The cyclops and the twelve-eyed toad: William James and the unity-disunity problem in psychology.

Viney, Wayne

doi:10.1037/0003-066x.44.10.1261

Cited by 25 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…It has outlived entire paradigms and will continue to do so until it has been dealt with directly. By avoiding metaphysical snares and pitfalls, one may then come to organize research and practice around "an empiricism sufficiently radical to call us back insistently and repeatedly to the unique features of human experience" (Viney, 1989(Viney, , p. 1265). There is a parallel in feminist research, in which the attempt is made to dis-cover primary women's experience beyond the framework of a language, which has been found to be fundamentally patriarchal and archaic in nature (Johnson, 1989;Levesque-Lopman, 1988).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Specter of Metaphysics in Counseling Research and Practice: The Qualitative Challenge

Hanna

Shank

1995

Jour of Counseling & Develop

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After decades of scientific research, the specter of metaphysics pervades and hinders virtually all aspects of counseling research, theory, and practice. Qualitative research is suggested as capable of coming to terms with such issues. This article notes that qualitative research will gain acceptance when it takes a significant step toward solving a major problem in the discipline. A tentative outline of an approach to metaphysical problems involving radical empiricism and phenomenology is provided. Along the way, some necessary cognitive shifts are delineated, involving dialectical and abductive reasoning processes.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Specter of Metaphysics in Counseling Research and Practice: The Qualitative Challenge

Hanna

Shank

1995

Jour of Counseling & Develop

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Section: Compatibility Of Psychological Descriptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is often argued that the largely fragmented appearance of psychology (and cognitive science as well) is due to the fact that psychology is still in a preparadigmatic, "immature" state. Some have even argued that this situation is unavoidable (e.g., Koch 1983, Gardner 1992 and should be considered as the strength of psychology (e.g., Viney 1989, McNally 1992 rather than an undesirable affair.From the perspective of the philosophy of mind, arguments against the possibility of a unified science of psychology have been presented as well. Most prominent are the accounts of Kim (1992Kim ( , 1993 and Fodor (1997), both using the scheme of multiple realization in the framework of supervenience to reject unification.…”

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confidence: 99%

Contextual emergence of mental states

Atmanspacher

2015

Cogn Process

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The emergence of mental states from neural states by partitioning the neural phase space is analyzed in terms of symbolic dynamics. Well-defined mental states provide contexts inducing a criterion of structural stability for the neurodynamics that can be implemented by particular partitions. This leads to distinguished subshifts of finite type that are either cyclic or irreducible. Cyclic shifts correspond to asymptotically stable fixed points or limit tori whereas irreducible shifts are obtained from generating partitions of mixing hyperbolic systems. These stability criteria are applied to the discussion of neural correlates of consiousness, to the definition of macroscopic neural states, and to aspects of the symbol grounding problem. In particular, it is shown that compatible mental descriptions, topologically equivalent to the neurodynamical description, emerge if the partition of the neural phase space is generating. If this is not the case, mental descriptions are incompatible or complementary. Consequences of this result for an integration or unification of cognitive science or psychology, respectively, will be indicated. Interlevel RelationsKnowledge of well-defined relations among different levels of descriptions of physical and other systems is inevitable if one wants to understand how (elements of) different descriptions depend on each other, give rise to each other, or even imply each other. The most ambitious program in this regard is physical reduction in the sense that higher-level descriptions of features of a system are determined by the description of features at the most fundamental level of physical theory, no matter how remote the higher level is from that most fundamental level. This program assumes that the description of all features which are not included at the fundamental level can be constructed or derived from this level without additional input.However, already physical examples pose serious difficulties for this program. It has recently been proposed that the concept of contextual emergence (Atmanspacher and Bishop, this issue; Bishop and Atmanspacher, preprint) addresses such situations more properly. Contextual emergence is characterized by the fact that lowerlevel descriptions provide necessary, but not sufficient conditions for higher-level descriptions. (Note that such a relation between descriptive levels does not necessarily entail the same relation between ontological levels.) The presence of necessary conditions indicates that lower-level descriptions provide a basis for higher-level descriptions, while the absence of sufficient conditions means that higher-level features are neither logical consequences of lower-level descriptions nor can they be rigorously derived from them alone. Hence, a full-blown reductive program is inapplicable in these cases. Sufficient conditions for a rigorous derivation of higher-level features can be introduced through specifying contexts reflecting the particular kinds of contingency in a given situation.A key ingredient of this proc...

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“…Rutherford: How would you describe James's teaching style? I also address the problem in two other articles: "The Cyclops and the Twelve-Eyed Toad" (Viney, 1989) and "William James on the Advantages of a Pluralistic Psychology" (Viney, King, & King, 1992). He was not highly systematic and often pursued tangents, but such tangents were inherently interesting to students.…”

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confidence: 99%

Using CHAINS, a QuickBASIC 4.5 Program, to Teach Single-Subject Experimentation with Humans

Dermer

2004

Teaching of Psychology

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Students enrolled in a single-subject design course studied the repeated acquisition of response sequences by using CHAINS, a QuickBASIC 4.5 program, which runs in DOS or Windows®. For about 2 months, students examined the learning of such sequences as a function of various treatments. Each week students graphed their data, discussed their research, modified their experiments, and then wrote American Psychological Association-style manuscripts. Students positively evaluated CHAINS and the instructional process. Suggestions for future instruction include distributing students' manuscripts the following semester so new students can replicate earlier work and using the alternating treatments design, which quickly permits comparing treatments.

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The cyclops and the twelve-eyed toad: William James and the unity-disunity problem in psychology.

Cited by 25 publications

References 11 publications

The Specter of Metaphysics in Counseling Research and Practice: The Qualitative Challenge

The Specter of Metaphysics in Counseling Research and Practice: The Qualitative Challenge

Contextual emergence of mental states

Using CHAINS, a QuickBASIC 4.5 Program, to Teach Single-Subject Experimentation with Humans

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