Journal
CONSCIOUSNESS AND COGNITION
Volume 14, Issue 1, Pages 219-230Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2004.09.004
Keywords
history of ideas; reductionism; tropism; conditional reflex
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The life sciences in the 20th century were guided to a large extent by a reductionist program seeking to explain biological phenomena in terms of physics and chemistry. Two scientists who figured prominently in the establishment and dissemination of this program were Jacques Loeb in biology and Ivan P. Pavlov in psychological behaviorism. While neither succeeded in accounting for higher mental functions in physical-chemical terms, both adopted positions that reduced the problem of consciousness to the level of reflexes and associations. The intellectual origins of this view and the impediment to the study of consciousness as an object of inquiry in its own right that it may have imposed on peers, students, and those who followed is explored. (c) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available