Applying this remark to physiology, we see that the nerves and brain
as physical objects are not truly data; they are to be replaced, in
the ideal structure of science, by the sensations through which the
physiologist is said to perceive them. The passage from these sensations
to nerves and brain as physical objects belongs really to the initial
stage in the theory of physics, and ought to be placed in the reasoned
part, not in the part supposed to be observed. To say we see the
nerves is like saying we hear the nightingale; both are convenient but
inaccurate expressions. We hear a sound which we believe to be causally
connected with the nightingale, and we see a sight which we believe
to be causally connected with a nerve. But in each case it is only
the sensation that ought, in strictness, to be called a datum. Now,
sensations are certainly among the data of psychology. Therefore all the
data of the physical sciences are also psychological data. It remains
to inquire whether all the data of psychology are also data of physical
science, and especially of physiology.
If we have been right in our analysis of mind, the ultimate data of
psychology are only sensations and images and their relations. Beliefs,
desires, volitions, and so on, appeared to us to be complex phenomena
consisting of sensations and images variously interrelated. Thus (apart
from certain relations) the occurrences which seem most distinctively
mental, and furthest removed from physics, are, like physical objects,
constructed or inferred, not part of the original stock of data in the
perfected science. From both ends, therefore, the difference between
physical and psychological data is diminished. Is there ultimately
no difference, or do images remain as irreducibly and exclusively
psychological? In view of the causal definition of the difference
between images and sensations, this brings us to a new question, namely:
Are the causal laws of psychology different from those of any other
science, or are they really physiological?
Certain ambiguities must be removed before this question can be
adequately discussed.
First, there is the distinction between rough approximate laws and
such as appear to be precise and general. I shall return to the former
presently; it is the latter that I wish to discuss now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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