Ernst Mach’s contributions to the philosophy of mind *

Abstract

Ernst Mach was trained as a physicist in Vienna. He entered psychology in 1860, when the appearance of Fechner's two-volume Elemente der Psychophysik had an electrifying effect upon him. As regards philosophy, Mach tells us later in the Analysis of Sensations that, during the 1860s, he was pulled toward a Herbartian "psycho-physical monadology" and toward panpsychist and "idealist" views. Mach's first job was as a professor of mathematics in Graz. Lacking a physical laboratory and funds to do research, he turned to a series of psychological experiments, with himself as subject. Mach's hypothesis has been challenged, for example by Morrone et al., who claimed the spectrum of the spatial frequency Fourier components accounted for the phenomenon, but it still survives in some form, even today where the phenomenon is accounted for in terms of on- and off-center surround regions in the retina discovered by Hubel and Wiesel.

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