Various - Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1

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These results indicate an increase in the respiration rate due to the
visual stimulus.

4. Of the other auditory stimuli used, the pistol-cap explosion gave
very irregular results. For one animal it caused acceleration, for
another inhibition. There is, however, good evidence that the sounds
were heard.

5. The ringing of a bell gave results similer to those for a whistle,
and the sound of a 500 S.V. tuning fork usually caused a slight
increase in the rate of breathing. In these experiments I therefore
have evidence, through their effects upon respiration, of the frog's
ability to hear sounds ranging from 50 V. to at least 1,000 V.

The croak of the green frog ranges from 100 to 200 V., so far as I
have been able to determine. That of the bull frog is lower, from 50
to 75; and in the leopard frog the range is from 80 to 125. The latter
is very different from the green frog in its croaking, in that it
croaks whenever disturbed, whereas, the green frog rarely responds in
that way to a stimulus.

We are now in a position to say that the failure of frogs to give
motor reactions to strong auditory stimuli is not due to their
inability to be affected by the stimuli, but is a genuine inhibition
phenomenon.

XI. THE EFFECTS OF AUDITORY STIMULI ON VISUAL REACTIONS.

Further experimental evidence of hearing was gotten from some work
done to test the influence of sounds upon motor reactions to visual
stimuli. Frogs, like most other amphibians, reptiles and fishes, are
attracted by any small moving object and usually attempt to seize it.
They never, so far as I have noticed, feed upon motionless objects,
but, on the other hand, will take almost anything which moves.
Apparently the visual stimulus of movement excites a reflex. A very
surprising thing to those who are unfamiliar with frog habits is the
fear which small frogs have of large ones. Put some green frogs or
small bull frogs into a tank with large bull frogs, and the little
ones will at once show signs of extreme fear; they jump about in the
most excited manner and try hard to escape. The cause of their fear
soon appears, since it is usually only a few minutes until the little
ones are swallowed by their wide-mouthed, cannibalistic fellows.

It is, moreover, well known that a bit of red flannel fastened to a
hook attracts frogs and is an excellent method of capturing them. Red
seems to be the color which they most readily notice.

This tendency of the frog to attempt to seize any moving object I made
use of to test the value of sounds. By placing a frog in a glass
aquarium which was surrounded by a screen, back of which I could work
and through a small hole in which I was able to watch the animal
without being noticed by it, and then moving a bit of red cardboard
along one side of the aquarium, I could get the frog to jump at it
repeatedly. In each attempt to get the moving object, the animal
struck its head forcibly against the glass side of the aquarium. There
was, therefore, reason to think that a few trials would lead to the
inhibition of the reaction. Experiment discovered the fact that a
hungry frog would usually jump at the card as many as twenty times in
rapid succession.

In this reaction to a visual stimulus there appeared good material for
testing audition. I therefore arranged a 500 S.V. tuning fork over the
aquarium and compared the reactions of animals to the visual stimulus
alone, with that to the visual stimulus when accompanied by an
auditory stimulus. The tuning-fork sound was chosen because it seemed
most likely to be significant to the frog. It is similar to the sounds
made by the insects upon which frogs feed. For this reason one would
expect that the sight of a moving object and the sound of a
tuning-fork would tend to reenforce one another.

The experiments were begun with observations on the effects of moving
objects on the respiration. In case of a normal rate of 54
respirations per minute sight of the red object caused an increase to
58. Then the same determination was made for the auditory stimulus.
The tuning-fork usually caused an increase in rate. In a typical
experiment it was from 65 per minute to 76. The observations prove
conclusively that the 500 S.V. sound is heard. My attention was turned
to the difference of the environment of the ear in its relation to
hearing. Apparently frogs hear better when the tympanum is partially
under water than when it is fully exposed to the air.

Having discovered by repeated trials about how vigorously and
frequently a frog would react to the moving red card, I tried the
effect of setting the fork in vibration a half minute before showing
the card. It was at once evident that the sound put the frog on the
alert, and, when the object came into view, it jumped at it more
quickly and a greater number of times than when the visual stimulus
was given without the auditory. This statement is based on the study
of only two animals, since I was unable to get any other frogs that
were in the laboratory at the time to take notice of the red
cardboard. This was probably because of the season being winter. I
venture to report the results simply because they were so definite as
to point clearly to the phenomenon of the reenforcement of the
visual-stimulus reaction by an auditory stimulus.

Concerning the influence of this combining of stimuli on the reaction
time, I am only able to say that the reaction to the moving object
occurred quicker in the presence of the auditory stimulus. When the
red card was shown it was often several seconds before the frog would
notice it and attempt to get it, but when the sound also was given the
animal usually noticed and jumped toward the moving card almost
immediately.

Unfortunately I have thus far been unable to get chronoscopic
measurements of the reaction times in this reenforcement phenomenon. I
hope later to be able to follow out the interesting suggestions of
these few experiments in the study of reenforcement and inhibition as
caused by simultaneously given stimuli.

A few observations made in connection with these experiments are of
general interest. The frog, when it first sees a moving object,
usually draws the nictitating membrane over the eye two or three times
as if to clear the surface for clearer vision. Frequently this action
is the only evidence available that the animal has noticed an object.
This movement of the eye-lids I have noticed in other amphibians and
in reptiles under similar conditions, and since it always occurs when
the animals have need of the clearest possible vision, I think the
above interpretation of the action is probably correct.

Secondly, the frog after getting a glimpse of an object orients
itself by turning its head towards the object, and then waits for a
favorable chance to spring. The aiming is accurate, and as previously
stated the animal is persistent in its attempts to seize an object.

XII. THE PAIN-SCREAM OF FROGS.

While making measurements of the frog's reaction time to electrical
stimulation, I noticed that after a few repetitions of a 2-volt,
.0001-ampere stimulus an animal would frequently make a very peculiar
noise. The sound is a prolonged scream, like that of a child, made by
opening the mouth widely. The ordinary croak and grunt are made with
closed or but slightly opened mouth. The cry at once reminds one of
the sounds made by many animals when they are frightened. The rabbit,
for example, screams in much the same way when it is caught, as do
also pigs, dogs, rats, mice and many other animals. The question
arises, is this scream indicative of pain? While studying reaction
time I was able to make some observations on the relation of the
scream to the stimulus.

First, the scream is not given to weak stimuli, even upon many
repetitions. Second, it is given to such strengths of an electrical
stimulus as are undoubtedly harmful to the animal. Third, after a frog
has been stimulated with a strong current (two volts), until the
scream is given with almost every repetition, it will scream in the
same way when even a weak stimulus is applied. If, for instance, after
a two-volt stimulus has been given a few times, the animal be merely
touched with a stick, it will scream. It thus appears as if the strong
stimulus increases the irritability of the center for the
scream-reflex to such an extent that even weak stimuli are sufficient
to cause the reaction. Are we to say that the weak stimulus is painful
because of the increased irritability, or may it be concluded that the
reflex is in this case, like winking or leg-jerk or the head-lowering
and puffing, simply a forced movement, which is to be explained as an
hereditary protective action, but not as necessarily indicative of any
sort of feeling. Clearly if we take this stand it may at once be said
that there is no reason to believe the scream indicative of pain at
any time. And it seems not improbable that this is nearer the truth
than one who hears the scream for the first time is likely to think.

The pain-scream is of interest in this consideration of auditory
reactions because it increases the range of sounds which we should
expect frogs to hear if we grant the probability of them hearing their
own voices.

It may be worth while to recall at this point the fact that a whistle
from the human lips--the nearest approach to the pain-scream among the
sounds which were used as stimuli in the experiments on
respiration--caused marked inhibition of respiration. Perhaps this
fact may be interpreted in the light of the pain-scream reaction. I
may add that I have never seen a frog give a motor reaction to the
pain-scream. Thinking it would certainly alarm the animals and cause
them to make some movement which would serve for reaction-time
measurements, I made repeated trials of its effects, but could never
detect anything except respiratory changes.

* * * * *

STUDIES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY.

* * * * *

THE POSITION OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE SYSTEM OF KNOWLEDGE.

BY HUGO MUeNSTERBERG.

The modern efforts to bring all sciences into a system or at least to
classify them, from Bacon to Spencer, Wundt and Pearson have never, if
we abstract here from Hegel, given much attention to those questions
of principle which are offered by the science of psychology. Of course
the psychological separation of different mental functions has often
given the whole scheme for the system, the classification thus being
too often more psychological than logical. Psychology itself,
moreover, has had for the most part a dignified position in the
system; even when it has been fully subordinated to the biological
sciences, it was on the other hand placed superior to the totality of
mental and moral sciences, which then usually have found their unity
under the positivistic heading 'sociology.' And where the independent
position of psychology is acknowledged and the mental and moral
sciences are fully accredited, as for instance with Wundt, psychology
remains the fundamental science of all mental sciences; the objects
with which philology, history, economics, politics, jurisprudence,
theology deal are the products of the processes with which psychology
deals, and philology, history, theology, etc., are thus related to
psychology, as astronomy, geology, zooelogy are related to physics.
There is thus nowhere a depreciation of psychology, and yet it is not
in its right place. Such a position for psychology at the head of all
'Geisteswissenschaften' may furnish a very simple classification for
it, but it is one which cannot express the difficult character of
psychology and the complex relations of the system of mental sciences.
The historical and philological and theological sciences cannot be
subordinated to psychology if psychology as science is to be
cooerdinated with physics, that is, if it is a science which describes
and explains the psychical objects in the way in which physics
describes and explains the physical objects. On the other hand, if it
means in this central position of mental sciences a science which does
not consider the inner life as an object, but as subjective activity
needing to be interpreted and subjectively understood, not as to its
elements, but as to its meaning, then we should have two kinds of
psychology, one which explains and one which interprets. They would
speak of different facts, the one of the inner life as objective
content of consciousness, as phenomenon, the other of the inner life
as subjective attitude, as purpose.

The fact is, that these two sciences exist to-day. There are
psychologists who recognize both and keep them separated, others who
hold to the one or the other as the only possible view; they are
phenomenalists or voluntarists. Mostly both views are combined, either
as psychological voluntarism with interposed concessions to
phenomenalism or as phenomenalism with the well-known concessions to
voluntarism at the deciding points. Further, those who claim that
psychology must be phenomenalistic--and that is the opinion of the
present writer--do not on that account hold that the propositions of
voluntarism are wrong. On the contrary: voluntarism, we say, is right
in every respect except in believing itself to be psychology.
Voluntarism, we say, is the interpretative account of the real life,
of immediate experience, whose reality is understood by understanding
its meaning sympathetically, but we add that in this way an objective
description can never be reached. Description presupposes
objectivation; another aspect, not the natural aspect of life, must be
chosen to fulfill the logical purposes of psychology: the
voluntaristic inner life must be considered as content of
consciousness while consciousness is then no longer an active subject
but a passive spectator. Experience has then no longer any meaning in
a voluntaristic sense; it is merely a complex of elements. We claim
that every voluntaristic system as far as it offers descriptions and
explanations has borrowed them from phenomenalistic psychology and is
further filled up by fragments of logic, ethics and aesthetics, all of
which refer to man in his voluntaristic aspect. We claim, therefore,
that such a voluntaristic theory has no right to the name psychology,
while we insist that it gives a more direct account of man's real life
than psychology can hope to give, and, moreover, that it is the
voluntaristic man whose purpose creates knowledge and thus creates the
phenomenalistic aspect of man himself.

We say that the voluntaristic theory, the interpretation of our real
attitudes, in short teleological knowledge, alone can account for the
value and right of phenomenalistic psychology and it thus seems unfair
to raise the objection of 'double bookkeeping.' These two aspects of
inner life are not ultimately independent and exclusive; the
subjective purposes of real life necessarily demand the labors of
objectivistic psychology. The last word is thus not dualistic but
monistic and the two truths supplement each other. But this
supplementation must never be misinterpreted as meaning that the two
sciences divide inner experience, as if, for instance, the
phenomenalistic study dealt with perceptions and ideas, the
voluntaristic with feelings and volitions. No, it is really a
difference of logical purpose of treatment and thus a difference of
points of view only; the whole experience without exception must be
possible material for both. There is no feeling and no volition which
is not for the phenomenalist a content of consciousness and nothing
else. There is, on the other hand, no perception and no idea which is
not, or better, ought not to be for the voluntarist a means, an aim, a
tool, an end, an ideal. In that real life experience of which the
voluntarist is speaking, every object is the object of will and those
real objects have not been differentiated into physical things under
the abstract categories of mechanics on the one hand, and psychical
ideas of them in consciousness on the other; the voluntarist, if he is
consistent, knows neither physical nor psychical phenomena.
Phenomenalist and voluntarist thus do not see anything under the same
aspect, neither the ideas nor the will.

This difference is wrongly set forth if the antithesis to voluntarism
is called intellectualism. Intellectualism is based on the category of
judgment, and judgment too is a ideological attitude. Phenomenalism
does not presuppose a subject which knows its contents but a subject
which simply _has_ its contents; the consciousness which has the
thought as content does not take through that the voluntaristic
attitude of knowing it and the psychologist has therefore no reason to
prefer the thought to the volition and thus to play the
intellectualist. If the psychologist does emphasize the idea and its
elements, the sensations, it is not because they are vehicles of
thought but because their relations to physical objects make them
vehicles of communication. The elements of ideas are negotiable and
thus through their reference to the common physical world indirectly
describable; as the elements of ideas are alone in this position, the
psychologist is obliged to consider all contents of consciousness,
ideas and volitions alike, as complexes of sensations.

The antithesis is also misinterpreted, or at least wrongly narrowed,
if it is called voluntarism _versus_ associationism. Recent
discussions have sufficiently shown that the principle of association
is not the only possible one for phenomenalistic theories. If
associationism is identified with objective psychology, all the
well-founded objections to the monopoly of the somewhat sterile
principle of association appear as objections to phenomenalism in
psychology, and voluntaristic theories, especially those which work
with the teleological category of apperception, are put in its place.
But without returning to apperceptionism we can overcome the
one-sidedness of associationism if full use is made of the means which
the world of phenomena offers to theory. The insufficiency of
associationism disappears if the content of consciousness is
considered as variable not only as to quality and intensity but also
as to vividness. This variation of vividness, on the other hand, is no
exception from the psychophysical parallelism as soon as the psychical
process is considered as dependent not only upon the local and
quantitative differences of the sensory process but also upon the
motor function of the central physical process. The one-sidedness of
the physiological sensory theories has been the hidden reason for the
one-sidedness of associationism. The sensory-motor system must be
understood as the physical basis of the psychophysical process and the
variations in the motor discharge then become conditions of those
psychical variations of vividness which explain objectively all those
phenomena in whose interest associationism is usually supplemented by
apperceptionism. The association theory must thus be given up in favor
of an 'action-theory'[1] which combines the consistency of
phenomenalistic explanation with a full acknowledgment of the
so-called apperceptive processes; it avoids thus the deficiency of
associationism and the logical inconsistency of apperceptionism.

[1] H. Muensterberg, 'Grundzuege der Psychologie.' Bd. I.,
Leipzig, 1900, S. 402-562.

Only if in this way the sciences of voluntaristic type, including all
historical and normative sciences, are fully separated from
phenomenalistic psychology, will there appear on the psychological
side room for a scientific treatment of the phenomena of social life,
that is, for sociology, social psychology, folk-psychology, psychical
anthropology and many similar sciences. All of them have been in the
usual system either crowded out by the fact that history and the other
mental sciences have taken all the room or have been simply identified
with the mental sciences themselves. And yet all those sciences exist,
and a real system of sciences must do justice to all of them. A modern
classification has perhaps no longer the right as in Bacon's time to
improve the system by inventing new sciences which have as yet no
existence, but it has certainly the duty not to ignore important
departments of knowledge and not to throw together different sciences
like the descriptive phenomenalistic account of inner life and its
interpretative voluntaristic account merely because each sometimes
calls itself psychology. A classification of sciences which is to be
more than a catalogue fulfills its logical function only by a careful
disentanglement of logically different functions which are externally
connected. Psychology and the totality of psychological, philosophical
and historical sciences offer in that respect far more difficulty than
the physical sciences, which have absorbed up to this time the chief
interest of the classifier. It is time to follow up the ramifications
of knowledge with special interest for these neglected problems. It is
clear that in such a system sciences which refer to the same objects
may be widely separated, and sciences whose objects are unlike may be
grouped together. This is not an objection; it indicates that a
system is more than a mere pigeon-holing of scholarly work, that it
determines the logical relations; in this way only can it indeed
become helpful to the progress of science itself.

The most direct way to our end is clearly that of graphic
representation wherein the relations are at once apparent. Of course
such a map is a symbol and not an argument; it indicates the results
of thought without any effort to justify them. I have given my
arguments for the fundamental principles of the divisions in my
'Grundzuege der Psychologie' and have repeated a few points more
popularly in 'Psychology and Life,' especially in the chapter on
'Psychology and History.' And yet this graphic appendix to the
Grundzuege may not be superfluous, as the fulness of a bulky volume
cannot bring out clearly enough the fundamental relations; the detail
hides the principles. The parallelism of logical movements in the
different fields especially becomes more obvious in the graphic form.
Above all, the book discussed merely those groups which had direct
relation to psychology; a systematic classification must leave no
remainder. Of course here too I have not covered the whole field of
human sciences, as the more detailed ramification offers for our
purpose no logical interest; to subdivide physics or chemistry, the
history of nations or of languages, practical jurisprudence or
theology, engineering or surgery, would be a useless overburdening of
the diagram without throwing new light on the internal relations of
knowledge.

Without now entering more fully into any arguments, I may indicate in
a few words the characteristic features of the graphically presented
proposition. At the very outset we must make it clear that phenomena
and voluntaristic attitudes are not cooerdinated, but that the reality
of phenomena is logically dependent upon voluntaristic attitudes
directed towards the ideal of knowledge. And yet it would be
misleading to place the totality of phenomenalistic sciences as a
subdivision under the teleological sciences. Possible it would be; we
might have under the sciences of logical attitudes not only logic and
mathematics but as a subdivision of these, again, the sciences which
construct the logical system of a phenomenalistic world--physics
being in this sense merely mathematics with the conception of
substance added. And yet we must not forget that the teleological
attitudes, to become a teleological science, must be also logically
reconstructed, as they must be teleologically connected, and thus in
this way the totality of purpose-sciences might be, too, logically
subordinated to the science of logic. Logic itself would thus become a
subdivision of logic. We should thus move in a circle, from which the
only way out is to indicate the teleological character of all sciences
by starting not with science but with the strictly teleological
conception of life--life as a system of purposes, felt in immediate
experience, and not as the object of phenomenalistic knowledge. Life
as activity divides itself then into different purposes which we
discriminate not by knowledge but by immediate feeling; one of them is
knowledge, that is, the effort to make life, its attitudes, its means
and ends a connected system of overindividual value. In the service of
this logical task we connect the real attitudes and thus come to the
knowledge of purposes: and we connect the means and ends--by
abstracting from our subjective attitudes, considering the objects of
will as independent phenomena--and thus come to phenomenalistic
knowledge. At this stage the phenomenalistic sciences are no longer
dependent upon the teleological ones, but cooerdinated with them;
physics, for instance, is a logical purpose of life, but not a branch
of logic: the only branch of logic in question is the philosophy of
physics which examines the logical conditions under which physics is
possible.