and his book has been cited as an outstanding early contribution to the debate between the nativist and empiricist views of perception. He disputed the Kantian notion of space as an "a priori form of intuition" in his book, On the Psychological Origin of the Presentation of Space (1873). He argued that the status of space is Teilvorstellung or a "partial presentation", one that must be experienced as part of a broader presentation.

In 1894, Stumpf was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin.