(4) The psychologist is certainly not inclined to regard the mind or
any idea belonging to it as material or as extended. But he does
recognize implicitly, if not explicitly, that ideas are composite. To
him, as to the plain man, the image held in the memory or imagination
_seems_ to be extended, and he can distinguish its parts. He does not
do much towards clearing away the difficulty alluded to at the close of
the last section. It remains for the metaphysician to do what he can
with it, and to him we must turn if we wish light upon this obscure
subject.
34. THE METAPHYSICIAN AND THE MIND.--I have reserved for the next
chapter the first two points mentioned as belonging to the plain man's
doctrine of the mind. In what sense the mind may be said to be in the
body, and how it may be conceived to be related to the body, are topics
that deserve to be treated by themselves in a chapter on "Mind and
Body." Here I shall consider what the metaphysician has to say about
the mind as substance, and about the mind as nonextended and immaterial.
It has been said that the Lockian substance is really an "unknowable."
No one pretends to have experience of it; it is revealed to no sense;
it is, indeed, a name for a mere nothing, for when we abstract from a
thing, in thought, every single quality, we find that there is left to
us nothing whatever.
We cannot say that the substance, in this sense of the word, is the
_reality_ of which the qualities are _appearances_. In Chapter V we
saw just what we may legitimately mean by realities and appearances,
and it was made clear that an unknowable of any sort cannot possibly be
the reality to which this or that appearance is referred. Appearances
and realities are experiences which are observed to be related in
certain ways. That which is not open to observation at all, that of
which we have, and can have, no experience, we have no reason to call
the reality of anything. We have, in truth, no reason to talk about it
at all, for we know nothing whatever about it; and when we do talk
about it, it is because we are laboring under a delusion.
This is equally true whether we are concerned with the substance of
material things or with the substance of minds. An "unknowable" is an
"unknowable" in any case, and we may simply discard it. We lose
nothing by so doing, for one cannot lose what one has never had, and
what, by hypothesis, one can never have. The loss of a mere word
should occasion us no regret.
Now, we have seen that we do not lose the world of real material things
in rejecting the "Unknowable" (Chapter V). The things are complexes of
qualities, of physical phenomena; and the more we know about these, the
more do we know about real things.
But we have also seen (Chapter IV) that physical phenomena are not the
only phenomena of which we have experience. We are conscious of mental
phenomena as well, of the phenomena of the subjective order, of
sensations and ideas. Why not admit that these _constitute_ the mind,
as physical phenomena constitute the things which belong to the
external world?
He who says this says no more than that the mind is known and is
knowable. It is what it is perceived to be; and the more we know of
mental phenomena, the more do we know of the mind. Shall we call the
mind as thus known a _substance_? That depends on the significance
which we give to this word. It is better, perhaps, to avoid it, for it
is fatally easy to slip into the old use of the word, and then to say,
as men have said, that we do not know the mind as it is, but only as it
appears to us to be--that we do not know the reality, but only its
appearances.
And if we keep clearly before us the view of the mind which I am
advocating, we shall find an easy way out of the difficulties that seem
to confront us when we consider it as nonextended and immaterial.
Certain complexes of mental phenomena--for example, the barber's pole
above alluded to--certainly appear to be extended. Are they really
extended? If I imagine a tree a hundred feet high, is it really a
hundred feet high? Has it any real size at all?
Our problem melts away when we realize what we mean by this "real
size." In Chapter V, I have distinguished between apparent space and
real space. Real space is, as was pointed out, the "plan" of the real
physical world. To occupy any portion of real space, a thing must be a
real external thing; that is, the experiences constituting it must
belong to the objective order, they must not be of the class called
mental. We all recognize this, in a way. We know that a real material
foot rule cannot be applied to an imaginary tree. We say, How big did
the tree seen in a dream _seem_; we do not say, How big was it
_really_? If we did ask such a question, we should be puzzled to know
where to look for an answer.
And this for a very good reason. He who asks: How big was that
imaginary tree really? asks, in effect: How much real space did the
unreal tree fill? The question is a foolish one. It assumes that
phenomena not in the objective order are in the objective order. As
well ask how a color smells or how a sound looks. When we are dealing
with the material we are not dealing with the mental, and we must never
forget this.
The tree imagined or seen in a dream seems extended. Its extension is
_apparent_ extension, and this apparent extension has no place in the
external world whatever. But we must not confound this apparent
extension with a real mathematical point, and call the tree nonextended
in this sense. If we do this we are still in the old error--we have
not gotten away from real space, but have substituted position in that
space for extension in that space. Nothing mental can have even a
position in real space. To do that it would have to be a real thing in
the sense indicated.
Let us, then, agree with the plain man in affirming that the mind is
nonextended, but let us avoid misconception. The mind is constituted
of experiences of the subjective order. None of these are in
space--real space. But some of them have apparent extension, and we
must not overlook all that this implies.
Now for the mind as immaterial. We need not delay long over this
point. If we mean by the mind the phenomena of the subjective order,
and by what is material the phenomena of the objective order, surely we
may and must say that the mind is immaterial. The two classes of
phenomena separate themselves out at once.
[1] "The Passions," Articles 34 and 42.
CHAPTER IX
MIND AND BODY
35. IS THE MIND IN THE BODY?--There was a time, as we have seen in the
last chapter (section 30), when it did not seem at all out of the way
to think of the mind as in the body, and very literally in the body.
He who believes the mind to be a breath, or a something composed of
material atoms, can conceive it as being in the body as unequivocally
as chairs can be in a room. Breath can be inhaled and exhaled; atoms
can be in the head, or in the chest, or the heart, or anywhere else in
the animal economy. There is nothing dubious about this sense of the
preposition "in."
But we have also seen (section 31) that, as soon as men began to
realize that the mind is not material, the question of its presence in
the body became a serious problem. If I say that a chair is in a room,
I say what is comprehensible to every one. It is assumed that it is in
a particular place in the room and is not in some other place. If,
however, I say that the chair is, as a whole, in every part of the room
at once, I seem to talk nonsense. This is what Plotinus and those who
came after him said about the mind. Are their statements any the less
nonsensical because they are talking about minds? When one speaks
about things mental, one must not take leave of good sense and utter
unmeaning phrases.
If minds are enough like material things to be in anything, they must
be in things in some intelligible sense of the word. It will not do to
say: I use the word "in," but I do not really mean _in_. If the
meaning has disappeared, why continue to use the word? It can only
lead to mystification.
Descartes seemed to come back to something like an intelligible meaning
when he put the mind in the pineal gland in the brain. Yet, as we have
seen, he clung to the old conception. He could not go back to the
frank materialization of mind.
And the plain man to-day labors under the same difficulty. He puts the
mind in the body, in the brain, but he does not put it there frankly
and unequivocally. It is in the brain and yet not exactly in the
brain. Let us see if this is not the case.
If we ask him: Does the man who wags his head move his mind about? does
he who mounts a step raise his mind some inches? does he who sits down
on a chair lower his mind? I think we shall find that he hesitates in
his answers. And if we go on to say: Could a line be so drawn as to
pass through your image of me and my image of you, and to measure their
distance from one another? I think he will say, No. He does not
regard minds and their ideas as existing in space in this fashion.
Furthermore, it would not strike the plain man as absurd if we said to
him: Were our senses far more acute than they are, it is conceivable
that we should be able to perceive every atom in a given human body,
and all its motions. But would he be willing to admit that an increase
in the sharpness of sense would reveal to us directly the mind
connected with such a body? It is not, then, in the body as the atoms
are. It cannot be seen or touched under any conceivable circumstances.
What can it mean, hence, to say that it is _there_? Evidently, the
word is used in a peculiar sense, and the plain man cannot help us to a
clear understanding of it.
His position becomes intelligible to us when we realize that he has
inherited the doctrine that the mind is immaterial, and that he
struggles, at the same time, with the tendency so natural to man to
conceive it after the analogy of things material. He thinks of it as
in the body, and, nevertheless, tries to dematerialize this "in." His
thought is sufficiently vague, and is inconsistent, as might be
expected.
If we will bear in mind what was said in the closing section of the
last chapter, we can help him over his difficulty. That mind and body
are related there can be no doubt. But should we use the word "in" to
express this relation?
The body is a certain group of phenomena in the objective order; that
is, it is a part of the external world. The mind consists of
experiences in the subjective order. We have seen that no mental
phenomenon can occupy space--real space, the space of the external
world--and that it cannot even have a position in space (section 34).
As mental, it is excluded from the objective order altogether. The
mind is not, then, strictly speaking, _in_ the body, although it is
related to it. It remains, of course, to ask ourselves how we ought to
conceive the relation. This we shall do later in the present chapter.
But, it may be said, it would sound odd to deny that the mind is in the
body. Does not every one use the expression? What can we substitute
for it? I answer: If it is convenient to use the expression let us
continue to do so. Men must talk so as to be understood. But let us
not perpetuate error, and, as occasion demands it, let us make clear to
ourselves and to others what we have a right to understand by this _in_
when we use it.
36. THE DOCTRINE OF THE INTERACTIONIST.--There is no man who does not
know that his mind is related to his body as it is not to other
material things. We open our eyes, and we see things; we stretch out
our hand, and we feel them; our body receives a blow, and we feel pain;
we wish to move, and the muscles are set in motion.
These things are matters of common experience. We all perceive, in
other words, that there is an interaction, in some sense of the term,
between mind and body.
But it is important to realize that one may be quite well aware of all
such facts, and yet may have very vague notions of what one means by
body and by mind, and may have no definite theory at all of the sort of
relation that obtains between them. The philosopher tries to attain to
a clearer conception of these things. His task, be it remembered, is
to analyze and explain, not to deny, the experiences which are the
common property of mankind.
In the present day the two theories of the relation of mind and body
that divide the field between them and stand opposed to each other are
_interactionism_ and _parallelism_. I have used the word "interaction"
a little above in a loose sense to indicate our common experience of
the fact that we become conscious of certain changes brought about in
our body, and that our purposes realize themselves in action. But
every one who accepts this fact is not necessarily an interactionist.
The latter is a man who holds a certain more or less definite theory as
to what is implied by the fact. Let us take a look at his doctrine.
Physical things interact. A billiard ball in motion strikes one which
has been at rest; the former loses its motion, the latter begins to
roll away. We explain the occurrence by a reference to the laws of
mechanics; that is to say, we point out that it is merely an instance
of the uniform behavior of matter in motion under such and such
circumstances. We distinguish between the state of things at one
instant and the state of things at the next, and we call the former
_cause_ and the latter _effect_.
It should be observed that both cause and effect here belong to the one
order, the objective order. They have their place in the external
world. Both the balls are material things; their motion, and the space
in which they move, are aspects of the external world.
If the balls did not exist in the same space, if the motion of the one
could not be towards or away from the other, if contact were
impossible, we would manifestly have no interaction _in the sense of
the word employed above_. As it is, the interaction of physical things
is something that we can describe with a good deal of definiteness.
Things interact in that they stand in certain physical relations, and
undergo changes of relations according to certain laws.
Now, to one who conceives the mind in a grossly material way, the
relation of mind and body can scarcely seem to be a peculiar problem,
different from the problem of the relation of one physical thing to
another. If my mind consists of atoms disseminated through my body,
its presence in the body appears as unequivocal as the presence of a
dinner in a man who has just risen from the table. Nor can the
interaction of mind and matter present any unusual difficulties, for
mind is matter. Atoms may be conceived to approach each other, to
clash, to rearrange themselves. Interaction of mind and body is
nothing else than an interaction of bodies. One is not forced to give
a new meaning to the word.
When, however, one begins to think of the mind as immaterial, the case
is very different. How shall we conceive an immaterial thing to be
related to a material one?
Descartes placed the mind in the pineal gland, and in so far he seemed
to make its relation to the gland similar to that between two material
things. When he tells us that the soul brings it about that the gland
bends in different directions, we incline to view the occurrence as
very natural--is not the soul in the gland?
But, on the other hand, Descartes also taught that the essence of mind
is _thought_ and the essence of body is _extension_. He made the two
natures so different from each other that men began to ask themselves
how the two things could interact at all. The mind wills, said one
philosopher, but that volition does not set matter in motion; when the
mind wills, God brings about the appropriate change in material things.
The mind perceives things, said another, but that is not because they
affect it directly; it sees things in God. Ideas and things, said a
third, constitute two independent series; no idea can cause a change in
things, and no thing can cause a change in ideas.
The interactionist is a man who refuses to take any such turn as these
philosophers. His doctrine is much nearer to that of Descartes than it
is to any of theirs. He uses the one word "interaction" to describe
the relation between material things and also the relation between mind
and body, nor does he dwell upon the difference between the two. He
insists that mind and matter stand in the one causal nexus; that a
change in the outside world may be the _cause_ of a perception coming
into being in a mind, and that a volition may be the _cause_ of changes
in matter.
What shall we call the plain man? I think we may call him an
interactionist in embryo. The stick in his hand knocks an apple off of
the tree; his hand seems to him to be set in motion because he wills
it. The relation between his volition and the motion of his hand
appears to him to be of much the same sort as that between the motion
of the stick and the fall of the apple. In each case he thinks he has
to do with the relation of cause and effect.
The opponent of the interactionist insists, however, that the plain man
is satisfied with this view of the matter only because he has not
completely stripped off the tendency to conceive the mind as a material
thing. And he accuses the interactionist of having fallen a prey to
the same weakness.
Certainly, it is not difficult to show that the interactionists write
as though the mind were material, and could be somewhere in space. The
late Dr. McCosh fairly represents the thought of many, and he was
capable of expressing himself as follows;[1] "It may be difficult to
ascertain the exact point or surface at which the mind and body come
together and influence each other, in particular, how far into the body
(Descartes without proof thought it to be in the pineal gland), but it
is certain, that when they do meet mind knows body as having its
essential properties of extension and resisting energy."
How can an immaterial thing be located at some point or surface within
the body? How can a material thing and an immaterial thing "come
together" at a point or surface? And if they cannot come together,
what have we in mind when we say they interact?
The parallelist, for it is he who opposes interactionism, insists that
we must not forget that mental phenomena do not belong to the same
order as physical phenomena. He points out that, when we make the word
"interaction" cover the relations of mental phenomena to physical
phenomena as well as the relations of the latter to each other, we are
assimilating heedlessly facts of two different kinds and are
obliterating an important distinction. He makes the same objection to
calling the relations between mental phenomena and physical phenomena
_causal_. If the relation of a volition to the movement of the arm is
not the same as that of a physical cause to its physical effect, why,
he argues, do you disguise the difference by calling them by the same
name?
37. THE DOCTRINE OF THE PARALLELIST.--Thus, the parallelist is a man
who is so impressed by the gulf between physical facts and mental facts
that he refuses to regard them as parts of the one order of causes and
effects. You cannot, he claims, make a single chain out of links so
diverse.
Some part of a human body receives a blow; a message is carried along a
sensory nerve and reaches the brain; from the brain a message is sent
out along a motor nerve to a group of muscles; the muscles contract,
and a limb is set in motion. The immediate effects of the blow, the
ingoing message, the changes in the brain, the outgoing message, the
contraction of the muscles--all these are physical facts. One and all
may be described as motions in matter.
But the man who received the blow becomes conscious that he was struck,
and both interactionist and parallelist regard him as becoming
conscious of it when the incoming message reaches some part of the
brain. What shall be done with this consciousness? The interactionist
insists that it must be regarded as a link in the physical chain of
causes and effects--he breaks the chain to insert it. The parallelist
maintains that it is inconceivable that such an insertion should be
made. He regards the physical series as complete in itself, and he
places the consciousness, as it were, on a _parallel_ line.
It must not be supposed that he takes this figure literally. It is his
effort to avoid materializing the mind that forces him to hold the
position which he does. To put the mind in the brain is to make of it
a material thing; to make it parallel to the brain, in the literal
sense of the word, would be just as bad. All that we may understand
him to mean is that mental phenomena and physical, although they are
related, cannot be built into the one series of causes and effects. He
is apt to speak of them as _concomitant_.
We must not forget that neither parallelist nor interactionist ever
dreams of repudiating our common experiences of the relations of mental
phenomena and physical. Neither one will, if he is a man of sense,
abandon the usual ways of describing such experiences. Whatever his
theory, he will still say: I am suffering because I struck my hand
against that table; I sat down because I chose to do so. His doctrine
is not supposed to deny the truth contained in such statements; it is
supposed only to give a fuller understanding of it. Hence, we cannot
condemn either doctrine simply by an uncritical appeal to such
statements and to the experiences they represent. We must look much
deeper.
Now, what can the parallelist mean by _referring_ sensations and ideas
to the brain and yet denying that they are _in_ the brain? What is
this reference?
Let us come back to the experiences of the physical and the mental as
they present themselves to the plain man. They have been discussed at
length in Chapter IV. It was there pointed out that every one
distinguishes without difficulty between sensations and things, and
that every one recognizes explicitly or implicitly that a sensation is
an experience referred in a certain way to the body.
When the eyes are open, we _see_; when the ears are open, we _hear_;
when the hand is laid on things, we _feel_. How do we know that we are
experiencing sensations? The setting tells us that. The experience in
question is given together with an experience of the body. This is
_concomitance of the mental and the physical_ as it appears in the
experience of us all; and from such experiences as these the
philosopher who speaks of the concomitance of physical and mental
phenomena must draw the whole meaning of the word.
Let us here sharpen a little the distinction between sensations and
things. Standing at some distance from the tree, I see an apple fall
to the ground. Were I only half as far away, my experience would not
be exactly the same--I should have somewhat different sensations. As
we have seen (section 17), the apparent sizes of things vary as we
move, and this means that the quantity of sensation, when I observe the
apple from a nearer point, is greater. The man of science tells me
that the image which the object looked at projects upon the retina of
the eye grows larger as we approach objects. The thing, then, may
remain unchanged; our sensations will vary according to the impression
which is made upon our body.
Again. When I have learned something of physics, I am ready to admit
that, although light travels with almost inconceivable rapidity, still,
its journey through space does take time. Hence the impression made
upon my eye by the falling apple is not simultaneous with the fall
itself; and if I stand far away it is made a little later than when I
am near. In the case in point the difference is so slight as to pass
unnoticed, but there are cases in which it seems apparent even to the
unlearned that sensations arise later than the occurrences of which we
take them to be the report.
Thus, I stand on a hill and watch a laborer striking with his sledge
upon the distant railway. I hear the sound of the blow while I see his
tool raised above his head. I account for this by saying that it has
taken some time for the sound-waves to reach my ear, and I regard my
sensation as arising only when this has been accomplished.
But this conclusion is not judged sufficiently accurate by the man of
science. The investigations of the physiologist and the psychologist
have revealed that the brain holds a peculiar place in the economy of
the body. If the nerve which connects the sense organ with the brain
be severed, the sensation does not arise. Injuries to the brain affect
the mental life as injuries to other parts of the body do not. Hence,
it is concluded that, to get the real time of the emergence of a
sensation, we must not inquire merely when an impression was made upon
the organ of sense, but must determine when the message sent along the
nerve has reached some part of the brain. The resulting brain change
is regarded as the true concomitant of the sensation. If there is a
brain change of a certain kind, there is the corresponding sensation.
It need hardly be said that no one knows as yet much about the brain
motions which are supposed to be concomitants of sensations, although a
good deal is said about them.
It is very important to remark that in all this no new meaning has been
given to the word "concomitance." The plain man remarks that
sensations and their changes must be referred to the body. With the
body disposed in a certain way, he has sensations of a certain kind;
with changes in the body, the sensations change. He does not perceive
the sensations to be in the body. As I recede from a house I have a
whole series of visual experiences differing from each other and ending
in a faint speck which bears little resemblance to the experience with
which I started. I have had, as we say, a series of sensations, or
groups of such. Did any single group, did the experience which I had
at any single moment, seem to me to be _in my body_? Surely not. Its
relation to my body is other than that.
And when the man of science, instead of referring sensations vaguely to
the body, refers them to the brain, the reference is of precisely the
same nature. From our common experience of the relation of the
physical and the mental he starts out. He has no other ground on which
to stand. He can only mark the reference with greater exactitude.
I have been speaking of the relation of sensations to the brain. It is
scarcely necessary for me to show that all other mental phenomena must
be referred to the brain as well, and that the reference must be of the
same nature. The considerations which lead us to refer ideas to the
brain are set forth in our physiologies and psychologies. The effects
of cerebral disease, injuries to the brain, etc., are too well known to
need mention; and it is palpably as absurd to put ideas in the brain as
it is to put sensations there.
Now, the parallelist, if he be a wise man, will not attempt to
_explain_ the reference of mental phenomena to the brain--to _explain_
the relation between mind and matter. The relation appears to be
unique. Certainly it is not identical with the relation between two
material things. We explain things, in the common acceptation of the
word, when we show that a case under consideration is an
exemplification of some general law--when we show, in other words, that
it does not stand alone. But this does stand alone, and is admitted to
stand alone. We admit as much when we say that the mind is immaterial,
and yet hold that it is related to the body. We cannot, then, ask for
an _explanation_ of the relation.
But this does not mean that the reference of mental phenomena to the
body is a meaningless expression. We can point to those experiences of
concomitance that we all have, distinguish them carefully from
relations of another kind, and say: This is what the word means,
whether it be used by the plain man or by the man of science.
I have said above: "If there is a brain change of a certain kind, there
is the corresponding sensation." Perhaps the reader will feel inclined
to say here: If you can say as much as this, why can you not go a
little farther and call the brain change the _cause_ of the sensation?
But he who speaks thus, forgets what has been said above about the
uniqueness of the relation. In the objective order of our experiences,
in the external world, we can distinguish between antecedents and
consequents, between causes and their effects. The causes and their
effects belong to the one order, they stand in the same series. The
relation of the physical to the mental is, as we have seen, a different
relation. Hence, the parallelist seems justified in objecting to the
assimilation of the two. He prefers the word "concomitance," just
because it marks the difference. He does not mean to indicate that the
relation is any the less uniform or dependable when he denies that it
is causal.
38. IN WHAT SENSE MENTAL PHENOMENA HAVE A TIME AND PLACE.--We have seen
in Chapters VI and VII what space and time--real space and time--are.
They are the plan of the real external world and its changes; they are
aspects of the objective order of experience.
To this order no mental phenomenon can belong. It cannot, as we have
seen (section 35), occupy any portion of space or even have a location
in space. It is equally true that no series of mental changes can
occupy any portion of time, real time, or even fill a single moment in
the stream of time. There are many persons to whom this latter
statement will seem difficult of acceptance; but the relation of mental
phenomena to space and to time is of the same sort, and we can consider
the two together.
Psychologists speak unhesitatingly of the localization of sensations in
the brain, and they talk as readily of the moment at which a sensation
arises and of the duration of the sensation. What can they mean by
such expressions?
We have seen that sensations are not in the brain, and their
localization means only the determination of their concomitant physical
phenomena, of the corresponding brain-change. And it ought to be clear
even from what has been said above that, in determining the moment at
which a sensation arises, we are determining only the time of the
concomitant brain process. Why do we say that a sensation arises later
than the moment at which an impression is made upon the organ of sense
and earlier than the resulting movement of some group of muscles?
Because the change in the brain, to which we refer the sensation,
occurs later than the one and earlier than the other. This has a place
in real time, it belongs to that series of world changes whose
succession constitutes real time. If we ask _when_ anything happened,
we always refer to this series of changes. We try to determine its
place in the world order.
Thus, we ask: When was Julius Caesar born? We are given a year and a
day. How is the time which has elapsed since measured? By changes in
the physical world, by revolutions of the earth about the sun. We ask:
When did he conceive the plan of writing his Commentaries? If we get
an answer at all, it must be an answer of the same kind--some point in
the series of physical changes which occur in real time must be
indicated. Where else should we look for an answer? In point of fact,
we never do look elsewhere.
Again. We have distinguished between apparent space and real space
(section 34). We have seen that, when we deny that a mental image can
occupy any portion of space, we need not think of it as losing its
parts and shrivelling to a point. We may still attribute to it
apparent space; may affirm that it seems extended. Let us mark the
same distinction when we consider time. The psychologist speaks of the
duration of a sensation. Has it real duration? It is not in time at
all, and, of course, it cannot, strictly speaking, occupy a portion of
time. But we can try to measure the duration of the physical
concomitant, and call this the real duration of the sensation.
We all distinguish between the real time of mental phenomena, in the
sense indicated just above, and the apparent time. We know very well
that the one may give us no true measure of the other. A sermon
_seems_ long; was it _really_ long? There is only one way of measuring
its real length. We must refer to the clock, to the sun, to some
change in the physical world. We _seem_ to live years in a dream; was
the dream _really_ a long one? The real length can only be determined,
if at all, by a physical reference. Those apparent years of the dream
have no place in the real time which is measured by the clock. We do
not have to cut it and insert them somewhere. They belong to a
different order, and cannot be inserted any more than the thought of a
patch can be inserted in a rent in a real coat.
We see, thus, when we reflect upon the matter, that mental phenomena
cannot, strictly speaking, be said to have a time and place. He who
attributes these to them materializes them. But their physical
concomitants have a time and place, and mental phenomena can be
ordered by a reference to these. They can be assigned a time and
place of existing in a special sense of the words not to be confounded
with the sense in which we use them when we speak of the time and place
of material things. This makes it possible to relate every mental
phenomenon to the world system in a definite way, and to distinguish it
clearly from every other, however similar.
We need not, when we come to understand this, change our usual modes of
speech. We may still say: The pain I had two years ago is like the
pain I have to-day; my sensation came into being at such a moment; my
regret lasted two days. We speak that we may be understood; and such
phrases express a truth, even if they are rather loose and inaccurate.
But we must not be deceived by such phrases, and assume that they mean
what they have no right to mean.
39. OBJECTIONS TO PARALLELISM.--What objections can be brought against
parallelism? It is sometimes objected by the interactionist that it
abandons the plain man's notion of the mind as a substance with its
attributes, and makes of it a mere collection of mental phenomena. It
must be admitted that the parallelist usually holds a view which
differs rather widely from that of the unlearned.
But even supposing this objection well taken, it can no longer be
regarded as an objection specifically to the doctrine of parallelism,
for the view of the mind in question is becoming increasingly popular,
and it is now held by influential interactionists as well as by
parallelists. One may believe that the mind consists of ideas, and may
still hold that ideas can cause motions in matter.
There is, however, another objection that predisposes many thoughtful
persons to reject parallelism uncompromisingly. It is this. If we
admit that the chain of physical causes and effects, from a blow given
to the body to the resulting muscular movements made in self-defense,
is an unbroken one, what part can we assign to the mind in the whole
transaction? Has it _done_ anything? Is it not reduced to the
position of a passive spectator? Must we not regard man as "a physical
automaton with parallel psychical states"?
Such an account of man cannot fail to strike one as repugnant; and yet
it is the parallelist himself whom we must thank for introducing us to
it. The account is not a caricature from the pen of an opponent. "An
automaton," writes Professor Clifford,[2] "is a thing that goes by
itself when it is wound up, and we go by ourselves when we have had
food. Excepting the fact that other men are conscious, there is no
reason why we should not regard the human body as merely an exceedingly
complicated machine which is wound up by putting food into the mouth.
But it is not _merely_ a machine, because consciousness goes with it.
The mind, then, is to be regarded as a stream of feelings which runs
parallel to, and simultaneous with, a certain part of the action of the
body, that is to say, that particular part of the action of the brain
in which the cerebrum and the sensory tracts are excited."
The saving statement that the body is not _merely_ a machine, because
consciousness goes with it, does not impress one as being sufficient to
redeem the illustration. Who wants to be an automaton with an
accompanying consciousness? Who cares to regard his mind as an
"epiphenomenon"--a thing that exists, but whose existence or
nonexistence makes no difference to the course of affairs?
The plain man's objection to such an account of himself seems to be
abundantly justified. As I have said earlier in this chapter, neither
interactionist nor parallelist has the intention of repudiating the
experience of world and mind common to us all. We surely have evidence
enough to prove that minds count for something. No house was ever
built, no book was ever written, by a creature without a mind; and the
better the house or book, the better the mind. _That_ there is a fixed
and absolutely dependable relation between the planning mind and the
thing accomplished, no man of any school has the right to deny. The
only legitimate question is: _What is the nature_ of the relation? Is
it _causal_, or should it be conceived to be _something else_?
The whole matter will be more fully discussed in Chapter XI. This
chapter I shall close with a brief summary of the points which the
reader will do well to bear in mind when he occupies himself with
parallelism.
(1) Parallelism is a protest against the interactionist's tendency to
materialize the mind.
(2) The name is a figurative expression, and must not be taken
literally. The true relation between mental phenomena and physical is
given in certain common experiences that have been indicated, and it is
a unique relation.
(3) It is a fixed and absolutely dependable relation. It is impossible
that there should be a particular mental fact without its corresponding
physical fact; and it is impossible that this physical fact should
occur without its corresponding mental fact.
(4) The parallelist objects to calling this relation _causal_, because
this obscures the distinction between it and the relation between facts
both of which are physical. He prefers the word "concomitance."
(5) Such objections to parallelism as that cited above assume that the
concomitance of which the parallelist speaks is analogous to physical
concomitance. The chemist puts together a volume of hydrogen gas and a
volume of chlorine gas, and the result is two volumes of hydrochloric
acid gas. We regard it as essential to the result that there should be
the two gases and that they should be brought together. But the fact
that the chemist has red hair we rightly look upon as a concomitant
phenomenon of no importance. The result would be the same if he had
black hair or were bald. But this is not the concomitance that
interests the parallelist. The two sorts of concomitance are alike
only in the one point. Some phenomenon is regarded as excluded from
the series of causes and effects under discussion. On the other hand,
the difference between the two is all-important; in the one case, the
concomitant phenomenon is an accidental circumstance that might just as
well be absent; in the other, it is nothing of the sort; it _cannot_ be
absent--the mental fact _must_ exist if the brain-change in question
exists.
It is quite possible that, on reading this list of points, one may be
inclined to make two protests.
First: Is a parallelism so carefully guarded as this properly called
_parallelism_ at all? To this I answer: The name matters little. I
have used it because I have no better term. Certainly, it is not the
parallelism which is sometimes brought forward, and which peeps out
from the citation from Clifford. It is nothing more than an insistence
upon the truth that we should not treat the mind as though it were a
material thing. If any one wishes to take the doctrine and discard the
name, I have no objection. As so guarded, the doctrine is, I think,
true.
Second: If it is desirable to avoid the word "cause," in speaking of
the relation of the mental and the physical, on the ground that
otherwise we give the word a double sense, why is it not desirable to
avoid the word "concomitance"? Have we not seen that the word is
ambiguous? I admit the inconsistency and plead in excuse only that I
have chosen the lesser of two evils. It is fatally easy to slip into
the error of thinking of the mind as though it were material and had a
place in the physical world. In using the word "concomitance" I enter
a protest against this. But I have, of course, no right to use it
without showing just what kind of concomitance I mean.
[1] "First and Fundamental Truths," Book I, Part II, Chapter II. New
York, 1889.
[2] "Lectures and Essays," Vol. II, p. 57. London, 1879.
CHAPTER X
HOW WE KNOW THERE ARE OTHER MINDS
40. IS IT CERTAIN THAT WE KNOW IT?--I suppose there is no man in his
sober senses who seriously believes that no other mind than his own
exists. There is, to be sure, an imaginary being more or less
discussed by those interested in philosophy, a creature called the
Solipsist, who is credited with this doctrine. But men do not become
solipsists, though they certainly say things now and then that other
men think logically lead to some such unnatural view of things; and
more rarely they say things that sound as if the speaker, in some
moods, at least, might actually harbor such a view.
Thus the philosopher Fichte (1762-1814) talks in certain of his
writings as though he believed himself to be the universe, and his
words cause Jean Paul Richter, the inimitable, to break out in his
characteristic way: "The very worst of it all is the lazy, aimless,
aristocratic, insular life that a god must lead; he has no one to go
with. If I am not to sit still for all time and eternity, if I let
myself down as well as I can and make myself finite, that I may have
something in the way of society, still I have, like petty princes, only
my own creatures to echo my words. . . . Every being, even the highest
Being, wishes something to love and to honor. But the Fichtean
doctrine that I am my own body-maker leaves me with nothing
whatever--with not so much as the beggar's dog or the prisoner's
spider. . . . Truly I wish that there were men, and that I were one of
them. . . . If there exists, as I very much fear, no one but myself,
unlucky dog that I am, then there is no one at such a pass as I."
Just how much Fichte's words meant to the man who wrote them may be a
matter for dispute. Certainly no one has shown a greater moral
earnestness or a greater regard for his fellowmen than this
philosopher, and we must not hastily accuse any one of being a
solipsist. But that to certain men, and, indeed, to many men, there
have come thoughts that have seemed to point in this direction--that
not a few have had doubts as to their ability to _prove_ the existence
of other minds--this we must admit.
It appears somewhat easier for a man to have doubts upon this subject
when he has fallen into the idealistic error of regarding the material
world, which seems to be revealed to him, as nothing else than his
"ideas" or "sensations" or "impressions." If we will draw the whole
"telephone exchange" into the clerk, there seems little reason for not
including all the subscribers as well. If other men's bodies are my
sensations, may not other men's minds be my imaginings? But doubts may
be felt also by those who are willing to admit a real external world.
How do we know that our inference to the existence of other minds is a
justifiable inference? Can there be such a thing as _verification_ in
this field?
For we must remember that no man is directly conscious of any mind
except his own. Men cannot exhibit their minds to their neighbors as
they exhibit their wigs. However close may seem to us to be our
intercourse with those about us, do we ever attain to anything more
than our ideas of the contents of their minds? We do not experience
these contents; we picture them, we represent them by certain proxies.
To be sure, we believe that the originals exist, but can we be quite
sure of it? Can there be a _proof_ of this right to make the leap from
one consciousness to another? We seem to assume that we can make it,
and then we make it again and again; but suppose, after all, that there
were nothing there. Could we ever find out our error? And in a field
where it is impossible to prove error, must it not be equally
impossible to prove truth?
The doubt has seemed by no means a gratuitous one to certain very
sensible practical men. "It is wholly impossible," writes Professor
Huxley,[1] "absolutely to prove the presence or absence of
consciousness in anything but one's own brain, though by analogy, we
are justified in assuming its existence in other men." "The existence
of my conception of you in my consciousness," says Clifford,[2]
"carries with it a belief in the existence of you outside of my
consciousness. . . . How this inference is justified, how
consciousness can testify to the existence of anything outside of
itself, I do not pretend to say: I need not untie a knot which the
world has cut for me long ago. It may very well be that I myself am
the only existence, but it is simply ridiculous to suppose that anybody
else is. The position of absolute idealism may, therefore, be left out
of count, although each individual may be unable to justify his dissent from it." |
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