An Introduction to Philosophy

AND

ally in the body. He who believes the mind to be a breath, or a something composed of material atoms, can conceive it as being in the body as unequivocally as chairs can be in a room. Breath

to every one. It is assumed that it is in a particular place in the room and is not in some other place. If, however, I say that the chair is, as a whole, in every part of the room at once, I seem to talk nonsense. This is what Plotinus

igible sense of the word. It will not do to say: I use the word "in," but I do not really mean in

put the mind in the pineal gland in the brain. Yet, as we have seen, he clung

body, in the brain, but he does not put it there frankly and unequivocally. It is

is mind? I think we shall find that he hesitates in his answers. And if we go on to say: Could a line be so drawn as to pass through your image of me and my imag

l its motions. But would he be willing to admit that an increase in the sharpness of sense would reveal to us directly the mind connected with such a body? It is not, then, in the body as the atoms are. It cannot be

gles, at the same time, with the tendency so natural to man to conceive it after the analogy of things material. He thinks of it as in th

pter, we can help him over his difficulty. That mind and body are related th

menon can occupy space—real space, the space of the external world—and that it cannot even have a position in space (section 34). As mental, it is excluded from the objective order altogether. The mind

it? I answer: If it is convenient to use the expression let us continue to do so. Men must talk so as to be understood. But let us not perpetuat

dy as it is not to other material things. We open our eyes, and we see things; we stretch out our hand, and

perceive, in other words, that there is an interacti

by mind, and may have no definite theory at all of the sort of relation that obtains between them. The philosopher tries to attain to a clearer con

a little above in a loose sense to indicate our common experience of the fact that we become conscious of certain changes brought about in our body, and that our purposes realize themselves in action. But ev

currence by a reference to the laws of mechanics; that is to say, we point out that it is merely an instance of the uniform behavior of matter in motion under such an

ctive order. They have their place in the external world. Both the balls are material t

anifestly have no interaction in the sense of the word employed above. As it is, the interaction of physical things is something that we can describe with

of atoms disseminated through my body, its presence in the body appears as unequivocal as the presence of a dinner in a man who has just risen from the table. Nor can the interaction of mind and matter present any unusual difficultie

terial, the case is very different. How shall we conce

milar to that between two material things. When he tells us that the soul brings it about that the gland be

could interact at all. The mind wills, said one philosopher, but that volition does not set matter in motion; when the mind wills, God brings about the appropriate change in material things. The mind perceives things, said an

eraction" to describe the relation between material things and also the relation between mind and body, nor does he dwell upon the difference between the two. He insists that mind and matt

seems to him to be set in motion because he wills it. The relation between his volition and the motion of his hand appears to him to be of much the s

w of the matter only because he has not completely stripped off the tendency to conceive the mind

was capable of expressing himself as follows;[1] "It may be difficult to ascertain the exact point or surface at which the mind and body come together and influence each other, in particular, how far int

w can a material thing and an immaterial thing "come together" at a point or surfac

phenomena to physical phenomena as well as the relations of the latter to each other, we are assimilating heedlessly facts of two different kinds and are obliterating an important distinction. He makes the same objection to calling the relations between

gulf between physical facts and mental facts that he refuses to regard them as parts of the one

a motor nerve to a group of muscles; the muscles contract, and a limb is set in motion. The immediate effects of the blow, the ingoing message, the ch

e brain. What shall be done with this consciousness? The interactionist insists that it must be regarded as a link in the physical chain of causes and effects—he breaks the chain to insert it. The par

ind in the brain is to make of it a material thing; to make it parallel to the brain, in the literal sense of the word, would be just as bad. All that we may understand him t

of describing such experiences. Whatever his theory, he will still say: I am suffering because I struck my hand against that table; I sat down because I chose to do so. His doctrine is not supposed to deny the truth contained in

ensations and ideas to the brain and yet denying

ussed at length in Chapter IV. It was there pointed out that every one distinguishes without difficulty between sensations and thin

tells us that. The experience in question is given together with an experience of the body. This is concomitance of the mental and the physical as it appears in the experi

e somewhat different sensations. As we have seen (section 17), the apparent sizes of things vary as we move, and this means that the quantity of sensation, when I observe the apple from a nearer point, is greater. The man of science tells

mpression made upon my eye by the falling apple is not simultaneous with the fall itself; and if I stand far away it is made a little later than when I am near. In the case in point the differen

of the blow while I see his tool raised above his head. I account for this by saying that it has taken some time

e brain affect the mental life as injuries to other parts of the body do not. Hence, it is concluded that, to get the real time of the emergence of a sensation, we must not inquire merely when an impression was made upon the organ of sense, but must determine when the message sent along the nerve has reached some part of the brain.

kind; with changes in the body, the sensations change. He does not perceive the sensations to be in the body. As I recede from a house I have a whole series of visual experiences differing from each other and ending in a faint speck which bears little resemblance

eference is of precisely the same nature. From our common experience of the relation of the physical and the ment

and that the reference must be of the same nature. The considerations which lead us to refer ideas to the brain are set forth in our physiologies and psychologies. The effect

th the relation between two material things. We explain things, in the common acceptation of the word, when we show that a case under consideration is an exemplification of some general law—when we show, in other words, that it does n

point to those experiences of concomitance that we all have, distinguish them carefully from relations of an

sensation." Perhaps the reader will feel inclined to say here: If you can say as much as th

and their effects. The causes and their effects belong to the one order, they stand in the same series. The relation of the physical to the mental is, as we have seen, a different relation. Hence, the parallelist seems justified in

and VII what space and time—real space and time—are. They are the plan of the real e

e that no series of mental changes can occupy any portion of time, real time, or even fill a single moment in the stream of time. There are many persons to whom this l

brain, and they talk as readily of the moment at which a sensation arises

are determining only the time of the concomitant brain process. Why do we say that a sensation arises later than the moment at which an impression is made upon the organ of sense and earlier than the resulting movement of some group of muscles? Because the change in the brain, to which we refer the s

ons of the earth about the sun. We ask: When did he conceive the plan of writing his Commentaries? If we get an answer at all, it must be an answer of the same kind—some

ing to a point. We may still attribute to it apparent space; may affirm that it seems extended. Let us mark the same distinction when we consider time. The psychologist speaks of the duration of a sensation. Has it real du

uring its real length. We must refer to the clock, to the sun, to some change in the physical world. We seem to live years in a dream; was the dream really a long one? The real length can only be determined, if at all, by a physical reference. Those apparent year

a time and place, and mental phenomena can be ordered by a reference to these. They can be assigned a time and place of existing in a special sense of the words not to be confounded with the sense in which we use the

to-day; my sensation came into being at such a moment; my regret lasted two days. We speak that we may be understood; and such phrases express a trut

that it abandons the plain man's notion of the mind as a substance with its attributes, and makes of it a mere collection of menta

lism, for the view of the mind in question is becoming increasingly popular, and it is now held by influential interactionists as

es and effects, from a blow given to the body to the resulting muscular movements made in self-defense, is an unbroken one, what part can we assign to the mind in the whole

ound up, and we go by ourselves when we have had food. Excepting the fact that other men are conscious, there is no reason why we should not regard the human body as merely an exceedingly complicated machine which is wound up by putting food into the mouth. But it is not merely a machine, because

ufficient to redeem the illustration. Who wants to be an automaton with an accompanying consciousness? Who cares to regard his

all. We surely have evidence enough to prove that minds count for something. No house was ever built, no book was ever written, by a creature without a mind; and the better the house or book, the better the mind. That there is a fixed and absolutel

ter I shall close with a brief summary of the points which the reader

gainst the interactionist's te

The true relation between mental phenomena and physical is given in certai

ould be a particular mental fact without its corresponding physical fact; and it is

this obscures the distinction between it and the relation between f

that they should be brought together. But the fact that the chemist has red hair we rightly look upon as a concomitant phenomenon of no importance. The result would be the same if he had black hair or were bald. But this is not the concomitance that interests the parallelist. The two sorts of concomitance are alike only in the one point. Some phenomenon is regarded a

ding this list of points, one may

ly, it is not the parallelism which is sometimes brought forward, and which peeps out from the citation from Clifford. It is nothing more than an insistence upon the truth that we shoul

comitance"? Have we not seen that the word is ambiguous? I admit the inconsistency and plead in excuse only that I have chosen the lesser of two evils. It is fatally easy to slip into the error of thinking of the mind as t

Truths," Book I, Part II,

," Vol. II, p. 57. Londo