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Abstract

The purpose of this article is to touch up some of the topics within cognitive psychology which have been dealt with in the Psychological Laboratory of the University of Copenhagen. It is emphasized as a historical characteristic of the scientific argumentation in the Psychological Laboratory that sometimes this argumentation has been so consistently radical in its criticism that beyond serving as a basis for a justified rejection of speculative sketches in approaches to cognitive psychology, it must also be said that it has impeded the development of an original cognitive psychology on a phenomenological foundation.
Some examples from the psychology of »set« are examined for illumination of the above mentioned matters. The way of presenting the problem is the topical subject in the second main section of the article, where it is attempted to unite phenomenological criticism with examples of a formalized description of thinking. It is argued that a gain of knowledge is obtained by considering a formalized description as a potential extension of the individual's lines of actions.