Psychology without Descartes: Could There Be One?

Deborah Brown

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Chapter 9 Psychology without Descartes: Could There Be One?

In: Mind and Obligation in the Long Middle Ages

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Deborah Brown

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 176–200

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004713260_010

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Abstract

It is one of those strange ironies of history that a discipline devoted to the scientific study of the mind and consciousness should define itself in opposition to the views of a thinker without whom it is unlikely to have existed. This is the case with psychology, which, from its inception, took as its distinctive subject matter the mind or consciousness as defined by Descartes while at the same time defining itself in opposition to Descartes’ hopelessly “rationalist psychology,” to quote William James. There is much to ponder in the early psychologists’ relationship to Descartes—and, likewise, in whether what Descartes was engaged in when theorising about the relationship between the mind and the mechanisms of the body constitutes what we would nowadays recognise as psychology. Picking up on Mikko Yrjönsuuri’s powerful and original treatment of the question “Cartesian Psychology—Could There Be One?”, this chapter explores the continuities and discontinuities between Descartes and the subject matter and methods of modern psychology. It will be argued that Descartes’ interest in psychophysical phenomena and the unique “sense making” function he implicitly ascribes to sensory perception provides grounds for thinking that Descartes could have accepted the distinctiveness of a science of consciousness and human behaviour.

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Mind and Obligation in the Long Middle Ages

Studies in the History of Philosophy in Honour of Mikko Yrjönsuuri

Series: Investigating Medieval Philosophy, Volume: 23

Cover Mind and Obligation in the Long Middle Ages

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004713260

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 25 Oct 2024

Subjects
- History
  - Medieval History
- Philosophy

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Part 1 Logic, Language, and Thought

Part 2 The Logic of Obligations

Part 3 Cognitive Psychology

Part 4 Moral Psychology

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Chapter 9 Psychology without Descartes: Could There Be One?

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Mind and Obligation in the Long Middle Ages

Studies in the History of Philosophy in Honour of Mikko Yrjönsuuri

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