Köhler, Wolfgang (1887–1967)
KÖHLER, WOLFGANG
(1887–1967)
Wolfgang Köhler, the German Gestalt psychologist, was born in Tallinn, Estonia. He studied first at the University of Tübingen and then at Bonn. He next studied physics under Max Planck and psychology under Carl Stumpf at the University of Berlin, and received his PhD from that school in 1909 for investigations on hearing. In 1911 he became Privatdozent at Frankfurt. Max Wertheimer came to Frankfurt in 1912, and in the same year Köhler and Kurt Koffka served as the subjects for Wertheimer's famous experiments on stroboscopic motion that are widely regarded as the beginning of Gestalt psychology.
In 1913 Köhler became director of the anthropoid experiment station operated by the Prussian Academy of Sciences at Tenerife in the Canary Islands, and he remained there, throughout World War I, until 1920. The pioneering studies in the psychology of chimpanzees that he carried out there were published in several papers and in the monograph Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden (The Mentality of Apes, 1917).
Köhler's next major work, Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand (Physical Gestalten in rest and in the stationary state), was published at Brunswick in 1920. It is primarily a work in physics and reveals Köhler's indebtedness to Planck, but its major themes played important roles in his more strictly psychological writings.
In 1921, with Wertheimer, Koffka, Kurt Goldstein, and Hans Gruhle, Köhler founded the journal Psychologische Forschung, which served as the leading organ of the Gestalt psychologists until Köhler was forced to suspend publication because of the difficulties of editing it from the United States. In 1922 Köhler succeeded Stumpf as director of the Psychological Institute and professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin. He held a visiting professorship at Clark University in the academic year 1925–1926 and returned to America for another visit in 1929. In the same year his Gestalt Psychology was published in English.
Köhler was the only leading member of the Gestalt school who was not Jewish, but he was strongly opposed to the Nazis. He published a letter against them in a Berlin newspaper after they took power and a bit later left Germany. Köhler gave the William James Lectures at Harvard in 1934 and published them as The Place of Value in a World of Fact in 1938. In 1935 he was appointed professor of psychology at Swarthmore College. His Page-Barbour Lectures given at the University of Virginia in 1938 were published in an expanded version in 1940 as Dynamics in Psychology. Köhler became professor emeritus at Swarthmore in 1957. In 1959 the school awarded him an honorary doctorate and he became visiting research professor at Dartmouth, a position he retained until his death.
Köhler is correctly thought of primarily as a psychologist. Nevertheless, throughout his career he never hesitated to interpret the results and methodology of the physical sciences and to apply his interpretations to the delineation of the proper task of psychology and to the elucidation of its problems. He admitted a debt to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, and his own work was broadly in the phenomenological stream. Both phenomenology and physics influenced his vocabulary, his methods of research, and his theoretical conclusions. Köhler was an ardent controversialist, and he engaged in a continuing polemical defense of the Gestalt theory. He believed that the theory offered a new resolution of the controversy between those who believe in innate ideas or tendencies and those who stress the importance of ideas acquired by learning. He thought that his Gestalt physics could resolve the biological controversy between mechanism and vitalism. He claimed to have dissolved the philosophical controversies between idealism and realism and between monism and dualism, and he advocated a form of epiphenomenalism or even an identity theory of mind and body. Köhler believed that by phenomenological analysis he could demonstrate both the existence and something of the nature of value, and that value, or "requiredness," was more general than moral philosophers and aestheticians believed; thus, he held, the psychologist's investigation of value was of prime importance to the philosopher.
Köhler, then, not only advanced psychological theories and views about the proper subject matter of this science but also presented well-reasoned opinions on speculative problems in biology, physiology, physics, and chemistry, and suggested possibly fruitful lines of research for these sciences to undertake. He also presented theories belonging to such central philosophical disciplines as epistemology, metaphysics, and value theory. This entry will discuss some of the philosophically interesting issues raised by Köhler in the physical sciences and psychology, as well as some of his general philosophical positions. It will not attempt to discuss his contributions to Gestalt psychology proper, except for his discussion of isomorphism.
Physics and Physiology
Köhler discussed physical concepts and discoveries for at least three main purposes: to demonstrate the existence of physical structures analogous to perceptual gestalten; to provide a physicochemical theory of perception and other mental functions; and to delineate the proper task of psychology by comparing its present status with the status of physics at various times in its history.
physical gestalten
Köhler, like the other Gestalt psychologists, claimed that a central subject of psychology is the investigation of certain kinds of structures in which "the whole is more than the sum of its parts." An analysis of these gestalten would explain many puzzling facts of vision, touch, hearing, memory, and understanding. The existence of such structures was denied on the ground that the whole can never be more than the sum of its parts. Köhler sought to show that there are a variety of recognized physical systems in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Machines are structures whose movements are strictly determined. From a knowledge of the parts of a machine and their interrelationships, we can know the motions of the whole. Thus a machine, according to Köhler, is no more than the sum of its parts. But in many physical systems it is the state of the whole that determines the state of the parts. Examples of such systems are the distribution of an electrical charge over the surface of a conductor, which varies with the shape of the conductor; the distribution of a current of electricity or fluid in a network of wires or pipes; the distribution of particles of a fluid body whose only constraint is the walls of the container; and a planetary system. The common characteristic of these systems is that the parts interact dynamically rather than mechanically. And in these systems, he claimed, the whole is greater than the parts.
These physical systems all exhibit another characteristic, which Köhler thinks is strikingly analogous to a characteristic of phenomenal gestalten. When the physical systems are disturbed, the interaction of their parts tends more or less rapidly to restore the systems to a state of equilibrium. They are thus dynamically self-regulating systems. Phenomenal gestalten are also dynamically self-regulating. The parts of the gestalten interact with one another to produce, or reproduce, systematic wholes within the perceptual field. Köhler recognizes, following Wertheimer, a set of five factors involved in the recognition of gestalten. If any of these factors are present, then we tend to perceive a gestalt, unless inhibiting factors are also present or the factors are so present as to cancel out one another. The five factors are (1) proximity : Objects that appear close together are more likely to be classed as part of the same gestalt than those which are far apart; (2) similarity : Objects that resemble each other tend to be classed as belonging together; (3) "common destiny ": If objects move or change together, they tend to be perceived as part of the same thing or as belonging together; (4) "good gestalt ": Forms that are not quite regular tend to be perceived as more regular than they are; (5) closure : Forms that are in some way incomplete tend to be perceived as complete—for example, a circle with a small arc missing will be perceived as a full circle.
The resemblance between dynamically self-regulating physical systems and phenomenal gestalten suggested to Köhler that it might be more fruitful to attempt to understand mental phenomena by means of a dynamic rather than a mechanical model, and in fact this model continued to serve Köhler throughout his career as a fruitful explanatory hypothesis in psychology. He was particularly successful in applying it to problems of perception, of memory, and of intelligence or insight—of coming to understand a situation or a problem.
Despite Köhler's apparent success in applying the two notions that in certain physical and phenomenal structures the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that psychological phenomena should be interpreted dynamically rather than mechanically, they have been widely criticized. Both notions, it is said, are enormously vague. It is not surprising that they seem to "work," for by their very vagueness they can be made to fit almost any body of facts. Surely in some generally accepted sense of "whole" and "part" almost any whole can be shown to be greater than the sum of its parts. But it is not clear that Köhler was applying the two terms univocally in the phenomenal cases he adduced as examples, and it is even less clear that he was using them in the same sense when speaking of the parts of phenomenal gestalten and of the parts of physical systems. Similarly, although the dynamic model may have aided Köhler in the design of new experiments and the interpretation of many phenomenal facts, it has been claimed that, outside of a certain limited range of cases, the apparent use of a dynamic model can mean no more than a recognition that phenomena change. The substance of the theory is probably Wertheimer's set of dynamic factors, which had in large part been anticipated by earlier psychologists, and there seems no reason to connect them with any specific physical theory.
isomorphism
Probably the most central concept in all of Köhler's thought is isomorphism, or similarity of form. He used this notion for two major and several minor purposes. The two major functions combine into a theory of knowledge that is partly conceptual and partly physicochemical and physiological. Köhler distinguished between (1) phenomena, or percepts; (2) their cortical correlates, or brain-states; and (3) nature, or the physical world. He was perfectly willing to believe that percepts and brain-states may eventually be shown to be identical and in this sense does not exclude the possibility of a metaphysical monism. He holds, in opposition to both phenomenalists and new realists, that the phenomenal world and the physical world are not identical, and thus is an epistemological dualist. (These points are discussed below.) It is the theory of isomorphism that serves as the connecting link among these three elements. Percepts, it is claimed, are related to one another within the phenomenal field as their cortical correlates are related to one another in the cortex and as the corresponding physical objects are related to one another in physical space. The structural relations within any of the three realms are reproduced in the others. If a man-percept appears in phenomenal space atop a horse-percept, then in physical space there is a man atop a horse, and in the brain there are two brain processes dynamically related to each other in the cortical correlative of the relation "on top of."
What concerns us here is the isomorphy between the phenomenal world and brain-states. In this connection Köhler formulated the principle of isomorphism for spatial relations (it can be formulated for any type of phenomenal ordering) as: "Experienced order in space is always structurally identical with a functional order in the distribution of underlying brain processes" (Gestalt Psychology, Mentor edition, New York, 1959, p. 39). The parts of the visual field are not independent of one another; they exhibit structural relationships. If, for example, there is in my visual field a white square on a black ground, then in my brain there are processes corresponding to the white square, the black ground, and the boundary between the two. The topological relations between the brain processes are functionally identical with the corresponding visual relations. Metrical relationships are not preserved, but such relationships as betweenness are. In memory, these relationships are preserved in memory-traces. Thus it is form or structure rather than exact pictorial images that are preserved.
Köhler holds that the physiological processes in the brain that are involved in perception and memory are very probably electrochemical in nature. In the case of the white square, the brain process corresponding to the square-percept contains a higher concentration of ions than the brain process corresponding to the black ground. The two processes are functionally connected at a boundary corresponding to the edge of the square. There is a potential difference across this boundary; an electric flow of ions therefore takes place, and the square is perceived. Changes in the solution leave memory traces, which are subject to alteration in the course of time. These traces are superimposed on one another and thus functionally mirror the order of time of the percepts themselves.
The theory of isomorphism, both in its conceptual outline and in its physiological accompaniment, has been only inadequately outlined here. The physiological element, despite the important role it plays in Köhler's claim that functionally an identity theory of mind and body is at least feasible, is a matter for empirical investigation. Much of what Köhler says sounds rather plausible, but there are difficulties in stating the theory with the proper degree of precision. Although he speaks of a cortical retina, Köhler does not mean that perception involves the reproduction of a (two-dimensional or three-dimensional) image of the object within the cortex. This would be complete isomorphism. On the other hand, almost any set of relationships can represent any other by some form of correspondence, and the correspondences, if any, actually involved in perception might be very complex or in some other way not what we would intuitively grasp as a correspondence.
There are other issues involved that can only be raised and not explored here. Suppose it were established that when a certain macroscopic brain-state is observed in people, they generally claim to perceive a certain object. For instance, take any of the reversible figures that appear to an observer now in one way and now in another, such as a Maltese cross, composed of alternating black and white rays, which can be seen in two different ways. In one way of looking at it certain parts appear as the figure and the others as ground, while in the other way what was ground appears as figure and what was figure appears as ground. According to Köhler, each way of seeing the figure corresponds to a different electrochemical state in the brain. Now suppose that one person's descriptions of the cross fail to correspond, in either a regular or irregular manner, to the descriptions that we have generally found associated with his brain-states. We may wish to claim that he is misdescribing what he is seeing. But how we choose to regard the situation is not merely a matter of fact; it involves at least one conceptual matter, a choice between conflicting criteria of what the person is seeing—the person's description (which is, of course, the only criterion we now have) and our knowledge of his brain-states. And empirical investigation alone cannot settle this conflict.
The same point applies to another example, in which a further factor becomes apparent. There is experimental evidence that when people see two parallel lines close to each other, one of which extends beyond the other at each end, they claim to see shadowy lines connecting the ends of the two lines to complete a trapezoid. Köhler suggests that the shadowy lines are caused by potential barriers in the cortex created by the cortical correlates of the lines actually drawn. Again, if it could be shown that such potential barriers are present in a person's brain although he claims not to see such lines, we might put it down to misdescription. But surely here we are inclined to take him at his word. In the first case we can describe what it means to see the cross in one way rather than another. But in this case we can only point out where the shadowy lines ought to be seen. The achieving aspect of perception is perhaps more obvious here. It is not simply a matter of what is seen but also of how we learn to describe what we see. In most descriptions it is clear what the standards of an accurate description are, and we can understand a proposal for a change in standards. In the present case it is not even clear what the standards are, if there are any. It is this element of conventional standards, which Köhler has omitted from his discussion, that makes his problems of the relationship among percepts, objects, and brain-states not merely a matter of physiological and psychological experimentation but of conceptual analysis.
Isomorphism and Language
Köhler developed an interesting linguistic theory as a corollary of his theory of isomorphism. This corollary, except for Köhler's added complexity, resembles the picture theory of meaning advanced by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and seems to have been developed out of similar considerations. If the only way one thing can represent another is by having the same form, then the only way language can represent a situation is through a common form. Since, according to the theory of isomorphism, a phenomenal event has a physiological correlate possessing a similar form, then language represents both the event and the physiological correlate indifferently. A statement ostensibly about an observed phenomenon can be interpreted as a statement about brain-states and vice versa: "… language … is the peripheral outcome of antecedent physiological processes, among others of those upon which my experience depends. According to our general hypothesis, the concrete order of this experience pictures the dynamic order of such processes. Thus, if to me my words represent a description of my experiences, they are at the same time objective representations of the processes that underlie these experiences. Consequently, it does not matter very much whether my words are taken as messages about experience or about these physiological facts. For, so far as the order of events is concerned, the message is the same in both cases" (Gestalt Psychology, p. 40).
physics and psychology
The third way in which Köhler has used physics is to elucidate what he regards as the proper program for psychology. Physics, in his view, is an old, established discipline whose techniques have been developed and refined over a long period of time. Quantitative methods and pointer readings are appropriate in physics because there are thoroughgoing and widely accepted theories that give meaning to the numbers arrived at. Even in the early days of physics, in the time of Galileo Galilei, many of the problems could be investigated quantitatively, because the phenomena investigated had long been known from everyday life and this knowledge provided the necessary qualitative meaning. Where everyday life did not supply the necessary qualitative background, as in the study of electricity, physics had to proceed by qualitative investigations before quantitative ones could be undertaken profitably. The problems of psychology, Köhler claims, are more often like those of electricity than those of Galilean mechanics. In general, in psychology the necessary meaning-giving theory is absent. Intelligence quotients are notoriously hard to interpret. The difficulty in assessing their significance arises out of a lack of any clear notion of what intelligence consists in. Psychology should first try to develop a theory of intelligence before it tries to measure intelligence. Until a satisfactory theory is arrived at, it can hardly be determined whether or not intelligence quotients do measure intelligence and how well they do it.
Gestalt Psychology
critique of behaviorism
Köhler's attempt to show that qualitative methods are the most appropriate in the present state of psychology arose in the context of his repudiation of behaviorism. His phenomenological view of the nature of the subject matter of psychology was radically different from the notion that psychology is the study of behavior, with its related stimulus-response physiological theory. The behaviorists, according to Köhler, have taken too much to heart one epistemological teaching but ignored its wider context. They seek to limit psychology to the observation of the response of human beings in scientifically controlled situations because they have become aware of the truth that one person cannot directly observe another person's experience. However, the behaviorist cannot avoid the study of direct experience by limiting himself to the observation of human reactions in controlled situations, for the only evidence he has of such reactions is his own experience. The behaviorist seeks to be objective, but he confuses two pairs of meanings of the terms subjective and objective. In one sense, observations of another person's reactions are no less subjective than my hearing his statements about what he is experiencing: Both are part of my experience. But in the primary sense subjective and objective refer to differently characterized phenomena within my experience. In this sense there is no reason why I cannot examine both subjective and objective experience; in the first sense I cannot help but investigate subjective phenomena.
critique of introspectionism
Whereas Köhler criticized behaviorism for misunderstanding the nature of direct experience, he criticized introspectionism for distorting the facts of experience to fit a preconceived theory. By "introspectionism" Köhler does not mean the gathering of information from an inspection of one's own experience in general; he has criticized the behaviorists for their refusal to accept information so gathered as unscientific. When he attacks introspectionism, Köhler has in mind certain characteristic theories and procedures of the psychologists of his own and the previous generation who relied on introspection. Philosophers and psychologists long believed, under the influence of geometrical optics, that, for example, a round penny must appear elliptical in most positions or that a white surface under a very low degree of illumination must appear gray, and a darker gray than a black surface under a very high degree of illumination. Experimentation has shown, however, that a "naive" observer tends to describe the penny as round no matter what shape strikes the retina and the white surface as white in almost any circumstances. The naive observer, it was held, could not be seeing what he claimed to be seeing. Introspectionists devised elaborate techniques by which a "trained" observer could be made to claim to see what by the laws of optics he should be seeing. In essence, these techniques consisted in excluding from the visual field of the observer all of the surroundings of the object to be observed. In this way, the introspectionists claimed, all the factors of learning are excluded and the object is seen as it "really" appears, before the process of education has distorted our pristine perceptions.
Köhler rightly points out that by employing this technique of exclusion in the interests of a theory, all other factors that might explain why the round penny looks round have been barred. The Gestalt theory offers an alternative explanation of this fact that does not involve the notion of an elaborate hoax played upon the naive observer, an explanation that cannot even be tested by the exclusionary techniques of introspectionism. The defects of introspectionism were further evidenced, Köhler claims, by the fact that introspective psychology had degenerated into an investigation of minute and trivial facts of interest only to specialists.
associationism and atomism
Köhler criticized both the introspectionists and the behaviorists for their psychological atomism or, as he also called it, their mosaic theory. Closely related to psychological atomism is the theory of associationism, which Köhler likewise regarded as inadequate. Psychological atomism is the view that what we perceive is a mosaic of bits and pieces, each independent and essentially unconnected with any other. The parts of the visual and other sensory fields thus lack any sort of relatedness. Yet we do recognize this brown patch and that white patch as belonging together and both as being parts of a dog, rather than one belonging with the ground underneath the dog and the other to the wall behind the dog.
Psychological atomism, according to Köhler, is a theory about the nature of the objects of perception. The theory of association is a theory as to how the experience of order arises out of the unordered psychological atoms postulated by psychological atomism. I have seen white patches associated with dogs in the past, and thus I come to expect that when I see a white patch of a particular kind in the future, it will belong to a dog.
Köhler's answer to psychological atomism is that we do not experience the parts of the visual field, for example, as separate from and unrelated to one another, but that we experience relationships among its parts. Certain wholes separate themselves from other parts of the field, and these wholes are composed of parts related to each other by means of the Wertheimer factors mentioned earlier. If we are in fact led to see things as belonging together by the very structure of experience, then the theory of association is unnecessary. Köhler went on to show that it is also inadequate, in that it cannot fully explain all that it was intended to explain.
Many of Köhler's criticisms of atomism and associationism as psychological theories are justified. But he apparently thought that in arguing against psychological atomism he was also arguing against any epistemological atomism as well. Part of his theory of isomorphism is the claim that the world as experienced contains experienced relationships among its constituents and that the observer does not add this structure to the world. But here, as earlier, conceptual matters are involved: It is not only a matter of experienced relationships but also of learning what it is to experience a relationship. We must learn the established criteria of what is to count as a relationship before we can know that what we are experiencing is a relationship.
Köhler also believed that the theory of associationism led to a hidden limitation in methods of investigation. According to the associationist, he holds, organization arises out of previous association, whereas, in his view, association depends on previous organization. Sensory gestalten, melodies, and meaningful sentences are organized wholes, and their parts are readily associated. Totally unrelated visual or auditory objects or nonsense syllables, on the other hand, have first to be organized into some kind of order before they can be recognized or be later remembered as having been associated. Köhler does not deny the facts of association but, rather, that association is a fundamental explanatory category. If it were recognized that order is more easily found than made, then it would be seen that organization should play a role in the design of experiments. As it is, far too many experiments fail. For instance, in experiments designed to test an animal's intelligence the apparatus may be too complex for the animal to grasp the relations of the parts and thus be beyond his capacity, whereas by a slight revision the apparatus could serve adequately in carrying out the experiments.
Philosophical Problems
epistemology
Köhler's epistemological views are difficult to organize and apparently are not altogether consistent. Probably the most careful and accurate presentation of his views is found in The Place of Value in a World of Fact. His theory is, as he claims, a form of epistemological dualism, here couched in the form of a refutation of both phenomenalism and the new realism and aimed at showing that the body-mind problem is a pseudo problem. Köhler's theory, both in content and in terminology, is strikingly similar to that developed by Bertrand Russell in The Analysis of Matter and The Outline of Philosophy.
The body-mind problem, Köhler claims, concerns the location of percepts. Physiology tells us that they are in our interior, in our brains, yet they appear to be outside ourselves. The resolution is that percepts are inside our bodies in one sense and outside our bodies in quite a different sense. We should distinguish between the body as a physical organism and the body as a percept. Percepts depend on processes within the physical organism; without such processes they would not take place. They appear as located outside the body, which is itself a percept. This perceptual body has a definite place in perceptual space, and other percepts have a definite relation to it within perceptual space. There is no more need to wonder why a perceptual dog appears outside of my perceptual body than to wonder why it appears outside of a perceptual house. Relationships in perceptual space say nothing about the location of percepts in physical space.
In some way what Köhler was saying has been recognized at least since Immanuel Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena, and Köhler's position seems open to much the same objections as Kant's. What is needed is an account of the relationships between physical space and perceptual space, or between physical object and percept, and this is not what Köhler has given. In physical space percepts are inside the observer's body; in perceptual space they are outside. Here is a radical disparity between spatial relations in the phenomenal and the transphenomenal realms. But Köhler wants to hold that relationships in the phenomenal and the physical worlds are isomorphic. The phenomenal house is between two phenomenal trees; the physical house is likewise between two physical trees. Phenomenal relationships are thus supposed to give us knowledge of physical relationships. And our knowledge of phenomenal relations is the only basis for any knowledge we may have of physical relations. But how do we get from percepts in the physical world to physical objects? And how can we avoid solipsism? Köhler claims that two scientists do not observe the same galvanometer. It is self-evident for him that neither can observe the other's phenomenal world. But physically the percept of each is different, for each is in his own brain. Köhler has not shown how we get from the two percepts to a common physical object.
That Kant spoke of things-in-themselves and Köhler of a physical world, or of nature, should not mask the fundamental similarities of their views. Despite Köhler's belief that the phenomenal world itself gives evidence of a nonphenomenal world, his physical world stands in exactly the same position as Kant's things-in-themselves. They are both unknowable.
causation
With his emphasis on experienced relationships between the parts of perceived entities, it is not surprising that Köhler denies David Hume's claim that we do not experience causal relations. Causation is only a special case of a general characteristic of experienced phenomena that Köhler terms requiredness, other cases of which are discussed in the section on value. In any of various ways one experience "demands" another for its completion. What Köhler calls insight is the coming to see what is demanded, what is needed to complete a set of factors. Men, and animals to a more limited degree, can have insight into, among other things, what caused a particular event or what will be the probable outcome of a particular line of action. The insight is the experiencing of a causal relation between cause and effect. Köhler concedes that the Humean theory of regular sequence accounts for our practice in various situations of subjecting causal theories to experimental testing after they have occurred to us, but it cannot by itself account for our first recognition of a cause.
Köhler has been criticized by defenders of the regularity theory for confusing psychological issues with logical ones. It may well be the case that in human (as well as in purely physical) situations we frequently arrive at the true answer to a causal problem without any elaborate examination of classes of sequences. From this, however, it does not follow that causation is a "simple" relation like, for example, coexistence that can be given in a single experience. Granting that I may truly judge that A 1 is the cause of B 1 without having performed elaborate controlled experiments, Hume's regularity theory has nevertheless been vindicated as an analysis of the concept of causation if I am prepared to admit that A 1 was not really the cause of B 1 were I to discover that other instances of A are or were not followed by instances of B.
value
Köhler's epistemological views are developed most fully in The Place of Value in a World of Fact. This volume is a contribution to the discussion of axiology that played such a prominent role in American philosophy during the 1920s and 1930s. The argument of the work is long, digressive, and difficult to summarize. The views on isomorphism and on epistemology mentioned above form an integral part of the argument. At the cost of oversimplifying Köhler's views to the point of distortion, it can be said that he holds that we can have direct perceptual knowledge of value. Value is an objective fact of the phenomenal, and hence also of the physical, world. Both phenomenal gestalten and physical gestalten spontaneously change in a certain direction. Melodies and visual shapes require completion in certain ways. Very often when we are attempting to remember something, the context in our mind shows us not only the sort of thing we seek to remember but also whether we are getting close to remembering it. Whatever the proper interpretation of these phenomena may be, Köhler believes that they all demonstrate the factor that he terms requiredness and that in the case of memory, the requiredness is a characteristic of something outside the present phenomenal situation. Valuation, an assessment of what ought to be, is not a unique phenomenon but another special case of the recognition of requiredness. Köhler does not directly undertake an analysis of valuation but only of requiredness in general. He hoped that his analysis would be of use to philosophers in their own analyses of ethical and aesthetic requiredness.
mechanism and vitalism
Toward the end of The Place of Value in a World of Fact, Köhler returns to two topics that had engaged him earlier, the dispute between mechanism and vitalism and the question of the precise metaphysical classification of his own theory. In the first case, as in many other situations, Köhler argues that the apparent alternatives are not exhaustive. Mechanists, in their treatment of living processes, take the same shortsighted view that they take of the nature of physical processes mentioned earlier. Mechanical systems are not the only kind of physical systems; there are also the dynamically self-regulating systems. The premise that man must be a machine because physics finds only mechanical systems in the world is thus undermined. On the other hand, one does not have to hold to vitalism just because men are obviously different from machines. Living organisms, including man, can quite easily be physical systems without being machines. And in fact, Köhler held, living organisms can be explained quite satisfactorily as dynamically self-regulating systems without postulating some mysterious nonphysical vital force.
body-mind problem
Köhler seems to advocate an epistemological dualism. He was not, however, a dualist in the sense in which the term is used in connection with the body-mind problem. Other psychologists have labeled him a physicalist, and he did not totally reject the terms materialist and monist as used to describe his metaphysical views. He found the label "materialist" misleading because he accepted the modern physicists' account of the world, and this account is very different from any traditional account of matter as composed of solid impenetrable particles. He believed that eventually it may be shown that phenomenal colors are identical with chemical states in the brain and that in this way the physicists' account of reality would be complete. In this sense he did not reject the possibility that monism is true, but in the meantime phenomenal qualities appear so different from any physical correlates that the possibility of the falsehood of monism likewise cannot be ruled out. There is some similarity between Köhler's views on this subject and the theory of J. J. C. Smart and U. T. Place that sensations and brain processes are identical. Like Smart and Place, Köhler argues that the undeniable phenomenological differences between colors and chemical states of the brain do not rule out the possibility that, in an important sense, they may nevertheless be identical. However, unlike Smart and Place, Köhler does not claim that such an identity has in fact been established.
See also Atomism; Behaviorism; Causation: Philosophy of Science; Epistemology; Galileo Galilei; Gestalt Theory; Hume, David; Husserl, Edmund; Introspection; Kant, Immanuel; Koffka, Kurt; Mind-Body Problem; Planck, Max; Psychology; Realism; Russell, Bertrand Arthur William; Smart, John Jamieson Carswell; Stumpf, Karl; Value and Valuation; Vitalism; Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann.
Bibliography
works by kÖhler
"Über unbemerkte Empfindungen und Urteilstäuschungen." Zeitschrift für Psychologie 63 (1913): 51–80.
Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden. Berlin, 1917. Revised 2nd ed. as Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen. Berlin: Springer, 1921. Translated from the 2nd ed. by Ella Winter as The Mentality of Apes. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1925.
Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand. Brunswick, Germany, 1920; 2nd ed., Erlangen: Philosophische Akademie, 1924.
"An Aspect of Gestalt Psychology." In Psychologies of 1925, edited by Carl Murchison. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1925. Ch. 8.
"Gestaltprobleme und Anfänge einer Gestalttheorie." Jahresbericht über das gesamte Physiologie und experimental Pharmakologie 3 (1925): 512–539.
"Komplextheorie und Gestalttheorie." Psychologische Forschung 6 (1925): 358–416.
Gestalt Psychology. New York: Liveright, 1929. German edition published as Psychologische Probleme, Berlin, 1933.
"Some Tasks of Gestalt Psychology." In Psychologies of 1930, edited by Carl Murchison. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1930. Ch. 8.
"Zur Psychophysik des Vergleichs und des Raumes." Psychologische Forschung 18 (1933): 343–360.
The Place of Value in a World of Fact. New York: Liveright, 1938.
Dynamics in Psychology. New York: Liveright, 1940.
"On the Nature of Associations." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 84 (1941): 489–502.
"Figural After-Effects: An Investigation of Visual Processes." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 88 (1944): 269–357.
"Gestalt Psychology Today." American Psychologist 14 (1959): 727–734.
The Task of Gestalt Psychology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969.
The Selected Papers of Wolfgang Koehler. Edited by Mary Henle. New York: Liveright, 1971.
In Anthologies
Ellis, W. D. A Source Book of Gestalt Psychology. London: Kegan Paul, 1938. Contains translation of portions of Die physikalischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand.
Henle, Mary. Documents of Gestalt Psychology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961. Contains Köhler's presidential address to the American Psychological Association (1959) and other later papers.
works on kÖhler
Arnheim, R. "The Two Faces of Gestalt Psychology." American Psychologist 41 (1986): 820–824.
Ash, Mitchell G. Gestalt Psychology in German Culture 1890–1967: Holism and the Quest for Objectivity. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Ayer, A. J. The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, 113–135. London, 1947.
Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth and Logic, 2nd ed., 56–59. New York, 1946.
Boring, E. G. "The Gestalt Psychology and the Gestalt Movement." American Journal of Psychology 42 (1930): 308–315.
Driesch, Hans. "Physische Gestalten und Organismen." Annalen der Philosophie 5 (1925).
Grelling, Kurt, and Paul Oppenheim. "Der Gestaltbegriff in Lichte der neuen Logik." Erkenntnis 7 (1938): 211–225.
Hamlyn, D. W. "Psychological Explanation and the Gestalt Hypothesis." Mind 60 (1951).
Hamlyn, D. W. The Psychology of Perception. London: Routledge and Paul, 1957.
Hartmann, George W. Gestalt Psychology: A Survey of Facts and Principles. New York: Ronald Press, 1935.
Henle, Mary. "One Man against the Nazis: Wolfgang Köhler." American Psychologist 33 (1978): 939–944.
Hobart, R. E. "Hume without Scepticism." Mind 39 (1930).
Katz, David. Gestalt Psychology: Its Nature and Significance. Translated by Robert Tyson. New York: Ronald Press, 1950.
Ley, Ronald. A Whisper of Espionage: Wolfgang Kohler and the Apes of Tenerife. Garden City Park, NY: Avery, 1990.
Müller, G. E. Komplextheorie und Gestalttheorie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1923.
Nagel, Ernest. The Structure of Science, 380–397. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1961.
Petermann, Bruno. Die Wertheimer-Koffka-Köhlersche Gestalttheorie. Leipzig: Barth, 1929. Translated by Meyer Fortes as The Gestalt Theory and the Problem of Configuration. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1932.
Reiser, O. L. "The Logic of Gestalt Psychology." Psychological Review 38 (1931): 359–368.
Rignano, Eugenio. "The Psychological Theory of Form." Psychological Review 35 (1928): 118–135.
Sherrill, R., Jr. "Natural Wholes: Wolfgang Kohler and Gestalt Theory." In Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, Vol. 1, edited by G. A. Kimble, M. Wertheimer, and C. White, 257–273. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1991.
Smith, Barry, ed. Foundations of Gestalt Theory. Munich: Philosophia, 1988.
Philip W. Cummings (1967)
Bibliography updated by Alyssa Ney (2005)