To my mind the most valuable thing to be gained from this division
of the experiment is the suggestion that there are definite types
of certainty, and that people may be classified by these. There are
obviously marked individual variations as to the characteristics of
this feeling. I should expect from my work this year that two pretty
distinct types could be discovered. For one of these, certainty in a
judgment as to an experience would rest very largely upon the vividness
of an image; for the other, upon the congruence of an image with other
previously accepted images, that is, the absence of conflicting images
when the experience judged about is imagined part of a wide setting
of past experiences. I should not expect either element of certainty
to appear absolutely, without the other form. For many people one
element would predominate in certain fields, as in judgments regarding
sense-experiences, the other in the more logical fields. For some,
again, perhaps, the two would be nearly coördinate in every experience
of certainty. But for some subjects, as, I think, for subject K here,
the vividness of the image would always be the determining factor,
while for others, as for subject H, congruence with wider experience
would be much more important. This classification of subjects according
to their types of certainty might develop into a much more complicated
affair. The experiments described here have gone no farther than
to suggest lines along which it may perhaps run. There may be other
elements equally important with these two. A set of experiments
consisting of attempts to raise uncertainty to certainty would bring
out the essentials of certainty from a new point of view, and would,
perhaps, test this theory that individuals may be classified according
to the types of their certainty, in the most satisfactory manner.
II. THE EFFECT OF VOLUNTARILY ATTENDING TO CERTAIN ASPECTS OF A TOTAL
EXPERIENCE UPON CERTAINTY IN THE JUDGMENTS AS TO THE CONSTITUTION
OF THAT TOTAL EXPERIENCE.
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