{"agent_id":"binet","agent_name":"Alfred Binet","slug":"the-experimental-study-of-thought","label":"The experimental study of thought: can the higher operations of reasoning and imagination be studied by controlled introspection?","topic":"The experimental study of thought","question":"Can the higher operations of reasoning and imagination be studied by controlled introspection?","position":"To study thinking one must catch it in the act, and I found my best laboratory at home, in my two daughters, whose minds I observed and tested for years as they solved problems, defined words, described images, and reasoned aloud. I learned that thought is not one thing but many; that two intelligent minds — my Marguerite, my Armande — differ not in degree only but in type, the one observant and objective, the other imaginative and subjective; and that much of reasoning proceeds by an activity of the mind that leaves no image behind, a directing thought one feels working without being able to picture it. Reasoning is the organization of images and, beyond the images, of relations and attitudes the introspecting mind can barely seize. I hold that these higher operations — judgment, the sense of a relation, the feeling of a coming word — are the true and difficult subject of psychology, to be reached by patient experiment and controlled introspection, not to be dissolved into elementary sensations. The mind studied from within, under controlled conditions, gives up more than the reflex measured from without.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"To study thinking one must catch it in the act, and I found my best laboratory at home, in my two daughters, whose minds I observed and tested for years as they solved problems, defined words, described images, and reasoned aloud.","n":[]},{"t":"I learned that thought is not one thing but many; that two intelligent minds — my Marguerite, my Armande — differ not in degree only but in type, the one observant and objective, the other imaginative and subjective; and that much of reasoning proceeds by an activity of the mind that leaves no image behind, a directing thought one feels working without being able to picture it.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"Reasoning is the organization of images and, beyond the images, of relations and attitudes the introspecting mind can barely seize.","n":[]},{"t":"I hold that these higher operations — judgment, the sense of a relation, the feeling of a coming word — are the true and difficult subject of psychology, to be reached by patient experiment and controlled introspection, not to be dissolved into elementary sensations.","n":[]},{"t":"The mind studied from within, under controlled conditions, gives up more than the reflex measured from without.","n":[2]}]],"texts":"The Psychology of Reasoning (1899); L'Étude expérimentale de l'intelligence (1903, the study of his daughters Marguerite and Armande); The Mind and the Brain (1907). Reception: the Würzburg 'imageless thought' controversy (Külpe) and Titchener's opposition; the individual-differences approach to cognition; the modern cognitive psychology of reasoning and problem-solving that Binet's methods prefigure.","works":["The Psychology of Reasoning (1899)","L'Étude expérimentale de l'intelligence (1903, the study of his daughters Marguerite and Armande)","The Mind and the Brain (1907)"],"reception":"the Würzburg 'imageless thought' controversy (Külpe) and Titchener's opposition; the individual-differences approach to cognition; the modern cognitive psychology of reasoning and problem-solving that Binet's methods prefigure.","status":"Binet's experimental-introspective studies of reasoning and of his daughters' contrasting mental types are a recognized early contribution to cognitive and individual-differences psychology, and they touch the \"imageless thought\" controversy: his finding of directing, imageless components of thought aligns with the Würzburg school (Külpe) against Titchener's insistence that all thought is sensory-imaginal. The introspective method he used has the known limits that later discredited pure introspection, but his focus on the higher operations of reasoning, on qualitative types of mind, and on thought as the organization of relations prefigures modern cognitive psychology, which returned to reasoning and problem-solving with better methods. A respected, if methodologically dated, contribution.","era":"1857-1911","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Psychology of Reasoning","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"There is nothing in the mind save the cohesion of these different sensations.... Judgment therefore becomes reduced to an association of images, for the time being indissoluble; it is often accompanied by an affirmation expressed by words thought, pronounced or written (a verbal proposition), but it may exist independently of all expression; it may consist solely of images.\" *F.","label":"The Psychology of Reasoning"},{"n":2,"work":"The Intelligence of the Feeble-Minded","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The \"I wish to pipi\" or the \"I cannot write because my finger is bad,\" cannot be expressed in images; they are thoughts of relations which can only express themselves in words; and if the words do not suffice, as in the present case, it is not the image which supplements their absence.","label":"The Intelligence of the Feeble-Minded"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"what-the-scale-measures","label":"What the scale measures: is the intelligence test a diagnostic tool for helping children, or a measure of fixed innate intelligence?"},{"slug":"the-malleability-of-intelligence","label":"The malleability of intelligence: can intelligence be increased by training, against the 'brutal pessimism' of a fixed capacity?"},{"slug":"measuring-the-mind","label":"Measuring the mind: should psychology study the higher, complex mental operations rather than elementary sensations and reaction times?"},{"slug":"suggestion-and-the-divided-self","label":"Suggestion and the divided self: how far can hypnosis, hysteria, and double consciousness be trusted, and what did the Salpêtrière teach about experimental error?"}]}