{"agent_id":"kohler","agent_name":"Wolfgang Köhler","slug":"gestalt-against-behaviorism","label":"Gestalt against behaviorism: is excluding direct experience a methodological mutilation?","topic":"Gestalt against behaviorism","question":"Is excluding direct experience a methodological mutilation?","position":"Behaviourism proposes to study the mind by refusing to look at it — to admit only what an outside observer can see and to strike direct experience from the record. But direct experience is the one thing given to us first and with certainty; a science that begins by discarding its primary data has amputated itself for the sake of a false rigour. We may and must study behaviour, but not by pretending the experienced world is not there.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Behaviourism proposes to study the mind by refusing to look at it — to admit only what an outside observer can see and to strike direct experience from the record.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"But direct experience is the one thing given to us first and with certainty; a science that begins by discarding its primary data has amputated itself for the sake of a false rigour.","n":[3]},{"t":"We may and must study behaviour, but not by pretending the experienced world is not there.","n":[4,5]}]],"texts":"Gestalt Psychology (1929): the argument that behaviourism's refusal of direct experience discards the primary data of psychology. Reception: the behaviourist and operationist insistence on public observables; the later cognitive revolution's partial vindication of Köhler's insistence on inner organisation.","works":["Gestalt Psychology (1929): the argument that behaviourism's refusal of direct experience discards the primary data of psychology"],"reception":"the behaviourist and operationist insistence on public observables; the later cognitive revolution's partial vindication of Köhler's insistence on inner organisation.","status":"That psychology must be rigorous and public in its methods I grant; that rigour requires the denial of experience I deny. The behaviourist discipline caught real laxity in the old introspection; it overcorrected into a refusal to see. My quarrel is not with measuring behaviour but with the metaphysical amputation that calls experience unreal.","era":"1887-1967","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Gestalt Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Atleast they must have agreed upon facing important problems as seldom as possible, since they are occupied mainly with describing the 1 The opposition between introspectionism and behaviorism discussed in this chapter is the opposition between those who use and those who reject the observation of direct experience.","label":"Gestalt Psychology"},{"n":2,"work":"Gestalt Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"He even aimed at formulating laws govern- ing the flow of direct experience. The well-known psychological school of behavior- ism has leveled against the older psychology the criticism that it was misguided both with respect to its subject-matter and its aim.","label":"Gestalt Psychology"},{"n":3,"work":"Gestalt Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"That, however, is allowing private affairs in exact science. It does not seem to disturb scientific procedure, as it does not disturb the affairs of every- day life, wherein it is the most general and natural occurrence. In certain cases, therefore, belief in the \"direct experience'' of others must be innocent and is not a hindrance to scientific progress.","label":"Gestalt Psychology"},{"n":4,"work":"Gestalt Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Certainly, what I call his attitude, or his voice, in my experience, is determined by physical events in the muscles and in the nervous system, etc., of his physical body. It is not only possible but even necessary to understand these physical events from the viewpoint of pure physics or physiology.","label":"Gestalt Psychology"},{"n":5,"work":"Gestalt Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"And there is still more in this world: my hand and fin- gers moving lightly over the smooth surface of the paper; now, when I stop writing and look around again, there is a feeling of health and vigor, but in the next moment I feel something like a dark pres- sure somewhere in my interior which tends to de- velop into a feeling of being hunted—I have prom- ised to have this manuscript ready within a few months.","label":"Gestalt Psychology"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"insight-versus-trial-and-error","label":"Insight versus trial-and-error: do animals learn by sudden restructuring or by gradual association?"},{"slug":"gestalt-against-atomism","label":"Gestalt against atomism: is organized experience prior to and different from its parts?"},{"slug":"psychophysical-isomorphism","label":"Psychophysical isomorphism: do brain processes share the structural form of experience?"},{"slug":"physical-gestalten","label":"Physical Gestalten: is organization a feature of physical nature, not something the mind imposes?"}]}