history of psychology

I ran across a heavily used quote by William James -- the "blooming, buzzing confusion," which he describes as a baby's first experience of the world.

A quick Google check seemed to show that nobody ever gives any of the context around the quote. Heck, about one time in three, they don't even get the three word excerpt right. So, I went to James' Principles of Psychology (1890) to see what might be useful to know.

The passage in question comes in the middle of James' chapter titled, "Discrimination and comparison." James began the chapter with a massive direct quote from John Locke, and used it to dive into a discussion of how a mind can make parts out of the wholeness of the world. The problem of how to break of the world was a serious drawback to the ideas of those thinkers like Hume and Locke, who supposed that the mind operated by recording associations between concepts and perceptions:

The truth is that Experience is trained by both association and dissociation, and that psychology must be writ both in synthetic and in analytic terms. Our original sensible totals are, on the one hand, subdivided by discriminative attention, and, on the other, united with other totals, -- either through the agency of our own movements, carrying our senses from one part of space to another, or because new objects come successively and replace those by which we were at first impressed. The 'simple impression' of Hume, the 'simple idea' of Locke are both abstractions, never realized in experience (487, emphases in original).

This is a recurring idea in psychology, and of course later became one of the thrusts of Chomsky's critique of behaviorism. How can these discriminations be made? -- particularly, given the "poverty" of information about how to make them? That is the problem James takes up. Continuing:

Experience, from the very first, presents us with concretized objects, vaguely continuous with the rest of the world which envelops them in space and time, and potentially divisible into inward elements and parts. These objects we break asunder and reunite. We must treat them in both ways for our knowledge of them to grow; and it is hard to say, on the whole, which way preponderates. But since the elements with which the traditional associationism performs its constructions -- 'simple sensations,' namely -- are all products of discrimination carried to a high pitch, it seems as if we ought to discuss the subject of analytic attention and discrimination first (ibid).

I rather like that point -- that what we think of as "simple sensations" actually involve "discrimination carried to a high pitch." It reminds me of information-theoretic analyses of the processing potential of the retina and optic nerve, which take gigabits of information per second and discard most of it so that the signal can squeeze through a rather narrow bandwidth to the brain. That's "discrimination carried to a high pitch" indeed, totally upstream of the brain's access to the resulting signal.

James' disadvantage, from the perspective of today, is that he framed the problem as one essentially of making out the parts of real objects. How can the mind make out parts that really are there composing things in the world? This frame had a long pedigree -- back to Plato's forms -- but depends on assumptions about the nature of things and concepts that most of us probably wouldn't want to be stuck defending.

The noticing of any part whatever of our objects is an act of discrimination.

You see, it's a very rigid idea of what objects are game for us to notice, and how we come to be aware of them. He is led, through considering things like the effect of chloroform on sensation and perception, to a "law" about the operation of concepts of part and whole in the mind:

[A]ny number of impressions, from any number of sensory sources, falling simultaneously on a mind which has not yet experienced them separately, will fuse into a single undivided object for that mind. The law is that all things fuse that can fuse, and nothing separates except what must. What makes impressions separate we have to study in this chapter. Although they separate easier if they come in through distinct nerves, yet distinct nerves are not an unconditional ground of their discrimination, as we shall presently see. The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion; and to the very end of life, our location of all things in one space is due to the fact that the original extents or bignesses of all the sensations which came to our notice at once, coalesced together into one and the same space. There is no other reason than this why "the hand I touch and see coincides spatially with the hand I immediately feel" (488, emphases in original).

So there you see -- the "blooming, buzzing" quote is there putting a pretty bow on what, by itself, seems to be a nonsensical "law". No wonder nobody ever bothers to give its context!

I think James has attended very carefully to the prosody of this passage -- it has the rhythm of blank verse. Consider:

Although they separate easier if
they come in through distinct nerves, yet distinct
nerves are not an unconditional ground
of their discrimination, as we shall
presently see. The baby, assailèd
by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once,
feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing
confusion; and to the very end of life,
our location of all things in one space
is due to the fact that the original
extents or bignesses of all the
sensations which came to our notice at once
coalescèd together into one
and the same space.

Very interesting. As I read through it, it reminded me of The Tempest. The main problem is that line with "sensations", which really is metered like two blank verse lines run together, but with no good way to divide them. I, for one, find it amusing to think of William James adding the voiced "-ed" to his prose!

After this beginning, James built up a theory of the discrimination of parts of objects from sensation. He addresses at several points the theories of the spiritualists, who had held that a non-material element of being must explain many if not all aspects of mind. I don't want to expand this little post into a full consideration of James' theory -- which really should be carried out together with subsequent literature on the topic. But there is an interesting passage in which he explains how, by contrasting present experience with discriminations previously made, the mind might build a picture that seems more than the sum of simple experiences:

As our brains and minds are actually made, it is impossible to get certain [sensed experiences] m's and n's in immediate sequence and keep them pure. If kept pure, it would mean that they remained uncompared. With us, inevitably, by a mechanism which we as yet fail to understand, the shock of difference is felt between them, and the second object is not n pure, but n-as-different-from-m. It is no more a paradox that under these conditions this cognition of m and n in mutual relation should occur, than that under other conditions the cognition of m's or n's simple quality should occur. But as it has been treated as a paradox, and as a spiritual agent, not itself a portion of the stream, has been invoked to account for it, a word of further remark seems desirable.

...

The sensationalists and the spiritualists meanwhile (filled both of them with their notion that the mind must in some fashion contain what it knows) begin by giving a crooked account of the facts. Both admit that for m and n to be known in any way whatever, little rounded and finished off duplicates of each must be contained in the mind as separate entities. These pure ideas, so called, of m and n respectively, succeed each other there. And since they are distinct, say the sensationalists, they are eo ipso distinguished. "To have ideas different and ideas distinguished, are synonymous expressions; different and distinguished meaning exactly the same thing," says James Mill. "Distinguished!" say the spiritualists, "distinguished by what, forsooth? Truly the respective ideas of m and n in the mind are distinct. But for that very reason neither can distinguish itself from the other, for to do that it would have to be aware of the other, and thus for the time being become the other, and that would be to get mixed up with the other and lose its own distinctness. Distinctness of ideas and idea of distinctness, are not one thing, but two. This last is a relation. Only a relating principle, opposed in nature to all facts of feeling, an Ego, Soul, or Subject, is competent, by being present to both of the ideas alike, to hold them together and at the same time to keep them distinct" (499-500).

Thus, James described two opposing positions about the nature of discrimination. Then he shows that, in his account of events, why the conception of a binary comparator (for the spiritualists, a Subject) is multiplying entities beyond necessity:

But if the plain facts be admitted that the pure idea of 'n' is never in the mind at all, when 'm' has once gone before; and that the feeling 'n-different-from-m' is itself an absolutely unique pulse of thought, the bottom of this precious quarrel drops out and neitehr party is left with anything to fight about. Surely such a consummation ought to be welcomed, especially when brought about, as here, by a formulation of the facts which offers itself so naturally and unsophistically (500, emphasis in original).

There is much more, of course. I wanted to quote that later passage to contrast it directly with the "blooming, buzzing confusion" quote that lies a dozen pages before it.

James appears to adopt the position that a plenitude of temporal data is available to the unschooled mind, from which it may rapidly build up a rather complex set of contrasts to distinguish objects and experiences. The metaphor of an infant subjected to a "buzzing confusion" seems to deliberately omit the very large temporal contrasts that present themselves to the infant's senses.

Likewise, we probably don't need to know much about visual processing to imagine that the great contrasts naturally presented within the "blooming confusion" of the visual field might likewise lead to natural comparison and distinction.

In a world giving our senses gigabits per second, we will necessarily have a hard time showing a "poverty" of data from which the mind might make useful distinctions. The "blooming, buzzing confusion" is a pretty metaphor, but is easily refuted as a serious model of experience.

Fig. 20 from Darwin 1872. "Terror"

While I was out of town for the holidays, a news story by Jeanna Bryner reported on research that looked at the facial expressions of blind Paralympians:

The analyses showed sighted and blind individuals modified their expressions of emotion in the same way in accordance with the social context. For example, in the Paralympics, the athletes competed in a series of elimination rounds so that the final round of two athletes ended in the winner taking home a gold medal while the loser got a silver medal.

The blind silver medalists who lost their final matches tended to produce "social smiles" during the medal ceremonies. Social smiles use only the mouth muscles. True smiles, known as Duchenne smiles, cause the eyes to twinkle and narrow and the cheeks to rise.

The "social smile" is interesting because it seems like a way of concealing emotions from others. The conclusion was that visual learning could not account for the socially correct use of these expressions, since people blind from birth follow the same rules.

When I read this story, I couldn't help but reflect on Darwin's description of facial expressions, in The expression of the emotions in man and animals. By taking up this topic, Darwin set out on new mode of psychological investigation, distinct in many ways from the experimental psychology tradition. In fact, the major figures in German experimental physiology, such as Wundt, are never mentioned in Expression. This clean separation may have been Darwin's deliberate attempt to establish psychological inquiry on new ground; his intent was marked in the last section of the Origin:

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history (Darwin 577-578).

Darwin was not alone in pursuing a comparative approach and insisting on continuities between humans and other animals. In some details he followed Herbert Spencer's psychology. George Romanes picked up Darwin's own notes on animal behavior as he began to systematize the field; his Animal Intelligence ranged in its examples from invertebrates to man's best friend, the dog.

Darwin also spends substantial parts of Expression on the expressions of dogs. His analysis, like his description of sexual selection in The descent of man presages later work on signaling. But Darwin's human examples are some of the most interesting in the book. The picture at the top of this post was drawn "from a photograph by Duchenne" -- the same Duchenne (Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand de Boulogne) whose name is commemorated by the "Duchenne smile" as well as the eponymous muscular dystrophy. Duchenne was an experimental physiologist, who among other things used electrical stimuli to contort the facial muscles into their characteristic expressions.

Darwin used the photograph above in Expression, along with others of the same experimental subject. The experimenter at right is Duchenne.

Darwin had other means of obtaining information that the current researchers of Paralympians lack. For instance:

Dr. W. Ogle observed for me in one of the London hospitals about twenty patients, just before they were put under the influence of chloroform for operations. They exhibited some trepidation, but no great terror. In only four of the cases was the platysma visibly contracted; and it did not begin to contract until the patients began to cry. The muscle seemed to contract at the moment of each deep-drawn inspiration; so that it is very doubtful whether the contraction depended at all on the emotion of fear. In a fifth case, the patient, who was not chloroformed, was much terrified; and his platysma was more forcibly and persistently contracted than in the other cases. But even here there is room for doubt, for the muscle which appeared to be unusually developed, was seen by Dr. Ogle to contract as the man moved his head from the pillow, after the operation was over. (Darwin 1872:300-301).

His subsequent discussion is interesting, begun with a characteristic Darwin question: "...I felt much perplexed why, in any case, a superficial muscle on the neck should be especially affected by fear...."

Darwin particularly sought to distinguish the unconscious signs of emotions from the deliberate, and the culturally variable from the universal. In a time when the study of cultural variability was just beginning, Darwin does an admirable job.

His explanations of unconscious expressions presage some of the writings of behaviorists, notably John Watson:

Through steps such as these we can understand how it is, that as soon as some melancholy thought passes through the brain, there occurs a just perceptible drawing down of the corners of the mouth, or a slight raising up of the inner ends of the eyebrows, or both movements combined, and immediately afterwards a slight suffusion of tears. A thrill of nerve-force is transmitted along several habitual channels, and produces an effect on any point where the will has not acquired through long habit much power of interference. The above actions may be considered as rudimental vestiges of the screaming-fits, which are so frequent and prolonged during infancy.

In this case, as well as in many others, the links are indeed wonderful which connect cause and effect in giving rise to various expressions on the human countenance; and they explain to us the meaning of certain movements, which we involuntarily and unconsciously perform, whenever certain transitory emotions pass through our minds.

Darwin did discuss the issue of Duchenne smiles and false smiles in Expression. Here is a redacted section from pages 203-204:

Dr. Duchenne has given a large photograph of an old man (reduced on Plate III. fig 4), in his usual passive condition, and another of the same man (fig. 5), naturally smiling. The latter was instantly recognised by every one to whom it was shown as true to nature. He has also given, as an example of an unnatural or false smile, another photograph (fig. 6) of the same old man, with the corners of his mouth strongly retracted by the galvanization of the great zygomatic muscles. That the expression is not natural is clear, for I showed this photograph to twenty-four persons, of whom three could not in the least tell what was meant, whilst the others, though they perceived that the expression was of the nature of a smile, answered in such words as "a wicked joke," "trying to laugh," "grinning laughter," "half-amazed laughter," &c. Dr. Duchenne attributes the falseness of the expression altogether to the orbicular muscles of the lower eyelids not being sufficiently contracted; for he justly lays great stress on their contraction in the expression of joy.

He goes on to examine the muscles involved in the expression with more detail. Darwin's concern was to connect the smiles of humans with expressions of other primates, and to connect the actions of the facial muscles in a rational way. For example, Darwin suggested that the zygomatic muscles contract during pleasurable emotions, and attempted to relate the characteristic expressions of mental patients having delusions of grandeur to that pattern. Elsewhere, he examines the "grins" of dogs and their relation to play, as well as various reports of smiles in non-human primates.

So, I doubt Darwin would have been surprised by the research on blind athletes.

References:

Darwin CR. 1872. The expression of the emotions in man and animals. John Murray, London.

Darwin CR. 1869. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. John Murray, London. 5 ed.

A man known to most psychologists only as H. M. has died. Benedict Carey has the story. After a brain operation to relieve profound seizures, H. M. was left with a complete inability to form new declarative memories. And his condition led to a revolution in the science of memory itself:

At the time, many scientists believed that memory was widely distributed throughout the brain and not dependent on any one neural organ or region. Brain lesions, either from surgery or accidents, altered people’s memory in ways that were not easily predictable. Even as Dr. Milner published her results, many researchers attributed H. M.’s deficits to other factors, like general trauma from his seizures or some unrecognized damage.

“It was hard for people to believe that it was all due” to the excisions from the surgery, Dr. Milner said.

That began to change in 1962, when Dr. Milner presented a landmark study in which she and H. M. demonstrated that a part of his memory was fully intact. In a series of trials, she had Mr. Molaison try to trace a line between two outlines of a five-point star, one inside the other, while watching his hand and the star in a mirror. The task is difficult for anyone to master at first.

Every time H. M. performed the task, it struck him as an entirely new experience. He had no memory of doing it before. Yet with practice he became proficient. “At one point he said to me, after many of these trials, ‘Huh, this was easier than I thought it would be,’ ” Dr. Milner said.

The implications were enormous. Scientists saw that there were at least two systems in the brain for creating new memories.

Behavioral science depends so completely on the willingness of subjects to volunteer for analysis and study. But rarely has so much understanding been achieved upon the cooperation of a single person.

It is hard to find a better discussion of how anthropology relates to culture than the first chapter of Robert Lowie's 1917 book, Culture and Ethnology. For instance:

[S]ince there is a persistent tendency to associate with culture the more impressive phenomena of art, science, and technology, it is well to insist at the outset that these loftier phases are by no means necessary to the concept of culture. The fact that your boy plays 'button, button, who has the button?' is just as much an element of our culture as the fact that a room is lighted by electricity. So is the baseball enthusiasm of our grown-up population, so are moving picture shows, thés dansants, Thanksgiving Day masquerades, bar-rooms, Ziegfeld Midnight Follies, evening schools, the Hearst papers, woman suffrage clubs, the single-tax movement, Riker drug stores, touring-sedans, and Tammany Hall (6-7).

I think that's a great example mainly because of how many of those things are gone! Plus, I was watching Citizen Kane last night, so the reference to the Hearst papers seems especially timely.

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Russell Jacoby bemoans progress (paywall). He thinks that colleges aren't teaching people to revere the right nineteenth-century intellectuals:

The divorce between informed opinion and academic wisdom could not be more pointed. If educated individuals were asked to name leading historical thinkers in psychology, philosophy, and economics, surely Freud, Hegel, and Marx would figure high on the list. Yet they have vanished from their home disciplines. How can this be?

In the case of Freud and Marx, because they were wrong. They built grand theories on a foundation of unobserved entities that don't exist. If you think they are still relevant to modern psychology and economics, your opinion isn't very ``informed.''

He goes on for an entire column this way. I see it as a surprising sign of hope that the academic fashions of the 1970's have given way.

On the subject of Hegel, I have to point you to Brian Leiter's take: "Please, Oh Please, Could You Publish Something about Philosophy by Someone Who Knows Something (even a little!) about the Subject?" in which he shows just how un-neglected Hegel has been.

Leiter ends with a note relevant to my current featured topic, blogging about your field:

For obvious reasons, intellectual tourists like Mr. Jacoby and Mr. Romano will regularly volunteer their amateurish musings about philosophy to [the Chronicle], since they aren't going to appear in any forum in which the editors know something about the subject.  That makes it even more imperative for philosophers to present their work and their discipline to a non-specialist audience.