What did Kulpe mean by imageless thought? Mental–set?
The idea of the imageless thought was proposed by the Oswald Kulpe. According to Kulpe hesitation, searching, confidence and doubting are the type of the imageless thoughts. Imageless thoughts are a belief about the presence of the objective significance present in our experiences. Imageless thoughts are not always found associated with the words, signs or symbols.
He has conducted an experiment for the demonstration of our ability to identify something, which was seen earlier just to check that are we able to remember the image of it or not. By this experiment, he derived a fact that recognition does not depend on the remembrance. Kulpe always believed that certain feelings, presentations or sensations could neither be explained nor related with an image present in our mind.
Kulpe‘s research disproved the fact presented by the Wundt that all the events found in our thoughts have direct association with the images. Wurzburg school of kulpe presented the fact called as the mental set or Einstellung. According to the fact of the mental set, explanation of all the behaviors does not depend on the associationistic logics.
Kulpe and his followers identified the original task, instead of the thinking process, which is directed by the stimulus. They called this mechanism as the mental set. Mental set is a type of an innate tendency to respond.