Wolfgang Köhler on facts and values

developed philosophical ideas as well. To be sure, he never considered himself a professional philosopher. Rather, as a consequence of his permanent commitment to scientific investigation and scientific methods, Köhler was eager to reflect upon the consequences of applying a scientific world view to human life. In his own words, he discussed the question of The place of value in a world of facts, as the title of his 1938 book reads. In this essay I investigate some of Köhler’s philosophical ideas. Köhler competently discusses the problem of facts and values, which is still urgent nowadays. To this purpose, he expresses his views concerning the nature of phenomenological data, the way mental and brain processes are related and the structure of physical reality. Although his philosophical reflexions mainly ensue from his epistemological turn, consisting in the adoption of the Gestalt's point of view in psychology, in The Place of Value in a World of Facts and in other works Köhler goes far beyond Gestalt psychology and develops a consistent and partly autonomous epistemology. In his view, true science cannot allow for the contradiction arising between the complete absence of value-related entities in the physical world and the obvious valuerelatedness of many, or most, human behaviors. Positivism and behaviorism tried to