The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 2, 1891-1892 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
We agree in all the main positions with Professor Münsterberg, but in the
last mentioned point we disagree. Professor Münsterberg limits psychical
states or feelings to states of consciousness without considering that
there are subconscious and even unconscious feelings. By consciousness
we understand those feelings alone which are concentrated so as to be
connected with the ego, i. e. the present centre of consciousness. We
assume that even the spinal ganglions of the brainless frog are feeling
if the skin is irritated, but this feeling can never become conscious,
it can no more be telegraphed to the central station so as to become
co-ordinated with other feelings which are registered in the brain. The
objection may be raised, We do not know whether the ganglion is feeling;
and I should answer, I call feeling anything that is of the same nature
as the elements of which consciousness consists, and we have all reasons
to assume that there is such an elementary psychical accompaniment of
the ganglionic irritations, and that consciousness rises from many such
elements through their co-ordinate combination in the brain. Isolated
feelings are never conscious, and consciousness is a co-operative system
of feeling. This distinction between consciousness and feeling is a mere
matter of terminology. If we find another terminology more practical
we are willing to surrender ours. Yet such a distinction between
consciousness and feeling seems to be necessary for a proper description
of the psychical facts. The assumption of subconscious states and even
of unconscious feelings is a great help in explaining the phenomena of
consciousness. But unless we are grossly mistaken, our disagreement is
merely apparent, for Professor Münsterberg, rejecting the idea of a
psychological explanation, believes in the parallelism of psychical and
physical phenomena. “The physical acts” (he says on p. 125) “reducible
to mechanical axioms can be explained through causation, the psychical
acts follow one another without inner necessity. If we connect both, we
are enabled to transfer the necessity-connection of the physical upon
the psychical and offer thus an explanation where otherwise description
only was possible.” But in doing this, have we not supplemented those
psychical elements which appear as conscious states by other psychical
elements which have not entered into that combination which makes them
actually conscious? It is an hypothetical addition for the sake of
explanation, a _Hilfsconstruction_ just as much as the supposition of the
existence of atoms or electric currents or other physical phenomena which
are not directly observed, but indirectly in their effects only.
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