Abstract
This chapter gives a brief overview of the (European) beginnings of positivist psychology, i.e. of the ways of thinking and research that promise an objective view into human experience by recording the brain’s physiological processes that accompany mental processes.
First published in C. R. Bartram, M. Bobbert, D. Dölling, T. Fuchs, G. Schwarzkopf and K. Tanner (Eds.), (2012). Der (un-)durchsichtige Mensch. Wie weit reicht der Blick in die Person? (pp. 33–45). Heidelberg: Winter
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07 October 2021
This book was inadvertently published as an authored volume instead of an edited work. The chapter author names have now been updated in the table of contents, in all chapter opening pages and throughout the book as required.
Notes
- 1.
In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1694), Locke defines a person as “a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places” (Locke 1979, § 9, 335). Therefore, personal identity consists in the continuity of memory and self-consciousness, namely, in “the sameness of a rational Being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person” (ibid.).
- 2.
This was shown in a detailed manner by Herman Schmitz to whose fundamental analysis of subjective facts or circumstances I here refer: “Ein Sachverhalt […] ist subjektiv, wenn höchstens einer, und zwar nur im eigenen Namen, ihn aussagen kann, während die Anderen zwar mit eindeutiger Kennzeichnung darüber sprechen, aber nie und nimmer das Gemeinte aussagen können” (Schmitz 1995, 6). [“A circumstance […] is subjective, if one at most, in fact only on one’s own behalf, can articulate it while the others can indeed talk about it with a clear description, but never ever can convey the actually meant”].
- 3.
“Subjektive Tatsachen sind sozusagen in höherem Maß als objektive Tatsachen tatsächlich; sie haben die Lebendigkeit des blutvoll und dringlich Wirklichen, während die bloß objektive, allein durch objektive Tatsachen konstituierte Welt so etwas wie ein Präparat ist, abgeblasst und zurechtgemacht für Erzählungen in der dritten grammatischen Person …” (Schmitz 1995, 7). [“Subjective facts are to a greater extend actual than objective facts, so to speak; they have the liveliness of the powerful [blutvoll] and urgent Real, whereas the mere objective world which is solely constituted by objective facts, is something like a preserved specimen, discoloured and dressed for third-person stories”].
- 4.
- 5.
At a glance, see Fuchs (2010, 68).
- 6.
Cf. the website of John-Dylan Haynes: www.bccn-berlin.de/Mitglieder/haynes/?languageld=2.
- 7.
Cf. Penfield and Perot (1963). The surgeries served the excision of seizure foci of patients suffering from therapy-resistant epilepsies. As the brain is insensitive to pain, patients could remain conscious and were able to communicate with the surgeons during surgery. For stimulation, fine electrodes were used to identify relevant brain areas and to operate as gently as possible.
- 8.
Cf. the elaborated debate on the thought experiment at Cosmelli and Thompson (2011).
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Fuchs, T. (2021). The Person and the Brain. In: Discussing Cognitive Neuroscience. Annals of Theoretical Psychology, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71040-8_3
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