# The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Dr. Münsterberg's Theory of Mind and Body

DISCUSSIONS.
DR. MÜNSTERBERG'S THEORY OF MIND AND BODY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Dr. Münsterberg has given us in the course of his psychological writings a very brilliant and striking presentation of what Professor James calls "the conscious-automaton theory." I propose in the following article to give a summary of this and of his resulting theory of will, followed in each case by criticism.
If we ask, says Dr. Münsterberg, what it is which is immediately given in experience, we find that it is neither a material world nor a soul, but simply consciousness the consciousness of a definite content. This content we are led by an unconscious impulse to separate into two series a series of perceptions of matter, and a series of mental states; and the question is, how are these series related to each other?
The popular theory conceives the relation as if the soul were situated at a point in the brain, where on the one hand it underwent changes caused by bodily processes, and on the other was able by a mere exercise of volition to impart to the body an impulse of motion. This theory, though sufficient for the needs of every-day life, overlooks that necessity of thought which obliges us to seek the explanation of every physical phenomenon in previous physical phenomena, and which finds its expression in the principle of the conservation of energy. "It is certain that every voluntary act is far more than a physico-chemical process; but equally certain that physical science, in explaining voluntary action, must attend solely to the physico-chemical process." "If a mental act could be wholly or partly the cause of a motion of matter, the lawful relations between kinetic and potential energy would be destroyed." The contraction of a muscle is nothing but a motion of matter; physical science must therefore assume it to be completely explicable as the result of prior material conditions.
The law of the conservation of energy is not a mere induction from experience, but a necessary presupposition of thought with regard to ​natural events. If it were only an induction drawn from the observation of non-organic processes, we might well anticipate an exception to its universality where matter borders upon mind. That it does not express an observation, but a postulate which we bring with us to the explanation of nature, appears when we consider what is meant by explanation.
To explain means to resolve the complicated phenomena we meet with in experience into simpler, more perspicuous ones. We understand a physical event when we have analyzed it into the elementary processes that make it up. If we wish to explain these, we resolve them into others still more elementary, till we reach the simplest processes conceivable, namely such as are continuously imaginable. These last cannot be analyzed into others still simpler, for what is imaginable is incapable of further analysis. But the causal impulse does not require that they should be further analyzed; for we think we discover in them a certain intrinsic necessity which makes further explanation superfluous. These simplest processes are described in the physical axioms. When an event is shown to be a consequence of the physical axioms, we regard it as explained.
A complicated process is thus explained by being resolved into simple processes which are continuously imaginable and necessary. The entire cosmic process would be completely explained, on its physical side, if we could resolve it without remainder into an infinity of simple processes, each continuously imaginable and necessary. We should then be able, if our minds were only vast enough, to picture to ourselves the entire course of nature in all its details as one continuous panorama, in which every transition would appear to us to be a necessary one.
Since the explanation of natural processes presupposes their continuous imaginability, it is evident that any psychophysical hypothesis which assumes the presence of lacunæ or discontinuities in nature violates the fundamental postulate upon which physical science depends. That postulate, commonly known as the law of the conservation of energy, forbids us to suppose that a motion can arise out of nothing or pass away into nothing. "That motion arises out of motion is in itself no more intelligible than that motion arises out of nothing; but only the former is continuously imaginable, only the former therefore explicable."
The conservation of energy therefore forbids us to suppose that any physical energy is lost when sensory nerve-impulses give rise to a sensation, or that any energy comes into existence when a volition is followed by a nervous discharge into the muscles. We must rather suppose that the sensory nerve-impulses produce commotions in the cortical ​nerve-cells, and that these manifest themselves in consciousness in the form of a sensation; and that the motor nerve-impulses are caused by other commotions in the cortical nerve-cells, which last manifest themselves in consciousness in the form of a volition. We must suppose, in short, that physical processes constitute a locked system, every subsequent state of which is fully accounted for by the immediately preceding state; that the nervous system is a highly complex mechanism for adapting the movements of an animal to environing conditions in a manner useful to the animal; and that consciousness is a parallel manifestation, concomitant to certain processes in the highest nerve-centres.
We thus have two series of events running parallel to each other — a continuous series of physical events, and side by side with it an interrupted series of mental events, corresponding to certain portions of the physical series. The doctrine thus far developed is that of a psycho-physical parallelism. Now physics in its sphere can never explain the mental series, any more than psychology in its sphere can explain the physical series. Yet the two sustain the most intimate relations to each other, for no mental events ever happen, so far as our experience goes, except in connection with physical events. We therefore need an hypothesis to account for this connection.
Such an hypothesis must either conceive the two series as co-ordinate, or regard one of them as subordinate to the other. They might, in the first place, be conceived to be co-ordinate, yet in other respects independent, each series taking place according to laws of its own. But this hypothesis would afford no explanation of their remarkable correspondence — no explanation of the fact that every bodily disturbance of sufficient intensity is accompanied by a sensation, and every emotion and volition by bodily changes. Our knowledge of the spatial world and our ability to act in it depend upon this fact, which cannot therefore be an accident. The hypothesis in question is thus as good as none at all.
A second hypothesis, first proposed by Leibniz, assumes the two series to be co-ordinate, but supposes them to have been created and set running by a cosmic Intellect, like two clocks which always correspond, yet do not mutually influence each other. This hypothesis — that of pre-established harmony — only repeats the problem in another form; for the relations between such a cosmic Intellect and the world of matter constitute a far more difficult psychophysical problem than the one we are seeking to solve.
Turning therefore to the hypothesis which regards one series as subordinate to the other, we assume in the first place, with Aristotle, Spinoza, Hegel, von Hartmann, and Wundt, that the mental series is the condition of the physical.
​A serious objection to this hypothesis lies in the discontinuity and irregularity of the mental series. Every hour of deep sleep interrupts it. At one moment we have only a few dull, monotonous sensations, at another a multitude of clear and articulate ideas, accompanied by conflicting emotions. These incalculable fluctuations make it impossible for us to regard the content of one moment as the adequate cause of the content of the next. Even if memory, thought, and will could be explained as results of previous states of consciousness, no explanation could be given of such an absolutely new fact as a fresh sensation or perception.
The only conceivable way of constructing a continuous causal series on the mental side, so as to explain all mental states as effects of previous mental states, would be to assume the existence of mental states of which we are not conscious, and use these to fill out the lacunæ of consciousness. This assumption is, as a matter of fact, illegitimate; for it belongs to the very essence of a mental state to be present to consciousness, and an unconscious mental state therefore involves a contradiction in terms. But if for argument's sake we nevertheless make it, and suppose that not only the molecular motions that go on in our brains but all motions of matter are accompanied by some kind of mental state; if, that is to say, we look upon the material world as only an outer shell covering an infinitude of conscious, semi-conscious, and unconscious mental states — it still remains true that these states are all mine; no provision has been made for the existence of another consciousness than my own; and I am confined in the barrenest solipsism.
In short, a consistent spiritualistic theory of the relations of mind and body is simply impossible, and we therefore turn to the only hypothesis which remains — the hypothesis according to which the physical series is the condition of the mental. This means that physical events take place independently, according to laws of their own, and that a few of them — namely, certain events in the cortex — are the indispensable condition for the occurrence of mental events. The psychophysical materialism which this doctrine asserts is to be sharply distinguished from philosophical materialism, or the doctrine that the ultimate reality of the world is matter, a frequent but wholly unjustifiable inference from it.
Psychophysical materialism is often supposed to be correctly expressed in the statement that brain-events cause states of consciousness. This is an illegitimate use of the word cause. For the statement would mean, if true, that what was at one moment a molecular motion in the brain was at the next a state of consciousness, and that the transition from one to the other could be continuously imagined — a manifest absurdity. Causality can only connect physical with physical, not phys​ical with mental. The correct statement is that brain-events are the indispensable condition, or substratum, of mental events.
In what sense is explanation possible in psychology, on the materialistic psychophysical theory? Owing to the characteristics of the mental series mentioned above, — its discontinuity and irregularity, and the frequent appearance of states that are entirely new, — it is obviously impossible to follow the analogy of physical explanation and interpret the mental state of one moment as the adequate cause of the mental state of the next. But a different kind of explanation is possible. "While I write this, tone-sensations invade my consciousness; some one in the next house begins to play upon the piano. Is this intrusion of tone-sensations inexplicable? Psychologically it is, for they were not preceded in consciousness by a content from which I could have inferred their approach. But every mental event is concomitant to an event in the brain, which latter is the necessary result of preceding physical events, and as such perfectly explicable." We may therefore say that a perception or other mental event is explained when it is shown to be the concomitant of a brain-event the occurrence of which at the given moment is intelligible as a result of the physical conditions. The lawful sequences of physical phenomena thus furnish a satisfactory explanation of the otherwise inexplicable sequences of mental phenomena.
In commenting upon the foregoing discussion, I shall speak first of the general theory of parallelism, and later of the special form of it which Dr. Münsterberg professes in his doctrine of the dependence of mind upon body.
The theory of parallelism appears to those who accept it to be a necessary inference from the law of the conservation of energy. If this is, as Helmholtz says, "a universal law of all natural phenomena," it must apply to the motions of molecules in the brain as much as to similar motions outside the body. This is no more than we should expect in view of the mechanical theory of life. But if the conservation of energy applies to brain-events, these must form a locked system, and states of consciousness must accompany without modifying them.
In view of these considerations, it is surely surprising that Professor James in his chapter on mind and body should not even have mentioned the law of the conservation of energy. Professor Ladd at least tells us clearly what he thinks of it, for in his recent Outlines he describes it as "only a valid and useful working hypothesis under which we may bring certain classes of physical phenomena."
​The German psychologists take a different view of the matter, to judge from the following passages from a recent article by Professor Wundt:
I have often explained why I regard an influxus physicus in the sense of Cartesian dualism as an impossibility, and believe the conception of a parallelism between mental and physical processes to be required by empirical psychology. . . . The Cartesian theory is untenable because it assumes a causal connection between entirely incomparable facts. A sensation can no more be explained by a motion than a motion by a sensation.
It goes without saying that an external movement as a physical process can only be explained by a previous physical process, as for example by a sensory excitation; and that, consistently with the principles of natural causation, there can be no motion for which such an explanation must not be postulated.
Dr. Münsterberg has rightly seen that the possibility or impossibility of interaction between mind and body depends upon the meaning and implications of the relation of cause and effect. While his account of this matter will perhaps prove more suggestive than convincing, it at least seems to me to contain the antidote to a current abuse of the Humian doctrine of causality, to which I wish to devote a few words.
Defenders of interaction tell us that Hume, Kant, and Lotze have shown that we never discern a causal bond uniting the cause with the effect. In the sense that we never perceive an identity between cause and effect, or a transference of energy from one to the other, or anything more than a mere empirical succession, this is doubtless true. But the hasty inference that the relation between cause and effect is impenetrable to reason, in such a way that any cause might conceivably be joined with any effect, is entirely unwarranted. For there exist at least a great number of cases in which cause and effect are connected by qualitative and even quantitative relations which make it appear by no means so irrational that one should be succeeded by the other. One of the most remarkable achievements of modern science consists, for example, in the proof that physical heat is a mode of motion of the minute particles of bodies, and that where ordinary motion is transformed into heat there is an exact equivalence between the amount of motion lost and the amount of heat evolved. In this case, cause and effect are not only qualitatively alike, but an exact quantitative relation exists between them. Now these qualitative and quantitative relations constitute a phenomenal bond ​between cause and effect which remains entirely unaffected by the Hume- Kant- Lotzian arguments.
It is doubtless true that the bare notion of causality contains no suggestion of such an equivalence. For all that, the demonstration of quantitative relations between successive events gives us a far more perfect understanding of their connection than the mere knowledge that they stand related as cause and effect. Once the possibility of such an understanding is suggested, it must, however seldom realizable, remain ever after the beau-ideal of the physicist. If, however, investigation proves it to be realizable in the great majority of cases, — and this, I take it, is the actual fact, — a strong presumption is raised with regard to any particular physical event that it can be shown to be connected with previous physical events by relations of quantitative exactitude.
Now the form in which this ideal has been realized is this, that the amount of energy contained in the cause has been found to be equal to the amount contained in the effect. But if the cause always contains the same amount of energy as the effect, the sum of all the causes in the universe must contain the same amount of energy as the sum of all their effects, and the quantity of energy in existence must be constant — which is the law of the conservation of energy.
If now from the causal relations of physical events inter se we turn to those between physical and mental events, it is evident that nothing resembling physical explanation is here possible. There can be no exact quantitative relation between cause and effect, for the two are incommensurable. We cannot picture to ourselves the cause passing over into the effect, for they belong to different orders of existence. "The passage from the physics of the brain to the facts of consciousness is unthinkable." The cause belonging to a given effect can at most be indicated, but the connection between the two cannot be explained.
Of course it is by no means inconceivable that a certain event in the nervous centres should be the indispensable condition of a sensation, or that a volition should be the indispensable condition of a nervous discharge into the muscles. But no such phenomenal bond can exist as that which connects two physical events, and we can only say that the cause is invariably succeeded by the effect. To say that the nervous event actively produced the sensation, or that the volition actively produced the motor discharge, would be to assume the existence of precisely that unseen bond which Hume, Kant, and Lotze have disproved.
We may correctly say that a physical cause produces a physical effect; the fall of a stone, for example, being a mode of motion, may as properly be said to produce that other mode of motion which we call heat, ​as a shoemaker with a given quantity of leather may be said to produce a certain number of pairs of shoes. But we cannot properly say that a physical cause produces a mental effect, or vice versa, because no such quantitative relations connect the cause with the effect as in the former case. We cannot speak of production, but only of invariable succession.
It is entirely credible that a nervous impulse coming inwards along a sensory fibre should have a side-effect in the shape of a sensation; but why the physical energy embodied in the nerve-impulse should on that account be debarred from producing all the physical effects which it would have produced had there been no sensation, and why these in turn should not go on to produce all their natural effects in conformity with the laws of physics, it is difficult to understand. In the same way, it is entirely credible that the event in the cerebral cortex which causes a motor discharge should have been immediately preceded by a volition; but how the presence of the volition absolves us from the duty of explaining this cortical event by means of previous cortical events, and supposing the energy contained in it to have been derived from them in a manner strictly consistent with the law of the conservation of energy, it is difficult to understand. If we were obliged to choose between explaining the motor discharge by means of previous cortical events or by means of the antecedent volition, we should have good reason to hesitate. But this is not the alternative; the motor discharge cannot be explained by means of the volition, which can at best be only its invariable antecedent; and the question simply is, whether we will explain the motor discharge in the usual way, by means of previous physical events, or will decline to explain it at all. If we take the latter course, we not only reject the only explanation of which the case admits, but load ourselves with the gratuitous hypothesis that a quantity of physical energy suddenly came into existence.
Whether advocates of the common-sense theory believe they have immediate experience of the mind's power to inaugurate physical changes, or are influenced by ethical and æsthetical considerations, the idea of the physical efficacy of mind involves precisely that fallacious notion of an invisible causal nexus which Hume, Kant, and Lotze strove to overthrow. Once eliminate this imaginary bond between mental cause and physical effect, and we are left with a bare empirical succession, for which it is evident that the parallelism theory makes as ample provision as the theory of common sense.
It is unnecessary here to make more than a passing reference to the wealth of physiological facts, such, for example, as the effects upon the mental functions of injuries, poisons, intoxicants, hard labor, insufficient food, etc., which find a more natural explanation on the theory of parallelism than on that of common sense.
​Although the parallelism theory is correct as far as it goes, there are two empirical facts connected with the relations between mind and body of which it contains no suggestion. The first of these is the fact that, while the physical series is continuous, the mental one is interrupted and incomplete, only a minute fraction of all the processes that go on in the physical world being accompanied by consciousness. It appears as though physical facts could exist without mental, but not mental facts without physical; as though, in other words, physical facts constituted the basis upon which mental facts rest. This appearance is strengthened by the second fact referred to, namely, that any interference with the normal course of the cerebral processes is at once followed by alterations or even by total suppression of consciousness; as where lesions of circumscribed cortical areas abolish certain classes of memories without affecting others. It is the desire to offer some explanation for these two empirical facts which leads Dr. Münsterberg to his doctrine of the dependence of mind upon body.
From the point of view of empirical investigation there is little to be said against this doctrine. Nerve-physiologists, experimental psychologists, and scientific alienists employ it constantly as a sort of working hypothesis, and their right to employ it is beyond question. At the same time they cannot be too often reminded that it is only a brief, compendious phrase to express the empirical facts respecting the relations between body and mind — the fact of parallelism, the fact that the mental series is interrupted, and the fact that interference with the physical series is accompanied by alterations of the mental — not a theory aiming to explain these facts.
When the doctrine is propounded, as it is by Dr. Münsterberg, for the purpose of explaining the empirical facts, it becomes an unmistakable piece of metaphysics; for it is impossible to explain the empirical relations of mind and body without transcending the limits of experience. What is more, it is a piece of very questionable metaphysics; for the doctrine that mental events depend for their existence, not upon the unknown reality that appears to us under the form of a material world, but upon these material appearances themselves, is indistinguishable from philosophical materialism, and open to all the objections that lie against that doctrine.
While abandonment of the common-sense theory must influence one's whole psychological attitude, evidently no theory will be more affected than that of the will. In volition we have as nowhere else the feeling of our own activity; and the question arises, how this feeling can be reconciled with a theory which regards all mental states as the passive concomitants of events in the brain. Dr. Münsterberg has given an ​answer to this question in the course of his book on the Voluntary Act, of the relevant parts of which the following is a brief summary.
Physiologically considered, the voluntary act is the final outcome of a physico-chemical process taking place in the sensory-motor arc; that is, in the apparatus composed of sense-organs, centripetal nerves, brain, centrifugal nerves, and striate muscles. By means of this apparatus the innumerable stimuli which act upon the animal body elicit from it those external movements which are useful for its preservation. The sum of the stimuli, taken in connection with the structure and momentary condition of the nervous apparatus, must furnish a complete explanation of every resulting movement. Such a useful movement is known in physiology as a reflex action. Every act, even the free voluntary act, is, physiologically speaking, a reflex action, differing from the spinal reflex of the brainless frog only in its vastly greater complexity.
In the normal frog with nervous system intact, the after-effects of previous excitations preponderate among the conditions producing movement, and the movement seems uncaused because the visible stimuli form so small a part of the total cause. Just as the eye and ear enable the organism to be affected by objects not in immediate contact with it, so memory — the power of the brain to associate to an impression the image of another impression experienced with it before — enables the organism to adapt its movements to objects before they have as yet entered the field of sense. The power of the human brain, finally, to analyze its impressions into their elements and recombine these into new complexes, enables it to form complexes corresponding to objects never actually experienced; so that civilized man is able to act with reference to objects the most distant in space, the most remote in time, or altogether ideal.
But the usefulness which characterizes animal movements demands some explanation. How could a nervous apparatus come into existence so constructed that, despite the infinite variety of external conditions, it should respond at every moment with a useful and appropriate reaction? The answer to this question is furnished by the Darwinian theory, which tells us that the nervous apparatus came into existence and was gradually perfected by means of natural selection. If natural selection explains the origin of the digestive apparatus, it can explain that of the nervous apparatus also; for the latter is no more useful than the former. But since natural selection explains the origin of the nervous apparatus, and since, given the apparatus, a definite complex of conditions necessarily evokes a definite external movement, it follows that every voluntary act, regarded solely on its physiological side, is completely explicable in accordance with the principles of physico-chemical science.
Approaching the problem from the psychological side, we find, if we ​look solely to the facts of consciousness, that what is given is not an individual substantive will, but only a great number of particular volitions. As every mental state, according to physiological psychology, consists ultimately of a complex of sensations, we have to inquire what is the special quality, intensity, and emotional tinge of the sensations that compose a volition, and in what manner they are combined. The most distinctive trait of volition is the feeling of activity. We have this feeling not only in external action, but also when we guide the course of our thoughts or turn our attention this way or that. What is the basis of the feeling of activity? There are two elements common to all states in which we have it.
(1) When I have a perception or a mental image, or when one idea calls up another by a customary association, I have no such feeling. But when I cannot think of something, search for it, and try to remember the connection in which I heard it, till finally it occurs to me, I feel that I have brought it to light by my own activity. I have the same feeling of activity when I pass from premises to conclusion, or when I attend to an interesting perception or idea and strive to hold it fast. Now in all these cases there is this common element, that the content of the subsequent state was implicitly contained in the antecedent state.
(2) A second element common to all mental processes in which we feel ourselves to be active is the presence of muscular tensions in different parts of the body: in the first place, tensions in the muscles of accommodation of the eye, ear, and tongue, when we attend to images derived from those senses; and in the second place, tensions in the muscles of the forehead, jaws, neck, and some other parts of the body. The net product of all these tensions is what we call the "feeling of effort"; similar tensions accompany all intense bodily activity; and because they also accompany certain processes of thought, we feel ourselves in these processes to be mentally active. Voluntary thought is thus characterized by the two facts, first, that the subsequent mental state is ideally anticipated in the antecedent state, and secondly, that the transition from one state to the other is accompanied by muscular tensions.
Let us now consider the external voluntary act. If I move my arm slowly and attend to my feelings, I am conscious of a peculiar impulse immediately preceding each muscular contraction, which I feel to be the cause of the latter. If I temporarily paralyze my arm by compression of the nerve and repeat the experiment, no muscle contracts, but I distinctly feel the impulse referred to. If, finally, I crook the first two joints of my forefinger as far as I can, at the same time bending the other three fingers as far as possible backward, and now will to crook my forefinger still further, I am unable to do so, further flexion ​being rendered impossible by tendinous resistance; yet I feel the peculiar impulse so acutely that, if I do not actually look at my hand, I am inclined to believe that my finger has moved. The impulse in question is the so-called "feeling of innervation," and we have to ask what is its nature.
The answer is, that it is nothing more nor less than the antecedent mental image of the movement to be executed. We constantly receive nerve-impulses by the sensory nerves which have their source in the skin, joints, tendons, and muscles; these impulses fuse into an aggregate sensation which informs us about the varying positions of our limbs. Like other sensations, this leaves behind it a mental image, and it is this mental image, brought up as the last result of the play of association, which immediately precedes the external movement and constitutes the "feeling of innervation."
Thus in external voluntary action as in voluntary thought, the ideal anticipation of a mental state precedes its actual realization. The two likewise agree in being accompanied by tensions in the muscles of the head. Our feeling of freedom in volition depends upon our consciousness that the effect perceived to be accomplished coincides with the ideal anticipation that preceded it. A voluntary act may thus be described as the perception, often accompanied by feelings of muscular tension, of an accomplished effect which was previously anticipated in idea.
Our analysis of volition thus discloses no elements which are not either sensations or reproductions of sensations; none, that is to say, not strictly co-ordinate with sensations like blue, hard, sour; and since sensations are readily conceivable as the passive concomitants of brain-events, it follows that the phenomena of volition are entirely compatible with the theory of parallelism.
In the introduction to his Contributions Dr. Münsterberg approaches the same question from a slightly different point of view. He inquires how those higher intellectual processes which Wundt groups together under the head of "apperception" are to be reconciled with the parallelism theory. It appears to be a fact that our ideas do not merely come and go of themselves, but that consciousness has the power to interpose and direct their movement, as a general directs the movements of troops, — joining, separating, and arranging them, holding back this and dismissing that, comparing one with another, selecting some from amongst the rest, and displaying now an increased, now a diminished activity. Now, while it is easy to conceive a physical basis for the sensational content of consciousness, it is difficult to conceive one for the activities of consciousness itself, and the question arises, how these are to be harmonized with the parallelism theory.
​Dr. Münsterberg's answer to this question is contained in the query whether the activities usually ascribed to consciousness cannot be equally well interpreted as mere passive changes taking place in the conscious content. On this view it would be the conscious content itself which now expands, now contracts, now entirely disappears; the elements of which flow together or apart; and which, by means of a definite complex of sensations and mental images, produces the impression of an arranging, comparing, selecting activity.
The contrast between this and the ordinary view will be apparent if we reproduce Dr. Münsterberg's account of attention. The ordinary view supposes that in attention the sensation or idea attended to suffers no change, but that consciousness itself increases in distinctness; while the accompanying sensation of strain is explained as an immediate consciousness of the mental activity involved. Dr. Münsterberg, as we know, explains the latter sensation as of muscular origin, and as due to tensions partly in the muscles of accommodation of the sense-organs involved, partly in the muscles which serve to fixate the head and to regulate respiration. The action of these muscles, particularly the more exact adjustment of the muscles of accommodation, has the effect of increasing the sharpness and distinctness of the individual sensations and ideas that make up the conscious content; and this result is at the same time helped on by the exclusion of inhibitory ideas and the reinforcement of favoring ones. Attention thus involves no activity of consciousness itself, but consists solely in changes taking place in the conscious content according to the laws of association, and is therefore perfectly intelligible on the parallelism theory.
But if consciousness has no power to interfere with the movement of our ideas, this is at least not true of the Ego, the most characteristic of all mental facts, which manifestly exerts a predominating influence in our mental life. What is to be made of the Ego upon the parallelism theory?
The word Ego, as commonly employed, designates two entirely distinct mental facts, which we may call the subject Ego and the empirical Ego. The subject Ego is identical with that abstraction of consciousness which may be distinguished in thought from the sensational and ideal content, but which cannot exist separately from it. The Ego in this sense possesses no physical substratum. Psychologically, it is the mere passive spectator of its momentary content, which it is powerless to act upon or alter in any way; while epistemologically, it is the absolute precondition of knowledge and of existence. The empirical Ego, on the other hand, which is the Ego we think of when we think of ourselves, the Ego which governs the course of our ideas, the Ego which acts and suffers, is a part, and for each human being the most significant part, of ​the sensational and ideal content. In its earliest form it consists only of that cluster of organic sensations which constitutes the perception of the body; but it comes in due course of time to include the past history of the individual, the contents of his memory, and the circle of his interests and aspirations. Though the massive complex thus formed dominates our entire mental life, it consists, when reduced to its elements, of nothing but sensations and mental images bound together by the ties of association. It therefore opposes no obstacle to the universal validity of the theory of parallelism.
Instead of commenting upon Dr. Münsterberg's theory of will, I shall present a summary of the objections urged against it by Professor Wundt, and offer in closing a single criticism upon these.
It is, in the first place, a mistake to classify the voluntary act as a reflex action. It is desirable for purely physiological reasons to limit the use of the word reflex to cases where the nerve-process passes from sensory to motor tracts without accompanying phenomena in consciousness. For only in reflexes proper is the connection between a given sense-impression and a given movement a uniform one. Where events in consciousness intervene, the final motor result becomes incalculable. Of course it is inadmissible, however, to assume that in the latter case the physical chain is anywhere interrupted.
The outcome of Dr. Münsterberg's investigation of the will is already contained in the proposition from which he sets out, that the ultimate constituents of consciousness are sensations. This applies in reality only to the cognitive part of consciousness, not to the feelings and the will.
Dr. Münsterberg lays down the rule that, wherever in thought we have the feeling of our own activity, the idea a, which forms the subsequent state of mind, is implicitly contained in the antecedent state; as where I try to remember a name, think of the circumstances under which I heard it, etc. But his example does not agree with his rule; for what is present in the antecedent state is not a, but certain other ideas which stand in more or less definite relations to a. But upon just such relations as these the association of ideas depends, and it is the ordinary process of association which Dr. Münsterberg is describing. He has failed to point out, as he should have done, the difference between ordinary associations and those with which we connect the idea of our own activity.
In external voluntary action the idea of a movement does as a rule precede its actual execution. Yet even here the theory is inadequate, and overlooks the essential thing in volition. For the facts are not ​completely described when the idea of a movement is said to be succeeded in consciousness by the perception of the actual movement. In passing from one to the other we have the feeling of our own activity, which is as much an empirical fact as is a sensation or an idea. Dr. Münsterberg's theory is obliged either to treat this feeling as an illusion, or to identify it with the muscular sensations. But as exactly similar muscular sensations may arise without our having the feeling of our own activity, as for instance when the motor nerves are stimulated electrically, it is evident that certain concomitant phenomena are here taken for the will itself.
The intellectualist theory, seeking as it does to resolve all mental phenomena into sensations and ideas, has its source in that tendency to substantialize mental events which looks upon the soul as a mere "bundle of presentations," for us objects of passive contemplation. Our volitions must, on this theory, be presentations, and as such decomposable into sensations; and elements of will which are non-presentable must of necessity be non-existent. But this whole theory is one tissue of false assumptions. Consciousness is in no sense such a bundle of juxtaposed presentations. Presentations are not objects, but events, which come into and pass out of existence, and during their brief life undergo continual changes. The percipient subject, above all, is not an observer, standing opposite its own presentations and passively contemplating them, but an inseparable segment of the network of psychic events themselves.
The objects of psychology are, in short, one and all conscious processes or events. These we separate into two groups, those which represent the objects and events of the external world, namely, our presentations, and those which express our own attitude towards the latter. The second group of processes divides into two subordinate groups, some being felt to be mere passive experiences, namely, our feelings, others to be self-produced, namely, our acts of will. The will itself is nothing different from these self-produced processes. But what is meant by the word self-produced?
When we seek to explain an act of choice, and to say why this was chosen and not that, we find that the mental states which were actually present do not suffice for this purpose. The reason why a particular impulse determines an act never lies in the relative strength of the conflicting impulses alone, but also in that upon which their relative strength ultimately depends; namely, the total character of consciousness as determined by its past history. This finds expression in the resultant quality of that product of innumerable past experiences which we call the consciousness of self. As in the progress of evolution the latter comes to be more and more clearly recognized as the decisive factor in ​voluntary action, we have in our volitions the peculiar consciousness of choice j the act no longer appears the passive outcome of a conflict of impulses, but an active decision between them. As in volition, so in attention what gives the decision is not the group of ideas actually present, but a latent factor which manifests itself in the consciousness of self. The uniformity and constancy with which this factor functions have led to the inclusion of both processes under the higher concept of apperception. Apperception is simply a name for these processes, not a real entity; it has no existence apart from the changes it produces in the conscious content and from the phenomena of feeling that attend it. And the Ego which is the decisive factor is not an abstract idea, but merely the totality of our native powers and past experiences coming to consciousness as a single feeling.
Exclusive consideration of the conflicting impulses or of the self lead respectively to the vulgar determinism and to indeterminism. The former regards every choice as the necessary issue of the conflict of impulses; but it cannot explain the consciousness of freedom, which depends upon the ascription of an act to the self as the bearer of all permanent volitional tendencies. The latter conceives choice as made by the self independently of motives; but while it explains the consciousness of freedom, it cannot explain either the origin of this consciousness or the influence exerted by the motives upon our acts of will.
Professor Wundt's view of the will, as expressed above, may be briefly summarized in the following sentence: We have, besides presentations and feelings, states of consciousness which we feel to be self-produced; and the self that produces these states is a sort of net-product of our native powers and past experiences. If, to clear up any obscurity that still lingers about the conception of the self, we turn to Professor Wundt's Physiologische Psychologie and Ethik, we read that "the consciousness of self, which has its root in the uniform activity of apperception, at last becomes narrowed down to this alone, so that at the completion of conscious development the will appears as the essential and, taken with the feelings and endeavors that proceed from it, the sole content of self-consciousness, from which the presentations are distinguished as relatively external constituents pointing to a world distinct from the personality"; and again, that "in the last stage of development the individual recognizes his essential being in the pure process of apperception; that is, in that inner activity of will which stands opposed to the remaining content of consciousness."
The above explanations have at least the appearance of moving in a ​vicious circle. For on the one hand the factor which determines the activity of apperception is said to be the self, on the other hand the self is represented as ultimately identical with the apperceptive activity. This ambiguity is no doubt partly to blame for the disfavor in which Professor Wundt's theory of apperception is so widely held. It can be avoided only on the assumption that the self which decides and chooses consists of presentational elements (or the fused residues of such) bound together by ties resembling those of ordinary association. While of course these elements do not for the most part come to clear consciousness in our acts of choice, their influence is not on that account the less decisive.
It is important, however, to recognize that the essential feature of the complex thus constituted, — the feature, that is to say, which most nearly represents the essence of the self, — is not so much the presentational elements themselves as the manner in which they are associatively connected. For the presentational elements alone would afford no sufficient explanation of the character of individual acts of choice. Even in the simplest spinal reflex, the afferrent impressions afford no explanation of the movements they elicit, but the latter are correlated to the former in a manner which, while biologically highly purposive, is in itself entirely arbitrary. The associative connections between sensory and motor presentations in the cortex allow, within physiological limits, of an infinitely wider range of individual variation. It is these associative connections, depending as they largely do upon the emotional coloring with which the presentations invest themselves for the individual consciousness, and not the latter in themselves alone, which determine the elective affinities exhibited by the self in the presence of conflicting ideas or motives.
Professor Wundt is therefore perfectly right in maintaining that the decisive factor in volition is not to be found among the presentational elements of consciousness. And if we could wish any further admission from him, we have it already in his remark that the apperceptive connections of ideas must be assumed to have been developed out of associative connections.
Charles A. Strong.
NEW YORK.
* ↑ Dr. Hugo Münsterberg, Privatdocent an der Universitāt Freiburg (Baden), Die Willenshandlung: ein Beitrag zur physiologischen Psychologie, Freiburg, 1889, pp. 100-111; Beiträge zur experimentellen Physiologie, Freiburg, 1890, Heft 1, Einleitung: Bewusstsein und Gehirn, pp. 6-19; Ueber Aufgaben und Methoden der Psychologie, Leipzig, 1891, pp. 13-37.
* ↑ Vorträge und Reden, I, 151.
* ↑ Philosophische Studien, VI, 3 (1890): Zur Lehre von den Gemüthsbewegungen.
* ↑ James, Psychology, I, 137: "But one has no right to pull the pall over the psychic half of the subject only, as the automatists do, and to say that that causation is unintelligible, whilst in the same breath one dogmatizes about material causation as if Hume, Kant, and Lotze had never been born."
* ↑ Wundt, Die physikalischen Axiome, Erlangen, 1866, pp. 128-132.
* ↑ Philosophische Studien, VI, 3 (1890): Zur Lehre von den Gemüthsbewegungen.
* ↑ Physiologische Psychologie, 3d ed., II, p. 467.
* ↑ Ethik, p. 385.
* ↑ Physiologische Psychologie, 3d ed., II, p. 388.