Other Affirmations of the Soul in Early Modern Psychology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2023
There were other dissenters to soulless psychology. Montague proposed that the soul was something like “potential energy.” Ladd held that the soul was a concept necessary for psychology because consciousness cannot be reduced to nerve action; consciousness has “real existence” in itself. Ladd’s hesitation to affirm the reality of the mind reflected his ambivalent position between an older Christian culture and the newer secular culture of his day. Hall attempted to ground the soul in recapitulation theory, with the soul evolving. Hall proposed a sublation or Aufhebung of the soul, with “immortality” transformed into the future evolution of the species and our gradual perfection. Münsterberg distinguished a soulless causal psychology and an ensouled purposive psychology. The two psychologies were both necessary but incompatible. McDougall did fuse the two by positing the real existence of a nonphysical mind.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.