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 rudiments of an organ, which would enable us to pass
by a process of reasoning from one to the other. They appear
together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so
expanded 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 and 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 remains still
intellectually impassable.
With these views Professor Huxley[173] expresses his agreement, and
although he contrives to confuse the issue very considerably, as is not
unusual when he undertakes to philosophize, he lays down in the clearest
possible terms that nothing whatever is _known_ as to the connexion of
mechanical processes with thought, whence it follows that on this point
Science has nothing to tell us.
"I really know nothing whatever [he writes] and never hope to know
anything, of the steps by which the passage from molecular movement to
states of consciousness is effected."
It should be needless to repeat that if nothing is known regarding all
this, it is mere charlatanism to pretend that Science tells us anything
about it, and those who make such assertions use words to which no
meaning can attach. Unfortunately such a practice is far from uncommon
in connexion with these questions. What sense can there be conceivable
in the well-known materialistic doctrine that the brain secretes
thought, just as the proper organs secrete bile or saliva? Bile and
saliva are material substances, with a definite chemical constitution,
each adapted to one definite function. But, Thought! It would be as
intelligible to talk of secreting the British Constitution, the Steam
Engine, and the Differential Calculus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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