The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell (best large ereader .txt) 📖
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nevertheless radically different from the laws of physics, since
the consideration of a single sensation requires the breaking up
of the group of which it is a member. When a sensation is used to
verify physics, it is used merely as a sign of a certain material
phenomenon, i.e. of a group of particulars of which it is a
member. But when it is studied by psychology, it is taken away
from that group and put into quite a different context, where it
causes images or voluntary movements. It is primarily this
different grouping that is characteristic of psychology as
opposed to all the physical sciences, including physiology; a
secondary difference is that images, which belong to psychology,
are not easily to be included among the aspects which constitute
a physical thing or piece of matter.
There remains, however, an important question, namely: Are mental
events causally dependent upon physical events in a sense in
which the converse dependence does not hold? Before we can
discuss the answer to this question, we must first be clear as to
what our question means.
When, given A, it is possible to infer B, but given B, it is not
possible to infer A, we say that B is dependent upon A in a sense
in which A is not dependent upon B. Stated in logical terms, this
amounts to saying that, when we know a many-one relation of A to
B, B is dependent upon A in respect of this relation. If the
relation is a causal law, we say that B is causally dependent
upon A. The illustration that chiefly concerns us is the system
of appearances of a physical object. We can, broadly speaking,
infer distant appearances from near ones, but not vice versa. All
men look alike when they are a mile away, hence when we see a man
a mile off we cannot tell what he will look like when he is only
a yard away. But when we see him a yard away, we can tell what he
will look like a mile away. Thus the nearer view gives us more
valuable information, and the distant view is causally dependent
upon it in a sense in which it is not causally dependent upon the
distant view.
It is this greater causal potency of the near appearance that
leads physics to state its causal laws in terms of that system of
regular appearances to which the nearest appearances increasingly
approximate, and that makes it value information derived from the
microscope or telescope. It is clear that our sensations,
considered as irregular appearances of physical objects, share
the causal dependence belonging to comparatively distant
appearances; therefore in our sensational life we are in causal
dependence upon physical laws.
This, however, is not the most important or interesting part of
our question. It is the causation of images that is the vital
problem. We have seen that they are subject to mnenic causation,
and that mnenic causation may be reducible to ordinary physical
causation in nervous tissue. This is the question upon which our
attitude must turn towards what may be called materialism. One
sense of materialism is the view that all mental phenomena are
causally dependent upon physical phenomena in the above-defined
sense of causal dependence. Whether this is the case or not, I do
not profess to know. The question seems to me the same as the
question whether mnemic causation is ultimate, which we
considered without deciding in Lecture IV. But I think the bulk
of the evidence points to the materialistic answer as the more
probable.
In considering the causal laws of psychology, the distinction
between rough generalizations and exact laws is important. There
are many rough generalizations in psychology, not only of the
sort by which we govern our ordinary behaviour to each other, but
also of a more nearly scientific kind. Habit and association
belong among such laws. I will give an illustration of the kind
of law that can be obtained. Suppose a person has frequently
experienced A and B in close temporal contiguity, an association
will be established, so that A, or an image of A, tends to cause
an image of B. The question arises: will the association work in
either direction, or only from the one which has occurred earlier
to the one which has occurred later? In an article by Mr.
Wohlgemuth, called “The Direction of Associations” (“British
Journal of Psychology,” vol. v, part iv, March, 1913), it is
claimed to be proved by experiment that, in so far as motor
memory (i.e. memory of movements) is concerned, association works
only from earlier to later, while in visual and auditory memory
this is not the case, but the later of two neighbouring
experiences may recall the earlier as well as the earlier the
later. It is suggested that motor memory is physiological, while
visual and auditory memory are more truly psychological. But that
is not the point which concerns us in the illustration. The point
which concerns us is that a law of association, established by
purely psychological observation, is a purely psychological law,
and may serve as a sample of what is possible in the way of
discovering such laws. It is, however, still no more than a rough
generalization, a statistical average. It cannot tell us what
will result from a given cause on a given occasion. It is a law
of tendency, not a precise and invariable law such as those of
physics aim at being.
If we wish to pass from the law of habit, stated as a tendency or
average, to something more precise and invariable, we seem driven
to the nervous system. We can more or less guess how an
occurrence produces a change in the brain, and how its repetition
gradually produces something analogous to the channel of a river,
along which currents flow more easily than in neighbouring paths.
We can perceive that in this way, if we had more knowledge, the
tendency to habit through repetition might be replaced by a
precise account of the effect of each occurrence in bringing
about a modification of the sort from which habit would
ultimately result. It is such considerations that make students
of psychophysiology materialistic in their methods, whatever they
may be in their metaphysics. There are, of course, exceptions,
such as Professor J. S. Haldane,* who maintains that it is
theoretically impossible to obtain physiological explanations of
psychical phenomena, or physical explanations of physiological
phenomena. But I think the bulk of expert opinion, in practice,
is on the other side.
*See his book, “The New Physiology and Other Addresses” (Charles
Griffin & Co., 1919).
The question whether it is possible to obtain precise causal laws
in which the causes are psychological, not material, is one of
detailed investigation. I have done what I could to make clear
the nature of the question, but I do not believe that it is
possible as yet to answer it with any confidence. It seems to be
by no means an insoluble question, and we may hope that science
will be able to produce sufficient grounds for regarding one
answer as much more probable than the other. But for the moment I
do not see how we can come to a decision.
I think, however, on grounds of the theory of matter explained in
Lectures V and VII, that an ultimate scientific account of what
goes on in the world, if it were ascertainable, would resemble
psychology rather than physics in what we found to be the
decisive difference between them. I think, that is to say, that
such an account would not be content to speak, even formally, as
though matter, which is a logical fiction, were the ultimate
reality. I think that, if our scientific knowledge were adequate
to the task, which it neither is nor is likely to become, it
would exhibit the laws of correlation of the particulars
constituting a momentary condition of a material unit, and would
state the causal laws* of the world in terms of these
particulars, not in terms of matter. Causal laws so stated would,
I believe, be applicable to psychology and physics equally; the
science in which they were stated would succeed in achieving what
metaphysics has vainly attempted, namely a unified account of
what really happens, wholly true even if not the whole of truth,
and free from all convenient fictions or unwarrantable
assumptions of metaphysical entities. A causal law applicable to
particulars would count as a law of physics if it could be stated
in terms of those fictitious systems of regular appearances which
are matter; if this were not the case, it would count as a law of
psychology if one of the particulars were a sensation or an
image, i.e. were subject to mnemic causation. I believe that the
realization of the complexity of a material unit, and its
analysis into constituents analogous to sensations, is of the
utmost importance to philosophy, and vital for any understanding
of the relations between mind and matter, between our perceptions
and the world which they perceive. It is in this direction, I am
convinced, that we must look for the solution of many ancient
perplexities.
* In a perfected science, causal laws will take the form of
differential equations—or of finite-difference equations, if the
theory of quanta should prove correct.
It is probable that the whole science of mental occurrences,
especially where its initial definitions are concerned, could be
simplified by the development of the fundamental unifying science
in which the causal laws of particulars are sought, rather than
the causal laws of those systems of particulars that constitute
the material units of physics. This fundamental science would
cause physics to become derivative, in the sort of way in which
theories of the constitution of the atom make chemistry
derivative from physics; it would also cause psychology to appear
less singular and isolated among sciences. If we are right in
this, it is a wrong philosophy of matter which has caused many of
the difficulties in the philosophy of mind—difficulties which a
right philosophy of matter would cause to disappear.
The conclusions at which we have arrived may be summed up as
follows:
I. Physics and psychology are not distinguished by their
material. Mind and matter alike are logical constructions; the
particulars out of which they are constructed, or from which they
are inferred, have various relations, some of which are studied
by physics, others by psychology. Broadly speaking, physics group
particulars by their active places, psychology by their passive
places.
II. The two most essential characteristics of the causal laws
which would naturally be called psychological are SUBJECTIVITY
and MNEMIC CAUSATION; these are not unconnected, since the causal
unit in mnemic causation is the group of particulars having a
given passive place at a given time, and it is by this manner of
grouping that subjectivity is defined.
III. Habit, memory and thought are all developments of mnemic
causation. It is probable, though not certain, that mnemic
causation is derivative from ordinary physical causation in
nervous (and other) tissue.
IV. Consciousness is a complex and far from universal
characteristic of mental phenomena.
V. Mind is a matter of degree, chiefly exemplified in number and
complexity of habits.
VI. All our data, both in physics and psychology, are subject to
psychological causal laws; but physical causal laws, at least in
traditional physics, can only be stated in terms of matter, which
is both inferred and constructed, never a datum. In this respect
psychology is nearer to what actually exists.
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