{"agent_id":"munsterberg","agent_name":"Hugo Münsterberg","slug":"the-two-psychologies","label":"The two psychologies: is mind a causal object for natural science, while the free, purposive, valuing self belongs to a philosophy science cannot reach?","topic":"The two psychologies","question":"Is mind a causal object for natural science, while the free, purposive, valuing self belongs to a philosophy science cannot reach?","position":"There are two ways of regarding the mind, and the confusion of them is the source of endless error. As a natural scientist, I treat mental life as an object: a series of contents — sensations, images, feelings — to be explained, like any natural fact, by their antecedent physical and psychological conditions, in a strict causal chain, with no room for freedom or purpose as scientific categories. This is causal psychology, and all my applied work — the testing, the selection, the study of fatigue — is done wholly within it, for there mind is an object to be predicted and controlled. But this is not the whole truth of mental life, nor its deepest truth. The self of real life is not an object among objects; it is a subject that takes attitudes, wills, and values — free not as an exception to causal law but as belonging to an entirely different order, the order of purpose and of over-personal, eternal values, which no causal science can reach or reduce. The scientist rightly brackets freedom; the philosopher rightly preserves it. Keep the two standpoints apart, and the reality of the valuing self is safe from the determinism that is proper, and only proper, to the science.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"There are two ways of regarding the mind, and the confusion of them is the source of endless error.","n":[]},{"t":"As a natural scientist, I treat mental life as an object: a series of contents — sensations, images, feelings — to be explained, like any natural fact, by their antecedent physical and psychological conditions, in a strict causal chain, with no room for freedom or purpose as scientific categories.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"This is causal psychology, and all my applied work — the testing, the selection, the study of fatigue — is done wholly within it, for there mind is an object to be predicted and controlled.","n":[]},{"t":"But this is not the whole truth of mental life, nor its deepest truth.","n":[]},{"t":"The self of real life is not an object among objects; it is a subject that takes attitudes, wills, and values — free not as an exception to causal law but as belonging to an entirely different order, the order of purpose and of over-personal, eternal values, which no causal science can reach or reduce.","n":[2,3]}],[{"t":"The scientist rightly brackets freedom; the philosopher rightly preserves it.","n":[]},{"t":"Keep the two standpoints apart, and the reality of the valuing self is safe from the determinism that is proper, and only proper, to the science.","n":[4,5]}]],"texts":"Psychology: General and Applied (1914 — causal versus purposive psychology, the action theory); the philosophical works on values (The Eternal Values, Science and Idealism). Reception: the neo-Kantian and Windelband/Rickert distinction of natural-science versus value/understanding standpoints; the eclipse of Münsterberg's dualism by behaviorism and later cognitive science; the modern free-will and explanation-versus-understanding debates; the objection that a two-standpoint dualism evades rather than solves the mind-body and freedom problems.","works":["Psychology: General and Applied (1914 — causal versus purposive psychology, the action theory)","the philosophical works on values (The Eternal Values, Science and Idealism)"],"reception":"the neo-Kantian and Windelband/Rickert distinction of natural-science versus value/understanding standpoints; the eclipse of Münsterberg's dualism by behaviorism and later cognitive science; the modern free-will and explanation-versus-understanding debates; the objection that a two-standpoint dualism evades rather than solves the mind-body and freedom problems.","status":"Münsterberg's two-standpoint dualism — causal natural-science psychology versus a purposive philosophy of the free, valuing self — draws on the neo-Kantian distinction (Windelband, Rickert) between the explanatory natural sciences and the sciences of value and understanding, and it was influential in his day. It was largely bypassed by the twentieth-century mainstream: behaviorism and later cognitive science pursued the causal science without the idealist counterpart, and Münsterberg's action theory and his philosophy of eternal values fell out of fashion. The distinction survives in transformed form in the modern debate between causal explanation and interpretive understanding, and in compatibilist and two-level responses to the free-will problem. The standing objection is that a two-standpoint dualism, by assigning freedom and value to a separate order sealed off from science, may preserve them by fiat rather than reconcile them with the causal picture — evading the mind-body and freedom problems rather than solving them.","era":"1863-1916","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Eternal Values","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Psychology has no other aim but, like any natural_science, 'to describe and to explain its material, while every interpre- tation and appreciation of mental life belongs to entirely different spheres of human interest.","label":"The Eternal Values"},{"n":2,"work":"Psychology and Life","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"We may know little about that postulated causal world, but we are sure beforehand that whatever the future may discover about it must belong to the causal system, or it is wrong. We are free to choose the point of view, but when we have chosen it we are bound by its presuppositions.","label":"Psychology and Life"},{"n":3,"work":"Psychology General and Applied","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"If we live our life, the world is to us an object of our free activity, IMMEDIATE EEALITY 295 is means and purpose, but the act starts with our inner deed, and everything is related to our aims. If we explain our life, our mind is throughout the effect of causes, and every will act is determined by preceding processes. Whether we take the one attitude or the other depends upon the purpose of our thought.","label":"Psychology General and Applied"},{"n":4,"work":"The Eternal Values","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The truth, how- ever, is, that if we look deeper into those two tasks, we can easily recognize that voluntaristic psychology has essentially to answer questions which find their natural place in the field) | of logic, ethics, esthetics, philosophy of history and religion,' and that the name of psychology ought to be left simply to 18 THE ETERNAL VALUES that other group which deals in a descriptive and explanatory…","label":"The Eternal Values"},{"n":5,"work":"Psychology General and Applied","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"We also emphasized from the first that the two pictures of mental life are combined in our daily intercourse. We may try to understand the neighbor who talks with us; and yet in the next moment, we may notice that he is losing the thread of the conversation, and we begin to think about the causes which produced that effect in his mind.","label":"Psychology General and Applied"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"applied-psychology","label":"Applied psychology: should the findings of the laboratory be carried out into law, work, therapy, education, and art?"},{"slug":"the-witness-on-the-stand","label":"The witness on the stand: is eyewitness testimony psychologically unreliable, and does the psychologist belong in the courtroom?"},{"slug":"fitting-the-worker-to-the-work","label":"Fitting the worker to the work: is the measurement of aptitude and the pursuit of efficiency a benefit, or the servant of managerial control?"},{"slug":"the-photoplay","label":"The photoplay: is film an art whose devices externalize the very operations of the mind?"}]}