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SECTION 7. The sensation, the stimulus (the contained minor reflex) is evidently an abstraction taken *per se*. It acts only in its adjustment or coordination with other reflexes. This coordination or mutual reinforcement and limitation, is equally an abstraction taken *per se*.

*Problem:* Consider how the old question of sensationalism vs. rationalism stands when each element is considered from the standpoint of the whole action, or reflex arc; when, that is, sensation is considered as itself an act, and the ideal element, or relation, as the active adjustment of that act.

SECTION 8. The reflex act, in its unity, is thus a coordination of distinct but adjusted minor reflexes, or acts. It is a moving equilibrium of actions.

In other words, *will*, the action or whole self, is the ordered unity of action; this unity being constituted by the relationships of subordinate activities.

Will is evidently the more developed according (1) as there is a wider number of distinct activities (minor reflexes) contained within an act, and (2) as these minor activities are more thoroughly adjusted to one another—unified.

The stages and process of development will be described later. So far we have been dealing simply with the accomplished (objective) action.

SYLLABUS OF COURSE 5

## INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY

### PHILOSOPHICAL DEPARTMENT
### UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

#### FEBRUARY, 1892.

SECTION 1.—Philosophy (science) is the conscious inquiry into experience. It is the attempt of experience to attain to its own validity and fullness; the realization of the meaning of experience.

Science and philosophy can only report the actual condition of life, or experience. Their business is to reveal experience in its truth, its reality. They state what *is*.

The only distinction between science and philosophy is that the latter reports the more generic (the wider) features of life; the former the more detailed and specific.

SECTION 2.—The separation of science and philosophy has reference to the incompleteness of knowledge. Although our experience goes on within the whole, the whole is the last thing of which we become conscious as a whole of included factors. Thus the trouble with philosophy is the difficulty of getting the whole, the generic, before consciousness in such a way that it may be naturally reported. The partial thing may be broken off from the whole and then described with comparative ease. But this process of multiplying pieces seems to leave the generic, the whole beyond and out of sight. It makes the whole remote, and capable of description only in unnatural ('metaphysical' 'transcendental') terms. Thus science, as relating to the part, and philosophy as referring to the whole, fall apart. Philosophy suffers by being made vague and unreal; science in becoming partial and thus rigid.

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The search for philosophy is not a peculiar or technical search; it is objective and general; it is the search for the real whole. Just so far as this whole is really attained in experience, it becomes possible to treat it in a direct, natural way, *but only in so far*. In two directions, the whole is now more definitely realized than ever before, so that we get a language for reporting it. These two directions are the two phases of action. On one hand, science has revealed to us, in outline, at least, the type action of the individual organism, the process involved in every complete act. On the other hand, as life has become freer, social action has revealed the principle involved in it. The action of the psycho-physical and of the political body, in other words, give us such perception of the whole that we may report the latter, thus translating philosophical truth into common terms.

### CHAPTER FIRST—THE PYCHO-PHYSICAL ACT.

**SECTION 3.**—The unit of nervous action is called the reflex-arc. (See Spencer, Psychology, Vol. I, first three chapters, especially pp. 27ff; James, Psychology, Vol. I, p. 12, pp. 20-21; Von Hartmann, Philosophy of Unconscious, Vol. I, pp. 127ff.) This term covers not simply the narrower 'reflex' of physiology (the winking of an eye, for example) but every unified action, or completed portion of conduct. *Illustrations*: the movement of an amœba, the impulse of a child for food, the perception of color, a word like 'civilization,' with its whole meaning, a virtuous act, a philosophic theory. Each is a unified action; and in this unity of action various conditions are brought to a head or focussed. Each is a coördination of certain experiences; each is an *expression*, more or less direct, more or less explicit, of the whole of life; it is the manifold circumstance of the Universe attaining a unity in action.

Such an activity as finds expression then in an entire reflex-arc is a whole, a concrete, an individual. It is the SELF in more or less developed form.

**SECTION 4.**—There are, evidently, two sides in the reflex-arc. These sides have no separation in fact, but may be distinguished by us. One side is the *diversity of conditions* involved; the other side is the *unity of action*.

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To the unity corresponds the self as Will; to the diversity, the Self as Intelligence. *Illustrations*: instinctive taking of food; hearing an enemy's footstep; hearing a bell; the scientific analysis of sound, and so on. *Problem*.—If Intelligence and Will are so closely connected, how do you account for their apparent disconnection in such an example as the last?

**SECTION 5.**—Taking up the reflex-arc on the side of its diversity, we may further distinguish two phases: There is the simple *diversity as such*; the multiple conditions involved in an act. This is the sensory side of knowledge. Any one of the diverse conditions taken *per se* constitutes a sensation or stimulus. Each of these in itself may be itself an act containing its conditions or factors. For example, within the action of taking food there is contained hunger as a condition. This hunger is itself, in turn, an activity, involving various factors of muscular change, and conditions of respiration, circulation, etc. The visual perception of the food is another element contained in the act. This, in turn, is itself an act unifying its conditions, etc. Either of these acts considered *per se* is a stimulus to the act of eating. In reality, it is simply one phase of, one process within, the act. *The sensory elements in experience are simply the various more or less distinct minor activities contained within an act of larger range.*

**SECTION 6.** The diverse conditions, or minor acts, involved within a unified action, have also their adjustments to each other. Each holds in check the others, and in turn is held by them. No one of them discharges *by itself* but only in the whole of which it is one member. This mutual checking and re-inforcing of the various contained minor actions is the coördination of the sensory elements.

This coördination, coöoperation, mutual adjustment, etc., is the *relation* of the sensory element. *It is thus the ideal side of knowledge.* For example, in an act, whether of taking food or of looking at a picture, what gives the activity of the optical apparatus—the sensation of color—its ideal value (its meaning) is the other similar minor activities or reflexes going on together with it, all within the larger reflex.

*Illustrations* may be found in cases of physical blindness, deafness, aphasia, &c. See James' Psychology, Vol. 1, p. 48-52 and references there.

5

CHAPTER SECOND—THE PHILOSOPHICAL READING: THE OBJECTIVE CATEGORIES.

SECTION 9.—In the type-action, we have the universe expressed, and from its structure, therefore, we may read the main philosophic ideas. Every such action is representative of the whole because it is the whole in concentrated form, not because it is part of the whole.

THE UNIT OR REPRESENTATIVE WHOLE IN EXPERIENCE IS A CENTRALIZED, AND THEREFORE, ORDERED MOVEMENT. (1) It is a movement in its every phase and moment and (2) this movement is centred; it comes to a head or unity in a certain doing.

SECTION 10.—Looking at any human experience, it is evident (1) that whatever occurs outside the body is motion; (2) that what goes on within, say the eye, is motion; (3) that this motion is continued along what we call the sensory nerve; (4) that it is further propagated in the brain, entering there into the existing moving tensions and discharges; (5) that this movement continues out through what we call the motor nerve; (6) and effects some further movement in muscle or gland—what we call an “outward act.”

All this is one continuous movement without breach, or insertion of any extraneous element. Viewed from the standpoint of the actual fact, the distinctions into external stimulus, receiving, conveying, registering, executing, organs are wholly subordinate. They exist within the one movement and are phases of its development. They are distinctions referring to the specific office performed in each phase of movement.

SECTION 11.—The centralized movement is what is. It is the reality, the concrete fact, the individual (i. e., the undivided, the total).

Every such unity, no matter how apparently limited in scope, is, and that absolutely or without qualification. It is an end in itself; i. e., an object. This is none the less true, although, as we shall see, in reference to other similar individuals or unified acts, it may be a contribution or function.

SECTION 12.—Within the unity, or centred movement, certain distinctions occur. The first main distinction is that of function