ABSTRACT
A primary driving force for Gestalt theory was abhorrence of dualism. The move made by Gestalt theory—that of replacing behavioral environment by the perceiver’s physiology/neurology—was a matter of token physicalism. Gestalt psychology warned against the experience error: attributing the organization of perceptual experience to the proximal stimulus when it should be attributed to the organizing tendencies of the nervous system. Substituting CNS error for experience error brings explanatory challenges that are, technically speaking, not minor, as the celebrated phi-phenomenon makes apparent. The resolution substituted the physical reality of the perceiver’s physiology for the concept of the behavioral environment and it promoted an interpretation of the physiology as molar processes rather than molecular processes. This step was articulated as an isomorphism between perceptual states and neural states—a psychoneural isomorphism. The resolution substituted the physical reality of the perceiver’s physiology for the concept of the behavioral environment and it promoted an interpretation of the physiology as molar processes rather than molecular processes.
