Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling

by Hiram Miner Stanley

These early simple revivals, which are all hallucinatory, perform an important function. They are practically anticipatory, in that the reaction is secured before the actual presence of the reality. Thus they save an actual bodily experience, though the mental is quite real, yet fainter than actual object would give. Thus with an enemy an animal will revive, upon slight indirect sensation, previous experiences, and it will have in ideal form, i.e., without the objective reality, a very real experience with what is to it real enemy, thus escaping before full advent of enemy. When a shadow alarms a low organism—and even very low organisms seem to react to shadows—there is no actual harm done to its members as would happen with a concrete body, and hence there is no direct pain. The shadow is yet taken for real body, and revival pains and revival sensations are attained with this, and there is consequent activity. Shadow does not appear as sign of enemy, but in itself a dangerous reality, so that anticipatory reaction is gained without actual representation. In most cases in low organisms what we take for fear or other emotion is probably no more than revival of the type of which this shadow experience is an example. What is actually unreal, being only revival, is taken for the real, and is acted on accordingly, and in most cases this action is of service as anticipatory. When the organism discovers the shadow to be but shadow, a something, not the object, yet connected with it, when it becomes a sign of further experience, this is representation as the basis of emotions such as fear and anger.

The pain intensity in the simple revivals, re-presentations, is doubtless less than in experience with objective realities, so there is a saving on this score in pseudo-direct experience. While reactions are secured upon this method without injury being actually inflicted, still there is loss of economy in this, that the activity is excessive under the circumstances. Priority of action to real injury is secured, but at an excessive expense of energy, almost equal to that in actual experience with the real thing.

This acting to a false reality, while it has a value for experience, is, as said, uneconomical, and it must sometimes not have the anticipatory force. The cheat and illusion is ultimately at some critical moment cognized by consciousness, revival comes to be estimated at its real worth, and sense of reality and unreality is formed. The revived presentation does not stand in and by itself alone, but it acquires a significance, and it loses the force of complete reality value. That which is brought into consciousness again is not only revival, but is felt to be such.

To constitute representation, then, there must be not merely revival, but sense of revival with some sense of unreality of revival form. But this would avail nothing save it brought in sense of its value for experience. The revival must not only be appreciated as such, but the relation to the experienceable must be cognized. The calling up of the past must be applied to experience. The sight of a fire not only calls up revivals, but there is the sense of the experienceable therewith, and an emotion which incites me to walk to the fire and receive warmth. Mere return and sense of return must be supplemented by sense of value for future experience. Representation is experience doubling on itself. All representation is more than representation of thing, revival; it is representation of experience as such, hence an experience of experience. We must always emphasize as the essence of representation not the revival, but the sense of the experienceable or experienced thereby conveyed.

The process to representation we see exemplified in measure in awaking from a dream. The dream itself, speaking from the objective point of view of observing psychologist who detects no real things in interaction with the body, is representative in nature; but, for the experiencing consciousness, there is no sense of revival, and all is presentative activity. Things are known as such, and not as dreamt or represented. Awaking is a gradual pouring in of sense of revival and of sense of objective unreality of the experience; we become conscious that the activity is no direct consciousness, but a recalling or reproduction. The dream image, which was so real to me while in the dream, I now hold as representative only, as having no immediate answering form and substance. When, as with the superstitious, the dream is felt to have significance, to have a meaning for life in pleasure-pain terms, then emotion becomes possible, and fear, hope and kindred feelings are excited.

We observe that representation is then a new order of consciousness. Representation cannot be attained by any combination of experiences, revival or direct, but it is a unique and reflex act. It is not a development of presentation, as an echo and re-echo of it; and the mere fact of absence of external cause or object does not constitute a cognition as representation. The objectifying is not self-contained, but it conveys a meaning for experience. Representation is an experience which includes some cognizance of or sense of experience, and it is thus the germ of self-consciousness and consciousness of consciousness. Experience comes to be more than a series of detached and isolated activities with no cognitive power beyond a direct and immediate apprehension, but by rising to some appreciation of itself it becomes forewarned and forearmed, able to consciously appreciate and attend to its own welfare.

We have also to emphasize this, that while representation involves a conscious re-objectifying, it must also include some re-feeling consciously accomplished of pain and pleasure. Revivals of pain and pleasure are felt and are appreciated as revivals, as having their basis not in present object, but in previous experience. It is by understanding feeling as experienced and experienceable, it is in view of pleasure-pain experience, that emotion arises. It is not sense of imminence of object, but of imminence of pain and pleasure, that awakens responsive emotion and so self-conservative action. Emotion always implies a pleasure or a pain in ideal sense of the experienceability of either. Representation as cognitive revival and sense thereof is subsidiary to representation as feeling revival with sense thereof. For instance, the representation of a tooth and of pain of toothache are correlative representations. Mere representation of cognition has no value in itself, is a mere idle panorama, save as it brings on representation of pleasure-pain. Unless representation of object implies representation of pain, there is no deterrent effect on the mind, and no proper bodily reaction.

We may believe that the order and basis of the representative side of mind is practically the same as indirect and simple activity, that the actual motive forces and originating impulses are pleasures and pains. We should suspect that the first revival attained was a pure feeling revival, and that the first representation was of pain and pleasure, and not of object, a consciously re-feeling rather than a consciously re-objectifying. The immediate value of the feeling side necessitates that all differentiation be initiated there.

Representation is only of experience of things or of pleasure-pain experience. It is always experience of experience, hence the expression, representation of an object, is, in strictness, inaccurate. Experience of things, as cognitive act, is always presentation. Yet early representation must be considered as very much adulterated by presentative elements. It was only slowly that representation was differentiated as a distinct power such as we find it in human consciousness; at the first it must have resembled the confused state that we sometimes experience between sleeping and waking when a given image often shifts from presentation value to representation value, and then back again.

Representation at the first is also purely concrete and particular. Bare appreciation of the experienceable does not include idea of experience. But representation in itself is merely a calling up and application of definite experiences as such. Experience as general term is not known, but only the particular facts as experiences.