declarative memory, 97 Selz’s theory of, 97, 98 deductive empiricism, 144, 146, 147 de Groot, A., 87, 115, 207, 209, 210 applying Selz’s psychology, 115 and problem solving, 110 Selz’s contact with, 90 demarcation, problem of, 6, 9–11, 84, 136, 145 and deductive criterion, 67, 84, 150, 151 genesis of Popper’s solution, 6, 12–16 and inductive criterion, 9, 143 Popper’s early problem of, 65–67 and Popper’s first problem, 137 and problem of induction, 11, 12 Denkpsychologie, see psychology of thinking determining tendencies, 31, 93, 177 Ach on, 31, 93 critiqued by Muller, ¨ 93 mentioned by Popper, 128 Descartes, R., 105, 183, 185, 202 Dessoir, M., 89 developmental psychology, see child psychology Dilthey, Wilhelm, 105, 157 Selz’s critique of, 215 dogmatic attitude, 10–11, 12 dogmatic thinking, 4, 11, 15–16, 57–58, 59, 60, 70–74, 127, 188, 189, see also experience of regularity as an active process, 130 and hypotheses, 130 as an inductive process, 130 as a noninductive process, 130

239

Popper’s early theory, 62–64, 69, 77–86, 116, 129–130, 136, 142 Stern on, 44 and theory of neurosis, 15–16 typical experiences of, 70–75 dogmatic way of teaching, 59, see also Burger, E. Dostojewski, F., 203 Driesch, H., 217 drill school (Drillschule), 54 Dummett, M., 173 Duncker, K., 208, 209 and excitation by equality, 101 and resonance effect, 101 Ebbinghaus, H., 24, 25, 204 Eccles, J., 155 Eddington, A., 10, 12 education, 15, 130, 189 and Groos, 42, 201 and James, 201 philosophy of, 59, 64 role of memorization in, 131–134 stage of habit, 15, 85, 190 stage of self-determination, 15, 189–190 education through habit, 58, see also Burger, E. Popper on, 58–59 Ehrenfells, C. F. von, 25, 26 Einstein, A., 5, 10, 16, 147, 156, 215 and demarcation problem, 65, 148 influence on Popper, 148 theory of relativity, 10, 12, 146 emergent evolution, 153–154, 183–184, see also Jennings, H. S. and determinism, 183–184 experimental determinism, 183–184 and indeterminism, 183 method of trial and error, 183 empiricism, 143, 146, 157, 164 British, 139, 153, 172, 186, see also Berkeley, G.; Hume, D.; Locke, J. and philosophy of science, 148–149 Selz’s critique of, 101 epiphenomenalism, 185–186 epistemology without a knowing subject, see knowledge, objective errors, 98, 103, 151, 209 and control processes, 104 and partially operative problems, 103 and prejudices, 104 essentialism, 162 evolution, 128, 185, see also darwinism and mutations, 2 evolutionary epistemology, 34, 45, 79, 148, 182, see also Lorenz, K. Lamarckian, 211

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evolutionary epistemology (cont.) Lorenz on, 153 and Popper, 5–6, 11, 23, 152, 153–156, 165, 174, 223 pre-Darwinian, see Lamarckian and Selz, 89, 105, 114 evolutionary psychology, 23, 36, 39, 216, see also Spencer, H. Buhler’s ¨ critique of, 39, 111 and Popper’s early theory of cognitive development, 17, 118, 119, 123, 124, 126, 130, 135, see also psychology. evolutionary theory, 105 Existentialerlebnis Brentano on, 72 Popper on, 203 expectation, 2, 5, 149, 174, 176, 203, see also anticipation; problems disappointed, 174, 203 preceding repetition, 8, 21, 138, 149 experience of certainty, 71 experience of regularity, 13, 57, 59–60, 63, 66, 69, 74–75, 82, 129, 142, 203, see also dogmatic thinking and attitude (Einstellung), 72–74, 76 and norms and facts, 82–83 and standing by one’s opinion (Festhalten), 72–74, 81, 83, 130 experiments, see theory Faas, E., 205 falsifiability, 7, 10, 147 falsification, 135 and Selz, 104 Faraday, M., 109, 178 fear, 43 Fechner, G. T., 33 Feigl, H., 136, 164, 182–183 findings (Setzungen), 72–73, 77 Avenarius on, 203 dogmatic, 81, 83 Popper on, 81, 83, 144, 203 problematic, 81 Franklin, B., 108 Frege, G., 165, 170, 172, 174–175, 183 grasping a thought, 172, 174 Popper’s appeal to, 173 third realm, 172, 174–175 thought (Gedanke), 172–173, 174 Freud, S., 10, 16, 29, 35, 45–51, 116, see also psychoanalysis Buhler’s ¨ critique of, 45–46, 118 Popper’s attitude towards, 65–67 Popper’s critique of, 69–70 Friedman, M., 157, 158, 159 Fries, J., 144 Frisch, M. von, 169 Fröbel, F., 200

Geisteswissenschaften, see human sciences genetic epistemology, 45, 115 and Popper, 132 geometry, axioms of, 145–148 Euclidian, 146–147 non-Euclidian, 146–147, 215 Popper’s thesis on, 145–148 and synthetic a priori knowledge, 146 Gesetzerlebnis, see experience of regularity Gestalt psychology, 25–27, 34, 87, 89, 109, 116, 162, 209, 210, see also Koffka, K.; Köhler, W. attacking association psychology, 115 Berliner school, 26, 161 Gestalten, 26–27, 212 Selz plagiarized by, 207 Goethe, W., 105 Glöckel, O., 53–54 Gomperz, H., 118–119, 121, 123, 128 on methodology and transcendental method, 119 on methodology as secondary science, 119 on psychologism, 216 on semasiology, 128 Grattan-Guinness, I., 223 Grobler, A., 180, 220 Groos, Karl, 18, 35, 39, 40, 41–42, 43, 44, 48–49, 62, 64, 74, 78, 141, 184, 185, 201, 202, 203, 220 on curiosity, 80 fear of the Unheimlichen, 43, 185 fear of what is unusual, 43, 75 followed by Popper, 138 habitual attitude (Einstellung), 41 his Humean stance, 61 law of habit, 41 mechanization of acquired activities, 42, 60, 84, 108, 134 potential concept, 42 readiness (Bereitschaft), 43 urge at repetition (Wiederholungsdrang), 41 Grove, J., 180, 220 Gundlach, Horst, 196 habit, 8, 60, 84 Buhler’s ¨ associative theory of, 112 formation of, 42, 116 Groos’s theory of, 60, 75–76 Hume on, 15, 58 law of, 25, 41 Morgan on, 61–62 Popper’s revolutionary revision of, 142 Popper’s theory of, 60–61, 84, 133, 134, 138 theory of, 41–43

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Index Hacohen, Malachi, 63–64, 128, 145, 192, 194, 210, 215 Hamilton, William, 94 Handelshochschule, 89 closing of, 89 ius promovendi, 89 Hansen, T. E., 137, 193, 195, 213 Hardy, A., 222 Hartmann, E. von, 37 Hayek, F., 179, 221 Hebb, D. O., 222 Heimat (homeland), 56 Heimatgefühl, 142 Heimhaftigkeit Avenarius on, 75 Popper on, 84 Helmholtz, H., 146–147 the problem of, 146 Herbart, J. F., 27 Herrmann, T., 206 Hitler, A., 89 Hobbes, T., 202 Hofstätter, P., 117 human sciences, 22, 105–106, 116, 117, 167, 169 antinaturalistic stance of, 105 and Bergson, 105 challenged by Selz, 105–106 and Dilthey, 105 and methodological unity of science, 129 Popper’s critique of, 128, 129, 214 and Selz’s nomothetic explanation, 105, 126 and Spengler, 105 and Spranger, 105 Hume, D., 3, 6, 16, 20, 33, 44–45, 71, 72, 83, 92, 112, 153, 155, 171, 203, 220 Buhler’s ¨ critique of, 44–45 degrees of certainty, 83 his inductive theory of belief, 4, 21, 60–61, 84, 133, see also psychology of knowledge Selz’s critique of, 112–113 Selz’s reading of, 88 Humphrey, G., 103, 108, 210 Hunter, J., 154 Husserl, E., 29, 32, 67, 72, 98 Selz’s reading of, 208 Huxley, T., 185, 186, 222 hypotheses, 130, see also anticipation ad hoc, 151 parsimonic use of, 147, 148 and schematic anticipations, 110, 129 hypotheticodeductive method, 144 anticipated by Selz, 113, 144

241

idea, 175–176 subjective, 171 critiqued by Frege, 172 idea psychologists, 171 idea psychology, 173–174, 176, 181–182 imageless thought, 72, 88 Ach on, 31 Buhler ¨ on, 32, 72, 220 Selz on, 91, 208 individual psychology, 35, 66, 77–78, see also Adler, A. abandoned by Popper, 130 and Popper, 66 induction, 129, 135, 136, 184 problem of, 6 connection with problem of demarcation, 11–12 epistemological problem of, 135, 145 genesis of Popper’s solution, 6, 12–16 Hume’s problem of, 6–9, 59 Kulpe’s ¨ endorsement of, 202 logical problem, 6–7, 8 Popper’s endorsement of, 13, 62, 65–70, 71, 82, 84, 85, 129, 138, 202, 203 and Popper’s first problem, 137 Popper’s logical reasons for rejecting, 8–9 Popper’s rejection of, 143, 150 psychological problem, 7, 84, 143, 145 replaced by deduction, 136 Selz’s rejection of, 113 inferiority feeling, 51–52, 77–78, see also Adler, A. insightful thinking, 73, 83, 93 Buhler ¨ on, 81, 112 and chance, 109, 178 contrast with mechanical thinking, 73 Selz’s explanation of, 109 instinct, 111–112, see also theory of stages Buhler ¨ on, 35–37, 39, 40 and evolutionary psychology, 39 Freud on, 46 Groos on, 41–42 Loeb on, 37 Stern on, 42, 49 instruction, see task intellect, 134, see also psychology of judgement; theory of stages; why questions Buhler’s ¨ nonreductive view of, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 111, 125, 131, 169 and development, 40–41 intellectual reactions, 144, 174, see also system of specific responses adopted by Popper, 140 coined by Selz, 140

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Index

intellectual reactions (cont.) integrated with motor reactions, 112, 125, 126 Popper on analogy with motor reactions, 140 intentionality, 181 introspection, 91, 156 introspective psychology, 120 Schlick’s critique of, 159 Jackson, F., 186, 222 James, W., 24–25, 41, 42, 94, 95–96, 196, 201 critiqued by Selz, 96–97 law of habit, 25, 41 James-Lange theory of emotions, 163, 164 Jennings, H. S., 17, 35, 36, 37–38, 41, 110, 123, 140–141, 153–155, 157, 183–184, 186, see also emergent evolution and associationism, 123, 141, 155 inductive trial and error, 154–155 influence on Buhler, ¨ 38–39 Popper influenced by, 154–155 and radical experimentalism, 154 representative stimuli, 38 resolution of physiological states, 141 selection of overproduced movements, 140–141 on trial-and-error behaviour, 141 on trials, 38, 140 on varied movements, 37–38 judgements, 29–30, 72–73, see also findings; Marbe, K. transcending sense experience, 144, 214 Kant, I., 3, 24, 33, 119, 132, 155, 157, 166 and a priori knowledge, 153, 157 and geometry, 146, 147 Kantianism, see Kant Katz, D., 221 Katz, S., 206 Kierkegaard, S., 203 on fear and anxiety, 203 knowledge a posteriori, 145 a priori valid, 145, 147, 148 dispositional, 99, 106 fallibility of, 143, 146 genetic a priori, 3, 4, 143, 145, 147–148, 153 objective, 171, 173–175, 177, 180 subjective, 172 synthetic a priori, 143 Koffka, K., 26, 157, 208, 210 accused of plagiarism by Selz, 89, 208 Selz’s correspondence with, 90 Köhler, E., 55, 62, 74–75, 80, 81–82, 161–162

Köhler, W., 25, 26, 40, 125, 157, 185 Buhler’s ¨ critique of, 40 chimpanzees and insight, 27, 40, 110, 112 and physicalism, 161–162 Selz’s ideas confirmed by, 110 Kohnstamm, P., 90 Komplexergänzung, see whole completion Kretschmer, E., 163, 218 Krug, J., 218 Kruger, ¨ F., 18, 25, 26–27, 121, 122–123, 162, 214 school of, 87 theory of complex qualities, 26–27, 34, 162, 212 Kulpe, ¨ O., 17, 18, 27–30, 31, 32, 67–68, 70, 84, 88, 90, 98, 118–119, 202, 206 on complex experiences, 29, 68–69 on definition of psychology, 29 on elementary experiences, 29, 68–69 on epistemology and psychology, 33 method of research, 29 pure psychology, 28 Selz appraised by, 88 Selz’s reading of, 208 Kulpean ¨ school, 126 Popper on, 132 Kusch, M., 197 labour schools (Arbeitsschule), 54 and critical thinking, 131 debate with the learning schools, 130, 131–133 and the Kraftprinzip, 133 and self-activity, 131 laws of ordered thinking, 99, 103, 134 replacing laws of association, 132, 135 learning, 36–39, 110, see also training Popper on, 149 trial and error, 38–39, 42 learning schools (Lernschule), 54 accumulation of knowledge, 131, 133, 148 and the bucket theory, 133 debate with the labour schools, 130, 131–133 and frequent repetition, 131 and the Stoffprinzip, 131, 133 Liepmann, L., 206 and schematic anticipations, 207 Lipps, T., 88 Locke, J., 3, 33, 153, 155, 171–172, 196, 220, see also empiricism, British and association psychology, 20–21 Selz’s reading of, 88

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Index Loeb, J., 37–38, 39 logic and psychology, 172, 174, see also Frege, G.; psychologism; transference, Popper’s principle of logic of scientific discovery, 19 and Popper’s psychology of scientific discovery, 128 logical positivism, 6, 144, 157 Popper’s critique of, 214 logicism Piaget on, 101 Popper on, 171, 195, 213 Lombroso, A., 36 Lorenz, K., 5, 153, 155, 216, see also evolutionary epistemology on a priori knowledge, 155 on imprinting, 5, 17 Popper’s critique of, 155 Lotze, H., 25 Mach, E., 30, 37, 56, 79, 123, 144, 152, 158, 202, 210, 211, 214 on the origin of concepts, 120–121 Popper’s mentioning of, 139 and sensualism and associationism, 123, 139–140, 214 and subjectively functional behaviour, 121 machine theory, 210 Mandler, J. M., and G. Mandler, 207 Marbe, K., 18, 28, 29–30, 31, 33, see also judgements on consciousness, 30 Marx, K., 10, 16 Mayer, A., 29, 30 Meinong, A., 71, 73, 98, 166 expression, 168 intentionality, 168 introspective psychology, 168 meaning, 168 Selz’s reading of, 208 similarity with Wundt, 168 theory of language, 168 on the theory of objects, 98 memory and abbreviation of reactions, 138–139 associative, 132–134, 138, 141 automatized insightful, 134, 138 passive and mechanical, 133 rote, 130 and schematic anticipations, 133 memory, psychology of, 132 Selz’s, 133, 136 mental activities, see mental processes mental images, 92–93, 94, 99, 184, 186 mental processes, 106 abbreviation of, 134

243

analogous to functional bodily movements, 106, 209, 210 Selz’s ‘‘mechanistic’’ view of, 209 Messer, A., 18, 208 metaphysics, 9 method of trial-and-error elimination, 1–11, 110, 153, 180, 188 and dogmatic trial and critical-error elimination, 4, 12–16, 17, 64, 127, 190 genesis of Popper’s, 129, 212 Popper’s three-stage model, 2–3, 128 and Selz, 125, 128 methods, see also solving methods of abstraction of solving methods, 107, 108–109 of actualizing familiar solving methods, 106 of applying solving methods, 107 of coincidental abstraction of solving methods, 109, 178, 179 of finding of solving methods, 107 of immediate abstraction of solving methods, 211 of productive use of previously established abstractions, 107 of reproductive abstraction of solving methods, 211 of routine actualization of solving methods, 107 Métraux, A., 205, 206 Mill, J. S., 172, 202 mind-body problem, 118, 156, 165, 180–190 and emergentism, 180 and functionalism, 161, 181–182 and interaction, 171, 183 Popper’s epistemological approach, 156 Popper’s pluralistic theory of, 164–165, 170 mnemonic exercise, 131, 138, 148, 174 Morgan, C. L., 17, 35, 36, 37, 41, 61, 62, 67, 110, 123–124, 125, 153, 186, 217, 218 and association, 62 his Humean stance, 62 influence on Buhler, ¨ 38–39 selection of overproduced movements, 37 theory of trial and error, 37 Müller, G. E., 24, 25, 27, 71, 72, 93, 157, 203 Selz’s critique of, 88, 89, 94, 97 Munz, P., 155 natural science, 143 naturalistic epistemology, 34, 44, 89 Selz anticipating contemporary, 205 Newell, A., 101, 115, 205 Newton, I., 16

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ontogenesis, 27, 113 parallelism with phylogeny, 27, 45, 63–64 operations, see solving methods oracle of Delphi, 79 Orth, J., 29, 30 parallelism a priori assumption of, 163–164 axiom of, 167, 168, see also Wundt, W. M. of experience and objective cognitive structures, 127 psychobiological, 163–164 psychophysical, 157, 159 of scientific and prescientific induction, 127–128, 136 of scientific research and psychology of thinking, 127, 136 Pavlov, I. P., 155, 182 Pedagogic Institute of Vienna, 5, 13, 54, 56 pedagogy, 57–63, see also work pedagogy personalism, 16, 17, 46, 49, 50, 51 abandoned by Popper, 130 Stern on, 35, 48, 54 personality psychology, 215 Selz’s critique of, 215 Pestalozzi, A., 200 phylogeny, 27, 110, 113, 127 parallelism with ontogenesis, 27, 45, 63–64 physicalism, 159, 181, 182, 187–188, 219, see also reduction; Schlick, M. Buhler’s ¨ critique of, 217 and language, 187–188 Popper’s critique of, 118, 159, 170 Piaget, J., 31, 34, 45, 106, 115 Plato, 41, 170 play, 34, 39 Buhler ¨ on, 39 Groos on, 39 Poincaré, H., 146–147, 215 Popper, K. abandoning association psychology, 135 Angst for strangeness, 75 and autobiographical essay, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12–21, 129 changeover to philosophy, 135, 170 on conservatism, 83 on cowardliness, 78 on critical inductive judgements, 85 and critical science, 127 on curiosity, 80–81 demarcating epistemology and psychology, 128 dissertation of, 116, 128, 129, 130, 135, 138, 139, 155, 156–157, 178, 186, 214

and dogmatic speculation, 127 early methodology, 64–70, 118–119, 145–148 enrolling the Pedagogic Institute of Vienna, 55 experience-of-is (Seinserlebnis), 83 experience-of-ought (Sollerlebnis), 83 on factual relations (Seinsbeziehungen), 83 fear of the unfamiliar, 75–80, 130 following Stern’s inductive methodology, 65–67 his Humean stance, 61–62 interrupted inductive judgements, 85 his logical motive for abandoning psychology, 19–21, 135 and magical ritual, 127 methodology as a critical science, 119, 147 methodology as a secondary science, 119–147 methodology as transcendental science, 119 on normative relations (Soll-Beziehungen), 83 on pedantry, 83–84 and phenomenological psychology, 65–70 on rejection of what is new, 78 Selz anticipating, 135 on Selz as motive for abandoning psychology, 18–19 and Selz’s diagram, 149, 175, 220 his Selzian experiment, 151 on the Selzian scheme, 128, 129, 136, 140, 144, 211 on subliminal consciousness, 81, 202 his theory of the intellect, 13, 138 theory of three worlds, 156, 164–165 thesis of 1927, 130, 189–190, 220 his verificationism, 70 Preyer, W., 34 Prins, F., 87 problem solving, 27, 142, 179, 181–182, 184, 186, 213 and control processes, 102–103 and critical appraisal, 103 and errors, 98, 103–104 interaction between wholes and parts, 110 and logic, 103 and logical relations, see structural relations and logical theory of, 177 Popper’s scheme of, 175 psychological theory of, 177 and Selz, 91, 98, 99, 109, 110, 210 Selz’s genetic approach, 103

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Index and semantic relations, see structural relations and structural relations, 97–98 unmediated, 99, 134, 213 and verification processes, 103 problems, 2, 151, 156, 175–176, 188 prior to observations, 3–4, 151, 153, see also anticipation; expectation Selz on, 98 and Selz’s explanation of insight, 109 as species adaptation, 2 procedural memory, 97 Selz on, 98 productive thinking, 104, 115, 209 Selz’s explanation of, 106 protocol sentences, 144 pseudoscience, 9, 16, 67, 84 psychoanalysis, 23, 45–50, 54, 116, see also Freud, S. and demarcation problem, 65–67 Popper’s critique of, 46 Psychological Institute of Vienna, 14, 54, 56 psychologism, see also Frege, G.; logic and psychology and Popper, 128, 144, 150, 151–152, 171, 175–176, 195, 216 Popper’s ambiguous definition of, 151–152 Stumpf on, 22, 195 psychology, see also aspects of psychology methodological primacy of, 161 Popper’s early psychology, 17–23, 177, see also evolutionary psychology reduction to biology, 162 psychology of judgement, 40, 71–72 and Buhler, ¨ 40–41, 71–74 doubt and certainty, 40, 72–73, 81 and Groos, 40–41 and Stern, 40–45 psychology of knowledge, 23, see also Hume, D. deductive, 13, 22, 79, 121, 123, 129, 136, 137–145, 149, 150, 174 and genesis of knowledge, 137 sensualistic, 143 and theory of knowledge, 137–145 psychology of language animals, 169, 188 and announcement function, 117, 166–169, 171, 188, 211 and argumentation, 176, 188, 190, 222, 223 Buhler’s, ¨ 116–117, 156, 165–171, 218 Buhler’s ¨ biological approach, 168 and descriptive function, 117, 127, 152–169, 188, 190, 211, 222, 223

245

and expressive function, 117, 166–169, 171, 188, 211 inductive function, see announcement function Popper’s manuscript on, 171, 173 and representative function, see descriptive function role of the community, 167–168 and searchlight, 188 signal, see announcement function symbol, see descriptive function symptom, see expressive function truth and falsity, 169, 188 psychology of scientific discovery, 19 and method of routine application of means, 108 and OS, 114, 128, 144, 177 Selz anticipating recent, 108 psychology of thinking, 16, 18, 23, 24, 29–33, 39, 64, 65, 67, 68, 71–73, 74, 75, 78, 88, 89, 99, 104–105, 116, 118, 120, 122–123, 128, 149, 151, 153, 155, 174, 182, 189, 190, see also Wurzburg ¨ school and Buhler, ¨ 84 deductive, 139–140 Popper on, 125, 132, 156, 176 Popper’s shift towards, 130 and Selz, 91, 104, 125, 129, 132, 214 rationalism, 143, 146 reduction, 160, see also physicalism; Schlick, M. Popper’s critique of, 160 reflection interval, 91 and de Groot, 91 and Selz, 91 reflexlike coordinations, 113, 210 refutation, 151 relational facts, see relational structures relational structures, 98–99, 100, 101, see also structures repetition, 8, 61, 110, 113, 141 dogmatic trials preceding, 143 merely abbreviating reactions, 141 and Morgan, 62, 67 representational function of thought, 127 reproductive thinking, 104, 106, 107, 115, 132, 209 retrospective method, 91 Rickert, H., 202 Riemann, G. F., 146 Romanes, G. J., 39 Rousseau, J. J., 36 routine solving methods, 110, see also methods; solving methods acquisition of, 110–111

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Ruhle, ¨ O., 200 Russell, B., 158 Ryle, G., 189 schemata, 100, 208, see also Bartlett, F. of thought, 132–133 schematic anticipations, 22, 99–101, 107, 108, 109, 110, 115, 129, 135, 138, 140, 141, 143, 174, 176, 213, see also whole completion anticipated by Buhler, ¨ 208 anticipated by Liepmann, 208 anticipated by Moskiewicz, 208 blueprint for Popper’s psychology of knowledge, 140–144, 174–175 and Claparède, 100 and cognitive psychology, 99–100 and Duncker, 100 and feedback, 110, 210 and Gestalt psychology, 100 and hypotheses, 110, 141, 144 integrative theory, 141 and Koffka, 99–100 and Köhler, 99 not mentioned by Popper, 142 and Piaget, 100 Popper’s application of Selz’s theory of, 130, 132–136 Selz’s diagram of, 100–101 Schlick, M., 118, 127, 144, 146, 157–161, 183, 214 see also physicalism; reduction and acquaintance, 158, 159 and knowledge, 158 and knowledge as coordination, 158–159 school-reform movement, 53–55 and Adler, 54–55 and Buhler, ¨ 54 and Charlotte Buhler, ¨ 54 and Glöckel, 53–54 and Stern, 54 teacher-training programs, 54–55 Schopenhauer, A., 37 scientific attitude, see critical attitude scientific knowledge as a biological tool, 3 scientific tradition, 108, 178, 220 and growth of, 108 Selz’s evolutionary model of, 108 and problems, 178 searchlight theory, 3, 79, 114, 116, 132, 135, 136, 149, 155–156, 165, 174–175, 178, 183, 184–185, 186, 190, 222 and bucket theory, 175–176 Seebohm, H.-B., 210 self and character, 189

and Hume, 189 Mach on, 189 Popper on, 68, 188–190 and world, 190 self-activity, 54, 58–59, 85 and Burger, 58 Popper on, 85, 130, 133 self-determination, 57–59, 189–190, see also Burger, E. Selz, O., 17, 18, 25, 33, 49, 72, 86, 139, 153, 155, 176–180, 184, 189–190, 202, 203, 211, 220, 221, 223 actualization of knowledge, 98 and biology of the inner, 106, 126, 129 caught after the Reichskristallnacht, 90 deportation to Westerbork, 90 dissertation of, 88, 98 Dutch lectures, 207 and epistemology, 103 essay on Spengler, 113, 214 explanation of genial achievements, 105, 108, 112 at the Handelshochschule, 89 influence on de Groot, 101 influence on Duncker, 101 influence on Newell, 101, 115 influence on Piaget, 101, 115 influence on Popper, 18–23, 126, 212 influence on Simon, 101, 115 integrating psychology and biology, 105, 135 life of, 87 mentioned by Popper, 126, 132, 141 on methods of science, 108, 113 migration to the Netherlands, 90 murdered in Auschwitz, 90 and pedagogy, 103 Popper’s reading of, 214 and protocol analysis, 99, 101, 103, 207 quoted by Popper, 124, 125 rector of the Handelshochschule, 89 relationship with the Wurzburger ¨ school, 88 resigning his professorship, 89 study of flight accidents, 211 study with Lipps, 88 study with Stumpf, 88 teaching at the Amsterdam Teachers Seminar, 90 work on the Aufbau of the phenomenal world, 90 Selz, Sigmund (father of Otto), 87 semasiology, 128–129 sensations, 92 sensualism, 17, 24–25, 32, 56, 69, 71, 75, 84, 121, 142, 145, 220

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Index shock, 41, 43 Simon, H., 101, 115 simplicity, 147–148 and falsifiability, 147 Smart, J. J. C., 164 solving methods, 91, 106–108, 112, 178, see also methods alternative, 106, 107, 108 automatic, 110 cumulative, 106 and de Groot, 91 difference with associations, 113 fixed, 113 insightful, 110 mentioned by Popper, 128, 132 Spencer, H., 39, 111, 153 Spengler, O., 105, 210 Selz’s critique of, 105–106, 179 Spinoza, B., 105 Spranger, E., 105, 116, 118, 157 Selz’s critique of, 215 state of affairs (Sachverhältnis), see relational structures Stern, C., 18 Stern, W., 18, 25, 32, 35–36, 37, 40, 42, 43, 44–45, 55, 62, 64, 65–66, 74, 75–76, 84, 112, 189, 202, 203 connections between individual psychology and child psychology, 51–52 fear of the unhabitual, 75, 203 feeling of familiarity, 203 feeling of strangeness, 41 and inductive methodology, 46–48 positive appraisal of Adler, 46, 49–50 principle of convergence, 35–36 problematic thinking, 44 on psychoanalysis, 46–49, 202 role in child psychology, 34–35 Selz’s critique of, 215 Vygotsky’s critique of, 198, 199 Weiterdenken, 44 stimulus word, see task Stout, G., 36–37 Strindberg, A., 203 striving for superiority, 51–52, see also Adler, A. structure completion, see whole completion structures, 98, 207, see also relational structures Stumpf, C., 23, 33, 88, 98, 210 on criticism, 22 on psychologism, 22 Selz’s reading of, 208 subject-predicate logic, see Aristotelian logic

247

superstition, 79, 204 surprise, 41, 43, 112 system of specific responses, 106, 125, 149, 151, see also intellectual reactions task, 30–31, 99, 101–104 and association psychology, 93 as directive representation, 93, 97, see also constellation theory mentioned by Popper, 128, 151 and Selz, 90–91 and stimulus word, 90, 97, 99, 101–103 testing movements, 2 theoretical pluralism, 217 Buhler’s ¨ defence of, 117–118, 156, 170–171 adhered to by Popper, 165–166 theory, 150, 153, see also experiments bold, 79, 204, 214 prior to experiments, 150 theory of knowledge, 22, 137–145 interaction with psychology of knowledge, 137–145 and questions of validity, 137 theory of stages, 35–45, see also instinct; intellect; learning; training and Buhler, ¨ 110, 124–125, 169 mentioned by Popper, 124 Selz’s critique of Buhler’s, ¨ 111–112, 212 Thorndike, E. L., 39, 110, 116, 218 total task, 101–103, 184 training, 134, see also learning Buhler ¨ on, 35, 37–38, 125 transcendence, 166–167, 170 animal life, 170 and problem solving, 180 transference, Popper’s principle of, 8–9, 21–23, 128, 137, 195, see also logic and psychology; psychologism Buhler ¨ on, 22 Stumpf on, 22 trying-out behavior, 85, 125, 141, 177, 187 and acquisition of routine solving methods, 110–111 difference with blind trial and error, 111 guided by schematic anticipations, 110 and partial insight, 111 Popper referring to Selz’s notion of, 125, 128 and trying-out movements, 111 Turing, A., 181, 182 U¨

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ber die Gesetze des geordneten Denkverlaufs. Eine experimentelle Untersuchung, 88 unconsciousness, 70 Adler on, 50–51 Kulpe ¨ on, 28–29 Popper on, 70 Unended Quest, 4, 5, 12–21, 129, 148 Unheimliche, Das Avenarius on, 75, 76 Popper on, 203 Stern on, 203 unfounded anticipations, 119, 142, 147 unfounded prejudice, 142 equated with unfounded anticipations, 142 unintended effects, 179–180, 188 Hayek on, 179 Popper on, 179–180 Selz on, 179 Wundt on, 179 unities, see structures; relational structures Vaihinger, H., 68, 69–70, 189, 202 on fictions, 68, 70, 189 van Strien, P., 205 Vienna Circle, 6 Volkelt, H., 18, 26, 27, 28, 34, 123, 125, 127, 139, 162, 182, 218 on animal consciousness, 121 critique of association psychology, 123 critique of Mach’s sensualism, 124 and evolutionary explanation, 123 similarity with Selz’s, 124 theory of assimilation, 123–124, 155, 164 theory of complex qualities, 122–124 Vygotsky, L. S., 198, 199 Wasserman, L. (mother of Otto Selz), 87, 205 Watkins, J., 187, 188 Watson, J. B., 116, 157, 205 Watt, H. J., 30–31, 93, 208 on Aufgabe, 30–31 Selz’s critique of, 213 Wertheimer, M., 157, 209 Wettersten, J., 150, 191, 193, 194, 195, 210 whole completion, 94, 98, 99, 107, see also schematic anticipations and gaps, 132 Gestalt completion, 100

and Gestalt theory, 94 law of, 94, 100 Popper on, 133, 213 why questions, see also intellect; psychology of judgement Buhler ¨ on, 40, 44, 80 Popper on, 81 Stern on, 80 Windelband, W., 202 Wittgenstein, L., 6, 157, 171 work pedagogy, 57–63, 200, see also pedagogy world 1, 187, see also world 2; world 3 and interaction, 187 world 2, 171, 174, 175–177, 180, 184, 186, 187, 190, see also world 1; world 3 and interaction, 187 non-Cartesian, 183 world 3, 127, 164–165, 173, 174–177, 180, 183, 187, see also world 1; world 2 autonomy of, 170, 171, 177–179 and feedback, 190, 223 and interaction, 187 and language, 188 Popper’s evolutionary approach to, 173 and problems, 175–176 and product, 174, 175, 180 Wundt, W. M., 24, 25–26, 30, 33, 127, 157, 163, 167–168, 200, 202, 221, see also parallelism apperception, 27 conflict with Buhler, ¨ 31 creative synthesis, 25 Völkerpsychologie, 27, 127, 177, 178–179 Wurzburg ¨ school, 17, 18, 28, 31, 32, 33, 71, 87, 156, 161, 184, see also psychology of thinking differences with Selz, 91 imageless thought, 88 and Kulpe, ¨ 34, 210 Piaget’s critique of, 101 relation with cognitive science, 33 Selz’s relationship with, 88 Ziehen, Th., 95 Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums, 88, 104, 106, 115 Zweckhaftes Verhalten, see behaviour, subjectively functional

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