V. THE PRINCIPLES AND LAWS OF PSYCHICAL CAUSALITY.

§ 22. CONCEPT OF MIND.



1. Every empirical science has, as its primary subject of treatment, certain particular facts of experience the nature and reciprocal relations of which it seeks to investigate. In dealing with such facts it is found to be necessary, if science is not to give up entirely the grouping of the facts under leading heads, to have general supplementary concepts which are not contained in experience itself, but are gained by a process of logical treatment of experience. The most general supplementary concept of this kind which has found its place in all the empirical sciences, is the concept of causality. It comes from the necessity of thought which prescribes that all our experiences shall be arranged according to reason and consequent, and that we shall remove, by means of secondary supplementary concepts and if need be by means of concepts of a hypothetical character, all contradictions standing in the way of the establishment of a consistent interconnection of experience in accordance with the principle of reason and consequent. In this sense we may regard all the supplementary concepts which serve for the interpretation of any sphere of experience, as applications of the general principle of causation. These concepts are legitimate in so far as they are required, or at least rendered probable, by the causal principle; they are unwarranted as soon as they prove to be arbitrary fictions resulting from foreign motives, and contributing nothing to the interpretation of experience.

2. The concept matter is a fundamental supplementary concept of natural science formulated under the principle stated. In its most general significance matter is the permanent substratum assumed as existing in universal space, that is, the substratum of the activities to which we must attribute all natural phenomena. In this sense the concept matter is indispensable to every explanation of natural science. The attempt therefore, which has been made in recent times to raise energy to the position of a governing principle, does not succeed in doing away with the concept matter, but merely gives it a different content. This content, however, is given to the concept by means of a second supplementary concept, which relates to the causal activity of matter. The concept of matter which has been accepted in natural science up to the present time, is based upon the mechanical physics of Galileo, and uses as its secondary supplementary concept the concept of force, which is defined as the product of the mass and the momentary acceleration. A physics of energy seeks to introduce everywhere instead of this concept force, the concept energy, which in the special form of mechanical energy is defined as half the product of the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity. Energy, however, must, just as well as force, have a position in objective space, and under certain particular conditions the points from which energy proceeds may, just as well as the point from which force proceeds, change their places in space, so that the concept of matter as a substratum contained in space, is retained in both cases. The only difference, and it is indeed an important one, is that when we use the concept force, we presuppose the reducibility of all natural phenomena to forms of mechanical motion, while when we use the concept energy, we attribute to matter not only the property of motion without a change in the form of energy, but also the property of the transformability of qualitatively different forms of energy into one another without a change in the quantity of the energy.

3. The concept of mind is a supplementary concept of psychology, in the same way that the concept matter is a supplementary concept of natural science. It too is indispensable in so far as we need a concept which shall express in a comprehensive way the totality of psychical experiences in an individual consciousness. The content of the concept, however, is in this case also entirely dependent on the secondary concepts which give a more detailed definition of psychical causality. In the definition of this content, psychology shared at first the fortune of the natural sciences. Both the concept of mind and that of matter arose primarily, not so much from the need of explaining experience as from the effort to reach a fanciful doctrine of the general interconnection of all things. But while the natural sciences have long since outgrown this mythological stage of speculative definition, and make use of some of the single ideas which originated at that time only for the purpose of gaining definite starting points for a strict definition of their concepts, psychology has continued under the control of the mythological metaphysical concept of mind down to most modern times, and still remains, in part at least, under its control. The concept mind is not used as a general supplementary concept which serves primarily to gather together the psychical facts and only secondarily to give a causal interpretation of them, but it is employed as a means of satisfying so far as possible the need of a general universal system, which system includes both nature and individual existence.

4. The concept of a. mind substance in its various forms, is rooted in this mythological and metaphysical need. In the development of this concept there have not been wanting efforts to meet as far as possible, from the metaphysical position, the demand for a psychological causal explanation, but such efforts have in all cases been afterthoughts, and it is perfectly obvious that psychological experience alone, independent of all foreign metaphysical motives, would never have led to a concept of mind substance. This concept has beyond a doubt exercised a harmful influence on the scientific treatment of experience. The view, for example, that all the contents of psychical experience are ideas, and that these ideas are more or less permanent objects, would hardly be comprehensible without such presuppositions. That this concept is really foreign to psychology, is further attested by the close relation in which it stands to the concept of material substance. Mind substance is regarded either as identical with material substance, or else as distinct in nature but yet reducible in its most general formal characteristics to one of the particular concepts of material elements, namely to the concept of the atom.

5. Two forms of the concept mind substance may be distinguished, corresponding to the two types of metaphysical psychology pointed out above (§2, p. 6). The one is materialistic and regards psychical processes as the activities of matter or of certain material complexes such as the brain elements. The other is spiritualistic and looks upon psychical processes as states and changes in an unextended and therefore indivisible and permanent being of a specifically spiritual nature. In this case matter is thought of as made up of similar atoms of a lower order (monistic, or monadological spiritualism), or the mind atom is regarded as specifically different from matter proper (dualistic spiritualism, see table p. 17).

In both its materialistic and spiritualistic forms, the concept mind substance does nothing for the interpretation of psychological experience. Materialism does away with psychology entirely and puts in its place an imaginary brain physiology of the future, or when it tries to give positive theories, falls into doubtful and unreliable hypotheses of cerebral physiology. In thus giving up psychology in any proper sense, this doctrine gives up entirely the attempt to furnish any practical basis for the mental sciences. Spiritualism allows psychology as such to continue, but in the type of psychology which it permits actual experience is entirely subordinated to arbitrary metaphysical hypotheses, through which the unprejudiced observation of psychical processes is obstructed. This appears as a rule in the incorrect statement of the problem of psychology, with which the metaphysical theories start. Such theories regard inner and outer experience as totally heterogeneous, though in some external way interacting, spheres.

6. It has been shown (§ 1, p. 3) that the phases of experience dealt with in the natural sciences and in psychology are nothing but phases of one experience regarded from different points of view; in the natural sciences experience is treated as an interconnection of objective phenomena and, in consequence of the abstraction from the knowing subject, as mediate experience; in psychology experience is treated as immediate and underived.

When this relation is once understood, the concept of a mind substance immediately gives place to the concept of the actuality of mind as a basis for the comprehension of psychical processes. Since the psychological treatment of experience is supplementary to that of the natural sciences, in that the psychological treatment deals with the immediate reality of experience, it follows that there is no place in psychology for hypothetical supplementary concepts such as are necessary in the natural sciences because of the presupposition in the natural sciences of an object independent of the subject. The concept of the actuality of mind, accordingly, does not require any hypothetical determinants to define its particular contents, as does the concept of matter, but quite to the contrary, the concept of actuality excludes such hypothetical elements from the first, by defining the nature of mind as the immediate reality of the processes themselves. However, since one important component of these processes, namely the totality of ideational objects, is, at the same time, the subject of consideration in the natural sciences, it necessarily follows that substance and actuality are concepts which refer to one and the same general experience, with the difference that in each case experience is looked at from a different point of view. If we abstract from the knowing subject in our treatment of the world of experience, that world appears as a manifold of interacting substances; if, on the contrary, we regard the world of experience as the total content of the experience of the subject including the subject itself, then the world appears as a manifold of interrelated occurrences. In the first case, phenomena are looked upon as outer phenomena, in the sense that they would take place just the same, even if the knowing subject were not there at all, so that we may call the form of experience dealt with in the natural sciences outer experience. In the second case, on the contrary, all the contents of experience are regarded as belonging directly to the knowing subject, so that we may call the psychological attitude the attitude of inner experience. In this sense outer and inner experience are identical with mediate and immediate, or with objective and subjective forms of experience. All these terms serve to designate, not different spheres of experience, but different supplementary points of view in the analysis of an experience which is presented to us as an absolute unity.

7. That the method of treating experience employed in natural science should have reached its maturity before that employed in psychology, is easily comprehensible in view of the practical interests connected with the discovery of regular natural phenomena thought of as independent of the subject. It was, furthermore, almost unavoidable that this priority of the natural sciences should, for a long time, lead to a confusion of the two points of view. This did really occur as we see by the different psychological substance concepts. When the reform came in the fundamental position of psychology, and the characteristics and problems of this science were sought, not in the specifically distinct nature of its sphere, but in its method of considering all the contents presented to us in experience in their immediate reality, unmodified by any hypothetical supplementary concepts — when this reform came, it did not originate in psychology itself, but in the single mental sciences. The view of mental processes based upon the concept of actuality, was familiar in these mental sciences long before it was accepted in psychology. This inadmissible difference between the fundamental position of psychology and the mental sciences is what has kept psychology until the present time, from fulfilling its mission as a foundation for all the mental sciences.

8. When the concept of actuality is adopted, one of the questions on which metaphysical systems of psychology have long been divided is immediately disposed of. This is the question of the relation of body and mind. So long as body and mind are both regarded as substances, this relation must remain an enigma in whatever way the two concepts of substance are defined. If they are like substances, then the different contents of experience as dealt with in the natural sciences and in psychology can no longer be understood, and there is no alternative but to deny the independence of one of these forms of knowledge. If they are unlike substances, their connection is a continual miracle. If we start with the theory of the actuality of mind, we recognize the immediate reality of the phenomena in psychological experience. Our physiological concept of the bodily organism, on the other hand, is nothing but a part of this experience, which we gain, just as we do all the other empirical contents of the natural sciences, by assuming the existence of an object independent of the knowing subject. Certain components of mediate experience may correspond to certain components of immediate experience, without there being any necessity of reducing the one component to the other or of deriving one from the other. In fact, such a derivation is absolutely impossible because of the totally different points of view adopted in the two cases. Since we have here, not different objects of experience, but different points of view in looking at a unitary experience, there must be at every point a thoroughgoing relation between the two modes of treatment adopted in the natural sciences and in psychology. It is, furthermore, obvious that the natural sciences never exhaust the total content of reality, there are always a number of important facts which can be approached only directly, or in psychological experience; these are all the contents of our subjective consciousness which do not have the character of ideational objects, that is, are not directly referred to external objects. This includes our whole world of feeling so long as this world is considered entirely from the point of view of its subjective significance.

9. The principle that all those contents of experience which belong at the same time to the mediate or natural scientific sphere of treatment and to the immediate or psychological sphere, are related to each other in such a way that every elementary process on the psychical side has a corresponding elementary process on the physical side, is known as the principle of psycho-physical parallelism. It has an empirico-psychological significance and is thus totally different from certain metaphysical principles which have sometimes been designated by the same name, but which have in reality an entirely different meaning. These metaphysical principles are all based on the hypothesis of a psychical substance. They all seek to solve the problem of the interrelation of body and mind, either by assuming two real substances with attributes which are different, but parallel in their changes, or by assuming one substance with two distinct attributes which correspond in their modifications. In both these cases the metaphysical principle of parallelism is based on the assumption that every physical process has a corresponding psychical process and vice versa, or on the assumption that the mental world is a mirroring of the bodily world, or that the bodily World is an objective realization of the mental. This assumption is, however, entirely indemonstrable and leads in its psychological application to an intellectualism which is contradictory to all experience. The psychological principle of parallelism, on the other hand, as above formulated, starts with the assumption that there is only one experience, which, however, as soon as it becomes the subject of scientific analysis, is, in some of its components, open to two different kinds of scientific treatment, to a mediate form of treatment, which investigates ideated objects in their objective relations to one another, and to an immediate form, which investigates the same objects in their directly known character, and in their relations to all the other contents of the experience of the knowing subject. So far as there are objects to which both these forms of treatment are applicable, the psychological principle of parallelism requires relation at every point between the processes on the two sides. This requirement is justified by the fact that both forms of analysis are in these two cases really analyses of one and the same content of experience. On the other hand, from the very nature of the case, the psychological principle of parallelism can not apply to those contents of experience which are objects of natural-scientific analysis alone, or at least it can apply only in so far as these belong to the ideational contents of our subjective consciousness. Furthermore, the principle in question can not apply to those contents of consciousness which go to make up the specific character of psychological experience. Among the latter we must include the characteristic combinations and relations of psychical elements and compounds. To be sure, there are combinations of physical processes running parallel with the psychical processes, in so far at least as a direct or indirect causal relation must exist between the physical processes the regular coexistence or succession of which is indicated by a psychical interconnection, but the characteristic content of the psychical combination can, of course, in no way be a part of the causal relation between the physical processes. Thus, for example, the elements which enter into a spatial or temporal idea, stand in a regular relation of coexistence and succession in their physiological substrata; or the ideational elements which make up a process in which psychical contents are related or compared, have corresponding combinations of physiological processes of some kind or other, which are repeated whenever these psychical processes take place. But the physiological processes can not contain anything of that which goes to form the specific nature of spatial and temporal ideas, or anything of that which goes to form the relating and comparing processes, because natural science purposely abstracts from all these processes. Then, too, there are two concepts which result from the psychical combinations, which, together with their related affective elements, lie entirely outside the sphere of experience to which the principle of parallelism applies. These are the concepts of value and end. The forms of combination which we see in processes of fusion or in associative and apperceptive processes, as well as the values which they possess in the whole interconnection of psychical development, can only be understood through psychological analysis, in the same way that objective phenomena, such as those of weight, sound, light, heat, etc., or the processes of the nervous system, can be approached only through physical or physiological analysis, that is, through a form of analysis which makes use of the supplementary substance-concepts of natural science.

10. Thus the principle of psycho-physical parallelism, in the incontrovertible empirico-psychological significance above attributed to it, leads necessarily to the recognition of an independent psychical causality, which is related at all points to physical causality and can never come into contradiction with it, but is just as different from this physical causality as the point of view adopted in psychology, or that of immediate subjective experience, is different from the point of view taken in the natural sciences, which as has been pointed out is the point of view of mediate, objective experience due to abstraction. And just as the nature of physical causality can be revealed to us only in certain principles which are valid for all natural phenomena, as for example the principle of inertia, the principle of composition of forces, and the principle of conservation of energy, so also an account of the characteristics of psychical causality can be given only by extracting from the sum total of psychical processes by a process of abstraction the principles of psychical phenomena. Furthermore, as certain general laws of nature, such as the law of gravity, the laws of falling bodies, the laws of oscillation of elastic media, etc., can be derived from certain complex physical phenomena, through the application of the principle of natural causation, so also can the empirical laws of psychic phenomena be referred back to general psychical principles. Among these general laws, those are of special importance for the definition of the total character of mental life which underlie the development of mental products in their historical evolution. These laws may, accordingly, be designated as the general laws of psychical evolution.

References. Volkmann, Lehrbuch der Psychologie, vol. I, Sect. 1. (This presents the substance concept of the Herbartian School, together with an historical review of the development of this concept.) Lotze, Medicin. Psychol., chap. I. (This presents a substance concept which shows some tendencies toward the theory of actuality.) Bain, The Relation of Mind and Body, 1873. (Physiological Theory). L. Busse, Geist und Körper, Seele und Leib (Assumes a psycho-physical interaction). Theory of Actuality: Wundt, Ueber psychische Kausalitat und das Prinzip des psycho-physischen Parallelismus, Phil. Stud., vol. 10; Ueber die Definition der Psychologie, Phil. Stud., vol. 12; Logik, 2nd ed. vol. II, pt. 2, chap. 2. Grundz., 5th ed., vol. III, chaps. 21 and 22; Lectures, lecture 30. Paulsen, (English trans. by Thilley) Introduction to Philosophy. edm. König, Zeitschr. f. Philos., vol. 119 (Principle of Parallelism).