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The role of phenomenology in psychophysics

Steven Horst

pp. 446-469

Psychophysics is a branch of experimental psychology often described as being concerned with "the measurement of sensation". Some of the field's most important figures, like Gustav Fechner and S.S. Stevens, have viewed phenomenology - in the sense of the examination of the first-person experience of sensations and percepts - as playing a crucial role in psychophysics. But other practitioners and philosophers have been critical of this assumption. Some have held that what psychophysics really measures are functionally-characterized discriminative capacities. Others have taken the even more radical view that psychophysics does not really measure any inner variables, whether phenomenological or neural.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-2646-0_24

Full citation:

Horst, S. (2010)., The role of phenomenology in psychophysics, in S. Gallagher & D. Schmicking (eds.), Handbook of phenomenology and cognitive science, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 446-469.

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