Conscious Elements

ELEMENTS, CONSCIOUS, the simplest, independently observable constituents of conscious experience. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the conviction was widespread among psychologists that all conscious phenomena could be reduced to combinations of a limited number of simple observable constit uents, termed "conscious elements." There was little agreement, however, as to the nature of these constituents. W. Wundt believed them to be of two main types,—sensations and feelings. E. B. Titchener, one of the most influential of Wundt's pupils, dis tinguished a third main type,—images. Chr. von Ehrenfels and other members of the school of Gestaltqualitat insisted that consciousness involved a further class of elements, namely, form qualities (Gestaltqualitdten). Yet another view was advocated by the school of "imageless thought," whose members claimed to find in consciousness certain impalpable elements which they termed knowledges (Bewusstheiten).

Since 1912 the attitude of psychologists toward conscious ele

ments has undergone a radical change. The works of M. Wert heimer, C. Rahn, K. Koffka and W. Koehler have shown that conscious elements such as sensations and feelings are inferential entities, not observable ones; and furthermore, that explanatory systems, which, like those of Wundt and Titchener, involve syn theses of such inferential entities, are at variance with a large number of experimental findings. There has resulted a marked tendency either to give up the concept of conscious elements entirely, or to interpret it as referring not to constituents of conscious events but to their aspects or attributes. In the latter case, conscious elements are considered not as explanatory or generative entities, but as the raw data of observation, whose variety is presumably as great as is the number of distinct pre dications which can be made about conscious events.

See W. Wundt, Outlines of Psychology (and ed.) ; M. Bentley, American Journal of Psychology (vol. xiii., 19o2) ; E. B. Titchener, Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes (1go9) ; C. Rahn, Psychological Monographs (No. 67, 1913) ; K. Koffka, Psychological Bulletin (vol. xix., 1923) ; W. Koehler, Psychol ogies of 1925 (1926). (J. G. B.-C.)