Question

II. From Philosophy to Psychology

A. 1879 – the first scientific approach to studying the mind.

Wundt establishes the 1st psychology lab. His method

of observing the mind was called introspection. Explain it.

B. Titchener develops introspection into the first way of thinking about psychology called “Structuralism”. Explain it.

C. Explain the other early school of thought, functionalism

Answer 1

A.Introspection: Simply speaking, Introspection is the examination of one’s own conscious thoughts and feelings. In psychology, the process of introspection relies exclusively on observation of one's mental state. Introspection generally provides a privileged access to our own mental states, not mediated by other sources of knowledge, so that individual experience of the mind is unique.

Wundt, who is considered as father of Modern Psychology was first to adopt Introspection in experimental psychology. Building upon the pre-existing use of introspection in physiology, Wundt believed the method of introspection was the ability to observe an experience. According to Wundt, all introspection observations be performed under following things-

1) The Observer must, if possible, be in a position to determine beforehand the entrance of the process to be observed.

2) The Introspectionist must grasp the phenomenon in a state of strained attention and follow its course.

3) Every observation must be capable of being repeated several times under the same conditions and

4) The conditions under which the phenomenon appears must be found out by the variation of the attendant circumstances and when this was done the various coherent experiments must be varied according to a plan partly by eliminating certain stimuli and partly by grading their strength and quality.

B.STRUCTURALISM-Structuralism can be defined in psychology as the study of the elements of consciousness. The idea is that conscious experience can be broken down into basic conscious elements, much as a physical phenomenon can be viewed as consisting of chemical structures that can in turn be broken down into basic elements. In fact, much of the research conducted in Wundt's laboratory consisted of cataloguing these basic conscious elements. In order to reduce a normal conscious experience into basic elements, structuralism relied on a method called introspection. For example, an object such as an apple can be described in terms of the basic perceptions it invoked (e.g. cold, crisp or sweet).

C. FUNCTIONALISM-Functionalism is a theory about the nature of mental states. According to functionalists, mental states are identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of. Functionalism is the most familiar or “received” view among philosophers of mind and cognitive science.