Describe similarities and differences that existed between the positions of Kant, Mach, Ehrenfels, James, Brentano, and the Gestaltists.
Immanuel Kant was a classical rationalist who thought that relation between the actions of faculties (capabilities) of mind and the sensory stimulations results in conscious experiences. If one changes faculties of mind with characteristics of brain then there is significant arrangement between Gestaltists and Kant.
Both Gestaltists and Kant agreed to the point that conscious knowledge cannot be diminished to sensory stimulations. Also, for both of them conscious knowledge is very different from the components that create it. The main difference that arises between them is sensing and perception. This is the difference that our brains used by Gestaltists or mind used by Kant made to screen sensual knowledge like touching or viewing.
Ernst Mach was a physicist who postulated that there are two perceptions, one is time form and other is space form, and both these forms are independent of the constituents that form them. An example of time form is the melody and it is recognized as same in spite of what tempo or key is played in it. An example of space form is the characteristics of a circle means whether it is small, large, dull, bright, pink, or red.
Here, Mach showed a great point which is different types of sensual components can leads to identical perception. This idea is similar to the Gestaltists approach towards psychology.
Christian von Ehrefels and Brentano studied together in Vienna. In 1890, he wrote a paper on Gestalt qualities which were named as “Uber Gestaltqualitaten”. After reading this paper, the founder of Gestalt approach of psychology Max Wertheimer is greatly influenced by him and took many topics from Ehrefels. Ehrefels elaborated the Mach postulates of time and space forms further.
By elaborating, he said human recognizes the pattern drawn from dots and not separate dots. Both Mach and Ehrefels argued that form or configuration arises from components of sensation. They had the same notions and ideas which John Stuart Mill had given many years earlier. Mill proposed his idea which was based on mental chemistry that new sensation was very different from sensations that were fused to make it.
Many Gestaltists were students of Stumpf at Berlin in Germany. Also, William James who was an American contributed to the Gestaltists psychology. He gave certain principles that support phenomenological knowledge with physiology that provide many clues which arrange it to Gestalt psychology.