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
it thus within the circle of objective knowledge; but my subjective
experience, my spiritual existence, that of which I am most deeply
assured, demands another expression. Nay more, on closely scrutinizing
your objective explanations, it is evident that a psychical process
is _implied_ throughout--such terms as undulations, refractions,
media, lenses, retina, neural excitation, overtly refer, indeed, to
the material objective aspect of the facts, but they are themselves
the modes of Feeling by which the facts are apprehended, and would not
exist _as such_ without the “greeting of the spirit.”
46. What, then, is our conclusion? It is, that to make an adequate
explanation of psychical processes by material conditions we must first
establish an equivalence between the subjective and objective aspects;
and, having taken this step, we must complete it by showing wherein the
difference exists; having established this entity and diversity, we
have solved the problem.
Let us attempt this solution. When I speak to you, the spoken words
are the same to you and to me. You hear what I hear, you apprehend
what I apprehend. But there were muscular movements of articulation
felt by me and not felt by you; to feel these you also must articulate
the words; but so long as you merely hear the words, there is a
difference in our states of feeling. Some of my movements you can see,
others you can imagine; but this is not my feeling of them, it is your
optical equivalent of my muscular feeling. On a similar assumption of
equivalence, a neural process is made to stand for a logical process.
In thinking a proposition, we are logically grouping verbal symbols
representative of sensible experiences; and this is a quite peculiar
state of Consciousness, wholly unlike what would arise in the mental or
visual contemplation of the neural grouping, which is its physiological
equivalent. But this diversity does not discredit the idea of their
identity; and although some of my readers will protest against such an
idea, and will affirm that the logical process is not a process taking
place in the organism at all, but in a spirit which uses the organism
as its instrument, I must be allowed in this exposition to consider
the identity established, my purpose being to explain the diversity
necessarily accompanying it. Therefore, I say, that although a logical
process is identical with a neural process, it must appear differently
when the modes of apprehending it are different. While you are thinking
a logical proposition, grouping your verbal symbols, I, who mentally
_see_ the process, am grouping a totally different set of symbols: to
you the proposition is a subjective state, i. e. a _state_ of feeling,
not an _object_ of feeling: to become an object, it must be apprehended
by objective modes: and this it can become to you as to me, when we see
it as a process, or imagine it as a process. But obviously your state
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