4 - Dissenters II

Summary

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.