The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
There remains a sort of philosophic faith, bred like most faiths from
an æsthetic demand. Mental and physical events are, on all hands,
admitted to present the strongest contrast in the entire field of
being. The chasm which yawns between them is less easily bridged over
by the mind than any interval we know. Why, then, not call it an
absolute chasm, and say not only that the two worlds are different,
but that they are independent? This gives us the comfort of all simple
and absolute formulas, and it makes each chain homogeneous to our
consideration. When talking of nervous tremors and bodily actions, we
may feel secure against intrusion from an irrelevant mental world.
When, on the other hand, we speak of feelings, we may with equal
consistency use terms always of one denomination, and never be annoyed
by what Aristotle calls 'slipping into another kind.' The desire on
the part of men educated in laboratories not to have their physical
reasonings mixed up with such incommensurable factors as feelings is
certainly very strong. I have heard a most intelligent biologist say:
"It is high time for scientific men to protest against the recognition
of any such thing as consciousness in a scientific investigation." In
a word, feeling constitutes the 'unscientific' half of existence, and
any one who enjoys calling himself a 'scientist' will be too happy to
purchase an untrammelled homogeneity of terms in the studies of his
predilection, at the slight cost of admitting a dualism which, in the
same breath that it allows to mind an independent status of being,
banishes it to a limbo of causal inertness, from whence no intrusion or
interruption on its part need ever be feared.
Over and above this great postulate that matters must be kept simple,
there is, it must be confessed, still another highly abstract reason
for denying causal efficacity to our feelings. We can form no positive
image of the _modus operandi_ of a volition or other thought affecting
the cerebral molecules.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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