The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)James, William
Philosophy
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
Our own formula escapes the unintelligibility of psychic atoms by
_taking the entire thought_ (even of a complex object) _as the minimum
with which it deals on the mental side_. But in taking the entire
brain-process as its minimal fact on the material side it confronts
other difficulties almost as bad.
In the first place, it ignores analogies on which certain critics
will insist, those, namely, between the composition of the total
brain-process and that of the _object_ of the thought. The total
brain-process is composed of parts, of simultaneous processes in the
seeing, the hearing, the feeling, and other centres. The object thought
of is also composed of parts, some of which are seen, others heard,
others perceived by touch and muscular manipulation. "How then,"
these critics will say, "should the thought not itself be composed of
parts, each the counterpart of a part of the object and of a part of
the brain-process?" So natural is this way of looking at the matter
that it has given rise to what is on the whole the most flourishing of
all psychological systems--that of the Lockian school of associated
ideas--of which school the mind-stuff theory is nothing but the last
and subtlest offshoot.
The second difficulty is deeper still. _The 'entire brain-process' is
not a physical fact at all._ It is the appearance to an onlooking mind
of a multitude of physical facts. 'Entire brain' is nothing but our
name for the way in which a million of molecules arranged in certain
positions may affect our sense. On the principles of the corpuscular or
mechanical philosophy, the only realities are the separate molecules,
or at most the cells. Their aggregation into a 'brain' is a fiction of
popular speech. Such a fiction cannot serve as the objectively real
counterpart to any psychic state whatever. Only a genuinely physical
fact can so serve. But the molecular fact is the only genuine physical
fact--whereupon we seem, if we are to have an elementary psycho-physic
law at all, thrust right back upon something like the mind-stuff
theory, for the molecular fact, being an element of the 'brain,'
would seem naturally to correspond, not to the total thoughts, but to
elements in the thought.
What shall we do? Many would find relief at this point in celebrating
the mystery of the Unknowable and the 'awe' which we should feel at
having such a principle to take final charge of our perplexities.
Others would rejoice that the finite and separatist view of things
with which we started had at last developed its contradictions, and
was about to lead us dialectically upwards to some 'higher synthesis'
in which inconsistencies cease from troubling and logic is at rest.
It may be a constitutional infirmity, but I can take no comfort in
such devices for making a luxury of intellectual defeat. They are but
spiritual chloroform. Better live on the ragged edge, better gnaw the
file forever!
THE MATERIAL-MONAD THEORY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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