The Physical Basis of Mind: Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind.Lewes, George Henry
Philosophy
The Physical Basis of Mind: Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind.
Lewes, George Henry
Mind and body; Psychophysiology
fact, what in subjective terms is called Logic, in objective terms is
Grouping.
31. Let us approach the question on a more accessible side. Sensation
avowedly lies at the basis of mental manifestations. Now, rightly
or wrongly, Sensation is viewed alternately as a purely subjective
fact--a psychological process--and as a purely objective fact--the
physiological reaction of a sense-organ. It is so conspicuously a
physiological process that many writers exclude it from the domain
of Mind, assign it to the material organism, and believe that it is
explicable on purely mechanical principles. This seems to me eminently
disputable; but the point is noticed in proof of the well-marked
objective character which the phenomenon assumes. In this aspect a
sensation is simply the reaction of a bodily organ. The physiologist
describes how a stimulus excites the organ, and declares its reaction
to be the sensation. Thus viewed, and expressed in terms of Matter
and Motion, there is absolutely nothing of that subjective quality
which characterizes sensation. Yet without this quality the objective
process cannot be a sensation. Exclude Feeling, and the excitation of
the auditory organ will no more yield the sensation of Sound by its
reaction, than the strings and sounding-board of a piano when the keys
are struck will yield music to a deaf spectator. Hence the natural
inference has been that inside the organism there is a _listener_: the
Soul is said to listen, transforming excitation into sensation. This
inference only needs a more systematic interpretation and it will
represent the biological theory, which demands something _more_ than
the reaction of the sensory organ--namely, the reaction of the whole
organism _through_ the sensory organ. I mean, that no organ isolated
from the organism is capable of a _physiological_ reaction--only
of a physico-chemical reaction; and sensation depends on (_is_)
the physiological reaction. When a sense-organ is stimulated, this
stimulation is a vital process, and is raised out of the class of
physico-chemical processes by virtue of its being the indissoluble
part of a complex whole. Interfere with any one of the co-operant
conditions--withdraw the circulation, check respiration, disturb
secretion--and the sense-organ sinks from the physiological to the
physical state; it may then be brought into contact with its normal
stimuli, but no stimulation (in the vital sense) will take place, there
will be no vital reaction.
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