objective experience of an observer be similar to what is being
experienced subjectively by the individual under observation? The
answer is rather simple in the case of temporal and dynamical
traits of behavior. A pianist while playing a sonata is living in a
dynamical stream, the organization of which is very clear to him.
In his experience he ends one “phrase” now and at a definite moment
begins the next one. He starts a _crescendo_ as the Ehrenfels-quality
of one musical development and a _ritardando_ as that of another.
Whatever the laws of motor innervation may be, the impulses which
are conducted to his muscles follow the organization of the scheme
he “has in mind.” The final results are sound waves, and these are
not dynamically organized, because in the air one wave is independent
of the previous waves and so forth. But something remains which is
sufficient for organization in those who listen. Where he intends a
_crescendo_ as an Ehrenfels-quality, the product of his playing will
be a series of waves of increasing intensity. In those who listen
this series will produce an acoustical whole which again has the same
Ehrenfels-quality of “swelling.” Where, in his experience, he ends a
“phrase” and afterwards starts a new one, the relations of the waves
as to temporal distance, intensity, and so forth, will be such that
in the acoustical organization experienced by the audience one whole
ends and a new one begins at corresponding moments. In some respects
the situation is the same as in the case of physical objects that
appear as segregated wholes in visual experience. Though among the
light-waves reflected by the surfaces of objects, and consequently
among the stimuli projected upon the retina, there is no organization,
the relations between the stimuli are so well preserved that, in the
nervous system, organization, which depends upon those relations, will
generally build up “adequate” wholes. As in this case, organization
comes nearer the objective facts in some essential points than the
indifferent mosaic of stimuli does, so in our example, acoustical
organization will correspond to something in the pianist which does not
exist _as such_ in the sound waves between him and his audience. Once
more the mediating properties of the stimuli are their relationships.
If we assume that the pianist has experiences similar to our own,
the knowledge implicit in our acoustical organization goes beyond
the knowledge implicit in our having visual objects as segregated
wholes. For the organization which we experience will correspond not
only to the organization of his nervous processes, but also to the
organization of his musical “intentions,” as he _experiences_ them. In
order to understand this, we must remember the concluding remarks of
the second chapter. If the pianist intends a musical phrase as a whole,
shall we assume that the processes corresponding to that experienced
development-as-a-whole are also one whole functionally, or shall we
assume the contrary? Where, for his experience, the phrase ends and
after a discontinuity a new one begins, shall we suppose that the
corresponding processes of his brain are functionally continuous or
shall we assume that the physiological organization is discontinuous,
and hence similar to that of his experiences? _Gestalt_ psychology
assumes the similarity of organization in both cases; it makes
this hypothesis quite generally and in all respects. And from this
viewpoint the genesis of communication between the experiences of one
man and those of another becomes simple enough. The experiences of
the first, the pianist, are a picture of the corresponding processes
in his brain, so far as organization is concerned. Innervation of
the pianist’s muscles occurs as something like a projection of that
picture upon his muscles. The sound-waves which he produces are not
organized, but the relations between them somehow correspond to and
represent that previous organization. In a similar nervous system a
new organization is built up depending upon those relations existing
among the acoustical stimuli. To some degree it will be similar to
that which exists or has just existed in the nervous system of the
pianist. Therefore the experience corresponding to these processes
will be correspondingly similar to the organization of the experience
in the pianist. As in this example, the similarity between the inner
experiences of one man and the sensory experience of another may be
explained wherever we find such a correspondence existing with respect
to temporal organization and dynamics.
It will not be necessary to repeat the argument in the case of
“direction,” of “tension,” of “lack of determination,” and so forth.
Even where we do not have full insight into the reasons _why_ the
peripheral overt behavior of a human organism pictures the organization
of its experiences, or better that of the corresponding processes in
his brain, we have to admit that this connection very often exists.
The temporal and other relations of the stimuli which are produced
by such activity in one organism are just the right ones, then, to
determine the appropriate organization and similar Ehrenfels-qualities
in other organisms receptive to those stimuli. A man who makes a great
effort to find a name which he cannot immediately remember will, very
probably, contract his face. The face thus contracted produces just the
constellation of stimuli which, in the objective experience of another,
will determine the character of “tension” as an Ehrenfels-quality
of that face as a visual whole. We have also seen how the almost
inevitable visual grouping of a man with those objects towards which he
is directed, will complete the picture so that, in this respect too, we
see something similar to what is going on “in” that man.
At this point the reader may protest that, after all, our understanding
of other people remains an indirect affair. Though, in our objective
experience, the other may exhibit properties similar sometimes to his
inner experiences, our objective experience remains something different
numerically from those inner experiences of another. The first gives
us what we call “bodily events” in direct objective experience,
whereas the second will never become an objective experience of ours.
Therefore, in one point at least, we do not seem to be better off than
other theorists! Something like a concluding step in our analysis seems
to be needed if we are to use our objective experiences as a basis for
guessing about similar inner processes in others.
Indeed, the discussion has proceeded to this point as though in
this final step the old and the new idea would become identical
compulsively, the only difference being the acknowledgment of a much
better basis for this last step in the new theory. It is now time,
however, to change this aspect of the problem. It has to be changed
in the direction of agreement with what is sound and justified in
behaviorism.
If I recollect the incidents of a day which has been particularly
filled with social contacts and the continual necessity of
understanding other people, I have to confess that I have scarcely, if
ever, had an “image,” or anything like it, of the inner experiences
of those other people! To speak the truth: I have never even thought
of the possibility of having one. I intentionally summon such an
“image” now, in the hope of producing and “having” what, from the usual
viewpoint, should always be the kernel of social understanding. But
the resulting product is very poor and decidedly unusual. It becomes
quite obvious by such a test that generally social understanding does
_not_ depend upon that procedure. What else happens then? The answer is
simple, though it will surprise some of my readers.
In my objective experience of my neighbor’s anger there is no “dualism”
between the “movements of his body” and his “inner experiences.” Even
for the scientist this dualism does not exist, so long as he remains
naïve and does not theorize too much. To ask for the _final step_ from
certain of our objective experiences, viz., the behavior of others,
to the inference of their inner life, is nothing but the introduction
of a sophisticated, scientific and philosophical classification into
a field which, to the unprejudiced observer, does not require such a
treatment. Philosophy, in trying to build up a picture of the world,
may be compelled, perhaps, to make a distinction between “mind” and
“body.” But that does not mean that our objective experience of others
must appear to us as something insufficient and limited, _behind_ which
an altogether different kind of event occurs. This is not necessary
because objective experience as such contains _all_ the material needed
for understanding others, at least in all those cases which we have
treated here. When I refer to the calmness of another man standing
before me in everyday life, I refer to his visible appearance, which is
not something “merely” visible to me, but contains all the “calmness”
I am interested in _without any further idea about something additional
such as, for instance, his “consciousness_.” If he becomes more and
more excited, according to my eyes and ears, this _crescendo_ is not
an indifferent sensory fact. In its dynamical properties it _contains_
what I call the man’s excitement, and I do not think of the man as a
locus of events belonging to an essentially different world. At least,
before I begin to philosophize, I do not do so. In the same way, when
I refer to other men’s “hesitation,” “restlessness,” “determination,”
“depression,” “avoiding,” “reaching for,” and also their “joy,” “fear,”
“anger,” “embarrassment” and so forth, I am usually far from inferring
“inner experiences” in them, by making “a last step” from my sensory
experiences into quite another field. On the contrary, what I denote by
those terms _remains_ entirely in sensory space. Though the terms may
also be applied to _my_ inner experiences, which often are strikingly
similar to those objective experiences, they do not usually refer to
the inner experiences of others when used in an everyday description of
their conduct.
May I ask the reader to make an experiment before criticizing these
statements? It is easy enough to produce embarrassment in some one.
If the reader tries it and if he becomes convinced that he has
been successful, he should ask himself whether what he calls the
embarrassment of the other is not present to him in sensory space. He
should also ask whether or not he imagines something out of another
world, i.e., the subjectively experienced embarrassment of the other,
when he “understands” that man’s behavior, as we understand each other
in daily life. Sometimes, it is true, we experience the other man’s
attitude as something issuing from “his interior.” But what is here
called “his interior” is a part of the same sensory space in which his
visible face is seen. Even such a description does not refer to events
in a world apart; it means an event in the self-same world in which we
see the other “looking at a definite object,” for instance. If in my
objective experience the other man is a segregated whole and if to this
whole there corresponds a functional whole of processes in my brain,
we have no right to expect that the dynamics of that functional whole
should be restricted to its boundary in all cases, the interior of it
remaining altogether empty. So we may well understand the fact that
sometimes a dynamical attitude seems to issue from another person’s
“interior.”
The conclusion of this discussion is that the “numerical difference”
between fear as experienced subjectively and fear as experienced
objectively by an observer, shall not be denied. But we have to
add immediately that this theoretical difference does not play an
appreciable rôle in common life, because here, from the viewpoint
of a naïve observer, the frightened behavior, as it is experienced
objectively, _is the_ fear of the other. Similarly, to this observer
the pencil before him _is the_ pencil, though in a moment of
theoretical consideration he may realize that, in addition to it, there
exists a pencil as an unexperienced physical object.
I mention one more consequence of this theory or, as one should better
say, of this description: All physical events or states which send
similar constellations of stimuli to our eyes and ears, as issue from
the physical body of another person, will look or sound “emotional,”
“restless,” “directed towards something,” “determined,” and so forth,
just as a living person does. No one can hear naïvely the rumbling
_crescendo_ of thunder without thus understanding it as “menacing.”
Different types of weather are experienced in the same manner, i.e.,
as calm or restless or friendly, and so forth.[48] No one thinks
of imagining the subjective experiences of the weather in such a
case. What surrounds us in sensory space, we describe as restless or
menacing or friendly, because these are the dynamical attributes or
Ehrenfels-qualities which characterize the sensory experiences in
question.
I wish to state expressly, however, that sometimes the problem of
“understanding” seems to present difficulties which cannot be solved
in this way. Wherever the objective experience which we have of
another person does not appear as similar to those inner experiences
which he probably has, a new situation is before us. One might say,
for instance, that, from the viewpoint of our theory, laughing as seen
and heard by others is not an appropriate expression of that group of
subjective states which are usually accompanied by laughing. Whether
in such cases the theory of association and assimilation, or any
other indirect explanation, may be accepted as a supplement, I shall
not try to decide here. Suppose that such a supplement should become
necessary; the facts described in this chapter would be an excellent
basis for it, because where understanding has already occurred as
something direct and obvious, this core of experiences might well tend
to complete itself in the form of meaning acquired indirectly. On the
other hand, we do not claim that what is going on within a person will
_always_ be evident in his sensory appearance. A theory that would
pretend so much could not possibly be right. Most persons begin to
conceal themselves to some degree early in life. A well-trained actor
or pianist does not “look” his stage fright at all; he does not “sound”
it either. To be sure, sometimes, calmness acquired as a social form
will become transparent in consequence of some slight but treacherous
nuance of effort in it. Real embarrassment, as, for instance, in the
example considered above (pp. 253-255), is a thing which few people
can conceal altogether. By no means can we deny, however, that
innumerable passing events and traits of inner life remain hidden in
social contact, because suppression of peripheral “projection” has
become a facile automatism in adults. Moreover, I shall concede without
hesitation that, on the way from organized processes in one person
through the transmission by waves of light or sound to new organization
in a second person, much may be lost or distorted. The theory gives
us neither an altogether new nor an altogether perfect key to another
person’s inner life; it tries only to describe so far as it can that
kind of understanding which is the common property and practice of
mankind.
A special relevant task consists in considering what further effects
those sensory experiences may have, which, possessing the qualities
of calmness or restlessness, of tension or relaxation, and so forth,
appear to us both in our fellow men and the weather. In our nervous
system, the processes underlying those experiences do not remain
isolated, the psychophysical field is larger, and other parts of it are
very apt to develop processes which we experience as subjective. We
have seen that these have much in common with the processes underlying
our objective experience of the behavior of others. Therefore, a rather
direct influence seems to be possible. Social contagion particularly,
but also fear, as an effect of menacing objective experience, or
haughtiness as a consequence of the humbleness of others, experienced
objectively, must be considered from the new viewpoint.
These are problems which we may leave to a future time when the
simpler facts described in this chapter will have found more general
acknowledgment. One word more shall be said, however, about the
application of the new viewpoint to scientific method. In this respect
one might be inclined to say that such an understanding of others
is all right for the purposes of common life, but not for those of
science. It ought to be excluded, therefore, from behavioristic
studies as something which originates in our sensory processes as a
very indirect and complicated result of stimulation. We have seen,
however, that even such a radical behaviorist as Dr. Watson does not
keep himself free from its use, because too little would be left
of the qualitative observation and description of behavior, if he
should try seriously to exclude even the slightest trace of that
“understanding.” Take the example of the physicist! If he would exclude
from objective observation whatever exists for him as a product of
sensory organization only, he could neither rely upon the sensory
segregation of _objects_, including his apparatus, nor upon their
_form_ as a visual experience, since it does not exist without the
“indirect and complicated” processes of sensory organization. It is
obvious that such an extreme procedure would make his scientific
task an impossible affair. Quite the same is true of behavioristic
psychology. At least as preliminary material the sensory experiences
which we have considered in this chapter have to be used, wherever they
occur as striking and evident in behavior as objective experience. With
naïve confidence the physicist did likewise to a great extent, before
he could develop the present methods of his science which restrict the
use of sensory experience to certain special and very reliable cases.
In our young science it will be convenient to follow his example with
caution, as we proposed in the second chapter. But I wish to lay some
stress upon the necessary caution. Only those should be allowed to
apply this method in objective psychology who know how to discriminate
between the apparent data of objective experience and the mere play of
untrained and prejudiced imagination.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Buytendijk und Plessner: _Philosophischer Anzeiger_. 1925.
E. von Hornbostel: _Festschrift Meinhof_.
L. Klages: _Vom Wesen des Bewusstseins_. 1921.
W. Köhler: _Die Methoden der psychologischen Forschung beim Affen_
(Cf. Chapter II).
Usnadze: Psychol. Forsch., 5. 1924.
VIII
_Association_
WITHOUT the observation of direct experience we should be in great
danger of constructing an artificially simplified system of psychology,
as is that of current behaviorism. On the other hand, it seems
absolutely impossible to me to develop psychology as a science of
direct experience or of “consciousness.” For the development of that
science the field of actual experience alone is inadequate, especially
when compared with the totality of those processes in the nervous
system, a few of which are at each moment accompanied by experience,
but _all_ of which seem to be more or less interdependent. How can one
pretend to construct an adequate theory of psychological events using
experience alone, if the processes underlying experience are merely
a dynamical province of a much larger functional whole? It is almost
impossible to deny this fact nowadays. Therefore, we cannot hope to
understand experience itself exclusively from its own aspect, any more
than one could hope to learn and understand the game of chess through
watching only the moves in one corner of the board the whole time.
In this latter case the observer of the game would soon become aware
of the fact that something important was going on beyond the narrow
field of his observation, that evidently the moves in it referred
to something beyond, since they even seemed to come from there and
to disappear again into the unseen. Exactly the same is true of
experience. When reading or talking about things which are not present,
we do not usually develop adequate “images” of them. Sometimes scarcely
anything at all seems to be experienced of those absent things. When
asked about my profession I answer that I am a psychologist. But all
the _actual_ experience connected with this word is a certain feeling
of familiarity, of being sure about it, and of a certain direction
in which I might start at once in order to furnish more concrete and
detailed data. This “readiness for transition” in a definite direction,
the mark of which is not given explicitly in actual experience, has
been described excellently by William James. It is one of the most
frequent and common things to be found in experience. And its most
conspicuous character consists in its being _experienced as_ pointing
beyond the actual field of experience towards something particular
and ready outside. So experience tells us about its own functional
incompleteness. Nor should we be too much astonished by the fact;
nothing else can be expected if, of a larger functional whole, only
a restricted field has experience as a correlate; to the dynamical
dependence of this field upon definite physiological states beyond
itself corresponds the felt definite direction in experience. Though
not experienced actually, those physiological states “beyond” seem to
be definite enough; for in general our reading and talking go the right
way, sufficiently determined by those “states beyond.”
Perhaps the simplest example of this is “successive comparison,” in its
different forms. After a few years of traveling I meet a friend, and
my first idea is “How old he looks!” That does not at all mean that he
looks particularly old on an absolute scale. I see older-looking men
every day. Nor does it mean that I reproduce an image of him, as I knew
him before, and now compare the two. Nevertheless, what is meant refers
to the past and represents an extreme form of what occurs in most cases
of successive comparison. If five seconds after a first noise I hear a
second one, similar but sufficiently louder, I am able to judge about
the relation of their intensities without any difficulty, though I do
_not_ reproduce the first at the moment of the second. (Personally, I
am not able to experience even a somewhat inadequate “image” of one
noise when I hear a second one which is slightly different.) In this
point all observers at present seem to agree.
But how do we judge about the relation, if only one of the noises is
actually experienced? We may answer that we do not experience the
second noise as something isolated and discrete, but that, when it
occurs, it seems to come with a definite direction “from something
in the past.”[49] Even if we take this for granted, however, our
problem is not yet solved. Our judgments are usually rather accurate.
Hence, what is left of the past, i.e., of the first sound, which now
determines the direction with which the second noise appears, must be a
fairly definite representative of the first noise. On the other hand,
this _trace_ of the first sound is an effect not comparable to that
process which, five seconds before, was accompanied by our experience
of the first sound. If it were still of the same kind, it should be
accompanied by a similar experience throughout, which it certainly
is not. Hence, the only possibility seems to be that a physiological
product of that first process remains after that process itself has
ceased, that such a product represents sufficiently well that process
by which it was produced, and that the definite direction with which
the second noise appears depends upon the “level” of that product in
its relation to the intensity of the second noise.
The concentration of those molecules which have taken part in the
first process may be considered as a product of that process, left
behind as its trace, with corresponding properties. There are other
hypotheses. But no theory will be competent which does not assume
some trace corresponding more or less to the actual properties of the
first process. Some years ago I developed a more detailed theory of
successive comparison, primarily concerned with the way in which the
trace of a first sound determines the direction with which the second
sound appears.[50] I concluded that by experimentation on successive
comparison we are able to find out what happens to the trace of the
first process after this process itself has ceased. The final result of
these considerations was that such a trace is preserved for a long time
and that, probably, it is identical with what has to be assumed as the
physiological basis of enduring memory and of reproduction.