{"agent_id":"kohler","agent_name":"Wolfgang Köhler","slug":"psychophysical-isomorphism","label":"Psychophysical isomorphism: do brain processes share the structural form of experience?","topic":"Psychophysical isomorphism","question":"Do brain processes share the structural form of experience?","position":"The order we find in experience is not laid over a chaos in the brain; the brain processes that underlie a Gestalt are themselves organised, and organised in the same functional form. The seen figure and the cortical process are two aspects of one structured event — isomorphic, not identical, but sharing their form. Organisation in the mind mirrors organisation in the nervous system because both obey the dynamics of systems seeking equilibrium.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The order we find in experience is not laid over a chaos in the brain; the brain processes that underlie a Gestalt are themselves organised, and organised in the same functional form.","n":[1,2]},{"t":"The seen figure and the cortical process are two aspects of one structured event — isomorphic, not identical, but sharing their form.","n":[]},{"t":"Organisation in the mind mirrors organisation in the nervous system because both obey the dynamics of systems seeking equilibrium.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"Gestalt Psychology (1929): the isomorphism thesis — that the organised physiological processes underlying an experience have the same functional structure as the experience. Reception: Lashley's experiments against cortical field-currents; the collapse of Köhler's specific electrical-field model; the survival of a weaker structural correspondence in cognitive neuroscience.","works":["Gestalt Psychology (1929): the isomorphism thesis — that the organised physiological processes underlying an experience have the same functional structure as the experience"],"reception":"Lashley's experiments against cortical field-currents; the collapse of Köhler's specific electrical-field model; the survival of a weaker structural correspondence in cognitive neuroscience.","status":"The general thesis — that organised experience answers to organised brain process — I hold; the SPECIFIC model, that steady cortical currents flow in fields answering to the perceived figure, was the vulnerable form of it, and the experiments against direct cortical currents told against that model. The principle of structural correspondence stands where my particular electrophysiology did not.","era":"1887-1967","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Gestalt Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"In order to understand this, we must remember the concluding remarks of the second chapter. If the pianist intends a musical phrase as a whole, shall we assume that the processes correspond- ing to that experienced development-as-a-whole are also one whole functionally, or shall we assume the contrarye Where, for his experience, the phrase ends and after a discontinuity a new one begins, shall 258 GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY…","label":"Gestalt Psychology"},{"n":2,"work":"Gestalt Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"As used by these authors it is based upon the /Jogical order in which we arrange certain experiences after abstract- ing them from their context and judging about their similarities. It attributes a congruent logical order to the underlying processes, similarly abstracted 64 GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY from their dynamic context like dead specimens in a museum.","label":"Gestalt Psychology"},{"n":3,"work":"Gestalt Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Take vision, for example. How many things may be present simul- taneously in one actual field! Still, excluding ex- treme peripheral regions, there does not seem to be any confusion for the most part. One object appears separated from all others, and the sharpness of its contours is evidence of a high accuracy of function.","label":"Gestalt Psychology"},{"n":4,"work":"Gestalt Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Under normal conditions neighboring areas of different chroma will almost always be different in brightness. There- fore, sharp contours on the retina will in most cases give accurate contours in the visual field. 1 Psycholog. Forschung, 9, 1927. 2It is well known in photometry that without differences of brightness figures lose their definite form by diffusion into the ground.","label":"Gestalt Psychology"},{"n":5,"work":"Gestalt Psychology","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"In some respects the situa- tion is the same as in the case of physical objects that appear as segregated wholes in visual experi- BEHAVIOR. 257 ence.","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":"physical-gestalten","label":"Physical Gestalten: is organization a feature of physical nature, not something the mind imposes?"},{"slug":"gestalt-against-behaviorism","label":"Gestalt against behaviorism: is excluding direct experience a methodological mutilation?"}]}