The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 3, 1892-1893 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
It may be inferred from this that, even in the simplest matters intuition
is very nearly twice as valuable a “faculty” as reason, as far as
economy of time is concerned. (It would be interesting to determine
the difference in fatigue.) But the interesting point is that the
experimenter can teach himself to give either reaction time at his
pleasure. If he thinks of his ears, he has a feeling of strain in them,
and a long reaction time; if he directs his attention to his fingers (or
if he thinks of indifferent matters) he is unconscious of what is going
on, and his reaction time is short. It is plain that the more of these
educated brain-reflexes we can produce, the fuller and more complicated
lives we shall be capable of carrying on. It may also be assumed that
the ideal human being is the one who has many brain-reflexes, but who
is capable of bringing them all into consciousness upon occasion.
Connections that we cannot make conscious are a frequent source of
illusion. When we move the eye-ball about by the will, objects seem to
remain stationary; but when, putting the finger on the under eyelid, we
push the eye-ball up and down in the socket, we cannot help _perceiving_
that objects are moving up and down. Prof. William James suggests as
a good experiment that some one who has eyes that he is not afraid of
injuring should do this pushing several hours a day, and see if he cannot
force conscious reason to do her work and to make him _see_ that the
objects are not moving.
For perfectly regular circumstances,—that is, for the world of nature
or of human character so far as is governed by fixed laws,—reflex
action presents an immense economy of time and work. To provide against
extraordinary emergencies, it would seem to be desirable that we
should have the power of interposing consciousness in the chain which
begins with stimulus and ends in action. Whenever a large number of
considerations, or considerations of an abstract character, have to be
weighed and balanced, then reason is the only sufficient guide.
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