A New Look at New Realism

The Psychology and Philosophy of E. B. Holt

Eric Charles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781412842426
• eBook ISBN: 9781351534819
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This volume brings to the attention of contemporary readers a tradition of psychological thought that has received little attention over the last century. Psychology's history has been unimaginatively presented as a fight between behaviorists and mentalists. A third alternative, the New Realism, which cuts through that dichotomy, has been lost. "The New Realism" was indeed once new. This volume provides a glimpse of how this school of thought attempted to redefine the notion of mental processes, including consciousness, in psychological theorizing. Holt's rejected the nativity of iconoclastic Watsonian behaviorists, and thus the New Realism was thoughtful in ways that behaviorist social engineering was not. The implications of these innovations in psychological theorizing are traced from the beginning of the twentieth century to the contemporary period. The contributors provide these intellectual links, along with efforts to look at the relatedness of the human organism and its world. At their beginning, these ideas are embedded in a reverence for William James's work, particularly his later Radical Empiricism. In contemporary psychology, this legacy has given us the framework of ecological psychology as we know it today, and provides the basis for several modern critiques of cognitive psychology. The present volume opens the door for future historical inquiries. This is an exemplary addition to the series on the History of Psychological Ideas.

1

E. B. Holt to William James, 1905

 

 

Editor’s Note: In the following letter E. B. Holt writes to William James, with whom he was very close (see Taylor, this volume), and discusses both personal and professional matters. This letter is written in 1905, early in Holt’s career, but late in James’s. The letter is of value both in what it can tell us about Holt’s intellectual position and his temperament at this time, as well as what it can tell us about James’s understanding of Holt’s position. It seems clear that James has previously told Holt that his position is compatible with Radical Empiricism, and one can presume (given Holt’s stated deference to James) that said opinion did not change. The book referred to, Holt’s Concept of Consciousness (1914), did not appear until almost a decade after this correspondence, and so we cannot know James’s opinion of the final work. Reprinted with permission of the Houghton Library at Harvard University, where it is labeled “mh bms am 1092 (399).”

My Dear Mr. James:

When not on duty for the wedding of Perry, I’ve been down here at work on my little Concept of Consciousness. In revisiting the subject I read over the paper which you had (so economically written on the contents of a ragbag) and this very kind letter that you wrote me about it. I have followed your advice and for the present volume, anyhow, quite given up the silly scheme of serving up the old theories of consciousness en ragoût; specially since Ward, Busse, Paulsen, and Strong have sufficiently done that.

The scheme of the booklein works out I think pretty (though I as shouldn’t says it) well; quite in systematic stone on stone, with few or no joists, roof-trees and step-ladder, so dear to the Tentotnic mind, in evidence. I haven’t been able to resist several times showing spleen at the subjective idealists.

There is the quandary as to what I shall call the theory. Provision-ally I’ve called it “empirio-criticism” reineweg, although it differs considerably from anything of Avenarius. I tried in vain to think up the two words by which you formally called your present theory in the paper that mentioned the “mosaic” of conscience. The paper isn’t by me. But you have said that I have my ideas from you, as may well be; and if you care to glance over the sheets when finished, and find that my arguments readily subsume under yours, I will gladly erase “empirio-criticism” all through + put “rational empiricism” (?) or whatever your designation was. I do think I’m more nearly your disciple than anyone’s else in these matters: unless indeed you account it fatal that I can’t accept pragmatism in any form. It will all depend on what your pleasure is.

Mr. B. Russell was just asked by Mrs. Pearsal Smith to state his views in words of one syllable and briefly, for her comprehension. He replied at once and very cockily: “What IS means is not what IS is.” They say that he isn’t done chuckling over it. Neither is Mrs. Smith, but differently. He says all his philosophy is summed up in that sentence. For my part, I can only suppose that much reading of Meinong hath made him mad. As well it might.

Perry is married and gone away on the insuitable honeymoon. These trips must be dismal affairs. I should dread nothing more than the moment when I must learn that my wife travelled with fifty queer looking bottles, twenty-five dresses, and packed her hair-brush and tooth-powder underneath the whole mess. And the chivalrous new husband, disguised as a man of means, is instantly involved by his dovelike wife with sixteen porters, whenever he emerges from a train. I’m thankful I shall never be pestered with a honeymoon. Tom [Perry] and Rachel are serving their time out in Devonshire.

There is nothing to eat in Oxford, and so I start to-morrow for the northern coast of France, to visit David Kimball and his wife (not on their honeymoon). I shall go on writing my book, and for sightseeing make only a pilgrimage to Amiens: in order to purge my mind of English Gothic.

Please don’t trouble to answer this scrawl. I shall be at home very soon. Oh, and I thank you a thousand times for calling on my dear old Mother.

With heartiest wishes, I am Affectionately Yours,

Ned Holt.

Part I

The Specific Response and the Problem of Illusory Experiences

2

Observing Mental Processes

Joel Michell

Observing Mental Processes

It is taken for granted, almost universally, that the only mental processes we can observe directly are our own, so much so that the issue of our knowledge of other minds is one of the standard problems of modern philosophy. Mental processes, including cognition, are conceived of as being essentially private, open only to first-person inspection. In the light of that, E. B. Holt’s view that we can directly see the cognitions of others in relation between their behavior and environment seems absurd. Yet for Holt, it was a central component of his understanding of “New Realism.” Despite that, it is a component that was not developed in any convincing way by his successors, and with the revival of mentalism in academic psychology in the 1960s, the old dogmas regarding privacy were reinstated because the new view, viz., that mental processes equate to internal information processing algorithms, fit the privacy thesis fairly snugly. However, I would like to suggest that Holt’s observability thesis was an idea ahead of its time and that it remained undeveloped not because it was wrong but because it required philosophical resources then lacking. If cognition is understood as a relation between the organism and its environment, then some account of the logical structure of the known must be given.

From the perspective of mainstream, modern American psychology, Holt is notable as a somewhat idiosyncratic, philosophical interpreter of behaviorism and is notable for his influence upon psychologists like E. C. Tolman and J. J. Gibson and their numerous followers. Yet the lines of Holt’s influence reach into unsuspected and far-flung corners of academia. Surprisingly, one line was through Britain to Australia, where its traces survive in a little-known¹ school of realist psychologists, within which attempts have been made to make sense of Holt’s observability thesis. It is time that these attempts fed back into the wider circle of Holt’s admirers.

The Australian Link to Holt

When I began psychology at the University of Sydney in 1960, our textbooks included W. M. O’Neil’s An Introduction to Method in Psychology.² Considering introspection, O’Neil noted the conventional wisdom “… that only the person himself can observe his own mental states” (1957, p. 100) and contradicted it in these terms: “Opposed to it is the fact that we do observe anger, fear, puzzlement, confusion, abstractedness and the like in others as well as in ourselves” (p. 100). Another of our teachers, J. R. Maze,³ expounded the same view. He argued that there is no logical reason why the mental states of others should not be open to our observation and vice versa. In part, his argument echoed Holt’s reasoning on the same issue:

The belief that it is in principle impossible to observe another’s thoughts is a consequence of that conception of mental processes that I have been rejecting, namely, that their objects are entities of a shadowy non-physical nature whose existence is constituted by the subject’s having or knowing them, i.e. they exist only in “their” relation to the subject, so by definition they cannot stand in that relation of being the object of knowledge to any other subject. But, as I have argued, the objects of mental acts are not constituted even in part by standing in that relation; they are states of affairs that exist independently of their being known and which therefore can in principle be observed by anyone with an opportunity to do so. Therefore, since it is in principle possible for me to be independently acquainted with some fact that you too are acquainted with, since you do not create it by being aware of it, then at least that objection to the possibility of my knowing the cognitive relation between you and the objects of your knowledge has been removed. (1983, p. 99)

Maze argued that not only is social life premised upon the ability to sometimes observe others’ thoughts, but also, crucially, learning to speak depends upon the same capacity because “[t]o say that one thing is used to symbolise another means that the audience must understand what the user is thinking” (1983, p. 102). Somewhat unusually, we were exposed to the view that not only can we observe the mental processes of others, but given the facts of ordinary life, we must be able to do this.

Not only were we exposed to this view, but also its link with the American New Realists, and specifically with Holt, was explicit. O’Neil, in his history of psychology, noted that “[a]n American group of New Realists were vigorously propounding this view at the end of the first decade of this century. Perry and Holt (1912) in particular denied that knowns were other than independently existing objects and situations” (1968a, p. 131), a point reiterated in his paper “Realism and Behaviorism” (O’Neil, 1968b). It was stressed that one of the influences upon behaviorism was the philosophical legacy of William James as developed especially by Perry and Holt.⁴ O’Neil was a meticulous historian, so mention of Holt was not uncharacteristic of his attention to detail. However, another connection linked him to Holt. This connection was via the two “Australian” philosophers Samuel Alexander⁵ and John Anderson.⁶

In his Gifford Lectures of 1916–1918 at Glasgow University, Alexander developed a comprehensive realist system of metaphysics (Alexander, 1920) in which he also discussed Holt’s realism.⁷ In attendance was a young John Anderson, who, at that time, “was embarking on a study of William James for his M.A. thesis” (Kennedy, 1995, p. 61). Alexander’s lectures changed Anderson’s life: “There can be little doubt … that the philosopher who exercised most influence on the young Anderson was not a Scot, a Welshman or even an Englishman, but the Australian-born Samuel Alexander from Manchester” (Kennedy, 1995, p. 61). Around the same time, “Alexander read a paper on the American New Realists, which greatly interested Anderson” (p. 61). The writings of William James, the New Realists, and Alexander’s lectures formed a heady intellectual mix, one that shaped Anderson’s mature philosophical vision.

Anderson recognized that James was “not a realist” (1940, p. 87), but he considered that James had done much to advance realism by insisting that relations are as real as the objects related and “just as much ‘given’ in experience as the things related” (1958, p. 53). Anderson held that, in part, because of James’s influence, the job of developing realism had been “done most thoroughly … in ‘The New Realism’, a co-operative work by six American philosophers” (1958, p. 53), rather than by the British realists, Russell, Moore, and Alexander. Anderson never underestimated his intellectual debt to these Americans, and his seminal paper, “The Knower and the Known” (Anderson, 1927), is really an extended discussion of the thesis that “mind is a relation and not a substance” (Holt, 1915, p. 99). One of the conclusions derived in this paper is that “we do observe situations of the sort ‘A knows B’ (whenever, e.g., we take part in a discussion)” (1927, p. 38). In 1927, Anderson was appointed professor in Sydney, and there he developed his own distinctive interpretation of realism, which many regard as “the most systematic presentation of a realist philosophy” (Passmore, 1957, p. 267).

Anderson’s influence upon Australian philosophy was profound⁸ (Grave, 1984). His influence upon psychologists at the University of Sydney was significant as well.⁹ His philosophy, influenced as it was by American New Realism, was relevant to the conceptual foundations of psychology, and Anderson directly affected a number of the university’s psychologists. Best known was O’Neil, who acknowledged that

I have taken from him [Anderson] three related views. The first is that things exist independently of our knowledge of them, the second is that there can be no duality of the rational and the empirical, of the universal and the particular or the higher and the lower, and the third is that logic is an empirical study whose principles are determined by things themselves. (O’Neil, 1957, p. v)

Then there was Maze, a student of Anderson, whose book, The Meaning of Behaviour (1983), developed implications of Andersonian realism for psychology, overlapping with many of the concerns that had occupied Holt half a century before. As a result of O’Neil’s and Maze’s influence, an Australian school of realist thought emerged in psychology,¹⁰ which, today, remains loosely integrated and philosophically coherent in its a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction—Finding Holt,
• 1. E. B. Holt to William James, 1905
• Part I The Specific Response and the Problem of Illusory Experiences
• Part II Holt’s Legacy and Holt as Legacy
• Part III Beyond Representation
• Contributors
• Index