'The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding
facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite
thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur
simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor
apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to
pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one phenomenon to the
other. They appear together but we do not know why. Were our minds
and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable
us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable
of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their
electrical discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately
acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we
should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem. How are
these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness?
The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain
intellectually impassable[7].'
Next, in all cases of recognized causation there is a perceived
_equivalency_ between cause and effect, such equivalency belonging to
the very essence of that in which we conceive causation to consist. But
as between matter and motion on the one side, and feeling and thought on
the other, there can be no such equivalency conceivable. That no such
equivalency is conceivable may be rendered apparent on grounds of
Materialism itself. For Materialism is bound to accept the fundamental
doctrine of modern physics--that, viz. as to the conservation of
energy--and therefore it becomes evident that unless we assimilate
thought with energy, there is no possibility of a causal relation, or a
relation of equivalency, as obtaining between the one and the other.
For however little we may know about brain-dynamics, materialists, at
least, must take it for granted that in every process of cerebration the
matter and force concerned are indestructible quantities, and therefore
that all their possible equations are fully satisfied, could we but
follow them out. Howsoever complex we may suppose the flux and reflux of
forces to be within the structure of a living brain, it is no more
possible for any one of the forces concerned to escape from brain to
mind, than it would be for such an escape to occur in a steam-engine or
a watch; the doctrine of the conservation of energy forms an insuperable
bar to the supposition that any equation in the region of physics can be
left unsatisfied, in order to pass over and satisfy some other equation
in the region of psychics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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