The Psychology Of Consciousness

C Daly King

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136324048
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Atención sanitaria

This is Volume XVI of thirty-eight in the General Psychology series. First published in 1932 this study explores the fact that consciousness is not merely an accidental by-product of human life but rather constitutes the chief goal of living.

CHAPTER I

RELIGION, PSYCHOANALYSIS, PAN-PSYCHISM

IT will be of advantage, we feel, not to dismiss entirely all former attempts to solve the problem of ’ I simply because they appear to have failed to produce any completely satisfactory result. It is possible that we may find some useful items in such previous attempts and a brief review of their leading examples can do us no injury. First of all we might consider the most venerable theory, and one still held in respect if not in awe by vast numbers, the idea, namely, of the ‘ soul ’.

In its crudest form this is the theory that I have, in addition to a body, a soul that animates the body. What is called death is the violent but natural separation of the two, the body thereupon returning to the earth and the soul (which ‘ I ’ accompany) departing to realms unknown, but surmised to be pleasant or the reverse according to the body’s previous conformity to a code of behaviour defined in the doctrine. A refinement, or perhaps the original, of the hypothesis declares that ‘ I ’ am no other than this soul.

The first version has obviously nothing to say concerning the nature of ‘ I ’ but serves merely to push the field of inquiry farther back, since it interposes between ‘ I ’ and my body another entity called my soul. All the same it had this advantage, that it described the soul as a natural phenomenon composed of certain super-gaseous substances. And it preserved a tenable position in relation to scientific criticism by maintaining that a further development of scientific technique and instruments would show its claims to be founded on fact.

The scientific criticism of this position consists, of course, in asserting that the observed facts are fully explicable on much simpler grounds and thus that there exists no rational necessity for the more elaborate hypothesis. On the other hand, the scientist is forced to admit that the principle of parsimony constitutes no final argument, since, after all, the universe may not be constructed for the express purpose of accommodating our mental laziness.

The more seriously considered advocates of the soul-doctrine, however, have nowadays vacated the former relatively advantageous position and they now deny all substance whatsoever to the soul, maintaining that it is simply the animating, supernatural principle of the more concrete body. Thereby they are exposed to much more serious objections than are to be found in the mere principle of parsimony.

For there is nothing supernatural, quite the contrary in fact, about the ‘ animation ’ of a steam engine when a fire is kindled under its boiler or about its ‘ death ’ when the fire goes out. If therefore an animating principle or life-force is the essence of the argument for a soul, the supernatural mystery is quickly resolved into a complicated, but chemical, process.

For our bodies are run—they exhibit those characteristics to which we give the general title, life—by means of a process of oxidation. Fire is fundamentally an oxidation reaction, the flame and heat being byproducts : and the substances that enter our bodies as food, in conjunction with the air we breathe, undergo oxidation or slow burning ; their molecules break down, are re-combined with other chemical substances to nourish the cells of the body, rebuild them and carry off the refuse. Can this process be the soul ? In the end it is the breakdown of this process that is the immediate cause of natural death.

In order to present a sharp contrast between the religious and the biological view, we have undoubtedly attributed to biology, in the position above advanced, a somewhat old-fashioned standpoint. In fact nowadays there exists within biology itself a certain defeatist school, strikingly parallel with the defeatist school in physics, which endeavours in a nebulous way to embrace the soul-doctrine. The up-to-date way of doing this is first to repudiate any straightforward vitalism. In the words of J. S. Haldane, a leader of this biological school, “ The vitalists (have failed) because we can show by observation and experiment that it is impossible to distinguish within the organism any influence not dependent on that of environment, direct or indirect.” ¹ The next step is to repudiate mechanistic interpretations. “ What we actually find is that the life of the organism is an indivisible co-ordinated whole which is constantly maintaining and reproducing itself. The phenomena of life cannot be fitted into the scheme of physico-chemical interpretation.” ² Between these last two sentences there is certainly no such connection that the second follows logically from the first ; and in fact the attempt of this school seems to be, by talking rapidly in circles, so to confuse the issue with sophistries concerning the alleged nature of ‘ wholes ’ that any solution becomes impossible by definition. Thus they say, “We cannot separate organic from environmental structure, any more than we can separate the action of the environment from the reaction of the organism.” ³ This is a strange assertion, for of course we can separate very clearly for example, the phasic nervous impulses originating from environment and the tonic originating within the organism, and in fact modern neurological theory is built around this significant distinction. If the defeatist assertion were true, it would be equally impossible for us to separate the environment from the planet Earth, or the planet from the solar system, or the solar system from the universe, and scientific investigation would become impossible.

The fallacious implication in all of this is really very simple ; it is the illogical notion that because two things are related, they are therefore identical. As we shall see, the Gestalt school in psychology, like the defeatist school in biology, uses this fallacy about ‘ wholes ’ for the purpose of attacking the detailed work of those whose outlook disturbs their own emotional bias against mechanism ; for in fact the ‘ wholes ’ with which the ‘ holists ’ like to deal are no more truly ‘ wholes ’ than the ‘ parts ’ to which they object in the case of others. There is only one real ‘ whole ’, and that is the whole Universe.

For our own purposes it is necessary to notice that the majority of biologists are not of the above opinions. Dr. Crile, for example, who is at least as leading a biologist in America as is Professor Haldane in England, has been engaged for a number of years upon the problem of the ‘ artificial ’ creation of life from non-living material, and his work has progressed so satisfactorily that already it is rumoured that he is on the verge of the accomplishment. Whether he succeeds or not, the great mass of biological opinion is to the effect that this is theoretically possible ; it is thus to the effect that the source of our physical animation is not due to a ‘ soul ’ but to purely physical causes, no matter how complicated or how interrelated with various electrical, chemical and physiological subdivisions of physics they may be.

As Sir Arthur Keith, the President (1927) of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, puts it, “ Now, when physiologists study the living brain of an ape, they have no grounds for supposing that they are dealing with a dual structure. The brain is not a tenement inhabited by a spirit or soul. The ‘ spirit ’ or ‘ soul ’ is but a name for the manifestations of the living brain. The leading neurologists of the world are agreed that the same is true of the human brain.” ¹

Needless to say, such physical sources of our physical energy no longer retain any mystery in principle, nor could they be at all supposed to be eternal. But the adherents of the soul reply that of course they do not mean that the soul is the physical energy that makes the body go ; they have in mind quite another kind of energy, “ spiritual energy ”. We wonder what this can be, since they allege it is not a substance and since, further, we are becoming familiar with the entirely natural process of resupplying those substances that go to make up a man. In vain we ask for information as to the characteristics of such an energy, even non-substantial ones. They reply that although they indeed know nothing of it and have only subjective emotions to support their view, they " have faith ” that it is indeed so.

As Professor Troland of Harvard has remarked, this is only a “ dignified way of avoiding the issue ”.¹ And those of us with less faith or credulity are forced to conclude that the word ‘ energy ’ really has approximately the same meaning for them as for us. In the absence of intelligible evidence to the contrary we must also conclude that they do mean that the soul is the ordinary energy of the body, which, owing to the elusive nature of all energy, is open to mysterious interpretations. For why imagine, without a shred of evidence, that a physical body needs other than physical energy ? Especially when we are in a position not only to identify the energy but to prove that it is sufficient, within a very small fraction, for all that the body does.

This small fraction, of course, might be supposed to be the very loophole for which the vitalists are searching, except for a significant circumstance. Not so long ago this fraction was considerably larger than at present, last year it was larger than now, next year there is every reason to believe that it will continue to shrink, and shortly it will in all probability disappear. In fact, the uncompensated fraction is a measure, not of the intervention of the soul in human activity, but of the difference between perfection and present performance in our instruments, data and calculations regarding the energy intake and the energy output of the human machine. After all, the matter is somewhat complicated, and even vitalistic impatience should allow a few years before prejudging the final result.

But perhaps there is something which is not done through the agency of our bodies ? If this were so, there might be the possibility of our use of other than purely physical energies. But, to anticipate a little, we now have evidence that our thinking and feeling (which used to be considered non-physical activities) are as fundamentally dependent upon physics as the movements of our legs ; and thus, unfortunately, the last vestige of support for our possession of non-physical energy vanishes. For with thinking, feeling and physical movement all our known activities are exhausted.

If ‘ I ’, then, be equated with the soul (as is the case in the theory under discussion), ‘ I ’ become merely an aspect of the operating body mechanism, an aspect that disappears at once with the cessation of the body’s operation. Both ‘ I ’ and the soul become subordinate details of the body, an idea which has recently come into fashion and which we shall investigate later.

But if it still be urged that we are unfair to the soul in dismissing it as not proven, this theory only grows more unsatisfactory upon further examination. For we are asked to regard a serious question as finally answered by an assertion which cannot even be intelligibly formulated. In short, we are asked to “ have faith ”, thus denying one of our most truly human qualities, the impulse to reason. From that position the majority of us would prefer to escape, just as we should flee the incantations of a jungle wizard.

Here indeed, in this matter of ‘ faith ’, is the crux of our modern disagreement with the traditionally established claims of religious dogma. Religion nowadays has two aspects, that of ethics and that of philosophy, the advocacy of a certain code of personal conduct and the advocacy of a particular doctrine purporting to explain the nature of reality. As to the ethics there is good reason to suspect that its mandates are of a social rather than an individual value, but it is the other aspect, that of the interpretation of objective fact, with which we have now to do.

It is this side of religion which, as Dr. Hodgson says (quoted by Dr. Troland),¹ comes down to the following principle : “ ’ Whatever you are totally ignorant of, assert to be the explanation of everything else.’ ” Our very ignorance is the basis underlying our invited agreement, since it is just in regard to those matters on which we possess no knowledge at all, that we are in a position to exercise the greatest ‘ faith ’. The only ground offered for our participation in this view is an appeal to a series of ancient documents, already translated and retranslated, through scores of prejudices.

Now there may be good reason for supposing that the original doctrine of the Church was far more rational and significant than it has become on the lips of its present-day spokesmen. But there is no use in crying for the impossible resuscitation ; we have no clear access to any but modern Church leaders and we must fairly judge of it by their standpoint, or not at all. Unfortunately, the opinions even of those who are inclined to agree regarding the earlier significance of the Church, remain simply speculations, for these persons have no more knowledge than the rest of us of what its earliest significance was.

Whatever therefore may have been the first associations with the word ‘ faith ’, it is impossible to doubt that its present synonym is ‘ credulity ’, i.e., belief without reason, and from such an atmosphere, with such an outlook, we cannot expect the respectable assistance which a serious investigation merits. With the best will in the world we are forced, by the current attitude of the Church itself, to carry our efforts in other directions.

There is another and more sophisticated proposal met with to-day. This is the mind-theory, implicit in much of modern psychology and particularly in psychoanalysis and the psycho-philosophical doctrine of Panpsychism where, more formidably than elsewhere, it is plausibly supported.

‘ I say its adherents, am not a soul but a mind, the argument running as follows : one cannot doubt that consciousness exists : the brain is an organic mechanism which in its nature cannot be equated (although it may be associated) with consciousness. Since the brain itself cannot be conscious and since nevertheless something is indeed conscious, we will call this something ‘ mind ’ ; ‘ I ’ equals mind, because for various reasons (which will appear later) ‘ I ’ cannot equal body, much less that subdivision of body called ‘ brain ’.

That this is mere verbalism based upon the old philosophical theory of parallelism, seems evident upon a little inspection. It amounts to precisely nothing to say that something equals mind equals ‘ I ’ Let us add, “ equals X ”, and we have what is actually put forward, namely, that an unknown is involved, thus leaving the original problem still unsolved. To restate the dilemma, even in novel terms, gets us nowhere.

In fact this line of argument suggests the common attempt to persuade ourselves that we have made progress by supplying a verbal label which, though familiar in sound, lacks any real content. The term ‘ mind ’ as ordinarily used is in fact only an abstraction of ‘ brain and refers to a part only of the operation...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION by DR. WILLIAM M. MARSTON
• FOREWORD. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE QUESTION OF ‘ I ’
• CHAPTER I. RELIGION, PSYCHOANALYSIS, PANPSYCHISM
• CHAPTER II. BEHAVIORISM AND ITS OPPONENTS
• CHAPTER III. INTEGRATIVE PSYCHOLOGY, OR THE SYSTEM OF UNIT RESPONSE
• CHAPTER IV. THE PSYCHONIC THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
• CHAPTER V. INADEQUACIES OF THE OLDER AND MORE RECENT POSITIONS
• CHAPTER VI. CONSCIOUSNESS AS A STATE
• CHAPTER VII. ATTEMPTS AND FAILURES
• CHAPTER VIII. THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
• CHAPTER IX. A PSYCHOLOGICAL TECHNIQUE FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
• CHAPTER X. THE LEGITIMACY OF THE SELF-OBSERVATIONAL TECHNIQUE
• CHAPTER XI. PROVISIONAL CONCLUSIONS
• APPENDIX A. POINTS OF AGREEMENT AND DISAGREEMENT WITH CURRENT THEORIES
• REFERENCES
• INDEX