Psychology · William James
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
We may call these three metaphysical attempts the _monistic_, the _spiritualistic_, and the _atomistic_ theories respectively. Each has its difficulties, of which it seems to me that those of the spiritualistic theory are _logically_ much the least grave. But the spiritualistic theory is quite out of touch with the facts of multiple consciousness, alternate personality, etc. (pp. 207-214). These lend themselves more naturally to the atomistic formulation, for it seems easier to think of a lot of minor consciousnesses now gathering together into one large mass, and now into several smaller ones, than of a Soul now reacting totally, now breaking into several disconnected simultaneous reactions. The localization of brain-functions also makes for the atomistic view. If in my experience, say of a bell, it is my occipital lobes which are the condition of its being seen, and my temporal lobes which are the condition of its being heard, what is more natural than to say that the former _see_ it and the latter _hear_ it, and then 'combine their information'? In view of the extreme naturalness of such a way of representing the well-established fact that the appearance of the several parts of an object to consciousness at any moment does depend on as many several parts of the brain being then active, all such objections as were urged, on pp. 23, 57, and elsewhere, to the notion that 'parts' of consciousness _can_ 'combine' will be rejected as far-fetched, unreal, and 'metaphysical' by the atomistic philosopher. His 'purpose' is to gain a formula which shall unify things in a natural and easy manner, and for such a purpose the atomistic theory seems expressly made to his hand.
But the difficulty with the problem of 'correspondence' is not only that of solving it, it is that of even stating it in elementary terms. "L'ombre en ce lieu s'amasse, et la nuit est la toute." Before we can know just what sort of goings-on occur when thought corresponds to a change in the brain, we must know the _subjects_ of the goings-on. We must know which sort of mental fact and which sort of cerebral fact are, so to speak, in immediate juxtaposition. We must find the minimal mental fact whose being reposes directly on a brain-fact; and we must similarly find the minimal brain-event which can have a mental counterpart at all. Between the mental and the physical minima thus found there will be an immediate relation, the expression of which, if we had it, would be the elementary psycho-physic law.
Our own formula has escaped the metempiric assumption of psychic atoms by _taking the entire thought_ (even of a complex object) _as the minimum with which it deals on the mental_ side, and the entire brain as the minimum on the physical side. But the 'entire brain' is not a physical fact at all! It is nothing but our name for the way in which a billion of molecules arranged in certain positions may affect our sense. On the principles of the corpuscular or mechanical philosophy, the only realities are the separate molecules, or at most the cells. Their aggregation into a 'brain' is a fiction of popular speech. Such a figment cannot serve as the objectively real counterpart to any psychic state whatever. Only a genuinely physical fact can so serve, and the molecular fact is the only genuine physical fact. Whereupon we seem, if we are to have an elementary psycho-physic law at all, thrust right back upon something like the mental-atom-theory, for the molecular fact, being an element of the 'brain,' would seem naturally to correspond, not to total thoughts, but to elements of thoughts. Thus the real in psychics seems to 'correspond' to the unreal in physics, and _vice versa_; and our perplexity is extreme.
Our non-sensational, or conceptual, states of mind, on the other hand, seem to obey a different law. They present themselves immediately as referring beyond themselves. Although they also possess an immediately given 'content,' they have a 'fringe' beyond it (p. 168), and claim to 'represent' something else than it. The 'blue' we have just spoken of, for instance, was, substantively considered, a _word_; but it was a word with a _meaning_. The quality blue was the _object_ of the thought, the word was its _content_. The mental state, in short, was not self-sufficient as sensations are, but expressly pointed at something more in which it meant to terminate. But the moment when, as in sensations, object and conscious state seem to be different ways of considering one and the same fact, it becomes hard to justify our denial that mental states consist of parts. The blue sky, considered physically, is a sum of mutually external parts; why is it not such a sum, when considered as a content of sensation? The only result that is plain from all this is that the relations of the known and the knower are infinitely complicated, and that a genial, whole-hearted, popular-science way of formulating them will not suffice. The only possible path to understanding them lies through metaphysical subtlety; and Idealism and _Erkenntnisstheorie_ must say their say before the natural-science assumption that thoughts 'know' things grows clear.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.