Structuralism and Functionalism in Psychology

3 Key excerpts on "Structuralism and Functionalism in Psychology"

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  History and Philosophy of Psychology

  • Man Cheung Chung, Michael E. Hyland(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  In almost all cases, these schools and movements were being set up in opposition to the type of psychology Titchener had taken to the USA, and given the term Structuralism. Functionalism was a rejection of Structuralism. One of the difficulties with any school which is founded on the rejection of something else, is that one can be sure what it is not, but not what it is. One of the criticisms levelled against the functionalists was that their definition was rather vague. To some extent this criticism is true, but viewed from a historical perspective, it does not matter. In addition, it is inevitable that an approach to psychology which is based on the rejection of the existing order is vague about what it actually was. On the positive side, however, the functionalists promoted a freeing up of psychology, and in particular to allow a focus on applied psychology. Whereas structuralism argued that psychology should be a pure non-applied science – and achieve the status of a pure science current in Europe, there was no such reluctance towards application in the USA. The beginning of applied psychology: the study of intelligence and personality Psychologists have the reputation of being good at measuring things. Whenever psychologists interact with others applying their discipline, it is usually in the field of measurement that they best know. The structuralism of Titchener and the voluntarism of Wundt before him both involved measurement but in neither case was this measurement particularly useful to applied problems. In addition, phrenology (see Chapter 3) was an early (though invalid) way of measuring personality. Closely related to phrenology (and equally invalid) is craniometry, the measurement of intelligence by cranial capacity – i.e. the size of the brain (Gould, 1981). Leaving aside physical measures, such as phrenology and craniometry, there are two ways of measuring the mind

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  The History and Evolution of Psychology

  A Philosophical and Biological Perspective

  • Brian D. Cox(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  7  William James and Functionalism

  In the preceding two chapters, we have been discussing the roots of psychology in the German revolutions in philosophy and physiology. In 1875, at roughly the same time that Brentano and Wundt were becoming famous, a newly minted MD, who had been teaching anatomy and physiology as a way of keeping busy while recuperating from a nervous breakdown, was assigned to teach his first course at Harvard in “the New Psychology,” without ever having taken such a course himself. That man was William James. Up until then, in spite of being a member of the second-richest family in the state of New York, William, in his own mind, had not amounted to much. He had not begun an illustrious writing career, like his younger brother Henry; he had not distinguished himself in the Civil War, like his even younger brothers Robertson and Wilkerson. He even suspected that his Harvard medical degree was a bit of a fake: Some of the examining board were friends of the family and he had had an easy time of the exam. He never intended to practice medicine anyway.

  And yet William James would soon begin the long process of writing one of the indisputable gems of the history of psychology. The Principles of Psychology, said the distinguished historian of ideas Jacques Barzun, was an American masterpiece:

  It is a masterpiece in the classic and total sense—no need of a descriptive or limiting word before or after: not “of observation” or “of prose writing,” not more “scientific” than “humanistic.” One can point to these and other merits if one is so inclined, but the fused substance defies reduction to a list of epithets. No matter how many unexpected qualities are found in it—wit, pathos, imaginative understanding, polemical skill, moral passion, cosmic vision and sheer learning—the work remains always greater than their sum.

  (Barzun, 1983, p. 34)

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  Consciousness

  • Josh Weisberg(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  6 Functionalism Functionalism is the view that the mind is defined by what it does, not by what it's made of. If you “do the right thing”, you're in. The identity theory, by contrast, says you need “the right stuff” (to stick with the 1980s' movie titles). The possibility of multiple realization is one of the main motivations for functionalism. It seems plausible to think that lots of different kinds of creatures can have experiences, even if they're made of very different kinds of stuff. And for those who are open to the possibility of machine minds or even machine consciousness, functionalism seems to be a requirement. Functionalism as I've characterized it so far is a very broad view, taking in a range of positions. In fact, the views we'll consider in the following two chapters – first-order representationalism and higher-order representationalism – are versions of functionalism in this broad sense. But because they highlight the function of representing, either the world or the subject's own states, those views get separate treatment. In this chapter, we'll focus on “purer” examples of functionalism, ones framed in terms of what consciousness does for its subjects. We'll first look at a number of ways of pinpointing the right functional “level” to describe the mind. Then we'll consider some examples of functionalist theories of consciousness, most notably the “global workspace” view. But we'll also look at what are known as “enactive” or “extended” views of consciousness. These are versions of functionalism taking the relevant functional roles to extend beyond the head to the rest of the body and even the outside environment. We'll close, as usual, with some worries about the view, most notably that functionalists aren't even talking about consciousness! They are, according to some critics (and even some proponents), “eliminativists” about consciousness

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