Supplemental Article - Is Psychology a Science?/ Persistent Questions in Psychology For Edward Titchener, a pioneer of psychology you'll meet later in the course, the "why" of mental life entails a search for the neurological correlates of mental events. He did not believe that the nervous system causes mental events but rather provides a substrate that gives psychological processes a continuity they otherwise would not have. This position is most like psychophysical parallelism. occasionalism. e realism irrationalism.

The answer is **psychophysical parallelism**.<br /><br />Here's why:<br /><br />* **Psychophysical parallelism** proposes that mental and physical events run parallel to each other but don't causally interact. Titchener's belief that the nervous system provides a "substrate" or framework for mental processes without directly causing them aligns perfectly with this view. The nervous system and mental processes are synchronized, but one doesn't cause the other.<br /><br />Let's look at why the other options are incorrect:<br /><br />* **Occasionalism:** This philosophy suggests that God intervenes to cause the apparent interaction between mind and body. Titchener's view doesn't invoke any divine intervention.<br /><br />* **Naive realism:** This is the belief that we perceive the world directly and accurately as it is. This isn't relevant to the relationship between mental events and the nervous system.<br /><br />* **Irrationalism:** This emphasizes intuition, feeling, or instinct over reason. Titchener's focus on the nervous system and its relationship to mental processes is a decidedly rational approach.<br />