The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)James, William
Science
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
_Considering all the circumstances, I feel justified in discarding
his entire batch of illusions as irrelevant to our present inquiry._
Whatever they may prove, they do not prove that our visual percepts of
form and movement may not be sensations strictly so called. They much
more probably fall into line with the phenomena of irradiation and of
color-contrast, and with Vierordt's primitive illusions of movement.
They show us, if anything, a realm of sensations in which our habitual
experience has not yet made traces, and which persist in spite of
our better knowledge, _un_suggestive of those other space-sensations
which we all the time know from extrinsic evidence to constitute
the real space-determinations of the diagram. Very likely, if these
sensations were as frequent and as practically important as they
now are insignificant and rare, we should end by substituting their
significates--the real space-values of the diagrams--for them. These
latter we should then seem to see directly, and the illusions would
disappear like that of the size of a tooth-socket when the tooth has
been out a week.
* * * * *
_(b) Another batch of cases which we may discard is that of double
images_. A thoroughgoing anti-sensationalist ought to deny all native
tendency to see double images when disparate retinal points are
stimulated, because, he should say, most people never get them, but
_see_ all things single which experience has led them to believe to
_be_ single. "Can a doubleness, so easily neutralized by our knowledge,
ever be a datum of sensation at all?" such an anti-sensationalist might
ask.
[Illustration: FIG. 70.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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