By means of experimental introspection, the structuralists attempted a kind of mental chemistry, identifying the elementary sensations and feelings out of which more complex (conscious) mental states were built.
Mach's more influential view was both phenomenological and Darwinian: the unification of knowledge took the form of an analysis of ideas into elementary sensations (neutral monism) and was ultimately a matter of adaptive economy of thought.
Unlike for Stumpf, but like for Wertheimer and Köhler, for Carnap elementary sensations were only abstractions he wrote of quasi-analysis through classes of recollected experiences- from experiential Gestalts.
The elementary sensations of pleasure and pain, accordingly, rather than abstract moral principles or abstract concepts of goodness or badness, are the fundamental guides to what is good and bad, since all sentient creatures are naturally attracted to the one and repelled by the other.
Different sensory modalities such as hearing, touch, and vision share a common principle of cortical organization, in that elementary features of the sensation are topographically mapped across the cortical surface.
Sparse temporal coding of elementary tactile features during active whisker sensation.
Jadhav, S. P., Wolfe, J. & Feldman, D. E. Sparse temporal coding of elementary tactile features during active whisker sensation.
The complete consciousness which is expressed by the words, 'I see, I feel a movement', is not completely represented by this little elementary phenomenon [i.e., of a sensation of vision or of motion].
Finding genius in elementary geometry.
Locke's Essay was a dogged attempt to produce the total world of human conceptual experience from a set of elementary sensory building blocks, moving always from sensation toward thought and from the simple to the complex.
At the turn of the 20th century, German psychologists Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener suggested that the elementary psychological states that make up consciousness, such as sensations, images, and feelings, can be observed and analyzed by experimentation.
