Theodule Ribot: freedom in the face of heredity and memory
Abstract
The French philosopher and psychologist Théodule Ribot was intended to establish an experimental psychology, namely a psychophysiology, and for that he needed to overcome the psychology based on the notion of mind. The traditional notions of immortal soul, consciousness, will, and free will, among others, are replaced by physiological phenomena. The aim of this article is to think the human freedom in a context where deterministic factors, such as heredity and memory, are preponderant. Ribot considers that the antithesis between determinism and freedom is insoluble in the scientific field, for it is a metaphysical question. However, psychology must renounce the metaphysics, and metaphysics must perish due to its own contradictions. There is, in Ribot’s thought, skepticism about what we may know outside of science.
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