Philosophical Roots: Description vs. Explanation

Many experiments on consciousness rely at some point on a participant saying what they experienced. Did they see the faint stimulus? Was the image vivid? Did the thought come in words? Those reports are data. What they're data about is less obvious than it looks.

Early experimental psychology found this out the hard way. In the first decade of the 1900s, researchers at Würzburg reported that trained observers sometimes experienced thoughts with no sensory images at all. Researchers trained in a rival tradition, notably Edward Titchener's laboratory at Cornell, looked for the same thing and found faint images the Würzburg observers had supposedly missed (Titchener 1909). Each side's observers reported what their own training led them to find, and introspection offered no further court of appeal (Kusch 1999, ch. 1). The "imageless thought" controversy was never settled on its own terms. Psychology largely moved on, and introspection lost its standing as a scientific method.

The problem didn't go away. Eric Schwitzgebel has argued that people are often wrong about their own current conscious experience, and confidently so. That includes basic features, such as how much of the visual field is clear at any moment (Schwitzgebel 2008). If he's right, a first-person report can't be taken at face value as a readout of experience. It needs a method behind it.

The stakes are practical. Studies of consciousness routinely compare what participants report with what their brains are doing. If the reports are unreliable in ways nobody has checked, the comparison inherits the error, however precise the brain data.

That raises a question for any study that uses first-person data: what kind of claim does a given report support? It might be one of three kinds:

• a claim about a private inner state, available only to the person who has it
• a claim about the causes of the experience, which the person may know nothing about
• a claim about how something appeared, from what perspective, against what background, and over what stretch of time

These are different claims, and they need different evidence. Much confusion about first-person methods comes from treating them as one.

Telling them apart lets you read a study's use of reports critically. It also helps you design your own studies with a clear sense of what reports can and can't show. And it clarifies phenomenology's claim to offer something introspective psychology didn't: a disciplined way of describing experience that doesn't depend on an infallible inner eye.

References

• Kusch, Martin. 1999. Psychological Knowledge: A Social History and Philosophy. Philosophical Issues in Science. London: Routledge. (Ch. 1 covers the Würzburg imageless-thought controversy.)
  • Free: None.
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • Free companion: SEP, "Introspection" (Schwitzgebel)
• Schwitzgebel, Eric. 2008. "The Unreliability of Naive Introspection." Philosophical Review 117 (2): 245–73.
  • Free: Author's PDF
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
• Titchener, Edward Bradford. 1909. Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes. New York: Macmillan.
  • Free: Internet Archive (public domain)

Introduction

Experimental psychology began in the late 19th century as a science of consciousness, and its main instrument was trained self-observation. How that program worked, and the dispute that undermined it, explain much of the suspicion that first-person reports still face.

This reading covers Wilhelm Wundt's experimental introspection, Edward Titchener's structuralism, and the imageless-thought controversy. It ends with the decline of introspective psychology.

Wundt's Experimental Introspection

Introspection is observing and reporting one's own current mental states. Wilhelm Wundt, who founded one of the first psychology laboratories at Leipzig, set out to make it scientific.

For Wundt, psychology studies immediate experience. Its task is to analyze consciousness into elements and discover how they combine. In his Outlines of Psychology, the elements are pure sensations and simple feelings. Simple feelings vary along three dimensions: pleasurable versus unpleasurable, arousing versus subduing, and straining versus relaxing (Wundt [1896] 1897).

Wundt distrusted casual self-observation. What he accepted was experimental introspection: self-observation under controlled laboratory conditions. The stimulus is varied systematically, and trained observers report simple, immediate features of their experience (Schwitzgebel 2024). He didn't think higher mental processes, such as thinking, could be studied fully this way.

Titchener's Structuralism

Edward Bradford Titchener trained with Wundt and then led the psychology laboratory at Cornell. He pushed the program further. Structuralism, in Titchener's sense, analyzes consciousness into its elementary processes, the way anatomy analyzes the body. It asks what the mind's elements are and how they're arranged. The question of what mental processes do was a separate inquiry, which Titchener compared to physiology (Titchener 1898).

The method required discipline. Trained observers had to describe their experience in terms of elementary processes, such as sensations and feelings, rather than naming the object that caused them. Titchener called naming the object the stimulus error (Schwitzgebel 2024). A trained observer looking at an apple should report patches of color and qualities of feeling, not "an apple."

The Imageless-Thought Controversy

In the early 1900s, researchers at Würzburg, led by Oswald Külpe, extended introspection to thinking itself. Their trained observers reported thoughts that seemed to carry no sensory or imaginal content at all. This became known as imageless thought (Kusch 1999, ch. 1).

Titchener rejected the finding. In his Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes (1909), he reported that his own observers, analyzing more carefully, found faint images, kinesthetic sensations, and fragments of inner speech in the same kinds of thinking. On his account, reports of imageless thought reflected inadequate training or analysis (Titchener 1909).

The dispute exposed a structural weakness. Each side attributed the other's results to faulty training or method, and introspection had no independent way to decide between them (Kusch 1999, ch. 1; Schwitzgebel 2024). Kusch argues that the course of the controversy also reflected institutional and national differences among the laboratories, not only the evidence (Kusch 1999, ch. 1).

Decline

In the following decades, introspection lost its standing as psychology's central method, especially in the United States, where behaviorism rejected reports of inner states as scientific data (Schwitzgebel 2024). The imageless-thought controversy is often cited as a major reason. Historians disagree about how much weight it carried compared with other factors.

Conclusion

Introspective psychology treated consciousness as a set of inner elements that trained observers could report under controlled conditions. The imageless-thought controversy exposed its weak point: when trained observers disagreed about their own experience, the method had no way to decide. Any later use of first-person reports has to answer that problem.

Key Terms

• Introspection: Observing and reporting one's own current mental states.
• Experimental introspection: Wundt's method of self-observation under controlled laboratory conditions, in which the stimulus is varied systematically and trained observers report simple features of experience.
• Structuralism: Titchener's program of analyzing consciousness into its elementary processes, the way anatomy analyzes the body.
• Stimulus error: Titchener's term for reporting the object that causes an experience rather than the experience's elementary processes.
• Imageless thought: Thought reported by Würzburg observers as having no sensory or imaginal content.

References

• Kusch, Martin. 1999. Psychological Knowledge: A Social History and Philosophy. Philosophical Issues in Science. London: Routledge. (Ch. 1 covers the Würzburg imageless-thought controversy.)
  • Free: None.
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • Free companion: SEP, "Introspection" (Schwitzgebel)
• Schwitzgebel, Eric. 2024. "Introspection." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/introspection/.
• Titchener, E. B. 1898. "The Postulates of a Structural Psychology." Philosophical Review 7 (5): 449–65.
  • Free: Classics in the History of Psychology (public domain)
• Titchener, Edward Bradford. 1909. Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes. New York: Macmillan.
  • Free: Internet Archive (public domain)
• Wundt, Wilhelm. (1896) 1897. Outlines of Psychology. Translated by Charles Hubbard Judd. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.
  • Free: Classics in the History of Psychology · Internet Archive (public domain)
  • Free companion: SEP, "Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt" (Kim)

Introduction

A common objection to phenomenology is that it's introspection under another name. The objection misses a distinction between three kinds of account of the same experience, and between two ways of being aware of one's own mind.

This reading explains causal explanation and phenomenological description, introduces Brentano's distinction between inner perception and inner observation, and applies all three approaches to hearing a melody. Citations to Brentano's Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) give the book and chapter.

Causal Explanation

Causal explanation accounts for an experience by the physical and physiological causes that produce it. For hearing a melody, the story runs from pressure waves in the air, to the eardrum and cochlea, to neural signals in the auditory cortex. From there, it continues to the brain processes that group separate tones into a sequence.

This kind of account answers the question of why and how the experience occurs. Its standpoint is third-person, and it's tested by measurement and intervention. It doesn't need to say what hearing the melody is like. It takes that as the thing to be explained.

Phenomenological Description

Phenomenological description describes how things are given in experience, and the structures of that givenness, rather than inner states or their causes (Smith 2013). Here, givenness means the way something shows up in experience: from a perspective, against a background, and over time.

Described this way, a melody is heard as one unfolding whole, not as a string of separate sounds. Each note is heard against the notes just sounded, which still shape how it sounds. The next note is expected before it arrives. The melody is heard as coming from over there, and as familiar or strange.

Two features set this apart from introspection. First, the description is directed at the melody as experienced, not at sensations "in" the mind. Second, it aims at structures that any experience of this kind would have, which others can check against their own experience. It isn't a private report of one person's states.

A Bridge: Inner Perception and Inner Observation

Franz Brentano drew a distinction that helps show why introspection ran into trouble. We have inner perception of our own mental phenomena: an awareness that accompanies each act as it occurs. But we can't have inner observation of them, meaning we can't attend to a present mental state as the object of our attention (Brentano [1874] 2015, bk. I, ch. 2).

His example is anger. Try to observe your anger while it's happening, and the anger has already changed, because the attention needed for observation disturbs what it observes. Brentano held that observation is possible only in memory, when the state is past.

The distinction cuts against introspective psychology, which relied on observing present states. It also shows why description needn't rely on inner observation. A phenomenological description turns attention to the object as it's given, such as the melody unfolding, and to the manner of its givenness, rather than trying to inspect a mental state head-on.

One Experience, Three Accounts

Conclusion

Causal explanation tells you why an experience occurs. Phenomenological description tells you how its object is given. Brentano's distinction between inner perception and inner observation explains why the introspective attempt to inspect present states was unstable, and it shows that description doesn't depend on that attempt.

Key Terms

• Causal explanation: Accounting for an experience by the physical and physiological causes that produce it.
• Phenomenological description: Describing how things are given in experience, and the structures of that givenness, rather than inner states or their causes.
• Givenness: The way something shows up in experience: from a perspective, against a background, and over time.
• Inner perception: In Brentano, the awareness of one's own mental phenomena that accompanies each act as it occurs.
• Inner observation: In Brentano, attending to a present mental state as the object of one's attention. He held it impossible for present states and possible only in memory.

References

• Brentano, Franz. (1874) 2015. Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Translated by Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linda L. McAlister. Routledge Classics. London: Routledge.
  • Free: No English translation; German original, vol. 1 (1874), Internet Archive
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • Free companion: SEP, "Franz Brentano" (Huemer)
• Smith, David Woodruff. 2013. "Phenomenology." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/.

Introduction

Research that uses first-person reports often mixes three kinds of claim without marking the difference. A single sentence in a methods section can report an inner state, gesture at a cause, and describe an appearance all at once.

This reading sets the three approaches side by side by aim, object, method, and standard of evidence. It then works through one ordinary experience, seeing a red apple, under each approach.

The Three Approaches

Introspective psychology studies consciousness through trained self-observation, analyzing experience into elements. Causal explanation accounts for an experience by the physical and physiological causes that produce it. Phenomenological description describes how things are given in experience, and the structures of that givenness, rather than inner states or their causes (Smith 2013). Here, givenness means the way something shows up in experience: from a perspective, against a background, and over time.

The table shows why the approaches don't compete on the same ground. Each answers a different question, and each needs different evidence.

Worked Example: Seeing a Red Apple

Take one moment: seeing a red apple on a kitchen table.

Introspective report. "A roughly circular patch of red sensation, with a bright white spot near the top and a mild pleasant feeling." The report breaks the experience into sensations and feelings, the way a trained observer would, and avoids naming the apple.

Causal explanation. "Light reflected from the apple's surface, mostly at long wavelengths, stimulated retinal cones. The visual cortex processed its color and shape." The account names causes the viewer never experiences.

Phenomenological description. "The apple appears as one thing, seen from this side. Its back isn't seen, but it's given as there. Its red looks different in the highlight and in the shadow, yet it's seen as one even red. It stands out against the table, which recedes into the background." The description stays with the apple as it appears. It picks out features any perception of a thing would share: one side seen, hidden sides given as present, and a figure standing out against a background.

Three Common Slips

• Calling a causal claim a description. "My brain saw red" is a causal claim, and it misplaces the seeing as well.
• Treating description as a list of sensations. "Red patch, round shape, shiny spot" is an introspective analysis, not a description of the apple as it shows up.
• Treating description as private. A phenomenological description isn't a report of one person's private data. It invites others to check it against their own experience of the same kind.

Conclusion

Introspective psychology, causal explanation, and phenomenological description differ in aim, object, method, and evidence. Seeing an apple can be analyzed into sensations, explained by causes, or described as it is given. Each yields a different kind of claim, and research that uses first-person reports needs to say which kind it's making.

Key Terms

• Introspective psychology: Psychology that studies consciousness through trained self-observation, analyzing experience into elements.
• Causal explanation: Accounting for an experience by the physical and physiological causes that produce it.
• Phenomenological description: Describing how things are given in experience, and the structures of that givenness, rather than inner states or their causes.
• Givenness: The way something shows up in experience: from a perspective, against a background, and over time.

References

• Smith, David Woodruff. 2013. "Phenomenology." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/.

Introduction

The contrast between explaining experience and describing it predates phenomenology. In 1894, Wilhelm Dilthey drew a related line between two kinds of psychology, and his version still frames debates about the human sciences.

This reading works through a harder case than perception, anxiety before giving a talk, under three approaches. It then explains Dilthey's contrast between explanatory psychology and descriptive psychology.

Worked Example: Anxiety Before a Talk

Emotions show why the distinction matters, because what an emotion is about and how it colors the world are part of the experience itself.

Introspective report. "I felt tension in my chest, a sensation of heat in my face, and an unpleasant feeling of moderate intensity." The report lists sensations and a feeling, located in the body.

Causal explanation. "Anticipating evaluation triggered a stress response: heart rate rose and stress hormones were released." The account names causes, most of which the speaker never experiences as such.

Phenomenological description. "The talk ahead colors the whole room. The audience shows up as a group about to judge. The notes in my hand look thin. The minutes before the start both drag and rush." The description is directed at the talk and the room as the anxiety discloses them, not at sensations in the chest.

The introspective report and the causal account both leave out what the anxiety is about, and how it changes the way everything else appears. Phenomenological description, describing how things are given in experience and the structures of that givenness rather than inner states or their causes, keeps both in view (Smith 2013).

Dilthey: Explaining and Understanding

In "Ideas for a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology" (1894), Dilthey distinguished two approaches to mental life (Dilthey [1894] 2010).

Explanatory psychology models itself on natural science. It posits a limited set of hypothetical elements and causal laws, and it tries to derive mental life from them.

Descriptive psychology, in Dilthey's sense, starts instead from the connectedness of mental life as it is lived. Every experience already stands in relation to others, to purposes, and to meanings. This psychology describes and analyzes that lived whole rather than building it up from hypothetical parts.

Behind the contrast is Dilthey's claim that we explain nature but understand mental life. Understanding (Verstehen) is grasping a mental or cultural whole through its lived connections and meaning, rather than deriving it from causes.

The contrast isn't a rejection of causal inquiry. Dilthey accepted that mental life has causes and that psychology can study them. His claim was about priority: the explanatory approach builds mental life from parts it posits in advance, while the descriptive approach starts from the whole as it is lived and asks what its connections are. On his view, explanation without that prior description risks explaining something other than the mental life we actually have.

Dilthey's contrast is related to phenomenology but not the same. His focus is the historical and cultural life of human beings. Phenomenological description concentrates on the structures of givenness in experience. Both reject the idea that causal explanation exhausts what can be known about mental life.

Conclusion

Anxiety before a talk shows what each approach can capture. Sensations and causes can be reported or measured. What the anxiety is about, and how it changes the look of the world, is available only to description. Dilthey's contrast between explaining and understanding is an earlier statement of the same point: the causes of mental life don't tell you what it means.

Key Terms

• Phenomenological description: Describing how things are given in experience, and the structures of that givenness, rather than inner states or their causes.
• Explanatory psychology: In Dilthey, psychology modeled on natural science, which derives mental life from hypothetical elements and causal laws.
• Descriptive psychology: In Dilthey, psychology that starts from the lived connectedness of mental life and describes and analyzes it as a whole.
• Understanding (Verstehen): In Dilthey, grasping a mental or cultural whole through its lived connections and meaning, rather than deriving it from causes.

References

• Dilthey, Wilhelm. (1894) 2010. "Ideas for a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology." Translated by Rudolf A. Makkreel and Donald Moore. In Understanding the Human World, edited by Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi, 115–210. Vol. 2 of Wilhelm Dilthey: Selected Works. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Free: None; editors' introduction (PDF sample)
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
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• Smith, David Woodruff. 2013. "Phenomenology." In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. https\://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/.

Introduction

First-person reports usually arrive mixed. A single sentence can report an inner state and hint at a cause in the same breath. This reading shows how to turn one such report, and a causal explanation of the same moment, into a phenomenological description, step by step. It ends with an annotated model you can compare your own work against.

The Starting Point

The sample experience is ordinary. It's late morning, you haven't eaten, and you notice an apple in a bowl on the kitchen counter. Here are two accounts of the moment.

Introspective report:

I felt a sensation of red and a pang of hunger.

Causal explanation:

Light reflected from the apple stimulated my retina, and low blood sugar triggered hunger signals in my brain.

Both are reasonable things to say, and neither is a description of how the apple showed up. The report divides the moment into two inner items, a sensation and a pang. The explanation names causes you never experienced. The steps below rework the moment into a description.

Walking Through the Rewrite

Step 1: Remove claims about causes and inner mechanisms

Strike out every phrase that names a cause or a mechanism you didn't experience: "light reflected," "stimulated my retina," "low blood sugar," "signals in my brain." These may be true. But they belong to a causal explanation, and they don't tell you anything about how the moment was given.

Next, look at the introspective vocabulary. "A sensation of red" treats the red as an inner item. In the moment itself, the red wasn't in you. It was the apple's color, over there on the counter. Mark the phrase for rewriting rather than deleting it.

What's left is thin: an apple, red, and hunger. That's the right place to start.

Step 2: Describe what appears and how it appears

Now describe the apple as it showed up. Attend to three aspects of its appearing (Sokolowski 2000):

• Perspective. You saw the apple from one side, from where you stood. Its back wasn't visible, but it was given as there. You didn't see a red disk.
• Background. The apple stood out from the bowl, and the bowl from the counter. The rest of the kitchen was present but unattended.
• Meaning. The apple showed up as food, and as something you could reach for. It didn't show up as a neutral colored shape.

A phenomenological description of perception often turns on this interplay of what's present and what's absent: the side you see, and the sides co-given with it (Sokolowski 2000).

Step 3: Describe the act's directedness and its temporal flow

Ask what the experience was directed at, and how. The hunger in the introspective report wasn't a free-floating pang. It was bound up with the apple: the apple appeared as something to eat, and the hunger showed up as a pull toward it. Describe the directedness, not the inner state.

Then describe how the moment unfolded. You didn't take in the apple all at once. Your glance landed on the bowl, found the apple, and settled on it. The pull toward it grew as you looked. Describing that sequence captures what a single-sentence report compresses.

The directedness also shapes what shows up. Because you're hungry, the apple stands out from the bowl and the rest of the counter recedes. If you'd been looking for your keys, the same counter would have been organized differently, with the apple part of the background. A description should record this, because it's part of how the moment was given, not an extra fact about your state.

Step 4: Check whether the description names features any such experience would have

Read your description back, and sort its features into two groups.

Some belong to this moment only: the redness, the late-morning hunger, the kitchen. Others would belong to any perception of a thing like this. It's seen from a side, with hidden sides given as there. It stands out against a background. It unfolds over a stretch of time.

The second group is what makes the description more than an anecdote. It names features others can check against their own experience of the same kind.

Key Considerations

The pitfall of causal vocabulary. Causal language slides back in easily. Phrases like "my brain registered," "my eyes detected," and "a signal told me I was hungry" all reintroduce mechanisms. A useful test: could you have noticed this in the experience itself? If not, it belongs to an explanation.

The pitfall of listing sensations. Replacing the report with a longer list ("red, round, shiny, a pang in the stomach") is still introspective analysis. The description should stay with the apple as it appeared, and with how it appeared, not with elements of experience.

Terms.

• Givenness is the way something shows up in experience: from a perspective, against a background, and over time.
• Manner of appearing is the "how" in "what appears and how it appears." It covers perspective, background, meaning, and temporal flow.

What description doesn't claim. A description doesn't claim to be infallible. It can be corrected by attending again, or by comparing it with others' descriptions of the same kind of experience.

Summary

The rewrite removes causes, turns inner items back into features of the object as it appeared, describes the act's directedness and unfolding, and then checks which features any such experience would share. Here is an annotated model description to compare your own work against:

Late in the morning, my glance lands on the bowl and finds the apple.[1] I see it from this side. Its back isn't visible, but it's there for me as the rest of the same apple.[2] It stands out red against the pale bowl, and the counter and the rest of the kitchen fall into the background.[3] It shows up as food, as something within reach, and the longer I look, the more it pulls at me.[4]

1. Temporal flow. The description records the sequence of noticing instead of compressing it into one moment.
2. Perspective and hidden sides. This is a feature any perception of a physical thing would share (Step 4).
3. Background. The object is given as a figure against a field, and the red is the apple's red, not an inner sensation (Steps 1–2).
4. Meaning and directedness. The hunger is described as a pull toward the apple, not as an inner pang, and no causal vocabulary appears (Steps 1 and 3).

References

• Sokolowski, Robert. 2000. Introduction to Phenomenology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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  • Publisher: Cambridge University Press
  • Free companion: SEP, "Phenomenology" (Smith)