International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1 / Philosophy and Metaphysics

by Unknown

[6] According to Plato, it is true, the ideas are separated from the sensible things; they must be thought in a conceptual place, for the space of senseperception is to be understood as non-being, matter. The things revealed to sense, however, occupy a middle position between being and non-being, so that they partake of the ideas. In this sense, the statement made above holds also of the older view of the concept philosophy.

[7] Cf. the articles on Francis Bacon by Chr. Sigwart in the Preussische Jahrbücher, xii, 1863, and xiii, 1864.

[8] Kant, Kr. d. r. V., 1st ed., pp. 100 f.

[9] It is not our present concern to ascertain how this actually happens. The psychological presuppositions of the present paper are contained in the theory of reproduction that I have worked out in connection with the psychology of speech in the articles on "Die psychologischen Grundlagen der Beziehungen zwischen Sprechen und Denken," Archiv für systematische Philosophie, II, III, und VII; cf. note 1, page 151.

[10] Cf. the author's "Umrisse zur Psychologie des Denkens," in Philosophische Abhandlungen Chr. Sigwart ... gewidmet, Tübingen, 1900.

[11] The difference between the two points of view can be made clearer by an illustration. The case that we shall analyze is the dread of coming into contact with fire. The psychological analysis of this case has to make clear the mental content of the dread and its causes. Such dread becomes possible only when we are aware of the burning that results from contact with fire. We could have learned to be aware of this either immediately through our own experience, or mediately through the communication of others' experience. In both cases it is a matter of one or repeated experiences. In all cases the effects of earlier experiences equal association and recall, which, in turn, result in recognition. The recognition explaining the case under discussion arises thus. The present stimuli of visual perception arouse the retained impressions of previous visual perceptions of fire and give rise to the present perception (apperception) by fusing with them. By a process of interweaving, associations are joined to this perception. The apperceptively revived elements which lie at the basis of the content of the perception are interwoven by association with memory elements that retain the additional contents of previous perceptions of fire, viz., the burning, or, again, are interwoven with the memory elements of the communications regarding such burning. By means of this interweaving, the stimulation of the apperceptive element transmits itself to the remaining elements of the association complex. The character of the association is different under different conditions. If it be founded only upon one experience, then there can arise a memory or a recall, in the wider sense, of the foregoing content of the perception and feeling at the time of the burning, or, again, there can arise a revival wherein the stimulated elements of retention remain unconscious. Again, the words of the mother tongue that denote the previous mental content, and which likewise belong to the association complex (the apperceiving mass, in the wider sense), can be excited in one of these three forms and in addition as abstract verbal ideas. Each one of these forms of verbal discharge can lead to the innervations of the muscles involved in speech, which bring about some sort of oral expression of judgment. Each of these verbal reproductions can be connected with each of the foregoing sensory (sachlichen) revivals. Secondly, if the association be founded upon repeated perceptions on the part of the person himself, then all the afore-mentioned possibilities of reproduction become more complicated, and, in addition, the mental revivals contain, more or less, only the common elements of the previous perceptions, i. e., reappear in the form of abstract ideas or their corresponding unconscious modifications. In the third case the association is founded upon a communication of others' experience. For the sake of simplicity, let this case be confined to the following instance. The communication consisted in the assertion: "All fire will burn upon contact." Moreover, this judgment was expressed upon occasion of imminent danger of burning. There can then arise, as is perhaps evident, all the possibilities mentioned in the second case, only that here there will be a stronger tendency toward verbal reproduction and the sensory reproduction will be less fixed.

In the first two cases there was connected with the perception of the burning an intense feeling of pain. In the third the idea of such pain added itself to the visual perception of the moment. The associated elements of the earlier mental contents belong likewise to the apperceiving mass excited at the moment, in fact to that part of it excited by means of association processes, or, as we can again say, depending upon the point from which we take our view, the associative or apperceptive completion of the content of present perception. If these pain elements are revived as memories, i. e., as elements in consciousness, they give rise to a new disagreeable feeling, which is referred to the possible coming sensation of burning. If the mental modifications corresponding to these pain elements remain unconscious, as is often possible, there arises none the less the same result as regards our feeling, only with less intensity. This feeling tone we call the dread.

As a result of the sum total of the revivals actual and possible, there is finally produced, according to the particular circumstances, either a motor reaction or an inhibitant of such reaction. Both innervations can take place involuntarily or voluntarily.

The critical analysis of the fact that we dread contact with fire, even has another purpose and accordingly proceeds on other lines. It must make clear under what presuppositions the foresight that lies at the basis of such dread is valid for future experience. It must then formulate the actual process of revival that constitutes the foundation of this feeling as a series of judgments, from which the meaning and interconnection of the several judgments will become clear. Thus the critical analysis must give a logical presentation of the apperceptive and associative processes of revival.

For this purpose the three cases of the psychological analysis reduce themselves to two: viz., first, to the case in which an immediate experience forms the basis, and secondly, to that in which a variety of similar mediately or immediately communicated experiences form such basis.