We have, therefore, the result (so unfortunate for logic) that logic
is not free to go its own way, but is compromised by the assumption
that knowledge goes on not in terms of things (I use "things" in the
broadest sense, as equaling _res_, and covering affairs, concerns,
acts, as well as "things" in the narrower sense), but in terms of a
relation _between_ things and a peculiar existence made up of
consciousness, or else between things and functional operations of
this existence. If it could be shown that psychology is essentially
not a science of states of consciousness, but of behavior, conceived
as a process of continuous readjustment, then the undoubted facts
which go by the name of sensation, perception, image, emotion,
concept, would be interpreted to mean peculiar (i.e., specifically
qualitative) epochs, phases, and crises in the scheme of behavior. The
supposedly scientific basis for the belief that states of
consciousness inherently define a separate type of existence would be
done away with. Inferential knowledge, knowledge involving reflection,
_psychologically_ viewed, would be assimilated to a certain mode of
readaptation of functions, involving shock and the need of control;
'knowledge' in the sense of direct non-reflective presence of things
would be identified (psychologically) with relatively stable or
completed adjustments. I can not profess to speak for psychologists,
but it is an obvious characteristic of the contemporary status of
psychology that one school (the so-called functional or dynamic)
operates with nothing more than a conventional and perfunctory
reference to "states of consciousness"; while the orthodox school
makes constant concessions to ideas of the behavior type. It
introduces the conceptions of fatigue, practice, and habituation. It
makes its fundamental classifications on the basis of physiological
distinctions (e.g., the centrally initiated and the peripherally
initiated), which, from a biological standpoint, are certainly
distinctions of structures involved in the performance of acts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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