The Würzburg School today: The three—now four—world theory and new psychological research

Abstract

Research in cognitive psychology has been by and large dominated by attempts to explain how psychological processes can be explained as products of biological ones; these processes are presumed to be causal. These theories fail to account for and be integrated with theories of non-causal mental activities. In order to bridge this gap a new theory of mental processes is needed. Karl Popper and John Eccles’s three world theory offers a promising path. According to this view there are biological entities, rational thought processes and ideas’. It is a revision of a view that Popper adopted as a member and student of the Würzburg School, which held that there are biological entities, causal psychological processes and ideas’. By going back towards the original and redoing it as a four world theory, by adding to it non-causal rational thought processes, the unfortunate widespread influence of associationist psychology and inductivist methods may be overcome and new social aspects of cognitive psychology may be opened.