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An Empiricist Schema of the Psychophysical Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Gustav Bergmann
Gustav Bergmann*
Affiliation:
State University of Iowa
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Extract

This paper does not purport to present a fully developed argument. Rather, it intends to delineate, in broad strokes and in a synoptic manner, the total frame of reference of Scientific Empiricism as far as it is necessary for an integration of the several contributory clarifications of the complex, usually referred to as the psychophysical problem. Several considerations seem to justify such an attempt. It is desirable, from time to time, to free the results of logical and methodological analysis from their specialized contexts. Only thus can they be presented in a way which brings to the fore their continuity with more traditionally worded epistemological thought. By doing this such a presentation should also help to dissolve the current objections of formalism, scientism, and philosophical irrelevance so frequently based on misunderstanding. It is only fair to admit, however, that these misunderstandings have been facilitated by the preoccupation with the technical, and the brevity with regard to the nontechnical, which characterize the modern analysts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , January 1942 , pp. 72 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1942

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References

∗ References in footnotes have been omitted; the argument itself is believed to show clearly to which writers it owes most. I wish, however, to acknowledge my debt to my friend, Professor W. S. Sellars from whom I have learned, by disagreement, in two years of assiduous discussion.

1 A third possible precise meaning of ‘particular’ would refer to the descriptive symbols of a language in general without restriction to the proper names. ‘Descriptive’ is used in Carnap's sense. What is here and later on referred to as ‘primitive functions’ corresponds to Carnap's undefined descriptive predicates and functors.

2 G. Bergmann, The Subject Matter of Psychology. Phil. of Sci., 7, 1940, 415-433.

3 That ‘I’ and ‘You’ are particulars of this type is the projected assertion of the existence of minds. In a suggestive way of speaking, minds are as real as forces, atoms, and electrons, which are indeed constructs of about the same height as ‘You'. See also the paper on “The Subject Matter of Psychology”. In the terminology of that article, the bending back of the language is, approximately, both a factual and a formal isomorphism. The point now stressed is its factuality.

4 See also G. Bergmann and K. W. Spence: Operationism and Theory in Psychology. Psych. Rev., 48, 1941, 1-14.

5 This shift accounts also for the inevitable failure of all attempts to raise the traditional argument for the existence of other minds to the status of a hypothesis. Such an attempt has again been made in Ayer's last book, Foundations of Empirical Knowledge.