The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Münsterberg - Über Aufgaben und Methoden der Psychologie
The qualities which marked the author's Beiträge zur Psychologie reappear, if in a less pronounced form, in this treatise on the Problems and Methods of Psychology. If the scope of the work does not admit of the same originality of treatment, we find the same stimulating suggestiveness, the same easy, flowing style, and the same effect of a rapid stream of thought hurrying the author along to conclusions from which, perhaps, calm reflection would have withheld him.
The first chapters in the book are given to the consideration of the problem of Psychology in the broad and narrow sense.
In the narrow sense of the word, Dr. Münsterberg finds that the problem of Psychology is the analysis of the content of consciousness into its elements, and the determination of the rules according to which these elements build up the complex states of mind; but this is merely descriptive: explanation includes the element of necessary result: a phenomenon is not explained until it is shown to result necessarily from some other, generally simpler, phenomenon. Granting the complete parallelism of psychical and neural processes, the former would find their explanation in the causal connection of the latter. That is, Dr. Münsterberg regards Physiological Psychology as the only finally valid Psychology. In the first of his Beiträge (p. 15) he has told us, however, that explanation means the referring back of complicated phenomena to simpler; and to this meaning Psychology, in so far as it is a science of the mind, must hold; the analysis of complex mental states into their elements constitutes psychological explanation. Granting the correctness of the views held by the Association School of Psychology, their derivation of all complex mental states from associative processes assuredly constituted an explanation of the genesis of these states.
The factor of necessary result cannot be transferred from Physiology to Psychology, unless we are to regard the connection between bodily and mental states as causal; but this Dr. Münsterberg in his first Beitrag (p. 18) expressly denies. The problem of Psychology having been determined, what are the methods? The speculative method is of course rejected. Besides this, the author finds that the use of Mathematics in Psychology is absurd: Mathematics can only be applied to phenomena between which there is a causal relation: the numerical determinations of experimental Psychology are not Mathematics, but only exact expressions of facts.
Excepting the mathematical treatment of the psycho-physical methods, it is true that the outcome of Mathematics in Psychology has been small. And it is unfortunately true that the inroads of Mathematicians into the field of Psychology has for the most part resulted in a tangle of more or less meaningless formulæ; but the examples given by Dr. Münsterberg to show the absurdity of Mathematics in Psychology are not wholly convincing. He says, for instance (p. 52), "We know, if two quantities are equal to a third, they are equal to each other. Now the sensation from a sound stimulus of 500 vibrations a second, is like the sensation of 500.2; in the same way the sensation of 200.4 vibrations is like that of 200.2; consequently the sensation of 500 vibrations a second is like that of 500.4 — which experiment shows to be false." But this argument hinges on the use of the word 'like,' which in German also means equal (gleich): when the psychologist applies the word 'like' to sensations it is simply as a shorthand expression for the phrase, 'Not to be distinguished from one another in respect to some quality.' Inserting this qualification in the place of the word 'like' in the above reasoning, the logic of words and facts agree.
Having determined the problem of Psychology and ruled out unproductive methods, Dr. Münsterberg discusses the methods that he considers fruitful, and first of all self-observation. It will scarcely surprise those who have read the article on the "Time-sense" in the Beiträge to find that a very broad scope is given to the method of introspection. The rejection of self-observation as an independent method in Psychology is held to spring from the theory which regards consciousness as made up of contents, and activities related to these contents; as an activity cannot make itself the object of its own action, it can only be examined in the more or less deceptive memory image. Against this, the author holds that consciousness is the content of consciousness; that attention is not an activity which determines states of consciousness, but is in itself a state of consciousness composed of feeling of muscular tension joined to the consciousness that the sensation or mental images are rising or sinking, and growing dimmer or clearer.
Self-observation consists in these feelings, along with the directive idea that the discrimination and retention involved in them are necessary to scientific purposes.
Attention, discrimination, and comparison, and the other so-called activities of consciousness, are for the most part open to observation as being made up of changes in conscious states along with a certain integrating play of associative elements. Dr. Münsterberg grants that direct self-observation is not always practicable: the mental phenomena may be too dim or fleeting, or they may be overpowering as in wrath (p. 168), but of the sum total of those psychical processes, he finds but a scanty number which cannot be observed in transitu, and these for the most can be examined in the reproduced images (p. 168).
The author's theory of attention is familiar to the readers of his article on the "Time-sense"; but the observation of the process of attention would, as Mr. Titchener points out in Mind (vol. xvi, p. 524), be equivalent to setting a series of tensions and strains, to interpreting another series. It is assuredly something more than theoretical conclusions in regard to the constitution of mind, which has led to the limiting of self-observation; it is the familiar fact that as soon as we apply direct attention to a mental process, the latter either fades away or becomes distorted, and observation of it has to take place through its reproduction in memory. As James says, it is not alive, but only in the post mortem that it becomes the prey of the psychologist.
The complement of the introspective method lies in mediate observation of the state of mind shown in the play of passion in the normal man, in the acts of the child, of the savage, of the maniac, and of animals. As regards observations on animals, Dr. Münsterberg says (p. 104) that the empirical proof for the existence of consciousness in them rests on a fallacy; but, as Huxley points out, the evidence is the same as that which leads one to believe that one's fellow-man feels; in both cases it is the evidence of a similarity of structure and action.
In the chapter on immediate psychical observation under artificial conditions the problems of Psychology are brought under the headings of the psychopetal, psychofugal, and psychocentral processes: of these the psychopetal processes, usually called forth by stimulation of the special senses, have been far more investigated than what Dr. Münsterberg considers the more important psychofugal, — as, for instance, muscle and joint sensations; and he promises, in a forthcoming fourth Beitrag, to give us results of investigations in this neglected field.
It is, of course, useful to accent the distinction between a mere difference of sensation and a recognition of the direction of this difference, — whether one sound be higher than another, or louder than another, and so on; but it is doubtful if Psychology has anything to gain by calling those recognitions of the direction of difference a 'distance judgment': the word implies a quantitative difference, but the recognition of kind of difference may be qualitative, as in judging between tones. The addition of the so-called chain reaction to the psycho-physic methods seems to me of very dubious value. Ten people, say, sit in a circle, and a stimulus is passed from one to another as soon as it is discriminated: the time is measured by the first reacter starting the chronoscope, when he stimulates the second, and stopping it as soon as the stimulus travels back to him. Dividing by ten we get a reaction time for each reacter, in which the error of the chronoscope is to be reduced to one-tenth.
The many sources of error in this method are patent, and chief among them is the chronoscopic error itself. G. E. Miiller has already pointed out (Göt. gel. Anzeiger, 1891, No. 11, p. 598) that the control hammer tests the chronoscope only for periods of about 0,160 sec.; the longer the current flows through the electro-magnet, the greater will be the error in the recoil of the armature. What this error would amount to in a chain reaction it is hard to say, but it is certainly of moment.
Of especial value are Dr. Münsterberg's strictures on that perversion of the experimental method which consists in heaping up columns of figures without careful investigation of the mental phenomena which they, in a measure, represent. But the withholding of figures through which alone one can discover possible sources of error, or form an independent judgment, is hardly to be defended on the ground that every one who reports experiments has a right to demand a certain amount of personal confidence (p. 146). The question here is not one of honesty of intent, but of fallibility of judgment, and even at the risk of tediousness the investigator should put his critic in the possession of data which alone enable him to test conclusions, and try theories.
The last chapters in the book are taken up with the discussion of mediate psychical investigations under artificial conditions, in which, of course, the data are drawn from experiments on animals, and within narrow limits, on children, the insane, and from hypnotic states. A small space is also given to Psycho-physiology, viz. the connection between mental and neural processes. As a whole, the book does not seem to me a weighty contribution to psychological literature; on the one hand, the criticism of the generally accepted methods is hardly searching enough; on the other hand, Dr. Münsterberg has not marked clearly what belongs to his own hypotheses, and what belongs to accepted psychological doctrines. While, as the editor informs us, the works of this series are to be presented in a form accessible to the general reader, they are, nevertheless, to be written with scientific severity. But scientific severity cannot be predicated of a treatise in which the line between hypotheses and demonstrated fact is not sharply drawn.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1939, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 84 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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