The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell (best large ereader .txt) đ
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LECTURE VI. INTROSPECTION
One of the main purposes of these lectures is to give grounds for
the belief that the distinction between mind and matter is not so
fundamental as is commonly supposed. In the preceding lecture I
dealt in outline with the physical side of this problem. I
attempted to show that what we call a material object is not
itself a substance, but is a system of particulars analogous in
their nature to sensations, and in fact often including actual
sensations among their number. In this way the stuff of which
physical objects are composed is brought into relation with the
stuff of which part, at least, of our mental life is composed.
There is, however, a converse task which is equally necessary for
our thesis, and that is, to show that the stuff of our mental
life is devoid of many qualities which it is commonly supposed to
have, and is not possessed of any attributes which make it
incapable of forming part of the world of matter. In the present
lecture I shall begin the arguments for this view.
Corresponding to the supposed duality of matter and mind, there
are, in orthodox psychology, two ways of knowing what exists. One
of these, the way of sensation and external perception, is
supposed to furnish data for our knowledge of matter, the other,
called âintrospection,â is supposed to furnish data for knowledge
of our mental processes. To common sense, this distinction seems
clear and easy. When you see a friend coming along the street,
you acquire knowledge of an external, physical fact; when you
realize that you are glad to meet him, you acquire knowledge of a
mental fact. Your dreams and memories and thoughts, of which you
are often conscious, are mental facts, and the process by which
you become aware of them SEEMS to be different from sensation.
Kant calls it the âinner senseâ; sometimes it is spoken of as
âconsciousness of selfâ; but its commonest name in modern English
psychology is âintrospection.â It is this supposed method of
acquiring knowledge of our mental processes that I wish to
analyse and examine in this lecture.
I will state at the outset the view which I shall aim at
establishing. I believe that the stuff of our mental life, as
opposed to its relations and structure, consists wholly of
sensations and images. Sensations are connected with matter in
the way that I tried to explain in Lecture V, i.e. each is a
member of a system which is a certain physical object. Images,
though they USUALLY have certain characteristics, especially lack
of vividness, that distinguish them from sensations, are not
INVARIABLY so distinguished, and cannot therefore be defined by
these characteristics. Images, as opposed to sensations, can only
be defined by their different causation: they are caused by
association with a sensation, not by a stimulus external to the
nervous systemâor perhaps one should say external to the brain,
where the higher animals are concerned. The occurrence of a
sensation or image does not in itself constitute knowledge but
any sensation or image may come to be known if the conditions are
suitable. When a sensationâlike the hearing of a clap of
thunderâis normally correlated with closely similar sensations
in our neighbours, we regard it as giving knowledge of the
external world, since we regard the whole set of similar
sensations as due to a common external cause. But images and
bodily sensations are not so correlated. Bodily sensations can be
brought into a correlation by physiology, and thus take their
place ultimately among sources of knowledge of the physical
world. But images cannot be made to fit in with the simultaneous
sensations and images of others. Apart from their hypothetical
causes in the brain, they have a causal connection with physical
objects, through the fact that they are copies of past
sensations; but the physical objects with which they are thus
connected are in the past, not in the present. These images
remain private in a sense in which sensations are not. A
sensation SEEMS to give us knowledge of a present physical
object, while an image does not, except when it amounts to a
hallucination, and in this case the seeming is deceptive. Thus
the whole context of the two occurrences is different. But in
themselves they do not differ profoundly, and there is no reason
to invoke two different ways of knowing for the one and for the
other. Consequently introspection as a separate kind of knowledge
disappears.
The criticism of introspection has been in the main the work of
American psychologists. I will begin by summarizing an article
which seems to me to afford a good specimen of their arguments,
namely, âThe Case against Introspection,â by Knight Dunlap
(âPsychological Review,â vol xix, No. 5, pp. 404-413, September,
1912). After a few historical quotations, he comes to two modern
defenders of introspection, Stout and James. He quotes from Stout
such statements as the following: âPsychical states as such
become objects only when we attend to them in an introspective
way. Otherwise they are not themselves objects, but only
constituents of the process by which objects are recognizedâ
(âManual,â 2nd edition, p. 134. The word ârecognizedâ in Dunlapâs
quotation should be âcognized.â) âThe object itself can never be
identified with the present modification of the individualâs
consciousness by which it is cognizedâ (ib. p. 60). This is to be
true even when we are thinking about modifications of our own
consciousness; such modifications are to be always at least
partially distinct from the conscious experience in which we
think of them.
At this point I wish to interrupt the account of Knight Dunlapâs
article in order to make some observations on my own account with
reference to the above quotations from Stout. In the first place,
the conception of âpsychical statesâ seems to me one which
demands analysis of a somewhat destructive character. This
analysis I shall give in later lectures as regards cognition; I
have already given it as regards desire. In the second place, the
conception of âobjectsâ depends upon a certain view as to
cognition which I believe to be wholly mistaken, namely, the view
which I discussed in my first lecture in connection with
Brentano. In this view a single cognitive occurrence contains
both content and object, the content being essentially mental,
while the object is physical except in introspection and abstract
thought. I have already criticized this view, and will not dwell
upon it now, beyond saying that âthe process by which objects are
cognizedâ appears to be a very slippery phrase. When we âsee a
table,â as common sense would say, the table as a physical object
is not the âobjectâ (in the psychological sense) of our
perception. Our perception is made up of sensations, images and
beliefs, but the supposed âobjectâ is something inferential,
externally related, not logically bound up with what is occurring
in us. This question of the nature of the object also affects the
view we take of self-consciousness. Obviously, a âconscious
experienceâ is different from a physical object; therefore it is
natural to assume that a thought or perception whose object is a
conscious experience must be different from a thought or
perception whose object is a physical object. But if the relation
to the object is inferential and external, as I maintain, the
difference between two thoughts may bear very little relation to
the difference between their objects. And to speak of âthe
present modification of the individualâs consciousness by which
an object is cognizedâ is to suggest that the cognition of
objects is a far more direct process, far more intimately bound
up with the objects, than I believe it to be. All these points
will be amplified when we come to the analysis of knowledge, but
it is necessary briefly to state them now in order to suggest the
atmosphere in which our analysis of âintrospectionâ is to be
carried on.
Another point in which Stoutâs remarks seem to me to suggest what
I regard as mistakes is his use of âconsciousness.â There is a
view which is prevalent among psychologists, to the effect that
one can speak of âa conscious experienceâ in a curious dual
sense, meaning, on the one hand, an experience which is conscious
of something, and, on the other hand, an experience which has
some intrinsic nature characteristic of what is called
âconsciousness.â That is to say, a âconscious experienceâ is
characterized on the one hand by relation to its object and on
the other hand by being composed of a certain peculiar stuff, the
stuff of âconsciousness.â And in many authors there is yet a
third confusion: a âconscious experience,â in this third sense,
is an experience of which we are conscious. All these, it seems
to me, need to be clearly separated. To say that one occurrence
is âconsciousâ of another is, to my mind, to assert an external
and rather remote relation between them. I might illustrate it by
the relation of uncle and nephew a man becomes an uncle through
no effort of his own, merely through an occurrence elsewhere.
Similarly, when you are said to be âconsciousâ of a table, the
question whether this is really the case cannot be decided by
examining only your state of mind: it is necessary also to
ascertain whether your sensation is having those correlates which
past experience causes you to assume, or whether the table
happens, in this case, to be a mirage. And, as I explained in my
first lecture, I do not believe that there is any âstuffâ of
consciousness, so that there is no intrinsic character by which a
âconsciousâ experience could be distinguished from any other.
After these preliminaries, we can return to Knight Dunlapâs
article. His criticism of Stout turns on the difficulty of giving
any empirical meaning to such notions as the âmindâ or the
âsubjectâ; he quotes from Stout the sentence: âThe most important
drawback is that the mind, in watching its own workings, must
necessarily have its attention divided between two objects,â and
he concludes: âWithout question, Stout is bringing in here
illicitly the concept of a single observer, and his introspection
does not provide for the observation of this observer; for the
process observed and the observer are distinctâ (p. 407). The
objections to any theory which brings in the single observer were
considered in Lecture I, and were acknowledged to be cogent. In
so far, therefore, as Stoutâs theory of introspection rests upon
this assumption, we are compelled to reject it. But it is
perfectly possible to believe in introspection without supposing
that there is a single observer.
William Jamesâs theory of introspection, which Dunlap next
examines, does not assume a single observer. It changed after the
publication of his âPsychology,â in consequence of his abandoning
the dualism of thought and things. Dunlap summarizes his theory
as follows:
âThe essential points in Jamesâs scheme of consciousness are
SUBJECT, OBJECT,and a KNOWING of the object by the subject. The
difference between Jamesâs scheme and other schemes involving the
same terms is that James considers subject and object to be the
same thing, but at different times In order to satisfy this
requirement James supposes a realm of existence which he at first
called âstates of consciousnessâ or âthoughts,â and later, âpure
experience,â the latter term including both the âthoughtsâ and
the âknowing.â This scheme, with all its magnificent
artificiality, James held on to until the end, simply dropping
the term consciousness and the dualism between the thought and an
external realityâ(p. 409).
He adds: âAll that Jamesâs system really amounts to is the
acknowledgment that a succession of things are known, and that
they are known by something. This is all any one can claim,
except for the fact that the things are known together, and that
the
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