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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Certain traditional philosophic contradictions, pertaining to a postulated duality between mind and body, which at the same time is used to explain their functional unity, have been translated in contemporary thought into terms of certain contradictions, pertaining to a postulated duality between psychological worlds and the physical world, which at the same time is used to explain how one or the other somehow constitutes its contrary. Nevertheless, however unsuccessful hitherto, the more modern formulation of these connections at least provides a field within which progressive logical operations towards a non-contradictory synthesis are possible. Recently such an approach was developed in J. T. Culbertson's article, “A Physical Theory of Sensation”, which appeared in the technical scientific section of this Journal, vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 197-226. The present discussion concerns some of the problems suggested by that theory, which was so stated that it could very easily be converted into a statement concerning the structure of relations between any given psychological world and the physical world.
1 The present discussion follows not only from the article, but also from the Ph.D. dissertation (Yale 1940) of which the article was an adaptation, and from a series of discussions with its author.
2 K. Lewin. “Principles of Topological Psychology.” N. Y., 1936.
3 Thus the theory is as compatible with a Gestalt, or with a functional psychology, as it is with a reflexological system.
4 These certain patterns are the “trees” which mediate an R and its R system.
5 Including truths qua valuable.
6 Nor, in these cases, does the R-system correspond to the “common sense” stimulus-object. It is an isomorph of certain abstracted experience properties, only.