Please assist me with discussion question
Discussion3
Critically think about Early Approaches to Psychology, the Darwinian Revolution and the Assessment of Intelligence. Familiarize yourself with Module 3’s objectives, introduction, video, and articles. Use the articles in Module 3 as your primary reference, then use the St Leo Online Library for peer review sources and to find relevance to this week’s topic.
Please share your information with our classmates on this thread.
The articles to use are attached
Questions:
1). This week our reading focuses on the history and development of tests and measurements. Think about the development of intelligence tests, and what you have read. Our reading highlights the different tests for our sensory systems. Identify the test which you believe to be the most influential in modern psychology. How has this test helped evolve research and findings over the years?
2). Charles Darwin is often said to have made significant contributions to the educational and psychological fields. What influential contributions has he made to psychology that are still referred to even today?
>
Classics in the History of Psychology
An internet resource developed by
Christopher D. Green
York University, Toronto, Ontario
(Return to
Classics index
)
>
V.-MENTAL TESTS AND MEASUREMENTS
by Prof. J. McK. Cattell (
1
890)
First published in Mind, 1
5
, 373-381.
Psychology cannot attain the certainty and exactness of the physical
sciences, unless it rests on a foundation of experiment and measurement.
A step in this direction could be made by applying a series of mental tests
and measurements to a large number of individuals. The results would
be of considerable scientific value in discovering the constancy of mental
processes, their interdependence, and their variation under different circumstances.
Individuals, besides, would find their tests interesting, and, perhaps,
useful in regard to training, mode of life or indication of disease. The
scientific and practical value of such tests would be much increased should
a uniform system be adopted, so that determinations made at different times
and places could be compared and combined. With a view to obtaining
agreement among those interested, I venture to suggest the following
series of tests and measurements, together with methods of making them.[1]
The first series of ten tests is made in the Psychological Laboratory,
of the University of Pennsylvania on all who present themselves, and
the complete series on students of Experimental Psychology. The results
will be published when sufficient data have been collected. Meanwhile,
I should be glad to have the tests, and the methods of making them, thoroughly
discussed.
The following ten tests are proposed:
I. Dynamometer Pressure.
II. Rate of Movement.
III. Sensation-areas.
IV. Pressure causing Pain.
V. Least Noticeable difference in Weight.
VI. Reaction-time for Sound.
VII. Time for naming Colours.
VIII. Bi-section of a 50 cm. Line
IX. Judgment of 10 seconds time.
X. Number of Letters remembered on once Hearing.
[p.37
4
] It will be noticed that the series begins with determinations
rather bodily than mental, and proceeds through psychophysical to more
purely mental measurements.[2]
The tests may be readily made on inexperienced persons, the time required
for the series being about an hour. The laboratory should be conveniently
arranged and quiet, and no spectators should be present while the experiments
are being made. The amount of instruction the experimentee should receive,
and the number of trials he should be given, are matters which ought to
be settled in order to secure uniformity of result. The amount of instruction
depends on the experimenter and experimentee, and cannot, unfortunately,
be exactly defined. It can only be said that the experimentee must understand
clearly what he has to do. A large and uniform number of trials would,
of course, be the most satisfactory, the average, average variation, maximum
and minimum being recorded. Time is, however, a matter of great importance
if many persons are to be tested. The arrangement most economical of time
would be to test thoroughly a small number of persons, and a large number
in a more rough-and-ready fashion. The number of trials I allow in each
test is given below, as also whether I consider the average or ‘best’ trial
the most satisfactory for comparison. Let us now consider the tests in
order.
I. Dynamometer Pressure. The greatest possible squeeze of the
hand may be thought by many to be a purely physiological quantity. It is,
however, impossible to separate bodily from mental energy. The ‘sense of
effort’ and the effects of volition on the body are among the questions
most discussed in psychology and even in metaphysics. Interesting experiments
may be made on the relation between volitional control or emotional excitement
and dynamometer pressure. Other determinations of bodily power could be
made (in the second series I have included the ‘archer’s pull’ and pressure
of the thumb and fore-finger), but the squeeze of the hand seems the most
convenient. It may be readily made, cannot prove injurious, is dependent
on mental conditions, and allows comparison of right-and left-handed power.
The experimentee should be shown how to hold the dynamometer in order to
obtain the maximum pressure. I allow two trials with each hand (the order
being right, left, right, left), and record the maximum pressure of each
hand.
II. Rate of Movement. Such a determination seems to be of considerable
interest, especially in connexion with the preceding. [p.375] Indeed, its
physiological importance is such as to make it surprising that careful
measurements have not hitherto been made. The rate of movement has the
same psychological bearings as the force of movement. Notice, in addition
to the subjects already mentioned, the connexion between force and rate
of movement on the one hand and the ‘four temperaments’ on the other. I
am now making experiments to determine the rate of different movements.
As a general test, I suggest the quickest possible movement of the right
hand and arm from rest through 50 cm. A piece of apparatus for this purpose
can be obtained from Clay & Torbensen, Philadelphia. An electric current
is closed by the first movement of the hand, and broken when the movement
through 50 cm. has been completed. I measure the time the current has been
closed with the Hipp chronoscope, but it may be done by any chronographic
method. The Hipp chronoscope is to be obtained from Peyer & Favarger,
Neuchâtel. It is a very convenient apparatus, but care must be taken
in regulating and controlling it (see MIND No. 42).[3]
III. Sensation-areas. The distance on the skin by which two points
must be separated in order that they may be felt as two is a constant,
interesting both to the physiologist and psychologist. Its variation in
different parts of the body (from 1 to 68 mm.) was a most important discovery.
What the individual variation may be, and what inferences may be drawn
from it, cannot be foreseen; but anything which may throw light on the
development of the idea of space deserves careful study. Only one part
of the body can be tested in a series such as the present. I suggest the
back of the closed right band, between the tendons of the first and second
fingers, and in a longitudinal direction. Compasses with rounded
wooden or rubber tips should be used, and I suggest that the curvature
have a radius of 5mm. This experiment requires some care and skill on the
part of the experimenter. The points must be touched simultaneously, and
not too hard. The experimentee must turn away his head. In order to obtain
exact results, a large number of experiments would be necessary, and all
the tact of the experimenter will be required to determine, without undue
expenditure of time, the distance at which the touches may just
be distinguished.
IV. Pressure causing Pain. This, like the rate of movement, is
a determination not hitherto much considered, and if other more important
tests can be devised they might be substituted for these. But the point
at which pressure causes pain may be an important constant, and in any
case it would be valuable in the diagnosis of nervous diseases and in studying
abnormal states of consciousness. The determination of any fixed point
or quantity in pleasure or pain is a matter of great interest in theoretical
and practical ethics, and I should be glad to include. some such test [p.376]
the present series. To determine the pressure causing pain, I use an instrument
(to be obtained from Clav & Torbensen) which measures the pressure
applied by a tip of hard rubber 5 mm. in radius. I am now determining
the pressure causing pain in different parts of the body; for the present
series commend the centre of the forehead. The pressure should be gradually
increased and the maximum read from the indicator after the experiment
is complete. As a rule, the point at which the experimentee says the pressure
is painful should be recorded, but in some cases it may be necessary to
record the point at which signs of pain are shown. I make two trials, and
record both.
V. Least noticeable difference in Weight. The just noticeable
sensation and the least noticeable difference in sensation are psychological
constants of great interest. Indeed, the measurement of mental intensity
is probably the most important question with which experimental psychology
has at present to deal. The just noticeable sensation can only be determined
with great pains, if at all: the point usually found being in reality the
least noticeable difference for faint stimuli. This latter point is itself
so difficult to determine that I have postponed it to the second series.
The least noticeable difference in sensation for stimuli of a given intensity
can be more readily determined, but it requires some time, and consequently
not more than one sense and intensity can be tested in a preliminary series.
I follow Mr. Galton in selecting ‘sense of effort’ or weight. I use small
wooden boxes, the standard one weighing 100 gms. and the others 101, 102,
up to 110 gms. The standard weight and another (beginning with 105 gms.)
being given to the experimentee, he is asked which is the heavier. I allow
him about 10 secs for decision. I record the point at which he is usually
right, being careful to note that he is always right with the next heavier
weight.
VI. Reaction-time for Sound. The time elapsing before a stimulus
calls forth a movement should certainly be included in a series of psychophysical
tests: the question to be decided is what stimulus should be chosen. I
prefer sound; on it the reaction-time seems to be the shortest and most
regular, and the apparatus is most easily arranged. I measure the time
with a Hipp chronoscope, but various chronographic methods have been used.
There is need of a simpler, cheaper and more portable apparatus for measuring
short times. Mr. Galton uses an ingenious instrument, in which the time
is measured by the motion of a falling rod, and electricity is dispensed
with, but this method will not measure times longer than about 1/3 sec.
In measuring the reaction-time, I suggest that three valid reactions be
taken, and the minimum recorded. Later, the average and mean variation
may be calculated.[4]
VII. Time for naming Colours. A reaction is essentially reflex,
[p.377] and, I think, in addition to it, the time of some process more
purely mental should be measured. Several such processes are included in
the second series; for the present series I suggest the time needed to
see and name a colour. This time may be readily measured for a single colour
by means of suitable apparatus (see MIND No. 42), but for general use sufficient
accuracy may be attained by allowing the experimentee to name ten colours
and taking the average. I paste coloured papers (red, yellow, green and
blue) 2 cm. square, 1cm. apart, vertically on a strip of black pasteboard.
This I suddenly uncover and start a chronoscope, which I stop when the
ten colours have been named. I allow two trials (the order of colours being
different in each) and record the average time per colour in the quickest
trial.
VIII. Bisection of a 50 cm Line. The accuracy with which space
and time are judged may be readily tested, and with interesting results.
I follow Mr. Galton in letting the experimentee divide an ebony rule (3
cm. wide) into two equal parts by means of a movable line, but I recommend
50 cm. in place of 1 ft., as with the latter the error is so small that
it is difficult to measure, and the metric system seems preferable. The
amount of error in mm. (the distance from the true middle) should be recorded,
and whether it is to the right or left. One trial would seem to be sufficient.
IX. Judgment of 10 sec. Time. This determination is easily made.
I strike on the table with the end of a pencil and again after 10 seconds,
and let the experimentee in turn strike when he judges an equal interval
to have elapsed. I allow only one trial and record the time, from which
the amount and direction of error can be seen.
X. Number of Letters repeated on once Hearing. Memory and attention
may be tested by determining how many letters can be repeated on hearing
once. I name distinctly and at the rate of two per second six letters,
and if the experimentee can repeat these after me I go on to seven, then
eight, &c.; if the six are not correctly repeated after three trials
(with different letters), I give five, four, &c. The maximum number
of letters which can be grasped and remembered is thus determined. Consonants
only should be used in order to avoid syllables.
Experimental psychology is likely to take a place in the educational
plan of our schools and universities. It teaches accurate observation and
correct reasoning in the same way as the other natural sciences, and offers
a supply of knowledge interesting and useful to everyone. I am at present
preparing a laboratory manual which will include tests of the senses and
measurements of mental time, intensity and extensity, but it seems worth
while to give here a list of the tests which I look on as the more important
in order that attention may be [p.378] drawn to them, and co-operation
secured in choosing the best series of tests and the most accurate and
convenient methods. In the following series, fifty tests are given, but
some of them include more than one determination.
Sight
1. Accomodation (short sight, over-sight, and astigmatism).
2. Drawing Purkinje’s figures and the blind-spot.
3. Acuteness of colour vision, including lowest red and highest violet
visible.
4. Determination of the field of vision for form and colour.
5. Determination of what the experimentee considers a normal red, yellow,
green and blue.
6. Least perceptible light, and least amount of colour distinguished
from grey.
7. Least noticeable difference in intensity, determined for stimuli
of three degrees of brightness.
8. The time a colour must work on the retina in order to produce a
sensation, the maximum sensation and a given degree of fatigue.
9. Nature and duration of after-images.
10. Measurement of amount of contrast.
11. Accuracy with which distance can be judged with one and with two
eyes.
12. Test with stereoscope and for struggle of the two fields of vision.
13 Errors of perception, including bisection of line, drawing of square,
&c.
14. Colour and arrangement of colours preferred. Shape of figure and
of rectangle preferred.
Hearing.
15. Least perceptible sound and least noticeable difference in intensity
for sounds of three degrees of loudness.
16. Lowest and highest lens audible, least perceptible difference in
pitch for C, C’, C”, and point where intervals and chords (in melody and
harmony) are just noticed to be out of tune.
17. Judgment of absolute pitch and of the nature of intervals, chords
and dischords.
18. Number and nature of the overtones which can be heard with and
without resonators.
19. Accuracy with which direction and distance of sounds can be judged.
20. Accuracy with which a rhythm can be followed and complexity of
rhythm can be grasped.
21. Point at which loudness and shrillness of sound become painful.
Point at which beats are the most disagreeable.
22. Sound of nature most agreeable. Musical tone, chord, instrument
and composition preferred.
[p.379] Taste and Smell.
23. Least perceptible amount of cane-sugar, quinine, cooking salt and sulphuric
acid. and determination of the parts of the mouth with which they are tasted.
24. Least perceptible amount of camphor and bromine.
25. Tastes and smells found to be peculiarly agreeable and disagreeable.
Touch and Temperature.
26. Least noticeable pressure for different parts of the body.
27. Least noticeable difference in pressure, with weights of 10, 100
and 1000 gms.
28. Measurement of sensation-areas in different parts of the body.
29. Accuracy with which the amount and direction of the motion of a
point over the skin can be judged.
30. Least noticeable difference in temperature.
31. Mapping out of heat, cold and pressure spots on the skin.
32. The point at which pressure and heat and cold cause pain.
Sense of Effort and Movement.[5]
33. Least noticeable difference in weight, in lifting weights of 10, 100
and 1000 gms.
34. Force of squeeze of hands, pressure with thumb and forefinger
and pull as archer.
35. Maximum and normal rate of movement.
36. Accuracy with which the force, extent and rate of active and passive
movements can be judged.
Mental Time.
37. The time stimuli must work on the ear and eye in order to call forth
sensations.
38. The reaction-time for sound, light, pressure and electrical stimulation.
39. The perception-time for colours, objects, letters and words.
40. The time of naming colours, objects, letters and words.
41 The time it takes to remember and to come to a decision.
42 The time of mental association.
43. The effects of attention, practice and fatigue on mental time.
Mental Intensity.
44. Results of different methods used for determining the least noticeable
difference in sensation.
45. Mental intensity as a function of mental time.
[p.380] Mental Extensity.
46. Number of impressions which can be simultaneously perceived.
47. Number of successive impressions which can be correctly repeated,
and number of times a larger number of successive impressions must be heard
or seen in order that they may be correctly repeated.
48. The rate at which a simple sensation fades from memory.
49. Accuracy with which intervals of time can be remembered.
50. The correlation of mental time, intensity and extensity.
Remarks by Francis Galton, F.R.S.
(A) One of the most important objects of measurement is hardly if at all
alluded to here and should be emphasised. It is to obtain a general knowledge
of the capacities of a man by sinking shafts, as it were, at a few critical
points. In order to ascertain the best points for the purpose, the sets
of measures should be compared with an independent estimate of the man’s
powers. We thus may learn which of the measures are the most instructive,
The sort of estimate I have in view and which I would suggest should benoted
[? for private use] is something of this kind,-“mobile, eager, energetic;
well shaped; successful at games requiring good eye and hand; sensitive;
good at music and drawing”. Such estimates would be far from worthless
when made after only a few minutes’ talk; they ought to be exact when made
of students who have been for months and years under observation. I lately
saw a considerable collection of such estimates, made by a medical man
for a special purpose. They were singularly searching and they hit off,
with a few well chosen epithets, a very great variety of different characters.
I could not induce the medical man to consent to the publication of specimens
of his excellent analyses, nor even of fancy specimens. Even these would
have sufficed to show that if psychologists seriously practised the art
of briefly describing characters. they might raise that art to a high level.
(B) The method I have long used for testing keenness of eye-sight in
persons whose powers of eye-adaptation are normal, still seems to me quite
effective. It is to register the greatest distance at which numerals printed
in diamond type can be read. Strips of paper cut out at random from a small
sheet printed all over with these numerals, are mounted on blocks set at
successive distances from the eye-hole. They can easily be changed when
dirty. Fair light is wanted, but that is all that is needed for ordinary
test purposes.
C) I have constructed an instrument which is not yet quite as I desire
, of which the first part would I think greatly facilitate [p. 381] the
working with the Hipp chronograph. I had found great trouble in inducing
coarse and inexperienced persons to deliver their blows aright. They bungled
and struck the instrument wrongly, and often broke it. Then I made it more
massive, yet still they broke it and often hurt themselves much in doing
so. My present plan is to give them nothing more than one end of a long
thread to hold. The other end passes round a spring reel, like the tape
in a spring measuring tape. The string when left to itself will reel home
much faster than the swiftest blow can travel. All that the experimentee
does is to retard it; the quickest man retarding it the least. The string
travels smoothly and swiftly in a straight line between two eyelet holes.
A bead attached to that part of the string would make the necessary breaks
of electric contact with great neatness. The thread has a stop to cheek
it when it has run far enough home. My reel is nothing more than a very
light wooden wheel with a groove in it, some 3 inches in diameter, and
with a brass axis turning freely between fixed points. One thread passes
round the axis, and is tied at the other end to an india rubber band. The
other thread passes in the opposite direction round the grooved wheel,
and then through the eyelet holes. The experimentee is placed well back,
quite clear of the apparatus. Nothing can act better than this part of
my new instrument.
(D) I now use a very neat, compact, and effective apparatus (made for
me by Groves, 89, Bolsover Street, Portland Street, W.) which is a half-second’s
pendulum, held by a detent 18º from the vertical. The blow of a released
hammer upon the detent gives the sound-signal and simultaneously lets the
pendulum go. An elastic thread is fixed to the pendulum parallel to its
axis, but about 1½ inch apart from it. As the pendulum oscillates
this thread travels between 2 bars; the one fixed, the other movable. The
fixed bar lies horizontally between the pendulum and the thread and is
graduated. The movable bar nips the thread when a key is touched. Doing
this, constitutes the response. The pendulum itself receives no jar through
the act, owing to the elasticity of the thread. The graduations on the
bar, that forms the chord to an arc of 18º on each side of the vertical,
are calculated and published in the Jour. Anthrop. Inst. early last
year, 1889, together with my description of the first form of the instrument.
I exhibited the revised form of it at the British Association last autumn
; a brief description of it will appear in their Journal. The instrument
is arranged for sight-signals as well. It is also arranged to measure the
rapidity with which any given act can be performed. The experimentee touches
a key that releases the pendulum ; then he performs the act; finally he
touches the second key, that causes the thread to be nipped.
Footnotes
[1] Mr. Francis Galton, in his Anthropometric Laboratory
at South Kensignton Museum, already uses some of these tests, and I hope
the series here suggested will meet with his approval. It is convenient
to follow Mr. Galton in combining tests of body, such as weight, size,
colour of eyes, & c., with psychophysical and mental determinations,
but these latter alone are the subject of the present discussion. The name
(or initials) of the experimentee should be recorded, the nationality (including
that of the parents), and the age, sex, occupation and sate of health.
[See Remark (a) by Mr. Galton]
[2] Sharpness of sight (including colour-vision) and
hearing might, perhaps, be included in the list. I have omitted them because
it requires considerable time to discover the amount and nature of the
defect (which is usually bodily, not mental), and because abundant statistics
have been published, and are being collected by oculists and aurists. [See
Remark ( b )]
[3] See Remark ( c ).
[4] See Remark ( d )
[5] Organic sensations and sensations of motion, equilibrium
and dizziness, should perhaps be included
in this series.
A Selection from The Descent of Man
Charles Darwin
The main conclusion here arrived at, and now held by many
naturalists
who are well competent to form a sound judgment, is that man is
descended
from some less highly organised form. The grounds upon which this
conclusion
rests will never be shaken, for the close similarity between man and
the
lower animals in embryonic development, as well as in innumerable
points
of structure and constitution, both of high and of the most trifling
importance,
– the rudiments which he retains, and the abnormal revisions to which
he
is occasionally liable, – are facts which cannot be disputed. They have
long been known, but until recently they told us nothing with respect
to
the origin of man. Now when viewed by the light of our knowledge of the
whole organic world their meaning is unmistakable. The great principle
of evolution stands up clear and firm, when these groups of facts are
considered
in connection with others, such as the mutual affinities of the members
of the same group, their geographical distribution in past and present
times, and their geological succession. It is incredible that all these
facts should speak falsely. He who is not content to look, like a
savage,
at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe
that
man is the work of a separate act of creation. He will be forced to
admit
that the close resemblance of the embryo of man to that, for instance,
of a dog – the construction of his skull, limbs and whole frame on the
same plan with that of other mammals, independently of the uses to
which
the parts may be put – the occasional re-appearance of various
structures,
for instance of several muscles, which man does not normally possess,
but
which are common to the Quadrumana – and a crowd of analogous facts –
all
point in the plainest manner to the conclusion that man is the
co-descendant
with other mammals of a common progenitor.
We have seen that man incessantly presents individual differences in
all parts of his body and in his mental faculties. These differences or
variations seem to be induced by the same general causes, and to obey
the
same laws as with the lower animals. In both cases similar laws of
inheritance
prevail. Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of
subsistence;
consequently he is occasionally subjected to a severe struggle for
existence,
and natural selection will have effected whatever lies within its
scope.
A succession of strongly-marked variations of a similar nature is by no
means requisite; slight fluctuating differences in the individual
suffice
for the work of natural selection; not that we have any reason to
suppose
that in the same species, all parts of the organisation tend to vary to
the same degree.
By considering the embryological structure of man, – the homologies
which he presents with the lower animals, – the rudiments which he
retains,
– and the reversions to which he is liable, we can partly recall in
imagination
the former condition of our early progenitors; and can approximately
place
them in their proper place in the zoological series. We thus learn that
man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in
its
habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole
structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed
amongst
the Quadrumana, as surely as the still more ancient progenitor of the
Old
and New World monkeys. The Quadrumana and all the higher mammals are
probably
derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long line
of diversified forms, from some amphibian-like creature, and this again
from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the past we can see
that the early progenitor of all the Vertebrata must have been an
aquatic
animal, provided with branchiæ, with the two sexes united in the
same individual, and with the most important organs of the body (such
as
the brain and heart) imperfectly or not at all developed. This animal
seems
to have been more like the larvæ of the existing marine Ascidians
than any other known form.
The high standard of our intellectual powers and moral disposition
is
the greatest difficulty which presents itself, after we have been
driven
to this conclusion on the origin of man. But every one who admits the
principle
of evolution, must see that the mental powers of the higher animals,
which
are the same in kind with those of man, though so different in degree,
are capable of advancement….
The moral nature of man has reached its present standard, partly
through
the advancement of his reasoning powers and consequently of a just
public
opinion, but especially from his sympathies having been rendered more
tender
and widely diffused through the effects of habit, example, instruction,
and reflection. It is not improbable that after long practice virtuous
tendencies may be inherited. With the more civilised races, the
conviction
of the existence of an all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on
the
advance of morality. Ultimately man does not accept the praise or blame
of his fellows as his sole guide though few escape this influence, but
his habitual convictions, controlled by reason, afford him the safest
rule.
His conscience then becomes the supreme judge and monitor. Nevertheless
the first foundation or origin of the moral sense lies in the social
instincts,
including sympathy; and these instincts no doubt were primarily gained,
as in the case of the lower animals, through natural selection.
The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest
but
the most complete of all the distinctions between man and the lower
animals.
It is however impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief
is innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand a belief in
all-pervading
spiritual agencies seems to be universal, and apparently follows from a
considerable advance in man’s reason, and from a still greater advance
in his faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder. I am aware that
the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as
an argument for His existence. But this iS a rash argument, as we
should
thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel and
malignant
spirits, only a little more powerful than man; for the belief in them
is
far more general than in a beneficent Deity. The idea of a universal
and
beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he
has been elevated by long-continued culture….
I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will be
denounced
by some as highly irreligious; but he who denounces them is bound to
shew
why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct
species
by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and
natural
selection, than to explain the birth of the individual through the laws
of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the species and of the
individual
are equally parts of that grand sequence of events, which our minds
refuse
to accept as the result of blind chance. The understanding revolts at
such
a conclusion, whether or not we are able to believe that every slight
variation
of structure, – the union of each pair in marriage, – the dissemination
of each seed, – and other such events, have all been ordained for some
special purpose.
Sexual selection has been treated at great length in this work, for,
as I have attempted to shew, it has played an important part in the
history
of the organic world. I am aware that much remains doubtful, but I have
endeavoured to give a fair view of the whole case. In the lower
divisions
of the animal kingdom, sexual selection seems to have done nothing:
such
animals are often affixed for life to the same spot, or have the sexes
combined in the same individual, or what is still more important, their
perceptive and intellectual faculties are not sufficiently advanced to
allow of the feelings of love and jealousy, or of the exertion of
choice.
When, however, we come to the Arthropoda and Vertebrata, even to the
lowest
classes in these two great Sub-Kingdoms, sexual selection has effected
much….
Sexual selection depends on the success of certain individuals over
others of the same sex, in relation to the propagation of the species;
whilst natural selection depends on the success of both sexes, at all
ages,
in relation to the general conditions of life. The sexual struggle is
of
two kinds; in the one it is between the individuals of the same sex,
generally
the males, in order to drive away or kill their rivals, the females
remaining
passive; whilst in the other, the struggle is likewise between the
individuals
of the same sex, in order to excite or charm those of the opposite sex,
generally the females, which no longer remain passive, but select the
more
agreeable partners….
The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is
descended
from some lowly organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly
distasteful
to many. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from
barbarians.
The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a
wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me,< for the
reflection
at once rushed into my mind - such were our ancestors. These men were
absolutely
naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their
mouths
frothed with excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and
distrustful.
They possessed hardly any arts, and like wild animals lived on what
they
could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to every one
not
of their own small tribe. He who has seen a savage in his native land
will
not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some
more
humble creature flows in his veins. For my own part I would as soon be
descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy
in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon, who
descending
from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a
crowd
of astonished dogs - as from a savage who delights to torture his
enemies,
offers up bloody sacrifices, practises infanticide without remorse,
treats
his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest
superstitions.
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though
not
through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and
the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally
placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the
distant
future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with
the
truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it; and I have given
the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge,
as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy
which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not
only
to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like
intellect
which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar
system
– with all these exalted powers – Man still bears in his bodily frame
the
indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
From Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in
Relation
to Sex (New York: Appleton and Co., 1883), pp. 7, 609, 612-614,
618-619.
This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook,
available
at
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1871darwin.html.
© Paul Halsall Aug 1997 halsall@murray.fordham.edu
An internet resource developed by
Christopher D. Green
York University, Toronto, Ontario
(Return to
Classics index
)
First published in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology,
and Scientific Methods, 1, 477-491.
‘Thoughts’ and ‘things’ are names for two sorts of object, which
common sense will always find contrasted and will always practically
oppose to each other. Philosophy, reflecting on the contrast,
has varied in the past in her explanations of it, and may be expected
to vary in the future. At first, ‘spirit and matter,’ ‘soul and
body,’ stood for a pair of equipollent substances quite on a par
in weight and interest. But one day Kant undermined the soul and
brought in the transcendental ego, and ever since then the bipolar
relation has been very much off its balance. The transcendental
ego seems nowadays in rationalist quarters to stand for everything,
in empiricist quarters for almost nothing. In the hands of such
writers as Schuppe, Rehmke, Natorp, Munsterberg — at any rate
in his earlier writings, Schubert-Soldern and others, the spiritual
principle attenuates itself to a thoroughly ghostly condition,
being only a name for the fact that the ‘content’ of experience
is known. It loses personal form and activity – these passing
over to the content — and becomes a bare Bewusstheit or
Bewusstsein überhaupt of which in its own right absolutely
nothing can be said.
I believe that ‘consciousness,’ when once it has evaporated to
this estate of pure diaphaneity, is on the point of disappearing
altogether. It is the name of a nonentity, and has no right to
a place among first principles. Those who still cling to it are
clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumor left behind by the disappearing
‘soul’ upon the air of philosophy. During the past year, I have
read a number of articles whose authors seemed just on the point
of abandoning the notion of consciousness,[1]
and substituting for it that of an absolute experience not due
to two factors. But they were not quite radical enough, not quite
daring enough in their negations. For twenty years past I have
mistrusted ‘consciousness’ as an entity; for seven or eight years
past I have suggested its non-existence to my students, and tried
to give them its pragmatic equivalent in realities of experience.
It seems to me that the hour is ripe for it to be openly and universally
discarded.
To deny plumply that ‘consciousness’ exists seems so absurd on
the face of it — for undeniably ‘thoughts’ do exist — that I
fear some readers will follow me no farther. Let me then immediately
explain that I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity,
but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function.
There is, I mean, no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted
with that of which material objects are made, out of which our
thoughts of them are made; but there is a function in experience
which thoughts perform, and for the performance of which this
quality of being is invoked. That function is knowing. ‘Consciousness’
is supposed necessary to explain the fact that things not only
are, but get reported, are known. Whoever blots out the notion
of consciousness from his list of first principles must still
provide in some way for that function’s being carried on.
I
My thesis is that if we start with the supposition that there
is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of
which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff ‘pure
experience,’ the knowing can easily be explained as a particular
sort of relation towards one another into which portions of pure
experience may enter. The relation itself is a part of pure experience;
one if its ‘terms’ becomes the subject or bearer of the knowledge,
the knower,[2] the other becomes the object
known. This will need much explanation before it can be understood.
The best way to get it understood is to contrast it with the alternative
view; and for that we may take the recentest alternative, that
in which the evaporation of the definite soul-substance has proceeded
as far as it can go without being yet complete. If neo-Kantism
has expelled earlier forms of dualism, we shall have expelled
all forms if we are able to expel neo-Kantism in its turn.
For the thinkers I call neo-Kantian, the word consciousness to-day
does no more than signalize the fact that experience is indefeasibly
dualistic in structure. It means that not subject, not object,
but object-plus-subject is the minimum that can actually be. The
subject-object distinction meanwhile is entirely different from
that between mind and matter, from that between body and soul.
Souls were detachable, had separate destinies; things could happen
to them. To consciousness as such nothing can happen, for, timeless
itself, it is only a witness of happenings in time, in which it
plays no part. It is, in a word, but the logical correlative of
‘content’ in an Experience of which the peculiarity is that fact
comes to light in it, that awareness of content takes
place. Consciousness as such is entirely impersonal — ‘self’
and its activities belong to the content. To say that I am self-conscious,
or conscious of putting forth volition, means only that certain
contents, for which ‘self’ and ‘effort of will’ are the names,
are not without witness as they occur.
Thus, for these belated drinkers at the Kantian spring, we should
have to admit consciousness as an ‘epistemological’ necessity,
even if we had no direct evidence of its being there.
But in addition to this, we are supposed by almost every one to
have an immediate consciousness of consciousness itself. When
the world of outer fact ceases to be materially present, and we
merely recall it in memory, or fancy it, the consciousness is
believed to stand out and to be felt as a kind of impalpable inner
flowing, which, once known in this sort of experience, may equally
be detected in presentations of the outer world. “The moment
we try to fix out attention upon consciousness and to see what,
distinctly, it is,” says a recent writer, “it seems
to vanish. It seems as if we had before us a mere emptiness. When
we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is
the blue; the other element is as if it were diaphanous. Yet it
can be distinguished, if we look attentively enough, and know
that there is something to look for.”[3]
“Consciousness” (Bewusstheit), says another philosopher,
“is inexplicable and hardly describable, yet all conscious
experiences have this in common that what we call their content
has a peculiar reference to a centre for which ‘self’ is the name,
in virtue of which reference alone the content is subjectively
given, or appears…. While in this way consciousness, or reference
to a self, is the only thing which distinguishes a conscious content
from any sort of being that might be there with no one conscious
of it, yet this only ground of the distinction defies all closer
explanations. The existence of consciousness, although it is the
fundamental fact of psychology, can indeed be laid down as certain,
can be brought out by analysis, but can neither be defined nor
deduced from anything but itself.”[4]
‘Can be brought out by analysis,’ this author says. This supposes
that the consciousness is one element, moment, factor — call
it what you like — of an experience of essentially dualistic
inner constitution, from which, if you abstract the content, the
consciousness will remain revealed to its own eye. Experience,
at this rate, would be much like a paint of which the world pictures
were made. Paint has a dual constitution, involving, as it does,
a menstruum[5] (oil, size or what not) and a
mass of content in the form of pigment suspended therein. We can
get the pure menstruum by letting the pigment settle, and the
pure pigment by pouring off the size or oil. We operate here by
physical subtraction; and the usual view is, that by mental subtraction
we can separate the two factors of experience in an analogous
way — not isolating them entirely, but distinguishing them enough
to know that they are two.
II
Now my contention is exactly the reverse of this. Experience,
I believe, has no such inner duplicity; and the separation of
it into consciousness and content comes, not by way of subtraction,
but by way of addition — the addition, to a given concrete
piece of it, other sets of experiences, in connection with which
severally its use or function may be of two different kinds. The
paint will also serve here as an illustration. In a pot in a paint-shop,
along with other paints, it serves in its entirety as so much
saleable matter. Spread on a canvas, with other paints around
it, it represents, on the contrary, a feature in a picture and
performs a spiritual function. Just so, I maintain, does a given
undivided portion of experience, taken in one context of associates,
play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of ‘consciousness’;
while in a different context the same undivided bit of experience
plays the part of a thing known, of an objective ‘content.’ In
a word, in one group it figures as a thought, in another group
as a thing. And, since it can figure in both groups simultaneously
we have every right to speak of it as subjective and objective,
both at once. The dualism connoted by such double-barrelled terms
as ‘experience,’ ‘phenomenon,’ ‘datum,’ ‘Vorfindung’ —
terms which, in philosophy at any rate, tend more and more to
replace the single-barrelled terms of ‘thought’ and ‘thing’ —
that dualism, I say, is still preserved in this account, but reinterpreted,
so that, instead of being mysterious and elusive, it becomes verifiable
and concrete. It is an affair of relations, it falls outside,
not inside, the single experience considered, and can always be
particularized and defined.
The entering wedge for this more concrete way of understanding
the dualism was fashioned by Locke when he made the word ‘idea’
stand indifferently for thing and thought, and by Berkeley when
he said that what common sense means by realities is exactly what
the philosopher means by ideas. Neither Locke nor Berkeley thought
his truth out into perfect clearness, but it seems to me that
the conception I am defending does little more than consistently
carry out the ‘pragmatic’ method which they were the first to
use.
If the reader will take his own experiences, he will see what
I mean. Let him begin with a perceptual experience, the ‘presentation,’
so called, of a physical object, his actual field of vision, the
room he sits in, with the book he is reading as its centre; and
let him for the present treat this complex object in the commonsense
way as being ‘really’ what it seems to be, namely, a collection
of physical things cut out from an environing world of other physical
things with which these physical things have actual or potential
relations. Now at the same time it is just those self-same
things which his mind, as we say, perceives; and the whole
philosophy of perception from Democritus’s time downwards has
just been one long wrangle over the paradox that what is evidently
one reality should be in two places at once, both in outer space
and in a person’s mind. ‘Representative’ theories of perception
avoid the logical paradox, but on the other hand they violate the
reader’s sense of life, which knows no intervening mental image
but seems to see the room and the book immediately just as they
physically exist.
The puzzle of how the one identical room can be in two places
is at bottom just the puzzle of how one identical point can be
on two lines. It can, if it be situated at their intersection;
and similarly, if the ‘pure experience’ of the room were a place
of intersection of two processes, which connected it with different
groups of associates respectively, it could be counted twice over,
as belonging to either group, and spoken of loosely as existing
in two places, although it would remain all the time a numerically
single thing.
Well, the experience is a member of diverse processes that can
be followed away from it along entirely different lines. The one
self-identical thing has so many relations to the rest of experience
that you can take it in disparate systems of association, and
treat it as belonging with opposite contexts. In one of these
contexts it is your ‘field of consciousness’; in another it is
‘the room in which you sit,’ and it enters both contexts in its
wholeness, giving no pretext for being said to attach itself to
consciousness by one of its parts or aspects, and to out reality
by another. What are the two processes, now, into which the room-experience
simultaneously enters in this way?
One of them is the reader’s personal biography, the other is the
history of the house of which the room is part. The presentation,
the experience, the that in short (for until we have decided
what it is it must be a mere that) is the last term
in a train of sensations, emotions, decisions, movements, classifications,
expectations, etc., ending in the present, and the first term
in a series of ‘inner’ operations extending into the future, on
the reader’s part. On the other hand, the very same that
is the terminus ad quem of a lot of previous physical operations,
carpentering, papering, furnishing, warming, etc., and the terminus
a quo of a lot of future ones, in which it will be concerned
when undergoing the destiny of a physical room. The physical and
the mental operations form curiously incompatible groups. As a
room, the experience has occupied that spot and had that environment
for thirty years. As your field of consciousness it may never
have existed until now. As a room, attention will go on to discover
endless new details in it. As your mental state merely, few new
ones will emerge under attention’s eye. As a room, it will take
an earthquake, or a gang of men, and in any case a certain amount
of time, to destroy it. As your subjective state, the closing
of your eyes, or any instantaneous play of your fancy will suffice.
In the real world, fire will consume it. In your mind, you can
let fire play over it without effect. As an outer object, you
must pay so much a month to inhabit it. As an inner content, you
may occupy it for any length of time rent-free. If, in short,
you follow it in the mental direction, taking it along with events
of personal biography solely, all sorts of things are true of
it which are false, and false of it which are true if you treat
it as a real thing experienced, follow it in the physical direction,
and relate it to associates in the outer world.
III
So far, all seems plain sailing, but my thesis will probably grow
less plausible to the reader when I pass from percepts to concepts,
or from the case of things presented to that of things remote.
I believe, nevertheless, that here also the same law holds good.
If we take conceptual manifolds, or memories, or fancies, they
also are in their first intention mere bits of pure experience,
and, as such, are single thats which act in one context
as objects, and in another context figure as mental states. By
taking them in their first intention, I mean ignoring their relation
to possible perceptual experiences with which they may be connected,
which they may lead to and terminate in, and which then they may
be supposed to ‘represent.’ Taking them in this way first, we
confine the problem to a world merely ‘thought of’ and not directly
felt or seen. This world, just like the world of percepts, comes
to us at first as a chaos of experiences, but lines of order soon
get traced. We find that any bit of it which we may cut out as
an example is connected with distinct groups of associates, just
as our perceptual experiences are, that these associates link
themselves with it by different relations,[6]
and that one forms the inner history of a person, while the other
acts as an impersonal ‘objective’ world, either spatial and temporal,
or else merely logical or mathematical, or otherwise ‘ideal.’
The first obstacle on the part of the reader to seeing that these
non-perceptual experiences have objectivity as well as subjectivity
will probably be due to the intrusion into his mind of percepts,
that third group of associates with which the non-perceptual experiences
have relations, and which, as a whole, they ‘represent,’ standing
to them as thoughts to things. This important function of non-perceptual
experiences complicates the question and confuses it; for, so
used are we to treat percepts as the sole genuine realities that,
unless we keep them out of the discussion, we tend altogether
to overlook the objectivity that lies in non-perceptual experiences
by themselves. We treat them, ‘knowing’ percepts as they do, as
through and through subjective, and say that they are wholly constituted
of the stuff called consciousness, using this term now for a kind
of entity, after the fashion which I am seeking to refute.[7]
Abstracting, then, from percepts altogether, what I maintain is,
that any single non-perceptual experience tends to get counted
twice over, just as a perceptual experience does, figuring in
one context as an object or field of objects, in another as a
state of mind: and all this without the least internal self-diremption
on its own part into consciousness and content. It is all consciousness
in one taking; and, in the other, all content.
I find this objectivity of non-perceptual experiences, this complete
parallelism in point of reality between the presently felt and
the remotely thought, so well set forth in a page of Münsterberg’s
Grundzuge, that I will quote it as it stands.
“I may only think of my objects,” says Professor Munsterberg;
“yet, in my living thought they stand before me exactly as
perceived objects would do, no matter how different the two ways
of apprehending them may be in their genesis. The book here lying
on the table before me, and the book in the next room of which
I think and which I mean to get, are both in the same sense given
realities for me, realities which I acknowledge and of which I
take account. If you agree that the perceptual object is not an
idea within me, but that percept and thing, as indistinguishably
one, are really experienced there, outside, you
ought not to believe that the merely thought-of object is hid
away inside of the thinking subject. The object of which I think,
and of whose existence I take cognizance without letting it now
work upon my senses, occupies its definite place in the outer
world as much as does the object which I directly see.”
“What is true of the here and the there, is also true of
the now and the then. I know of the thing which is present and
perceived, but I know also of the thing which yesterday was but
is no more, and which I only remember. Both can determine my present
conduct, both are parts of the reality of which I keep account.
It is true that of much of the past I am uncertain, just as I
am uncertain of much of what is present if it be but dimly perceived.
But the interval of time does not in principle alter my relation
to the object, does not transform it from an object known into
a mental state…. The things in the room here which I survey,
and those in my distant home of which I think, the things of this
minute and those of my long vanished boyhood, influence and decide
me alike, with a reality which my experience of them directly
feels. They both make up my real world, they make it directly,
they do not have first to be introduced to me and mediated by
ideas which now and here arise within me…. This not-me character
of my recollections and expectations does not imply that the external
objects of which I am aware in those experiences should necessarily
be there also for others. The objects of dreamers and hallucinated
persons are wholly without general validity. But even were they
centaurs and golden mountains, they still would be ‘off there,’
in fairy land, and not ‘inside’ of ourselves.”[8]
This certainly is the immediate, primary, naïf, or practical
way of taking our thought-of world. Were there no perceptual world
to serve as its ‘reductive,’ in Taine’s sense, by being ‘stronger’
and more genuinely ‘outer’ (so that the whole merely thought-of
world seems weak and inner in comparison), our world of thought
would be the only world, and would enjoy complete reality in our
belief. This actually happens in our dreams, and in our day-dreams
so long as percepts do not interrupt them.
And yet, just as the seen room (to go back to our late example)
is also a field of consciousness, so the conceived or recollected
room is also a state of mind; and the doubling-up of the
experience has in both cases similar grounds.
The room thought-of, namely, has many thought-of couplings with
many thought-of things. Some of these couplings are inconstant,
others are stable. In the reader’s personal history the room occupies
a single date — he saw it only once perhaps, a year ago. Of the
house’s history, on the other hand, it forms a permanent ingredient.
Some couplings have the curious stubbornness, to borrow Royce’s
term, of fact; others show the fluidity of fancy — we let them
come and go as we please. Grouped with the rest of its house,
with the name of its town, of its owner, builder, value, decorative
plan, the room maintains a definite foothold, to which, if we
try to loosen it, it tends to return and to reassert itself with
force.[9] With these associates, in a word,
it coheres, while to other houses, other towns, other owners,
etc., it shows no tendency to cohere at all. The two collections,
first of its cohesive, and, second, of its loose associates, inevitably
come to be contrasted. We call the first collection the system
of external realities, in the midst of which the room, as ‘real,’
exists; the other we call the stream of internal thinking, in
which, as a ‘mental image,’ it for a moment floats.[10]
The room thus again gets counted twice over. It plays two different
rôles, being Gedanke and Gedachtes, the thought-of-an-object,
and the object-thought-of, both in one; and all this without paradox
or mystery, just as the same material thing may be both low and
high, or small and great, or bad and good, because of its relations
to opposite parts of an environing world.
As ‘subjective’ we say that the experience represents; as ‘objective’
it is represented. What represents and what is represented is
here numerically the same; but we must remember that no dualism
of being represented and representing resides in the experience
per se. In its pure state, or when isolated, there is no
self-splitting of it into consciousness and what the consciousness
is ‘of.’ Its subjectivity and objectivity are functional attributes
solely, , realized only when the experience is ‘take,’ i.e.,
talked-of, twice, considered along with its two differing contexts
respectively, by a new retrospective experience, of which that
whole past complication now forms the fresh content. The instant
field of the present is at all times what I call the ‘pure’ experience.
It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as
yet. For the time being, it is plain, unqualified actuality, or
existence, a simple that. In this naïf immediacy
it is of course valid; it is there, we act
upon it; and the doubling of it in retrospection into a state
of mind and a reality intended thereby, is just one of the acts.
The ‘state of mind,’ first treated explicitly as such in retrospection,
will stand corrected or confirmed, and the retrospective experience
in its turn will get a similar treatment; but the immediate experience
in its passing is [11]’truth,’ practical truth,
something to act on, at its own movement. If the world
were then and there to go out like a candle, it would remain truth
absolute and objective, for it would be ‘the last word,’ would
have no critic, and no one would ever oppose the thought in it
to the reality intended.[12] I think I may
now claim to have made my thesis clear. Consciousness connotes
a kind of external relation, and does not denote a special stuff
or way of being. The peculiarity of our experiences, that they
not only are, but are known, which their ‘conscious’ quality is
invoked to explain, is better explained by their relations —
these relations themselves being experiences — to oneanother.
IV
Were I now to go on to treat of the knowing of perceptual by conceptual
experiences, it would again prove to be an affair of external
relations. One experience would be the knower, the other the reality
known; and I could perfectly well define, without the notion of
‘consciousness,’ what the knowing actually and practically amounts
to — leading-towards, namely, and terminating-in percepts, through
a series of transitional experiences which the world supplies.
But I will not treat of this, space being insufficient.[13]
I will rather consider a few objections that are sure to be urged
against the entire theory as it stands.
V
First of all, this will be asked: “If experience has not
‘conscious’ existence, if it be not partly made of ‘consciousness,’
of what then is it made? Matter we know, and thought we know,
and conscious content we know, but neutral and simple ‘pure experience’
is something we know not at all. Say what it consists of
— for it must consist of something — or be willing to give it
up!”
To this challenge the reply is easy. Although for fluency’s sake
I myself spoke early in this article of a stuff of pure experience,
I have now to say that there is no general stuff of which
experience at large is made. There are as many stuffs as there
are ‘natures’ in the things experienced. If you ask what any one
bit of pure experience is made of, the answer is always the same:
“It is made of that, of just what appears, of space,
of intensity, of flatness, brownness, heaviness, or what not.”
Shadworth Hodgson’s analysis here leaves nothing to be desired.(1)
Experience is only a collective name for all these sensible natures,
and save for time and space (and, if you like, for ‘being’) there
appears no universal element of which all things are made.
VI
The next objection is more formidable, in fact it sounds quite
crushing when one hears it first.
“If it be the self-same piece of pure experience, taken twice
over, that serves now as thought and now as thing” — so
the objection runs – “how comes it that its attributes should
differ so fundamentally in the two takings. As thing, the experience
is extended; as thought, it occupies no space or place. As thing,
it is red, hard, heavy; but who ever heard of a red, hard or heavy
thought? Yet even now you said that an experience is made of just
what appears, and what appears is just such adjectives. How can
the one experience in its thing-function be made of them, consist
of them, carry them as its own attributes, while in its thought-function
it disowns them and attributes them elsewhere. There is a self-contradiction
here from which the radical dualism of thought and thing is the
only truth that can save us. Only if the thought is one kind of
being can the adjectives exist in it ‘intentionally’ (to use the
scholastic term); only if the thing is another kind, can they
exist in it constitutively and energetically. No simple subject
can take the same adjectives and at one time be qualified by it,
and at another time be merely ‘of’ it, as of something only meant
or known.”
The solution insisted on by this objector, like many other common-sense
solutions, grows the less satisfactory the more one turns it in
one’s mind. To begin with, are thought and thing as heterogeneous
as is commonly said?
No one denies that they have some categories in common. Their
relations to time are identical. Both, moreover, may have parts
(for psychologists in general treat thoughts as having them);
and both may be complex or simple. Both are of kinds, can be compared,
added and subtracted and arranged in serial orders. All sorts
of adjectives qualify our thoughts which appear incompatible with
consciousness, being as such a bare diaphaneity. For instance,
they are natural and easy, or laborious. They are beautiful, happy,
intense, interesting, wise, idiotic, focal, marginal, insipid,
confused, vague, precise, rational, causal, general, particular,
and many things besides. Moreover, the chapters on ‘Perception’
in the psychology books are full of facts that make for the essential
homogeneity of thought with thing. How, if ‘subject’ and ‘object’
were separated ‘by the whole diameter of being,’ and had no attributes
and common, could it be so hard to tell, in a presented and recognized
material object, what part comes in through the sense organs and
what part comes ‘out of one’s own head’? Sensations and apperceptive
ideas fuse here so intimately that you can no more tell where
one begins and the other ends, than you can tell, in those cunning
circular panoramas that have lately been exhibited, where the
real foreground and the painted canvas [14].
Descartes for the first time defined thought as the absolutely
unextended, and later philosophers have accepted the description
as correct. But what possible meaning has it to say that, when
we think of a foot-rule or a square yard, extension is not attributable
to our thought? Of every extended object the adequate mental
picture must have all the extension of the object itself. The
difference between objective and subjective extension is one of
relation to a context solely. In the mind the various extents
maintain no necessarily stubborn order relatively to each other,
while in the physical world they bound each other stably, and,
added together, make the great enveloping Unit which we believe
in and call real Space. As ‘outer,’ they carry themselves adversely,
so to speak, to one another, exclude one another and maintain
their distances; while, as ‘inner,’ their order is loose, and
they form a durcheinander in which unity is lost.(1) But
to argue from this that inner experience is absolutely inextensive
seems to me little short of absurd. The two worlds differ, not
by the presence or absence of extension, but by the relations
of the extensions which in both worlds exist.
Does not this case of extension now put us on the track of truth
in the case of other qualities? It does; and I am surprised that
the facts should not have been noticed long ago. Why, for example,
do we call a fire hot, and water wet, and yet refuse to say that
our mental state, when it is ‘of’ these objects, is either wet
or hot? ‘Intentionally,’ at any rate, and when the mental state
is a vivid image, hotness and wetness are in it just as much as
they are in the physical experience. The reason is this, that,
as the general chaos of all our experiences gets sifted, we find
that there are some fires that will always burn sticks and always
warm our bodies, and that there are some waters that will always
put out fires; while there are other fires and waters that will
not act at all. The general group of experiences that act, that
do not only possess their natures intrinsically, but wear them
adjectively and energetically, turning them against one another,
comes inevitably to be contrasted with the group whose members,
having identically the same natures, fail to manifest them in
the ‘energetic’ way. I make for myself now an experience of blazing
fire; I place it near my body; but it does not warm me in the
least. I lay a stick upon it, and the stick either burns or remains
green, as I please. I call up water, and pour it on the fire,
and absolutely no difference ensues. I account for all such facts
by calling this whole train of experiences unreal, a mental train.
Mental fire is what won’t burn real sticks; mental water is what
won’t necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mental
fire. Mental knives may be sharp, but they won’t cut real wood.
Mental triangles are pointed, but their points won’t wound. With
‘real’ objects, on the contrary, consequences always accrue; and
thus the real experiences get sifted from the mental ones, the
things from out thoughts of them, fanciful or true, and precipitated
together as the stable part of the whole experience-chaos, under
the name of the physical world. Of this our perceptual experiences
are the nucleus, they being the originally strong experiences.
We add a lot of conceptual experiences to them, making these strong
also in imagination, and building out the remoter parts of the
physical world by their means; and around this core of reality
the world of laxly connected fancies and mere rhapsodical objects
floats like a bank of clouds. In the clouds, all sorts of rules
are violated which in the core are kept. Extensions there can
be indefinitely located; motion there obeys no Newton’s laws.
VII
There is a peculiar class of experience to which, whether we take
them as subjective or as objective, we assign their several
natures as attributes, because in both contexts they affect their
associates actively, though in neither quite as ‘strongly’ or
as sharply as things affect one another by their physical energies.
I refer here to appreciations, which form an ambiguous
sphere of being, belonging with emotion on the one hand, and having
objective ‘value’ on the other, yet seeming not quite inner nor
quite outer, as if a diremption had begun but had not made itself
complete.
Experiences of painful objects, for example, are usually also
painful experiences; perceptions of loveliness, of ugliness, tend
to pass muster as lovely or as ugly perceptions; intuitions of
the morally lofty are lofty intuitions. Sometimes the adjective
wanders as if uncertain where to fix itself. Shall we speak of
seductive visions or of visions of seductive things? Of healthy
thoughts or of thoughts of healthy objects? Of good impulses,
or of impulses towards the good? Of feelings of anger, or of angry
feelings? Both in the mind and in the thing, these natures modify
their context, exclude certain associates and determine others,
have their mates and incompatibles. Yet not as stubbornly as in
the case of physical qualities, for beauty and ugliness, love
and hatred, pleasant and painful can, in certain complex experiences,
coexist.
If one were to make an evolutionary construction of how a lot
of originally chaotic pure experience became gradually differentiated
into an orderly inner and outer world, the whole theory would
turn upon one’s success in explaining how or why the quality of
an experience, once active, could become less so, and, from being
an energetic attribute in some cases, elsewhere lapse into the
status of an inert or merely internal ‘nature.’ This would be
the ‘evolution’ of the psychical from the bosom of the physical,
in which the esthetic, moral and otherwise emotional experiences
would represent a halfway stage.
VIII
But a last cry of non possumus will probably go up from
many readers. “All very pretty as a piece of ingenuity,”
they will say, “but our consciousness itself intuitively
contradicts you. We, for our part, know that we are conscious.
We feel our thought, flowing as a life within us, in absolute
contrast with the objects which it so unremittingly escorts. We
can not be faithless to this immediate intuition. The dualism
is a fundamental datum: Let no man join what God has put
asunder.”
My reply to this is my last word, and I greatly grieve that to
many it will sound materialistic. I can not help that, however,
for I, too, have my intuitions and I must obey them. Let the case
be what it may in others, I am as confident as I am of anything
that, in myself, the stream of thinking (which I recognize emphatically
as a phenomenon) is only a careless name for what, when scrutinized,
reveals itself to consist chiefly of the stream of my breathing.
The ‘I think’ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my
objects, is the ‘I breath’ which actually does accompany them.
There are other internal facts besides breathing (intracephalic
muscular adjustments, etc., of which I have said a word in my
larger Psychology), and these increase the assets of ‘consciousness,’
so far as the latter is subject to immediate perception; but breath,
which was ever the original of ‘spirit,’ breath moving outwards,
between the glottis and the nostrils, is, I am persuaded, the
essence out of which philosophers have constructed the entity
known to them as consciousness. That entity is fictitious,
while thoughts in the concrete are fully real. But thoughts in
the concrete are made of the same stuff as things are.
I wish I might believe myself to have made that plausible in this
article. IN another article I shall try to make the general notion
of a world composed of pure experiences still more clear.
Footnotes
1. Articles by Bawden, King, Alexander, and others.
Dr. Perry is frankly over the border
2. In my Psychology I have tried to show that we
need no knower other than the “passing thought.” [Principles
of Psychology, vol. I, pp. 338 ff.]
3. G.E. Moore: Mind, vol. XII, N.S., [1903],
p.450
4. Paul Natorp: EinleitungindiePsychologie,
1888, pp. 14, 112.
5. “Figuratively speaking, consciousness may
be said to be the one universal solvent, or menstruum, in which
the different concrete kinds of psychic acts and facts are contained,
whether in concealed or in obvious form.” G.T.Ladd: Psychology,
Descriptiveand Explanatory, 1894, p.30.
6. Here as elsewhere the relations are of course
experienced relations, members of the same originally chaotic
manifold of nonperceptual experience of which the related terms
themselves are parts.
7. Of the representative functions of non-perceptual
experience as a whole, I will say a word in a subsequent article;
it leads too far into the general theory of knowledge for much
to be said about it in a short paper like this.
8. Munsterberg: Grundzugeder Psychologie,
vol. I, p. 48.
9. Cf. A.L. Hodder: The Adversaries of the
Sceptic, pp.94-99.
10. For simplicity’s sake I confine my exposition
to “external” reality. But there is also the system
of ideal reality in which the room plays its part. Relations of
comparison, of classification, serial order, value, also are stubborn,
assign a definite place to the room, unlike the incoherence of
its places in the mere rhapsody of our successive thoughts.
11. Note the ambiguity of this term, which is taken
sometimes objectively and sometimes subjectively.
12. In the Psychological Review for July
[1904], Dr. R.B. Perry has published a view of Consciousness which
comes nearer to mine than any other with which I am acquainted.
At present, Dr. Perry thinks, every field of experience is so
much “fact.” It becomes “opinion” or ‘thought”
only in retrospection, when a fresh experience, thinking the same
object, alters and corrects it. But the corrective experience
becomes itself in turn corrected, and thus the experience as a
whole is a process in which what is objective originally forever
turns subjective, turns into our apprehension of the object. I
strongly recommend Dr. Perry’s admirable article to my readers.
13. I have given a partial account of the matter
in Mind, vol. X, p. 27, 1885, and in the Psychological
Review, vol. II, p. 105, 1895. See also C.A. Strong’s article
in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods,
vol I, p. 253, May 12, 1904. I hope myself very soon to recur
to the matter.
14. Spencer’s proof of his ‘Transfigured Realism’
(his doctrine that there is an absolutely non-mental reality)
comes to mind as a splendid instance of the impossibility of establishing
radical heterogeneity between thought and thing. All his painfully
accumulated points of difference run gradually into their opposites,
and are full of exceptions.
Classics in the History of Psychology
An internet resource developed by
Christopher D. Green
York University, Toronto, Ontario
ISSN 1492-3173
(Return to
Classics index
)
C. SPEARMAN (1904)
First published in American Journal of Psychology 15,
201-293
Posted May 2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| Chap. I. | Introductory. | PAGE | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1. Signs of Weakness in Experimental Psychology | 202 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2. The Cause of this Weakness | 203 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3. The Identities of Science | 204 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4. Scope of the Present Experiments | 205 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chap. II. | Historical and Critical | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1. History of Previous Researches | 206 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2. Conclusions to be drawn from these Previous Researches | 219 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3. Criticism of Prevalent Working Methods | 222 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chap. III. | Preliminary Investigation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1. Obviation of the Four Faults Quoted | 225 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2. Definition of the Correspondence Sought | 226 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3. Irrelevancies from Practice | 227 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (a) Pitch | 228 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (b) Sight | 232 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (c) Weight | 233 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (d) Intelligence | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4. Irrelevancies from Age | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5. Irrelevancies from Sex | 235 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 6. The Elimination of these Irrelevancies | 236 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 7. Alternations and Equivocalities | 238 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chap. IV. | Description of the Present Experiments | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1. Choice of Laboratory Psychics | 241 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2. Instruments | 242 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (a) Sound | 243 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (b) Light | 244 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 245 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3. Modes of Procedure | 246 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (a) Experimental Series I | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (b) ” ” II |
247 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (c) ” ” III |
248 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (d) ” ” IV |
249 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (e) ” ” V |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4. The Estimation of Intelligence | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5. Procedure in Deducing Results | 252 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (a) Method of Correlation | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (b) Elimination of Observational Errors | 253 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (c) Elimination of Irrelevant Factors | 255 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chap. V. | The Present Results | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1. Method and Meaning of Demonstration | 256 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2. Correspondence between the Discrimination and the Intelligence | 259 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (b) ” ” II |
263 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (c) ” ” III |
264 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (d) ” ” IV |
265 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (e) Conclusions | 268 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3. Correspondence between General Discrimination and General Intelligence | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (a) Village School | 269 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (b) The High Class School | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (c) Practical Verification of the Argument | 271 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (d) Conclusion | 272 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4. Universal Unity of the Intellective Function | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5. The Hierarchy of the Intelligences | 274 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 6. Outer Factors Determining the Amount of Correlation | 277 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 7. Previous Researches Conflicting with the Present Results | 279 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 8. Summary of Conclusions | 283 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Appendix | Tabular Statements of Original Data and Calculated Correlations | 286 |
