An Introduction to PhilosophyFullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
An Introduction to Philosophy
Fullerton, George Stuart
Philosophy
I have said above: "If there is a brain change of a certain kind, there
is the corresponding sensation." Perhaps the reader will feel inclined
to say here: If you can say as much as this, why can you not go a
little farther and call the brain change the _cause_ of the sensation?
But he who speaks thus, forgets what has been said above about the
uniqueness of the relation. In the objective order of our experiences,
in the external world, we can distinguish between antecedents and
consequents, between causes and their effects. The causes and their
effects belong to the one order, they stand in the same series. The
relation of the physical to the mental is, as we have seen, a different
relation. Hence, the parallelist seems justified in objecting to the
assimilation of the two. He prefers the word "concomitance," just
because it marks the difference. He does not mean to indicate that the
relation is any the less uniform or dependable when he denies that it
is causal.
38. IN WHAT SENSE MENTAL PHENOMENA HAVE A TIME AND PLACE.--We have seen
in Chapters VI and VII what space and time--real space and time--are.
They are the plan of the real external world and its changes; they are
aspects of the objective order of experience.
To this order no mental phenomenon can belong. It cannot, as we have
seen (section 35), occupy any portion of space or even have a location
in space. It is equally true that no series of mental changes can
occupy any portion of time, real time, or even fill a single moment in
the stream of time. There are many persons to whom this latter
statement will seem difficult of acceptance; but the relation of mental
phenomena to space and to time is of the same sort, and we can consider
the two together.
Psychologists speak unhesitatingly of the localization of sensations in
the brain, and they talk as readily of the moment at which a sensation
arises and of the duration of the sensation. What can they mean by
such expressions?
We have seen that sensations are not in the brain, and their
localization means only the determination of their concomitant physical
phenomena, of the corresponding brain-change. And it ought to be clear
even from what has been said above that, in determining the moment at
which a sensation arises, we are determining only the time of the
concomitant brain process. Why do we say that a sensation arises later
than the moment at which an impression is made upon the organ of sense
and earlier than the resulting movement of some group of muscles?
Because the change in the brain, to which we refer the sensation,
occurs later than the one and earlier than the other. This has a place
in real time, it belongs to that series of world changes whose
succession constitutes real time. If we ask _when_ anything happened,
we always refer to this series of changes. We try to determine its
place in the world order.
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