Edwin B. Holt

Edwin B. Holt (born 1873, Winchester, Massachusetts, U.S.—died January 25, 1946, Rockland, Maine) was an American psychologist and philosopher noted for his emphasis on the purposive character of knowing.

Holt, a student and follower of psychologist William James, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1901) and remained there to teach until 1918. By 1908, when he completed The Concept of Consciousness (1914), he believed that objects are as perceived: thus, consciousness resembles a photographic lens that provides a correct picture of objects.

James believed that understanding the relation between stimulus and response is one source of cognition. Influenced by this notion, Holt advocated a form of cognitive behaviourism in which stimulus-response relations provide a foundation for meaning or knowing. In The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics (1915), he suggested that the wish, considered as purpose or a planned course of action, is one such relation that helps explain mind or mental processes. Holt’s student, Edward C. Tolman, later emphasized these points in his purposive behaviourism.

Holt retired from Harvard to devote time to writing but in 1926 began 10 years of teaching at Princeton University, where he completed the first volume of Animal Drive and the Learning Process (1931). This work contributed to the development of dynamic psychology, or the psychology of human nature, and sought to explain the significance of radical empiricism for psychology.