1. Titchener\'s ghost decides to pay you a visit. He can\'t rest in peace until
ID: 3443595 • Letter: 1
Question
1. Titchener's ghost decides to pay you a visit. He can't rest in peace until he is convinced that you will carry on his work as a structuralist. He asks you to act as a structuralist as you eat dinner tonight. How would you do this? What technique would you use? Give a sample of this.
2. The ghost of William James shows up the next evening. He wants to talk to you about his perspective. You tell him that you analyzed the experience of eating dinner the night before from the structuralist point of view. He asks you to do the same only from his perspective. How would you do this? How would the two perspectives differ?
3. Not to be ignored, Watson and Skinner's ghosts show up the next evening and ask you to complete the same analysis as a behaviorist. How would you do this and what would you describe?
4. After sharing dinner with Watson and Skinner, you feel compelled to explain to them why strict behaviorism is an inadequate explanation for human behavior. Summarize neobehavioristic research that supports this.
Explanation / Answer
1. As a structuralist for one night, the task bestowed upon by the ghost of Edward Titchner himself, would imply using the experimental method of introspection itself to understand the underlying nature of my consciousness while eating dinner. Embarking on a theoretical journey in structuralism would entail investigating one’s own conscious experiences such as the mental categories which get assimilated in the experience of a physical sensation such as food. Thus, by applying the technique of introspection that is systematically becoming aware of the basic elements of experience such as the sensation of heat, taste, flavours and texture of the food, the mental ideas which constitute thoughts about what is being eaten, along with the mental images or elements that make a concept such as ‘Indian’, ‘Thai’ or ‘Italian’ food, or ‘spicy’ ‘non-spicy’, homely and familiar food vs. unsafe and strange food. All these factors constitute what gets ultimately registered in the experience of eating. Thus, as I began to clear out any distracting thoughts from my mind and concentrate on the minutest of details about the experience of eating the dinner, I would make a conscious attempt to avoid any pre-existing categories such as ‘spicy’ or ‘Indian’ or any known categories of language and instead note the pure sensory experience itself. The rationale is that, categories in language colour perception about the material under scrutiny it and they can confound the purpose of introspection and distract attention away from the structures or the building blocks of consciousness such as that involved in eating. Thus, in my experience of eating a food with excess of chilly, I would report it not as ‘hot’ or ‘spicy’ but as ‘ a gritty form of solid particles which causes tingling on the tongue and causes it to protrude out of the lips.’ The idea behind such a structuralist report of an everyday experience like dinner is to gauge at the elements which constitute our understanding of the world in our wakefulness.
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