A primer of psychology / by Edward Bradford Titchener.

  • Titchener, Edward Bradford, 1867-1927.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A primer of psychology / by Edward Bradford Titchener. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    317/340 (page 297)
    We have seen that every perception and idea means something. The elementary processes are put together at the bidding of nature (§ 38); and to say that nature lays constraint upon mind is to give the biological account of the fact which the psycholo- gist expresses by saying that mental processes ‘mean.’ What is ‘meaning’ in psychology is simply ‘forma- tion under stress of natural environment ’ in biology. Psychology has to do, of course, with all the aspects of mind : the concrete mental processes which form the objects of psychological enquiry are groups-of-ele- mentary-processes-that-mean. Logic, now, abstracts Psychology from the processes that compose the perception or and loglc' idea or judgment, and looks exclusively at the mean- ing-side of the complex. It does not care whether thought go on in terms of sight or hearing or touch ; it is concerned only to discover whether the thought is valid, justified under all sorts and kinds of environ- mental conditions. It thus proceeds ‘ formally ’ or symbolically, like a sort of algebra; and, when it has gone so far as to formulate the laws of valid think- ing, deduces from them rules or norms of scientific thought and procedure, — as ethics deduces norms of conduct from the ‘laws of life.’ The relation of psychology to logic, then, is two- fold. On the one hand, logic arises by way of abstraction from psychology; a single aspect of the total psychological fact is made the basis of a special science. On the other hand, psychological investigation falls under the sway of logic ; unless the method of psychology is logical, its results will be invalid.