Philosophia Scientiæ Travaux d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences

19-3 | 2015 The Bounds of Naturalism Experimental Constraints and Phenomenological Requiredness

Charles-Édouard Niveleau and Alexandre Métraux (dir.)

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/philosophiascientiae/1121 DOI: 10.4000/philosophiascientiae.1121 ISSN: 1775-4283

Publisher Éditions Kimé

Printed version Date of publication: 30 October 2015 ISBN: 978-2-84174-727-6 ISSN: 1281-2463

Electronic reference Charles-Édouard Niveleau and Alexandre Métraux (dir.), Philosophia Scientiæ, 19-3 | 2015, « The Bounds of Naturalism » [Online], Online since 03 November 2017, connection on 10 November 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/philosophiascientiae/1121 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ philosophiascientiae.1121

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Bounds of Naturalism: A Plea for Modesty Charles-Édouard Niveleau and Alexandre Métraux

A Philosopher in the Lab. Carl Stumpf on Philosophy and Experimental Sciences Riccardo Martinelli

La phénoménologie expérimentale d’Albert Michotte : un problème de traduction Sigrid Leyssen

Objectifying the Phenomenal in Experimental Psychology: Titchener and Beyond Gary Hatfield

Spatial Elements in Visual Awareness. Challenges for an Intrinsic “Geometry” of the Visible Liliana Albertazzi

The Phenomenology of the Invisible: From Visual Syntax to “Shape from Shapes” Baingio Pinna, Jan Koenderink and Andrea van Doorn

The Deep Structure of Lives Michael Kubovy

Philosophia Scientiæ, 19-3 | 2015 2

The Bounds of Naturalism: A Plea for Modesty

Charles-Édouard Niveleau and Alexandre Métraux

Many thanks to William Blythe for his insightful linguistic corrections on the English text.

1 Introduction

1 The articles published in this volume of Philosophia Scientiæ address specific issues in contemporary psychological research. They have been collected with a singular purpose in mind. The editors share the conviction that the discussion of tangible research problems ranging from methodological challenges to epistemological riddles is a more solid foundation for the examination of various aspects of naturalism than simply adopting one of the many stances from contemporary philosophies of cognition, general body-mind theories or what is often referred to as classical (philosophical) phenomenology.

2 Some of our authors focus partly on the history of modern psychology, while others draw, more or less freely, on fragments of Gestalt theory or disparate phenomenological insights but none of the subsequent articles derive their key arguments directly from a specific school of thought, be it philosophical or psychological. Instead, crucial questions concerning various facets of naturalism are raised from discussion of factual research situations. These are questions which demand specific answers, or at least the outline of such answers.

3 A rapid “scan” through the essays selected for the present issue is likely to be misleading or deceiving. The topics chosen by our authors may appear similar to those conventionally dealt with in academic philosophy, but any mere appearance is where similarities end. Notwithstanding prima vista impressions, these contributions do not elaborate on diverse matters such as first person reports, the units of sensory experiences, the impact of judgmental fallacies, etc., in strict continuation with philosophical discussions (e.g., whether phenomenology exists,1 whether qualia are constitutive of the human mind, or whether the human mind needs to be accounted for

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essentially in terms of computation or Turing machine states run by clever algorithms). This issue is not the place for debates about grand philosophical theses; nor is it a public arena where one can observe how an author follows the lead of Daniel Dennett, for example. This scholar once asserted that, since he was a “philosopher, not a scientist”, he was also “better at questions than answers” [Dennett 1996, vii]. Yet, despite limiting himself to questions, his intention was also to positively and unquestionably “introduce the set of fundamental assumptions that hold my way together and give it a stable and recognizable pattern” [Dennett 1996, vii]. Our authors refrain from smartly constructing whole philosophies held together by similar fundamental assumptions. They prefer instead to tackle problems confronted in, and by, empirical and experimental enquiries into human mental states and processes of the most variegated kinds.

2 Reorientating the naturalism issue from an interdisciplinary perspective

4 Consequently, the question of whether naturalism should be adopted as a viable research program within philosophy—conceived as a distinct academic discipline—is clearly not our immediate concern here. In his 1955 presidential address to the American Philosophical Association, Ernest Nagel already declared that “the number of distinguishable doctrines for which the word ‘naturalism’ has been a counter in the history of thought is notorious” [Nagel 1955, 3]. Despite a half century of intense technical debate, the meaning of naturalism remains quite equivocal, and as David Papineau recently admitted, “[t]he term ‘naturalism’ has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy” [Papineau 2007]. The difficulty of firmly determining what philosophical naturalism is supposed to be or what naturalism really means to philosophy requires us to doubt its ability to properly address what is really at stake in naturalism. Given that naturalism can be understood, interpreted, and defended in several ways [Andler 2009a]—even within the realm of cognitive studies and especially in the philosophy of mind—one is entitled to ask whether the variety of naturalistic interpretations of mental states and processes results from philosophers’ temptation to above all satisfy their own interest in speculation and abstract conceptualization. This applies especially to the body-mind problem, which still represents the core issue in philosophy of mind. In the attempt to explain, by the way of a priori reasoning, how the mind in general is an integral part of the real nature, philosophers have carefully, deliberately and with great conceptual sophistication outlined abstract ontologies of body-mind relations (reviewed, e.g., by [Kim 2011] and [Mandik 2014]). This slippery slope of overconceptualization has revealed an autarkic or disconnected way of thinking with respect to a genuine naturalistic approach implying involvement with the sciences themselves.

5 A philosopher of mind could of course argue that: (argument 1) philosophy is the right sphere for dealing with naturalism rather than science, since by vocation it is concerned with highly theoretical, meta-scientific issues, and that (argument 2) the increasing shift from an ontological to a methodological naturalism (see [Haug 2014] for recent debates) is intended to overcome suspicions that philosophy (and essentially the philosophy of mind) will inevitably succeed regardless of the course taken by the sciences.

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6 Argument (1) reveals a misestimation of the conceptual resources of scientific practice. These conceptual resources are actually stronger than is usually admitted by professional philosophers, which suggests that there is no need for philosophical help to begin with (contrary to [Thagard 2009]). If experimental and other research practices cut themselves off from theoretical issues, they risk turning into a blind and guideless data-gathering exercise. Scientific achievements, the establishment of local frameworks and the emergence of global research paradigms are all efficient remedies against the prejudice that science has neither a normative nor a general dimension without the assistance of philosophy.2

7 If, according to argument (2), one admits that, until more or less recent times, philosophy was extensively nourished by scientific practices—and thus deeply rooted therein—and if one recognizes that philosophers currently call for a return to the previous conditions of philosophical practice, then one cannot avoid challenging the existence of a dividing line between philosophy and science. Roberto Casati illustrates this trend when he asserts that: If philosophy is pervasive and continuous with non-philosophical disciplines, if consequently this dialogue is above all highly interdisciplinary, [philosophy] tends to align itself with the standards of scientific disciplines, and generates strongly contextualized and localised philosophical problems. [Casati 2006, 27]

8 However, it is not an easy task to provide an accurate description of what non- reductive alignment with, and contextualization within the sciences entail and how philosophico-scientific interactions might yield productive or even innovative results. Whatever the outcome, the reconstruction of philosophy along the line of its interactions with the sciences has certain far-reaching consequences for the present issue.

9 Concerning the impact of philosophy, it would be nonsensical to grant a privilege to philosophy in and by itself when considering problems of naturalism. Indeed, whatever the consequences for the alleged foundational ontology of mind and the so-called “naturalistic philosophy”—given that such perspectives are usually a matter addressed by philosophical circles only—, naturalism primarily concerns epistemological and methodological issues in the sciences. These issues may of course be addressed either by philosophically minded scientists or by scientifically informed philosophers.3 The editors of the present issue of Philosophia Scientiæ share the conviction that philosophers of science are better equipped to perform this task than any philosopher of mind in the traditional (and academic) sense of the term.4,5

10 Though we are here concerned with psychological research, it would still be misleading to talk about the “philosophy of psychology” rather than about the “philosophy of science”. Indeed, the label “philosophy of psychology” refers to something that has little to do with the working practices of scientific psychologists. Gary Hatfield is among the few authors to have noticed this discrepancy: If the truth be told, though, much of what goes under the title of “philosophy of psychology” has only a tenuous relation, if any, to actual scientific psychology. In some cases this arises innocently and understandably from the equivocal use this label permits: some philosophers use the title “philosophy of psychology” as a catch-all for problems in philosophy of mind. In other cases, philosophers have appealed to results in scientific psychology to speak to questions in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and even philosophy of science, without making psychology an object of analysis in its own right. [Hatfield 1994, 19]

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11 Bermudez provides a paradigmatic case of this misleading conception when he declares that “the philosophy of psychology is the systematic study of the interplay between philosophical concerns and psychological concerns in the study of cognition” [Bermudez 2005, 2]. According to this commonly shared view, the core issue is about the relation between commonsense psychological explanations and explanations from scientific psychology. This, of course, presupposes a broader conception of psychology than the one available in scientific psychology as such. Needless to say that, regarding the constant involvement of philosophy in the course of the long history of scientific psychology [Hatfield 2009, part III], one should be skeptical about the relevance of such a historically and disciplinary disconnected conception of psychology. Following Lawrence Shapiro’s ironical remark, “many of the issues that Bermudez [...] [among many other authors] believe[s] to be central to philosophy of psychology would be alien to psychologists [...]” [Shapiro 2010, 793]!6

12 But to be quite honest, it must be admitted that the radical significance of the proposed reorientation on philosophy is rarely assumed in its entirety, even by promoters or supporters of this integrative approach. For example, in the introduction of his Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Paul Thagard does agree with Hatfield’s diagnosis while trying to reinvigorate the lost but senseful understanding of the label “philosophy of psychology”. When he states that “[t]he philosophy of scientific psychology must be distinguished from enterprises that have been popular in philosophy: ‘philosophical psychology’ and armchair philosophy of mind”, no doubt that he clearly intends “to sharply distinguish philosophy of psychology and cognitive sciences from approaches to philosophy of mind that attempt to ignore scientific developments” as well as from the fake philosophy of psychology. But he doesn’t seem to fully assume his view when he brings this further precision: The point of philosophy of psychology is [...] to deal with philosophical issues through close attention to developments in scientific psychology. [Thagard 2007, X]

13 This means, ultimately, that philosophy retains the priority in its own questioning while science can be used as a filter for philosophical questions or, at best, as a means to obtain more satisfying answers. But, if one agrees that philosophy is not inherently different from science and if the proper goal of philosophy of psychology “is not to develop conceptual truths about the mind”, as Thagard rightly puts it himself, why should we continue to posit some preexisting intrinsically philosophical issues that are not, in the first instance, interrelated to, motivated by, and raised in scientific ones? In what sense and to what extent do philosophical issues have to be distinguished from scientific developments?

14 It is not a question here of reducing philosophy to science but of recognizing their true functional interdependence in one way or another (even though some asymmetry actually remains in knowledge-producing) and at the outset of any research. Pretending to keep a close contact with sciences by picking up some ready-made results, artificially importing some experimental methods for purely philosophical purpose still makes philosophy of psychology an armchair discipline despite appearances.

15 Our approach may appear to unfairly misread or even distort the philosophy of mind’s official program. For example, Pete Mandik states that: Philosophy of mind has also enjoyed prominent interactions with various empirical sciences in recent debates, especially through interdisciplinary interactions with

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the cognitive sciences. Thus much recent work in philosophy of mind has been informed by (and to some extent, has informed) advances in psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and anthropology. [Mandik 2010, 1-2]

16 Yet, in our view, what is emphatically called “interdisciplinary interactions” does not go beyond a flatus vocis if these interactions consist of one-side (inter)actions. Surely it is more than a rumor that philosophy of mind is at best more informed by the sciences than the reverse. Methodological naturalism, as a theoretical tenet, is more “scientifically” informed and discipline-oriented towards philosophical issues than philosophically-minded with an orientation towards the sciences. Once more, it may be thrilling to use the sciences as a source of inspiration in the pursuit of philosophical goals for their own sake, but it seems even more thrilling to engage in permanent transactions with the sciences and thus engage in research which does not lose contact with the practices of scientists. In any case, our authors have greatly benefited from what was, and still is, happening within the realm of the sciences, thus attributing more weight to the problems faced by empirical and experimental research than to a specific philosophical agenda, whether scientifically informed or not.

17 Two examples (which are incidentally also interrelated) seem to illustrate the approach which prevails in the present collection of essays.

3 What is psychophysics really about? Sketch for a semantic analysis of sensation

18 Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, we have repeatedly heard that scientific psychology—the science established in laboratories, the psychology which proudly opposed the old armchair psychology, the fruit of thinkers who believed themselves to be amply equipped to explore the dark continents of the human and, occasionally, the animal mind—draws its high epistemic status from psychophysical theorems set forth by Gustav Theodor Fechner. There is much truth to this well-worn assertion. Fechner provided hypotheses which enabled the experience of sensory impressions to be referred to the purely material sphere and the relations between stimuli and sensations to be determined in mathematical terms and thus to reach a level of articulation which previous savants like Immanuel Kant thought to be metaphysically impossible. It is certainly no longer strange to talk of psychophysics as a perfectly well-accepted branch of research. The founding of The International Society for Psychophysics in 1984 and the annual Fechner Day held over the past thirty years 7 are further evidence that this tradition is still alive and well.8

19 However psychophysics, in its commonly known version (i.e., as a subject matter taught in lectures and seminars offered in colleges and universities), only represents part of the original paradigm developed by Fechner. There is no doubt that post- Fechnerian psychophysics underwent subtle adjustments and that the relations between stimuli and sensations have been further investigated in a way that he could hardly have anticipated. But this physicist originally outlined an outer as well as an inner psychophysics. Outer psychophysics covers that which one now commonly subsumes under the denomination of “psychophysics”, while inner psychophysics, in contradistinction, has been simply pushed out of sight. There remains practically no trace of it in the collective memory of today’s psychology communities, except in the form of a mere psycho-physiology.9 This part of the Fechnerian research program was

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intended to precisely determine the relations between internal (or neural) stimuli and lived sensations. Therefore, this kind of study was initially far from being circumscribed to the mere investigation of the relation between neuro-electric responses and the intensity of sensation as is often believed when this section of Fechner’s program is deemed worthy of mention. It originally took psychological processes into account and not just their physiological and anatomical counterparts [Fechner1860, 11], [Fechner1877, 3].10

20 Does it really matter, however, whether Fechner’s initial research program was forgotten [Scheerer 1987] after having been cut in two? Does it really matter, considering the fact that one half of it not only promoted relevant theories, but also proved to be acceptably successful for nearly a century and a half? It certainly does not matter to those who unknowingly mistake one half of the research program for the entire project.11 It would, however, matter to those who prefer not to easily stick with the everyday habits of normal science and who have enough curiosity to ask questions like “What’s the equivalent of a physically defined stimulus of the outer world for a stimulus—let’s say: of proprioceptive origin—considered from the point of view of inner psychophysics?” Moving beyond normal psychophysics to study sensations which are the result of some kind of physical stimulus, but certainly, as is the case with phosphenes, do not relate to outer stimuli, e.g., unabsorbed lightwaves, compels us to deal with specific problems of methodology, experimentation and measurement which are usually ignored in normal post-Fechnerian psychophysics, if we discard their dilution into mere physiological investigations.

21 Yet, there is no need to look back to the era of Fechner and some of his early followers to notice that normal, conventional (i.e., outer) psychophysics is unlikely to address the totality of the phenomena it claims to explain. The starting point of outer psychophysics is the correlation between physical stimulus and sensory response but physical stimulus does not cover all of what is perceived—it is clearly difficult to consider bistable or multistable phenomena from a purely psychophysical point of view:12 there is a perceptual variation which does not rely upon a correlative variation in physical parameters.

22 Let us take, for example, the unsurprisingly trivial experience one undergoes when contemplating reversible figures like the Necker cube or Rubin vase, also known as the Rubin face (see figure 1).13 Here is a description of what happens (realistically) when one looks at the Rubin face/vase figure under constant external conditions (with no increment of luminosity occurring). One perceives either a vase against a black background or two faces in profile facing one another on two sides of a white background. In addition, the perceived content of the same surface reverses from one “meaning” to the other “meaning”, i.e., from opposite faces to vase, or vice versa. Moreover, when we carefully look at what happens in the course of this visual experience, it clearly may be fairly difficult to stop the figure from reversing automatically. It seems as if the figure has reversed under the impact of some physiological agent unbeknown to the subject.

23 According to classical theorems drawn from Fechner’s outer psychophysics, reversible figures should be ontologically barren from occurrence. Indeed, the stimulus remains the same throughout the experience of the Rubin face/vase figure. Hence, the sensation should in turn remain the same, too. This kind of paradoxical experiential and experimentally tested outcome ought to be taken seriously at face value and received

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as a welcome opportunity to reconsider certain significant semantic and epistemic issues in psychological research.14

Figure 1: A Rubin-type reversible figure

24 The sketchy reconstruction of the case of Rubin’s reversible figures draws our attention to one concept of psychological research, namely the concept of sensation. The concept of sensation is highly controversial in the history of psychophysics. But it seems hard to discard sensation from psychophysics without compromising its psychological relevance (see [Shapiro 1994]). Viewed in terms of the traditional approach to psychophysics, seeing two faces and then seeing one vase (or vice versa) reflects a theoretically paradoxical situation, since a constant stimulus cannot be the cause of two distinct sensations. But, conversely how could a single, stable, and unchanging stimulus provoke two distinct, and distinguishable, sensations? If we closely consider the high frequency of reports on subjects who see two faces and/or a vase (while figure and ground reverse depending on whether you see a vase or two faces first), we could alternatively hypothesize that the stimulus (the whole figure with its physical parameters objectively presented to the subject) remains constant while the sensation (i.e., the psychologically relevant state called “sensation” in traditionally taught psychophysics) presents either two faces or a vase. This evidence is doomed to remain a mystery if that which is perceived is reduced exclusively to the physical parameters of the one, unchanging stimulus. The investigation of phenomena requires that a distinction be made between (a) the object of sensations (such as the figure presented to the subject with all its physical, purely objective, neutral or subject-independent properties) and (b) the content of sensations (such as the figure of a vase or the figure of two faces as perceived by a subject and phenomenologically grasped with no consideration for the subject’s assumptions concerning the realness of the properties of the object at stake). The paradox of reversing sensations (in terms of post-Fechnerian psychophysics) may

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thus be due to a definition of “sensation” which is either too loose or broad and thus implies that whatever one sees, hears, smells, feels by touch, etc., is conventionally subsumed under the term. This is despite the fact that so-called “sensations” may be quite diverse insofar as they are (a) considered from a purely objective or idealised standpoint (as if our sensory states can be strictly correlated to some determined and constant physical features of the stimuli) and (b) insofar as they are being experienced by subjects. In other words, traditional psychophysics, as received and enlarged by post- Fechnerian scholars, may cause all sorts of problems for itself. It is likely, indeed, that it confounds that which it unravels by methodically organized research acts with the fully- fledged thing it intends to unravel.15

4 The phenomenological requiredness: a scientific concern and prospect

25 However, phenomena such as following the movements made by afterimages in one’s visual field, perceiving first a vase and then two faces (or vice versa), seeing phosphenes in an absolutely dark room, noticing auras at the onset of migraines, or feeling different kinds of pains in one’s forearm or in the abdomen, are too intrinsically bound to one’s own streams of perceptual experience to fit any a priori framework, be it philosophical or not. These phenomena are observable only to the person who “experiences” them, to put it crudely. They occur inside the subject, whereby the word “inside” is both used metaphorically and in a possibly misleading way. The least one would have to acknowledge, however, is that these phenomena, if made the content of propositions, are uttered, expressed and possibly described in first person reports. These reports may turn out to be insufficiently concise (a subject may correct her/ himself while thinking twice about the phenomenon at stake), and yet, due to their reference to the stance “from within”, they have to be taken into account for what they are—a source of first-hand distinctions between various kinds of mental states that one lives through, sometimes against one’s will (as with patches of itchy skin) and which sometimes become the focus of sustained attention (as has often happened in experimental studies of afterimages since 1750).

26 Research in psychology cannot (or rather must not) ignore subjects noticing, perceiving, feeling and perhaps suffering pain. For without the study of such experiences, we would not sense what it is like not to be someone else. However it would be an error to infer from this assumption that one’s own perspective on one’s “inner” mental life will yield genuine psychological knowledge under any circumstance. Some exercises in introspection quickly show with a high degree of reliability that some mental states and/or processes are easily graspable, whereas other such mental states and/or processes tend to remain indiscernible notwithstanding the efforts of self-observation undertaken by subjects. Let us return to the example of the Rubin vase. Does the black part of this figure cause one or several sensations? Should one identify what one perceives as the black and the white parts of the figure with two distinct visual impressions or several of the same or should one say perhaps that there is a set of fuzzy single impressions which combine into a figure? If we consider either of the two faces then the nose is easily distinguishable from the mouth. But, do we now have two elements of a profile, or do we rather see a nose and a mouth which, in turn, are made of little bits of a nose and fragments of a mouth, respectively. And what about

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the dozens of feelings, moods, and similar states of mind which appear hard to characterize with the sufficient precision a subject either desires or is required to attain by a physician, psychotherapist or judge?

27 Being aware of one’s mental states and processes needs to be characterized epistemologically as a key to psychological research. Yet this key alone is by all means far from being sufficient. The character of reports of mental states and processes is both an unsettled and an exciting challenge. Indeed, what do psychologists study when using, for example, first person reports on sensory experiences? Do they confront sensory data rather than linguistic data, which refers to subjects’ having perceptions? To what extent a psychologist is committed, in a way or another, to the language of perception? On the contrary, should he/she reduce the verbal report, as far as possible, to a yes/no response, in order to get the unbiased and online process by which the subject is performing the task? Are psychologists capable of solving the problem of disentangling the content of first person reports on sensory data, on the one hand, from the content of sensory data as experienced by subjects, on the other? If, for whatever epistemological reason, we assume that we cannot do without first person reports to begin with, the problem at hand seems to be intractable without other strategies enabling researchers to move beyond such reports on sensory perception—and on other so-called “private” mental states and processes, like pain, itches, dreams, etc. (we readily admit that the adjective “private” is most likely a misnomer).

28 Hence, since most mental phenomena experienced by subjects are neither self- explicatory nor always fully graspable, and since such lacunae often do not escape the observation of subjects themselves,16 psychological research needs to coordinate phenomenal experiences with research methods of various kinds—be they physiological, psycho-somatic, social psychological, and so on. This kind of coordination (past and present) is the key topic of the papers collected for the present issue.17

29 A single example may illustrate the overall approach focused upon here. Take the commonly reported, examined, and diagnosed phenomenon of negative scotoma in migraines. This consists of an “area of partial or total blindness which may follow, or, on occasion, precede a scintillating scotoma” [Sacks 1971, 79]. This phenomenon is no doubt accessible to the person experiencing it because (trivially) otherwise it would not be noticed. In addition, it is topic of many first person reports. Given medical, paramedical, and everyday encounters with migraines in various individual and social contexts, these first person reports are easily turned into third person reports. The phenomenon itself has been selected (and continues to be selected) as a topic of hot medical research.

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Figure 2: Variants of migraine scotoma. From: [Sacks 1971, 78]

30 Though avalanches of scotoma-linked visual sensations may vary from person to person, in principle at least they are suitable for iconical typification and representation as an illustration in Oliver Sacks’s monograph on migraines clearly shows (see figure 2).

31 Migraines are examples of the undeniable feeling of something wrong more often than not combined with a temporal and intermediate acceleration of peristaltic movements, spasms, decreasing or increasing secretion, an unstable and fluctuating nervous system, and varying degrees of headache. The scotoma, whether scintillating or negative, thus turns out to be embedded in a huge number of organic processes which extend, so to speak, from the skin to the belly to the eyes and the whole nervous system. Given such all-encompassing bodily conditions, it would certainly be an epistemological error to reduce the mental phenomenon of a scotoma either to how it is described as an experience (“private” in nature, seeing scintillating or more or less enduring blind spots in one’s visual field) or to systematically discard that which is accessible only to the experiencing person.

32 However this example of course does not mean that all mental states and processes are suitable for the same types of first and third person reports, the same experimental designs developed for further studies, the same explanatory schemata and the same patterns of psychological theories.

33 The approach that we prefer to adopt, then, in studies of regional or even local epistemology is to take single cases of psychological research as a starting point for study of the methods used in field and lab experiments and the critical determination of which kinds of concepts are at stake.

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KOENDERINK, Jan J., VAN DOORN, Andrea, & WAGEMANS, Johan [2015], The nature of the visual field, a phenomenological analysis, Pattern Recognition Letters, 64, 71– 79, doi: 10.1016/j.patrec. 2015.02.003.

KUBOVY, Michael & GEPSHTEIN, Sergei [2003], Grouping in space and in space-time: An exercise in phenomenological psychophysics, in: Perceptual Organization in Vision: Behavioral and Neural Perspectives, edited by R. Kimchi, M. Behrmann, & C. R. Olson, Mahwah: Erlbaum, 45–86.

MANDIK, Pete [2010], Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind, London; New York: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.

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MAUSFELD, Rainer [2012], On some unwarranted tacit assumptions in cognitive neuroscience, Frontiers in Psychology, 3(67), 1–13, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00067.

METZGER, Wolfgang [1936], Gesetze des Sehens. Die Lehre vom Sehen der Formen und Dinge des Raumes und der Bewegung, Frankfurt am Main: Kramer, English translation, cf. (Metzger2009).

—— [1941], Psychologie: die Entwicklung ihrer Grundannahmen seit der Einführung des Experiments, Dresden: Steinkopff.

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PALMER, Stephen & BROOKES, Joseph L. [2008], Edge-region grouping in figure-ground organization and depth perception, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 34, 1353–1371, doi: 10.1037/a0012729.

PALMER, Stephen E. & GHOSE, Tandra [2008], Extremal edge: A powerful cue to depth perception and figure-ground organization, Psychological Science, 19(1), 77–83, doi: 10.1111/j. 1467-9280.2008.02049.x.

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[Pind(2014)]PIND, Jörgen [2014], Edgar Rubin and Psychology in Denmark. Figure and Ground, Heidelberg; New York; Dordrecht; London: Springer.

PINNA, Baingio [2010], What comes before psychophysics? The problem of “What we perceive” and the phenomenological exploration of new effects, Seeing and Perceiving, 23(5), 463–481, doi: 10.1163/187847510x541144.

ROCK, Irvin [1975], An Introduction to Perception, New York: Macmillan, doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-01062-5.

ROLLS, Edmund T. [2013], On the relation between the mind and the brain: A neuroscience perspective, in: The Mind-Body Problem in Cognitive Neuroscience, edited by G. Vacariu & M. Vacariu, Paris: Kimé, Philosophia Scientiæ, vol. 17-2, 31–70, doi: 10.4000/philosophiascientiae.849.

RUBIN, Edgar [1915], Synsoplevede Figurer, Studier i Psykologisk Analyse [Visually perceived figures. Studies in psychological analysis], Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, German translation by P. Colett, Visuell wahrgenommene Figuren, 1. Teil, Copenhagen: Christiania; Berlin; London: Gyldendal, [1921]. English translation of key sections, “Figure and Ground” in: Readings in Perception, edited by D. C. Beardslee & M. Wertheimer, [1958], Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 194–203.

SACKS, Oliver [1971], Migraine: The Evolution of a Common Disorder, London: Faber and Faber.

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SCHEERER, Eckart [1987], The unknown Fechner, Psychological Research, 49(4), 197–202, doi: 10.1007/ BF00309026.

—— [1992], Fechner’s inner psychophysics: Its historical fate and present status, in: Cognition, Information Processing, and Psychophysics: Basic Issues, edited by H.-G. Geissler, S. Link, & J. T. Townsend, Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 3–21.

SCHUMANN, Friedrich [1900], Beiträge zur Analyse der Gesichtswahrnehmungen. Erste Abhandlung: Einige Beobachtungen über die Zusammenfassung von Gesichtseindrücken zu Einheiten, Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 23, 1–32, URL http:// vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/library/data/lit31389.

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STROTHER, Lars, VAN VALKENBURG, David, & KUBOVY, Michael [2003], Toward a psychophysics of perceptual organization using multistable stimuli and phenomenal reports, Axiomathes, 13(3-4), 283–302, doi: 10.1023/B:AXIO.0000007207.77996.ca.

THAGARD, Paul [2007], Introduction to the philosophy of psychology and cognitive science, in: Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science, edited by Paul Thagard, Amsterdam: North-Holland, Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, ix–xvii, doi: 10.1016/B978-044451540-7/50016-5.

—— [2009], Why cognitive science needs philosophy and vice versa, Topics in Cognitive Science, 1(2), 237–254, doi: 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2009.01016.x.

THEURER, Kari & BICKLE, John [2013], What’s old is new again: Kemeny-Oppenheim reduction at work in current molecular neuroscience, in: The Mind-Body Problem in Cognitive Neuroscience, edited by G. Vacariu & M. Vacariu, Paris: Kimé, Philosophia Scientiæ, vol. 17-2, 89–113, doi: 10.4000/ philosophiascientiae.856.

VACARIU, Gabriel & VACARIU, Mihai (eds.) [2013], The Mind-Body Problem in Cognitive Neuroscience, Philosophia Scientiæ, vol. 17-2, Paris: Kimé.

VAN LEEUWEN, Cees [2013], Brain and mind, in: The Mind-Body Problem in Cognitive Neuroscience, edited by G. Vacariu & M. Vacariu, Paris: Kimé, Philosophia Scientiæ, vol. 17-2, 71–87, doi: 10.4000/ philosophiascientiae.853.

VECERA, Shaun P., VOGEL, Edward K., & WOODMAN, Geoffroy F. [2002], Lower region: A new cue for figure-ground assignment, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131(2), 194–205, doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.131.2.194.

VICARIO, Giovanni B. [1993], On experimental phenomenology, in: Foundations of Perceptual Theory, edited by S. C. Masin, Amsterdam; New York: North-Holland, Advances in Psychology, vol. 99, 197–219, doi: 10.1016/S0166-4115(08)62773-9.

WAGEMANS, Johan et al. [2012], A century of Gestalt psychology in visual perception: II. Conceptual and theoretical foundations, Psychological bulletin, 138(6), 1218–1252, doi: 10.1037/a0029334.

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NOTES

1. See, for example, the controversy on phenomenology and the human mind in letters sent to the editors of the Times Literary Supplement and partly published in 5843, dated 27 March 2015, p. 6. Note also the remarks sent by Rowland Malony from Beer (Devon), one of the TLS’s readers, made public on the same page, relating to this and similar philosophical controversies: “Entertaining for the rest of us though it is, reading philosophers swatting at each other in your letters page is no great advertisement for the subject, is it? Would it help if they agreed to make the acquisition of wisdom and the dissolving of ego the pursuit in future?” 2. [Wagemans, Feldman et al. 2012b] give a good illustration of what we have in mind here with regards to our current issue on psychological research. See also the research program initiated and headed by Johan Wagemans at www.gestaltrevision.be/en/. Another example in the field of neuroscience can be found in [Mausfeld 2012]. 3. This integrative approach to the mind-body problem has also been recently illustrated in a previous issue of the present journal, see [Vacariu & Vacariu 2013]. See in particular the articles [Rolls 2013] and [van Leeuwen 2013] for the first category and [Bechtel 2013] and [Theurer & Bickle 2013] for the second. Bechtel and Bickle are among the main flag-bearers of the emerging research subfield labelled “the philosophy of neuroscience” which promotes a more scientifically oriented approach to the philosophical analysis of the mind-body problem (see, for instance, [Bechtel, Mandik et al. 2001] and [Bickle 2009]). 4. Concerning the misguided nature of current debates in philosophy of mind and the need for fresh start from a more appropriate philosophy of science, see [Horst 2005, 2007]. 5. [Bechtel 2009, 565, note 2]: “As philosophers of science engage particular sciences, they often [...] engage in the theoretical issues arising in the science.” Even though the same author also shares a quite optimistic view on the philosophy of mind’s ability to have some “potential [!] importance” to cognitive science, see [Bechtel 2010]. 6. This remark about philosophy of psychology can be extended to the entire field of the philosophy of cognitive science as well. We should probably prescribe the same remedy: “In short, philosophy of cognitive science can also, and perhaps should, be thought of as a division within the philosophy of science, on par with philosophy of biology, philosophy of economics, etc. This may seem obvious, but it is not how it is usually treated” [Andler 2009b, 256]. 7. See http://www.ispsychophysics.org/. 8. In the introduction to his handbook, Christian Bonnet asserts that “the questions raised by Fechner are still hot topics for current research” [Bonnet 1986, 9]. 9. For a short presentation of Fechner’s inner psychophysics and its relevance for current cognitive sciences, see [Scheerer 1992]. Murray’s attempt to show the existence of a line of research from inner psychophysics to modern signal detection theory should also be mentioned [Murray 1993], though this attempt is rooted in a rather vague historical narrative allowing for many approximations (see [Gundlach 1993b] for critical comments). 10. For further developments on Fechner’s psychophysics as a whole project, see, if not exclusively, Gundlach’s incomparably well executed historical and epistemological account of Fechnerian psychophysics [Gundlach 1993a]. 11. Furthermore, what is now meant by “psychophysics” refers more to a mere set of techniques integrated to experimental psychology and sensory physiology than to a genuine discipline (see [Farell & Pelli 1999] and [Ehrenstein & Ehrenstein 1999] for reviews). In short, the modern psychophysical approach follows at least these two criteria: careful experimentation (controlled stimuli, reliable task) and data analysis (psychometric functions, statistical tools). 12. See [Strother, VanValkenburg et al. 2003] and [Kubovy & Gepshtein 2003] for reviews of Michael Kubovy’s decisive works on that issue.

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13. For further details on Rubin’s approach, see [Rubin 1915]. [Pind 2014, 90-109] has recently presented in English the main results of Rubin’s doctoral dissertation. 14. Let us note that the figure/ground assignment remains a hot topic for experimental psychology which has, until now, analyzed the relevant perceptual grouping cues to include symmetry [Bahnsen 1928], parallelism [Metzger 1936], convexity [Kanisza & Gerbino 1976], edge-region grouping [Palmer & Brookes 2008], extremal edges [Palmer & Ghose 2008], etc., i.e., cues which are said to determine the figure/ground organization. In addition, experimental psychology studies the impact of lower-regions in a visual scene [Vecera, Vogel et al. 2002] upon the figures so that they appear phenomenologically closer to the observer, or the top-down influence of higher-order processes (such as object-recognition and attention) on figure assignment (see [Rock 1975], [Peterson 1994] and [Peterson & Gibson 1993]) to mention only some examples of more or less current research. 15. We here overtly allude to a passage of Theodor W. Adorno’s introduction to the sociology of music: “one realizes that the division of scientific labor causes the “Verwechslung des methodisch Veranstalteten mit der Sache selbst [...]” [Adorno 1973, 397]. 16. [Schumann 1900] indicates how useful self-observation can be, as a research method, to discover new effects or phenomena. But he also recognizes how difficult it is to find observers with such a fine and accurate ability. Furthermore, one must admit that some phenomenal concepts are intrinsically hard to describe by themselves, as it is the case with “the visual field” (see [Koenderink, van Doorn et al. 2015]). 17. See also [Ehrenstein, Spillmann et al. 2003] and [Spillmann 2009] on the relation between phenomenology and neuroscience, and [Pinna 2010] for a mutual enlightenment between phenomenology and outer psychophysics. We set aside the question whether or not a descriptive (pre-)science (?) (such as experimental phenomenology) can also explain—and not only describe —the modes of appearing of perceptual phenomena. This strategy has been promoted by [Metzger 1936, 1941], [Kanizsa 1980, 1991], [Bozzi 1989], [Bianchi & Davies In preparation], [Vicario 1993], and more recently [Albertazzi 2011, 2012, 2013].

ABSTRACTS

We reformulate the issue of naturalism within the realm of scientific practices by suggesting that a fine-grained epistemological analysis of the methods, procedures and concepts of psychology is needed. The outcome of this attempt turns out to be operational as it concerns the construction of an exact and experimental approach that allows one to account for the phenomenology of mental states and processes.

Nous reformulons la question du naturalisme sur le terrain de la pratique scientifique en privilégiant une analyse épistémologique fine des méthodes, procédures et concepts employés en psychologie. L’enjeu devient alors opérationnel: celui de la mise en place d’un cadre exact et expérimental permettant de rendre compte de la phénoménologie de l’expérience.

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AUTHORS

CHARLES-ÉDOUARD NIVELEAU University of Paris 1, EA 3762 PhiCo ExeCO, CNRS UMR 8547, Archives Husserl (France)

ALEXANDRE MÉTRAUX Laboratoire d’Histoire des Sciences et de Philosophie – Archives H.-Poincaré – Université de Lorraine –CNRS (UMR 7117) (France)

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A Philosopher in the Lab. Carl Stumpf on Philosophy and Experimental Sciences

Riccardo Martinelli

1 Introduction

1 Born in 1848, Carl Stumpf was appointed professor of philosophy in 1873 at the age of 25, in Würzburg. He ended his career as professor of philosophy and director of the Institute of Psychology in Berlin. Although he officially retired from teaching in 1923 [Stumpf 1924, 411], at the end of his life in 1936, Stumpf was still at work on his Erkenntnislehre, which was published posthumously in 1939-1940. His scientific production is quite notable. Stumpf’s interests ranged from philosophy [Stumpf 1891, 1906a, 1906b, 1910 , 1939 -1940] and history of philosophy [Stumpf 1869, 1919a], to experimental investigation into the field of psychology [Stumpf 1873, 1899a, 1907c, 1916, 1917, 1918], with particular attention to acoustic and musical phenomena [Stumpf 1883, 1890, 1898, 1911b], which he also considered from a historical point of view [Stumpf 1897]. Furthermore, he wrote on many other scientific topics, such as mathematics [Stumpf 1938] (see also [Stumpf 2008]), physical acoustics [Stumpf 1899b], phonetics [Stumpf 1926], ethnomusicology [Stumpf 1901; Stumpf 1911a], child psychology [Stumpf 1900], animal psychology [Stumpf 1907b], psychology of genius [Stumpf 1909], among others.1

2 This heterogeneous body of writing led to different interpretations of his personality. Early scholars argued that he brought a phenomenological attitude to experimental psychology, stemming from Brentano’s philosophy and fostering the development of the Gestalt theory [Spiegelberg 1960, 54]. Historians of psychology sometimes claim that Stumpf progressively abandoned philosophy in favor of experimental psychology [Sprung 2006, 15], while others (more properly) recognize his uninterrupted philosophical commitment [Ash 1995, 30]. In contrast to the tendency to consider him

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an orthodox follower of Brentano in philosophy [Schuhmann 1996, 128], [Schuhmann 2001, 71], recent interpretations argue for the originality of his thought [Fisette 2006].

3 Stumpf’s lifelong work in experimental psychology is part of an interesting epistemological program. His experimental activity was not accompanied by any loss of interest for philosophical issues. Rather, he aimed at the progressive, harmonic and mutual development of natural sciences, Geisteswissenschaften2 and philosophy. Originally combining phenomenology with experimentation and descriptive psychology with metaphysics, his program still deserves our attention.3

4 In this essay I consider the relationship between philosophy and experimental sciences from the point of view of Stumpf’s epistemology. I first introduce Stumpf’s own comments concerning his double commitment as an experimentalist and a philosopher (§ 2). I then proceed to illustrate his classification of sciences (§ 3) and his definition of phenomenology and philosophy (§ 4). Finally, I discuss his views concerning the mutual relationship between philosophy and natural science (§ 5).

2 A philosopher in the lab

5 In his Autobiography, written in 1924, Stumpf retrospectively considers his experimental work. It is worth quoting the passage at length: I was well aware, of course, that such absorption in all the details of a field of sensation stood in sharp contrast to the general conception of the mission of the philosopher, although Fechner had been a famous example of this type. When I considered the hopeless condition, as it appeared, perhaps, in Überweg’s review of recent philosophy—ever new systems without any connection with one another, each bent on originality, at least on a new terminology, none of them with any power of conviction—when I compared this with the evolution of physics, what a vast difference! Might it not be possible for a specialist in philosophy to work together with other specialists, at least in some particular field? If this were done by others in other fields, might there not result finally a beneficial relationship between philosophy and the single sciences? Thus the time in Würzburg marks for me the beginning of a new line of work to which I have remained faithful to the present day, which, however, has made me an outsider to the great majority of my colleagues. My work of observation and experimentation has absorbed my time and strength even more than is the case with most experimental psychologists. Although I fully appreciate the saying of Aristotle that theory is the sweetest of all, I must confess that it was always a joy and a comfort to pass from theory to observation, from meditation to facts, from my writing-desk to the laboratory; and, thus, in the end, my writing-desk was neglected and has not produced a single textbook or compendium, which indeed ought to have been its first duty, even at the time when I was an instructor. However, I never intended to spend so much of my lifetime on acoustics and musical psychological studies as I did later on. I had counted on a few years. But it was, after all, not musical science but philosophy that always remained mistress of the house, who, it is true, granted most generously great privileges to her helpmate. [Stumpf 1924, 396-397]

6 This passage contains at least four important statements: Stumpf affirmed that the philosopher should also be a scientist, a specialist in some field (1); he confessed his particular bent to experimental activities as compared to armchair reflection (2); however, he admitted he sometimes exaggerated: experimental work had taken him longer than he had planned (3); finally, he declared that he had never really abandoned

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philosophy, which remained the “mistress of the house” throughout his whole career (4). I shall now comment on these issues, with respect to their importance for our present concerns.

7 (1) There is no doubt that to Stumpf, Franz Brentano and Hermann Lotze represented two outstanding teachers of philosophy. Yet, Stumpf went through excellent scientific training as well. During the time he spent in Göttingen, he was deeply influenced by the famous physicist Wilhelm Weber who, “besides Brentano and Lotze, developed and formed” his manner of “scientific thinking” [Stumpf 1924, 392]. Stumpf remarks that at that time a philosopher with a good scientific training was as rare as a “white raven” [Stumpf 1924, 393]. Remarkably, Weber’s name was quoted here along with Brentano and Lotze. Obviously, Brentano’s and Lotze’s influence over Stumpf was further- reaching than Weber’s; nevertheless, this mention must be taken seriously. Weber’s lesson instilled in Stumpf a genuine scientific spirit, which very few philosophers of his time were endowed with. On the one hand, this made him an “outsider”, as he used to say. On the other hand, this double competence paved his way to Berlin, where the Faculty needed a true experimentalist to establish the Institute of Psychology, and at the same time wanted a man with deep philosophical knowledge to direct it. Wilhelm Dilthey was particularly influential in this recruitment [Sprung 2006, 124 ff.]. Incidentally, Brentano never approved of Stumpf’s decision to move to Berlin, and this led to some bitterness between them.4 In total, Stumpf was by all means an acknowledged specialist in the field of experimental psychology, with particular skills in the study of sound and music perception and in ethnomusicology.5

8 (2) Despite his personal inclination for experimental practice, Stumpf was not merely a technical experimentalist, blind to theory. As the Director of the Institute in Berlin, he let his assistants teach the experimental approach, while he was in charge [...] of the theoretical meetings, in which psychological problems a propos of various recent treatises were discussed, and emphasized, in the spirit of Brentano; not only the need for psychological observation but also the necessity of logical thinking. I laid particular stress on these meetings because I regard the experimental method —at least of the external sort—as by no means the cure-all for psychology. [Stumpf 1924, 404]

9 In short, Stumpf was not fond of dealing with experimental devices, but appreciated experimentation as a sophisticated intellectual exercise, aiming to discover psychological laws. For him, the experimental method cannot do without inductive reasoning and “logical thinking” about the conditions of the experiment. This approach undoubtedly influenced the Gestaltists. It is well-known that Wolfgang Köhler, Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Kurt Lewin, Erich von Hornbostel, Johannes von Allesch, Adhémar Gelb (and also, among others, Robert Musil), were all, at least partially, trained at the Berlin Institute. Scholars have repeatedly investigated the special intellectual atmosphere pervading this scientific institution, the role played by Stumpf in this context and the unusual degree of intellectual independence of his students and assistants who, for the most part, didn’t adhere blindly to his doctrines but rather carried out autonomous research.6 After all, that was perfectly compliant with the intentions of the Director, who never aimed to establish a school of thought: I have never endeavored to found a school in the strict sense; and have perceived it almost to be more pleasant and certainly more interesting, to have my students reach different conclusions rather than merely to have them corroborate my theorems. I derive all the more joy and gratitude from the loyalty of the young

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people who, in the same scientific spirit, but by their own independent plans, continue the work of research. [Stumpf 1924, 441]

10 Perhaps for this reason, the Berlin group respected him, as evidenced by the celebratory writing on Stumpf’s 75th birthday, a special issue of the Gestaltists’ official review, Psychologische Forschung [Wertheimer 1923].

11 (3) Stumpf undoubtedly invested much more time in experimental activities than he had intended. He originally meant to write four volumes of his Tonpsychologie. Only two volumes were ever published [Stumpf 1883, 1890], and the residual topics were dealt with in some other, less monumental, publications [Stumpf 1898, 1911a]. Stumpf probably understood that the whole project, in its complete form, would have required too much time. He was sometimes overwhelmed by the many duties of his intense academic life, especially in Berlin. No surprise then that he completed his major philosophical work, Erkenntnislehre [Stumpf 1939-1940], after his retirement, thus compensating for the (relative) lack of philosophical production. Commenting on his studies on vowel sounds in his Autobiography, he writes: [t]he experimental results fascinated me to such an extent that I could not give up the investigation until this important field of phenomenology had been satisfactorily cleared up. [Stumpf 1924, 414]

12 Once again, the attraction that experimental research exerted over him shows through in his words.

13 Occasionally, Stumpf’s work was rather dispersive. When he was asked to investigate the case of “kluge Hans”, a horse that was said to perform elementary calculations, he couldn’t resist the temptation [Stumpf 1907b]. I fully realized the extraordinary difficulties involved; the excitement aroused in the city and even in foreign countries by the daily reports of the strange case in the newspapers; the curiosity of the crowds who sought admission; the peculiarities of Mr. von Osten; the unfavorable locality; etc. The irresistible desire to determine the facts induced me to undertake the investigation, and we finally succeeded in revealing the facts [...]. [Stumpf 1924, 407, emphasis added]

14 On other occasions he showed the same enthusiasm for the ascertainment of facts, despite fakes and mystifications, almost with a “detective” attitude, see [Stumpf 1904].

15 (4) All this said, philosophy always remained the “mistress of the house” in Stumpf’s laboratory. In other terms, he affirms that experimental work has great importance for philosophy—it is not an alternative to philosophy: it is instrumental to it. In the Preface to the second volume of Tonpsychologie, published seven years after the first, Stumpf explains the reasons for this delay. Even in the late 19th century—he remarked—a professor of philosophy was not allowed to always be busy with “whistles, plates and forks”. However, against those who believe that experimental work debases the eternal mission of philosophy, that is, to elevate the human spirit, he argued that experimental work in psychology always “turns to the purposes of metaphysics and ethics”, and added: “[t]hese disciplines lie at our heart” [Stumpf 1890, v-vi]. To avoid any misunderstanding, Stumpf makes it clear that even during his long-lasting experimental activities he never actually abandoned or rejected philosophy. Patient and meticulous work in marginal fields of research also contributes to higher scopes.7 The discovery of factual truths in the field of experimental psychology turns out to be an advance in philosophy. I shall come back on this point in the next section.

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16 Stumpf ascribed the same instrumental value to other fields of his scientific work, including comparative musicology.8 In 1900, he founded the Berliner Phonogrammarchiv (now on the UNESCO World Heritage list), a collection of Edison cylinders whose direction was later taken up by Erich von Hornbostel. The study of exotic music traditionally relied upon the amateurish, approximate transcriptions made by missionary fathers or musically-educated travelers. In contrast, phonographic recordings promote objectivity and allow preservation. Stumpf’s empirical research in the field of ethnomusicology was therefore part of a consciously pursued scientific programme [Martinelli 2014]. In the first volume of Tonpsychologie, the “comparison of peoples and times” is one of the auxiliary methods of psychology [Stumpf 1883, vi]. Two years later, in 1885, in a pioneering study of the music of North American Indians, Stumpf stressed the value of comparative musicology not only for ethnology and the history of humankind, but also for general psychology and philosophy, and particularly for aesthetics [Stumpf 1886, 89]. In a study of the music of a Siamese (Thailand) ensemble, he argued that comparative musicology represents a fruitful task for the psychologist or the philosopher who is ready to abandon the “parlor of scholars” [Gelehrtenstube] and the old-fashioned method of self-observation, and wishes to “widen his horizon by means of an objective study of human thinking and feeling in other times and spaces” [Stumpf 1901, 167].9

3 Natural sciences, Geisteswissenschaften, and “neutral” sciences

17 Stumpf tackled the problem of the classification of sciences on the basis of the fundamental philosophical distinction between phenomena and psychic functions. He called “phenomena” the sense-data (including when they are remembered rather than actually sensed), together with the relations that hold between them. “Psychic functions” is the name assigned to all mental activities, states and experiences: e.g., perceiving, developing concepts, judging, feeling emotions, desires, and so on [Stumpf 1906a, 105-106]. Although they always occur together, phenomena and functions can and must be carefully distinguished [Stumpf 1906a, 111]. Phenomena and mental functions are always logically separable; each of them may vary independently, i.e., without a corresponding variation of the other. They differ in the utmost degree: no assertion pertaining to phenomena is also applicable to psychic functions. Thus, reality is “double-sided”, i.e., it has an ultimately dualistic aspect that cannot be overcome in any way [Stumpf 1906a, 115].10

18 In Stumpf’s view, the distinction between natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften originates from the above mentioned dichotomy. No matter how they are defined, the contraposition of the physical and the mental has always been the basis of the distinction between natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften. [Stumpf 1906b, 10]11

19 Accordingly, all natural sciences are rooted in phenomena, while Geisteswissenschaften stem from the study of mental functions. The separation of natural sciences and mental sciences [Geisteswissenschaften] is based on the fundamental differences of sense data [Erscheinungen] and psychic functions, or on the respective contents of external (sensuous) and internal (psychological) perception. Phenomena and functions are directly presented in the

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closest connection, but they are essentially different. Observation of functions is the foundation of the mental sciences, however these latter are no more tied to their departure point than the natural sciences are. Just as the natural sciences proceed to the construction of the material outer world, so functions aim to understand the nature of psychic forces in general and the resulting actions and phenomena in terms of the inner life that alone is given to our observation. Psychology occupies the same place among the mental sciences as physics does among the natural sciences. [Stumpf 1924, 424]

20 Natural sciences, then, are not directly based upon phenomena. This would open the way to Mach’s phenomenalism, reducing everything to basic phenomenal data or “sensations” [Empfindungen].12 Stumpf, who totally disagreed with this view, was rather a constructivist. In the first place, one must distinguish between a mere sensation and an “object” [Gegenstand], which is the result of a conceptual construction trained by ordinary experience. This is a prerequisite to any kind of scientific construction [Stumpf 1906b, 10]. In the second place, true scientific objects are not phenomena as such; rather Stumpf defined them as “bearers” of variations, occurring in space and time according to the laws of physics [Stumpf 1906b, 16]. Finally, in Stumpf’s view, even the external world is a hypothetical structure. Regularities and exceptions in the continuous variation of our sensations and presentations can be explained only by means of this hypothesis, repeatedly confirmed by any act of experience [Stumpf 1906b, 12].

21 Accordingly, natural sciences ultimately rest upon phenomena, but are the outcome of further elaboration; their objects are merely inferred from phenomena. In contrast, Geisteswissenschaften deal directly with mental functions, although they also include higher-order constructs. Psychology is the science of elementary mental functions, whereas the other Geisteswissenschaften deal with complex mental functions [Stumpf 1906b, 21]. In opposition to Husserl’s misunderstanding of psychology as a science of facts [Tatsachenwissenschaft] [Husserl 1911, 12-13], Stumpf claimed that psychology fundamentally aims to find the general laws of the psychical world, not merely to record mental occurrences [Stumpf 1939-1940, 194].

22 Stumpf’s basic dichotomy between natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften was enriched by many other supplementary factors.13 In this context, special attention should be paid to a third group of sciences, which he called “neutral sciences”. As previously stated, neither natural sciences nor psychology directly investigate phenomena; nevertheless, that investigation represents a major scientific task. At this stage, Stumpf introduced three neutral sciences devoted to the study of phenomena: phenomenology, eidology and the theory of relations [Stumpf 1906b, 26, 32, 37]. Their differences lie in their specific subjects. Phenomenology deals with sensory phenomena; eidology with what Stumpf called “formations” [Gebilde], that is concepts, forms, states of affairs [Sachverhalte], namely any content of thought [Stumpf 1906b, 32-33]. The general theory of relations [allgemeine Verhältnislehre] deals with relationships such as similarity, sameness, part and whole, etc. [Stumpf 1906b, 37].

4 Phenomenology and philosophy

23 Given its experimental nature, Stumpf’s phenomenology is particularly relevant in this context. Radically diverging from Husserl, he attributed to phenomenology the task of investigating sensory phenomena.14 Colors, sounds, sensory qualities of all kinds are

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ruled by structural laws. The investigation into mixed sensory qualities or into relations such as similarity, increase, fusion, etc., also belongs to phenomenology [Stumpf 1906b, 27]. Further examples of phenomenological problems are: the existence of basic phenomena, the relationship between sensations and judgments [Stumpf 1883], the fundamental “attributes” of sensations (quality, brightness, intensity) [Stumpf 1917], and the difference between sensation and presentation [Stumpf 1918]. Phenomenology is mainly pursued by physicists, physiologists, and psychologists. Effectively, in the past, physicists also used to deal with phenomenological problems. Most remarkably, they all work experimentally: Stumpf’s phenomenology is an experimental discipline. For instance, he considered some work by Ewald Hering and Hermann von Helmholtz, who analytically investigated the fields of optics and acoustics, highly influential in phenomenology [Stumpf 1907a, 186].

24 In this sense, phenomenology formed the core of many of Stumpf’s own experimental activities: I have also devoted most of my time to phenomenological preparatory work, but my real aim has always been to understand functions. [Stumpf 1924, 424-425]

25 Accordingly, in his Autobiography Stumpf presents much of his experimental work as pertaining to the field of phenomenology [Stumpf 1924, 425-429]. It is within this context that he introduced his early books on the origin of space perception [Stumpf 1873], his writing on the attributes of visual perception [Stumpf 1917], plus a series of minor articles concerning specific problems of sensory phenomena [Stumpf 1899b], [Stumpf & Meyer 1898], [Stumpf & Schaefer 1901], and many others. Furthermore, he considers his study on vowel sounds a phenomenological field of investigation [Stumpf 1924, 414]. Since they touch upon phenomenological issues, the two volumes of Tonpsychologie were also mentioned here [Stumpf 1883, 1890]. However, these were mainly devoted to the theory of sense-judgments concerning sounds (i.e., psychic functions), so they more properly belong to descriptive psychology.15

26 Together with the two other mentioned neutral sciences, phenomenology was considered by Stumpf as a “pre-science” [Vorwissenschaft]. This means that phenomenology is the basis for further processing, carried out by all sciences. He also introduced metaphysics as a neutral “post-science” [Nachwissenschaft].16 Metaphysics aims to collect and elaborate the outcomes of all sciences—so that one could even call it metapsychics [Stumpf 1906b, 42]. Metaphysics deals with the connection linking the objects of all sciences: psychic functions, phenomena, formations, relations, and physical objects. This acceptance of metaphysics clearly distinguishes Stumpf’s position from coeval positivism. But he advocated a renewed metaphysics, that is not “built a priori”—a “metaphysics of experience”, based upon scientific results [Stumpf 1906b, 43].

27 Metaphysics is a part of philosophy. What, then, about philosophy as a whole? Stumpf considered philosophy to be the science of “most universal objects” [allgemeinste Gegenstände] [Stumpf 1906b, 86].17 These objects correspond to the different philosophical disciplines. For instance, “ethics, aesthetics and logic” are “practical sciences”, that “lead to Good, Beauty and Truth—in other words, they teach distinguishing, and realizing in one’s interior the right and wrong as to one’s will, taste and scientific judgment” [Stumpf 1906b, 88]. The heterogeneous nature of the most universal objects raises a supplementary question: what does the unity of philosophy consist of? The answer is quite clear:

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That’s for sure; it is neither metaphysics nor theory of knowledge, nor even the universal ideas of the values that keeps these very divergent areas of philosophical research together. Rather, this role is played by psychological research that those disciplines need in an equally strong manner. [Stumpf 1906b, 90]

28 It is true that some psychological research should be fruitfully pursued by means of experiments—“especially those that pertain not to psychology in a strict sense, but rather to phenomenology” [Stumpf 1906b, 90]. However, this seems to lose all contact with fundamental philosophical questions. Nevertheless, as discussed above, phenomenological research also contributes to philosophy and psychology as a whole provides the link connecting all the philosophical disciplines.

29 At the same time, psychology and philosophy still differ radically; for instance, while the inquiry into the origin of concepts is a psychological problem, the search for the origin of truth is purely philosophical [Stumpf 1891, 501], [Stumpf 1939-1940, (I), 6-7]. As Stumpf claimed in opposition to the Kantian account of space and time, form and matter, the categories and so on, philosophical ideas should always “pass the exam” of psychology. In fact, nothing can be “true from the point of view of the theory of knowledge [erkenntnistheoretisch]” and at the same time “psychologically false” [Stumpf 1891, 482].

30 To meet these requirements, psychology “must not forget, absorbed in experimental detail, the nobler phenomena of mental life that cannot be investigated in this manner and the great general questions” [Stumpf 1924, 414]. For instance, Stumpf devotes his opening lecture at the Third International Congress of Psychology in Munich to a classical metaphysical problem: the relationship between body and mind [Stumpf 1896].18 Despite the astonishing number of hypotheses formulated by philosophers and scientists on this theme, progress has been made only recently: “[r]esearch on mind and body have gained extraordinarily in precision since the times of Descartes and Spinoza” [Stumpf 1896, 92]. Among the factors that favored this development, Stumpf listed “the philosophical analysis of the concepts of substance and causality, the discovery of the law of energy, the emergence of psychophysics, the triumphal diffusion of evolutionism, the progress in the anatomy and the physiology of sense- organs and most significantly in the localization of mental activities” [Stumpf 1896, 92-93]. Philosophy (the analysis of categories), physics (the law of conservation of energy), psychology (psychophysics), biology (evolution), anatomy and physiology: the progress of these disciplines is a fundamental condition for the advancement in the matter. Another circumstance shortens the distance between philosophers and psychologists: “[w]hy shouldn’t even philosophy make use of experiments, whenever this is possible?” [Stumpf 1906b, 89].19 For instance, concepts undergo a real development with time, a continuous adjustment to the advances of scientific knowledge. For this reason, “one can also design experiments with concepts, confronting either the one or the other with phenomena” [Stumpf 1896, 93].

31 In summary, natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften need a preliminary “phenomenological” work, an experimental analysis of sensory data. This work is carried out by natural scientists and psychologists, who adopt an experimental approach, as Stumpf himself quite often did. Natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften, including psychology, elaborate their materials and deduce laws concerning their own subject matters. On this basis, philosophy proceeds to a general reassessment of knowledge, aiming at the most universal objects and their unity. Internal coherence among the various philosophical disciplines is ultimately granted by psychology. This could suggest that Stumpf supports a close relationship of philosophy with

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Geisteswissenschaften. In the next section, I shall show that this is only partially true. Notwithstanding the close relationship between philosophy and psychology, Stumpf went so far as to give priority to the natural sciences over Geisteswissenschaften.

5 Natural sciences and philosophy

32 As described above, Stumpf suggested that the philosopher is perfectly legitimate in carrying out experimental psychology, or experimental phenomenology, because such work is also fundamentally useful to ascertain philosophical truths. Moreover, he elaborates a more radical version of this approach. He does not simply concede that the philosopher is allowed to practice science; rather, he claims that the philosopher should do so. Stumpf counterattacked so to speak and charged his “armchair” colleagues with ignoring or misunderstanding important aspects of their discipline. In this, he did not merely propose a strong connection between philosophy and experimental psychology; rather he advocated a cooperation of philosophy with natural science in general.

33 Stumpf devoted his inaugural speech as Rector of the University of Berlin to the Rebirth of philosophy [Stumpf 1907a]. His first polemic target was idealism. With their incapacity to understand science and to cope with it, idealists totally missed their goals and ended up causing a materialist, anti-philosophical reaction [Stumpf 1907a, 164]. To overcome all these tendencies, the original obstacle should be removed. First and foremost, philosophy should go hand in hand with natural sciences. Stumpf mentioned Gustav Theodor Fechner and his teacher Rudolph Hermann Lotze as recent examples of this attitude [Stumpf 1907a, 165].20 These thinkers were philosophers and scientists at the same time; Fechner was a physicist and Lotze a physician. Moreover, Fechner and Lotze took psychology seriously, thus going beyond Kant’s notorious doubts about the possibility of a scientific psychology. It might appear surprising that Franz Brentano was not mentioned among the promoters of this renewal of philosophy. However, Brentano, who was not a scientist, failed to meet the requirements of the argumentation under discussion. True, he had won Stumpf over to philosophy with his thesis that this discipline shares its methodology with natural science: “Vera philosophiae methodus nulla alia nisi scientiae naturalis est” [Brentano 1929, 136-137]. 21 But later Stumpf developed different ideas about scientific methodology and, furthermore, started a scientific practice of his own.22 Be that as it may, Stumpf concludes that psychology, “practiced in the spirit of the natural science” [Stumpf 1907a, 166], is one of the sources of the ongoing rebirth of philosophy. Another source is a more rigorous attitude towards the history of philosophy. Whereas the idealists polemically referred to their immediate predecessors, the history of philosophy makes the true thought, e.g., of Leibniz or Aristotle, available to us.

34 Stumpf notes that philosophy has two main tasks: a theoretical and an ethical one. In the first place, philosophy should unify the most universal concepts, thus granting “a conclusion to our knowledge”; in the second place, philosophy should “elevate us [...] over the terrestrial atmosphere and the nothingness of everyday life”, enabling us to recognize our duties [Stumpf 1907a, 168]. There are two main ways of pursuing these goals: “philosophy of experience” [Erfahrungsphilosophie] and “a priori philosophy”. There is no doubt that Stumpf’s preference is for philosophy of experience, which moves from the outcomes of sciences and endeavors to maintain a close relationship with them. “The philosophy of experience”, he asserts, “grows out of single sciences and

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attempts to maintain the closest connection with them, to speak their language as far as possible, and to follow their methods [...]” [Stumpf 1907a, 169]. Rather than claiming for absolute systems, this kind of philosophy proceeds step by step and strives for relative conclusions. Even if it is provisional, any relative conclusion always represents an important result. In his late years, Stumpf still maintained this point: Philosophy should get rid of the habit of appearing on the scene while claiming the need for a complete and self-contained system that can answer all questions. Its scientific character is proved by the fact that philosophy always leaves open many more questions than those it provides answers to. [Stumpf 1939-1940, (I), 123]

35 The philosophy of experience favors collective work, interactive discussion, and respect for the work of others. The execrable habit of starting every time from the very beginning, typical of many philosophers, should be finally overcome. Philosophy should take the best from scientific methodology and incorporate it into its praxis.

36 Stumpf does not support any kind of fusion (or confusion) between philosophy and science: along with the pseudo-science of the idealists, the positivistic removal of philosophy is his second polemic target. He does maintain that philosophy should be “oriented to the natural sciences and based upon them”.23 However, he also insists that it would be “the ruin of philosophy” to put it completely into the hands of natural science [Stumpf 1907a, 188]. Philosophy has a distinctive value and autonomy that differentiate it from any science (including psychology). Philosophy should cope with scientific results, but its objectives and aims lie beyond those of the scientific disciplines.

37 Remarkably, Stumpf has natural sciences in mind. It is true that Geisteswissenschaften may also assist the philosopher. Yet he warmly recommends a “comprehensive training in the field of the natural sciences” to all those who aim at “a satisfactory world view” [Stumpf 1907a, 179], rather than at an insight into specific philosophical disciplines like, e.g., philosophy of law, or aesthetics. Stumpf did not insinuate that Geisteswissenschaften are inferior to natural sciences in applying a rigorous methodology. Rather, the difference lies in the fact that while Geisteswissenschaften have a formal value in suggesting methodological rigor and precision to the philosopher, natural sciences, in addition, provide important material notions that are enormously valuable for our understanding of the world [Stumpf 1907a, 180-181]. In Stumpf’s view, scientific activity is far from being somehow opposed to philosophy; rather, familiarity with it promotes an attitude of strength and conveys material notions, which are the necessary ingredients for a renewed philosophy.

38 In short, Stumpf occupied a unique position within the development of German philosophy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. While he affirmed a close relationship between philosophy and psychology, he avoided reductionism and psychologism. Philosophy is autonomous with respect to both natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften; nevertheless, it is bound to flourish on condition that it maintains a closer relationship with natural sciences and keeps to their methods whenever possible. It is true that Stumpf did not pursue the goal of a scientific philosophy as strongly as the Viennese Neo-positivists or the “Berlin Group” around Reichenbach did; however, he contributed to shaping the figure of a scientist-philosopher and cultivated this ideal in more than one generation of young scientists, mainly psychologists.24 Far enough from positivistic reductionism, but also from any form of foundationalism, Stumpf neither aimed to reduce philosophy to science, nor to “ground” science

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through some privileged form of philosophical insight. He firmly believed that philosophy should learn a lot from natural science (practices, habits, methods), and he always based his work on this principle.

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STUMPF, Carl & SCHAEFER, Karl Ludolf [1901], Tontabellen, Beiträge zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft, 3, 139–146, also in Beiträge zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft 2, 84–167, URL http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/library/data/lit38487.

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TOCCAFONDI, Fiorenza [2009], Stumpf and gestalt psychology: Relations and differences, Gestalt Theory, 31(2), 191–211.

WERTHEIMER, Max (ed.) [1923], Festschrift Carl Stumpf zum 75. Geburtstag in Dankbarkeit und Verehrung gewidmet, Psychologische Forschung, vol. 4, Berlin: Springer.

NOTES

1. For a complete bibliography of Stumpf’s writings, see [Fisette 2015a]. 2. I shall leave the term Gesiteswissenschaften in German, because no English translation fully covers its meaning. 3. On Stumpf’s philosophy and its present-day importance, see [Fisette 2015], [Fréchette 2010]. For a criticism, [Rath 1994, 215]. 4. See Stumpf’s remarks concerning a planned edition of his correspondence with Brentano and other documents edited by G. Fréchette, in [Fisette & Martinelli 2015, 491-528, (esp. 494 ff., 504-507)]. 5. Stumpf says that his choice of music psychology depended on the fact that this topic was less likely than others to raise contrasts with Brentano [Stumpf 1919b, 145]. Nevertheless, the two philosophers ended up contending about the concept of tonal fusion [Martinelli 2013]. 6. For a comprehensive analysis of the development of the Gestaltists at the Berlin Institute and the role played by Stumpf, see [Ash 1995, 2002]. See also [Toccafondi 2009]. The case of Musil is analyzed in [Bonacchi 2008, 2015]. As to the Gestaltists’ sharp criticism of Stumpf, see, e.g., [Köhler 1913, 78]. 7. Brentano affirms the same principle in one of his writings concerning sensory psychology: “Die Methode verlangt, daß man vom Einfacheren zum Komplizierteren fortschreite. Auch winkt der Arbeit hier der reichste Lohn, da jeder Fortschritt in der Erkenntnis des Elementarsten, selbst wenn klein und unscheinbar in sich selbst, seiner Kraft nach immer ganz unverhältnismäßig groß sein wird” [Brentano1907, 69]. 8. Stumpf also believed that the history of philosophy, which represents another part of his activity [Stumpf 1869, 1919a], is instrumental to philosophy: “only the most exact historical truth can also be at the command of philosophical truth” [Stumpf 1907a, 167]. 9. Stumpf also recorded songs of prisoners of war from all over the world during the First World War [Stumpf1924, 410], see [Christensen 2000], [Simon 2000]. 10. This distinction clearly roots in Brentano’s doctrine of internal and external perception. However, starting from 1883 Stumpf ascribed no epistemological preeminence to internal perception [Stumpf 1883, 22], see [Martinelli 2003, 86], thus radically diverging from Brentano. This innovation was soon noticed by Meinong in his review of Stumpf’s book [Meinong 1885, 130] and by Brentano himself, who expressed his disappointment in 1885 in a letter to Marty, quoted in [Fisette & Martinelli 2015, 495]. As late as 1948, i.e., 12 years after Stumpf’s death, Alfred Kastil was still engaged in a criticism of this deviation from the Brentanian orthodoxy [Kastil 1948]. A further analysis of this theme would obviously take us too far away from our present concerns. For a discussion of Stumpf’s dualism, see, e.g., [Martinelli 2011, 68]. 11. Despite his use of the Kantian term Erscheinung, Stumpf does not think of a contraposition of phenomena and “things in themselves”. Phenomena are not “merely” phenomena, but a part of what is immediately given: “The whole of the immediately given is real. Thence we gain the general concept of reality, which we then extend to other things” [Stumpf1906a, 111]. 12. [Mach1906]. Stumpf often argues against Mach’s phenomenalism: see, e.g., [Stumpf 1896, 84-85].

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13. [Stumpf1906a, passim]. In the present essay I shall not consider all of these factors but rather concentrate upon the consequences of Stumpf’s general point of view as to the relationship between philosophy and science. 14. For a comparison with Husserl, see [Rollinger 2008], [Fisette 2009a, 2015b]. 15. Stumpf identifies descriptive psychology with Husserl’s first phenomenology, as developed, e.g., in Logische Untersuchungen, see [Fisette 2009a]. 16. This complex epistemological structure could be simplified introducing the concept of reality. If one considers only real objects, the classification of sciences is the following: natural sciences, Geisteswissenschaften and metaphysics [Stumpf 1906b, 44]. 17. In Stumpf’s Autobiography, philosophy is defined as “the science of the most common laws of the psychical, and of the real, in general (or conversely)” [Stumpf1924, 414]. This definition partially overlaps with Stumpf’s own definition of metaphysics. 18. As President of the organizing committee, Stumpf proposed to name the conference “Congress for experimental psychology”, since experimentation has an “eminent value for the formation of psychological thought—on the condition that it puts together the manual activity with thought” [Stumpf 1896, 68]. The word experimental was finally omitted in order to promote interdisciplinarity; however, contributions from cognate disciplines should include the exact ascertainment of some factual truths, since “we want to measure and count whenever it is possible” [Stumpf 1896, 70-71]. 19. Stumpf is one of the few philosophers of the nineteenth century to endorse such a position. Although in a different sense, there is nowadays a trend towards “experimental philosophy”, see, e.g., [Knobe & Nichols 2008]. 20. Stumpf also mentions Leibniz, whose philosophy appears to him much more current than that of the idealists, see also [Stumpf1923, xxv]. 21. “The true method of philosophy is none other than that of natural science”. 22. Confronting Brentano’s views on scientific psychology and science in general with those of Stumpf would require a separate analysis, see [Rollinger 1999], [Fisette 2009a], [Martinelli 2013]. 23. He speaks of a “naturwissenschaftlich orientierten und fundamentierten Philosophie” [Stumpf 1907a, 188]. 24. No surprise that, for instance, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Lewin took part in the activities of the so-called Berlin Group led by Hans Reichenbach. Together with Lewin, Köhler had cooperated with Reichenbach and planned to start a journal for exact science, see [Ash 1995], [Milkov 2013]. As to the Gestaltists’ relationship to the Vienna Circle, see [Kluck 2008].

ABSTRACTS

This essay addresses the interrelations between philosophy and experimental sciences that lie at the heart of Carl Stumpf’s epistemology. Following a biographical exposé demonstrating how Stumpf succeeded in acquiring a dual competence in both philosophical and scientific fields, we examine the vast array of academic disciplines encompassed by his research. Such a biographical treatment aims, indeed, to better promote the thrust of Stumpf’s assertion that philosophical enquiries should always be carried out in close connection with scientific practices, and underlines how philosophico-scientific interactions established his work as a central pillar in the history of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German thought.

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Cet essai traite de la relation entre philosophie et sciences expérimentales au sein de l’épistémologie de Carl Stumpf. Après un exposé des éléments biographiques montrant comment Stumpf est parvenu à acquérir cette double compétence, nous examinons la grande variété des champs disciplinaires sur lesquels portèrent l’ensemble de ses recherches. Cela permettra de mieux saisir le sens de l’affirmation de Stumpf selon laquelle la philosophie devrait toujours être une entreprise menée en étroite collaboration avec la pratique scientifique et de montrer ainsi la place tout à fait singulière qu’il occupe au sein de l’histoire de la pensée allemande au tournant du vingtième siècle.

AUTHOR

RICCARDO MARTINELLI University of Trieste (Italy)

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La phénoménologie expérimentale d’Albert Michotte : un problème de traduction

Sigrid Leyssen

Je souhaiterais ici remercier les relecteurs anonymes pour leurs remarques qui m’ont été précieuses. J’ai présenté une première version de cet article en 2013 lors du Congrès de la ESHHS (European Society for the History of the Human Sciences) qui s’est tenu à l’université de Würzburg. Les recherches menées pour la rédaction de cet article ont été rendues possibles grâce aux bourses accordées par le Fonds National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique (FNS) et l’Institut Max Planck d’Histoire des Sciences de Berlin (MPIWG).

1 Introduction

1 On considère souvent le psychologue belge Albert Michotte (1881-1965) comme l’un des principaux représentants de la phénoménologie expérimentale. Dans l’introduction de son récent Handbook for Experimental Phenomenology, la psychologue italienne Liliana Albertazzi n’hésite pas à lui accorder une place éminente au sein de cette discipline : Il existe principalement deux versions « classiques » de la phénoménologie : la version husserlienne et la version expérimentale de Stumpf et Michotte. [Albertazzi 2013, 1]1

2 Comme l’observe Albertazzi, c’est la version husserlienne de la phénoménologie qui l’a emporté : la phénoménologie s’est imposée comme une théorie philosophique. Au cours des dernières décennies, Albertazzi, ainsi que d’autres chercheurs, ont beaucoup contribué à ramener au premier plan cette autre branche de la phénoménologie, qui s’est développée dans le cadre de la psychologie expérimentale. Au regard de ce rôle fondateur qui lui est reconnu, il est toutefois surprenant de découvrir qu’Albert Michotte n’a adopté le terme de phénoménologie expérimentale que sur le tard. En m’appuyant sur des archives non dépouillées jusqu’ici, comme la correspondance, les interventions non publiées et les cours de Michotte, les thèses de doctorat qu’il a dirigées, ainsi que ses notes de lecture, je me propose de suivre la manière dont a

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évolué l’usage que Michotte a fait du terme de « phénoménologie expérimentale », les implications du choix de ce terme ainsi que l’interprétation qu’il en a donnée.

3 Les éditeurs de ce numéro consacré aux « limites du naturalisme : contrainte expérimentale et exigence phénoménologique » estiment que les approches phénoménologiques ont été majoritaires dans la psychologie scientifique de langue allemande entre 1890 et 1930. Ils observent également que la phénoménologie est à présent de retour dans certaines pratiques expérimentales en psychologie. Dans la période sur laquelle je vais me pencher dans cet article, qui va des années 1910 aux années 1960, je me concentre sur ce qui se passe entre cette prise d’envol initiale et la récente résurgence observée. Dans cette période intermédiaire, la phénoménologie fait souvent l’objet d’un certain dédain de la part des psychologues expérimentaux. J’examinerai les différents rôles que le terme de « phénoménologie » a été amené à jouer dans l’œuvre de Michotte en les situant dans le contexte d’une recomposition du paysage de la phénoménologie et de la psychologie à cette période. Cet examen permettra d’entrevoir les problèmes soulevés par la communication entre les différentes disciplines (la philosophie et la psychologie expérimentale) et les écoles psychologiques dans lesquelles ce concept a été à la fois employé et débattu, ainsi que la manière originale dont Michotte a essayé de les dépasser : cette communication demandait un véritable travail de traduction. Il permettra enfin de mieux comprendre la contribution de Michotte au processus qui a conduit à faire reconnaître la phénoménologie expérimentale comme une « version classique de la phénoménologie ».

2 Phénoménologie expérimentale : une dénomination tardive et controversée

2.1 Une dénomination tardive

4 Si, dans les présentations que l’on a pu faire de la phénoménologie expérimentale, Albert Michotte apparaît comme une figure majeure de la discipline, c’est entre autres pour avoir clairement revendiqué l’étiquette de « phénoménologie expérimentale » afin de décrire son approche dans le champ de la psychologie expérimentale de la perception, et pour en avoir donné une définition détaillée. Cette définition s’applique à la méthode qu’il avait employée lors de ses recherches sur l’impression de causalité, annoncées en 1929 [Michotte 1929], cf. infra, et amorcées en 19392. Toutefois, ce n’est que plusieurs décennies après le début de ces recherches que Michotte adoptera le terme de « phénoménologie expérimentale » pour caractériser son approche. De fait, la première occurrence de ces deux mots accolés et employés en référence explicite à sa méthode, figure à ma connaissance dans un texte que Michotte écrivit en 1961, l’année de ses quatre-vingts ans. Il s’agit d’un long article-bilan dans lequel, aiguillonné par la volonté de clarifier autant que possible la nature de ses recherches, il livrait une nouvelle synthèse du travail effectué au cours des décennies précédentes. Cet article était conçu comme un appendice, intitulé « Theory of Phenomenal Causality – New Perspectives », à la traduction anglaise de son livre La Perception de la causalité [Michotte 1946], dont la parution était prévue pour 1963 [Michotte 1963]. Une version française du même article fut par ailleurs intégrée à un recueil paru en 1962, intitulé Causalité, Permanence, et Réalité Phénoménales. Études de psychologie expérimentale, qui rassemblait

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les travaux effectués par Michotte et son laboratoire dans la continuité des conceptions exposées en 19463.

5 Dans son projet de recherche sur la perception de la causalité mécanique, Michotte étudiait des perceptions causales qu’il nommait « effet lancement » et « effet entraînement », ainsi que plusieurs dizaines d’autres perceptions du même ordre, comme celle de l’« effet outil ». Les impressions de ce type sont des perceptions de relations fonctionnelles entre mobiles. De nombreuses perceptions de relations fonctionnelles présentent une structure cinétique perceptive caractéristique qui peut être décrite précisément. Cette structure cinétique perçue dépend de systèmes de stimulations bien déterminés et de lois identifiables de l’organisation perceptive. À l’époque, l’idée que des significations de ce type soient directement données dans la perception n’allait pas de soi4 : la vision empiriste selon laquelle nous ne percevons, dans les cas décrits précédemment, qu’une succession de mouvements, faisait l’objet d’un large consensus [Michotte 1946]. Les psychologues de la Gestalt avaient bien proposé de considérer les relations causales comme un phénomène de Gestalt d’un ordre plus complexe [Michotte & Thinès 1966], mais personne n’avait encore mené d’expériences systématiques sur le sujet.

6 Le terme de « phénoménologie expérimentale » ne figurait pas dans les premières publications de Michotte portant sur les perceptions causales. Bien qu’il ait posé la question, dans son premier article publié sur ce sujet, en 1941, de savoir si « [l]a causalité physique est [...] une donnée phénoménale » [Michotte 1941], et qu’il se soit ainsi donné pour thème explicite l’étude du donné phénoménal, il ne présentait pas ses recherches elles-mêmes comme relevant de la phénoménologie (expérimentale). Cette expression ne trouvait pas davantage de place dans la première édition de son livre, publiée juste après la guerre en 1946. Lorsqu’il commença, dans les années cinquante, à mentionner la phénoménologie – par exemple dans un essai autobiographique destiné à la célèbre série History of Psychology in Autobiography – c’était en référence à ses thèmes de recherche : la causalité phénoménale, la perception de la permanence, la réalité phénoménale étaient tous « des problèmes fondamentaux de la phénoménologie » [Michotte 1952, 227]. De même, il présentait le travail effectué dans les années 1940 comme portant « sur la phénoménologie » [Michotte 1952, 235]. À la suite de cette publication, on constate que c’est de plus en plus souvent comme phénoménologue, ou tout au moins comme quelqu’un qui faisait de la phénoménologie, qu’il était cité par les commentateurs5. Nulle part pourtant ses textes imprimés ne faisaient mention d’une quelconque « méthode phénoménologique ».

7 Elle figurait en revanche dans la thèse de doctorat (non publiée) d’un des étudiants de Michotte, John F. Burke (ou R. P. Luke Burke O.F.M.). Intitulée Phenomenal Permanence with Tunnel Effect, cette thèse (soutenue le 28 février 1951) vit le jour dans le cadre du projet sur la perception de la causalité mené par le laboratoire de Michotte. Un exemplaire corrigé en a été conservé6. Chacun des effets phénoménaux étudiés par Burke faisait l’objet d’un examen en deux temps : tout d’abord dans le cadre d’une section intitulée « analyse phénoménologique des résultats », puis dans une section qui se nommait à l’origine « analyse mathématique ». L’adjectif « mathématique » fut barré et remplacé, de la main même de Michotte, par « analyse quantitative » ou « analyse numérique des résultats » [Burke 1951, 17]. L’expression d’« analyse phénoménologique » a subsisté en revanche telle quelle. Il s’agissait d’une section dans laquelle l’expérimentateur classait les nombreuses descriptions spontanées fournies

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par les participants à l’aide d’un nombre réduit de catégories déduites à partir de la formulation et des tournures utilisées [Burke 1951, 9–12]. Toutefois, les notions introduites dans la thèse via les titres intermédiaires ne figuraient pas dans l’article publié l’année suivante [Burke 1952]. Ceci laisse supposer que le terme « analyse phénoménologique » était occasionnellement utilisé par les membres du laboratoire pour désigner un élément de la méthode globale, mais qu’ils avaient tendance à l’éviter dans leurs publications.

8 Quelques années plus tard, dans la nouvelle préface à la deuxième édition de son livre, Michotte fit le choix de présenter son travail comme étant « d’ordre purement phénoménologique ». S’il souscrivait à une perspective phénoménologique, c’était alors essentiellement en réaction aux interprétations épistémologiques de son travail. Dans le même temps, la description en trois étapes qu’il donnait ensuite de sa recherche mettait clairement en évidence sa nature expérimentale. Mais il n’était pas pour autant question de « phénoménologie expérimentale » : Le titre de l’ouvrage a suscité quelques malentendus, en ce sens que d’aucuns lui ont attribué une portée épistémologique qui ne correspondait nullement à notre façon de voir, ni à nos intentions. [...] De fait, nous avons toujours considéré ce travail comme étant d’ordre purement phénoménologique, au sens que les psychologues de l’école expérimentale donnent à ce mot. [Michotte 1954, v]7

9 L’usage que faisait Michotte de la dichotomie entre phénoménologie et épistémologie faisait référence à une phase bien antérieure de sa carrière scientifique : dans les années précédant la première guerre mondiale, Michotte avait en effet montré beaucoup moins de réticences à situer son activité dans le champ de la phénoménologie. Au début de sa carrière de professeur de psychologie expérimentale, il avait utilisé le terme « phénoménologique » comme synonyme d’« empirique ». Son intention était alors de distinguer l’approche qui était la sienne en tant que psychologue expérimental de celles, épistémologiques et métaphysiques, suivies par ses collègues philosophes de l’Institut supérieur de philosophie de l’Université catholique de Louvain – le même institut où il avait fait ses études et qui devait, tout au long de sa carrière, abriter son laboratoire. La conférence qu’il donna à la Société philosophique des professeurs à l’Institut de philosophie en 1912 sur le thème du « moi empirique » est à cet égard éloquente [Michotte 1912]. Michotte prenait pour objet le concept d’intuition directe du moi sur lequel certains systèmes philosophiques étaient fondés, et il se proposait de le soumettre à une analyse empirique. Il s’appuyait, pour étayer cette réflexion sur le moi empirique, sur des expériences sur le choix volontaire qu’il avait menées peu auparavant [Michotte & Prüm 1910]. Son message était alors sans ambiguïté : « Je veux rester sur le terrain de la phénoménologie pure » [Michotte 1912, 2]. La méthode qu’il proposait dans ce contexte était celle de l’introspection systématique. Il expliquait comment, grâce à cette méthode développée peu de temps auparavant par les membres de l’École de Würzburg, il était possible d’aller au-delà des observations occasionnelles sur lesquelles étaient fondées la plupart des études antérieures et d’entreprendre une étude systématique dans des conditions contrôlées et en répétant les expériences sur plusieurs individus [Michotte 1912, 4]. Après la guerre, Michotte perdit confiance en la méthode d’introspection systématique et semble avoir longtemps évité d’utiliser le terme de phénoménologie pour décrire ses recherches.

10 Lorsqu’en 1961, il introduisit, pour de bon cette fois, l’expression de « phénoménologie expérimentale », c’était dans un sens très spécifique : il ne s’agissait plus seulement de

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donner une idée de la nature de ses thèmes de recherche, de donner l’orientation générale de son travail ou encore de se démarquer de la philosophie ; il ne s’agissait pas davantage, comme cela avait encore été le cas dans la thèse de Burke, d’une méthode partielle ou d’une forme de « propédeutique à la psychologie ou aux sciences naturelles8 » (c’était dans ces termes qu’il présentait dans ses cours la pensée de Carl Stumpf). Le terme de « phénoménologie expérimentale » s’appliquait désormais à l’ensemble de son programme de recherche en psychologie expérimentale. Il choisit donc ce terme afin de désigner une méthodologie de recherche bien déterminée, dont il décrivait les étapes successives, logique et expérimentale, et qu’il situait clairement dans le champ de la psychologie scientifique, de manière à la distinguer d’autres approches.

11 Employée tardivement, l’expression de « phénoménologie expérimentale » s’appliquait à une méthode déjà rodée : elle présentait donc un caractère rétroactif. Ses débuts furent timides : quand le terme fut utilisé pour la première fois en 1961, c’était entre parenthèses, et comme synonyme de « phénoménologie psychologique ». Il s’agit d’un passage dans lequel Michotte proposait plusieurs termes plus ou moins équivalents dans un souci de clarté. C’est pourquoi [i.e., en raison de malentendus antérieurs] nous croyons souhaitable de préciser ici le point de vue de la phénoménologie psychologique (ou expérimentale) tel que nous le concevons. [Michotte 1962, 10]

12 Dans la suite du texte, comme dans plusieurs documents datant de la même année, Michotte semblait clairement opter pour le terme de phénoménologie expérimentale.

13 Si tardif et hésitant qu’ait été son lancement, la nouvelle dénomination bénéficiait d’un contexte qui lui assura une certaine visibilité. À l’exception de quelques textes choisis traduits en espagnol et d’une petite poignée d’articles publiés en anglais, la plupart des textes de Michotte parus jusqu’alors n’étaient en effet disponibles qu’en français. Or, le texte dans lequel il définit la phénoménologie expérimentale parue à la fois en anglais et en français. De plus, Michotte disposait alors d’un ambassadeur efficace en la personne de Georges Thinès (1923), l’un de ses derniers étudiants et collaborateurs. Thinès écrivit des textes consacrés à la phénoménologie expérimentale de Michotte9 et il se révéla être un défenseur infatigable et pugnace de la phénoménologie expérimentale en tant que psychologie engageant une réflexion sur ses propres fondations épistémologiques [Thinès 1961]. Thinès joua ainsi un rôle important pour donner une visibilité à ce nouveau « label » : alors que, par exemple, aucune des études publiées du vivant de Michotte ne comportait dans son titre l’expression « phénoménologie expérimentale », le recueil de traductions anglaises de ses derniers travaux, publié en 1991 sous la direction de Thinès, d’Alan Costall et de George Butterworth, s’intitule Albert Michotte’s Experimental Phenomenology of Perception.

14 Pourquoi Michotte s’est-il montré si longtemps réticent à se réclamer ouvertement d’une approche phénoménologique ? La reconstitution des conditions dans lesquelles il a choisi de recourir à un nouveau terme pour qualifier un champ de recherche ouvert plusieurs décennies auparavant, tout comme l’examen des différents rôles que ce terme a été amené à jouer, mettent en lumière les difficultés auxquelles s’était heurté le projet de phénoménologie expérimentale. Ils permettent également de comprendre les espoirs qui reposaient sur elle et les types de solutions qu’elle était censée apporter à la psychologie.

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2.2 Une étiquette controversée

15 Lorsqu’en 1961 Michotte présenta sa méthode comme une phénoménologie expérimentale, on ne peut pas dire qu’il ait recouru à un terme particulièrement populaire en psychologie scientifique. Qu’attendait-il de cette nouvelle étiquette ? Il s’agissait tout d’abord de se rattacher à la longue lignée des psychologues qui, au cours de l’histoire de la discipline, avaient cherché à développer une phénoménologie empirique ou expérimentale (tradition à laquelle s’attachaient notamment les noms de Franz Brentano, Carl Stumpf, David Katz, Edgar Rubin ainsi que ceux des psychologues de la Gestalt). Michotte situait clairement ses recherches dans la lignée de la Gestalt psychologie [Michotte 1963, 308]. Toutefois, de ce vaste champ de recherches, le choix du terme « phénoménologie expérimentale » isolait délibérément un aspect particulier : ce qui était mis en avant, c’était l’exploration expérimentale des structures perceptives et de l’émergence de la signification dans la perception, par opposition à une recherche qui se serait concentrée sur leur isomorphisme psychophysiologique10. Michotte prenait ainsi ses distances avec une étiquette gestaltiste que beaucoup de psychologues considéraient alors comme une méthode qui avait échoué. La phénoménologie expérimentale telle que la concevait Michotte était à la fois plus sélective et plus englobante, ce qui permettait d’élargir son spectre.

16 Il n’en reste pas moins qu’en 1961, le terme de phénoménologie expérimentale était tout sauf neutre. Il n’était plus possible de l’utiliser comme une simple référence à l’approche expérimentale pratiquée par les psychologues dans la lignée de Carl Stumpf et des psychologues de la Gestalt : l’emploi de ce terme par Michotte était voué à la polémique. Le terme était en effet lesté de connotations extrêmement négatives, en particulier dans la psychologie américaine, où il semble avoir été moins utilisé par les psychologues de la Gestalt eux-mêmes11 que par leurs adversaires. Edwin G. Boring (1886-1968), qui était alors le directeur du laboratoire de psychologie de l’université de Harvard, livra ses vues sur le sujet en 1933 : L’auteur n’a rien contre la phénoménologie expérimentale tant qu’elle se borne à être une méthode temporaire à laquelle recourt une science encore à ses débuts. [...] La phénoménologie ne fournit pas à l’analyse de catégories stables. Par conséquent, elle fait peser le risque d’une multiplication chaotique de termes descriptifs qui serait fatale à la classification systématique nécessaire au bon fonctionnement d’une science. [Boring 1933, 21-22]

17 Comme on peut le percevoir à la lumière de cette citation, beaucoup de psychologues avaient fini par associer le terme de phénoménologie expérimentale – utilisé ici en référence explicite au travail des psychologues de la Gestalt – à une pratique assez peu scientifique de la psychologie : elle se résumait à une approche chaotique, purement descriptive et dépourvue de tout pouvoir prédictif. Dans le passage cité, Boring, un ancien élève de Edward B. Titchener (1867-1927), ne faisait que relayer les attaques de ce dernier contre la phénoménologie, qu’il estimait dépourvue de tout caractère scientifique et forcément suspecte sur le plan épistémologique12.

18 Deux décennies plus tard, une lettre adressée à Michotte par le psychologue de la Gestalt Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967) faisait écho à cette image négative auprès de nombreux psychologues. Michotte lui paraissait l’un des seuls à avoir su, tout en pratiquant une approche phénoménologique, éviter les fourvoiements typiques de ce type de démarche :

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La plupart des psychologues qui se sont essayés à l’approche phénoménologique se sont enlisés dans des développements fastidieux et sans conséquences réelles. Ton article ne s’écarte pas un seul instant des enjeux vraiment essentiels et décisifs.13

19 Il existait alors plusieurs écoles de « psychologie phénoménologique ». Il y avait la psychologie phénoménologique pratiquée aux Pays-Bas par l’École d’Utrecht dans les années quarante et cinquante autour de Frederik Buytendijk (1887-1974). Michotte entretenait des liens étroits avec Buytendijk, qu’il avait convié à enseigner à Louvain plusieurs années en tant que professeur invité. L’approche des psychologues d’Utrecht n’en était pas moins très différente de la sienne. D’après Van Hezewijk et Stam, l’une des ambitions principales de la psychologie phénoménologique dans sa version utrechtoise était « de faire entrer la phénoménologie et l’existentialisme français et allemand dans les sciences humaines » [van Hezewijk & Stam 2008, 187]. Leur phénoménologie était donc plutôt celle d’Edmund Husserl, de Max Scheler, de Karl Jaspers [van Hezewijk & Stam 2008, 186].

20 Au cours des années cinquante et soixante, l’approche phénoménologique fit aussi une entrée timide au sein de la psychologie américaine. Robert Kugelmann s’est penché sur les différentes versions qui circulaient alors dans le milieu des psychologues catholiques, dont il a montré par ailleurs les liens avec l’École de Louvain. Selon lui, ces psychologues entendaient « ne plus limiter la base empirique de la psychologie aux approches expérimentales [...]. Ils entendaient lui donner un sens empirique au sens large, celui que lui donnait la phénoménologie » [Kugelmann 2011, 114], [Kugelmann 2005]. Les promoteurs de ce type de psychologie phénoménologique n’avaient pas nécessairement une grande inclination pour la recherche expérimentale.

21 L’intérêt accru que portaient les psychologues à la phénoménologie philosophique reflétait la montée en puissance de la phénoménologie en philosophie au même moment. L’Institut de philosophie où travaillait Michotte ne fut pas le dernier touché par la vague. Lorsque Herman Leo Van Breda y apporta les archives Husserl en 1938 [Breda 1959], l’Institut devint un passage obligé pour beaucoup de philosophes gagnés à la phénoménologie. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, par exemple, vint y consulter les Archives Husserl à plusieurs reprises et donna, à l’occasion d’une de ces visites, une conférence sur la perception dans le laboratoire de Michotte [Vergote & Taminiaux 1990]. La phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty s’est développée dans un dialogue constant avec les résultats de la psychologie expérimentale (telle que l’illustraient Michotte, les psychologues de la Gestalt ou Jean Piaget) [Merleau-Ponty 2011], ce qui rendait pour certains sa psychologie phénoménologique difficile à situer : était-elle une philosophie ou une psychologie scientifique ? (Voir par exemple [Strasser 1951].) Ce qui était clair, en revanche, c’est que l’Institut supérieur de philosophie était devenu un centre actif d’études phénoménologiques. Avant même l’arrivée des Archives Husserl, les équipes de ce centre de philosophie néo-scolastique avaient montré un vif intérêt pour la phénoménologie14. Dès 1910, soit peu après les séjours de recherche de Michotte au laboratoire de Würzburg en 1907 et 1908, et sa découverte, par l’entremise d’Oswald Külpe, de « l’œuvre de Brentano, Mach, Meinong, Husserl, Stumpf, von Ehrenfels et d’autres encore » [Michotte 1952, 214-215]15, son ami et collègue Léon Noël avait souligné l’importance de la phénoménologie [Noel 1910]. À partir de cette date, l’Institut avait suivi de près les nouveaux développements de la phénoménologie. Dans la foulée, plusieurs tentatives de comparaison entre philosophie phénoménologique et néo-scolastique virent le jour [Waelhens 1936], [Riet 1957].

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22 Le fait que Michotte ait été rattaché à l’Institut de philosophie de Louvain a pu, en ce sens, encourager à revendiquer le terme de phénoménologie pour caractériser son travail, mais cela a aussi induit une certaine confusion. Lorsqu’il choisit finalement l’appellation de phénoménologie (expérimentale), Michotte dut entreprendre un sérieux travail d’élagage pour en circonscrire le sens. Il ne se servit pas de ce mot pour qualifier sa méthode au cours des années trente et quarante, qui furent pourtant une époque faste pour la phénoménologie à Louvain. L’expression n’apparaît pas dans les premières présentations de son travail sur la causalité. La proximité induite par Louvain paraît donc dans un premier temps l’avoir plutôt conduit à prendre ses distances avec le terme de phénoménologie. Par la suite, il semble avoir résolu de le reprendre à son compte, mais cette fois dans le sens que le mot avait pour lui en tant que psychologue, en se démarquant donc clairement de son acception philosophique.

23 Lorsque les philosophes s’étaient emparés du terme, les psychologues appartenant aux courants majoritaires de la discipline n’avaient pas spécialement tenté de leur en disputer l’usage. C’est donc dans un contexte où, aux yeux d’une grande partie de son entourage, la phénoménologie était assimilée soit à la phénoménologie husserlienne, soit à de la mauvaise psychologie scientifique, que Michotte choisit de mettre en avant l’expression de phénoménologie expérimentale. Le geste était audacieux et appelait des éclaircissements : il allait falloir établir précisément ce qu’était cette phénoménologie expérimentale dont il se réclamait, et ce qu’elle n’était pas.

3 Définir la phénoménologie expérimentale en 1961

24 Michotte écrivait en 1961 : [N]ous croyons souhaitable de préciser ici le point de vue de la phénoménologie psychologique (ou expérimentale) tel que nous le concevons. [Michotte 1962, 10]

25 Dans les pages suivantes, il décrivait les différentes étapes qui structuraient cette approche16. Ces explications visaient clairement le lectorat anglo-saxon, public réputé acquis au (néo-)béhaviorisme et censé nourrir également certains préjugés à l’égard des approches phénoménologiques.

26 Dans un premier temps, il s’agissait de rechercher les conditions expérimentales les plus simples dans lesquelles on obtenait d’un sujet une réponse de type causal (par exemple, une phrase comme « Je vois un objet A qui heurte un objet B et le met en mouvement » qui exprime clairement une relation causale entre les objets). Dans un deuxième temps, les conditions de la stimulation étaient systématiquement modifiées, afin d’étudier la relation entre ces changements et d’éventuelles modifications des réponses causales concernant leur fréquence et leurs « nuances qualitatives » [Michotte 1959, 17]. Jusqu’à ce stade de la recherche, Michotte écrivait : [I]l n’y aurait aucune différence pratique dans l’interprétation des résultats selon que l’on se place à un point de vue strictement behaviouriste ou à un point de vue phénoménologique, puisque les réponses se bornent à signaler la présence ou l’absence d’événements X différenciés par le sujet. [Michotte 1962, 18]

27 À l’instar de n’importe quel comportement, les réponses verbales pouvaient être utilisées comme des « réactifs différentiels », c’est-à-dire comme indiquant simplement « si un sujet perçoit un événement X, ou non, dans telle ou telle situation expérimentale » [Michotte 1962, 14]. Michotte admettait que ce que le sujet perçoit restait forcément une inconnue. Toutefois, insistait-il, il en apprend déjà beaucoup au

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psychologue lorsqu’il indique si ce qu’il voit est similaire à ce qu’il a vu à un stade antérieur de l’expérience, ou s’il en diffère. Cet usage des réponses verbales était, d’après Michotte, commun à toutes les expériences psychophysiques [Michotte 1962, 14]. Michotte, par contre, considérait comme centrale la question « de savoir dans quelle mesure et par quels moyens il est possible d’utiliser les réponses verbales » [Michotte 1962, 14], afin d’en savoir plus sur la manière dont les sujets perçoivent certaines situations physiques. Il soutenait alors qu’il était possible d’utiliser les réponses verbales « d’une manière plus enrichissante » [Michotte 1962, 14] qu’en les traitant simplement comme des réponses différentielles.

28 Pour Michotte, rien à ces deux stades ne distinguait son approche de celle des béhavioristes. Mais en introduisant l’étape suivante, il affirmait : on peut, adoptant délibérément le point de vue de la phénoménologie expérimentale, tenter de dépasser les stades précédents en essayant d’atteindre certaines propriétés caractéristiques de la structure des événements X. [Michotte 1962, 18, je souligne]

29 Michotte présentait son traitement des réponses verbales comme étant tout à fait caractéristique de l’approche phénoménologique qu’il revendiquait désormais. Au lieu de considérer la manière dont le sujet rapporte ce qu’il voit comme une interprétation de ce qui est vu, Michotte adoptait l’hypothèse de travail selon laquelle les réponses verbales constituent des descriptions, c’est-à-dire « tradui[sen]t littéralement » ou « rapporte[nt] fidèlement » la manière dont le sujet voit les événements se dérouler [Michotte 1962, 18-19], voir aussi [Michotte 1954, 220]. la réponse verbale n’exprimerait donc pas une interprétation, mais aurait une valeur descriptive, indiquant que, pour le sujet, ce qu’il voit se produire dans la fente est spécifiquement différent dans les deux cas : ou bien deux événements successifs indépendants, ou bien au contraire un seul événement complexe qui ne pourrait s’exprimer correctement, dans l’opinion du sujet, qu’en utilisant des mots à signification causale. [Michotte 1962, 19, je souligne]

30 Michotte ne niait pas que l’acte de décrire implique un travail de la part du sujet : il parlait même à ce propos d’invention ou de découverte. Il notait aussi que les capacités langagières et l’étendue du vocabulaire jouaient un rôle, en aidant le sujet à trouver la manière la plus précise et la plus complète de verbaliser un événement [Michotte 1959, 22]. D’autre part, tout en insistant sur la valeur descriptive des réponses du sujet, Michotte précisait bien que cela n’impliquait en aucun cas que les mots permettaient d’imaginer ou de représenter ce qui était perçu par autrui : le perçu restait nécessairement une inconnue. Toutefois, maintenait-il, les mots choisis par le sujet peuvent nous renseigner sur certaines caractéristiques de la structure du phénomène x [Michotte 1959, 24].

31 Les réponses verbales fournies par les participants constituaient une variable observable de l’expérience à partir de laquelle il était possible, selon Michotte, de saisir certaines caractéristiques des phénomènes expérimentés. Lorsqu’on étudie les réponses verbales, [l]es indications qu’elles fournissent peuvent en effet amener l’expérimentateur à concevoir certaines hypothèses relatives aux propriétés des phénomènes X, Y, Z. [...] Et ces hypothèses étant formulées, on peut alors combiner des situations expérimentales appropriées permettant de contrôler leur validité et arriver ainsi, en fin de compte, à l’introduction de nouvelles distinctions, à la formation de nouveaux concepts, à la formulation de nouvelles lois, s’appliquant exclusivement au « monde phénoménal ». [Michotte 1962, 14]

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32 De l’aveu même de Michotte, l’utilisation de l’information contenue dans les réponses verbales en vue de faire émerger de nouvelles hypothèses n’était pas neuve. « C’est ce qu’ont réalisé en grande partie des psychologues de l’école de la Gestalt et bien d’autres qui leur ont succédé » [Michotte 1962, 14]. Mais il était désormais possible de pousser plus loin l’application de cette méthode grâce à un nouveau dispositif expérimental, et en particulier à l’aide d’instruments permettant la présentation variée et contrôlée d’événements dynamiques.

33 Comme cela avait déjà été le cas en 1929 lorsqu’il avait présenté pour la première fois son nouveau projet de recherche dans un discours en séance plénière prononcé lors du Congrès international de psychologie à l’université de Yale17, Michotte proclamait en 1962 sa dette aussi bien à l’égard de la psychologie béhavioriste que de celle de l’école de la Gestalt. Sa propre approche, expliquait-il, constituait un dépassement de l’un comme de l’autre courant. Michotte reconnaissait au béhaviorisme le mérite d’avoir recentré la psychologie sur les actes, mais reprochait à beaucoup d’études comportementales de passer sous silence le rôle de la perception, alors même que c’est elle qui déclenche et guide l’action. Il soulignait que l’expérimentateur qui souhaitait aller au-delà d’un niveau élémentaire d’expériences psychophysiques devait impérativement prendre en compte la manière dont le sujet percevait la structure et le sens d’une situation de stimulation, comme le sens qu’a pour lui sa propre réaction, sous peine d’échouer à définir de manière satisfaisante son propre dispositif18.

34 Michotte rendait aussi hommage aux intuitions révolutionnaires de la Gestalt psychologie, tout en proposant de pousser les choses plus loin, d’aller au-delà des structures statiques ou de l’étude de mouvements considérés pour eux-mêmes et de s’attaquer expérimentalement à la perception d’événements dynamiques [Michotte 1954, 4], [Michotte, discours de Yale]. L’analyse d’événements dynamiques était pour lui capitale, dans la mesure où c’était le type d’expérience le plus approprié à l’étude de la perception des phases de transition. Ces expériences devaient permettre de mieux comprendre la perception dans son fonctionnement dynamique. Son argument était le suivant. Toute modification du système de stimulation entraîne une réorganisation de la structure perceptive. Or celle-ci n’est pas instantanée. Les phases de transition lors desquelles s’effectue cette réorganisation sont au cœur de l’étude des impressions causales. Il s’agit en l’espèce du bref instant, juste après l’impact, au cours duquel la structure perceptive antérieure entre en conflit avec celle qui est suscitée par la nouvelle constellation de stimuli [Michotte 1962, 56-57]. La manière dont le conflit est résolu durant cette courte phase de transition produit une impression caractéristique qui relie l’événement et le dote d’une signification spécifique. Les nuances du langage employées par les sujets pour décrire leurs impressions sont ici un instrument très utile [Michotte 1959, 22], non seulement parce qu’elles permettent de savoir quelles structures perçues sont différentes les unes des autres, mais aussi parce qu’elles donnent des indices sur la nature de ces différences. L’être humain parlant, observait Michotte, semble être le seul « instrument » capable d’une détection aussi fine, et de réponses aussi différenciées à des variations de signification aussi infimes [Michotte 1962, 12].

35 Les trois étapes suivantes de son exposé étaient consacrées à l’étude des relations précises entre les propriétés des structures perceptives, les formulations causales et les conditions expérimentales [Michotte 1962, 21]. Il s’agissait moins d’étapes chronologiques que de stades au cours du déploiement de la logique expérimentale.

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Dans cette méthode, il n’y avait plus de distinction nette entre une partie clairement phénoménologique et une partie expérimentale, comme c’était le cas dans certains projets de recherche où une sorte de « prélude phénoménologique » avait pour fonction d’encadrer ou d’orienter la recherche expérimentale proprement dite. L’approche décrite par Michotte se caractérisait par une étroite interdépendance entre le travail sur les descriptions et l’expérimentation : l’analyse des réponses verbales obtenues lors des expériences était utilisée pour mener de nouvelles expériences visant à la fois à vérifier les hypothèses émises sur la base des réponses et à obtenir plus de détails, lesquels étaient à leur tour utilisés pour mener des expériences visant à obtenir des réponses plus nuancées, et ainsi de suite. Les pages précédentes ont montré que ce travail avait consisté à construire une série d’hypothèses relatives aux structures perceptives correspondant aux réponses d’Entraînement et de Lancement, et à tenter ensuite de justifier expérimentalement ces hypothèses au fur et à mesure de la progression de l’analyse. [Michotte 1962, 61-62]

36 L’analyse phénoménologique et l’expérience étaient ainsi sur un pied d’égalité ; elles marchaient en permanence main dans la main, dans un constant mouvement d’ajustement mutuel.

4 Problèmes de traduction

37 Michotte insistait sur les similitudes que sa méthode présentait avec le béhaviorisme afin de créer des ponts avec son lectorat-cible, en l’occurrence le public anglo-saxon, et de diminuer l’impression d’étrangeté associée pour une vaste frange de ce public au nom qu’il avait choisi. D’autre part, le choix de cette étiquette semble avoir été pour lui un moyen de répondre directement à certaines des critiques qu’on lui avait adressées ou qu’il anticipait.

38 Michotte était familier des critiques communément émises, en psychologie, à l’égard des méthodes phénoménologiques. Il avait eu connaissance de celle, célèbre, de Titchener : des résumés et des annotations de sa main à ce sujet ont été conservés19. Dispersées dans son œuvre, on peut trouver des remarques qui répondent aux critiques visant le manque de cohésion systématique, de pouvoir explicatif ou prédictif de la phénoménologie. Il n’ignorait pas non plus le reproche selon lequel les soi-disant rapports « naïfs » de ce qui est « donné » dans l’expérience sont en réalité inévitablement biaisés épistémologiquement (au sens où ils reflètent forcément davantage les connaissances du sujet, ses croyances, les structures logiques et linguistiques que ce qui est vu). La critique de Tim R. Miles (1923-2008) semble toutefois avoir été une surprise. Tim et Elaine Miles avaient traduit en anglais le livre de Michotte sur La Perception de la causalité. Fortement impliqué dans le projet de faire connaître l’œuvre de Michotte, Tim Miles écrivit également deux essais destinés à figurer en appendice de l’édition anglaise, espérant ainsi, écrivait-il, « contribuer modestement à établir l’importance [de ce] livre pour la philosophie comme pour la psychologie20 ».

39 Le lecteur habitué à voir Michotte mentionné comme l’un des principaux représentants de la phénoménologie expérimentale ne peut qu’éprouver un sentiment de stupéfaction à la lecture de ces textes. Miles y proposait en effet de laisser purement et

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simplement de côté la phénoménologie [Miles 1963]. Miles insistait tout d’abord sur le fait que Michotte proposait une version très particulière de la phénoménologie. Michotte donne un sens particulier au mot phénoménologie en insistant fortement sur la nécessité d’un examen attentif des réponses verbales du sujet. [Miles 1963, 402]

40 Il distinguait la version de Michotte d’autres approches (citant par exemple Koffka [Miles 1963, 402]) dans lesquelles la phénoménologie est synonyme d’« étude de l’expérience perceptive », et auxquelles il reprochait de suggérer trop fortement la croyance en un dualisme entre événements physiques et mentaux. Dans la suite du texte, Miles continuait à mettre en évidence tout ce qui séparait l’approche de Michotte de la phénoménologie dans son acception la plus commune, et tout ce qui l’unissait au contraire aux béhavioristes ou néo-béhavioristes. Non seulement sa version particulière de la phénoménologie diffère de celle de philosophes comme Husserl, mais sa parenté avec le néo-béhaviorisme saute aux yeux. [Miles 1963, 403]

41 Miles concluait en suggérant qu’il serait parfaitement possible de reformuler le programme de recherche de Michotte en supprimant complètement toute allusion à la phénoménologie. Pour conclure, il me paraît possible d’envisager une refonte conceptuelle du texte qui en préserverait les aspects essentiels, tout en renonçant au concept de « phénoménologie ». [Miles 1963, 408-409]

42 Dans son désir de rendre l’œuvre de Michotte accessible au public anglo-saxon, Miles ne se contentait donc pas de le traduire : il tentait aussi de la mettre – conceptuellement – au goût du lecteur britannique ou américain, réputé, dit-il, pour « nourrir des inclinations pour le béhaviorisme [...] tout au moins dans la mesure où il refuse de prendre pour objet de travail “l’expérience consciente” » [Miles 1963, 402]. C’est ainsi que Miles en venait à minimiser l’importance de l’étiquette de « phénoménologie expérimentale ».

43 Miles envoya à Michotte un premier jet de son texte en octobre 1960, en lui signalant que l’éditeur Methuen était intéressé par l’idée de publier son essai en appendice à la traduction du livre de Michotte. Michotte était bien conscient de l’impact que pourrait avoir l’inclusion, dans son propre livre, d’un texte critiquant la méthode de phénoménologie, signé de la main de son propre traducteur. C’est pourquoi il prit la peine, en janvier 1961, de rédiger une critique de six pages, claire et circonstanciée, de l’essai de Miles. Ce texte a été conservé dans leur correspondance21. Malgré la cordialité dont faisait preuve Michotte, présentant la longueur de sa lettre comme un hommage au dur labeur effectué par Miles pour traduire son livre, le ton de sa lettre était ferme, voire, par endroits, empreint d’une certaine stupéfaction devant les malentendus dont témoignait le commentaire de Miles. Malentendus que Michotte attribuait courtoisement à des différences de nuances entre l’anglais et le français concernant la compréhension et l’usage de certains concepts : J’ai eu l’impression, en lisant votre commentaire, [que] le malentendu qui a suscité vos critiques provient de ce que vous avez compris mon point de vue dans le sens d’une sorte de dualisme cartésien qui est aux antipodes de ma pensée. Et ceci est assez étrange, et doit être attribué sans doute à des nuances de compréhension de certains mots, parce que le genre d’objections que vous soulevez n’a pas été fait par d’autres auteurs continentaux, français, allemands, ou italiens, ni parmi les psychologues ni parmi les philosophes, même dans des compte-rendu très étudiés de mon livre. [Michotte 1961, 5]

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44 Pour Michotte, l’une des causes des problèmes rencontrés par le lecteur anglophone était l’usage qu’il faisait de termes comme « apparent », et leur relation aux mots « phénoménal » et « illusion », ou encore d’expressions telles que « monde phénoménal ». Le dialogue engagé avec Miles semble avoir joué un rôle non négligeable dans le choix des thèmes discutés la même année dans son article « Théorie de la causalité phénoménale. Nouvelles Perspectives ». Le traducteur a donc influencé, dans une large mesure, la présentation même que Michotte a donnée de la phénoménologie expérimentale.

45 Tim et Elaine Miles avaient fourni un travail approfondi pour traduire le livre de Michotte, et ils étaient sincèrement intéressés par son travail. Toutefois, le vocabulaire phénoménologique ne semblait leur évoquer que des conceptions stéréotypées de la phénoménologie expérimentale. Telle était en tout cas la perception de Michotte. Les explications qu’il donnait à Miles – plus tard partiellement incluses dans l’article « Nouvelles Perspectives » – convergeaient toutes vers l’idée que sa phénoménologie était une entreprise empirique.

46 C’était sur ce point que Michotte insistait avant tout : « Mon point de vue dans tout le livre est essentiellement empirique » [Michotte 1961, 1]. Cette affirmation rappelle la conférence de 1912 (cf. supra). Toutefois, Michotte avait alors choisi le terme « phénoménologique » pour indiquer que son approche était de nature empirique (par opposition à une approche épistémologique ou métaphysique), tandis qu’en 1961, c’était l’usage même du mot phénoménologique qui appelait désormais des clarifications. Michotte illustrait ce point à Miles en expliquant qu’il travaillait sur deux sortes de données : Lorsque nous abordons en psychologie les problèmes de la perception (ou des « sensations » couleurs, etc.) du point de vue de la phénoménologie expérimentale, nous nous trouvons en présence de deux sortes de données relatives à la même situation : a) Il y a la façon dont le sujet « voit » ce qui l’entoure, la façon dont les choses lui apparaissent, révélée par ses réponses verbales. [...] b) l’expérimentateur dispose également d’une autre sorte de données, permettant de définir « ce qui entoure » le sujet, « la situation dans laquelle il est placé ». Ce sont les données que les méthodes des sciences physiques lui permettent de recueillir. [Michotte 1961, 1– 2, je souligne]

47 Il s’agit là, à ma connaissance, de la toute première occurrence du terme de « phénoménologie expérimentale » sous la plume de Michotte. Celle-ci, expliquait-il, se fonde sur deux ensembles de données clairement délimités : d’une part les réponses verbales fournies par le sujet, d’autre part la situation dans laquelle il est placé, décrite en termes physiques par l’expérimentateur. En expliquant en quoi consiste le premier ensemble de données – les réponses verbales du sujet – Michotte proposait une définition du terme « phénoménal » : Ceci est l’une des données du problème, et c’est à celle-là qu’on donne le nom « phénoménale ». Le terme « phénoménal » s’applique donc aux réponses des sujets qui essaient de communiquer à l’expérimentateur ce qu’ils voient ou ce qu’ils sentent dans une situation donnée, créée par ledit expérimentateur. [Michotte 1961, 1]

48 Étant donné que l’expérience d’autrui représente forcément une inconnue, Michotte insistait sur le fait que seules les réponses du sujet constituent pour l’expérimentateur un matériau observable – et c’est à ces réponses qu’il appliquait le qualificatif de « phénoménal » : les événements tels qu’ils sont vus et exprimés. Il poursuivait :

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Et le « monde phénoménal », c’est le monde de ces communications verbales, et de ce que « voit » le sujet, dans la mesure où cela est révélé par les communications. [Michotte 1961, 1]

49 Afin de prévenir le danger, signalé par Miles, d’une interprétation dualiste de ce passage, Michotte expliquait que, lorsqu’il parlait de monde phénoménal et de monde physique, « le mot monde n’a d’autre sens ici que celui de tout, d’ensemble ; l’ensemble des descriptions que [...] des sujets peuvent donner de ce qu’ils sentent » [Michotte 1961, 1]. Comme Miles persistait à estimer que le mot prêtait à confusion, ils s’accordèrent finalement pour inclure dans le texte une note concernant cet usage du mot « monde ».

50 L’accusation de dualisme toucha Michotte au vif. Fidèle à sa formation néo-scolastique, Michotte avait toujours combattu aussi bien un dualisme cartésien qu’un monisme matérialiste qui dominait la recherche scientifique, défendant pour sa part l’étroite intrication du corps et de l’esprit. Désireux de réfuter ce reproche, il expliqua que son matériau de travail consistait en deux descriptions différentes de la même situation : Les mêmes événements sont par conséquent décrits de deux façons différentes. Ce sont là les « deux mondes » de mon livre : il s’agit alors d’étudier les rapports qui existent entre les variations de l’une et les variations de l’autre. [Michotte 1961, 2]

51 La phénoménologie expérimentale telle qu’il la concevait se proposait d’étudier les relations entre les variations affectant ces deux types de descriptions.

52 Michotte désirait ainsi faire comprendre à Miles que le donné phénoménal ne désignait en aucun cas une impression fuyante et insaisissable ou un hypothétique contenu mental, mais ce qui est donné dans l’expression verbale. Le donné phénoménal n’avait donc pas à être « détecté au moyen d’une sorte d’inspection intérieure » [Michotte 1961, 5], comme le suggérait Miles. Il est bien clair qu’il n’est pas question de détecter le donné phénoménal par une espèce de regard intérieur, puisque phénoménal = la façon dont les choses apparaissent au sujet. Cette conception n’est, à ma connaissance, défendue par personne. [Michotte 1961, 5]

53 De plus, il soulignait que l’objet de la phénoménologie était davantage que de simples « illusions ». [J]e veux souligner la notion très importante que du point de vue empirique, tout au moins, apparence phénoménale n’est pas à confondre avec illusion. [Michotte 1961, 2]

54 Le sens de cette distinction entre apparence phénoménale et illusion est assez facile à comprendre. Dans le cas de certaines apparences, le mouvement phénoménal et le mouvement physique coïncident. Dans d’autres, ce n’est pas le cas. C’est seulement dans ce dernier cas que le mouvement phénoménal peut être qualifié d’« illusoire ». Pour autant, lorsque Miles émettait l’idée qu’il serait plus sûr de rapporter systématiquement le témoignage du sujet sous la forme « c’est comme si » – au lieu de « il y a un mouvement, quelque chose est lancé, etc. », Michotte écartait fermement cette suggestion [Michotte 1961, 3], [Miles 1963, 403]. Pour lui, ce type de reformulation conduisait à passer à côté de l’expérience. Michotte insistait sur le fait que ses analyses se fondaient sur les termes mêmes employés par les participants. S’il arrivait à ces derniers d’utiliser « comme si », c’était dans des circonstances bien particulières, « lorsqu’ils utilisaient une comparaison faisant intervenir quelque chose qui n’était pas présent dans l’expérience. “C’est comme si quelqu’un donnait un coup de pied etc [...]” » [Michotte 1961, 4]. L’expression « comme si » était donc associée à un caractère

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phénoménal spécifique. Faire précéder toutes les déclarations du sujet d’un « comme si » aboutirait par conséquent à une distorsion des données.

55 Or, comme il le signalait lui-même à Miles, Michotte avait mené une série d’expériences importantes qui concernaient précisément la coïncidence et les écarts entre réalité phénoménale et réalité physique [Michotte 1948]. La spécificité de la sphère phénoménale était au centre de ses préoccupations. Confronté, à travers Miles, à une opposition dirigée précisément contre les concepts qui étaient à ses yeux les plus cruciaux, Michotte semble avoir choisi de se montrer aussi direct que possible. C’est probablement dans l’espoir que le choix du nom de phénoménologie expérimentale aurait pour effet de centrer le débat sur ces thèmes qu’il décida de présenter sa recherche sous cette étiquette, au risque de soulever la controverse.

56 Les commentaires de Michotte menèrent apparemment Miles à la conclusion que la phénoménologie expérimentale ne présentait pas de réelles différences avec le béhaviorisme. Dans son texte, il suggéra donc que le nom choisi l’avait été de manière arbitraire – on se rappellera ici qu’il ne figurait pas dans la version originale du livre que Miles avait entrepris de traduire – et qu’on pouvait le laisser purement et simplement de côté : Il me semble possible de rendre compte de ce travail sans aucune référence à la phénoménologie. Un tel compte-rendu n’impliquerait aucun changement fondamental dans les méthodes de recherche mais constituerait seulement une manière différente de rendre compte de celles qui existent déjà. [Miles 1963, 403]

57 Miles suggérait qu’un néo-béhavioriste qualifierait plutôt « les événements x de variables intermédiaires » [intervening variables] suivant l’expression de Skinner, afin d’échapper au « malaise ontologique » qui résulterait du fait d’être contraint de considérer les événements x comme « existant réellement » [Miles 1963, 409-410]. Ces suggestions permettent de prendre la mesure des craintes que suscitait chez Miles l’usage du mot « phénoménologie ». Son malaise était avant tout de nature ontologique : le plus gênant était à ses yeux les soupçons de dualisme dont le texte de Michotte pouvait faire l’objet, ainsi que l’impression qu’il pouvait donner de chercher à réintroduire l’expérience comme objet de recherche en psychologie. Dans le livre même où Michotte introduisait explicitement le terme de phénoménologie expérimentale pour baptiser son approche, son commentateur tentait ainsi de désamorcer ce qu’il percevait comme une bombe susceptible de compromettre la diffusion de l’œuvre de Michotte auprès du public anglo-saxon.

58 Miles n’était pas le seul à pratiquer une stratégie de contournement de la phénoménologie. Si Heller et Lohr ont inclus l’article « Nouvelles Perspectives » dans les deux volumes de traduction en langue allemande des travaux tardifs de Michotte et de ses collaborateurs, ils n’ont pas mentionné la phénoménologie expérimentale dans leur introduction [Michotte, Heller et al. 1982]. On peut interpréter ce fait de différentes manières. Jusqu’à cette date, les seuls articles de Michotte disponibles en allemand étaient des textes plus généraux écrits avec l’aide de Thinès et Geneviève Crabbé pour le monumental Handbuch de Metzger [Michotte & Thinès 1966], [Michotte, Thinès et al. 1966]. Ces articles dressaient un panorama des travaux récents accomplis sur le thème de la perception de la causalité et des compléments amodaux, sans d’ailleurs se limiter à la contribution de Michotte. Ils étaient davantage centrés sur les résultats obtenus et sur les différences entre les théories proposées que sur la méthode même de Michotte. Ces textes, immédiatement postérieurs à la publication de l’article « Nouvelles

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Perspectives », sont les derniers que nous possédions de la main de Michotte. Toutefois, il n’y était pas fait mention de la phénoménologie expérimentale. Pour les psychologues de langue allemande, le nom de Michotte n’était donc pas associé à ce « label ».

59 Le climat qui régnait alors au sein de la psychologie allemande constitue un second élément d’explication. Heller et Lohr ont noté que le travail de Michotte a été généralement perçu comme se situant dans le prolongement de la Gestalt psychologie. S’interrogeant sur les raisons pour lesquelles Michotte avait rencontré « si peu de disciples » [Michotte, Heller et al. 1982, 10] en Allemagne, ils proposaient de prendre en compte la popularité du béhaviorisme dans l’après-guerre : L’une des premières raisons qui vient à l’esprit est la vague béhavioriste et la nécessité pour les Européens de rattraper leur retard en la matière après la deuxième guerre mondiale. On sent clairement que cette phase tire à sa fin. [Michotte, Heller et al. 1982, 10]

60 Au vu d’une telle formation reçue par la plupart des psychologues, qualifier le travail de Michotte de phénoménologie expérimentale pouvait donc difficilement apparaître à une personne animée du désir de la faire connaître au public allemand comme la stratégie la plus efficace.

61 On peut observer des réticences semblables dans les milieux psychologiques français, y compris parmi les psychologues les plus familiers de l’œuvre de Michotte. Paul Fraisse, par exemple, avait été l’élève de Michotte avant de devenir professeur de psychologie expérimentale à la Sorbonne : Fraisse a perpétué la tradition de son maître, mais davantage dans le sens d’une psychologie plus nuancée du comportement humain que d’une phénoménologie expérimentale. L’Italie représente de ce point de vue une exception. En Italie, en effet, la phénoménologie expérimentale était restée populaire dans un certain nombre de laboratoires. Pour les Italiens, le concept le plus emblématique de la recherche de Michotte fut celui de la fenomelogia sperimentale (voir par exemple [Bozzi 1999], [Bozzi en préparation], [Albertazzi 2013]).

5 Conclusion

62 Michotte introduisit le terme de phénoménologie expérimentale en 1961 dans l’un de ses derniers articles, rédigé peu avant sa mort. C’était un baptême tardif, et le terme n’est apparu que dans un seul texte publié. De plus, l’article s’adressait au public auprès duquel les termes choisis par Michotte avaient sans doute le plus de chances de prêter à controverse. C’est ce « label », choisi par Michotte pour définir la recherche accomplie durant les décennies précédentes, que j’ai entrepris d’étudier dans cet article. Je me suis penchée sur le contexte particulier dans lequel cette nouvelle dénomination avait été proposée – celui de la préparation de la traduction anglaise, longtemps attendue, de son livre. J’ai montré comment le traducteur avait poussé Michotte à détailler certaines caractéristiques de sa méthode et comment, de cette façon, il avait pu contribuer à orienter la définition de la phénoménologie expérimentale dans une certaine direction. Ces circonstances jettent une nouvelle lumière sur l’unique définition explicite de la phénoménologie expérimentale qui ait été donnée par un auteur appelé à passer à la postérité comme l’un des principaux représentants de ce courant.

63 Qualifier la psychologie expérimentale qu’il pratiquait de phénoménologie expérimentale était, de la part de Michotte, un geste fort, dont les enjeux étaient considérables.

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Lorsque l’on considère les différents rôles qui furent assignés à ce « label » en fonction des circonstances – il s’agit pour lui tour à tour de se situer à l’intérieur d’une tradition, de se démarquer, de susciter la polémique – ce terme apparaît comme un précieux outil historiographique pour étudier les interactions entre les différentes écoles de psychologie scientifique et les différents courants philosophiques de ce demi-siècle de recherches psychologiques. J’ai choisi d’explorer l’interprétation spécifique que Michotte a donnée à ce terme en prenant au sérieux quelques-unes des critiques auxquelles il a bien voulu réagir.

64 L’étiquette finit par s’imposer. Beaucoup de ceux qui connaissaient le travail de Michotte la jugèrent parfaitement appropriée. Ce qui retarda son apparition, ce fut sans doute le poids excessif des connotations dont était chargée la phénoménologie expérimentale, ainsi que la confusion engendrée autour de ce terme par les différents candidats qui briguaient cette étiquette flexible pour leurs méthodes. Aux yeux de certains, le nom choisi par Michotte pour son approche était propre à en faire ressortir les aspects les plus importants. D’autres, à l’inverse, non moins désireux de promouvoir son travail, adoptèrent une perspective différente et choisirent plutôt, comme on l’a vu, de mettre en avant d’autres aspects de sa recherche et d’éviter l’étiquette de phénoménologie expérimentale qui leur paraissait superflue, ou dont ils craignaient les implications.

65 Les questions liées à la traduction sont au centre de l’œuvre de Michotte : en quel sens la description fournie par le sujet peut-elle être considérée comme une « traduction » en mots du perçu ? En quel sens ces « traductions » sont-elles susceptibles d’offrir un matériau exploitable expérimentalement ? Michotte a lui-même thématisé les difficultés liées à ce type de traduction, en notant l’absence de vocabulaire approprié pour décrire les différences observées, ainsi que la difficulté à distinguer la description de l’interprétation. J’ai choisi, dans le cadre du présent article, de me concentrer sur une autre catégorie de problèmes de traduction en me penchant sur les tentatives auxquelles Michotte s’est livré pour « traduire » son approche – c’est-à-dire, en l’occurrence, pour la rendre accessible à des psychologues dont il était séparé autant par l’environnement intellectuel et les pratiques de recherche que par la langue. L’étiquette de phénoménologie expérimentale participait d’une dernière tentative de traduction de sa propre pensée.

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NOTES

1. Pour plus de travaux sur la phénoménologie expérimentale, voir par exemple [Spiegelberg 1972], [Herzog 1992], [Bozzi 1999]. 2. Pour une introduction générale à son travail sur la causalité, voir les précieuses introductions aux recueils de traductions [Michotte, Thinès et al. 1991], [Michotte, Heller et al. 1982], [Gavin 1972], [Costall 2003] et son propre article autobiographique [Michotte 1952]. Voir [Wagemans, van Lier et al. 2006] pour une appréciation récente de ce travail. 3. L’article est intitulé « Théorie de la causalité phénoménale. Nouvelles perspectives – 1961 » [Michotte 1962]. 4. Pour signification comme mot tabou en psychologie, et en mentionnant Michotte, voir par exemple [Rommetveit 2003]. 5. Par exemple, à l’occasion de la publication de l’essai autobiographique de Michotte, Edwin Boring écrivit à celui-ci que son travail montrait « ce que pouvait être la phénoménologie à son meilleur niveau et sous sa forme la plus productive », Boring à Michotte, Harvard, 3.3.1951, correspondance de Michotte, conservée à la Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l’éducation de l’Université catholique de Louvain, à Louvain-la-Neuve. 6. Cf. [Burke 1951], Phenomenal Permanence with Tunnel Effect. Thèse de doctorat soutenue à Louvain, 28 février 1951. Tapuscrit annoté par Michotte, 130 p., Universiteitsarchief, KU Leuven, Archief Joseph R. Nuttin 124.

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7. Si Michotte s’est bien intéressé tout au long de sa carrière à la portée épistémologique de son travail, voir par exemple Michotte dans [Strasser 1951, 714], il a toujours insisté sur la nature empirique de ses recherches. 8. « De phenomenologie van Stumpf is de propaideuse voor psychologie en natuurwetenschap. » Cours de Michotte 1944 ou 1945. Vergelijkend onderzoek naar voorwerp en methoden der psychologische en physische wetenschappen. [Étude comparée de l’objet et des méthodes des sciences psychologiques et physiques], tapuscript, 98 p., p. 15. Universiteitsarchief, KU Leuven, Archief Nuttin 38. 9. Thinès range Michotte dans la catégorie des phénoménologues expérimentaux [Thinès 1991b]. C’est à ses yeux un héritier « non seulement de Stumpf, mais aussi de von Ehrenfels et de Meinong » [Thinès 1991b, 80]. Il est, dit-il, l’un des seuls psychologues expérimentaux de cette époque à avoir osé se référer à Stumpf et Brentano [Thinès 1977, 88, 168 ff.] « encore que de manière indirecte et au prix de nombreuses concessions aux idées gestaltistes régnantes » [Thinès 1977, 88]. Notons ici l’effort que fait Thinès pour distinguer la phénoménologie expérimentale de la Gestalt psychologie. Voir également [Thinès 1991a]. 10. Voir, au sujet de la manière dont Michotte discutait cet aspect de la Gestalt psychologie, sa correspondance avec le psychologue de l’université de Cambridge Frederic Bartlett où il est question des philosophes de la Gestalt et de leur « biophysique spéculative », Bartlett à Michotte, Cambridge, 29 décembre 1930. Une copie de leur correspondance est conservée à l’Universiteitsarchief, KU Leuven, Archief Nuttin 115–116. L’idée d’un isomorphisme entre événements phénoménaux et cérébraux était trop spéculative pour Michotte. Elle était aussi trop matérialiste pour ce catholique dont la formation avait été marquée par la philosophie néo- scolastique. 11. Bien que le travail des psychologues de la Gestalt soit souvent associé à l’étiquette de « phénoménologie expérimentale », je n’ai pas encore rencontré le terme sous cette forme même dans leurs œuvres. Ils se réfèrent plus volontiers à une « méthode phénoménologique », voir par exemple [Köhler 1939]. 12. Titchener précisait en note : « C’est bien évidemment la phénoménologie de Husserl que j’ai à l’esprit et pas celle de Brentano et de Stumpf » [Titchener 1912, note 9]. Mais son article tendait à étendre à bien d’autres psychologues les accusations portées à l’encontre de la phénoménologie. Titchener continuait « Je ne peux que rappeler mon point de vue sur ce sujet : la phénoménologie – quelle que soit sa forme : phénoménologie de l’esprit, Gegenstands-theorie, science du soi – ne peut pas être réellement scientifique. » 13. « Die meisten Psychologen, die das phänomenologische Vorgehen versucht haben, sind dabei ins weitläufige Reden ohne rechte Konsequenzen geraten. Dein Artikel weicht nicht für einen Augenblick vom Wesentlichen und Entscheidenden ab », Wolfgang Köhler à Albert Michotte, 18 & 24 décembre 1953, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, Archives de la Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l’éducation, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve. 14. Au sujet de la façon dont les néo-scolastiques se sont emparés de l’existentialisme et du destin de ce label, voir [Baring 2014]. 15. Dans la version française que Michotte donnera en 1954 de ce texte autobiographique, Mach ne figure plus dans la liste. 16. Il était déjà arrivé à Michotte par le passé d’exposer les grandes lignes de sa méthode en étapes – brièvement, dans sa préface à [Michotte 1954], et de manière plus détaillée dans [Michotte 1959]. Aucun de ces textes, toutefois, ne faisait mention d’une phénoménologie expérimentale. 17. Voir le manuscrit de préparation de cette intervention, dactylographié et annoté, répertorié sous le titre « Manuscript van Michotte over Perceptie in verband met lezing op Yale-Congres », in : Universiteitsarchief, KU Leuven, Archief Nuttin 122. Jusqu’à présent, on ne connaissait que le résumé de son intervention, publié dans les Actes de la conférence [Michotte 1929].

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18. Cette critique n’est qu’effleurée dans la conférence prononcée à Yale. Dans ses cours, toutefois, Michotte semble s’être montré plus explicite : voir par exemple Cours de Michotte, 1944 ou 1945. Vergelijkend onderzoek naar voorwerp en methoden der psychologische en physische wetenschappen. Chap. 5 : Kritische Studie der Gedragspsychologie [Étude critique du béhaviorisme], Universiteitsarchief, KU Leuven, Archief Nuttin 38. Pour la relation de Michotte avec le béhaviorisme, voir aussi [Costall 2003]. 19. Michotte, Notes sur « Titchener 1912 Prolegomena to a study of introspection », notes manuscrites, Universiteitsarchief, KU Leuven, Archief Nuttin 120. 20. Miles à Michotte, Bangor, 24 octobre 1960, dans la correspondance de Michotte conservée à la Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l’éducation de l’Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve. 21. « Remarque à propos de la note de T. Miles », tapuscrit en annexe à la lettre de Michotte à Miles, Louvain, 9 janvier 1961, Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l’éducation de l’Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve.

RÉSUMÉS

Considéré de nos jours comme l’un des principaux représentants de la phénoménologie expérimentale, le psychologue Albert Michotte (1881-1965) n’a adopté que sur le tard le terme de « phénoménologie expérimentale » pour qualifier sa démarche. Dans cet article, j’étudie l’usage qu’il fait de cette dénomination, les implications de ce choix ainsi que l’interprétation qu’il en a donnée. Je montre, notamment, comment une discussion entre Michotte et le traducteur anglais de son livre, Tim R. Miles, a été importante pour déterminer l’orientation de la seule présentation explicite que Michotte a publiée de sa phénoménologie expérimentale. L’étude des différents rôles que ce terme a été amené à jouer dans l’œuvre de Michotte montre également les problèmes soulevés par la communication entre différentes disciplines (la philosophie et la psychologie expérimentale) et écoles psychologiques dans lesquelles ce concept a été à la fois employé et débattu : cette communication demandait un véritable travail de traduction.

The experimental psychologist Albert Michotte (1881-1965), now often considered as one of the main advocates of an experimental phenomenology, adopted the term experimental phenomenology as a label for his approach only very late in life. In this paper, I study the evolution of Michotte’s use of this label, the implications of his choice of this controversial term, and his particular interpretation of it. I show, in particular, how a discussion between Michotte and the English translator of his book, Tim R. Miles, would to an important degree determine the focus of Michotte’s only explicit presentation of his experimental phenomenology. Studying furthermore the different roles this label of (experimental) phenomenology was to perform in Michotte’s work makes clear how, also more generally, it was part of difficult translation processes between different languages, disciplines (philosophy and experimental psychology) and psychological schools.

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AUTEUR

SIGRID LEYSSEN Centre Alexandre Koyré – EHESS (France), Universität Regensburg (Allemagne)

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Objectifying the Phenomenal in Experimental Psychology: Titchener and Beyond

Gary Hatfield

1 Introduction

1 Experimental psychology arose in the nineteenth century when experimental techniques were applied to the investigation of mental phenomena, especially sensory states. The early applications, at mid-century, included Ernst Heinrich Weber’s and Gustav Fechner’s psychophysical studies of various sensory phenomena and experiments on color perception by Hermann von Helmholtz and others. In the 1880s and 1890s experimental studies multiplied, not only on sensory phenomena but also on reaction times and memory and attention.

2 Together with this expanded application of experimental techniques came methodological literatures on the new approaches. These included focused critiques of psychophysics and wider discussions of the notion of introspection or self-observation [Selbstbeobachtung] (e.g., [Wundt 1888], [Scripture 1899, chap. 1], [Titchener 1912a,b]).

3 At first taking its place in German universities—where Wilhelm Wundt and colleagues at Leipzig and Georg Elias Müller and colleagues at Göttingen trained early generations of experimenters—from 1890 this avowedly “new” psychology grew most rapidly in North America and specifically the United States.

4 In the United States, the experimental psychology of introspection was most closely allied with Edward Bradford Titchener. A classics and philosophy undergraduate at Oxford, he took his doctorate with Wundt at Leipzig and then accepted a position at Cornell University, teaching there from 1892 until his death in 1927. Until at least 1915, he retained a notion of experimental or scientific introspection as the fundamental method of psychology.1 In standard historical surveys (e.g., [Palmer 1999, 48-50]), his approach is characterized as bankrupt. In connection with the imageless thought controversy,

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his methods provided fodder for J. B. Watson [Watson 1913, 163-164] and other detractors who sought to undermine introspectionist and mentalist psychology.

5 This standard story has been challenged in various ways [Beenfeldt 2013, ix], [Hatfield 2002]. My aim here is to follow the development of an approach to perceptual experimentation that arose, at least partly, out of Titchener’s methodological reflections and took on a life of its own. In Titchener’s hands, the methodological topic concerns the “stimulus error”, which (pending closer description) arises when experimental subjects in studies of sensory perception focus on what they think, know, or judge the stimulus object to be, rather than describing or indicating the characteristics of their own perceptual experience.

6 Titchener’s brand of introspection went hand-in-hand with a theoretical conception that sensory experience is constituted out of elements, which include “sensations”. The stimulus error occurs when, in an experiment in psychophysics, subjects describe a stimulus aspect (say, the length of a line) using knowledge or measurement of the objective physical length instead of focusing on their own sensations (phenomenal experience of the line’s length [Titchener 1910, 7, 202]). Titchener’s concerns arose within a theoretical outlook that sought to isolate, as much as is possible, meaningless sensations as the ultimate constituents of integrated perceptions—the line as a black extent, not treated as a mark on a surface.

7 Interpreters disagree on the specific characteristics of Titchener’s theoretical framework and its intellectual origins. Some characterize Titchener as hewing theoretically to traditional English associationism [Beenfeldt 2013], [Brock 2013, 30-31], while others have him turning to embrace a German tradition stemming from Wundt and Oswald Külpe (Wundt’s assistant when Titchener was at Leipzig) [Boring 1929, 402-413].2 The sensory atomism of both traditions, along with the introspective search for elemental dimensions of phenomenal experience, came under challenge on several fronts, especially in the Gestalt psychologists’ notion of direct experience, e.g., [Köhler 1929, 8, 35], which was well known in the American context.3 Nonetheless, the role of Titchener’s discussion as an impetus to methodological reflection in experimental sensory psychology should not be undervalued. By tracing the subsequent fate of discussions initiated over stimulus error, we can follow a notion of introspection or experimental introspection that continues to the present day.

8 This paper examines Titchener’s notion of stimulus error in relation to the experimental investigation of phenomenal experience, or what he variously termed (conscious) “mental experience” [Titchener 1897, 12], or “human experience considered as dependent on the experiencing person” [Titchener 1910, 16]. It follows the subsequent development of perceptual experimentation primarily in the American literature, with notice to British and German studies that entered this stream. It discusses how Titchener’s outlook was eventually supplanted by more sophisticated approaches to perceptual experimentation and by less theory-driven descriptions of phenomenal experience. These new approaches to perceptual experimentation did not seek specifically to neutralize subjects’ presumed favoring of physical descriptions, but rendered subjects’ attitudes toward both stimulus objects and their own experiences as independent variables to be manipulated and evaluated experimentally. They sought to reveal what the manipulation of attitude could uncover about both phenomenal and cognitive aspects of subjects’ perceptual responses.

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2 Titchener, introspection, and the stimulus error

9 Although Boring reviews several applications of the term “stimulus-error” [Boring 1921], its primary meaning derives from Titchener, who finds that even though subjects in experiments have been directed to report on sensations, they instead make responses using their beliefs about the physical stimulus: We are constantly confusing sensations with their stimuli, with their objects, with their meanings. Or rather—since the sensation of psychology has no object or meaning—we are constantly confusing logical abstraction with psychological analysis; we abstract a certain aspect of an object or meaning, and then treat this aspect as if it were a simple mental process, an element in the mental representation of the object or meaning. [Titchener 1905a, xxvi]4

10 The “error” results when, instead of holding object-perception and meaning in abeyance, the subject gathers an object-content from perception and reports it. Titchener gives examples from auditory, gustatory, and haptic perception and describes the tendency in visual spatial perception to overlook sensations (which correspond to “peripheral cues”) in favor of objects arrayed in space [Titchener 1910, 314]. According to him, the elemental sensations of vision are bidimensional (planar), and we acquire perception of the third dimension (or depth) [Titchener 1910, 303-306].

11 Titchener’s notion of stimulus error must be understood in the wider context of his psychological theory. He believes it should be possible to focus on sensations, or at least phenomenal dimensions of sensations (e.g., hues, pitches), by ignoring “meaning”, including any conception of an object as possessing its own attributes. Let us consider his theoretical commitments as they condition his notion of stimulus error.

2.1 The background to Titchener’s theoretical conceptions

12 Boring described Titchener as “an Englishman who represented the German psychological tradition in America” [Boring 1929, 402]. This oft-repeated characterization has been challenged. Beenfeldt forcefully argues that Titchener was rather a representative of British associationism [Beenfeldt 2013].

13 Beenfeldt attributes four characteristics to British associationism, which he also finds in Titchener’s thought: (1) a reductive decomposition of human mental life into (2) elements that ultimately are (3) sensationistic in nature and (4) follow certain law-like regularities (e.g., the classical laws of association). [Beenfeldt 2013, 41]

14 Accordingly, David Hume, David Hartley, and James and John Stuart Mill provide the fundamental background for Titchener’s psychology, including a notion of “mental chemistry”, according to which associations can yield novel qualities, taken from John Stuart Mill [Beenfeldt 2013, 42].

15 In fact, Titchener rejected or modified all of these points and was highly critical of the “English” associationism.5 Rather than asserting outright that mental life can be reduced to sensational elements and their laws of combination, he adopted decomposition into elements as a “heuristic” attitude, which reflected his estimation that science begins with analysis into constituents. His elements were provisional. He distinguished his “sensationalism” from traditional “associationism”, contending that the latter (a) did not properly distinguish epistemology from psychology; (b) treated

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ideas as static entities, like the blocks out of which a mosaic is constructed, rather than as transitory processes, as, he says, Wundt has taught us to think; and (c) invoked the superseded notion of mental chemistry.6 He rejected the traditional “laws of association” for trying to connect “ideas” as static epistemological blocks [Titchener 1909, 24-28] and as overemphasizing connections based on succession as opposed to simultaneity [Titchener 1910, 390].

16 A more promising conceptual background for Titchener’s description of the stimulus error is the general distinction between sensations, or sensational elements, and perception of objects through complex ideas or representations. Such a distinction can be found in traditional associative accounts, but Titchener was more in tune with Wundt’s elementism.7 Wundt defined sensations [Empfindungen] as “those states of our consciousness that cannot be analyzed into simpler constituents” [Wundt 1880, 1:271]. They differ among themselves only in quality and intensity. Sensations from the sense organs divide into those of touch, sound, temperature, smell, taste, and sight (light) [Wundt 1880, 1: 272, 278-279]. Perceptions [Wahrnehmungen], which Wundt also called intuitions [Anschauungen], are by contrast a type of idea [Vorstellung], namely, one that “refers to an actual object” present to the senses [Wundt 1880, 2: 1].

17 The distinction between elemental sensations and perceptions of objects was deeply embedded in German sensory psychology. Helmholtz prominently and notoriously wrote that we ignore our sensations except insofar as they are informative of external objects, which are, accordingly, the usual objects of our perceptions proper. The elemental sensations that initially arise from sensory stimulation become so embedded in external perception that we are unaware of the sensations themselves and their relations: “the connection between sensations and external objects may interfere very much with the perception of their simplest relations” [Helmholtz 1866, 3: 9].8 Helmholtz in fact adopted, as did Wundt, the view that sensations are non-spatial and that all spatial organization takes place by learning. Wundt more generally held that the psychologist always begins from “composite psychical experience” and seeks “psychical elements” by a process of “analysis and abstraction” [Wundt 1901, 32].

18 Titchener was well aware of Helmholtz’s and Wundt’s postulation of non-spatial sensations [Titchener 1910, 304-305], but nonetheless maintained that primitive visual sensations are two-dimensional.9 At the same time, he accepted that naive subjects naturally attend to objects and their properties as opposed to sensations. Ernst Mach also endorsed a distinction between sensation or sensory elements and complexes of such elements [Mach 1886]. And in America, George T. Ladd, an early expositor of the “new” psychology, followed the German tradition closely. He distinguished between “sensations” (as “modes of our being”) and presentations of “objects” or “things” with their inherent properties. The latter perceptions are a product of development, so that an adult psychologist “does not remember by what stages he first learned to see or feel the extended and external objects of sense” [Ladd 1889, 382]. Nonetheless, he held that presentations are elaborated “from the material of simple sensations” through various processes, including a Wundtian “synthetic” process [Wundt 1880, 2: 29, 164, 177], which he glossed as a “constructive” process [Ladd 1889, 387-388].

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2.2 Titchener, introspective analysis, and synthesis

19 Titchener echoed the general sort of distinction made by Helmholtz, Wundt, Mach, and Ladd, in distinguishing (a) sensations as elements having the attributes of quality, intensity, temporal duration, and (sometimes) spatial extent—aspects of which one may hope to partially isolate in consciousness—from (b) perceptions compounded from sensations and imbued with meaning by their relation to other sensations. His psychology aimed to find the basic elements of mental life by analysis (provisionally, the basic elements are sensations, images, and affections or emotions) [Titchener 1910, 36-41, 47-48]. This analysis was then supplemented by a synthesis of the elements to constitute complex perception.10 Such syntheses yield psychological “meanings”, which are contexts of sensations and, in a manner not fully explained, yield reference to objects via organism-environment interaction [Titchener 1909, 175-179]. “Pure perceptions”, which are rare, would be complexes only of sensations; “mixed perceptions” include both sensations and images (often, memory images) [Titchener 1910, 364-365].

20 Titchener held that although the sensations of vision are two-dimensional and come from two eyes, we nonetheless experience unitary objects at a distance through meaning. Accordingly, perceivers normally overlook the pervasive double images found in a stationary field of objects at various distances under steady fixation. While acknowledging other factors, such as roving fixations or suppression of one image, he attributed binocular unity “perhaps mainly, to cortical set or adjustment; we mean, expect, are disposed to see singly things that are objectively single” [Titchener 1910, 309, note 1]. Still, in a psychological experiment, if experiencing a double image, one should report it on pain of committing the stimulus error. In such experiments, one is not aiming to elicit a physical description of an objectively single object. Titchenerian sensory experimentation aims for a description of experience, and not a report based on knowledge of objects from past experience or on an interpretation (that a single object is present) gleaned from their double vision.

21 It was part of Titchener’s view that sensations and images are adequate to account for all the content of perception. In his Text-Book, at the end of the long section on perception, he discussed an objection to his outlook that perception involves only sensations as supplemented by images and meanings [Titchener 1910, 367-368]. According to the objection, the contents of perceptions are more than the combination of their parts. Complexes such as melodies or shapes include as a distinct element a “form of combination”. Accordingly, a square is more than four linear extensions, sensibly of the same length, and occupying certain relative positions in the visual field; [...] squareness is a new character, common to all squares, but not to be explained by attention, or by the laws of sensory connection, or by those of imaginal supplementing. [Titchener 1910, 372]11

22 His reply to this objection is revealing of his conception of the (at least provisional) task of experimental and introspective psychology. To the proposal that a “form of synthesis” is distinct from the elements as synthesized, he answered: this attitude betrays a confusion of the analytic and the genetic points of view. We cannot generate the square from lines, or the melody from rhythm and scale; but neither is that what we try to do. The square and the melody are given, as perceptions. Our psychological task is to analyse these given perceptions, to discover their elements, and to formulate the laws under which the elementary

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processes combine. That done, we can write, for “square” and “melody”, “these and these elements connected in these and these uniform ways”, and we can go on to search for physiological conditions (§ 9). We have solved our problem in analytical terms; we have not first defined the terms, and then put them together to produce something that was not contained in the definition.—The author cannot, in his own introspection, identify the form of combination as a distinct mental element. [Titchener 1910, 372-373]

23 There is a lot that might be discussed in this quotation.12 But the main point is clear: Titchener is committed to a psychology of elements and firmly believes that organized wholes, such as melodies or shapes, can be derived by the summation of parts—while granting that it is the wholes that are given in experience.

24 Titchener, then, was trained into a world in which a sensation-perception distinction was widely accepted. There was disagreement on whether visual sensations are non- spatial or two dimensional. But it was widely agreed that uninitiated subjects focus on perceived objects rather than sensations. That is, in ordinary life, observers focus on objects, not the sensations caused by those objects.

2.3 Titchener and introspection as observation

25 Although Titchener believed that sensations are primitive (not further analyzable) elements of mental life, for him even the seasoned introspector does not experience unvarnished sensations. Rather, we discover the properties of sensations by establishing conditions for focusing on them and then reporting introspectively on their attributes, such as quality, intensity, or duration. Typically, all of these attributes cannot be attended to at once or made the subject of a single report. Moreover, sensations may become so connected with other sensations that their attributes (quality, intensity, extent) cannot be introspectively isolated [Titchener 1910, 51].

26 Titchener regarded introspection as a form of observation [Titchener 1912b, 486-487]. Observation involves “attention to the phenomena, and record of the phenomena” [Titchener 1910, 20]. In an introspective experiment, the job of the subject is to describe experience as it is, as opposed to guessing about the stimulus: The question, however, so far as the validity of introspection is concerned, is not whether the reports tally with the stimuli, but whether they give accurate descriptions of the observer’s experimental consciousness; they might be fantastically wrong in the first regard, and yet absolutely accurate in regard to conscious contents. [Titchener 1912b, 489]

27 In saying that introspection is observation applied to mental experience, Titchener did not mean to assert that it involves the observation of a special mental object that is distinct from what he considered to be the objects of everyday perception (physical objects with various properties). In particular, he did not suppose that in introspecting a sensory experience one turns away from the world and looks within. There is a deep and persistent misunderstanding of classical introspection on this point. Titchener himself tried to allay this misunderstanding. Because the misinterpretation is so pervasive, he is worth quoting in full. He finds: that certain psychologists, in writing of self-observation, think of the “mind” as in some way “turning in upon itself”, very much as one might fancifully conceive of the eyes as turning about to view the brain; that this mental gymnastic appeals to them as something far more difficult of performance than the direction of the mind to the outer world; and that they are thus led to regard self-observation as the

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mind’s crowning achievement, the signal difference between man and the lower animals [...] the psychological observer is supposed to be aware of himself as introspecting himself, aware of himself as observer and aware of himself as observed, while at the same time he is aware of the relation of the two selves [...] as a matter of fact, introspection knows nothing of this sort of mind or self and its performances. Introspection is an interrogation of experience; as such, it issues either from a present conscious purpose or from a habit of observation which is the resultant of previous conscious purpose; and, in so far, it is the expression of “reflection” or of “reflective thought”. In so far, but no farther: it implies self- consciousness only in the sense and to the degree in which all scientific observation, that of physics and chemistry included, implies self-consciousness. [Titchener 1912a, 440]

28 He goes on explicitly to reject the view that in introspection there are “two objects,—on the one hand, the mental operation itself which is to be observed, and on the other, the object to which this mental operation is directed” [Titchener 1912a, 441]. Titchener here stays close to Wundt [Wundt 1888, 293, 296, 306-307], who was careful to observe that in saying psychology takes “immediate experience” which is “inner” as its object, “the expressions outer and inner experience do not indicate different objects, but different points of view from which we take up the consideration and scientific treatment of a unitary experience” [Wundt 1901, 2-3]. In introspection, one focuses on how external objects appear [Hatfield 2005, 272-275].

29 This form of observation can be undertaken by psychologists possessing divergent theoretical outlooks. These outlooks may yield disagreements about what is a simple or basic element of sensory experience and what is the artificial product of a special point of view. According to Titchener, if one succeeds in focusing on the pitch of an upper partial tone in a musical note, one has noticed an attribute of a primitive, constituent element that was present in the tone all along [Titchener 1910, 100-101]. Because Titchener held that visual sensations are primitively bidimensional, he held that when spatial perception tends toward the two-dimensional under reduced-cue conditions, the experimenter is inducing “primitive” spatial sensations. Others disagreed, holding that the act of attention changes the experience of the tone, so as to highlight the overtone [Köhler 1913, 14-22], or that when an experience as of a two-dimensional field occurs under a special attitude or reduced stimulus conditions, the experience as reported is genuine but artificial [Koffka 1935, 235-236], [Gibson 1950, 42].

30 In these cases, there need be no disagreement on the description of the experiences themselves. The Gestaltist might well hear the partial tones. But they give them a different theoretical interpretation: they are not elements uncovered, but a product of perceptual reorganization. Titchener’s claim that the partial tone is getting closer to elemental sensations is a product of theory [Titchener 1915]. Introspection doesn’t settle the matter, for different schools might agree in their introspective reports. In fact, the Gestalt assault on Titchenerian elements [Köhler 1913] was aimed more at the theoretical positing of unnoticed sensations than at empirical claims. The Gestaltists proposed a new theory of what is basic in experience: a three-dimensional world of meaningful objects [Köhler 1929, chap. 1-2], [Koffka 1935, chap. 1-3]. Others delayed grand theory in order to study more closely the relation between different aspects of phenomenal experience. In this, they were following up Titchener’s warning about the stimulus error but widening the context of experimental investigation.

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3 Ongoing discussions of stimulus error and phenomenal report

31 Titchener’s notion of introspective observation and his distinction between a report of sensory experience and a focus on object properties remained valuable. His idea that introspection involves attention to dimensions or attributes of perceptual experience was widely applicable, even to conceptions of the content of that experience foreign to his own. As Titchener observed, even James, the arch anti-atomist, nonetheless found describable characters or attributes in the unitary stream of consciousness, taking note of “flights and perchings”13 or of various sensation-attributes that we can abstract from the stream. “Voluminousness” or spatiality is, according to James, a distinguishable feature of experience [James 1890, 2: 134-136]. We can attend to this aspect of experience and report its characteristics. In this sense it is an element of experience, but not an atomic constituent out of which experience is compounded [James 1890, chap. 6].

32 James and Titchener agreed on the need to distinguish reports on sensory experiences from reports of stimulus properties as physical properties. James contended that a primary error in psychology arises from the ill effects of speech: we name our mental states by the objects that cause them and then “assume that as the objects are, so the thought must be” [James 1890, 1: 195]. This is effectively a description of the stimulus error. James feared that such an error would yield an overly fragmented description of experience, mirroring the known physical constituents of the situation. Titchener rued the error because it could lead to the description of a stable, unified, constant physical object in place of varying and discrete sensory attributes or sensations. The two authors differed over what is fundamental in perceptual consciousness, with James being skeptical of atomic elements. I am interested in both their commonalities and differences, and their relations to subsequent descriptions of phenomenally immediate sensory experience.

3.1 Changing attitudes toward “direct experience”

33 James, like Titchener, accepted that spatiality is part of sensory experience [James 1890, 2: 135-136]. He did not hold that we visually perceive depth and distance innately. Nor did he hold that our sensory experience tracks the real sizes of things. Coming close to Titchener’s subsequent analysis of stimulus error, he held that when we perceive things such as dinner plates at different distances, we attribute to them the same sizes as when they are close. We do this not because of our sensory state, which he held varies with the retinal image, but because we impose a standard size, as a “meaning”. Plates farther away “feel” smaller, but we “overlook” that fact because we “know” them to be equal in size [James 1890, 2: 179-180].

34 Titchener was aware that some theorists held the third dimension to be directly sensed. Earlier, Ewald Hering held that in binocular vision we immediately perceive height, width, and depth [Hering 1864, 324]. Titchener objected that this position is “psychologically impossible”. He elaborated: Sensations of height and breadth might pass muster, if we mean by them qualitative local signs, but a sensation of depth is an impossibility: depth has no

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specific quality that can be seen, and, if it had, we have no sense-organ wherewith to see it. [Titchener 1910, 338]

35 Presumably, Titchener means to affirm a Berkeleyan point that the visual stimulus is unable to produce experiences of distance directly, perhaps because it has only two dimensions itself. But he also makes a phenomenal point: there is no “experience” of depth or distance.14

36 Soon, others besides Hering were rejecting both points. In the teens and twenties, researchers related to the Gestaltists found phenomenal size constancy [Köhler 1929, 105]: that phenomenal experience does not vary directly with proximal stimulation, but includes depth and distance. Accordingly, when dinner plates are seen at different distances around the table, even though those farther away subtend a smaller visual angle, they are experienced phenomenally with roughly the same size. In 1929, Köhler published, in English, in the United States, a systematic introduction to the Gestalt point of view, entitled Gestalt Psychology. He argued for taking phenomenally direct experience at face value. Instead of seeing the constancy of size as a constructed meaning for the “real” (two-dimensional) sensations, he argued that the direct experience of the world as in depth should, at least initially, be treated as a description of actual sensory experience.

37 Once it was accepted that visual experience might be treated as phenomenally three- dimensional, it became possible to conceive of doing experiments to test the characteristics of subjects’ perceptions under various conditions, in order to distinguish different kinds of experiences and different aspects of subjects’ responses. Perhaps sometimes subjects do guess or cognitively evaluate physical properties of things from prior knowledge as applied to phenomenal experience. Perhaps in other cases they can be induced to describe phenomenal experience as they have it. This became the new goal. Instead of assuming that subjects naturally tend toward a cognitively based “stimulus error”, the question of how subjects approach the perceptual task was to be brought under experimental control.

3.2 Stimulus error and instructional set in size-perception experiments

38 The first decades of the twentieth century witnessed a lively discussion on the effect of attitude or “set” on psychophysical experiments, including close discussion of using instructions to affect perceptual set. Much of this discussion focused on the relation between judgments of “equality” between two stimuli (or experiences) and judgments of uncertainty over whether they differ. Samuel Fernberger and others attributed some equivocal results to the fact that subjects were not given clear “tasks” [Aufgabe] with respect to the judgments, allowing the “set” or attitude [Einstellung] behind their judgments to vary without experimental control [Fernberger 1914]. More generally, some psychologists regarded it is as a mistake to ask for anything except a report on the physical stimulus itself (a position associated with James McKeen Cattell).

39 Boring entered this discussion with his paper on stimulus error [Boring 1921]. His goal was to show that even “behaviorists” and other “psychologists of capacity” (including Cattell) need to distinguish between physical stimulus and sensation if they are to avoid equivocal data arising from the stimulus error. He characterized the stimulus error as follows:

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We commit the stimulus-error if we base our psychological reports upon objects rather than upon the mental material itself, or if, in the psycho-physical experiment, we make judgments of the stimulus and not judgments of sensation. [Boring 1921, 451]

40 The remedy is to control through instructions the attention of subjects and the criteria they employ in making a judgment. In the article, Boring made incidental reference to these issues as they arise for size perception. In the ensuing decades from the 1930s through the 1960s, there was ongoing discussion and refinement of the use of instructions in experiments on size and shape perception.

41 These discussions challenged a fundamental aspect of the notion of “stimulus error”: the claim that subjects tend to judge according to physical estimation or reasoning rather than appearances. The assumption that subjects naturally make physical estimates is evident in an early size-perception experiment by Martius, who wanted to prevent subjects from employing this attitude so that they could focus on appearances [Martius 1889, 605]. Going forward, experimenters at first made conflicting claims about the natural tendencies of uninstructed subjects. Ultimately, they instead employed instructions to control task and attitude for all observations, and then theorized about the responses they elicited under these varying conditions.

42 Writing in the early thirties, R. H. Thouless held that an undirected and unstudied response of the “average subject” would seek to report the apparent properties of shape (and also size), since assessment of objective physical size requires a “more complex process of judgement” [Thouless 1931b, 23]. In discussing such tendencies, Thouless distinguished among “real”, “projective”, and “apparent or ‘phenomenal’ ” shape: Let us suppose that a subject is asked to report on the shape of an inclined plane figure whose shape is not previously known to him. He might be answering any one of three questions: (1) as to the “real” shape of the object observed, (2) as to the shape of its plane projection, (3) as to its apparent or “phenomenal” shape. It is only in answering number 3 that he is performing the simple operation of reporting immediate experience. [Thouless 1931b, 22]

43 Thouless usefully distinguishes among different tasks. But his experiments did not make task, attitude, or set into a variable; he instead controlled for the subject’s attitude by relating that he, as experimenter, wants “to know [from the subject] neither what the shape of the object really is nor how he thinks it ought to look but simply the shape it does look to him” [Thouless 1931b, 23]. He did not relate his experimental approach to discussions of stimulus error in Titchener and Boring; he framed his approach as an application of Hering’s discussions of lightness constancy to textbook descriptions of shape constancy as the norm [Thouless 1931a, 339, 343].

44 Other experimentalists did connect the study size perception and shape perception with the ongoing discussion of instructions. This group also did not believe that subjects naturally tend toward the “stimulus error” but assumed that subjects normally respond to appearances. But they did not fix ahead of time what the “correct” character of experience should be (e.g., two-dimensional sensations for sight). By varying instructional set, they turned the question of how subjects make judgments about size and shape into an object of investigation. They retained the distinction, found in Titchener, Boring, and Thouless, between “immediate” judgments of experience versus complex cognitive judgments that apply to appearances reasoning about how size varies with distance.

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45 In seminal experiments, Beverley Holaday15 studied size perception under varying experimental conditions, including variations in “intentional set”, which he characterized as psychological variations (as opposed to physical variations in the stimulus situation or physiological variations). He distinguished four different attitudes for comparing the sizes of two stimulus objects: (1) the “normal attitude”, in which we judge the “visual size” of the “visual object” as in everyday perception (this correlates with Thouless’s phenomenal or apparent judgment); (2) the “analytic” attitude, in which one seeks through instructions to direct subjects toward a projective estimate based on perceptual attitude alone, without using techniques such as squinting and without theoretical reasoning; (3) “objective procedure”, in which subjects are instructed to estimate the suspected size of the object using the appearance but supplementing it by moving their heads from side to side and using reflection to give their best bet about the correct sizes; and (4) the “analytic bet-procedure”, of seeking to judge what the projective value must be using techniques such as squinting or reflecting on what the photographic size would be [Holaday 1933, 442]. These instructional sets equate the “normal” attitude with apparent instructions but also bring that condition under the experimental control of instructions.

46 As research proceeded, investigators gave up claims to know beforehand the “basic” attitude of subjects and became interested in the dynamics of the various instruction sets [Carlson 1962]. Investigators noted some apparently paradoxical results. An empirical trend developed in which objective instructions yielded overconstancy for size perception, apparent instructions yielded slight underconstancy, and projective instructions produced a result toward projective values, but not reaching them [Holway & Boring 1941], [Gilinsky 1955].16 The question now concerned not the “stimulus error”, but James, Titchener, Boring, and Thouless’s explanation of it: that “non-apparent” judgments arise from cognitive factors.

4 Sequel

47 How one continues the story from here depends on an assessment of which positions have panned out, which in turn is conditioned by theory-dependent assessments of the fundamental characteristics of perceptual experience. For instance, a naive realist would have a different account of the role of instructions, translating them into the language of taking different conceptual attitudes toward objective stimulus values as directly present in normal perception. I have no sympathy with this approach since I believe that naive realism is a non-starter.17

48 The story directly continues in recent findings of the developmental psychologist Carl Granrud, which vindicate the distinction between phenomenal reports and cognitively complex reports [Granrud 2012]. In studying size constancy in child development, Granrud found that some children, when instructed to report objective size, engage in a strategy of reasoning that things look smaller in the distance. Other children do not use such strategies or do so later. When he compared the two groups under conditions of apparent and objective instructions for near and far stimuli, all subjects showed slight underconstancy under both instructions for near stimuli. For far stimuli, instructional set made no difference for non-strategy users. Strategy users exhibited underconstancy under apparent instructions and overconstancy under objective instructions. Granrud ruled out (on phenomenal grounds) the conclusion that strategy users actually see

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more distant things as larger than they are. Consequently, he attributed that response to cognitive factors (reasoning according to a strategy). He classified the judgments under apparent instructions as reports of phenomenal experience.

49 In my terms, the apparent reports are cases of introspection. They are instances in which subjects are directed toward their experience of size, as a phenomenally available aspect of their experience.18 They are not everyday judgments of how large the object over there is—that would be an objective report. They differ from such reports in that subjects are directed to attend to certain aspects of their phenomenal experience. Objective reports are not introspective, though they may rely on an introspective assessment of appearances. Once subjects have become strategy users, objective instructions induce them to use reasoning to report what can be known of objective stimulus properties. Such reports are not a matter of simply attending to phenomenally available dimensions of experience.

50 In the ongoing history of experiments that seek to study size and shape perception, there is an echo of Titchener’s distinction between accurate descriptions of experience and judgments focused on physical values of a stimulus object. But this distinction has been decoupled from assumptions about the elemental structure of phenomenal experience. There are few takers these days for the view that visual experience is “really” two dimensional. Rather, the characteristics of visual experience are to be determined by varying stimulus conditions and instructional set. Further, descriptions of phenomenal experience are to be distinguished from judgments of physical values. In this way, the earlier distinctions drawn by Titchener and James have received a new use, or a reformulated application. Investigators no longer speak of the “stimulus error”, but they do seek to tease apart phenomenal and cognitive (judgmental) factors in the complex of human perceptual experience. Indeed, recent findings by Granrud support the notion that introspective reports of apparent size describe phenomenal experience while reports that apply reasoning strategies to experience in order to judge objective size are manifestations of a cognitive response that goes beyond a description of phenomenal experience. In this context, a distinction between how things appear and how we judge them to be retains its validity, giving a partial vindication to Titchener’s earlier notion of stimulus error.

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NOTES

1. From 1915, Titchener’s publication rate diminishes and there is talk of a new system, only part of which was written and then published posthumously [Titchener 1929). In the 1920s, he no longer uses the term “experimental introspection” but he still invokes the importance of experiment and of self-observation, for example, of after-images [Titchener 1929, 41-45]. There is appreciation for a phenomenological turn in psychology [Titchener 1925, 323], but these remarks are sketchy. 2. Titchener was at Leipzig from 1890 to 1892. Külpe was first there in 1881-1882, returning as Wundt’s student in 1886, taking his doctorate in 1887 (on a topic begun with Müller in Göttingen) and becoming Wundt’s assistant. He published his Outlines in 1893 [Külpe 1893], was promoted to extraordinary professor, and left in 1894 for Würzburg. Külpe dedicated the book to Wundt. He agreed with Wundt that sensations are simple elements but differed in ascribing spatial attributes to visual and tactual sensations [Kuelpe 1893, 335, 373]. (They also disagreed in interpreting reaction-time experiments.) Titchener translated Külpe’s book, as he did some of Wundt’s. Külpe’s (and the Würzburger’s) radical divergences from Wundt and Titchener on imageless thought started after 1905. When in 1909 Titchener accused the Würzburgers of the “stimulus-error” [Titchener 1909, 145], he was applying a concept he had already developed. 3. The Gestaltists active in America (primarily, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka, and Max Wertheimer; later joined by Kurt Lewin) were opposed to the introspective search for simple elements, which Köhler criticized early [Köhler 1913]. Still, they advocated starting from what Köhler called “direct experience” [Köhler 1929, chap. 1-2], which may itself be seen as a form of introspection [Hatfield 2002, 2005]. According to Köhler, “direct experience” is of a world of meaningful objects (a lake, some trees, a boulder) in three dimensions. An honest description of such experience would be a naive description of this world (as containing a lake before one, a boulder to sit on, and so on), which does not privilege descriptions based in the science of physics. 4. Titchener introduces the term itself in the instructor’s part of his lab manual, using the formulation “R-error”, where “R” stands for German Reiz, meaning “stimulus” [Titchener 1905b,

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Ixiii, 198]. The English “stimulus-error” is found at [Titchener 1909, 145]. Titchener’s claim that sensations have no intrinsic meaning is based in theory; he ultimately does not claim that we must be able to experience sensations in complete isolation [Titchener 1915]. 5. His criticisms gained strength and explicitness between the early Outline of Psychology [Titchener 1897, 190-191] and later works [Titchener 1909, 22-37], [Titchener 1910, 374-395]. Those emphasizing Titchener’s English background often quote this sentence from the Outline: “The general standpoint of the book is that of the traditional English psychology” [Titchener 1897, vi], while omitting the ensuing sentence: “The system which is outlined in it, however, stands also in the closest relation to that presented in the more advanced treatises of the German experimental school, Külpe’s Outlines of Psychology and Wundt’s Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie” [Titchener 1897, vi]. We may ask what general aspect of the “English” psychology Titchener meant to endorse and what aspects of “system” he gleaned from Wundt and Külpe. Perhaps he adopted the general framework of introspection and elements from British psychology; but he rejected much of the rest of their framework, as he understood it (including sensations as “static” elements [Titchener 1915, 265]). Although he did not accept Wundt’s voluntarism [Titchener 1909, 36-37] with its active subject [Titchener 1897, 119-120], he did accept Wundt’s search for elements conceived as “processes” and his conception that sensory processes include “passive experiences”, that is, laws of connection yielding syntheses that are in some ways associative [Wundt 1901, 24, 276]. 6. He held that experimental psychology has “transcended” the chemical analogy [Titchener 1909, 32]; Wundt, too, had recently found aspects of disanalogy between chemical and psychical synthesis [Wundt 1893, 2: 46], [Wundt 1908, 269-271], after earlier using the analogy without apology [Wundt 1880, 2:28]. 7. Wundt scholarship since the 1980s has curiously denied that Wundt sought the elements of sensory processes; see [Beenfeldt 2013, 29]. It is almost as if, having discovered that certain aspects of Wundt had been de-emphasized in America, such as his voluntarism and his ethnographic psychology, scholars felt the need to define Wundt exclusively in terms of what had been omitted. But despite his emphasis on active synthesis, apperception, attention, and the will, Wundt regarded sensory processes as involving the synthesis of elemental sensations and set as a task for psychology the discovery of elemental processes [Wundt 1880, 1: 271], [Wundt 1901, 29-31]. 8. Helmholtz expressed this outlook in an early lecture on music [Bonn, 1857]: “It is a universal law of the perceptions obtained through the senses that we pay only so much attention to our sensations as is sufficient for us to recognize external objects. [...] All sensations which have no direct reference to external objects we are accustomed, as a matter of course, entirely to ignore” [Helmholtz 1896, 98]. He was speaking of the upper partial tones that can be isolated through practice or using laboratory instruments, which, as he saw it, allows the listener to discover in a musical note—originally heard simply as the sounding of an instrument—a complex set of partial tones. Terminologically, Helmholtz distinguished the “sensations of vision” [Gesichtsempfindungen], comprising light and color, from the “perceptions of vision” [Gesichtswahrnehmungen], extending to the “existence, form and position of external objects”; perceptions are formed from sensations [Helmholtz 1866, 2: v; 3: 1; also, 3: 533]. His more intricate terminological distinctions [Helmholtz 1866, 3: 10] need not detain us. 9. The idea that sensations originally are aspatial and possess only quality and intensity became prominent in the nineteenth century together with the notion that each sensory nerve fiber produces a single sensation [Hatfield 1990, 157-158, 184]. In denying this tenet of Wundt and Helmholtz, Titchener sided with older theory but also with a recent trend among his contemporaries. 10. In addition, Titchener’s psychology includes explanation through the physiological conditions of mental life, which leads to his psychophysical parallelism and denial that neural

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processes cause mental processes while still claiming that physiology is explanatory in psychology [Titchener 1910, 39-41], views that cannot be examined here. 11. Titchener [Titchener 1910, 372] cited the English philosopher-psychologist G. F. Stout as holding this position [Stout 1909, 2: 48] and recommended a related article by I. M. Bentley. The article [Bentley 1902] discussed Mach, Ehrenfels, Meinong, Cornelius, Witasek, and Stout, all of whom save Cornelius are cited in [Titchener 1909]. Later [Titchener 1929], he cited Mach, Meinong, Witasek, and Stout, the last three as adherents of a Brentanian “psychology of act”. He did not address the Gestalt psychologists who became prominent in the United States (Wertheimer, Koffka, and Köhler), citing [Titchener 1929, 229, note 207] only an early paper by Koffka on Vorstellungen. However, Chapter 3, in which act psychology is discussed, was completed by 1919 [Titchener 1929, xvii-xix], before the systematic writings of the Gestalt trio had appeared. 12. In the quotation, “genetic” means developmental. He here allows that we do not introspectively consider isolated sensations separately and then conjoin them in thought. Rather, the psychologist starts from experience of the square and seeks the elements (sensations or images) that could be conjoined to form the square. He is not committed to the elements being present before the square; rather, through analysis, they are found to be adequate constituents for it. 13. Titchener refers to James’s phenomenological point [James 1890, 1: 243], that the stream of consciousness does not flow uniformly, but consists of “flights” (“transitive parts”) and “perchings” (“substantive parts”, experienced for the moment). 14. Hering held that binocular stimulation, through corresponding and disparate points, is a stimulus for depth [Hering 1864]. Koffka held that three-dimensional spatial forms arise in visual experience through Gestalt laws of organization [Koffka 1935, 161]. Here, Titchener might be accused of the stimulus error regarding the proximal (two-dimensional) retinal image, using knowledge of the image to describe what is fundamental in visual experience. 15. Holaday was an American investigator who did doctoral work at the University of Vienna with Karl Bühler among his teachers. 16. There is another dimension of discussions about Titchenerian introspection and subsequent perceptual experimentation, which concerns the subject. Titchener, like Wundt and indeed [Holway & Boring 1941], employed as subjects students or colleagues trained in perception science. This might lead to a charge that theoretical bias infects the outcome, or it might mean that observers are more accurate because they are trained scientists (see [Schwitzgebel 2011]). In any event, in [Gilinsky 1955] we see the modern practice of using a large group of naive subjects in perceptual experimentation, rather than a few trained observers. 17. Another objection comes from “transparency” theorists who might suppose that there can be no stimulus error and no truly “apparent” instructions because the content of perception is exhausted through representations of the physical object. This position is often paired, e.g., [Harman 1990] with the misreading of Wundt and Titchener on introspection (discussed above). More generally, transparency theorists try to settle questions about the metaphysics of qualities through phenomenology, but their phenomenology relies on their metaphysics [Hatfield 2005, 270-274]. 18. I discuss introspection as “deliberate and immediate attention to certain aspects of phenomenal experience” in [Hatfield 2005, 279]. Chirimuuta [Chirimuutta 2014, 915-918] finds problems in distinguishing introspection from simply perceiving on this definition, but I believe that the notion of attending to phenomenal experience does the trick. Schwitzgebel adopts a similar conception of introspection in visual perception, while also surveying a variety of different activities that might be called “introspection” [Schwitzgebel 2012].

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ABSTRACTS

This paper examines Titchener’s notion of stimulus error in the experimental study of mental experience. It places Titchener’s introspective methods into the intellectual world of early experimental psychology. It follows the subsequent development of perceptual experimentation primarily in the American literature, with notice to British and German studies as needed. Subsequent investigators transformed the notion of a specifically stimulus error into experimental questions in which subjects’ attitudes toward their perceptual tasks became independent variables to be manipulated experimentally. Ultimately, these manipulations supported a distinction between accessing phenomenal as opposed to cognitive aspects of subjects’ responses to stimulus objects.

Tout en situant la méthode introspective de Titchener dans l’environnement intellectuel de la psychologie expérimentale naissante, nous examinons la notion d’erreur du stimulus proposée par ce savant dans l’étude de l’expérience mentale. Nous suivons l’évolution ultérieure de l’expérimentation dans le domaine de la perception, principalement dans la littérature américaine avec, au besoin, quelques références à la littérature britannique et allemande. Des chercheurs ont par la suite transformé la notion spécifique d’erreur du stimulus en questions d’ordre expérimental dans lesquelles les attitudes des sujets par rapport aux tâches perceptives devinrent les variables indépendantes à manipuler expérimentalement. Ces manipulations plaidèrent en faveur de la distinction entre l’accès phénoménal et les aspects cognitifs des réponses des sujets aux objets de stimulation.

AUTHOR

GARY HATFIELD Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (USA)

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Spatial Elements in Visual Awareness. Challenges for an Intrinsic “Geometry” of the Visible

Liliana Albertazzi

I wish to thank Osvaldo Da Pos for lively discussions in recent yearson the nature of spatial primitives, and the anonymous reviewers for the comments received. I am particularly grateful to one of the reviewers for suggesting a linguistically unambiguous terminology for definition of visual spatial primitives.

1 Introduction

1 The visual objects in conventional psychophysical science are mainly understood and represented in terms of Euclidean geometry, starting from primitives defined in terms of points, lines, and surfaces. It is generally assumed that there are Euclidean surfaces in the visual field, and that shapes have geometrical properties replicable in computational terms [Marr 1982]. This is generally seen to be an unproblematic issue in the current computational theory of vision. However, doubts about the Euclidean nature of visual spaces and visual objects have been raised by a broad array of so-called geometric illusions: straight lines are seen as curved [Hering 1861], [Zöllner 1860] or slightly tilted [Morgan & Moulden 1986], [Münsterberg 1897], arcs are perceived as flattened [Müller-Lyer 1889], [Tolanski 1964], vertical segments are overestimated with regard to horizontal ones [Chapanis & Mankin 1967], [Oppel 1854-1855], circles and squares are perceived with apparent size [Ebbinghaus 1902], [Coren & Enns 1993], as are areas [Wundt 1898], lines are perceived with apparent rather than actual length [Diaz & Delay 1990, 1992], [Müller-Lyer 1889], [Ponzo 1912], cubes, prisms, cones and conical shells undergo perspectival reversal [Benussi 1925], [Deręgowski 2014], [Kopfermann 1930], [Necker 1832], [Thiéry 1895], the contours of triangles are vividly present in the total absence of any stimulus indicating such lines [Kanizsa 1979], arrays of triangles can spontaneously “point” as a group in a selected direction [Attneave 1968], [Palmer & Bucher 1982], objects appear in such a manner as to seem physically

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“impossible” [Penrose & Penrose 1958], while objects which are impossible from a geometric viewpoint are perceived as physically plausible [Huffman 1971], [Kulpa 1987], and geometrically complete drawn parallelograms appear to be phenomenally incomplete because of 3-D interpretation of the orientation of the drawing with respect to the picture plane [Massironi & Bruno 1997]. Apparently, Wonderland is not merely a space of literary imagination! To put it in more explicit terms, the space we see in is intrinsically imaginative (Goethe spoke in terms of an exact sensory imagination). The main qualitative “skeletal” [Metzger 1941] characteristics of this space are convexities (the space outside) and concavities (the space inside) [Massironi 1998], and between these two characteristics, there may be an entire phenomenology of spatial variations. Perkins & Cooper, when testing the “errors” committed by subjects in the perception of surfaces inclinations, described the human perceiver as a “sloppy geometer” [Perkins & Cooper 1980]. However, this is an unfair characterization, because what the subject perceives is something intrinsically qualitative and should not be compared to a Euclidean metric viewpoint or indeed even more complex spaces defined by Cayley/ Klein geometries [Koenderink, Albertazzi et al. 2010]. The qualitatively different perception among the observers implies that the spatial percepts of the general population may well be highly variable between observers. In other words, different individuals see in (partially) different ways; however, the differences are identifiable [Foley 1965]. These results gainsay the assumption of psychophysical and neurophysiological research based on the concept of an ideal observer. Seeing is a process where space, more than being a static sequence of planes, is bodily situated in a frame of basic egocentric directions—such as right/left, above/below, in front of/ behind—with a biological normative aspect (above is “better” than below, in front is “better” than behind, etc.).

2 Examples of the “odd” behavior of shapes abound in the experimental literature on space perception [Gregory 2009], [Shapiro & Todorovic in press], [Wackermann 2010], as to so-called pictorial space illusions, see [Dunning 1991]. Those experiments make manifest the role of the perceiver in shaping appearances in visual awareness, so that the boundary between what is usually supposed to be real and what is a product of imagination is very labile. Perhaps the most insightful explanation of what occurs in seeing is still the Aristotelian idea of phantasia, i.e., the mind’s organization of qualities in subjective space and time [Aristotle 1986]. What occurs in seeing, in fact, is a question more of a psychic organization of qualitative contents in a multidimensional simultaneity than of a set of relations and operations following the rules of formal geometry. A good example of how shapes behave in awareness is Michotte’s parallelepiped, an anamorphic line drawing of a parallelepiped on a sheet of paper which is viewed with one eye at a high slant [Albertazzi 2011], [Massironi & Savardi 1991], [Michotte 1948], [Vishwanath 2014]. What is seen is a truncated pyramid with a transparent strongly voluminous appearance. Michotte observed that the visual effect of solidity (the plastic effect) was just like stereopsis in that the wire frame object appears to stick out of the paper and to be so real as to be graspable. To be noted is that this 3D effect takes place in the continuity of seeing, which suggests that 3D must be an ecologically dominant feature. Another extraordinary effect is the “Corrugated Mondrian” effect, where different patches of grey (of identical stimuli) appear to be of different colors because of the (again, “illusory”) perceived light in the phenomenal space [Adelson 1993].

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3 The visual field in seeing appears as a twofold extendedness [Extensität] (the term in [Brentano 1995]) filled with qualities at a certain location, where also the voluminous appearance of shapes is perceived more or less as such, more or less remote from the perceiver him/herself.1 From the observer’s viewpoint, in fact, depth is also subjective [Koenderink 2013], [Koenderink, van Doorn et al. 2011], [Vishwanath 2010]. For all these reasons, the phenomenal space of awareness has important similarities with pictorial space: one may perhaps say that they are different degrees of reality of appearances [Mausfeld 2013], [Metzger 1941].

4 A major source of surprise is the discovery that we are not the only living beings that perceive “illusions”. So-called geometrical illusions such as the Ponzo, the Müller-Lyer and the horizontal-vertical illusion, seem to be perceived by species as diverse as apes (chimpanzees [Fujita 1997]), monkeys, e.g., [Barbet & Fagot 2002], [Bayne & Davis 1983], [Suganuma, Filgueiras Pessoa et al. 2007], [Tudusciuc & Nieder 2010], see also [Fujita 1996], ungulates, e.g., horses, [Timney & Keil 1996], birds [domestic chickens, [Winslow 1933], [Nakamura, Watanabe et al. 2014], [Rosa Salva, Rugani et al. 2013]), ring doves [Warden & Baar 1929], pigeons [Fujita, Blough et al. 1991, 1993], [Nakamura, Fujita et al. 2006], [Nakamura, Watanabe et al. 2008, 2009], grey parrots [Pepperberg, Vicinay et al. 2008], and fish [Sovrano, Albertazzi et al. 2015]. The evidence of similar perceptual scaffoldings in species so different suggests either the presence of homologous traits inherited from a common ancestor, or the rediscovery of analogous frames by otherwise very different species. The space that we see in, besides being anisotropic, is essentially a space for the action of “invisible” forces and vectors [Leyton 1999], where the visual shapes change according to the configuration, the context, and the temporal extension in which they momentarily appear or remain visible. The δ movement [Kenkel 1913], [Harrower 1930] is an excellent example of what occurs in the unfolding of the acts of presentation. The phenomenon is visible when, in the tachistoscopic exposure of a cardboard disc for ca 100 ms, there is an expanding movement of the internal part of the figure, i.e., one sees an appearance that unfolds together with a distortion of the margins even in brief processes. The δ movement is also a phenomenal expression of the arousal and disappearance of visual forms, for example when we light up a dark room and the objects seem to expand. The same happens with lines [Eagleman & Sejnowski 2007], [Fröhlich 1923], [Harrower 1930], [Hubbard 2014], at least in the case of European subjects.

5 Spatial appearances are also cross-modally perceived by the general population (i.e., men and women of different expertise, and non-synaethetes) as naturally associated with color, sound, taste, touch and olfaction.

6 Experimental data show that circles are associated with red, triangles with yellow, acute angles with the range of red-yellow, and obtuse angles with the range of blue- green [Albertazzi, Da Pos et al. 2012]. This holds also for biological shapes, in which the pattern “round” and “elongated” appear to be matched respectively by reddish colors and bluish colors [Albertazzi, Malfatti et al. 2014a]. These collections of data raise the issue of a “geometry” of the purely visible, i.e., of the formal representation and modeling of what a subject perceives in actual seeing, where s/he is directly presented with appearances, not with physical objects. The expression “pure visibility [Sichtbarkeit]” is reminiscent of Reid’s idea of space [Reid 2000], but more specifically refers to Fiedler’s theory of pure visibility [Fiedler 1991] and the idea that the mind produces the building block materials of appearances. I do not endorse Fiedler’s

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separation between vision and the other senses, apart from touch, but I largely agree with his view of what seeing is (see also [Hildebrand 1893]). More than being illusory, the space of vision requires primitives and laws of organization different from the physical ones. The primitives of a geometry of the visible, in fact, more often than not are imbued with connotative dimensions making them meaningful for the perceiver.

7 In considering the main characteristics of a geometry of visual space, one has to be aware of a twofold possible approach: one addresses the genesis of visual shape (dynamically unfolding in the microgenesis of a presentation); the other addresses the appearances as such and their primitives.

8 In light of the foregoing considerations, I shall proceed as follows in this paper. I shall briefly list some issues concerning what can be viewed as a sort of radical change of perspective in vision science [Albertazzi 2013a], thereby dealing with the issue of the primitives of visual space. In other words, I shall conduct the pars destruens of a viewpoint well established in vision science. Hopefully, this will promote the development of a pars construens of a “geometry” of visual space, which necessarily requires collaborative work among experimental phenomenologists, philosophers, and mathematicians. Given the exploratory nature of the present inquiry, it is necessarily merely descriptive in Brentano’s terms [Brentano 1995]. However, suggestions are given as to potential future developments of the framework from an experimental viewpoint (see for example [Albertazzi, Canal et al. 2015b]).

2 Appearances and physical objects

9 The rationale underlying the reversal of viewpoint proposed above is well exemplified by the contraposition of the Galilean and Humean points of view on the question of whether qualities (the matter of appearances) can or cannot be objects of scientific inquiry [Albertazzi 2013b]. As well known, qualities are classically distinguished between primary or physical properties (spatiality, solidity, hardness, weight, shape, size, position, motion), and secondary ones (colors, tastes, smells, sounds), the latter classically thought to be a product of British empiricism. However, it was Theofrastus already in the third Century BC, who pointed out that in perception [...] one could develop these inquiries better [...] so as to show what qualities are proper to the sentient subject. [Theofrastus 1976, vi 2 1]

10 Galileo’s opinion on the point was very clear: [...] I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in consciousness. [Galileo1623, 274]

11 A correct statement indeed! Visual appearances (also in dreams) are given in perceptual awareness, have a qualitative nature and, strictly speaking, are psychic facts, i.e., they pertain to consciousness. However, as Hume remarked: It is universally allowed by modern enquirers, that all the sensible qualities of objects, such as hard, soft, hot, cold, white, black, &c. are merely secondary, and exist not in the objects themselves, but are perceptions of the mind, without any external archetype or model, which they represent. If this be allowed, with regard to secondary qualities, it must also follow, with regard to the supposed primary qualities of extension and solidity; nor can the latter be any more entitled to that denomination than the former. The idea of extension is entirely acquired from the senses of sight and feeling; and if all the qualities, perceived by the senses, be in the

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mind, not in the object, the same conclusion must reach the idea of extension, which is wholly dependent on the sensible ideas or the ideas of secondary qualities. [Hume 1975, 154]

12 The difference between physical and phenomenal objects has been shown since the first Gestalt studies. In current science, however, it is widely believed that Gestalt descriptions function mainly as heuristic cues for the presence of physical objects. This conception is broadly endorsed today by most scientists of perception when they assume that phenomenology describes (in first person accounts), while psychophysical and/or neurophysiological research, whose observables are metric quantities, explains (in third person accounts) [Albertazzi 2013a], [Spillmann 2009].

13 What is entirely missing in a Galilean framework, however, is a place for meaning (a sort of Faustian “stone guest” in current science) and value [Köhler 1939]. Current vision science is mainly syntax oriented. For example, in vision, algorithmic processes are applied to optical data, i.e., what happens is essentially the transformation of (meaningless) structures into (meaningless) structures [Koenderink 2013]. But a giraffe is not simply an aggregate of similar patches of black and white on a surface!

14 Meaningful appearances are incontrovertible primary ecological facts for humans and non-human living beings, i.e., they are met [Kanizsa 1979, 1991], [Metzger 1941, 2009]. To cite Goethe, one should not look for anything behind phenomena, because phenomena themselves are the explanation. Certainly, evolution has changed the external phenomenal world [Umwelten] [Uexküll 1934], [Koenderink 2012] by consolidating certain expectations, so that perceived qualities include anticipatory components necessary for the behavior and survival of living beings [Rosen 1991, 2012]. However, there are no pre-established, guaranteed-to-be-successful templates (understood as computational file formats) for every possible experience. What we have developed (or inherited) are schemes for actions like those offered primarily by the expressive configurations and affordances that we encounter in the environment and provide us with immediate information on how to behave [Gibson 1979]. One of these templates, for example, is the capacity to see multiplicity in unity, a “template for thinking”, to use Bohm’s expression [Bohm 1994]. To remain in the field of color perception, a particularly striking case concerns the so-called semantic dimensions of color. Belonging to the perceptive dimensions of color are qualities such as serious, mighty, serene, melancholic, already described in Goethe’s triangle [Goethe 1982] (though in fact first developed by Schreiber), but also qualities such as touchy-feely [Chirimuuta 2011], dull [Hering 1920], shrill [Kandinsky 1911], etc.; and there is evidence that any of bright-dark qualities is not unrelated to a scaling of light-heavy relationships, and these lead easily to soft-hard comparisons. Likewise, warm-cool relates to wet-dry dimensions [Albers 1963, 59]. There seems to be nothing more intermodal and interdisciplinary than the semantic dimensions of color, which are of concern to color science and color theory, art and design, and psychology. Two well- known cases in this field are the difference between cold and warm colors, that can be considered as one of the basic invariants of perceived color [Da Pos & Green-Armytage 2007], [Da Pos & Valenti 2007], [Ou, Luo et al. 2004a], [Xin, Cheng et al. 2004], and the difference between light and heavy colors [Arnheim 1954], [Itten 1961]. Neither of these differences derives from either physical properties of radiation or physiological processes, and classical colorimetry has nothing to say in this regard [Boynton 1979], [Brainard 1995], [Koenderink & van Doorn 2003]. For example, the basic polarity of the semantic attributes of color, warm-cold, is not represented in colorimetry space.

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3 Qualities

15 Qualities need to be reconsidered in light of a thorough taxonomy of qualities, which is currently lacking. The best analyses are still those by Metzger and Rausch [Metzger 1941], [Rausch 1966] (see also [Albertazzi 2010], [Pont 2013]). Prima facie one distinguishes among qualities of the skeletal structure (such as shape, movement, change, stability and instability); qualities of material (such as phenomena of brightness, transparency, hardness/softness); and tertiary qualities (the ways of being of qualities, in Metzger’s terms) such as expressive and physiognomic qualities (friendly, aggressive, masculine, appealing) and affordances [Gibson 1979]. The difficulty of composing a proper taxonomy of qualities, however, is caused by their very nature, because qualities are intrinsically relational. Some examples will help.

16 There is a figure/ground organization allowing whatever appearance to be visible, and the rules governing the emergence of a figure on a ground follow a precise hierarchy of conditions [Rubin 1949], [Peterson & Gibson 1993]. Visual qualities are always in the eye of the beholder, and they are given and reported in first person account, i.e., in subjective judgments based on visual awareness; qualities always appear in a mereological relation of whole (awareness) and parts (configurations of qualities as appearances); the configurations of qualities always have different degrees of Prägnanz [Koffka 1935], i.e., they follow an order of appropriateness; qualities are intrinsically cross-modal (for example, we perceive bright, thick, matt tunes). There are also qualities of qualities, such as the coloratura in music, or the ϕ movement (the objectless movement consisting in a perception of motion to which does not correspond a concomitant perception of objects in motion) and the β movement (when two fixed lights are lit with an inter-stimulus interval of ca 50 msec, only one light is seen in motion from left to right (see [Wertheimer 1912]). Psychophysical methods and measurements do not apply here; whence derives the difficulty of designing methods to test qualities. Qualities are also given in a series of polarities (such as small/large, high/ slow, sweet/sour, coarse/fine), and of spatial directions (left/right, below/above, in front of/behind). Issues therefore arise as to whether, for example, when perceiving something hot, one perceives cold as its amodal background; whether certain basic couples of qualities exist in all the modality domains, such as the hot/cold pair; or whether there are overlapping couples with the same semantic space, such as hot/cold, dry/wet, and sweet/sour. These are not idle questions, because answering them may induce us to reconsider the Aristotelian idea of a science of the sensible qualities based on couples of contraries such as hot and cold, and dry and wet [Aristotle 1906, 420a 25-420b], [Theofrastus 1976, ivi, on Democritus, 442b, 11], [Aristotle 1980, 8001a, 10 ff.], [Aristotle 1986, 420a25-420b], [Theofrastus 1976, on Democritus, vi, 1, 6]. This notion engenders a very different conception of the human perception of the environment, and of nature, which in our awareness appears to be intrinsically and naturally multimodal, qualitative, and scaled: for example, physically there is no object which is “more or less long” or “more or less short”.

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4 Aisthesis

17 If one analyses vision as a whole of appearances, it is difficult to maintain a sharp distinction between what pertains to science and what to aesthetics; or to be more precise, among perceptual, pictorial, and mental spaces, all of which are highly imaginative [Albertazzi 2006a,b]. In current science, subjective appearances are translated into third person account and re-presented in mathematical models, through metrics which tear off their qualitative character. This is one of the reasons why artistic products have hitherto often furnished the best re-presentations of appearances, much more than metrical and computational models. The writings of Alberti, Da Vinci, von Hildebrand, De Chirico, Marinetti, Klee, Kandinsky, et al., and also handbooks on how to draw [Ruskin 1857], or to paint [Hogarth 2002], are real sources of visual theory, showing what points, lines, surfaces and volumes are from a perceptual viewpoint; i.e., what the primitives of spatial appearances in visual awareness are. Observations relevant for the study of spatial primitives are to be found on the aesthetics of space [Lipps 1897], the already mentioned nature of the pure visible or appearance [Sichtbarkeit, sichtbare Erscheinung], (see [Fiedler 1991]), the difference between close and distant images [Hildebrand 1893], abstract shapes (animal and inorganic as well) [Riegl 1966], the relation between abstraction and empathy [Worringer 1908], and the perception of shape organization (lines to planes, to shapes, etc.) [Wölfflin 1950], [Kandinsky 1926].

18 Art is in fact an instrument with which to generate knowledge about natural processes, rendering manifest the conditions to make appearances visible: consider, for example, drawing, painting, and sculpting techniques, or procedures to generate metallic luster in ceramics. The visual analyses, specifically developed by artists straddling two centuries (the eighteenth and the nineteenth) are major explorations of the phenomenology of vision. Potentially, they could help to rewrite entire bodies of literature in vision studies: consider, for example, studies on shape from shading, where the concept of the shading cue may be replaced by that of the cue for relief articulation [Koenderink, van Doorn et al. 2015].

19 Currently some of these issues are being examined by both experimental aesthetics and cross-modality studies, which are undergoing a rapid scientific development. However, in such research the (ontological) dichotomy between so-called objective features and subjective aspects of experience still dominates, and the methodologies adopted are usually those of psychophysics. As varied as they may be, what these studies analyse are usually very simple stimuli: say, a grapheme and a color, a color and a sound, a smell and an olfaction (for a review see [Spence 2011]). What we cross-modally and generally perceive in the environment, however, are high-level, cross-modal, interlocked, and most of all meaningful, configurations of qualities [Albertazzi, Canal et al. 2015a]. What is missing in many contemporary studies is analysis of the characteristic of pure visibility, i.e., the purely qualitative aspect of visual objects, and the specific nature of the spatial extension of visual objects, of which artists, instead, have always been aware [Albertazzi 2011]. The study of artworks thus becomes a “laboratory” for the analysis of the laws of seeing and visual appearances [Metzger 2009, chap. 12.2]. Indeed, the artist does nothing but test, exemplify and reshape the construction of appearances based on laws that are also active in the natural perception of objects. This point of view has also been expressed to some extent by,

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among others, Da Vinci see [da Vinci & MacCurdy 2002], Klee [Klee 1961] and Kandinsky [Kandinsky 1926].

5 Spatial primitives

20 Our visual field, in the case of shapes, appears to be partitioned into spatial entities that can be described in terms of seen points (or punctoids), seen lines (or lineoids), seen surfaces (or surfaceoids), and seen volumes (or volumoids).2

21 What are these perceptual entities? Are they geometric entities? Are they coextensive with what we cognitively ascribe to the physical world? Alternatively, are they dependent on how our mind generates and externalizes these entities—i.e., psycho- geometric entities? What are the conditions of their appearance, their linkages and interdependencies? Are they meaning-bearers, and if so how? As mentioned, the arts are a rich field of research into these issues whose results should be further tested from an experimental phenomenological viewpoint.

22 It is necessary for experimental phenomenology [Albertazzi 2013a], [Vishwanath 2013]: To start with the perceptual phenomena and strictly avoid mixing up perceptual phenomena with their physical or physiological causes or to derive from the latter any principle of classification. [Hering 1920, 24]

23 The main tenets of experimental phenomenology pose problems of method, units of measurement, metrics (if any), and a formal theory of the spatial appearances [Kubovy 1999].

24 In order to identify the nature of the visual primitives, for example, one has to consider them in the space in which they appear, a space embedded with forces, raising, lowering, pushing appearances in different directions, and at different perceived velocities (see the concept of teleiosis in [Brentano 1988]). Embedded in this space are the laws of growth of form appearances [Thompson 1961], [Goethe 1978], [Haeckel 1904], [Ostwald 1922]. Consider a subjective visual square: in perceiving certain configurations as “squared”, we perceive not a Euclidean figure but a specific quality (i.e., “squaroid”) that covers a variable but always small number of variations. “Squaroid” has the character of a zone of particularly pronounced potential transformations which is merely perceptual. A visual square is also “sitting” on one of its sides, and therefore perceived as stable. When rotated by 45 degrees [Chen & Freeman 1984], [Schumann 1900], notwithstanding any change in its metrical size and dimensions, the square presents a different appearance: that of a diamond, which is certainly more similar to a rhombus than to a square, and in unstable equilibrium. Visual squares can appear differently in tachistoscopic presentation [Sander 1926], void [Bressan 1985], [Woodhouse & Taylor 1987], textured so as to have an inky, spongy, metallic, etc. quality; of different size if filled with lines [Helmholtz 1867], [Mather, O’Halloran et al. 1991], and endowed with connotative dimensions (good/bad, pleasant/ unpleasant, appealing/disgusting) [Köhler 1939]. One can measure how square forms differ from Euclidean squares. In so doing, one sees that the kind of units used for its measurement are not the JND of psychophysics, because one is measuring qualitative dimensions as parts of perceived space [Albertazzi 2012]. Testing the nature of a square appearance means relying on subjective judgments in first-person account. There is no other way to proceed, because what has to be tested and measured is how a square appearance appears to subjects, in the space of mental visual awareness. What is

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needed is a geometry of visual forms based on subjective qualities as perceived by humans, and in some respects also by “other species of mind” [Allen & Bekoff 1997]. More than imposing a metrics, one must rely on degrees of (qualitative) similarity as perceived by subjects, and on what is the order of appropriateness for that specific type of shape (for example, the best clue of the category squaroid). The complexity of the judgment of similarity and order is immediately evident when one consider that, depending on dimension, color, texture, etc., from time to time, in different contexts, one shape can be perceived as more square than another.

25 The first step in proceeding towards a geometry of the purely visual is to develop a taxonomy of primitives’ appearances which is as complete as possible, something similar to what Katz did for colors and their ways of appearing [Katz 1935]: for example, classifying the properties, the modes of appearances and the conditions for a figure to look like a square, and the extent to which it does so. It is necessary to abandon the idea that spatial primitives are stimuli re-presentations and in fact a product of information recovery and sensory completion: i.e., estimating properties of “objective” quantitative reality and having a direct access to its statistics captured in the mathematics of Bayesian estimation [Albertazzi, vanTonder et al. 2010], [Koenderink 2010, 2012], [Hoffman 2013], [Lappin, Norman et al. 2011], [Vishwanath 2005].

6 Visual points, lines, surfaces and volumes

26 The questions to start with in order to frame a “geometry” of visual space are the following: What are the visual spatial primitives? e.g., what is a visual point as to the “what” and the “where”? What are the relations among visual primitives, their visual extendedness, and space? What are their properties? (dimensionality, modality/ amodality, direction, color, etc.). What are the conditions of their phenomenal appearance? (E.g., when is a visual point visible? when does a visual point become a visual linelet, a disc, a volume?) How can one classify, measure and model the subjective appearance of visual primitives? (E.g., in the way in which one does so with the subjective experience of colors.)

27 Visual spatial primitives include seen points, seen lines, and seen surfaces. What we perceive in the environment, in fact, are not Euclidean dimensions, but fine threads, smooth wooden tables, water surfaces, gelatins, fogs: we do not perceive points with neither dimensions nor color, or one-dimensional lines. It is usually assumed that in 3D perception the customary order of perceived objects is from points to lines to surfaces and volumes. However, we perceive the depth, solidity and graspability of visual objects also in monocular vision, i.e., in the visual field, where lower-order primitives are usually seen as boundaries of higher-order elements (i.e., surfaces are boundaries of volumes, lines of surfaces, and points of lines). I shall distinguish different forms of dependence of lower-order elements on higher-order ones, so that the independence of the individual primitives as such is to be viewed as the limiting case of dependence.

28 Dimensionality is one of the characteristics of spatial appearances, but dimensions cannot be understood in the physical sense. Take the case of visual points (punctoids). These are not zero-dimensional, but may be one- or bi-dimensional (consider a hyper- compressed line reduced to its minimum, or imperceptibly circular or even oval). Do

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visual points have internal structure, i.e., parts? Can they be viewed as Euclidean points? Do they have borders of various types (knurled or frayed)? Very rarely do they have perfectly circular borders. When does a point in a 3D space (a star in the sky) become a sphere? When does a point becomes a dash line? Do points have orientation? If so, at what dimension? Do color and texture influence their appearance? Do points change spatial attitude (depth, meeting of lines, position) in configurations? Are there expressive points?

29 Consider a visual line (lineoid). It is one-dimensional, but has a marginal second dimension: to be phenomenally visible, in fact, it has to possess a certain width. Does the presentation of a line in a 3D space or contextually with other lines change its appearances? Do lines have visual location, direction, weight (think of chiaroscuro), depth, density (are there free lines)?

30 Consider a visual surface (surfaceoid): bidimensionality is a limit case (such as an A4 sheet of paper). However the bidimensionality of a fronto-parallel surface changes if seen at 90 degrees and becomes a visual line, the line being its non-detachable boundary. Do lines have visual location, direction, weight, depth, density (are there free surfaces)?

31 Consider a visual volume (volumoid). Is “being voluminous” also perceived in monocular vision? Is it necessarily related to grasping (motor action)? Do visual volumes have location, direction, weight, depth, density (think of clouds or fog)?

32 Another important consideration is that dimensions in presentation may not be homogeneous, because visual space itself, besides being finite, is qualitative and non- homogeneous [Mach 1984, chap. 6-10]. Visual primitives are also rarely detachable one from another: for example, how can one detach the visual surface boundary of a volume, such as the red quality spread on the surface of an apple? or the striated rose- yellow of a voluminous appearance of clouds?

33 Because pictorial space is a bidimensional space, it is a good “laboratory” for the analysis and the explanation of the forms in visual space and their genesis, i.e., of the conditions that allow them to be visible. When we draw or paint on a canvas, what we are in fact doing is represent, i.e., objectivize, the laws governing visual seeing. Artists are true to nature [Ruskin 1857], because from a point of view of pure visibility nature itself is an indefinite potential of morphological figurations localized in a space of pulling forces.

7 Experimental phenomenology of a visual point

34 There is lack of wide-ranging experimental evidence, based on subjective judgments on the perception of points, lines and surfaces, on which to build a theory of the primitives of visual awareness. Experimental evidence on the presence or absence of parts in visual points, for example, would be essential information on which to construct a theory of these and other visual spatial primitives. A point can be a marked part of some higher-order object, such as the origin of a line; or it can be unmarked, like an undifferentiated part of a line, or of a crystal clear blue sky without discontinuities of any sort, as in the Ganzfeld [Metzger 1930]. A point is also a position in space signalled by the arrangement or the structure of other objects, such as the target of an arrow.

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35 Here I shall consider seen points (punctoids) and their two main modes of appearance: a point as an independent object (an object so small that it can be seen even when it does not have phenomenally significant dimensions); and a point as a dependent object. In both cases, the phenomenal visual points have a form (contrarily to [Koffka 1935, chap. 4]).

36 It is difficult to define a point in phenomenal space as an independent object. In fact, points may be independent from any higher-order object, but not from the ground, which influences their appearance (a black point on a white ground and a white point of the same size on a black ground look different); points require color, and specific dimension to be visually distinguished and distinguishable in the field in which they appear.

37 A point as an independent object may be defined as having a minimal extension, with tolerance; as being localized; and as having a qualitative width and color (and color connotative characteristics as well, such as cold/warm, and merry/sad); as having figural and border characteristics (thorny, hooked, frayed margins as they appear in natural forms, such as stars or bacteria); and as being expressive (appearing good or bad, according to their position on a square frame, for example). Briefly, for a point to be a point there may be an organization of size, texture, border, color, and orientation (relatively to their borders, relatively to the planes on which they appear, such as right/left, above/below, in front of/behind); and also expressive characteristics, such as appearing stable or instable in space. Any model considering a point without dimensions, would, under this conceptualization, be wrong. Once these characteristics, have been carefully described, they must be tested experimentally before proceeding to define punctoid as a primitive.

38 The second mode of appearance of a point is as a dependent object. Consider the intersection point between lines, the extremes of a line, a point induced by convergent segments separated by a spatial interval; or the tip of an arrow, a cone, an edge, etc. Examples of dependent points in high-level configurations are also Hermann’s grid (1870), Ehrenstein’s figures and phenomena of neon color spreading [van Tuijl & Leeuwenberg 1979]. Points can lie on a ground, a line, a surface or inside or outside a volume: in a cone, for example, a point on the vertex is seen as external, a point on the surface is seen as external, while a point in the lower part is seen either on the base surface of the cone, slightly raised because of transparency, or on the inner surface of the cone. A point may amodally overlap with another point or with a line (both externally or internally), and there may be coincidence of boundaries of many overlapping points (consider the cone, above). In stereokinetic cones (or ellipses) points also overlap in time, changing their localization either in surface or voluminous appearances. There may be amodal points dependent on a texture of points, or induced ones dependent on four converging segments. Points may have directions depending on their irregular borders or on their potentiality to move within the same higher- order object on which they depend, without changing their type (i.e., being marked or unmarked). There are different degrees of freedom of directions in points as dependent objects. In fact, they can be marked points (the end point of the arrow); imaginary points (the internal points in a line or arranged in loose configurations); unmarked points (when the point is merely the “target” of the arrow). Consider then the midpoint of a disc and its degree of freedom: its centre has full potential movement (complete freedom of direction). However, if one removes a quarter of the disc, then half of the

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disc, its centre has fewer possible movements (50% degree of direction) (see the concept of plerosis in [Brentano 1988]). Finally, the direction of points may have degrees of punctoid (i.e., of Prägnanz).

39 As to the color of points as independent objects, they have their own color, although influenced by the ground on which they appear. The color of points as dependent objects, on the other hand, depends on the objects on which they depend, such as the color of the lines to which they belong, or it is influenced by the surface on which they appear.

40 The question of what a point is—or in other words, what the meaning of a point in the visual field is—can be answered only by attentive description of the multifarious modes of its appearances, and by a series of experimental tests based on subjective judgments in first-person account. The visual appearance, location, and meaning of points in space, in fact, depends only on seeing. Only when one has the whole visual grammar of a point is one entitled to look for the definition of a visual point.

8 Experimental phenomenology of a visual line

41 A line’s appearance is multifarious as well, and the initial questions are similar. What is a line? When is a line visible? When does a line cease to appear as a line? When does a line become a solid/transparent surface or a hole? Do lines have orientation? If so, at what dimension? Do color and texture influence their appearance? Do lines change spatial attitude (curvature, position of shape) in configurations? Are there expressive lines? “How” and “when” do we see lines: for example straight ones or curved ones? [Lipps 1897], [Platt 1960].

42 Here I shall consider the nature of seen lines (i.e., lineoids) and their two main modes of appearance: a line as an independent object (a unidimensional thin line that can be seen even when it does not have phenomenally significant dimensions), and a line seen as a dependent object.

43 It is difficult to think of a line in phenomenal space as a totally independent object. In fact, visual lines may be independent from any higher-order object; but like points, lines are not independent from the ground, which influences their appearance (a black line on a white ground and a white line on a black ground look different); lines require some other difference in color, and dimension, for example, to be visually distinguishable. A visual line is an elongated object that must have some minimal thickness to be visible (for example, threads, or a differently colored horizon of the sea), and a thick line behaves differently from a thin line. A line can be perceived as such although not drawn, as the continuous prolongation of two converging segments, or as two crossing lines of two converging segments.

44 A line as an independent object may be defined as having a minimal extension, with tolerance: its end-points are marked and have no degree of possible movement (whereas its internal points are not marked and have two degrees of possible movement); it is localized and has a qualitative width; it has color and connotative chromatic characteristics such as cold/warm, merry/sad; it has figural characteristics such as parts, potentially overlapping, so that a line is only a formal limit of a surface; it has border characteristics, such as thick, curved, zigzagged, blurred margins; and here the phenomenology is wide, because of the existence of smooth margins of a zigzagged

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line or zigzagged margins of a curved line, etc. Lines have expressive characteristics (appearing good or bad, cold or warm, aggressive or calm, quick or slow), relatively to their thickness, density, direction, degrees of freedom in a configuration. For a line to be a visual object there must be an organization of size, texture, border, color, and orientation (also in their “skeletal” characteristics, for example appearing stable or instable in space).

45 The second mode of appearance of a line is as a dependent object. In this case, a line can be a marked (or unmarked) part of some higher-order object (e.g., an undifferentiated part of a surface such as imaginary lines, lying as non-marked on a surface, or its marked boundary). A line can be a position in space signalled by a suitable arrangement of other objects (depending on their distance, context and relative position).

46 A growing set of visual lines extends in a surface, and the differently pronounced lines in the set are seen as parts of space (consider a row of trees seen by a perceiver in motion), their density being given by the different regular or irregular directions that they have (to the right/to the left, toward/below, toward/above, centripetal/ centrifugal). In the visual context lines are boundaries of both external surfaces and an inner area. They can also be boundaries of transparent volumes and depth cues as in chiaroscuro. Lines can have an overlapping of boundaries and parts in higher-order objects, such as surfaces and volumes: in the case of a ball, for example, the circular line that one sees is not a boundary of surfaces but of volumes, and one has virtual lines dependent on the position of the viewer (the same holds for an oval disc, or for a small ball moving on a bigger one). The visual sides of a volumetric cone are boundaries of the solid; the same holds for a stereokinetic cone, although with a higher degree of Prägnanz of the appearance of the voluminous solid shape and a temporal shifting [Albertazzi 2004].

47 As the boundary of a surface-object (figure), the non-independent line has the color of the surface to which it belongs; unmarked internal lines have the color of the surface as well. In the case of lines as boundaries in higher-order objects with different colors, such as a few quadrants of a disc, one may wonder what the color of the common boundary is, because the figure-ground effect may not apply here: one might see two side-to-side boundaries, or one boundary only, having the color of the visually more salient figure. Only experiments can give an answer to these preliminary questions.

9 Experimental phenomenology of visual surfaces and visual volumes

48 From the standpoint of seeing, surfaces and volumes appear to be strictly interrelated primitives. When surfaces are perceived lying on the same plane, the margin assumes a double function—as a contour enclosing both the surfaces—and the stratification of the two surfaces goes in parallel with the function of the dividing border. Color is a determinant of both surface stratification and the plastic effect in space. If a colored surface overlaps with and partially occludes another differently colored surface, the visual margin separating the two belongs to the former and its contour, while the surface to the rear is perceived amodally as continuing behind the former. If, on the contrary, the two surfaces are perceived as lying on the same plane, the margin line where the two abut assumes a double function. In other words, the stratification of the

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two surfaces, due to color, goes in parallel with the function of the dividing border [Da Pos & Albertazzi 2015].

49 In perceiving, at near distance, and in stereoscopic images we obtain both a 3D shape and an egocentric scale. The difference between stereoscopic and pictorial space resides in the fact that what we perceive in pictures is a 3D structure (3D shape and space) but that structure is not scaled to the ego-center [Vishwanath 2014]. When one has a perception of stereopsis (either through a stereoscope or a physical object), it is because things are scaled to the egocenter. Therefore one explanation for why, when one looks at a picture with one eye through an aperture [Vishwanath & Hibbard 2013] or with a synopter [Koenderink & Wijntjes et al. 2013], pictures appear as if they are “stereoscopic” is because there is some presentation of egocentric scale [Vishwanath & Hibbard 2013]. Vice versa, when we look into the distance in real scenes, the perception of 3D space/shape again becomes more “pictorial”. This can be explained on the basis of the fact that one no longer has the presentation of egocentric scale beyond a certain distance, because egocentric distance becomes very difficult to assess farther and farther away [Vishwanath 2014].

50 Because color and light conditions, and chiaroscuro as well, influence the appearance of distance, stratification, texture, transparency, pictorial relief, they are the conditions for volumes to appear in the visual field. Surfaces themselves are transparent boundaries of volume appearances, like a quality spread all over them [Alberti 1972]. The depth quality and plastic effect of the objects in a scene are also fundamental to our perceived quality of realness [Mausfeld 2013], [Michotte 1948], [Vishwanath 2010]. Both paintings and natural scenes show how the realness of visual objects derives to a great extent from appearances made of secondary qualities in extended visual space, such as flat, round, volumetric, soft, luminous, remote, close, graspable, etc.; and how the space of vision is essentially a space constructed by the observers.

10 Preliminary conclusions

51 It emerges from the foregoing discussion that qualitative primitives in visual space awareness—such as punctoids, lineoids, surfaceoids and volumoids—lie at the basis of the perceived visual configurations such as trees, plants, living beings, landscapes, and art works. They have specific and general properties, and can be individually analysed only as limit cases of independence. They form a whole/part hierarchy, may have coincident boundaries, present degrees of Prägnanz, and bear expressive characteristics. If the “elements” of a geometry of the visible are to be identified, they have the nature of psycho-geometric primitives, i.e., qualitative patterns, non-detachable from seeing. A geometry of the visible is the geometry of an act of visual presentation.

52 Complete identification of primitives like punctoids, lineoids, surfaceoids and volumoids can be achieved only after thorough empirical testing of their characteristics based on subjective judgments in first person account. Standard mathematical geometry is inadequate to account for them, because the primitives of visual space are not merely geometrical projections of retinal stimulation. Indeed, most aspects of the space-time in which those primitives appear are still far from being clearly understood, such as the dynamics of their morphogenesis in presentation, and the kind of continuum to which they pertain [Albertazzi 2002]. Other preliminary

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aspects that should be considered are the laws of organization and interrelation among the primitives: for example, one may expand the classic Gestalt laws by introducing the law of meaning [Pinna & Albertazzi 2010].

53 From a biological and ecological viewpoint, when the various shape configurations in nature and their coming into being are considered, the rules underlying the development of visual spatial primitives seem to apply also to the organic world of nature: consider punctoids (pointed formation from seeds to microorganism), lineoids (linear formation of crystals or of lightning), surfaceoids (connective biological tissue), and volumoids (of clouds, dunes or water masses) as analyzed in Haeckel and Thompson [Haeckel 1904], [Thompson 1961]. In a few recent experimentaI studies on organic shapes [Dadam, Albertazzi et al. 2012], [Albertazzi, Canal et al. 2014], for example, it has been shown that when the images of organic forms are grouped on the basis of certain characteristics (such as shape, margin, texture, dimensionality), rounded forms are perceived as harmonic and dynamic, while elongated forms are perceived to some extent as disharmonious and static. Furthermore, it has been shown that these spatial patterns are naturally associated with colors [Dadam, Albertazzi et al. 2012], and that round shapes are naturally matched by reddish colours (in the orange- red interval of the Hue Circle) and elongated shapes are matched by bluish colour (in the blue-green interval of the Hue Circle). From these experiments one may conclude that the perception of a “round” attribute is generally associated with “reddish”, “harmonic”, “dynamic” and “warm”, while the perception of an “elongated” attribute is associated with “greenish-bluish”, “disharmonious”, “static”, and “cold”. Adopting a qualitative approach to visual shapes might then result in extraordinary findings, ones such that it is possible to think in terms of a natural history of forms evolved from a few basic spatial primitives imbued with meaning—the idea at the core of Goethe’s Ur- formen [Goethe 1978]. Visible in the “book of nature”, in fact, is the tendency towards qualitative patterns and the repetition of patterns showing the same principles at work in different taxonomic realms: a challenge for a science of visual appearances and their primitives, and for an intrinsic geometry of visual space.

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NOTES

1. The German term Extensität is translated with extendedness because it refers to the qualitative nature of perceptual space: it does not refer to the classical mathematical concept of extension [Ausdehnung]. 2. The coined new terms punctoids, lineoids, etc. refer to how the visual points, the visual lines, etc., qualitatively appear in the visual field. The use of such terminology should avoid the danger to take these patterns as Platonic ideas or abstract concepts, which would be the case if one adopted terms such as “pointness”, “liness”, etc.

ABSTRACTS

A challenge for current vision science is to develop an observer-dependent science—a science of visual appearances beyond veridicalism. The space that we subjectively experience in vision is, in fact, highly ``illusory’’, and the primitives of the visual field are qualitative, contextual, and relational patterns rather than metric or stimuli-dependent cues. Drawing on the extensive evidence that the experimental literature on visual space perception offers on the behavior of the various constituents of that space such as shapes and surfaces, the paper describes the qualitative primitives of such a space and addresses the question of the intrinsic ``geometry’’ of visual appearances. The paper also makes suggestions for potential future developments of examining visual space from an experimental viewpoint.

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Un enjeu majeur pour les recherches actuelles dans les sciences de la vision consiste à mettre au point une approche dépendante de l’observateur – une science des apparences visuelles située au-delà de leur véridicité. L’espace dont nous faisons l’expérience subjective est en réalité hautement « illusoire», et les éléments de base du champ visuel sont des structures qualitatives, contextuelles et relationnelles, et non des indices métriques et dépendants du stimulus. Sur la base de nombreux résultats disponibles dans la littérature traitant de la manière dont fonctionnent les divers constituants de l’espace (formes, surfaces, etc.), l’article décrit les éléments qualitatifs de base d’un tel espace et pose la question de la « géométrie» des apparences visuelles. Il formule enfin un ensemble de propositions pour d’éventuelles recherches poursuivant l’examen de l’espace visuel d’un point de vue expérimental.

AUTHOR

LILIANA ALBERTAZZI CIMeC (Center for Mind/Brain Sciences) and Department of Humanities, University of Trento (Italy)

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The Phenomenology of the Invisible: From Visual Syntax to “Shape from Shapes”

Baingio Pinna, Jan Koenderink and Andrea van Doorn

This work was supported by the Visiting Scientist Program (2014) from the University of Sassari, Italy (to JK). We thank Katia Deiana for significant help in collecting the data and in preparing the manuscript.

1 Introduction. From vision to description: what do we see?

1 The starting question preceding every visual phenomenological and psychophysical experiment is “what do you see?” This question is expected to reveal the simplest, immediate answer about what is perceived and, above all, the most “correct”, “current” and “true” one. The terms written in quotation marks are usually considered to be isomorphic to the perceptual outcomes and can also be considered as synonyms on the basis of the linguistic reports made by the subjects. Briefly, what emerges through the spontaneous and immediate descriptions and responses is commonly accepted during visual phenomenology and psychophysical experiments as the closest result to actual perception. In fact, this kind of description is more pure, as it is less influenced by later unpredictable mediations, so it offers results that are free from thoughts, doubts or other uncontrolled top-down feedback that can corrupt or distort the primary vision process [Kanizsa 1979], [Koffka 1935], [Metzger 1963], [Titchener 1902].

2 For example, the pattern illustrated in Fig. 1a (p. 131) was spontaneously described as “a square” (for a full detailed description about how these data were collected see the “General methods” section). This outcome is complete and does not require anything else. Nobody casts doubts about its correctness and completeness, since this description is spontaneous, immediate, unanimous, and referred to the unique “thing” seen in

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Fig. 1a. The word “square” appears to describe fully and isomorphically the object illustrated. Furthermore, this word subsumes all the visual properties related to the object, so it appears to stand for the perceived thing. Therefore, the thing is its name and the name is the thing. The two components appear to be bijectively related.

3 The soundness, appropriateness and likelihood of the linguistic descriptions are tested and corroborated in everyday life, where people use the spoken language in a quasi- total agreement to talk and communicate about visual objects. It is rare to refute the innate trueness of the descriptions, but this may apply to life’s situations that are more complicated than looking at a single square. In fact, this only occurs under special conditions, for example when the linguistic renditions diverge due to specific and antithetical interests of the interlocutors (e.g., in the case of attractiveness or beauty and other tertiary or expressive qualities).

4 In general, the common and shared use of linguistic descriptions in everyday life is the best demonstration of isomorphism, correctness and completeness in relation to the visual object. It can be stated that if the linguistic description had not had these properties, it would not have been used as it is. Furthermore, in sciences like physics, chemistry or even mathematics, the linguistic descriptions commonly used in everyday life are not completely denied. Instead, they continue to be incorporated within the corpus of specialist words of the science considered.

5 Given this basic assumption that is shared with epistemological foundations, in the next sections the meaning of the linguistic description in relation to what is perceived will be analyzed and reconsidered. This will not only be on the basis of what is seen and then reported, but mainly on the basis of what is not perceived at first sight, or better still, of what is invisible, implicit or simply omitted in the subjects’ descriptions.

6 The main thesis of this work suggests that what is not perceived at first sight and what is invisible can tell us much more about vision than what is recognized. Briefly, the main purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate that phenomenologically a visual object is like a floating iceberg, with most of its mass below the surface of the water. In fact, it is of major interest that this work does not only address what can easily and immediately be observed “above the surface of the water”, but also focuses mostly on the rest of it, the hidden, unseen part. The scientific consequences of this approach will first be deduced and then be considered within vision science.

2 General methods

Subjects

7 Unless otherwise specified, different groups of 15 undergraduate students (both male and female) of linguistics, literature, human sciences, architecture and design, participated in each experiment described in the following sections. The subjects had some elementary knowledge of Gestalt psychology and visual illusions, but they were naive both to the phenomena studied and to the purpose of the experiments. They all had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

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Stimuli

8 The stimuli were those illustrated in the next section. They were displayed on a 33 cm color CRT monitor (Sony GDM-F520 1600x1200 pixels, refresh rate 100 Hz), driven by a MacBook computer with an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT, in an ambient room illuminated by an Osram Daylight fluorescent light (250 lux, 5600° K). All the conditions were displayed in the fronto-parallel plane at a distance of 50 cm from the subject. A chin rest stabilized the head position of the subjects who used binocular vision.

Procedure

9 A phenomenological free-report method was adopted. Different groups, each consisting of 15 subjects, only described one stimulus. This was to avoid interactions and contamination between stimuli. The descriptions reported throughout the paper use similar phrases and words to those provided by the spontaneous descriptions of at least 12 of the 15 subjects in each group, but were edited for brevity and representativeness. To provide a fair representation of the descriptions given by the subjects and to avoid contamination by the interpretations of the authors, the descriptions were judged by three independent graduate students of linguistics, naive with respect to the hypotheses. The descriptions are incorporated into the text to help the reader in the stream of argumentation. All the reports were quite spontaneous and the presentations were stopped when the subjects finished their reports. They viewed the stimuli during the time of the report. Observation time was unlimited.

10 During the experiment, subjects were allowed to add afterthoughts while watching and to see in different ways. The subjects could also receive suggestions and questions of any kind from the experimenter (see the following sections). All possible variations occurring during free exploration were written down by the experimenter. This was necessary to define the best conditions for the occurrence of emerging phenomena.

3 The binding description-perception

11 When Fig. 1b was shown to a new group of subjects, the most spontaneous and common answer given was “a rotated square”. The rotation is a new emerging attribute not needed in Fig. 1a. By increasing the geometrical rotation of the square shown in Fig. 1 up to 45 degrees, a diamond, rhombus or lozenge were the terms used as a description (see Fig. 1c). Furthermore, here the term “square” was barely mentioned. Indeed, these new outcomes were apparently different, as they replaced the use of the term “square” by the subjects. The question arises as to why these synonyms only emerge in the 45 degree tilted square and not in the square shown in Fig. 1a? This question is not trivial. Phenomenologically, Fig. 1c is not univocally defined and needs more words to be described, mainly because it can be perceived in different, although very similar, ways. This is not the case of the square of Fig. 1a, whose unique and univocal nature is immediate and strong. This outcome further suggests that the linguistic descriptions trace, maybe like a carbon paper, the emergence of visual things from the stimulus pattern. They are reported and mentioned through their name and syntax relations as they emerge visually. The next stimulus, shown in Fig. 1d, was most often described as “a black square” (80%), or less often simply as “a square” (20%). Again a new attribute

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emerges, the achromatic color, definitely implicit in the previous conditions. According to these last remarks, since the color was not mentioned in the previous conditions, if the linguistic description traces the visual emergence of attributes we can draw the conclusion that color is not as visually marked in those conditions as it is in Fig. 1d.

Figure 1: Squares and their attributes

12 By presenting Fig. 1e to a new group of naive subjects, the most spontaneous and common answer was “a distorted or deformed square”. Under these conditions, the new visual attribute required corresponds to the loss of regularity clearly traced in the description. However, when the next handmade pattern of Fig. 1f was shown, the main outcome was simple and “a square” was the only description given. Under a condition such as that shown in Fig. 1f, the loss of regularity was not mentioned, but it was discharged or discounted, although the geometrical conditions might require it. In contrast, Fig. 1g appears totally different, being described as “a square made of crunched up paper”. Thus its material attributes are revealed, a detail not mentioned in the previous figures. Finally, the patterns of Figs. 1h-1j were perceived as “a bevelled square”, “a broken square” and “a strange square” respectively.

13 At this stage, the following questions emerge spontaneously. Why are some attributes mentioned and required and others are not? Conversely, why are some attributes omitted in some conditions and reported in others? These questions are the main topic of the next section.

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4 Logical and phenomenological issues about perceptions and descriptions

14 Given these preliminary immediate descriptions, some basic remarks are worth highlighting. All the previous figures, except Fig. 1c, are phenomenologically perceived as squares although only a few of them are squares in the true geometrical acceptation of the term. In contrast, although the pattern of Fig. 1c is a square, it is perceived as a new figure with a new name. The assignment of a new name can be considered as the main process of perceiving an emerging “thing” that from now on becomes a distinct visual object.

15 Moreover, going back to Fig. 1a, the observed figure, the square, stands alone: it is defined without any other attribute. It is a square and nothing else, i.e., a square tout court, a square par excellence, a true singularity and a one-word object [Koenderink 1999], [Koenderink, van Doorn et al. 1992], [Johnston & Passmore 1994], [Rogers & Cagenello 1989]. At this stage, a question arises spontaneously: why is this figure a singularity, a one-word description neither revealing nor accompanied by other emerging properties?

16 The first answer could be that other possible attributes are left out because they are less important than the ones reported. Why then, in the other conditions, such as those illustrated in Fig. 1, do other attributes emerge? Should “the most important” attribute be the only one that continues to be highlighted? How can the term “major” be defined? Furthermore, why has only one specific attribute been selected instead of another and, why is only one mentioned, while sometimes two instead of three are reported, or maybe four or even five? The notion of “importance” can open intricate issues placed beyond the very simple figures studied here. This might suggest a different and simpler alternative way.

17 A second answer could be found if we consider that other possible attributes are “invisible” or unnoticeable. Hence, they are not traced nor picked up by the linguistic description. As a matter of fact, phenomenologically, not all attributes appear to be placed at the same level (gradient) of perceptibility. Some can be totally invisible or only perceptible after attention is focused on them. Some others remain totally invisible in spite of clear suggestions. This is the case, for example, which is quite common in nature, where animals and plants jeopardize or save their lives by playing the visible-invisible antinomy-dilemma [Pinna & Reeves 2015]. The advantage of this second answer is that it remains within the phenomenological domain without introducing further notions that could be transferred to other more cognitive domains. However, its limit is based on the question: why are some attributes immediately in the foreground or partially visible, while others are totally invisible? Does this reflect a natural organization of visual attributes?

18 A third answer, related to the previous one, may be highlighted. This suggests that other attributes are not invisible, just omitted. Therefore, it results that this is mostly a linguistic issue and not a visual one. In other words, although further attributes of the square are linguistically implicit, they can still be clearly perceptible but are simply not mentioned. In addition, related to this point, further attributes may be omitted simply because they are considered as superfluous. Therefore, the word “square” contains

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most of the information needed to complete the description. As a consequence, a square does not need any further attribute to be defined as such.

19 A fourth possible answer maintains that this square stands alone since it is the best example, the model or the prototype of other squares. Being a prototype [Rosch 1973, 1975, 1977], it does not need any other phenomenological attributes or qualifying words.

20 This sample of possible answers, expressed in an acceptation regarded as the closest to the phenomenal one, can be considered as a basic step that is useful to reach higher and higher levels of abstraction, starting from the phenomenal base. Briefly, they can be considered like a gradus ad Parnassum, a step towards the highest complexity of the organization of visual attributes.

21 The previous answers can be better understood if they are reconsidered in the light of the following questions: why are some attributes more important than others or more visible than others? Why are some attributes superfluous and how can they be rebuilt on the basis of the main one-word object? Why are some other attributes implicit and why are these mentioned only, or mostly, under specific conditions? What is a prototype and how is it created? How many prototypes exist, one for each object? What is an object?

22 These questions are useful to reveal the status of the theoretical complexity of each answer in relation to others. In other words, they can test whether each answer is plausible and useful to solve its related issues, or whether it leaves open and triggers more questions than the ones it can answer.

23 These remarks are persuasive if we think about the way the square of Fig. 1a could be seen after its comparison with all the other figures. A new group of subjects barely reported the attributes previously omitted. Only when they were asked to make a direct comparison with the other figures, did they describe Fig. 1a as an un-rotated square, with the sides oriented along the vertical-horizontal directions, white, regular, intact, unblemished and made of a rigid and polished material.

24 Therefore, in spite of all the attributes introduced, the square was still mostly perceived as a one-word object. In fact, the most common outcomes were those given with the description: “this is a square” (Fig. 1a) and “this is a rotated square” (Fig. 1b). In more formal terms, the phenomenal salience of those attributes was considered neither necessary nor sufficient in the double implication (if and only if). Phenomenally, this result makes the visibility of those attributes superfluous and implicit. As such, they can be omitted. This is not the case for the other conditions illustrated in Fig. 1, where the previous attributes were judged necessary and sufficient to define and qualify the object, i.e., the square. Among all the possible attributes, only those specifically reported were considered necessary and sufficient, while the others were not. So, only the proper and specific attributes were mentioned and this was with the phenomenal meaning of being the specific qualifier of the square, the right and unique qualifier of something that needs to be qualified in that specific way.

25 If this is true, the following phenomenal consequences can be immediately deduced. Not all the word-attributes used and introduced by the subjects manifest the same phenomenal status. Some are one-word objects, like “square”, while others are qualifiers or attributes. Going back to the descriptions of the patterns concerning Fig. 1, only “square” and the terms used for describing Fig. 1c are objects; all the others are

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attributes and qualifiers, adding a distinctive property or a specific characteristic to the object.

26 If vision is the domain and description is its co-domain, then description traces vision and both domain and co-domain could be ruled by a common and possibly isomorphic syntax. In a stronger version of this phrase, we could say that both should be ruled by a common and possibly isomorphic syntax. As a consequence, the related syntax should be based on the distinction between the object and its attributes within the domain and on the difference between the noun and the adjective within the co-domain. The noun, like the object, is the content word that serves as the subject or the object of a preposition. This is the way the square was perceived. Differently, the adjective is a word that expresses an attribute of something and, is then the word class that qualifies the noun. These are the ways the previous squares were defined and qualified.

27 Although at first sight this consequence could appear trivial or tautological, in the sense that one defines circularly the other and vice versa, this is not the case if we consider the fact that, by saying “square”, we perceive and talk about one among many possible attributes. In fact, the shape is an attribute, which apparently and logically should share the same epistemological status as color, orientation, material and so on. However, the status is logically but not phenomenologically the same. As we stated above, under our conditions, the shape is clearly perceived as the figure tout court, while the other terms appear like its direct attributes, i.e., adjectives. More clearly, since the square does not appear as an attribute, but as the figure, and since the square appears as the shape, the shape appears as the figure. This syllogistic argument is based on a strong phenomenological foundation, but it requires further deductions.

28 First, not all object properties are placed at the same hierarchical level. The shape can be considered as primary relative to the other attributes and, under our conditions, these are so primary they coincide with the object itself, the object per se. Second, a hierarchy is expected among the other attributes. Therefore, the attributes belonging to different domains are expected to appear with a different visual saliency and primacy, as if they were placed in a phenomenal position closer and closer or eventually farther from the foreground of the object. If this is true, the grammatical arrangement of adjectives might reflect the visual hierarchical organization of attributes within a visual object. Besides, if the spoken language reflects bijectively the visual language, then a similar syntax organization is expected at a phenomenal level. As a final consequence, the syntax, both in vision and in linguistics, represents the set of rules for forming admissible objects and, thus, sentences.

29 A further deduction suggests that the dilemma related to the previous questions, “Why does Fig. 1a represent a singularity, a one-word description neither revealing nor accompanied by other emerging properties?” and “why do other properties appear like their attributes or adjectives?”, can be reconsidered in the following biological and evolutionary terms. This idea can be briefly summarized in terms of adaptive fitness, according to which the visual properties are organized as they are because they evolved as they did. Therefore, the syntax organization of visual attributes is biologically suitable and reflects the ability of organisms or species to survive and reproduce in the environment in which they find themselves. The consequence of this survival and reproduction is that organisms contribute genes to the next generation. Within this approach, all the previous answers based on importance, visibility, implicitness and proto-typicality assume a new and synergistic meaning.

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30 These phenomenological remarks suggest the following further issue. Most of the patterns of Fig. 1 are perceived as squares with attributes, i.e., with something further. These “somethings” can also be perceived as happenings [Pinna 2010, 2011, 2012] changing the basic one-word condition of being only a square. For example, as demonstrated above, a rotated square is not just a square but a square with something else; with the attribute and the happening of being rotated. In other words, these happenings are like both attributes and verbs denoting action, occurrence, or state of existence and, at the same time, they are emerging attributes that one at a time introduce and define different and possibly independent dimensions (orientation, color, etc.) or domains of their being squares. All these attributes clearly assume different biological meanings and salience that can change among species.

31 A second important consequence is that omissions are important pieces of information, useful to understand the phenomenology of the object perception and its inner syntactic organization. More specifically, the more attributes are omitted (invisible attributes), the more likely the chance of the object being a one-word thing, or, the less the described attributes, the better the singularity of the perceived object. Briefly, the “phenomenal singularity” can be defined as the limit of the sequence of attributes that tends to zero, or as the object that does not require further attributes. It follows that the phenomenal singularity is the best instance for a specific one-word object.

32 The logical and phenomenological issues suggested in this section support the connection between vision and linguistics. However, these issues also suggest that vision and linguistics can be considered as a floating iceberg with a significant proportion of its mass below the surface and placed at a different depth elevation between successive contour lines (iso-lines). This is the main topic of the next section.

5 The gradient of visibility

33 Typically, every experimental and psychophysical task mostly focuses on specific attributes defined a priori. The free exploration and manipulation of a phenomenon is mainly restricted to an informal group of subjects that naively describe and define the visible and most prominent effect to be measured. These free outcomes are not noted down because they are considered to be preliminary and mainly aimed to define the experimental variables and their a priori description. However, during the preliminary phenomenological exploration, it is quite common that things hidden at first sight emerge and sometimes become even more evident than other attributes or “things” previously placed in the foreground. This suggests that together with what we perceive here and now as the most emerging and prominent piece, or tip of the visual “iceberg”, it could be necessary to define what we can see within the multiplicity of possible visual outcomes.

34 Why is this important? Firstly, new hidden phenomena, possibly more interesting from a scientific point of view than the ones under investigation, could be discovered. Secondly, the hidden phenomena can reveal an inner self-organization of attributes and things, i.e., the inner structure within a visual object and the organization to create the visual world. By exploring only the contour line of the object’s function, namely the curve connecting the components where the function has the same value, the nature of the function’s gradient is lost. The vector of the gradient is always perpendicular to the contour lines. More generally, the perception and phenomenology of the thing to view

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may not be enough to predict its behavior and understand a target phenomenon in the full etymology of the term (from Ancient Greek φαινìμενον—phainómenon, “thing appearing to view”). What emerges could depend on what is submerged, underground or in the background. As Gestalt psychologists clearly demonstrated, to understand the emergence of a figure, it is also necessary to study the phenomenal nature of the background and their reciprocal relationship [Koffka 1935], [Rubin 1915, 1921], [Wertheimer 1922, 1923]. By comparing the squares of Fig. 1, this entails that what is submerged has to be brought to the surface, similarly to what is emerged.

35 If a visual object can be considered as being similar to an iceberg, with hidden and structured attributes supporting it, then the question “what is a visual object?”, derived from the most famous of Koffka’s questions “why do things look as they do?”, becomes an intriguing starting issue and its results are useful to understand the full set of perceptual attributes that are strictly linked and embedded within the term “object”. As discussed in the previous sections, this term can be phenomenally considered like a structured holder [Koffka 1935], [Metzger 1941, 1963, 1975a,b, 1982], [Palmer 1999], [Pomerantz & Kubovy 1986] containing an organized set of multiple properties, some of which are placed in the foreground and then made explicit, while others are implicit and yet more can become explicit or, on the contrary, implicit or invisible after a while [Pinna 2012]. Just on the basis of the question “what is a visual object?” the meaning of the term “object” is phenomenologically ambiguous, poorly defined at first sight and not completely immediate in its element components. Moreover, not all possible object properties define the phenomenology of the “object” with equal strength. As previously stated, not all the object properties and meanings pop up perceptually with the same salience. In fact, some are more prominent than others [Rosch 1977]. This is the gradient of visibility. It is interesting that within this phenomenological notion some attributes, as they emerge from the implicit background, could be very different from what is expected and taken for granted, as it will be demonstrated in the next set of conditions.

36 Going back to Fig. 1a, the interesting implicit outcome of the previous descriptions was that none of the subjects (and this might also be the case for the readers) spontaneously reported the color of the square. The color seems to be taken for granted and then left, implicit. When a new group of subjects was asked: what color is the square? The most popular answer obtained was “white”. In fact, just asking the question was sufficient to show different phenomenal alternatives not previously considered, so, now the square was also described as black or transparent. When these possible results were highlighted, or directly suggested by the experimenter, the outcome revealed mainly that “the square is white”. Nevertheless, these possible results became visible and accepted as such with a visible salience, although less strong than the main one.

37 It also became obvious that they can all be seen, compete to be perceived and especially to be the unique recognized result. In greater detail, by noticing the phenomenal plausibility of these outcomes, the competition among them becomes visible and, at the same time, it becomes visible that they were unnoticed at first sight. The color of the square, which appeared composed by the color of the figure’s inner surface, or by the color of its boundary contours also popped out from invisibility. However, it was mostly the former that assumed the status of color [Pinna & Ehrenstein 2013], [Pinna & Deiana 2015]. A further implicit or invisible attribute was the color of the background, which

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was never reported during the experiment or during these reorganizations, revisions or shaking ups. In fact, when it was asked: “what is the color around the square?”, the answer of the subjects was “white”, “empty” or both. These outcomes demonstrate that, by asking new and unexpected questions, phenomenal organizations start to emerge.

38 The shape and color organization just described, can also be approached in a totally different way; apparently far away from vision, but supporting the previous results, i.e., by asking the subject to “draw a square”. All of us could do something like taking a black pastel and drawing a square shape as illustrated in Fig. 1a. Among 100 subjects interviewed, 99 of them drew the square as described. One of them reproduced the square shown in Fig. 1c, rotated through 45 degrees. Instead, upon asking “draw a rotated square” and “draw a black square”, the outcomes achieved were similar to those of Figs. 1b and 1d. The task “draw a white square” produced the same results as the task “draw a square”. Finally, by reversing the background, all the results were symmetrically reversed. In conclusion, these results suggested that the reproduction task can be considered as a further way to perceive an object, to pop out salient attributes and to hide others. At the same time, going from description back to vision is a way to demonstrate the strong connection between them.

39 In summary, as well as what emerges through the phenomenal description, there is also its complement, i.e., what is not described, implicit or taken for granted. By asking further questions and then delving into the hidden part of the visual object, unexpected issues can emerge. Therefore, what is taken for granted could cause surprise by revealing new components that influenced the final result. The question is then: why is something taken for granted? Phenomenally this may happen because it does not come to the fore, but takes second place with respect to some other attributes that are perceptually stronger and more salient. To be more precise, this is because the object attributes are hierarchically organized according to their strength, creating the visibility gradient. This implies that to understand what a visual object is, it is necessary to understand, not only what is perceived at first sight and with the maximum strength, but also what is seen as secondary, in the background and even what is totally invisible.

40 The notion of the visibility gradient is demonstrated here in a phenomenological acceptation prior to and epistemologically independent from Helmholtz’s likelihood principle [Helmholtz 1867], according to which the sensory input is organized into the most probable distal object or event consistent with the sensory data (the proximal stimulus). As a consequence, the visibility gradient is also prior to the Bayesian approach based on statistical inference [Mamassian, Landy et al. 2002], assuming perception as a visual inference problem [Helmholtz 1867] according to which the posterior probability is proportional to the product of prior probability and likelihood.

41 In the next sections a further step will be taken by showing also that the shape, which is the attribute mostly taken for granted and identified with the object tout court, is not as it appears to be but can be decomposed in a multiplicity of different and sometimes antinomic hidden subcomponents.

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6 The visibility problem: a further gradus ad Parnassum

42 In the previous section we stated that to understand the meaning of a visual object it is necessary to study the phenomenal nature of the invisible and hidden components. This statement will now be tested under conditions placed a step forward with respect to the one illustrated in Fig. 1a, although starting from it. The main purpose is to study the square and its invisible components.

43 Together with the circle, the square might be considered as one of the most fundamental of all shapes. Geometrically and phenomenally, the square is entirely based on the balanced proportion between its edges/sides and angles/vertices. A square is a flat shape with equal sides and equal right angles. A square can easily fit the definition of a rectangle with all angles at 90° and a rhombus with all sides of equal length. Moreover, given its special geometrical attributes, the square is used as a reference for all the other shapes. The square represents the basic shape used to measure any kind of object, shape or space. Every shape, either regular or irregular, is measured in squares () or in the 3-D version of the square cubes (). The square is the unit and, more generally, the “brick” of all other shapes, see [Pinna 2011].

44 By comparing Fig. 1a and 1c, the meaning of the square appears to be related to the orientation of the sides along the main directions of space. This entails that the phenomenal squareness cannot only be considered as the absolute proportion between sides and angles but it should also be seen in terms of dynamic prominence of the sides upon the angles. This is probably related to the roles assumed by the sides of the square in relation to the lower horizontal side (the base of the square) that elicits phenomenal stability and flatness. In addition, the word “square” appears to be related to visual attributes like straight, level, parallel, steady, equal, smooth, unchanging, plane, constant, stable, uniform and flat. The name itself, i.e., “base”, demonstrates its role as the foundation of the square, the component where the square rests. The relevance and high visibility of the base in assigning meaning to the whole shape is supported by the fact that the upper horizontal side does not have any particular name and that the two vertical sides appear indiscriminately as the height of the square, reinforcing the unique and singular role of the base.

45 The comparisons between the square of Fig. 1a and the diamond of Fig. 1c can be reconsidered in terms of a comparison between squareness and diamondness, which makes visible the inner properties of the square and consequently its meaning. This also highlights what part of a square is below the immediately visible surface [Mach 1914], [Rock 1973], [Schumann 1900]. By rotating the square by 45 degrees, it appears as a diamond, namely a new shape different from the square. The two figures are similar and opposite at the same time. While the square is perceived as flat and stable, the diamond is seen as sharp and unstable. The two apparent shapes manifest opposite inner meanings. If this is true, a counterintuitive and unexpected property of the square emerges through this in depth analysis. In fact, both the square and the diamond show two main components, sides and angles, but in their appearance they are not balanced, as the sides are asymmetrically prominent in the square while the angles dominate in the diamond. They are antinomic shapes, showing the paradoxical inner dynamics of the basic components of what we call “square” that is apparently linear and right without antinomies and inner conflicts.

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46 This implies that the emergence of the sides within the square, i.e., the “sidedness” shape attribute, mostly reveals the squareness. In contrast, the emergence of the angles within the diamond, i.e., the “pointedness”, manifests the diamondness, in antithesis with the squareness. The perpendicular orientation of the same shape along the main direction of the space only enhances one of the two opposite sub-attributes of the shape, i.e., the sidedness or the pointedness.

47 Briefly, the square of Fig. 1a that appeared as a singularity, a one-word object, revealed its inner components through a deeper phenomenological investigation that changed its appearance and manifested the inner asymmetry between two more elementary attributes: sidedness and pointedness. This is the problem of visibility that can hide and even make invisible an antinomic dynamic such as the one described here. Moreover, if the apparent regularity, saliency and singularity of the square reveal an inner dynamics between opposite more elementary shape components, what happens if different inner components of the square are accentuated and brought to visibility?

48 -2 The next conditions are aimed to support the previous analysis. By changing the equilibrium between the two attributes and accentuating the sidedness or pointedness, the whole meaning of the figure is expected to change accordingly. Therefore, although the geometry of the figure is kept constant, the square is expected to appear as a diamond or vice versa.

Visibilia ex invisibilibus: the visible from the invisible

49 Pinna & Sirigu proposed a principle of grouping, called the accentuation principle, stating that, all else being equal, elements tend to group in the same oriented direction of the discontinuous element placed within a whole set of continuous or homogeneous components [Pinna & Sirigu 2011]. The discontinuous element behaves similarly to an accent, or a visual emphasis, within the multiplicity of phenomenal components.

50 The role of the accentuation principle in shape perception can also be demonstrated by alternately highlighting sidedness or pointedness of the same geometrical figure, as shown in Fig. 2. Under these conditions, despite the vertical and horizontal configurable orientation effects (namely, the perception of local spatial orientation determined by global spatial directional structure, according to which the elements of Fig. 2 should all appear as diamonds), [Attneave 1954], [Attneave & Frost 1969], [Palmer 1980, 1999] alternate rows of figures are perceived as rotated squares or as diamonds on the basis of the position of the small circle (either empty or filled) placed near (either inside or outside) the angles or the sides of each figure [Pinna 2010, 2011], [Pinna & Albertazzi 2011]. By perceiving rotated squares instead of diamonds, the subjects are discerning the same geometrical figure, but different phenomenal figures, i.e., squares with their sidedness and diamonds with their pointedness. Geometrically they are exactly the same since the 45 degree rotated square coincides with the diamond. Phenomenally they are different since the two figures appear different, are given different names and have opposite inner shape attributes.

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Figure 2: Rotated squares or diamonds?

51 The sidedness and pointedness shape attributes could be phenomenally considered as shapes within a shape. This wording is not incorrect if we compare the conditions where the small circles are placed, namely in different positions inside and outside of the square, but still close to sides or angles. Indeed, this choice of words can be further confirmed by the new shapes triggered by the small circle placed in different random spatial positions inside or outside a geometrical diamond. In reality, in Fig. 3 several instances out of all the infinite possible variations are illustrated. In this picture, the possible shapes within a shape emerge only after careful observation. Under these conditions, the accentuation reveals the multiplicity of hidden and invisible shapes within the geometrical diamond. This entails that underneath the surface of the visible square there are many other possible shapes, literally hidden and invisible. Therefore, what is visible, the square, diamond or something in between, also depends on these invisible shapes.

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Figure 3: Accentuation reveals the multiplicity of hidden and invisible shapes within the geometrical diamond

52 The role and place of the invisible over visible can be better appreciated when irregular figures are used instead of regular ones. In Fig. 4a, the same geometrical figures, accentuated by black circles placed in different spatial positions within each shape, are perceived as irregular quadrangular shapes that appear different from one another. In Fig. 4b, a control without small circles is illustrated. However, although all the irregular shapes of the control appear mostly equal, they can be perceived at the same time as different. As the different shapes emerged from invisibility by becoming visible, for example after the perception of Fig. 4a, they also contributed to the perception of each shape in the control condition. Therefore, the shape seen and selected at the end, can be considered as the final product deriving from the interaction among the multiplicity of inner invisible or hidden shapes, first perceived in Fig. 4a and then transposed to Fig. 4b.

Figure 4: Irregular quadrangular shapes different one from the other (a). Controls (b and c)

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53 These results are corroborated by others obtained with a new group of subjects that first examined the control (Fig. 4b) and after this were confronted with the condition illustrated in Fig. 4a. Then the elements of the control were perceived as all being the same, without any shape difference among them.

54 The quadrangles of Fig. 4a not only are they different shapes, but also they appear as shapes pointing in different directions, oriented differently and each moving in the direction indicated by the accentuation. This outcome can be better appreciated in Fig. 4c, where these phenomenological attributes of the shape due to the inner shapes, represent a true syntactic organization similar to the one described in Fig. 1. However, differently from Fig. 1, under these conditions the syntax only occurs within the shape domain and among inner shapes attributes. The syntax organization now emerges through the push-pull hidden interaction among the multitude of shapes playing within the same geometrical quadrangle.

55 The syntax organization of inner hidden shapes creating a visible whole shape is analyzed in more depth in the next section.

7 Shape from shapes

56 The shape resulting from the dynamics of inner shapes can be better appreciated by making the figure even more irregular, adding alternate concavities and convexities as illustrated in Fig. 5. In this figure, each position of the small circle is crucial to reveal, for example, a specific angular object or face, a sharp thing oriented, moving fast or slowly in one specific direction instead of another, or with different tertiary and living attributes.

Figure 5: Shape from shapes due to the accentuation principle

57 The shape from shapes organization is more salient in Fig. 6. By comparing the controls illustrated in the first row of Fig. 6, they appear like two identical juxtaposed wiggly figures. The repetition and juxtaposition of the same figure and the configuration- orientation effect [Attneave 1968], [Palmer 1980] together determine the specific orientation of the figures that appears polarized into one or the opposite horizontal direction. Overall, both objects could be perceived as two living humanoid organisms moving in opposite directions, from left to right or from right to left.

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58 In the second row of Fig. 6, the same two figures with small circles inside them, are mostly perceived as two different humanoid organisms, male and female (as spontaneously reported by naive subjects), facing each other and walking in opposite directions [Heider & Simmel 1944]. In spite of the reiteration, juxtaposition and the configured orientation playing on the same figure, the accentuation principle reorganizes the two geometrically equal objects and turns them into two dissimilar ones.

Figure 6: Examples of organic-shape emergence

59 The third row increasingly demonstrates the strong effect due to the accentuation imparted by the filled circle. Three different organisms walking in different directions (left, central to frontal, right) are now perceived. These results might suggest that they depend on the similarity of the filled circle to an eye. As a whole, this presupposes that past experience and higher cognitive processes are likely to be involved in the organic segmentation, weakening the organic early segmentation highlighted by the accentuation principle. The counter-examples for this argument are illustrated in Fig. 7 where the small shape used to induce accentuation and its position weakens this counter-argument in favor of the organic shape due to the accentuation of one of the many inner invisible shapes.

60 Going back to the first row of Fig. 6, it is evident that amoeboid shapes can be perceived at the same time and very easily appear as made up of a multitude of possible inner shapes that are only accentuated by the small circle. In reality, the accentuation can now be made through the focus of attention. Under these circumstances, attention operates within a set of multiple and reversible possible inner local shapes that were previously invisible, while they can now be perceived and switched on.

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61 Fig. 7 demonstrates that by replacing the circles of the second row of Fig. 6 with small squares, the resulting effects of the accentuation previously described do not change at all. In fact, the square has a different shape from the eye, therefore, there is no need to invoke the role of past experience. However, it can be counter-argued that, although the square is dissimilar to the eye, it can appear as such in the two walking organisms perceived in the first two rows of Fig. 6. This is indeed what can be ascertained.

Figure 7: Counter-arguments against the role played by past experience

62 To confute this further past experience objection, the last two conditions shown in Fig. 7 can be considered. The circle is now placed outside the wiggly shape, thus further weakening the cognitive relation to the eye. Through this change, the outside shape accentuates and polarizes the direction of the two objects that appear to be moving respectively left and right, and, more importantly, have a different shape.

63 Differently from what was suggested by the eye argument, on the basis of the accentuation principle it can be stated that it is not the perception of the eye to outline that of the shape as a kind of humanoid organism. On the contrary, it is the organic organization due to accentuation that favors either the perception of the circle and of the square as an eye placed on something that has been previously segregated as a face or a head due to the circle and the square. In other words, the circle and the square accentuate the inner local shape of the head that feeds back to the circle and the square to be perceived as an eye. This reversed argument can explain the fact that the square could be perceived as an eye, although no-one has ever experienced a square eye.

64 In summary, every possible shape, even the most stable and regular one like a square, when observed more closely appears to be composed of multiple local shapes and is then unstable and reversible. Each figure per se manifests a particular shape and a specific set of visual meanings that are useful to define and change the whole final

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organization. This suggests that the spatial locations of the circle within a figure and within irregular shapes activate a competition among inner local shapes. This makes the overall emerging hierarchical organization and the roles of its components ephemeral and reversible. Therefore, through different sights, for example the protrusions and convexities of the previous figures, objects could be perceived alternately as the head of some kind of living being or as its limbs.

65 The organic segmentation is irreversible, more stable and easily controlled by accentuating one protrusion against the others. More saliently, it is accentuated and more stable and the final shape appears unique. This is the case of the square shown in Fig. 1a, accentuated in its sidedness by the horizontal or vertical directions of space and synergistically enhanced if one or, better, more circles are introduced along the sides.

66 More generally, this implies that a shape could be considered similar to some kind of holder containing a multiplicity of inner sub-shapes. These are invisible under most circumstances and organize reciprocally to create the whole emerging meaningful percepts that we call for example “square”, “diamond”, and so on. Some of the sub- shapes clearly emerge in the foreground, while others are confined in limits or placed below the threshold of visibility and last, but not least, certain remain in the hidden part of the iceberg of the gradient of visibility. However, although invisible, these shapes continue to play implicit roles and influence the emergent perceived shape.

67 Finally and more importantly, the previous results suggest that all sub-shapes visible with different saliency are not randomly related, but appear organized according to a syntax structure. This determines the emergence, for instance, of an organic Gestalt showing attributes of “headedness” and “bodiness”. These attributes clearly depend on a syntax organization, in the sense that without a true syntax they could not be formed. If syntax is the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language, the visual syntax of shape from shapes could be considered as the arrangement of these inner invisible local shapes that are crucial to the creation of the well-formed visible shape of the perceived world.

8 Conclusions

68 In the previous sections, the meaning of linguistic descriptions in relation to what is perceived has been analyzed and reconsidered, not only on the basis of what emerges perceptually and linguistically, but also on the basis of what is not immediately perceived; of what is hidden, invisible, implicit or simply omitted from the subjects’ reports.

69 It was assumed that the invisible attributes and visual components elicited a better understanding of vision than what is actually perceived. Through several effects, it was demonstrated that a visual object might be considered phenomenally similar to a floating iceberg with the most significant proportion of its mass below the water’s surface.

70 We demonstrated that next to what emerges through the phenomenal description, there is also what is not described, what is implicit or taken for granted. Through a phenomenological investigation of the invisible attributes and shapes, unexpected components emerged and these were demonstrated to be necessary to understand more deeply the visual nature of the perceived object. This is the case of several sub-

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shape components, like sidedness and pointedness, which are related to the sides and angles in the case of squares.

71 Through the phenomenology of the invisible, the binding of the object attributes appears to be organized according to visual syntax, thus creating a gradient of visibility. This implies that to understand what a visual object is, it is necessary to understand not only what is perceived at first sight and with maximum strength, but also what is seen as secondary, in the background and even what is totally invisible.

72 It is worth highlighting that the gradient of visibility could be understood only on the basis of a syntactical organization, which determines unequivocally the position of each visual attribute along the gradient of visibility. As linguistic syntax is the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences, visual syntax can be considered as the arrangement of inner attributes and shape components to create well-formed visible objects with attributes placed in different hierarchical positions.

73 This approach suggests answers to complex issues like the gradient of visibility and the complexity of the organization of visual attributes, but at the same time it opens new, complex, issues. One of these issues confronts the problem that if a shape emerges from inner sub-shapes, how and where do the inner local shapes form [Lewin 1933]. This is not a trivial, but a real issue, aimed to avoid postponing indefinitely the problem of shape formation. A possible answer could be based on the grouping principles that precede shape formation. To perceive the pointedness, two perpendicular sides should first group together to create an angle. If this is true, then visual perception could be considered as a set of different kinds and levels of organization, where one is based and emerges on the previous one and where all together determine increasing nested sets of more and more complex organizations.

74 The main deduction derived by the previous outcomes and theoretical notions is related to the binding problem and, in greater detail, to the fact of syntax organization of visual attributes in a well-formed visual object and in the formation of shape from shapes. This latter could be considered a potential candidate to explain how attributes belonging to different domains and processed in parallel neural pathways, or different sub-components belonging to the same domain (as in the case of the shape), are bound to create a well-formed visual singularity and wholeness.

75 A final and more general remark is related to the fact that evolution did not prepare our visual systems for reduced cue stimuli (like flat squares and so on), but rather, for natural scenes. From our results, it is not clear whether our principles and deductions apply when cues to the real world are complete and the stimulus is therefore “adequate” for vision. Our hypothesis, which is now an open issue, is that the accentuation could be reasonably extended from simple drawings like squares to biological conditions, where the appearance and the evolutionary success of a living organism depend on the accentuation of single parts of the body aimed to hide, show, deceive, attract, repel other organisms of the same or of different species. This is for example the case of make-up in fashion, likely aimed to accentuate part components (eyes, lips and so on) to enhance attractiveness, to change the shape and the meaning, to highlight inner shapes within the shape, to modify the gradient of visibility, to show something and hide something else at the same time. This promising extension requires further work.

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ABSTRACTS

Here, we address the phenomenology of visual objects, using verbal reports, spontaneous descriptions, answers to questions and responses to suggestions, as well as free associations. We occasionally ask for simple sketches. Such methods allow probing of the deep structure of visual awareness. This is above all revealed by what is not spontaneously mentioned, or is only mentioned by way of incidental properties. It is also disclosed by changes induced by minor variations or additions. We find remarkable agreement over a large number of participants. Thus verbal reports are a powerful probe of visual structure. Similarly to language, ``simple visual objects’’ have deep roots in subsidiary awareness. These ``invisible’’ foundations serve to define simple figures, like a ``square’’, as unique, prototypical objects. The nature of ``visual objects’’ thus involves an extensive ``invisible’’ realm. Without taking this into account, a proper understanding of the nature of the visual object is not possible. Finally, this should lead to a formal syntactical theory of basic visual shapes.

Nous abordons ici l’étude de la phénoménologie des objets visuels à partir de comptes rendus verbaux, de réponses à des questions ou de descriptions spontanées, ainsi que d’associations libres. Nous demandons même parfois aux sujets de réaliser de simples croquis. Cet éventail de méthodes permet de sonder la structure profonde de la conscience visuelle. Celle-ci est avant tout révélée par ce qui n’est pas spontanément mentionné par des qualités accidentelles ou encore par des changements induits lors de variations ou ajouts mineurs. Nous avons trouvé une concordance remarquable parmi un grand nombre de participants. Ceci démonte que les comptes-rendus verbaux permettent d’explorer puissamment la structure de la conscience visuelle. Tout comme le langage, les « objets visuels simples » ont des racines profondes dans la conscience. Ces fondations « invisibles » servent à définir des figures simples, un « carré » par exemple, comme des objets prototypiques et uniques. La nature des « objets visuels » implique ainsi l’existence d’un « vaste domaine invisible ». Sans une telle prise en compte, la compréhension correcte de la nature de l’objet visuel n’est pas possible. Cette découverte devrait permettre de mener à une théorie de la syntaxe formelle des formes visuelles fondamentales.

AUTHORS

BAINGIO PINNA Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Sassari (Italy)

JAN KOENDERINK Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (Belgium)

ANDREA VAN DOORN Department of Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University (The Netherlands)

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The Deep Structure of Lives

Michael Kubovy

I want to thank M. Bar-Hillel, I. Bianchi, D. Dobolyi, J. Shatin, for their insightful reading of earlier versions of this article, K. Mulligan, U. Savardi, for helpful comments when I presented this work at conferences. I dedicate this article to my mentor D. Kahneman, who has had a profound influence on my life, and two decades ago triggered my interest in this topic.

1 In this article I contrast two conceptions of the structure of lives: the “stream of behavior” framework (which I call “flat”) and the “concurrent strand” framework (which I call “deep”). The stream of behavior approach has a distinguished history, going back at least to William James. For example, William James writes about the stream of thought: “Within each personal consciousness thought is sensibly continuous” [James1981, 220]. In contrast, according to the parallel strand framework, lives consist of multiple concurrent and asynchronous strands, each endowed with a rich structure. As a foil against which to present the new approach, I have chosen the work of Daniel Kahneman on the measurement of well-being. This choice will reveal that taking a stance in this matter is not just a debate about theory—it has practical consequences as well.

1 The unbearable flatness of being

1.1 Kahneman’s two selves

2 In his Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman distinguishes between two selves, the “experiencing self”, which answers the question Does it hurt now?, and the “remembering self”, which answers the question, How bad (or good) was the experience on the whole? [Kahneman 2011, chap. 35]. In his work on well-being, he documents how the response of the remembering self to this question leads to paradoxical results, because it confuses experience with the memory of it. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not

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necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self. [Kahneman 2011, 381]

3 The purpose of this article is to answer a question that was beyond the scope of Kahneman’s project: what is the structure of the life of this remembering self?

4 Here is how he introduces the other self, the experiencing self: Two different interpretations of the term “utility” have been used [...] . In its original interpretation, which derives from Bentham, utility is interpreted in hedonistic terms, as a measure of pleasure and pain. [...] Edgeworth [Edgeworth 1881/1967, 98-102] suggested the idea of what he called the ‘hedonimeter’—an imaginary instrument, [...] which could measure the level of pleasure or pain that an individual was experiencing at any moment and then plot this as a continuous function of time. The area under the curve plotted by the hedonimeter would be a measure of the individual’s happiness for a given period. A developing strand in the recent research literature of economics is to try to revive this interpretation of utility as experienced utility. [Kahneman & Sugden 2005, 162]

Figure 1: Experienced utility (EU)—which is computed by Kahneman’s experiencing self—is additive. It is the area under the curve described by a measure of momentary pleasure or pain.

5 The diagram in Figure 1 illustrates this notion of experienced utility, which the experiencing self computes. According to Kahneman, this duration weighting is the rational way to assign value to an experience. It is rational because it adheres to a normative rule—the principle of temporal monotonicity: all other things being equal, the utility of a shorter period of pain is higher than the utility of a longer period of pain.

6 And yet, when a person is asked for a retrospective evaluation of an experience, it is the less rational remembering self that does the evaluation. Unfortunately, the remembering self does not adhere to the principle of temporal monotonicity. Instead, it seems to obey the two rules of retrospective evaluation (illustrated in Figure 2): • Peak-end rule: The retrospective evaluation of an unpleasant episode is the average of the evaluation of discomfort at its worst and the evaluation of discomfort at its end. • Duration neglect: The duration of the episode does not affect the retrospective evaluation.

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Figure 2: Two episodes of pain, one short, (a), and one long, (b). The long episode is composed of the short episode to which a less painful stretch of time has been added. People prefer the long episode of pain (b) over the short episode (a), even though the total amount of pain is larger in (b) than in (a). This is a manifestation of duration neglect. Kahneman calls this “the tyranny of the remembering self”.

(a) Short episode

(b) Long episode

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Figure 3: Freytag 1876’s pyramid—an attempt to capture the structure of a classical five-act play [rdrawn from Freytag 1876, 100], which resembles Kahneman’s peak-end rule.

7 The peak-end rule resembles Freytag’s dramatic pyramid (Figure 3) designed to capture the five acts of a classical play [Freytag 1876]. The peak in Kahneman’s rule is analogous to the the climax of the play. The end is analogous to the dénouement (traditionally called the play’s catastrophe, from the Greek for overturn). In tragedies the protagonist is worse off at the end than at the beginning; in comedies the protagonist ends up better off.

8 Several studies provide empirical support for these rules. In one, participants viewed a series of plotless films that were either pleasant or highly aversive and of either short or long (triple) duration [Fredrickson & Kahneman 1993]. Their ratings of the emotional impact of the films were well predicted by their peak and end ratings, regardless of the length of the films. These rules also predict the willingness of patients to undergo unpleasant medical procedures or listen to annoying sounds [Redelmeier & Kahneman 1996], [Redelmeier, Katz et al. 2003], [Stone, Broderick et al. 2000], [Schneider, Stone et al. 2011], [Schreiber & Kahneman 2000], to motivating people to exercise [Hargreaves & Stych 2013]. They have been applied in a variety of areas: the pricing, advertising or promotion of commercial products, the optimization of fundraisers [Baumgartner, Sujan et al. 1997], [De Maeyer & Estelami 2013], [Do, Rupert et al. 2008], [Nasiry & Popescu 2011], [Simonson, Carmon et al. 1994], and augmenting the appeal of art [Diener, Wirtz et al. 2001], [Krumhansl & Schenck 1997].1

1.2 Moment-by-moment assessment

9 As noted earlier, Kahneman believes that the experiencing self is laconic—it can convey nothing more than momentary assessments of pleasure and pain. At the same time he also claims that on normative grounds an objective observer should speak on behalf of this taciturn self. Such an observer should evaluate an unpleasant episode in the life of π by first tracing the curve described by π’s moment-to-moment ratings of pain and then obtain the area under this curve.

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10 In making such a claim, Kahneman is also telling us that the proper measurement of well-being should have little to do with the claims of the Gestalt psychologists [Wagemans, Elder et al. 2012], [Wagemans, Feldman et al. 2012], namely that: Phenomenal experience consists of part-whole structures, configurations, or Gestalten. [...] A Gestalt is an integrated, coherent structure or form, a whole that is different from the sum of the parts. [Wagemans, Feldman et al. 2012, 1219]

11 Kahneman’s idea of the experiencing self negates the possibility that the value of our lives may be different from the sum of the values of its moments. It represents lives as if they were “flat”. In a flat representation, lives are seen as a succession of abutting episodes, each containing one activity. This is in sharp contrast with the Structure of Lives, to be presented in the second half of this paper.

12 To understand how Kahneman measures experienced utility, we look to his Day Reconstruction Method (DRM). He and his colleagues [Kahneman, Krueger et al. 2004a,b] gave 909 employed women four packets in which they asked for (a) demographic information, (b) facts about yesterday, (c) feelings they experienced yesterday, and (d) information about their job. The second and third packets are central to the DRM. In the second packet (which the participants knew they could keep to themselves) they first recorded when they woke up and when they went to bed. They then constructed a diary of the preceding day (illustrated in Table 1) with the following instructions: Think of your day as a continuous series of scenes or episodes in a film. Give each episode a brief name that will help you remember it (for example, ‘commuting to work’, or ‘at lunch with B’ [...]). Write down the approximate times at which each episode began and ended. The episodes people identify usually last between 15 minutes and 2 hours. Indications of the end of an episode might be going to a different location, ending one activity and starting another, or a change in the people you are interacting with. [Kahneman, Krueger et al. 2004a, 1777]

Table 1: Diary, based on [Kahneman, Krueger et al. 2004b].

Episode Time it Time it # Notes to yourself: name began ended

What happened? What did you feel?

Morning

1M

2M

…

10M

Afternoon

1A Lunchtime

2A

…

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10A

Evening

1E Dinnertime

2E

…

10E

13 In the third packet (which the participants knew they would turn in) they answered questions about each episode: When it occurred (start and end times); what they were doing (by checking one or more of 16 activities); where they were; with whom they were interacting; and how they felt, using 12 affect descriptors. [...] The affect scales ranged from 0 (not at all) to 6 (very much). [Kahneman, Krueger et al. 2004a, 1777]

14 To obtain a measure of overall positive affect they calculated a mean of the ratings of happy, warm/friendly, and enjoying myself. Likewise, to get a measure of overall negative affect they calculated the mean of the ratings of frustrated/annoyed, depressed/blue, hassled/pushed around, angry/hostile, worried/anxious, and criticized/put down.

15 The results are fascinating. First, the overall measure of positive affect was much higher than the overall measure of negative affect. As Figure 4 shows, they differed by 3.4 points on the 7-point scale. Second, participants reported only mild negative affect (mean rating: 0.7) with relatively low frequency (1/3 of ratings were 0 and of the remaining 2/3, nearly all were 1), and they reported a complete absence of positive affect rarely (only 3% of the time) [Kahneman, Krueger et al. 2004a, 1777].

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Figure 4: Positive affect is higher than negative affect in the DRM data. The error bars represent 95% confidence intervals, based on data in [Kahneman, Krueger et al. 2004a, 1777, Table 1].

16 As we saw earlier, each woman reconstructed her Yesterday as a sequence of episodes. Since most of the episodes contained just one activity, each episode was assigned to one of 16 categories of activities. Disregarding the category working, which was—by stipulation—present in all the diaries (and consumed 6 hours and 54 minutes per day), I used their Table 1 to calculate an index of prevalence for each activity: mean hours/day × proportion of sample reporting.

Figure 5: Proportion of participants reporting activities, based on data in [Kahneman, Krueger et al. 2004a, Table 1].

17 Figure 5 shows the activities in order of prevalence. As is evident from the figure, the three top activities were eating, relaxing, and watching TV, and the bottom three were pray/worship/meditate, exercising, and intimate relations.

18 This diagram points to a troubling implication of the way the DRM is analyzed. Since the normative approach to the calculation of experienced utility must weight activities

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by their prevalence, then one’s spiritual life, one’s physical discipline, and one’s intimate life—which presumably are central to many people’s mental and physical well- being—could only marginally affect the DRM’s estimate of a person’s objective well- being.

19 It would be tempting to assign differential weights to episodes by virtue of the import and gravity of the activities they contain. But Kahneman’s hedonimetric assessment of experienced utility does not offer us the wherewithal to do this. Such a weighting would not be in the spirit of assessing moment-by-moment pleasure or pain, because the significance we attach to an activity or an event so often depends on its aftermath, which can be known only after the activity has taken place.

20 Two rebuttals to this objection come to mind. First, the prevalence of these activities in the lives of those for whom these activities are central would be much greater. For avid runners, surely exercise would have a prevalence far greater than 1:55 minutes per day per person. Second, we have noevidence that what a person considers important in life contributes to a person’s well-being.

21 Undoubtedly these rebuttals raise important empirical questions. However, when the tool used to assess well-being assumes that lives are flat, these questions cannot be answered.

1.3 Flatness is the rule

22 Kahneman tacitly adopted the stream of behavior framework because it has had no competition in contemporary cognitive science. The earliest empirical work to adopt this framework was done by Barker and his colleagues [Barker 1963, 1965], [Barker & Wright 1954]. They found that the behavior stream consists of discrete, qualitatively different, and repeated behavior units. In Cognitive Science, the focus shifted to the study of the perception of event structure [Condon & Ogston 1967], [Newtson 1976], [Newtson, Enquist et al. 1977], [Zacks & Tversky 2001]. Participants in their studies watch films in which actors perform an activity such as dish-washing or bed-making. While watching, they tap a key whenever they see a breakpoint, a boundary between one unit of behavior and the next [Swallow, Zacks et al. 2009]. From these data, researchers infer which features of the stream of behavior cause us to parse it into successive “events”. But they do not question the idea that life is a single stream of behavior. There is no place for concurrent streams within their framework.

2 The deep structure

23 Although earlier I promised to address the Structure of Lives from the point of view of the remembering self, I now must back off, because the term “remembering self” is too restrictive. Of course memory plays an important role in how we experience our lives, but memory is only part of the story.

24 And while we are rethinking labels, we might ask whether the name of the experiencing self is apposite. The so-called “tyranny of the remembering self” implies that it is the self that is central to our experience. And since, furthermore, Kahneman implies that the output of the experiencing self is by and large ignored in the management of our lives, it may not be experienced as a self.

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2.1 Lives are nearly decomposable into strands

25 The Structure of Lives, summarized in Figure 6, is based on the premise that we experience our lives as a complex system that is (a) hierarchical, and (b) nearly- decomposable into strands. To characterize strands, we need Herbert A. Simon’s notion of nearly decomposable (ND) systems.

26 According to Simon, “a complex system [is] made up of a large number of parts that interact in a non-simple way. In such systems, the whole is more than the sum of the parts, [i.e.,] given the properties of the parts and the laws of their interaction, it is not a trivial matter to infer the properties of the whole” [Simon 1962, 468]. This captures perfectly how I propose we think about lives.

Figure 6: The Structure of Lives.

27 Rather than present the systems of differential equations to characterize nearly decomposable systems (for which the reader may consult [Simon & Ando 1961]), I will characterize the idea informally, using a metaphor borrowed from [Simon 2002]. Imagine a building with rooms that have thick exterior and interior walls. These rooms are divided into thin-walled cubicles. Now suppose a storm suddenly forces the building into a temperature disequilibrium, so that there are sizable temperature differences within cubicles, between adjoining cubicles, between adjoining rooms, and between the building and the outdoors. Suppose also that the storm shut off the heating and the AC, and that the outside temperature remains steady, and that at this moment we begin to measure the evolution of the indoor temperatures.

28 The temperature within cubicles will rapidly become uniform; gradually, the temperature of the cubicles in each room will approach equality; more slowly, the temperatures of the different rooms will converge. Finally, the temperature of the rooms will be equal to the outside temperature.

29 Now imagine that the building is the life of a person, who we will call π. The rooms are strands, and the cubicles are substrands. Now suppose that each cubicle contains a space-heater whose thermostat is set at a different temperature. The temperatures in different cubicles in the same room, being poorly insulated from each other, despite the different thermostat settings, will tend to fluctuate together. This is also true—but to a lesser degree—of the temperatures in different rooms.

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30 The near-decomposability of lives into strands implies that—over the course of π’s life— strands will fluctuate together. But in the shorter run, strands will be independent. (Later I will suggest that such compartmentalization is not only normal, but an indicator of mental and physical health. Its failure is, at the very least, an indication of stress.)

31 Many people have strands such as HOME, WORK, SCHOOL, TRANSPORTATION AND TRANSITIONS, SHOPPING/ERRANDS, PERSONAL BUSINESS, and RECREATION/ENTERTAINMENT [Jiang, Ferreira et al. 2012]. Each strand is a collection of related activities that π tacitly groups together and discriminates from other strands. Three features characterize each strand: • π’s role, • the cast of characters, and • the place where it typically unfolds.

32 Table 2 lists likely features of a few common strands.

Table 2: Examples of strands, with primary role, cast, and place

strand role cast place

HOME parent child(ren) home

WORK attorney co-workers office

SCHOOL student students, etc. school

COMMUTE traveller

SHOPPING shopper shop

SHOPPING shopper Amazon.com

33 Because π’s strands are determined from a first-person point of view, the number of strands and the activities constituting each of them is primarily up to π. If π were asked to generate a catalog of his or her strands, there is no reason to expect it to be exhaustive. Such a catalog may justifiably be amended by an observer (e.g., a therapist) who knows π well. It is even conceivable that π and the therapist might disagree on the structure of π’s life, and that their views may never be reconciled. In short, in the approach I am developing here, there is no need to assert that π’s claims about strands (or any other feature of his or her life)—to which he or she has privileged access—are incorrigible.

34 Some strands may be idiosyncratic (a hobby such as DRAG RACING), other strands may be bound to a culture (such as the “parallel universe” of spirits in the zār possession cult described by [Boddy 1989]) but other are inevitably present at some point in all human lives (e.g., RELATIONS WITH PARENTS or HEALTH) and some are always present (FOOD, REST), although their labels may vary from person to person. In other words, some strands are universal. They can be based on (a) physiological needs (FOOD, REST), (b) social needs (FRIENDS), (c) roles in the sociological sense ( PARENT, TEACHER, SPOUSE), (d) places ( YOUR HOME, YOUR OFFICE, THE SCHOOL YOU ATTEND), or (e) Goffman frames (BUS-QUEUE or MEDICAL

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PATIENT) [Goffman 1974]. If a strand is based on a role or a frame, a person’s behavior is constrained by it as long as the person is in it.

35 From π’s first-person point of view, strands are concurrent and independent streams carrying the flow of π’s activities and experiences. They are parallel and independent in three ways:

36 1. Each strand is a sequence of events that π experiences as potentially causally-related, often occurring in a fixed place and with a stable cast of people. When we think (from a

first-person perspective) about our job, we think of it as an organized sequence of activities, even if it is interrupted by sleep or activities from other strands. What William James says about the continuity of personal consciousness applies perfectly to strands [James 1981, 231-240]. He points out that even when there is a time-gap in our consciousness (e.g., due to sleep) we experience the events after the gap as belonging with the events we experienced before it, as belonging to the same self. Likewise, even when there is a time-gap in a strand (e.g., due to sleep) we experience the events after the gap as belonging with the events we experienced before it, as belonging to the same strand.

37 2. With respect to most pairs of strands, we do not experience events in one to be causally related to events in the other; they are, by and large, compartmentalized. For

example, adults with siblings are likely to experience events in their work strand as

having no effect on their sibling strand, and vice versa. 38 3. Strands are asynchronous; they do not share a clock. Imagine that you are at the office

strand ( A: work) writing a report, when the phone rings. It’s the babysitter strand ( B:

child-care) asking to pick up your child early. You agree and return to your report. Toward the end of the day, you remember your promise and get ready to leave early. As you’re leaving, it is unlikely that you will remember what you were doing when the phone rang, although you may remember what you did during your time at the office.

39 Since to an outside observer π does not appear to be doing more than one thing at a time and π appears to be in one place at a time, it is tempting to describe π’s life as a succession of abutting episodes: what I earlier characterized as a “single-stream” or a “flat lives” conception. For an observer watching π working on the report at home, π may appear to engage first in one activity a (taking care of the children), and then another, b (writing the paper), which is interrupted by a return to a, and so on. activities a and b appear to be interleaved. From a first-person point of view, however, π did two things this evening: worked on the report, and took care of the children. π inhabited two continuing strands (which extend into the past and into the future, each following its own course) concurrently.

40 The relation between the inevitable interleaving of activities and the first-person continuity of strands may be likened to Faulkner’s narrative in As I Lay Dying. The book is narrated (and therefore must be read) from alternating—interleaved—points of view. But literary scholars have shown [Ross 1975] that it is possible to seamlessly stitch together each of the two narratives into concurrent stories. The transition from one to the other is akin to moving from a flat stream of events to a world of strands unfolding concurrently.

41 Exceptions to the near-decomposability of lives into strands are not uncommon. Many mothers of young children, for example, experience an unwelcome interdependence between WORK and FAMILY [Ashforth 2001], [Michel, Kotrba et al. 2011], [Nippert-Eng

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2008], which can be challenging [Powell & Greenhaus 2010]. The Structure of Lives does not constrain every activity to be a member of a strand, nor does it forbid an activity to be the member of more than one strand. Indeed the degree to which a life is nearly decomposable into strands may vary from individual to individual and from one life- stage to another.

2.2 Activities

42 Strands consist of activities. As Figure 6 shows, activities are of two kinds: temporally determinate and temporally diffuse.

43 Temporally determinate activities can be placed in a time-slot: SHOPPING or SLEEPING, for example. Such activities fall into three categories:

44 1. Unique. An incident is unique if it is an accident (e.g., a fall), a disaster (natural or caused by humans), or a singular coincidence (e.g., meeting a long-lost friend on the street).

45 2. Routine. Most of our activities are routine. Routine activities follow a script, “a predetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions that defines a well-known situation” [Schank & Abelson 1977]. For example, we all have scripts for different types of restaurant: the formal restaurant (order–eat–pay), the lunch buffet (take food–eat–pay), the cafeteria (take food–pay–eat), the fast-food restaurant (order & pay–get food–eat) and so on.

46 There are two ways for an activity to be routine:

47 (a) Scripted. It is repeated but its repetitions are not linked: when I made breakfast today, I followed the same script as yesterday, and yet I do not think of today’s breakfast as a continuation of yesterday’s.

48 (b) Planned and unhindered. It is planned, and it proceeds according to plan. Even though it was my first trip to Santa Fe the travel was routine because it proceeded according to schedule in a manner familiar to me from other trips: taxi–check-in–board–fly–disembark– pick up luggage–taxi.

49 Most routine activities have a hierarchical structure [Pantic, Pentland et al. 2007]. A “workout at a gym” in FITNESS may consist of the sub-activities drive–check-in–change– treadmill–weights–shower–change–leave–drive. Each of these can be further broken down to yet smaller-scale activities. For example, a run on treadmill begins with activate treadmill and enter settings, each of which may in turn be further decomposable.

50 3. Project. As illustrated on the left side of Figure 6, an activity is part of a project if it is linked (in my mind) to a past or a future event (an activity or an incident). All projects begin with an initial incident and end with a terminal incident. The initial incident is a challenge, which is either

51 (a) self-imposed, when I decide to do something (have a child, get a degree, write a paper), or

52 (b) externally imposed, when routine activities are thwarted (my computer crashes; I fall severely ill).

53 Projects are frequently the topic of narratives. Our propensity to generate narratives is central to the Structure of Lives.2

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54 It is plausible that narratives are the source of both the peak-end rule and of duration- neglect. Certain literary forms, such as Freytag’s characterization of a classical play as a pyramid (Figure 3), are indeed marked by the peak-end rule.

55 Even so, the peak-end rule may be the exception among narratives we generate, and a fortiori among those we consume. Few conform to the peak-end rule or to Freytag’s pyramid. Kurt Vonnegut, for example, produced plot diagrams for common types of stories [Vonnegut 2005], two of which I redraw in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Two Vonnegut plot diagrams (redrawn) [Vonnegut 2005].

(a) Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.

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(b) New Testament/Cinderella: humankind receives many gifts from God, then falls from grace, but eventually will achieve redemption and eternal bliss.

56 Beyond that, even familiar bodily episodes, such as urinary urgency, provide models of narratives more elaborate than can be described by a peak-end account. The increasing urgency, illustrated in Figure 8, consists of a sequence of episodes of tension followed by relief, each reaching a peak more intense than the preceding one [Chapple, Artibani et al. 2005, Fig 1]. This is of course a pattern common in suspense narratives.

Figure 8: The growth of urinary urgency which resembles the pattern followed by suspense narratives. The shaded areas represent successive episodes of increasing urinary urgency. (Redrawn from [Chapple, Artibani et al. 2005].)

57 As we mentioned earlier, the centrality of narrative in human life may also account for the phenomenon of duration-neglect, which is Kahneman’s main reason for wanting to replace the remembering self with the experiencing self. A narrative describes a

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sequence of events or activities. None of these would appear in the narrative unless they (a) were rife with emotion and tension, and (b) advanced the narrative to its conclusion. In narratives, as in episodes of urinary urgency, only the order of tension- relief events counts. Clock-time plays little or no role in the narrative of an experience or in literary narratives.

58 Some activities are not temporally determinate. If their timing is hard to pinpoint, we say that they are diffuse. Diffuseness is a defining characteristic of preoccupations (also called time perspectives [Frank 1939]), such as guilt or worry. When we become aware of a preoccupation, we rarely register where we were or when it was that a preoccupation surged (typically unbidden). We experience preoccupations as infiltrating experiences whose object is either in the past or in the future, and they rarely take center stage in consciousness. They may refer to events (a) in the future: positively (expectations, wishes, daydreams, hopes, plans), or negatively (fears); or (b) in the past: positively (pride in an achievement), or negatively (guilt, shame, regret).

2.3 Noteworthiness

59 Noteworthiness is the third central feature of the Structure of Lives. 3 It is a property akin to the perceptual phenomenon of figure-ground segregation (Figure 9).

Figure 0.8: The segregation of figure from ground as a model for the emergence of an activity as noteworthy.

60 To say that an incident or a preoccupation is noteworthy is tantamount to saying that it is in the foreground of one’s life. Furthermore, if a strand contains many noteworthy activities, then it is likely to inherit the noteworthiness of its activities. The concept is

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essential if we are to understand how it is possible that people who are suffering physical or psychological pain can claim that their life is fulfilling.

3 Conclusion

3.1 The standing of these claims

61 Perhaps the best way to characterize this effort is to say that it is a researcher’s attempt to give a systematic account of the structure of his experience in the expectation4 that this account resonates with others. Thus the scientific standing of the Structure of Lives is not straightforward. On the one hand, it looks like a description—a phenomenological description—of how we humans experience our lives. In this repect it is an attempt to answer the question, “What is it like to have a life?” On the other hand, it looks like a theory—an attempt to answer the question, “What is the structure of lives?” It would seem that in any phenomenological discourse such as this, description and theory are ineluctably intertwined.

62 This expectation that the Structure of Lives will resonate with others may remind the reader of the use of acceptability judgments in the study of generative syntax [Chomsky 1965], [Schütze 2011]. There is, however, a crucial difference. Acceptability judgments are used as evidence for a complex theory that posits generative machinery of which we are not conscious. In contrast, my appeal to the reader is about the Structure of Lives itself, all of which is available to any human being, who (tautologically) has and lives a life. If it is deemed a faithful description, no further evidence is required. And even if further evidence were demanded, where could we find it?

63 Some readers may think that the Structure of Lives looks like an ontology (i.e., a formal structure common in information science, e.g., [Smith 2014]). There are three reasons it is not.

64 1. It does not adhere to Smith & Ceusters’s fundamental principle of ontological realism: “[We] advocate the creation of [...] reference ontologies designed to embody the representational content of settled science” [Smith & Ceusters 2010, 140]. Since this is the first time such an attempt has been made, no settled science is available.

65 2. It does not readily fit into current ontologies. For example, SUMO, the ontology developed by Pease offers us the choice of classifying a life either as a physical entity or as an abstract entity [Pease 2011, Figure 56, 101]. Neither is acceptable.

66 3. It cannot satisfy the Smith, Kusnierczyk et al. requirement that ontologies have three levels of entities [Smith, Kusnierczyk et al. 2006, 58]: • Level 1: the objects, processes, qualities, states, etc., in reality (for example on the side of the patient); • Level 2: cognitive representations of this reality on the part of researchers and others; • Level 3: concretizations of these cognitive representations in (for example textual or graphical) representational artifacts.

67 I consider these in turn: • Level 1: What is the “reality” captured by the Structure of Lives? It is phenomenological, i.e., always initially formulated from a first-person point of view. Nothing rests on the accuracy

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of π’s account, even though under some circumstances “reality” may come into play: a journalist hearing π’s fanciful account of a voyage may wish to do some fact-checking. • Level 2: It is not the case that the Structure of Lives is a researcher’s “representation of a single reality”. As I said earlier, it is my attempt to give a systematic description of the structure of my experience. If it also describes the structure of the lives of many other people, then it may be considered a “single reality”, but not quite in the sense intended by [Smith, Kusnierczyk et al. 2006]. • Level 3: There is no reason (at this early stage) to treat Figure 6 as a separate “concretization”. It is part and parcel of the Structure of Lives.

3.2 The value of this approach

68 In conclusion, what does the Structure of Lives have to offer? It makes a contribution on two levels:

69 1. It is of value to cognitive science because • it offers a new way to illuminate everyday human experience, and it does so without postulating processes inaccessible to that experience. • it offers new directions for research on the perception of event structure.

70 2. It is of value to the understanding of well-being because it raises many new questions, of which two are: • To what degree does leakage between strands undermine well-being? • Does the Structure of Lives offer a better basis for assessing well-being than other methods? It suggests that well-being might best be assessed strand by strand, after which a global measure may be formed by giving each strand a weight determined by the noteworthiness of its contents.

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NOTES

1. This supporting evidence is not unanimous [Ariely & Loewenstein 2000], [Geng, Chen et al. 2013], [Kemp, Burt et al. 2008], [Miron-Shatz 2009], [Robinson, Blissett et al. 2011], [Rode, Rozin et al. 2007]. 2. We do not, however, take a stance on sweeping claims (criticized by [Strawson 2004]) that “each of us constructs and lives a ‘narrative’ [...] this narrative is us, our identities” [Sacks 1985, 110], that “we are virtuoso novelists, who [...] try to make all of our material cohere into a single good story” [Dennett 1992, 114], that “identity itself takes the form of a story, complete with setting, scenes, character, plot, and theme” [McAdams 2001, 101], or that a person “creates his identity [only] by forming an autobiographical narrative—a story of his life” [Schechtman 2007, 93]. Although some people formulate “identity narratives”—for example, in memoirs and autobiographies—they do not play a role in the present account of the structure of lives. The relation of what psychologists call autobiographical memory [Fivush 2010] and the Structure of Lives is a worthy topic, the treatment of which is beyond the scope of this article. 3. A detailed treatment is beyond the scope of this article. 4. In the light of many lectures on the topic to a variety of audiences.

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ABSTRACTS

Psychology has always treated behavior and experience as embedded in a unidimensional flow in time, the “stream of behavior”. This means that events and actions occupy non-overlapping time-intervals in this stream. Nevertheless a phenomenological analysis reveals that the structure of lives is richer and far more interesting. Using Herbert Simon’s notion of near- decomposability, I describe the structure of lives as a composite of nearly independent strands that run concurrently, and are asynchronous. This is a “deep structure” of lives in contrast to the current conception, which conceives of lives as “flat”.

La psychologie a toujours traité le comportement et l’expérience comme étant enchâssés dans un flux temporel unidimensionnel, « le courant du comportement » dans lequel les événements et les actions occupent des intervalles de temps qui ne se chevauchent pas. Pourtant, une analyse phénoménologique révèle que la structure de nos vies est bien plus riche et intéressante. En utilisant la notion de « quasidécomposabilité » de Herbert Simon, je décris cette structure comme un assemblage d’épisodes quasi-indépendants se réalisant de façon concurrente, et de nature asynchrone. Il s’agit d’une « structure profonde» des vies contrairement à la conception courante qui conçoit les vies comme « plates ».

AUTHOR

MICHAEL KUBOVY University of Virginia (USA)

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