Introduction

In this chapter I will introduce the work of John Dewey (1859–1952) (see Box 15.1) and an approach to psychology called functionalism. (Dewey himself preferred the term ‘instrumentalism’, but ‘functionalism’ tends to be the term most commonly used to refer to this approach.) Functionalism can be contrasted with the structuralist approach, exemplified by Titchener. Whereas structural psychology was an attempt to codify the structural elements, such as basic sensations, that went together to make complex states, the functionalists argued that there were no such elements. They argued that psychological phenomena should be understood in terms of processes and functions rather than fixed structural features.

This basic functionalist idea is present in Dewey’s thought in the following ways. Firstly, because psychology is to be understood in terms of processes rather than structures, the things that it deals with are not defined by their intrinsic characteristics, but by the functions that they perform. We should not, then, speak of memory, for example, as if it were a thing, but rather of the process of remembering. In addition, there are no parts of this process that are intrinsically memorial; anything – sensations, emotions, cognitions – that plays a role in the process is, for as long as the process lasts, part of what we call memory. Secondly, functionalists believe that psychological phenomena can only be understood as part of a broader network of connected processes. If we want to understand more about something in psychology, we should not attempt to narrow our focus and isolate it from everything else as if we were looking though a microscope. On the contrary, we should expand our field of view to see how that process functions within the wider context of other processes within the organism and the environment. When we do this, says Dewey, we find that many of the dualisms that have bedevilled philosophy – such as those between body and mind or between thought and action – do not reflect deep-seated metaphysical differences, but only differences of function. According to Dewey, when we see processes in context we find that they are not opposed to one another, but are necessary parts of an overall process. I hope to show in the course of this chapter how Dewey’s functionalist approach allows him to reconcile what were previously thought to be opposing sides of philosophical dichotomies.

Introduction

In the mid nineteenth century, scientists started to investigate human mental life experimentally. The mind had, up until this point, mainly been the topic of theoretical or logical discussion or, when empirical, based on the everyday observations of thinking and feeling. Now, however, the new methods and equipment of laboratory science were turned towards the investigation of the mind. But though the methods of science were mobilised in this direction, this did not mean that the investigators in this new field had completely jettisoned philosophical ideas about the mind as put forward by some of their predecessors. Indeed, as we shall see in this chapter, developments in the scientific approach to mind were explicitly informed by philosophical theories and the resulting empirical work was an attempt to make concrete the theoretical ideas of certain philosophers. Two philosophers in particular had an important influence on the development of physiological psychology. One of them was Kant, who has already been discussed in Chapter 6; the other is Spinoza.

INTRODUCTION

Union citizenship was introduced in 1992 by the Treaty of Maastricht. In the course of the two decades since then, Union citizenship has become one of the Union’s most ambitious legal projects. Union citizenship is, in the words of the Court, “destined to be the fundamental status of nationals of the Member States.”

Today, Union citizenship is considered not only an emblematic showpiece of evolutionary progress in European integration, but also tangible proof that the Union has transcended its original confines as a regional trade organization. Yet it is noteworthy that there have been important initiatives predating the Maastricht Treaty that created rights for individuals beyond a narrow economic scope. As early as 1951, Walter Hallstein, the Commission’s first President, described the freedom of movement of workers in the European Coal and Steel Community as coming close to what he called a European citizenship; and, in 1968, the Commission’s Vice-President, Lionello Levi-Sandri, declared that the free movement of economically active persons “represents something more important and more exacting than the free movement of a factor of production. It represents rather an incipient form – still embryonic and imperfect – of European citizenship.” And, indeed, the Union’s early legislation on worker mobility has moved beyond the narrow framework of mere economic mobility. Regulation 1612/68 (1968), for example, granted broad equal treatment rights not only for workers but also for their families in areas such as social and tax advantages and access to the education system. The underlying assumption was that workers would not exercise their mobility rights if they were treated like second-class citizens. Advocate General Jacobs took the view in Konstantinidis (1993) that:

INTRODUCTION

The freedom of movement for workers is a core feature of the European Union and, from its inception, distinguished it from other regional economic organizations. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC, 1951) established the mobility of workers in the coal and steel sectors. The Treaty of Rome (1957) provided for the gradual establishment of a general freedom of movement of workers in the EEC. Article 48(1) EEC provided: “Freedom of movement for workers shall be secured within the Community by the end of the transitional period at the latest.” Even before the end of the transitional period in 1969, the Community institutions began to implement the Treaty provisions governing the free movement of workers. An early example is Directive 64/221/EEC on the “co-ordination of special measures concerning the movement and residence of foreign nationals which are justified on grounds of public policy, public security or public health.” It limited the discretionary powers of the Member States to restrict movement of the citizens of other Member States. One of the most important acts of legislation was Regulation 1612/68, spelling out the principle of equal treatment with regard to employment. Directive 68/360/EEC, furthermore, eliminated many restrictions on movement and residence, creating movement and residence rights which, a few years later in the 1970s, were extended to self-employed persons (see Chapter 6 below). The early European legislative measures aimed at establishing a far-reaching principle of equal treatment which the Court then further generalized. In Sagulo (1977), the Court held that “community law . . . is based on the freedom of movement of persons and, apart from certain exceptions, on the general application of the principle of equal treatment with nationals.” It extended the principle of equal treatment to areas that it held to be important to facilitate mobility and the integration of the worker and his or her family into the host society.

Introduction

In the previous chapter we saw how pragmatism emphasised the connection of ideas with their practical consequences and how functionalism, exemplified in the work of Dewey, applied this approach to psychology. For the functionalists, mental states had to be understood in terms of the functions that they performed, and these functions were a matter of allowing an organism to survive in its environment. The idea of a pure realm of consciousness, completely divorced from the practical demands of action, was rejected; mental states could only be studied validly in connection with the behaviour to which they were intrinsically connected. This strain of thought was taken to a more radical conclusion by behaviourism. To the most radical of the behaviourists – and both J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner, two of the thinkers to be discussed in this chapter, described themselves as radical behaviourists – functionalism had not gone far enough. It was not simply the case, as the functionalists had argued, that one cannot talk about mental states without also talking about behaviour, but that so-called ‘mental states’ were nothing more than types of behaviour. Before examining the ideas of Watson and Skinner, however, we turn to one of the important precursors of behaviourism, E. L. Thorndike.

Introduction

In the previous chapter we saw that one of the crucial assumptions behind cognitivism was what Fodor called methodological solipsism. This is the idea, ultimately deriving from Descartes, that the mind is to be understood in its own terms rather than in terms of its connection to the environment. The nature, even the existence, of an environment external to the mind is as irrelevant to a description of its operations as it would be to the description of a computer’s programe: the program is still the same program regardless of what is going on outside the computer.

We also saw that one of the corollaries of this view was that all the constraints and structuring of behaviour could not be seen as the effects of environmental or situational factors because these were considered irrelevant to the actual nature of the mind. Structure, even the structure of overt behaviour, had to come from inside the mind. Fodor puts it thus:

INTRODUCTION

Article 49(1) TFEU provides:

It grants individuals the right to establish themselves in another Member State to pursue an economic activity on a self-employed basis. The Court held in Gebhard (1995) that the rationale of the freedom of establishment is “allowing a [Union] national to participate, on a stable and continuous basis, in the economic life of a Member State other than his State of origin and to profit therefrom, so contributing to economic and social interpenetration within the [Union] in the sphere of activities as self-employed persons.”

According to the EEC Treaty, freedom of establishment had to be implemented over the course of the transitional period, which ended in December 1969. This process was laid down in the “General Programme for the abolition of restrictions on freedom of establishment” (1962). In particular, the General Programme mapped out the liberalization of the various economic sectors through numerous legislative measures. By the early 1970s, broad economic sectors, including commerce, industry and crafts, had been opened up to European competition. After the transitional period had ended, the freedom of establishment became directly effective. As a consequence, the Court became increasingly relevant in the continuing integration of the European markets. This was particularly the case in areas where no consensus among the Member States for harmonizing measures could be found.

Introduction

The idea that species changed through evolution was one that preceded Darwin by a good many years, perhaps even centuries. Traces of such ideas can be found as far back as the works of Aristotle and evolutionary ideas were particularly prevalent among eighteenth-century naturalists, such as Buffon (1707–88). Pre-Darwinian approaches to evolution were not necessarily inimical to religion and many saw evolution as the unfolding of God’s design; it was creation in action. This meant that nature had a purpose: the instantiation of the divine plan through evolution. Humanity, as the pinnacle of God’s creative plan was, therefore, the last to emerge from the evolutionary process.

The fundamental idea behind these approaches to evolution was that of progress. The evolutionary process was understood as naturally tending towards the appearance of more and more sophisticated species. Even those who rejected the idea of a divine plan and who had a secular understanding of evolution nevertheless held it to be something progressive. One of these theorists was Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), one of the most influential and widely read scientists and philosophers of the nineteenth century. It was Spencer who was the first thinker to bring the idea of evolution to bear on psychology in a major way.

Introduction

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) is generally regarded as the father of experimental psychology. A glance at the opening chapter of virtually any introductory psychology textbook, which usually contains a brief history of psychology, will almost certainly refer the importance of his book Principles of Physiological Psychology (1874; English translation by E. B. Titchener, 1910) and, in particular, of the laboratory that he set up in Leipzig in 1879. The Leipzig laboratory is usually held to be the first experimental psychology laboratory and was important not only for the research that was carried out there, but for the large number of psychologists, both European and American, that trained there. For many psychologists in America, a trip to Leipzig to learn the new experimental methods was an important part of their education.

But the questions that Wundt sought to answer through these laboratory techniques cannot be fully understood in isolation from his philosophical presuppositions, and these, as Wundt himself says in the Preface to Principles of Physiological Psychology, owed much to Kant. In Chapter 6 we saw how Kant and Hume differed in how they sought to account for our experience. For Hume, experience essentially consisted of elementary sensations that were linked together through a mechanical process of association. Kant, on the other hand, believed that one could never account for the ordered nature of experience in this way. The fundamental flaw of empiricism, for Kant, was its willingness to accept sensory experience as fundamental rather than recognising that there must be even more fundamental structuring principles lying behind sensory experience for it to exist in the first place.

Preface

The sheer amount of information available to today’s psychology student, and the ease with which that information can be obtained, is greater than it has ever been in the past. Though this is no doubt a blessing, it is not without its dangers. In particular, it is easy for the student to become bogged down in a mass of facts and details with little appreciation of how everything fits together. Knowing disjointed facts, no matter how vast that knowledge may be, does not constitute understanding. It is only when that knowledge is embedded within an overarching framework that understanding occurs. Knowledge of the historical and philosophical foundations of psychology provides such a framework.

But in order to achieve this, the historical and philosophical foundations of psychology cannot themselves be presented in a bitty and disjointed fashion. There must be some sort of narrative, not just a bunch of ideas and theories. There must be an indication of how ideas fit together, and of the pervasive influence of certain core ideas that resurface at various points throughout the history of psychology. That is what I have tried to do in this book.