The Principles of Psychology

The Principles Of Psychology by John Bascom. This nineteenth?century work presents a comprehensive, methodical defense of an intuitive philosophy of mind. Bascom argues that genuine psychological knowledge lies in direct consciousness and that the sciences of mind require a postulated framework of intuitive ideas (such as existence, space, time, causation, liberty, beauty, and right). The book surveys the Field of Mental Science (consciousness, perception, memory, imagination, judgment), the Feelings (physical, intellectual, and spiritual), and the Will (vital action, executive volition, and primary choice), and it seeks to unite mind and body, action and motive, through regulative ideas. It treats perception as an interpretive act bridging mind and external reality, memory as a primitive, irreducible faculty, imagination as a productive faculty, and reason as the synthesis of intuitive ideas with sensory data. The work culminates in a discussion of liberty and the infinite, and closes with a metaphysical but resolutely rational affirmation of mind’s autonomy and the rational order, with religion and God positioned as ultimate grounds for meaning and unity.