Problems and psychologism: Popper as the heir to Otto Selz

Problems and Psychologism: Popper as the Heir to Otto Selz

A-fiche1 ter Hark*

MY AIM in this article is to draw attention to the latent psychological content of

much of Popper’s epistemology and philosophy of science; and to that extent it

can be read as an essay in the psychology of (the philosophy of) science. This

may sound paradoxical, because almost the whole burden of Popper’s epis-

temology is to get rid of any appeal to matters psychological. I am, in effect,

trying to turn the ‘objectivist’ view of Popper’s epistemology on its head by

arguing that both his arguments against psychologism and his arguments for

objective knowledge are tainted by psychological considerations. If it can be

shown that Popper’s concern with the logic of knowledge is not distinct from a

(tacit) concern with the psychology of knowledge, then even Popper is

committed to some version of psychologism. More specifically, I will argue

that Popper’s claims to have established the irrelevance of psychological

investigations to the rational reconstruction of science lack compulsion and

even depend upon equivocation. Popper has established the irrelevance of

what I call ‘association psychology’ to the evaluative mission of epistemology,

but not of cognitive psychology. Association psychology, the beginnings of

which are to be found in Hobbes, and which reach a climax in Pavlov’s

conditioned reflex theory, is the science of associative connections between

subjective and unchanging mental atoms. The cognitive psychology I refer to is

the largely neglected psychology of Otto Selz from which the contemporary

paradigm in psychology is a lineal descendant.’ Popper was very well versed in

the psychology of Selz as well as the program of the ‘Wiirzburger Schule’ with

which Selz was associated, as can be seen from Popper’s unpublished disser-

tation ‘Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie’ of 1928.2 In this contribution

to psychology, the Selzian germs of much of Popper’s later work can be

discerned rather clearly.

* Department of Philosophy, University of Groningen, A-Weg 30, 9718 CW Groningen, The Netherlands.

Received 30 June 1992; in revised form 18 January 1993.

‘H. Simon, ‘Otto Selz and Information-Processing Psychology’, in N. H. Frijda and A. D. de Groot (eds), Otto Selz: His Contribution to Psychology (The Hague: Mouton, 1981) pp. 147-163.

‘A copy of Popper’s dissertation - supposed by some to have already been lost - is to be found in the ‘Otto Selz Institut’ in Mannheim. Doctor Alexandre Mitraux, the administrator of this institute, gave a copy to Professor Pieter van Strien, who, in turn, gave me a copy.

Stud. Hist. Phil. Sri. Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 585609, 1993. 0039-3681/93 $6.00 + 0.00 Printed in Great Britain 0 1993. Pergamon Press Ltd

585

586 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

In this article the latent psychological content of Popper’s epistemology,

especially that of the ‘Searchlight’, his so-called logical criticism of induction as

well as his deductive method of conjectures and refutations, will be identified in

terms of some of the main theses of the program of Otto Selz. The conclusion

will be that Popper’s own work can be seen as a form of psychologism.

Popperian psychologism does not downplay the distinction between psycho-

logy on the one hand and epistemology on the other, and avoids the abdication

from normative questions and answers that is implicit in some psychologistic

views, but it does nevertheless hold that epistemological and methodological

rules correspond to cognitive operations performed by ordinary mortals and

geniuses alike. Long before the rise of cognitive science and computational

philosophy of science, Popper’s epistemology and methodology are the inter-

esting result of a co-operation between philosophy and cognitive psychology.

It will be argued that Popper raises into norms precisely those rules that have a

firm basis in our actual psychological make-up.

I proceed as follows. In Sections 1 and 2, I lay out the essentials of Popper’s

dissertation and of Selz’s work. This second part will be rather long as the

work of Selz is unknown and difficult, but indispensable to seeing Popper as a

psychologist and important for contemporary discussions in cognitive science.

In Section 3, I attempt to give a psychological reconstruction of Popper’s work

in terms of the major theses of Selz’s work. Finally, in Section 4, I return to the

issue of psychologism and argue that Popper’s arguments against it collapse

when psychology is construed as cognitive psychology.

1. Popper’s Dissertation ‘Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie’

In his dissertation3 Popper defends the programme of Karl Biihler as

outlined in Die Krise der Psychologie (1927). In this book Biihler defends a

‘pluralism of aspects’ in psychology. Psychology is possible if and only if the

aspects of experience, of behaviour and of ideas in the objective sense (‘Gebilde

des objektiven Geistes’) find an equal place. Popper applies this pluralistic

methodology first to the mind-body problem - a topic I will not pursue here,

as the kernel of it can be found in Popper’s published work” - and next to the

‘Denkpsychologie’. The aspect of behaviour is indispensable for a psychology

of thought that wishes to strengthen the ties with biology, as is Popper’s aim.

‘In his autobiography in P. A. Schilpp (ed), The Philosophy qf Karl Popper, Volume I (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1974), p. 61. Popper comments upon his dissertation that it was a ‘hasty’ product. MY point, however, is not so much the quality of the 1928 dissertation as the fact that it explicitly &o& the psychological germs of Popp&‘s later work in the philosophy of science

4K. R. Popper and J. C. Eccles, The Self and its Brain (Berlin: Springer Verlag. 1972).

Problems and Psychologism 587

Biihler’s three level theory of instinct, training and intellect’ plays a vital role

here, as does Selz’s attempt to explain cognitive operations biologically.

Popper, therefore, quotes with approval a passage of Selz which concludes by

expressing the hope that: ‘Perhaps our era is witnessing the beginnings of a

biology of the inner man. Psychology thus enters the ranks of the biological

sciences.‘6 The aspect of experience is equally indispensable, and Popper

discusses the various mutually contradictory definitions of thinking. Here one

finds the germs of Popper’s later rejection of the Bucket theory and his

endorsement of the Searchlight theory of mind and knowledge. He is in fact

very critical of those who define thinking in terms of ‘the receptive domain of

the mental apparatus’ (p. 71), such as association psychology and Gestalt

psychology, and he gives preference to the ‘Wiirzburger Schule’ which empha-

sizes the autonomous and active nature of thinking, or rather, imageless

thought (see Section 2).

The importance of the ‘objektive geistigen Gebilde’ for thinking is evident

too, according to Popper, but he gives a more biological and Selzian twist to

Biihler’s views.’ Popper is especially interested in the biological function of the

objective products of thinking, of which the natural sciences are the best

example. He even sketches the beginning of an evolutionary epistemology

which leads from ‘magical ritual’ and ‘dogmatic speculation’ to ‘critical

science’. In contrast with his later work, Popper underlines the role of a

psychology of thinking in the development from the certainty of dogma to

critical science. Thus he writes: ‘The dogmatical and critical thinking, however,

rises psychologically very pointedly in the ‘objektiven Gebilde’ as in behaviour

and experience.‘8 It is in this context that the work of Selz sows its seed in

Popper’s mind:

The Selzian concept of trying-out behaviour [probierenden Verhaltens] seems to me to have striking parallels in the objective enterprise of science. In science too, theories, ‘models’ (as Biihler says), are tried out, and even in such a way that corresponds completely [italics mine] to the Selzian scheme. As is well-known, the actual ways of inquiry in no way correspond to the logical principles of represen- tation; no more than the ‘operations’ described by Selz correspond to the objective logical ‘operations’. In spite of this the enterprise of science is in the long run

SK. Biihler, Die geistige Enfwicklung da Kindes (Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1922), pp. l-11.

6K. R. Popper, Zur Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie (Universitlt Wien, 1928), p. II. ‘Biihler derives the aspect of the objective contents of thought from his ‘Darstellungsfunktion of

language, to which Popper’s later theory of world three owes a lot, as he himself concedes. Although Popper emphasizes the role of imageless thoughts in bestowing meaning upon signs, he insists upon the distinction between the act of giving meaning and objective meaning itself (as Biihler and Selz, by the way, do too). The problem of demarcating psychology, epistemology and logic is noted here, without giving even a hint at a solution.

8Op. cit., note 6, p. 66.


evidently ‘task-directed’ [‘Aufgabegesteuert’], the ‘determining tendencies’ [‘determi- nierenden Tendenzen’] rise clearly.9

Analogous to the distinction between association psychology and cognitive

psychology, I will distinguish between two forms of psychologism, psycholo-

gism, and psychologism,. Psychologism, appeals to a parallelism of logic and

association psychology, whereas psychologism, points to a parallelism between

scientific reasoning and cognitive psychology. Psychologism, has to be rejected

precisely because of a lack of parallelism between logical operations and

subjective processes, as Popper also argues in his dissertation. This is the same

reason cited by Reichenbach and recently by Siegel” against psychologism:

psychological processes of thinking are ‘vague and fluctuating processes’ that

‘almost never keep to the ways prescribed by logic’ and therefore it would be a

vain attempt to construct a theory of knowledge which is at the same time

‘logically complete and in strict correspondence”’ with psychological

processes. But Popper does subscribe to psychologism,: epistemological

methods in science correspond ‘completely’ to the ‘Selzian scheme’, hence the

epistemological and methodological rules observed in science are analysable in

terms of a bsic set of cognitive operations. What is the difference between these

two forms of psychologism?

Firstly and most importantly, a different view as to the subject matter of

psychology. The ‘Selzian scheme’ conceives of psychology as the science of

cognitive operations. Thinking, on this view, is an inferential process closer to

processes as investigated in logic than associative linkages between mental

contents as described by association psychology. Indeed, the operations

analysed by Selz are the very same phenomena logicians analyse in terms of

logical form. For fear of straying into logic, psychologists and (British)

epistemologists have denied these cognitive processes and replaced them by

blind associative linkages which respect no rational rules at all, or. in the words

of Reichenbach, which ‘skip whole groups of operations’.” Skipping of

operations is precisely what Selzian operations avoid. Selz postulated a basic

set of operations that would transform a problem situation into a problem

solution in a stepwise fashion: each step was thought to be triggered by the

situation resulting from the previous step. Conceived as operations, then.

psychological processes keep more to the ways prescribed by logic than might

be supposed. Related to this is a different method of investigation. According

to the Bucket theory, typical of association psychology. introspection of

mental contents, such as images, is the only viable method to study thinking.

YIbid., p. 69. “‘H. Siegel, ‘Justification, Discovery and the Naturalizing of Epistemology’. Philosophy o/

Science 47 (1980), 297-32 1. “H. Reichenbach, Experience and Prediction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938). p. 5. 121bid.. p. 5.


The ‘Wiirzburger Schule’, however, emphasizes not so much introspection of actual mental contents as retrospection, immediately afterwards, of the mental operations that went into the solution of a problem. Thus conceived thinking is not a vague and non-propositional stream of consciousness but firmly tied to linguistic expression.

The second difference concerns a different view as to the relation between epistemology and psychology. To be sure, there are vast differences between the evaluative mission of epistemology and psychology’s concern with explaining cognitive processes. But to derive from these distinctive concerns the irrelevance claim, as Popper and Siegel do, rests upon an equivocation between two different senses of ‘irrelevant’: (1) psychological processes are irrelevant in the sense that they are not causal constraints upon epistemology, and (2) psychological processes are irrelevant in the sense that they are not causal constraints within which epistemological rules are construed. (1) is true: logical truths, epistemological rules are not true because we think in a certain way, as if they would become false, were the nature of thinking to change. But (2) is not true: epistemological rules, and even more so methodological rules, are constrained by psychological facts. This is one of the lessons to learn from Wittgenstein’s insistence upon human natural history.r3 Even mathematics is part of human natural history and thereby constrained by, amongst other things, psychological facts, such as the fact that we cannot take in numerals with 250 digits, cannot recognise 92-sided polygons without counting, or the fact that we do not always remember what number we had ‘carried’.14 Because these and other psychological facts are natural for us, we lay down certain rules, which is not to say that they are made true by them. Methodological rules too should be laid down with certain psychological facts in mind. This is precisely what Popper has done: because the Selzian scheme of problem- solving was natural to him, he has laid down his method of conjectures and refutations.

A dramatic change of mind occurs when Popper continues his career as a philosopher of science. Then psychology becomes almost exclusively association psychology and psychologism psychologism,. This comes out very clearly in his later dealing with the notion of problems and problem-solving: PopperI either maintains that science does not start from problems at all, but from already formulated hypotheses, or he maintainsI that science does start from problems, but then in a non-psychological sense, with problems as quasi-

‘)M. R. M. ter Hark, Beyond the Inner and the Outer: Witrgenstein’s Philosophy of Psychology (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), chapter 3.

lPG. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker, Witfgensrein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), pp. 236237.

lsK. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959). 16K R Popper Objective Knowledge: an Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1972): ’


Platonic Ideas abiding in world three. Popper, therefore, is an anti-psycholo-

gist. What is left of cognitive psychology and what of Popper’s endorsement of

psychologism,? Or - which comes to the same thing - what is left of Selz?

If one may believe Popper himself, ‘one of the minor motives’ of his ‘move

away from psychology’ was the discovery that ‘some of my results had been

anticipated, especially by Otto Selz’.” In particular, Popper mentions the fact.

discovered by Selz, that thinking goes on in terms of problems and their

tentative solutions rather than in terms of mental images.‘* As will be shown in

the next section, however, these psychological results continue to play a role in

Popper’s epistemology of the Searchlight and his methodology of conjectures

and refutations, and to that extent Popper never managed to move away from

Selz. Indeed, the most striking feature of Popper’s philosophy after 1928 is the

parallelism between logic and (Selzian) psychology, a parallelism which is to

guarantee that ‘there can be no clash between logic and psychology, and

therefore no conclusion that our understanding is irrational’.19 Popper refers to

this parallelism as the ‘principle of transference’, according to which what

holds in logic also holds in psychology and adds that this is a ‘daring

conjecture in the psychology of cognition or of thought processes’.” Given the

work of Selz, Popper’s principle is not ‘daring’ at all. Selz has extensively

shown that problem-solving proceeds rationally, respecting the laws of logic

instead of the laws of association. *’ And what is even more important: Popper

transfers as much Selzian results to the philosophy of science as the other way

round. The principle of transference, therefore, is not so much asymmetric but

symmetric. In that sense too Popper never left (Selzian) psychology.

2. The Programme of Sell

Otto Selz was a pupil of Oswald Kiilpe and Karl Biihler, who both belonged

to the ‘Wiirzburger Schule’. In the Wiirzburg School we have the first

systematic investigation into the psychology of thought. In general, the work

of the Wiirzburg Group is characterized by a joint attack upon association

psychology. First, the ingredients of association psychology, i.e. sensations and

images, are replaced by ‘imageless thoughts’; thoughts are an autonomous

class of conscious experiences not to be reduced to the images of colours and

sounds. Secondly, the laws governing thought processes are not to be

“Op. cit., note 3, p. 60. @Ibid. 190p. cit., note 16, Q. 6. *OIbid. *‘Popper emphasizes that the principle of transference holds only for cognitive psychology and

definitely not for association psychology. See Popper, op. cit., note 3, pp. 60-61.


conceived as the associative course of images but as ‘determining tendencies’ or ‘determining viewpoints’, the evidence for which was demonstrated in experiments on hypnotic suggestion. As Kiilpe puts it: ‘The actions of the ego are always subject to points of view and tasks [Aufgaben] and through them are moved to activity’.22 For instance, in experiments the subject receives a task which functions as a direction or instruction as to the point of view which he must adopt toward the present stimulus. The importance of the task in experiments and, more generally, of points of view, could not be explained with the tools of association psychology, for even associations of considerable strength could be overcome with a counteracting task. The programme of the School amounted to a reversal of association psychology: instead of saying that we are attentive because of associative processes, one ought to say: ‘We direct our eyes toward a certain point and strain our muscles because we want to observe it. Activity became the central focus, receptivity and the mechanism of images secondary.‘23

The critical attitude of the School towards association psychology comes to a climax in the work of Selz. Selz holds different views both of ‘determining tendencies’ and ‘imageless thoughts’. The School’s conception of determining tendencies is still too associational, according to Selz, and he replaces it by his notion of the total task and schematic anticipations. And although ‘imageless thoughts’ are considered by Selz to be an improvement upon the classical restriction to images, he departs radically from the mainly phenomenological perspective from which the School operates; instead Selz emphasizes the importance of a genetical perspective, from which the specific achievement of thought-processes has to be explained.

Association psychology is aptly referred to by Selz as the theory of difluse

associations, whereas he refers to his own approach as the theory of specific

responses. According to the theory of diffuse associations, memory residues of simultaneous mental events are associated in such a way that upon recurrence of one event the others will recur as well. If a mental event recurs a number of times, it will each time enter into new associations with other events that occur simultaneously. ‘In this way the event ends up as the centre of a system of associations diverging in all directions.‘24

The theory of diffuse associations naturally did not ignore the fact that, upon the recurrence of the original mental event, by no means all the mental

220. Kiilpe ‘The Modern Psychology of Thinking’, in J. M. Mandler and G. Mandler, Thinking: from Associaiion to Gestalt (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964), p. 215.

“Ibid., p. 215. 140. Selz, Die Gesetre der produktiven und reproduktiven Geistestiitigkeit. Kurzgefasste

Darstellung (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1924). Quoted from the English translation in op. cit., note I, p. 23.

SHIPS 24:4-F


events associated with it become conscious. This fact is explained by postu-

lating that the association linked most strongly to the mental event represses

weaker associations and hence becomes conscious. Intensity of association,

therefore, is the only direction-determining factor within the theory of diffuse

associations.

In his criticism of the theory of diffuse associations, Selz appeals to a

distinction between the appropriateness of a mental event and its intensity of

association. Whether or not an event is appropriate or adequate to the solution

of a cognitive task is independent of its strength of association. To explain the

appropriateness of an event, the dependency of the response upon the structure

of the task must be much more specific than the theory of diffuse associations

can and does maintain. For instance, the word ‘sieben’ triggers the associated

symbol 7, but a different word, such as ‘Ibsen’ pronounced with a long ‘I’,

which is totally unrelated to the meaning of the symbol 7, would have an equal

probability to trigger the symbol, as its sound is associatively linked to

‘sieben’.25 This consequence of the theory of diffuse associations is clearly

absurd and the result of ignoring the constraining role of the specific temporal

relations or, more generally, of complexes, by which the sounds are

constituted.

This role can be explained by Selz’s theory of specific responses, which, in

fact, is a reversal of the theory of diffuse associations. For where the latter

starts with a system of unordered associations to which directive factors have

to be added later in order to explain goal-directedness, directive factors are the

starting point of the former. I refer to this reversal as the thesis of the primac-v

of problems. Besides this, a second thesis, to be referred to hereafter as the

thesis of biological operations, conceives of thinking as the performance of

operations analogous to biological processes rather than as experiences to be

inspected by the mind’s eye. A third thesis, the thesis of sequential operations,

maintains that the process of thinking is an uninterrupted chain of both

general and specific partial operations which impel the solution of a task.

Finally, a fourth thesis involves the application of the earlier three to creative

thinking and is referred to as the anti-Bergson thesis, for reasons to be clarified

later.

What the first thesis amounts to more specifically can be seen by taking a

brief look at Selz’s experiments. 26 When offered a stimulus word ‘Bite’ and the

task ‘Cause’, the subject answers ‘Dog’ and gives the following retrospective

account:

“0. Selz, iiber die Gesetze des geordnelen Denkverhfs (Stuttgart: Spemann, 1913), p. 90. *6Typical tasks related to a stimulus-word in Selzian experiments were: ‘superordinate concept’,

‘co-ordinate concept’, ‘cause’, ‘part’, ‘whole’ and ‘definition’.


On hearing bite only a general conception. Then, as soon as I had read the task, rhe process of searching started. I also had an image of a leg with a wound, otherwise I saw nothing; then the concept ‘dog’ occurred to me, and in my consciousness: dogs bite.27

The stimulus word by itself has no effect. However, as soon as the task is read,

the process of searching starts. ‘Bite’ is viewed from the perspective of something caused, namely a wound, and thereby makes the process of searching possible. In this case the process of searching is called by Selz ‘Wissensaktualisierung’, which comes out very clearly from the fact that it is not the word ‘Dog’ alone which enters consciousness but the knowledge of the whole relational fact that dogs bite. The fusing of task and stimulus word has the same effect as a coherent question ‘What causes bites?‘, which also gives direction to the process of searching and is called by Selz the ‘total task’, or simply the problem.

Understanding of the problem leads to awareness of the goal (‘Zielbewusst- sein’), which, in its turn, leads to awareness of the solution. Awareness of the

goal is the initiatory event of problem solving, awareness of the solution is the end state. The most distinctive feature of Selz’s theory is the way he views the relation between starting point and end state: starting point and end state relate to each other as the schema of a complex in which one element is unknown to the completed complex (‘SachverhUtnis’). Symbolically:**

Goal-awareness Solution

Selz elsewhere formulates this relation between goal-awareness and solution in a different way: ‘Initial experience and final experience have an anticipatory relation with each other. The awareness of the goal anticipates the solution.‘*’ In contrast to expectations, where the anticipation is complete, anticipation of a goal in problem solving is schematic; otherwise there would be no problem. However, the indeterminacy of the sought-for element concerns only the element itself and not its relations to the other elements. Schematically

270p. cit., note 25, p. 199. 780. Selz, 2% Psychologie des Produktiven Denkens und des Irrtums (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen,

1922), p. 370. y refers to a relation, for instance the superordinate relation between two concepts. The black square refers to the unknown element.

=‘Ibid., p. 371.


anticipated are the relations the unknown element bears to the already known

elements. Problems are schematically anticipated complexes, and problem

solving amounts to finding the element which, when substituted for the

unknown element, satisfies the relation defined by the problem; then the

incomplete complex is completed.

Selz’s explanation of the order and direction of thinking has far-reaching

consequences for what Popper is later to call the Bucket theory of knowledge.

Traditionally, human memory is conceived of as a storehouse of simple

predicates (a is 6) organized in an associative fashion, and learning as the result

of induction by repetition. Selz reverses this picture completely. The ‘architec-

ture’ of memory is built up of two-termed relations (aRb), which Selz refers to

as ‘Wissensdispositionen’ and our knowledge of them as ‘dispositional know-

ledge’.30 Dispositions are not mental contents; hence the Bucket theory of the

mind, according to which we gain knowledge by inspecting momentary

contents, is of no use here. Dispositional knowledge needs to be actualized, or

practised. In that sense there is no difference between piano playing and

cognitive operations. Selz, therefore, endorses a much more dynamic or active

model of the mind, the mind consisting of dispositions for the realization of a

relational fact, or, in other words, potential knowledge and its actualization.

Thinking is the performance of (motor and cognitive) operations. I refer to this

reversal of the Bucket theory as the thesis of biological operations.

The predicate ‘biological’ is in need of explanation. Selz compares this

system of specific responses with physiological systems, which display a fixed

unambiguous linkage with a specific stimulus. Thus, light incidence in the

human eye automatically causes a contraction of the pupil. In contrast to

associationism, one finds here fixed, unalterable linkages which ensure a

biologically useful, life-maintaining response and serve as constant order-

imposing forces in the turmoil of life.” The fundamental difference between a

theory of diffuse associations and a theory of specific responses is that, in the

former, responses depend upon what happens to be the strongest association,

whereas in the latter they are unambiguously related to specific stimuli; Selz

speaks of ‘reflexoid linkages’. These linkages lead to order-imposing

anticipations:

The fact that these mechanisms of anticipation occur precisely where they facilitate the well-organized course of an intellectual process does not make it look quite

probable that they can be completely deduced from the general law of association, in the sense of Hume’s explanation of the anticipations of causality. Rather, the possibility of special goal-directed mechanisms, of intellectual operations that occur

‘Wp. cit., note 25, p. 154. ‘Disposition’ is used by Selz in a non-associative way, for they are wholes characterized by relational structures that correspond to the relational structures of ‘Sachverhlltnisse’. See further Section 4 below, ‘the Transcendence Argument’.

“Op. cit., note 24, p. 33.


automatically under specific conditions of elicitation, is to be considered; operations that develop in the course of phylogeny and ontogeny.‘*

The order-imposing role of anticipations cannot be explained via induction by

repetition, which starts from orderless associations, hence the former cannot

be derived from the latter. The reverse is true: special inborn ‘reflexoid

linkages’ automatically lead to anticipations of movements, the next word in a

sentence, etc., which safeguard the welfare of the whole organism. Induction

by repetition serves a different purpose: that of turning new knowledge into

unproblematic unconscious knowledge, such as expert knowledge.33

Besides schematic anticipations, other factors directing problem-solving are

operations and solving methods, of which scientific methods are the paradigm.

Understanding of the problem triggers cognitive operations that are correlated

(‘zugeordnet’) to it; blind operations seldom occur and even errors are related

to the structure of the problem. 34 Experiments show that meaningless errors,

unrelated to the task, are seldom made. Almost always, errors result from

faulty understanding of problem and goal. Problem solving, then, typically

consists of a sequence of operations that transform the problem, step by step,

into a problem solution. Successful completion of a partial operation

frequently becomes the stimulus triggering a further partial operation. ‘Or, the

failure of an operation will act as the stimulus triggering an alternative

operation (substitutional linkage), particularly in trying-out behaviour.‘3s

‘Trying-out behaviour’, according to Selz, should not be confused with blind

trial and error, but rather as a sequence of partial operations in which the

failure of one operation elicits the initiation of an alternative operation.36

Finally, each step is accompanied by control processes which give rise to

discrepancies between task and solution in our consciousness and determine

the appropriate correction of the original solution.37 I refer to this view of the

process of problem solving as the thesis of sequential operations.

Application of the thesis of sequential operations to creative thinking leads

to a view in direct opposition to the view of Bergson, explicitly referred to by

Selz,3* according to whom genuine discoveries are inexplicable. Let us call

Bergson’s view the phenomenology of insight and intuition and Selz’s view

simply the anti-Bergson thesis.

320p. cit., note 28, p, 644. “As shown particularly by A. D. de Groot, Thought and Choice in Chess (The Hague: Mouton,

1965), pp. 305-313. ‘*Err& do not result from associative factors that are contrary to the task (‘aufgabewidrig’).

but, for instance, from lack of understanding of the task. See op. cit., note 28, chapter 1, ‘JOp. cir., note 24, English translation, p. 32. ‘%elz discusses ‘trying-out behaviour’ especially in connection with Kiihler’s experiments with

primates. Trying-out behaviour also has a prominent place in Popper’s methodology, as conveyed too by his frequent use of ‘tentative solutions’.

“Op. cir., note 24, English translation, p. 43. ‘8Op. cit., note 28, p. xii and op. cit., note 24, English translation, p. 70.


Selz proposed a basic set of solving methods especially in his investigation of

productive thinking. In contrast with reproductive thinking, where a complex

can be completed simply by a matching of the problem with a complex already

stored in memory, in more complex cases of thinking what is evoked by the

problem is not a potential solution but a solving method. Creative thinking,

therefore, is mainly characterized by the ‘finding of means’ to the end of the

solution. The operation abstraction of means, and especially coincidental means

abstraction, is of relevance here, for Selz proposes the latter method as an

explanation of the phenomenology of insight and intuition.

Problem situations in science and art typically display the following rela-

tional structure:

f7i-n Goal Means ? Results

The goal (G) is known, but the solving method (A4) to realize (u) the goal is

unknown. However, what is also known is that in order to achieve the goal, the

sought-for means have to generate (x) the (partial) result (R). The relations

between these three elements form a schematic anticipation of a relational

whole with a gap - a gap which is filled by finding M.

Selz believes that in this way a less mysterious explanation can be given of

the role of chance discoveries. This is illustrated by his discussion of Franklin’s

discovery of the generation of electricity by means of the magnet.” Franklin had conceived the plan to draw off the electric charge of a thundercloud by

using the principle of arc discharge. His goal (G) was to bring down the

lightning from the clouds, He knew that in order to realize this goal he had to

make a connection between the cloud and the Earth (R). His problem was to

find an M the result of which would be that such a connection was established.

From the sight of kites being flown, Franklin abstracted the fact that a kite

may form a connection between Earth and cloud, and this abstraction of

means may have have led him to the execution of the plan by sending up a kite

on a wire. When the magnet inside the wire coil he was using was pushed into

place or taken out, he observed on the galvanometer connected to the coil a

deflection of the needle: ‘Because he had as it were been primed for means

abstraction by the problem he had posed himself, this trifling occurrence

sufficed to make the scientist see that in the closed but uncharged circuit a

current must have been generated by the movement of the magnet: the

principle of induction currents had been discovered.‘40 Thus, because of the

stubborn persistence of engrossing problems it is possible for an idea to occur

suddenly at a time when we are no longer thinking of the problem at all.

190p. cit., note 24, English translation, pp. 57-58. 401bid., p. 59.


Contrary to Bergson, Selz concludes: ‘This makes understandable what intel-

lectual or creative giants often report as the entirely passive, afflatus-like

nature of many sudden ideas. The phenomenon of “inspiration” can in part be

accounted for in this way.‘4’

In the next section I attempt to show that Popper’s epistemology and

methodology correspond completely to the ‘Selzian scheme’.

3. Popper as a Cognitive Psychologist

Towards the end of his dissertation Popper quotes a passage from Selz

referring to the theory of specific responses as the ‘biology of the inner man’

and again pointing to the difference between this theory and the theory of

diffuse associations: ‘It is not through a senseless play of associations but

invariably by dint of previously developed effective (life-supporting and life-

enhancing) operations that new mental modes of functioning are seen to

arise.‘42 Popper comments that Selz’s criticism of the senseless principle of

association ‘still has to establish itself in the theory of the meaningful course of

thinking’.43 I will argue that Popper’s famous contrast between the theory of

the ‘Searchlight’ of knowledge and the mind and the ‘Bucket theory’# is a

continuation of the debate between the theory of specific responses and the

theory of diffuse associations. As will be seen, the theory of the Searchlight is

made up especially of the Selzian theses of the primacy of problems and

thinking as biological operation.

Although in his published works Popper no longer refers to imageless

thoughts, 45 the notion, especia 11 in the way Selz uses it, continues to play a y

role. According to the Searchlight theory, the ingredients of the mind and

memory are not mental contents, but ‘anticipations’, ‘expectations’, or, more

generally, ‘dispositions to react’. The difference between these types of ingre-

dients also leads to another view of knowledge and learning: learning is not, as

the Bucket theory assumes, a passive reception of information, but rather the

result of active correction of expectations.46 And knowledge is not direct

acquaintance with mental contents, but consists of ‘the partial activation of

certain dispositions’. 47

So far the Searchlight theory is no less Kiilpian than Selzian, but scrutiny of

“Ibid., p. 66. According to Herbert Simon this explanation is still quite plausible; op. cit., note I, p. 158.

,,Op. cit., note 6, p. II. 431bid. “Op. cit., note 16, ‘The Bucket and the Searchlight: Two Theories of Knowledge’, pp. 341-361,

The fact that Popper speaks of two theories of knowledge is no objection to this comparison, for it is evident that Popper is concerned with descriptive epistemology, which is and always was concerned with classifying and describing psychological sources of knowledge.

4’Except once indirectly in op. cit., note 4, pp. 106-107. “Op. cit., note 44, p. 344. 4’K. R. Popper, Realism and the Aim of Science (London: Hutchinson, 1983), p. 91.


the role Popper attributes to dispositions will unmask their true Selzian

identity. First and foremost, the psychological role of Popperian dispositions is

identical to that of their Selzian counterparts. Popper even has recourse to a

(parody of a) Selzian experiment to illustrate his point. He gives his students in

Vienna the instruction ‘Observe!‘, which immediately makes them ask ‘what I

wanted them to observe. Clearly the instruction, “Observe!” is absurd’.4* The

parody is that Popper offered his students a stimulus without an ‘Aufgabe’. The

reaction of the students only demonstrates the psychological indispensability

of the ‘Aufgabe’, or problem, as a dynamical and direction-giving factor.

Hence Popper’s psychological conclusion that we actively ‘make’ observations

from a specific point of view.49

Popper even adopts the same biological stance towards psychology as Selz

did, for the ingredients of the mind are characterized as a ‘disposition to react,

or as a preparation for a reaction, which is adapted to [or which anticipates] a

state of the environment yet to come about’.jO Dispositions consist of ‘reflexoid

linkages’, of ‘inborn reactions’,5’ ‘ specifically’ tied to ‘typical situations’,52 such

as the eye of the frog. The importance of this biological stance will be pursued

below when discussing Popper’s ‘purely logical’ argument against induction.

From this psychological theory, a method for science is derived. Science too

never starts from scratch, but always from ‘horizons of expectations’,53 which

show us ‘whereto we ought to direct our attention; wherein to take an

interest’.54 I will pursue this point further when discussing the method of

conjectures and refutations. For the moment, however, I think it is clear that

the metaphor of the Searchlight has to be explained in terms of the light shed

upon the problem situations by what Selz called the total task and schematic

anticipations.

Before reinforcing this view by critical inspection of the method of conjec-

tures and refutations, I will attempt to recover the genuine psychological

considerations upon which Popper’s so-called logical choice of the method of

conjectures and refutations rests. 55 I will argue that Popper’s choice is informed

48K. R. Popper, ‘Science: Conjectures and Refutations’, in K. R. Popper, Conjecrurrs und Rejiimrions: The Growth of Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), p. 63.

“Op. cit., note 44, p. 343. JoIbid., p. 344. j’Op. cir., note 48, p. 41. 5*Op. cit., note 16, ‘Two Faces of Common Sense: An Argument for Commonsense Realism and

Against the Commonsense Theory of Knowledge’, p. 72. s30p. cit., note 44, p. 345. yIbid., p. 346. S’Popper insists upon the ‘purely logical’ character of his criticism of induction and aforriori of

the considerations that led him to adopt a non-inductive method, for instance: ‘Since there were logical reasons behind this procedure [i.e. the theory of conjectures and refutations], I thought that it would apply in the field of science also. .’ (op. cit., note 48, p. 46), suggesting thereby that if there were psychological reasons he would not have applied his method. From the quotation from Popper’s dissertation (Section 1, above footnote 9). however, we already know that there were psychological reasons: the adequacy of the ‘Selzian scheme’.


by Selz’s arguments against the tenability of the primacy of associative

repetitions typical of inductive theories.

His argument starts with a reference to a psychological experiment with

young puppies that even by the second test have learnt to avoid a burning

cigarette, which is at odds with inductive learning by repetition. Popper’s

explanation is: ‘The situation was a repetition-for-them because they

responded to it by anticipating its similarity to the previous one.‘56 The logical

basis, according to Popper, of this criticism is that repetition can never be

perfect but is always a case of similarity. But then repetition must share one of

the main characteristics of similarity: its relativity. Because of this relativity of

similarity in daily life as well as in science, points of view logically precede

associative repetitions.s7

I already quoted (Section 2, above footnote 32) Selz’s view that the order-

imposing function of anticipations is at odds with Hume’s view according to

which anticipations are the result of induction by repetition. Closer inspection

of Selz’s reason for rejecting the primacy of induction by repetition will help us

to see that Popper’s so-called purely logical arguments derive from the findings

of psychological experiments and hence not from logic alone. Selz’s argument

is that the principle of association implies results contradicted by psychological

findings. For instance, if the subject is given the stimulus word ‘farmer’ and the

task ‘superordinate’ the response might be ‘occupation’. As Selz reminds us,

‘farmer’ is not only associated with ‘occupation’ but also with ‘tradesman’.

However, if the task is ‘superordinate’ the task-irrelevant but associatively

linked response ‘tradesman’ never occurs. Association psychology cannot

explain these findings; instead it predicts the reproduction of ‘tradesman’ in

exactly the same degree as the reproduction of ‘occupation’. Therefore,

association psychology cannot explain why the incorrect response ‘tradesman’,

which represents a co-ordinate instead of a superordinate concept, does not

appear just as frequently as the correct response ‘occupation’.58

To put it in more Popperian terms: it is not the degree of similarity between

mental contents but the respect in which the similarity consists which is

determinative of the response. What determines the response is whether the

response is adequately related to the structure of the problem and the corre-

sponding schematic anticipation. From the point of view ‘superordinate’, the

stimulus word ‘farmer’, although similar to ‘tradesman’, elicits the response

‘occupation’, and conversely, the same stimulus ‘farmer’, although similar to

‘occupation’, elicits from a dzxerent point of view (‘co-ordinate’) a dz&ent

WD. cit.. note 48. I). 44 J70b. cit., note 15; pp. 420 IT. Wp. cil., note 22, ‘The Revision of the Fundamental Conceptions of Intellectual Processes’,

pp. 225-236. Translated from 0. Selz, ‘Die Umgestaltung der Grundanschauungen vom intellek- tuellen Geschehen’, Kuntstudien 32 (1927), 273-280.


response (‘tradesman’). Therefore, things dissimilar in many respects may lead

to the same response depending upon a specific point of view; things similar in

many respects may not lead to any response if the required point of view is

lacking. Given the psychological fact that what counts as an association is

determined by a preceding, non-associative anticipation, anticipations in their

turn cannot be explained out of a disorder of associations. Popper’s threat of

an infinite regression59 is merely a logical embellishment of this psychological

insight. Moreover, Popper’s reassurance that the primacy of anticipations is

not threated by an infinite regression. because ‘going back to more and more

primitive theories and myths we shall in the end find unconscious, inborn

expectations’,@I is equally a consequence of Selz’s biological psychology of

specific responses. Popper’s arguments against induction by repetition, there-

fore, is psychological through and through.6’ The impact of psychology,

however, is not confined to this destructive part of Popper’s work. On the

contrary. The constructive part of Popper’s philosophy, i.e. his methodology

of conjectures and refutations, is built upon Selz’s psychology of the primacy

of anticipations. As Popper proposes his methodology both as the method of

all of science and as the demarcation between science and pseudo-science, the

psychology of thinking, from which his methodology is derived, is surprisingly

found to occupy centre-stage in (the philosophy of) science.

Returning now to the method of conjectures and refutations, we can more

easily identify its psychological features. Popper gives the following schema:”

-EE-P 2

Background knowledge

‘Wp. cit., note 48, p. 45. @‘Ibid., p. 41. 6’In fact this is a different view of Popper’s logicistic ‘principle of transference’, according to

which what holds in logic also holds in psychology, for what holds in psychology is transferred to logic and not the other way round. See Section 1, above footnote 20.

6*Op. cif., note 16, ‘Of Clouds and Clocks’. p. 243 and at many other places.


P stands for problem, TS,...TS,, for the multiplicity of tentative solutions and

EE for error elimination. A problem together with its background is called a

‘problem situation’.

What is most conspicuous about this schema is Popper’s reticence about the

meaning of the arrows. What do they stand for? Psychological relations or

logical ones? Popper suggests the latter, for the relation between ‘a solution

and a problem is a logical relationship’,63 but he does not further explain the

meaning of ‘logical’. In any case, no reference is made to formal logic. The

only clue he gives is that the schema depicts a sequence of states following each

other. But, of course, the states can be said to follow each other only because

of corresponding psychological or biological operations by which certain states

are caused by other states. A comparison with the Selzian schema of problem

solving will make his psychological considerations more manifest:

P-+SM,,-+ SM,. . . SM,--CO---G

lSAA

In this scheme ‘P’ stands for problem, ‘SA’ for schematic anticipation, ‘SM’

for solving method, ‘CO’ for control operations and ‘G’ for goal.

The apparent differences between the two schemes are merely verbal; where

Selz uses psychological concepts, Popper translates them into the ‘formal mode

of speech’.64 For instance, both ‘background knowledge’ and ‘schematic antici-

pations’ serve the same psychological function: to give direction on to the

process of searching. Popper’s earlier use of ‘background knowledge’ is none

other than his psychologistic account of ‘horizons of expectations’ translated

into the ‘formal mode of speech’. A problem together with its background is a

‘problem situation’, which is said to be a logical relation between problem and

solution. What ‘logical’ means is left to guesswork here, but from the

Searchlight theory we gather that the initial state and the end state are linked

non-associatively. Popper, then, seems to identify non-associative or anticipa-

tory and logical. That is, ‘logical’ not in the sense of formal, but in the sense of

rational as opposed to irrational. But although rational and non-associative

linkages look more like logical relations than like associations, they remain

psychological. A problem, therefore, is neither an enumeration of data, nor a

hypothesis already at hand, but a relational structure that, in restricting the

range of adequately related tentative solutions, provides a heuristic guide. The

arrows in Popper’s scheme point, in a psychological sense, to the solution of

‘schematically anticipated complexes’, i.e. problems.

Wp. cir., note 16, ‘On the Theory of the Objective Mind’, p. 165. b”This is precisely the trick Popper accuses Carnap of when defending ‘protocol sentences’, op.

cir., note 15, p. 96.


In agreement with the Selzian scheme, Popper subscribes equally to the

direction-giving role of both solving-methods and errors, i.e. to the thesis of

sequential solving-methods. As the arrow from ‘P’ to ‘TS’ seems to indicate,

insight into the structure of the problem leads to solving-methods adequate to

the problem, hence blind trials seldom occur. Equally, the arrow between TS

and EE seems to suggest that blind errors do not occur either. These psycho-

logical assumptions, I will argue, play a vital role in Popper’s normative

enterprise to lay down methodological rules, such as the search for falsifying

facts.

As is well known, Popper proposes the critical or rational attitude in science.

It is sometimes thought6’ that the term ‘attitude’ conceals psychological

assumptions, but I argue that it is the predicate ‘critical’ which presupposes

psychological facts. First of all, Popper’s very attempt to influence scientific

research through norms presupposes the psychological fact that (scientific)

thinking proceeds not blindly and associatively but via specific solving-

methods that are adequate to the structure of problems. For what help could

norms afford, if thinking were as unsystematic and blind as association

psychology assumes? Secondly, Popper can raise the critical and falsifying

attitude into a norm only because of three further psychological findings, the

first of which is the fact that the mind is active and not passive. Because the

mind is active, errors are made and hence the need for criticism arises. Indeed,

Popper explicitly makes a connection between the opposite view of the mind,

i.e. the mind as a passive storehouse, and incorrigibility.hh Moreover, Popper’s

swamp metaphor for the empirical basis has to be seen from the same

psychological perspective. For the view that there is no uninterpreted empirical

basis, but only interpretations of the ‘total situation in which we find ourselves

when “perceiving ” ,67 is an insight due to Selz’s discovery of the ‘Gesamtauf-

gabe’ or the total task. The other two psychological facts are that solving-

methods are typically accompanied by control processes and that the errors

detected by these processes are not irrational, but systematically related to

specific solving-methods. Because of these two facts, we can be said to learn

from errors and because we can learn from errors Popper can raise the critical

attitude into a norm. An example may illustrate this point, In his analysis of

solving-methods applied to the task of giving definitions, Selz observed that

subjects typically look for examples that fit a preconceived idea. For instance,

6SFor instance A. E. Musgrave, ‘The Objectivism of Popper’s Epistemology’, in op. cir.. note 3. p. 579, discusses the apparent psychological connotation of ‘attitude’ and easily counters this view by translating ‘attitude’ into the formal mode of speech, such as ‘policy’. My psychologistic interpretation does not rest upon psychological sounding terms in Popper’s work and hence cannot be countered so easily.

%Op. cit., note 16, p. 62. 670p. cit., note 48, p. 387.


a subject held the view that machines were things bigger than tools.68 Guided by this notion he found the example of a steam-engine. From this example he derived the definition: an object the function of which is to achieve things exceeding human forces. Evidently, this is an error, as there are machines that do things not exceeding human forces. Psychologically, then, a certain prejudice or anticipation favours positive examples. In order to avoid these errors Selz proposes the norm ‘to complete the search for positive instances with the search for negative instances, hence for examples that do not belong to the properties corresponding to the theory’.69 One-sided search for positive instances has as a consequence that control processes that might lead to the detection of falsifying facts do not succeed. The example shows how a psychofogicaf analysis of errors can lead to practical norms for logically correct thinking. Popper’s falsifying attitude is such a norm, notwithstanding his emphasis upon its supposed non-psychological character. Here then we have a splendid example of co-operation between epistemological and psychological inquiry without the abolition of the prescriptive task of the former. On the contrary: the norm is only reinforced by its being embedded within the psychology of error.

The upshot of this section is that both Popper’s epistemology of the Searchlight and his method of conjectures and refutations are intertwined with psychological considerations. Moreover, the view of psychology that is presup- posed is not association psychology, but Selzian psychology. Hence, Popper subscribes to psychologism,. What then is the force of his arguments against psychologism? To that question I turn in the next section.

4. Psychologism Reconsidered

In this section I will consider three anti-psychologistic arguments offered by Popper in different places: the Transcendence Argument, the Ontological

Argument and the Argument from Discovery.

The Transcendence Argument

Psychologism is defined by Popper as ‘. . . the doctrine that statements can be justified not only by statements but also by perceptual experiences’.‘O Thus, in the Hume-Carnap tradition scientific knowledge is justified by an empirical basis of ‘immediate knowledge’, such as observations and ‘sense data’. Clearly,

68Op. cit., note 28, p. 281. *Ibid. ‘OOp. cit., note 15, p. 94.


the notion of psychologism used here is psychologism,. Popper’s ‘transcen-

dence argument’ is cogent and devastating to psychologism,, but not to

psychologism,. On the contrary. His complaint against psychologism, is not

merely logical, as is Frege’s, but partly derived from cognitive psychological

insights.

Psychologism founders on the ‘transcendence inherent in any description’,”

which is another way of expressing the idea that every description uses

‘universal names’. Universals cannot be justified in purely observational terms,

since the latter too are universals. Thus there is no uninterpreted empirical

basis.

I argue that Popper’s account of universal concepts comes very close to

Selz’s definition of ‘complexes’ (‘Sachverhlltnisse’) and, more importantly, the

same close ties between a theory of universals and a theory of the mind exists

in Popper’s work. According to Selz, ‘complexes are the fact that specific

objects stand in specific relations to each other’.‘* Complexes, such as ‘that

animal is the superordinate of dog’, are relational structures that exist

‘independently of its being noted by someone’.73 The specific relation of

superordinateness lies in the nature of the concerning objects (‘ohne weiteres

mitgegeben’) and is not the product of a knowing subject. Complexes, then, are

not psychological structures. Neither are they Platonic Ideas, for they do not

exist apart from objects. But they are not to be equated with objects either, for

objects are particulars, whereas complexes, or relations, are universals: every

complex expresses a relation, and a relation is a universal as it may occur in a

series of complexes, but every token of a complex is an individual and occurs

only once. It is important to note Selz’s specific point of view that every

‘Sachverhaltnis’ contains a relation. Even sentences that apparently do not

express relations can be reformulated in such a way that their relational

character comes to the surface. For instance, ‘the mouse is white’ has to be

reformulated as ‘the mouse possesses whiteness’, which clearly expresses a

relation between an object and a general property.

The relational view of universals makes any psychological theory which

appeals to images for the explanation of the genesis of abstract words highly

implausible. No wonder, then, that both Biihler and Selz reject the view of

Locke, according to whom abstract words stand for general ideas and images

formed by abstraction from particular images. To say of an image as such that

it is more or less general is senseless, as intrinsic properties can do no justice to

the relational properties in terms of which the meaning of abstract words has

to be sought. The nominalistic view of Berkeley equally has to be discarded,

“Ibid. ‘=Op. cit., note 25, p. 142 ‘)Ibid., p. 132.


for Berkeley’s denial of general images and his subsequent thesis of the

meaningless of abstract words still presupposes the imagist view. Neither the

position of Biihler nor that of Selz implies nominalism, as both of them refuse

to equate meaning with images and the absence of images with the absence of

meaning. The notion of ‘imageless thought’ was precisely introduced to escape

from this dilemma.

Popper’s ‘modified essentialism’ too conceives of universals as relations

which, although not inherent in particulars, are certainly not outside the world,

like Platonic Ideas.74 Abstract words are ‘dispositional words’ and these

characterize the law-like behaviour of things. Laws do not describe intrinsic

properties of particulars, but ‘structural or relational properties of the world’.”

As every description makes use of universals, every description is a relation,

the meaning of which necessarily ‘transcends’ observations.

No wonder, then, that Popper rejects the Bucket theory of the mind and

proposes his Searchlight theory. For if every complex expresses a relation and

every description of complexes uses universal or dispositional words, then the

observations upon which descriptions are based contain universals too. But if

observations contain universals and hence relations, then the psychological

and physiological processes responsible for them cannot start from mental

contents as conceived by the Bucket theory, for these are qualified only in

terms of intrinsic properties. The solution is to be found in Selz’s theory of

specific responses, where universals are present from the beginning: as dispo-

sitional or relational structures in memory that anticipate the incoming data of

sense experience. The Transcendence Argument, then, is an attack against a

mistaken psychological account of universals, but not against a psychological

account tout court. On the contrary. The argument derives its main force from

a different psychological account.

I conclude that psychologism, is not so much untouched by the

Transcendence Argument as reinforced by it, for Popper’s solution of the

problem of universals is derived from psychological insights into the primacy

of anticipations.

The Ontological Argument

I have quoted above Selz saying that complexes exist independent of a

subject’s claim to know. Selz, then, but also Biihler, anticipated Popper’s

‘epistemology without a knowing subject’. Among his forerunners, however,

Popper mentions neither Selz nor Biihler, but Plato, Bolzano, Frege and even

Hege1.76 Omitting Selz and Btihler from his list of forebears once again testifies

740p. cit., note 16, ‘The Aim of Science’, pp. 195-196. 7sIbid., p. 197. 760p. cit., note 16, ‘Epistemology without a Knowing Subject’, p. 106.

606 Studies in History and Philosophy qf Science

to Popper’s repression of his psychological past. This is remarkable for, first,

neither Selz nor Biihler is to blame for what Popper considers the error of

psychologism: to mistake objective knowledge for ‘subjective ideas or thought

processes’.” Second, Popper’s rather mundane, i.e. biological, view of world

three is less reminiscent of his philosophical forebears than of the two

psychologists. It ought not to surprise us, therefore, that there is a tension in

Popper’s ontology between the heritage of Frege and the heritage of Selz and

Biihler. On the one hand the ontological argument is a Fregean attempt to

safeguard epistemological objectivism. Objectivism is ensured by drawing the

Fregean line between the objective content of thought and the subjective act of

thinking the thought - a distinction which is paralleled by that between truth

and taking to be true. As psychology is the science of thought in the subjective

sense, the epistemological concern with objective contents is ‘totally indepen-

dent’ of psychology.

Again Popper’s argument rests upon equivocation. In one sense epistemo-

logy is independent of psychology, but in another sense it is not. Epistemology

is autonomous and independent of psychology in the sense that causal

constraints are not constraints upon logic, but dependent, in the sense that

psychology deals with causal constraints within which epistemological rules are

construed, as was illustrated in Sections 1 and 2. Hence, although epistemolo-

gical rules abide in world three, world three in its turn is constrained by world

two (and of course world one). Interestingly, this time it is Popper who

commits a category mistake and thereby, in his very attempt at drawing

boundaries, blurs boundaries: between epistemology and psychology. For the

relevant psychological constraints are placed by him in the world of logic, i.e.

world three, whereas the world of psychology, i.e. world two, is populated by

irrelevant epiphenomena, such as ‘feelings of perplexity and puzzlement’.‘*

Indeed, if understanding problems is defined in these subjective terms, then

psychology has nothing to contribute to epistemology. More importantly, as

the work of Selz and also de Groot demonstrates, these feelings do not even

contribute to psychology. Feelings of puzzlement and relief are neither neces-

sary nor sufficient for the explanation of problem-solving. Instead, if feelings

and images are reported during problem-solving, their occurrence depends on

their relation to the problem and not the other way round. For instance,

consciousness of the correctness of the solution, which often accompanies the

process, depends on whether the response relates to the stimulus word in the

way required by the structure of the problem.

“Op. cit., note 63, p. 156. ‘*Musgrave appeals to this subjectivist qualification of problem solving in order to rescue Popper

from psychologism; op. cit., note 3, pp. 57&571. Popper equally speaks of feelings of satisfaction as belonging to the psychology of problem solving; op. cit., note 63, p. 166.


The often noted impotence of world two to mediate between world three and

world one is also due to Popper’s category mistake. From epiphenomena no

causal efficiency can be expected, which comes out clearly in Popper’s adoption

of Frege’s grasping metaphor: ‘It is one of the main functions of the second

world to grasp the objects of the third world’.79 What grasping amounts to is

consistently left unclear by Popper, for Frege gave only a negative definition:

grasping is neither sense perception, for its objects are abstract, nor intro-

spection, for its objects are not psychological. In his later work, the grasping

metaphor is unpacked in terms of processes akin to problem-solving. Grasping

a world three object is said to be an active process rather than intellectual

intuition. ‘In order to understand a problem, we have to try at least some of the

more obvious solutions, and to discover that they fail; thus we rediscover that

there is a difficulty - a problem.‘80 Problems and problem-solving, then, not

only have to be placed in the world of psychology, but they have also to be

identified as the actual psychophysical mechanisms grounding Popper’s

mundane, i.e. biological approach, to world three. It is only from within these

causal constraints that Popper can build his world three out of objective

norms.

The Argument from Discovery

Popper’s anachronistic qualification of psychology is most conspicuous in

his application of Reichenbach’s distinction between the context of discovery

and the context of justification. The section in which Popper brings in this

distinction is erroneously called ‘Elimination of Psychologism’,B’ for what is in

fact eliminated is the science of psychology. The equation of psychology and

psychologism is a fine example of a Freudian slip of the tongue. For, as we

have seen, Popper’s Transcendence Argument was valuable against psycholo-

gism,, hence the equation of psychology and psychologism, might give the

impression that the same argument counts against the psychology of scientific

discovery. And indeed, if the context of discovery is as idiosyncratic as Popper

sketches it, then epistemology can dispense with psychology.

Popper’s reason for denying a logic of discovery is his subscribing to the

thesis of Bergsonism. In an often quoted passage he says: ‘My view may be

expressed by saying that every discovery contains an “irrational element”, or

“a creative intuition”, in Bergson’s sense.‘82 Alternatively, in 1928 Popper

approvingly refers to Selz’s method of ‘coincidental means abstraction’ as an

explanation of the phenomenology of insight and intuition from which

790p. cir., note 63, p. 156. 8oOp. cit., note 4, p. 44. 8’Op. cit., note IS, p. 31. B21bid., p. 32.

SHIPS 24:4-s


Bergsonism derives its main force. 83 Apparently the thesis of anti-Bergsonism

of 1928 has turned to its antithesis. The question is whether Popper can do this

consistently, given the fact that he tacitly sticks to the main points of Selz’s

psychology. I do not think so, and a careful reading of some of his remarks

about discovery reveals his latent endorsement of the method of ‘coincidental

means abstraction’.

Popper twice discusses the role of chance for scientific discoveries. Chance

discoveries are difficult to reconcile with the inductive method, as Popper

emphasizes, 84 but not with his own approach. For instance, Fleming’s dis-

covery of penicillin was not ‘really accidental’ for he was ‘searching for an

effect of the kind he found’.85 He expected the existence of substances of a

certain kind, and this expectation ‘motivated’86 his work. Stripped of their

ordinary language connotations, and seen from the perspective of Selz’s work,

‘searching’ and ‘motivation’ clearly refer to the method of coincidental means

abstraction. Like Michael Faraday, Fleming had long but in vain been trying

to find penicillin and at last chance gave him a hand. Because he had been

primed by the method of means-abstraction by an extraordinarily strong

schematic anticipation, chance could give him a hand. To that extent, chance

discoveries are both accidental and not accidental. Popper, then, merely pays

lip service to Bergsonism, for in fact he never changed his mind concerning the

psychologically plausible explanation of the phenomenology of insight and

intuition proposed by Selz.

Concluding Remarks

In this article, I have tried to demonstrate the latent psychological content of

a substantial part of Popper’s epistemology and methodology. On the basis of

Popper’s unpublished dissertation on the psychology of thinking of Buhler and

especially Otto Selz, I have argued that Popper’s descriptive epistemology of

the Bucket and the Searchlight is a direct continuation of Selz’s discussion of

the theory of diffuse associations and his own theory of specific responses.

Next it has been shown that Popper’s epistemology of the Searchlight has to be

unmasked as Selz’s psychology of problem-solving. Then, I have tried to show

to what extent Popper, contrary to his principle of transference, derives his

criticism of the inductive method and his proposal of the deductive method of

*30p. cit., note 6, p. 70, note I. There Popper mentions the application of Selz’s method to Darwin’s happening to pick up Malthus’s monograph on the population problem from which he abstracted his selection principle for the survival of the fittest.

Yhance discoveries are said to be based upon ‘inductive misinterpretations’; op. cit., note 47, p. 41.

85Op. cif., note 48, ‘Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Knowledge’, pp. 22c-221. 860p. cit., note 47, p. 49.


conjectures and refutations from his and Selz’s psychology of problem-solving. On the basis of these reconstructions, I conclude not merely that the genesis of Popper’s philosophy is psychological, but, more strongly, that the epistemological and methodological products of Popper’s mind are essentially intertwined with cognitive psychological findings and arguments. In this respect, Popper, rather unwillingly, has anticipated the co-operation between psychology and philosophy that is so characteristic of contemporary work in the philosophy of science and epistemology. Finally, I have argued that Popper’s arguments against this co-operation, i.e. his arguments against psychologism, rest on an anachronistic qualification of psychology, equating mistakenly cognitive psychology and psychology in the tradition of British empiricism. Popper failed to see that cognitive psychology is in no way a threat to the objectivity of logic. On the contrary. Cognitive psychology can propose rules of conduct that improve upon logically correct thinking: rules that can be useful in daily life as well as in science. To the extent that Popper proposes such rules, his logic of knowledge is closer to a psychology of knowledge than the gap between the context of justification and the context of discovery indicates.

Acknowledgements - I would like to thank Prof. Pieter van Strien for giving me a copy of Popper’s unpublished dissertation, as well as for drawing my attention to the importance of the ‘Wiirzburger Schule’ for the psychology of science. Next I would like to thank Prof. A. D. de Groot, Prof. T. A. F. Kuipers, the other members of the Groningen research group ‘Cognitive Structures’, and an anonymous referee for useful comments.

Problems and psychologism: Popper as the heir to Otto Selz

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