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past experience; the past experience is as essential as the
present question in the causation of our response. Thus all our
habitual knowledge consists of acquired habits, and comes under
the head of mnemic phenomena.
(b) IMAGES.—I shall have much to say about images in a later
lecture; for the present I am merely concerned with them in so
far as they are “copies” of past sensations. When you hear New
York spoken of, some image probably comes into your mind, either
of the place itself (if you have been there), or of some picture
of it (if you have not). The image is due to your past
experience, as well as to the present stimulus of the words “New
York.” Similarly, the images you have in dreams are all dependent
upon your past experience, as well as upon the present stimulus
to dreaming. It is generally believed that all images, in their
simpler parts, are copies of sensations; if so, their mnemic
character is evident. This is important, not only on its own
account, but also because, as we shall see later, images play an
essential part in what is called “thinking.”
(c) ASSOCIATION.—The broad fact of association, on the mental
side, is that when we experience something which we have
experienced before, it tends to call up the context of the former
experience. The smell of peat-smoke recalling a former scene is
an instance which we discussed a moment ago. This is obviously a
mnemic phenomenon. There is also a more purely physical
association, which is indistinguishable from physical habit. This
is the kind studied by Mr. Thorndike in animals, where a certain
stimulus is associated with a certain act. This is the sort which
is taught to soldiers in drilling, for example. In such a case
there need not be anything mental, but merely a habit of the
body. There is no essential distinction between association and
habit, and the observations which we made concerning habit as a
mnemic phenomenon are equally applicable to association.
(d) NONSENSATIONAL ELEMENTS IN PERCEPTION.—When we perceive any
object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to
be immediately given is really derived from past experience. When
we see an object, say a penny, we seem to be aware of its “real”
shape we have the impression of something circular, not of
something elliptical. In learning to draw, it is necessary to
acquire the art of representing things according to the
sensation, not according to the perception. And the visual
appearance is filled out with feeling of what the object would be
like to touch, and so on. This filling out and supplying of the
“real” shape and so on consists of the most usual correlates of
the sensational core in our perception. It may happen that, in
the particular case, the real correlates are unusual; for
example, if what we are seeing is a carpet made to look like
tiles. If so, the nonsensational part of our perception will be
illusory, i.e. it will supply qualities which the object in
question does not in fact have. But as a rule objects do have the
qualities added by perception, which is to be expected, since
experience of what is usual is the cause of the addition. If our
experience had been different, we should not fill out sensation
in the same way, except in so far as the filling out is
instinctive, not acquired. It would seem that, in man, all that
makes up space perception, including the correlation of sight and
touch and so on, is almost entirely acquired. In that case there
is a large mnemic element in all the common perceptions by means
of which we handle common objects. And, to take another kind of
instance, imagine what our astonishment would be if we were to
hear a cat bark or a dog mew. This emotion would be dependent
upon past experience, and would therefore be a mnemic phenomenon
according to the definition.
(e) MEMORY AS KNOWLEDGE.—The kind of memory of which I am now
speaking is definite knowledge of some past event in one’s own
experience. From time to time we remember things that have
happened to us, because something in the present reminds us of
them. Exactly the same present fact would not call up the same
memory if our past experience had been different. Thus our
remembering is caused by—
(1) The present stimulus,
(2) The past occurrence.
It is therefore a mnemic phenomenon according to our definition.
A definition of “mnemic phenomena” which did not include memory
would, of course, be a bad one. The point of the definition is
not that it includes memory, but that it includes it as one of a
class of phenomena which embrace all that is characteristic in
the subject matter of psychology.
(f) EXPERIENCE.—The word “experience” is often used very
vaguely. James, as we saw, uses it to cover the whole primal
stuff of the world, but this usage seems objection able, since,
in a purely physical world, things would happen without there
being any experience. It is only mnemic phenomena that embody
experience. We may say that an animal “experiences” an occurrence
when this occurrence modifies the animal’s subsequent behaviour,
i.e. when it is the mnemic portion of the cause of future
occurrences in the animal’s life. The burnt child that fears the
fire has “experienced” the fire, whereas a stick that has been
thrown on and taken off again has not “experienced” anything,
since it offers no more resistance than before to being thrown
on. The essence of “experience” is the modification of behaviour
produced by what is experienced. We might, in fact, define one
chain of experience, or one biography, as a series of occurrences
linked by mnemic causation. I think it is this characteristic,
more than any other, that distinguishes sciences dealing with
living organisms from physics.
The best writer on mnemic phenomena known to me is Richard Semon,
the fundamental part of whose theory I shall endeavour to
summarize before going further:
When an organism, either animal or plant, is subjected to a
stimulus, producing in it some state of excitement, the removal
of the stimulus allows it to return to a condition of
equilibrium. But the new state of equilibrium is different from
the old, as may be seen by the changed capacity for reaction. The
state of equilibrium before the stimulus may be called the
“primary indifference-state”; that after the cessation of the
stimulus, the “secondary indifference-state.” We define the
“engraphic effect” of a stimulus as the effect in making a
difference between the primary and secondary indifference-states,
and this difference itself we define as the “engram” due to the
stimulus. “Mnemic phenomena” are defined as those due to engrams;
in animals, they are specially associated with the nervous
system, but not exclusively, even in man.
When two stimuli occur together, one of them, occurring
afterwards, may call out the reaction for the other also. We call
this an “ekphoric influence,” and stimuli having this character
are called “ekphoric stimuli.” In such a case we call the engrams
of the two stimuli “associated.” All simultaneously generated
engrams are associated; there is also association of successively
aroused engrams, though this is reducible to simultaneous
association. In fact, it is not an isolated stimulus that leaves
an engram, but the totality of the stimuli at any moment;
consequently any portion of this totality tends, if it recurs, to
arouse the whole reaction which was aroused before. Semon holds
that engrams can be inherited, and that an animal’s innate habits
may be due to the experience of its ancestors; on this subject he
refers to Samuel Butler.
Semon formulates two “mnemic principles.” The first, or “Law of
Engraphy,” is as follows: “All simultaneous excitements in an
organism form a connected simultaneous excitement-complex, which
as such works engraphically, i.e. leaves behind a connected
engram-complex, which in so far forms a whole” (“Die mnemischen
Empfindungen,” p. 146). The second mnemic principle, or “Law of
Ekphory,” is as follows: “The partial return of the energetic
situation which formerly worked engraphically operates
ekphorically on a simultaneous engram-complex” (ib., p. 173).
These two laws together represent in part a hypothesis (the
engram), and in part an observable fact. The observable fact is
that, when a certain complex of stimuli has originally caused a
certain complex of reactions, the recurrence of part of the
stimuli tends to cause the recurrence of the whole of the
reactions.
Semon’s applications of his fundamental ideas in various
directions are interesting and ingenious. Some of them will
concern us later, but for the present it is the fundamental
character of mnemic phenomena that is in question.
Concerning the nature of an engram, Semon confesses that at
present it is impossible to say more than that it must consist in
some material alteration in the body of the organism (“Die
mnemischen Empfindungen,” p. 376). It is, in fact, hypothetical,
invoked for theoretical uses, and not an outcome of direct
observation. No doubt physiology, especially the disturbances of
memory through lesions in the brain, affords grounds for this
hypothesis; nevertheless it does remain a hypothesis, the
validity of which will be discussed at the end of this lecture.
I am inclined to think that, in the present state of physiology,
the introduction of the engram does not serve to simplify the
account of mnemic phenomena. We can, I think, formulate the known
laws of such phenomena in terms, wholly, of observable facts, by
recognizing provisionally what we may call “mnemic causation.” By
this I mean that kind of causation of which I spoke at the
beginning of this lecture, that kind, namely, in which the
proximate cause consists not merely of a present event, but of
this together with a past event. I do not wish to urge that this
form of causation is ultimate, but that, in the present state of
our knowledge, it affords a simplification, and enables us to
state laws of behaviour in less hypothetical terms than we should
otherwise have to employ.
The clearest instance of what I mean is recollection of a past
event. What we observe is that certain present stimuli lead us to
recollect certain occurrences, but that at times when we are not
recollecting them, there is nothing discoverable in our minds
that could be called memory of them. Memories, as mental facts,
arise from time to time, but do not, so far as we can see, exist
in any shape while they are “latent.” In fact, when we say that
they are “latent,” we mean merely that they will exist under
certain circumstances. If, then, there is to be some standing
difference between the person who can remember a certain fact and
the person who cannot, that standing difference must be, not in
anything mental, but in the brain. It is quite probable that
there is such a difference in the brain, but its nature is
unknown and it remains hypothetical. Everything that has, so far,
been made matter of observation as regards this question can be
put together in the statement: When a certain complex of
sensations has occurred to a man, the recurrence of part of the
complex tends to arouse the recollection of the whole. In like
manner, we can collect all mnemic phenomena in living organisms
under a single law, which contains what is hitherto verifiable in
Semon’s two laws. This single law is:
IF A COMPLEX STIMULUS A HAS CAUSED A COMPLEX REACTION B IN AN
ORGANISM, THE OCCURRENCE OF A PART OF A ON A FUTURE OCCASION
TENDS TO CAUSE THE WHOLE REACTION B.
This law would need to be supplemented by some account of the
influence of frequency, and so on; but it seems to contain the
essential characteristic of
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