The Death of Consciousness? James's Case against Psychological Unobservables

A historical and philosophical analysis argues that mistrust of consciousness in early 20th-century psychology did not originate solely with behaviorism. William James, writing before John Watson's 1913 manifesto, already expressed unease about consciousness. James's critique stemmed from his opposition to perceptual elementarism—the view that mental states are composed of atomic sensory elements. He argued that just as no isolated sensory elements can be found in conscious experience, no pure consciousness can be separated from its contents. This argument relied on rejecting appeals to unconscious mental processes as unobservable, mirroring his skepticism about introspecting consciousness itself.

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Abstract

abstract:Received wisdom has it that psychologists and philosophers came to mistrust consciousness for largely behaviorist reasons. But by the time John Watson had published his behaviorist manifesto in 1913, a wider revolt against consciousness was already underway. I focus on William James, an earlier influential source of unease about consciousness. James's mistrust of consciousness grew out of his critique of perceptual elementarism in psychology. This is the view that most mental states are complex, and that psychology's goal is in some sense to analyze these states into their atomic "elements." Just as we cannot (according to James) isolate any atomic, sensory elements in our occurrent mental states, so we cannot distinguish any elemental consciousness from any separate contents. His critique of elementarism depended on an argument against appeals in psychology to unconscious mentality—to unobservables. Perhaps this is ironic, but his thought is that pure consciousness is itself just as invisible to introspection as isolated, simple ideas.