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
in seeing or imagining the process must be different from your state
when the process itself is passing, since the modes of apprehension
are so different. There may be every ground for concluding that a
logical process has its correlative physical process, and that the two
processes are merely two aspects of one event; but because we cannot
apprehend the one aspect as we apprehend the other, cannot _see_ the
logical sequence as we _see_ the physical sequence, this difference in
our modes of apprehension compels us to separate the two, assigning
one to the subjective, the other to the objective class. Between the
sensible perception of an object and the reproduced image of the object
there is chiefly a quantitative difference in the physiological and
psychological processes: the image is a faint sensation. Yet this
quantitative difference brings with it the qualitative distinction
which is indicated in our calling the one a sensation, the other a
thought. The consequence has been that while all philosophers have
admitted the sensation to be--at least partly--a process in the bodily
organism, the majority have maintained that the thought is no such
process in the organism, but has its seat in a spirit independent of
the organism.
47. The states of Feeling which are associated with other states
characterized as objective because overtly referring to a Not-Self, we
group under the head of Matter: we assign material conditions as their
antecedents. Whereas states of Feeling which are not thus associated we
group under the head of Mind, and assign internal conditions as their
antecedents. Color and Taste are very different states of Feeling, yet
both are spontaneously referred to external causes, because they are
associated with visual and tactical states; whereas Hunger, Nausea,
Hope, etc., have no such associations, and their material conditions
are only theoretically assigned.
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