why did wundt accepted spinoza's idea of psychophysical parallelism? what was in the idea or theory that made wundt accept it?

-- magaret vedad (clue15_81@hotmail.com), September 23, 2003

Answers

First you have to believe that Wundt did accept Spinoza's theory. Wundt's position on the mind-body question was complex, as you'll find if you read the discussion in Wayne Viney and Brett King's A History of Psychology: Ideas and Context (3rd edition, Pearson Education, 2003). Parallelism in general has the appeal of recognizing that bodily processes and mental processes each appear to have "causality" of their own. You'll find that as you read other texts, other historians may interpret Wundt's position differently. I'd go sit in the library history of psychology section and read several accounts to see how the historians understand it.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), September 23, 2003.

[Posted for KD by cdg.]

The first point to note is that Wundt's parallelism owed nothing to Spinoza and everything to Leibniz who was Wundt's philosophical hero.

The second point is that one has to look at Wundt's choice of parallelism in the context of the alternatives that were on offer in his day and age. Cartesian interactionism was thought to be mysterious, materialism was politically incorrect, idealism was incompatible with the new scientific spirit that Wundt approved of, so what was left? Philosophers hadn't yet come up with those clever 20th century ways around the problem.

-- Kurt Danziger (kdanzig@yorku.ca), September 23, 2003.