The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell (best large ereader .txt) 📖
- Author: Bertrand Russell
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twofold:
(1) The object which is appearing irregularly;
2) The intervening medium.
It should be observed that, while the conception of a regular
appearance is perfectly precise, the conception of an irregular
appearance is one capable of any degree of vagueness. When the
distorting influence of the medium is sufficiently great, the
resulting particular can no longer be regarded as an appearance
of an object, but must be treated on its own account. This
happens especially when the particular in question cannot be
traced back to one object, but is a blend of two or more. This
case is normal in perception: we see as one what the microscope
or telescope reveals to be many different objects. The notion of
perception is therefore not a precise one: we perceive things
more or less, but always with a very considerable amount of
vagueness and confusion.
In considering irregular appearances, there are certain very
natural mistakes which must be avoided. In order that a
particular may count as an irregular appearance of a certain
object, it is not necessary that it should bear any resemblance
to the regular appearances as regard its intrinsic qualities. All
that is necessary is that it should be derivable from the regular
appearances by the laws which express the distorting influence of
the medium. When it is so derivable, the particular in question
may be regarded as caused by the regular appearances, and
therefore by the object itself, together with the modifications
resulting from the medium. In other cases, the particular in
question may, in the same sense, be regarded as caused by several
objects together with the medium; in this case, it may be called
a confused appearance of several objects. If it happens to be in
a brain, it may be called a confused perception of these objects.
All actual perception is confused to a greater or less extent.
We can now interpret in terms of our theory the distinction
between those mental occurrences which are said to have an
external stimulus, and those which are said to be “centrally
excited,” i.e. to have no stimulus external to the brain. When a
mental occurrence can be regarded as an appearance of an object
external to the brain, however irregular, or even as a confused
appearance of several such objects, then we may regard it as
having for its stimulus the object or objects in question, or
their appearances at the sense-organ concerned. When, on the
other hand, a mental occurrence has not sufficient connection
with objects external to the brain to be regarded as an
appearance of such objects, then its physical causation (if any)
will have to be sought in the brain. In the former case it can be
called a perception; in the latter it cannot be so called. But
the distinction is one of degree, not of kind. Until this is
realized, no satisfactory theory of perception, sensation, or
imagination is possible.
LECTURE VIII. SENSATIONS AND IMAGES
The dualism of mind and matter, if we have been right so far,
cannot be allowed as metaphysically valid. Nevertheless, we seem
to find a certain dualism, perhaps not ultimate, within the world
as we observe it. The dualism is not primarily as to the stuff of
the world, but as to causal laws. On this subject we may again
quote William James. He points out that when, as we say, we
merely “imagine” things, there are no such effects as would ensue
if the things were what we call “real.” He takes the case of
imagining a fire
“I make for myself an experience of blazing fire; I place it near
my body; but it does not warm me in the least. I lay a stick upon
it and the stick either burns or remains green, as I please. I
call up water, and pour it on the fire, and absolutely no
difference ensues. I account for all such facts by calling this
whole train of experiences unreal, a mental train. Mental fire is
what won’t burn real sticks; mental water is what won’t
necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mental
fire…. With ‘real’ objects, on the contrary, consequences
always accrue; and thus the real experiences get sifted from the
mental ones, the things from our thoughts of them, fanciful or
true, and precipitated together as the stable part of the whole
experience—chaos, under the name of the physical world.”*
* “Essays in Radical Empiricism,” pp. 32-3.
In this passage James speaks, by mere inadvertence, as though the
phenomena which he is describing as “mental” had NO effects. This
is, of course, not the case: they have their effects, just as
much as physical phenomena do, but their effects follow different
laws. For example, dreams, as Freud has shown, are just as much
subject to laws as are the motions of the planets. But the laws
are different: in a dream you may be transported from one place
to another in a moment, or one person may turn into another under
your eyes. Such differences compel you to distinguish the world
of dreams from the physical world.
If the two sorts of causal laws could be sharply distinguished,
we could call an occurrence “physical” when it obeys causal laws
appropriate to the physical world, and “mental” when it obeys
causal laws appropriate to the mental world. Since the mental
world and the physical world interact, there would be a boundary
between the two: there would be events which would have physical
causes and mental effects, while there would be others which
would have mental causes and physical effects. Those that have
physical causes and mental effects we should define as
“sensations.” Those that have mental causes and physical effects
might perhaps be identified with what we call voluntary
movements; but they do not concern us at present.
These definitions would have all the precision that could be
desired if the distinction between physical and psychological
causation were clear and sharp. As a matter of fact, however,
this distinction is, as yet, by no means sharp. It is possible
that, with fuller knowledge, it will be found to be no more
ultimate than the distinction between the laws of gases and the
laws of rigid bodies. It also suffers from the fact that an event
may be an effect of several causes according to several causal
laws we cannot, in general, point to anything unique as THE cause
of such-and-such an event. And finally it is by no means certain
that the peculiar causal laws which govern mental events are not
really physiological. The law of habit, which is one of the most
distinctive, may be fully explicable in terms of the
peculiarities of nervous tissue, and these peculiarities, in
turn, may be explicable by the laws of physics. It seems,
therefore, that we are driven to a different kind of definition.
It is for this reason that it was necessary to develop the
definition of perception. With this definition, we can define a
sensation as the non-mnemic elements in a perception.
When, following our definition, we try to decide what elements in
our experience are of the nature of sensations, we find more
difficulty than might have been expected. Prima facie, everything
is sensation that comes to us through the senses: the sights we
see, the sounds we hear, the smells we smell, and so on; also
such things as headache or the feeling of muscular strain. But in
actual fact so much interpretation, so much of habitual
correlation, is mixed with all such experiences, that the core of
pure sensation is only to be extracted by careful investigation.
To take a simple illustration: if you go to the theatre in your
own country, you seem to hear equally well in the stalls or the
dress circle; in either case you think you miss nothing. But if
you go in a foreign country where you have a fair knowledge of
the language, you will seem to have grown partially deaf, and you
will find it necessary to be much nearer the stage than you would
need to be in your own country. The reason is that, in hearing
our own language spoken, we quickly and unconsciously fill out
what we really hear with inferences to what the man must be
saying, and we never realize that we have not heard the words we
have merely inferred. In a foreign language, these inferences are
more difficult, and we are more dependent upon actual sensation.
If we found ourselves in a foreign world, where tables looked
like cushions and cushions like tables, we should similarly
discover how much of what we think we see is really inference.
Every fairly familiar sensation is to us a sign of the things
that usually go with it, and many of these things will seem to
form part of the sensation. I remember in the early days of
motor-cars being with a friend when a tyre burst with a loud
report. He thought it was a pistol, and supported his opinion by
maintaining that he had seen the flash. But of course there had
been no flash. Nowadays no one sees a flash when a tyre bursts.
In order, therefore, to arrive at what really is sensation in an
occurrence which, at first sight, seems to contain nothing else,
we have to pare away all that is due to habit or expectation or
interpretation. This is a matter for the psychologist, and by no
means an easy matter. For our purposes, it is not important to
determine what exactly is the sensational core in any case; it is
only important to notice that there certainly is a sensational
core, since habit, expectation and interpretation are diversely
aroused on diverse occasions, and the diversity is clearly due to
differences in what is presented to the senses. When you open
your newspaper in the morning, the actual sensations of seeing
the print form a very minute part of what goes on in you, but
they are the starting-point of all the rest, and it is through
them that the newspaper is a means of information or
mis-information. Thus, although it may be difficult to determine
what exactly is sensation in any given experience, it is clear
that there is sensation, unless, like Leibniz, we deny all action
of the outer world upon us.
Sensations are obviously the source of our knowledge of the
world, including our own body. It might seem natural to regard a
sensation as itself a cognition, and until lately I did so regard
it. When, say, I see a person I know coming towards me in the
street, it SEEMS as though the mere seeing were knowledge. It is
of course undeniable that knowledge comes THROUGH the seeing, but
I think it is a mistake to regard the mere seeing itself as
knowledge. If we are so to regard it, we must distinguish the
seeing from what is seen: we must say that, when we see a patch
of colour of a certain shape, the patch of colour is one thing
and our seeing of it is another. This view, however, demands the
admission of the subject, or act, in the sense discussed in our
first lecture. If there is a subject, it can have a relation to
the patch of colour, namely, the sort of relation which we might
call awareness. In that case the sensation, as a mental event,
will consist of awareness of the colour, while the colour itself
will remain wholly physical, and may be called the sense-datum,
to distinguish it from the sensation. The subject, however,
appears to be a logical fiction, like mathematical points and
instants. It is introduced, not because observation reveals it,
but because it is linguistically convenient and apparently
demanded by grammar. Nominal
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