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Epistemics of the soul: Epistemic logics in German 18th‐century empirical psychology

This article examines epistemic logics in 18th‐century German empirical psychology and distinguishes three basic patterns at play throughout the century. First, as empirical psychology was introduced in the 1720s, it relied on the Aristotelian‐scholastic conception of experience as universal and evi...

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Autor principal: Rydberg, Andreas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9795917/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35633500
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.22205
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author Rydberg, Andreas
author_facet Rydberg, Andreas
author_sort Rydberg, Andreas
collection PubMed
description This article examines epistemic logics in 18th‐century German empirical psychology and distinguishes three basic patterns at play throughout the century. First, as empirical psychology was introduced in the 1720s, it relied on the Aristotelian‐scholastic conception of experience as universal and evidently true propositions of how things typically behave in nature. Empirical psychology was here a matter of defining and demonstrating the general nature, structure, and functions of the soul by referring to experiences that most people could recognize as universally and evidently true. Second, around midcentury this logic was challenged as a new generation of philosopher‐physicians launched an empirical psychology based on extraordinary medical cases. Rather than focusing on the general and universal, this new strand of case‐based empirical psychology charted the individual, unique and often abnormal. Third, from the early 1770s, the interest in the individual was complemented by a new discourse on psychological method. Adopting the epistemic techniques developed within natural and experimental philosophy, empirical knowledge of the soul was seen as the result of rigorously conducted singular observations that were frequently repeated and carefully documented and analyzed. Rather than replacing one another sequentially, these three epistemic logics should be understood as cumulative. That is, despite sometimes profound differences, each new logic was layered on top of the existing ones, thereby broadening and increasing the epistemic complexity of empirical psychology.
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spelling pubmed-97959172022-12-28 Epistemics of the soul: Epistemic logics in German 18th‐century empirical psychology Rydberg, Andreas J Hist Behav Sci Original Articles This article examines epistemic logics in 18th‐century German empirical psychology and distinguishes three basic patterns at play throughout the century. First, as empirical psychology was introduced in the 1720s, it relied on the Aristotelian‐scholastic conception of experience as universal and evidently true propositions of how things typically behave in nature. Empirical psychology was here a matter of defining and demonstrating the general nature, structure, and functions of the soul by referring to experiences that most people could recognize as universally and evidently true. Second, around midcentury this logic was challenged as a new generation of philosopher‐physicians launched an empirical psychology based on extraordinary medical cases. Rather than focusing on the general and universal, this new strand of case‐based empirical psychology charted the individual, unique and often abnormal. Third, from the early 1770s, the interest in the individual was complemented by a new discourse on psychological method. Adopting the epistemic techniques developed within natural and experimental philosophy, empirical knowledge of the soul was seen as the result of rigorously conducted singular observations that were frequently repeated and carefully documented and analyzed. Rather than replacing one another sequentially, these three epistemic logics should be understood as cumulative. That is, despite sometimes profound differences, each new logic was layered on top of the existing ones, thereby broadening and increasing the epistemic complexity of empirical psychology. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2022-05-28 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC9795917/ /pubmed/35633500 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.22205 Text en © 2022 The Authors. Journal of The History of the Behavioral Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Rydberg, Andreas
Epistemics of the soul: Epistemic logics in German 18th‐century empirical psychology
title Epistemics of the soul: Epistemic logics in German 18th‐century empirical psychology
title_full Epistemics of the soul: Epistemic logics in German 18th‐century empirical psychology
title_fullStr Epistemics of the soul: Epistemic logics in German 18th‐century empirical psychology
title_full_unstemmed Epistemics of the soul: Epistemic logics in German 18th‐century empirical psychology
title_short Epistemics of the soul: Epistemic logics in German 18th‐century empirical psychology
title_sort epistemics of the soul: epistemic logics in german 18th‐century empirical psychology
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9795917/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35633500
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.22205
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