_Physics and Mind_
If a psychologist who was not a behaviourist had been listening to this
conversation he might break in:
“Does the physicist seriously propose that we should try to leave mind
out of our picture of the human organism? Even if we can eventually
explain the unconscious purposes of the lower organisms as ends towards
which they are driven by physical laws, yet man has the supreme
distinction of a conscious mind, he can select his aim, and if he likes
renounce it again for something else. You must therefore allow in your
picture for the emergence of mind at some point during the course of
evolution.”
“Wait a moment,” replies the physicist. “Your whole outlook towards
consciousness betrays not only an anthropomorphic standpoint, but one
limited to a single stage in man’s development. There is no single
condition adequately described by the word ‘conscious’. There are in
fact a great many different states of awareness which may grade into
one another, or may form a series of distinct conditions. We do not
know much about them yet, but their variety is most striking. There
is the dim sentience as we awake from chloroform, the awareness of
the dreaming state, the passive experiencing that accompanies any
intensely rhythmic activity such as running. Again, quite different
states are known in day-dreaming, intellectual concentration and the
delicately-balanced semi-consciousness of creative thought.
“Consider especially the states of awareness associated with love, or
with the supreme creative activities of the mind. Free-will, or the
deliberate choice of a purpose, is completely lost in a whole-natured
falling in love, as it is also in the artist’s need to follow some
dimly-conscious intuition of a task he must attempt. At these important
occasions free-will disappears before a sense of inner organic
necessity.
“These examples seem to me to make it clear that ‘conscious purpose’ is
not in any sense the ultimate or highest criterion of human behaviour,
and that free-will need not be taken necessarily to mean the power
to over-ride any laws of nature. In my view ‘free-will’ is simply
the apparent characteristic of organic behaviour when no complete
integration of the personality has been achieved and the mind seems
to be able to oscillate from one purpose to another. We really have
to deal in human beings with a whole series of forms of behaviour
of increasing complexity and integration: reflex and instinctive
actions, deliberate activity, and finally the intuitive whole-natured
creative functioning which leads to ends which could not have been
intellectually foreseen. To each of these must correspond a certain
type of awareness, and in my view, a brain process of a definite degree
of complexity. By analogy with our own experience of different modes
of consciousness, we may be able to infer from the structure of the
central nervous system of an organism what sort of awareness it can
experience.
“Eventually we must expect to be able to give a complete scheme of all
organic behaviour in terms of the organic processes and their laws, but
none the less it will remain a great deal more convenient in some cases
to refer to what happens to human beings by using words that suggest
their conscious experience. The behaviourist denies the scientific
significance of all but the very barest elements of conscious
experience, but of course he has to start from the human perception
of light and colour. Science cannot get on without ideas which obtain
their whole meaning from the qualities of conscious experience, and
hence the extreme behaviourist position merely arises from a prejudice
which prevents clear thinking. But as a campaign to put more stress on
the direct observation of what really happens to living beings in terms
of physical movements, behaviourism can only do good by bringing more
unbiassed knowledge about life.
“My own interpretation of the question may be put in this way. The
thing that is given in nature is a process in time. According to
its complexity and degree of co-ordination an organic process has
different degrees of awareness. There is no one condition called human
consciousness, because the human organism can function with different
degrees of co-ordination, and if we ask if an atom in absorbing light
is conscious, the question has no definite meaning. But in a few years
those who are studying the physiology of the central nervous system
will be able to indicate how many steps of synthesis and integration
occur between the simplest cell and the creative thinker, and to each
of these stages will be ascribed a mode of awareness. But below a
certain degree of organic complexity this ‘awareness’, will cease to
be anything that can be consciously imagined by man, e.g. below the
dimmest sentience one might allow an undifferentiated knowledge of mere
continuance, based in turn on the rhythmic pulsation of the elementary
cells.”
“Your scheme is of course still rather vague, but in its main outlines
it appears satisfactory”, replies the psychologist. “But tell me
outright, can mind influence matter? If I understand you rightly, you
suggest that matter certainly influences mind.”
“On the contrary, I do not! You are back at the meaningless questions
on which philosophers have wasted much time. To ask if mind can
influence matter does not mean anything until you know what you mean
by mind and matter, and to a scientist that means knowing the laws
they obey. Now, on the one hand, relativity and modern quantum theory
indicate that there is no matter in the old sense of particles made of
some unchanging stuff, and physical science recognizes atomic and other
_processes_ as fundamental in the place of ‘matter’. On the other hand,
you really mean by ‘mind’ one particular form of conscious activity:
the deliberate selection of a purpose. Therefore to give your question
real meaning I have to ask instead ‘Does the conscious selection of a
purpose alter the physical processes going on in the human organism?’
“But that is an absurd question. It is like asking: Does a dint in the
outside of a hat _cause_ an alteration in the shape of the inside of
the hat? To which the only reply is that the dint on the outside is
merely another way of describing the dint on the inside. There is no
_causing_ of the one by the other any more than if you fold a bit of
paper you can say that the crease on one side causes the crease on the
other side. They are identical and the double method of description
used in the question creates a meaningless problem.
“‘Conscious selection of a purpose’ is one way of describing a
particular process, and after this process has occurred the brain
will be different from before. The old theories of the correlation or
interaction of mind and matter presupposed that they were separate
things in themselves. The important questions become quite different
when one realizes that mind and matter do not exist independently,
but that they are both somewhat inadequate ways of describing certain
_aspects_ of one organic process. The spatial aspect of organic
process is called the physical organism. The temporal aspect of organic
process corresponds to the content of its consciousness. The physical
body is a group of spatial characteristics. Consciousness is a system
of temporal elements; memory, anticipation, deliberate repetition,
creative longing, hope and fear are all things set in time.
“Professor Alexander has said ‘Time is the mind of Space.’ He attempts
to explain space and time by an anthropomorphic analogy. It is a very
suggestive idea, though for the searcher whose goal is the nature of
consciousness itself it is more valuable to put it the other way round:
mind is the temporal aspect of process, body the spatial aspect. But
it is very important indeed to notice that we have not yet found the
adequate terms for describing these two aspects of process. Matter is
unsatisfactory for the spatial aspect, because there are no unchanging
particles. But nor is mind sufficient for the temporal aspect, because
there is a temporal aspect to the combination of hydrogen atoms and to
chemical and colloidal processes, and yet we must not speak of these
as having mind. When the new words for these two aspects are invented
they will form the foundation of the scientific synthesis which I am
expecting.”
To which the psychologist may answer: “Well, at heart I have always
been a thorough-going determinist like you, at least in dealing with
my patients. Moreover I find it works, because I have always included
in my picture of the patient a life-impulse of some sort, which can be
influenced by my personality. Thus if the behaviour of my patient is
absolutely determined, the conditions which determine what happens to
him include some inner life tendency, and also the effects produced on
him by all the people he meets.
“But if one attempts to formulate such an absolute determinism, or
to apply it to oneself, one gets into deep waters, and I haven’t the
courage to try it. It seems you must be right at bottom, but that only
a god could believe it without its upsetting his mental balance or his
sense of moral responsibility.”
“There I agree,” replies the physicist, “as long as one does not
simultaneously revise one’s whole view of life in terms of this new
organic knowledge. That is a very big task, but I should like one
day to attempt it. Two things especially would attract me to such a
revision of human values. One is that people who ought to know better
still go about making moral judgments about their acquaintances. Now
that we know how profound is the influence on a child of the treatment
it receives during its first five years of life, moral judgments become
rather old-fashioned and only show that the person making them has
himself not yet learnt to find emotional fulfilment in healthier ways.
An analysis of human behaviour along the lines of organic determinism
might do something to show that moral condemnations, whether of
bolshevism or of the sins of one’s children, are never effective unless
immediately accompanied by positive example or creative suggestion.
“But there is another more attractive reason why I should like to
attempt this transvaluation of values. If organic determinism is valid,
then the artist’s aspiration to create is a natural consequence of
some organic law. Creative aspiration may then be looked on as the
natural destiny of certain human beings, though they no more know
where they are going than did the two hydrogen atoms. But organic
determinism allows us to understand why it is of no importance that the
artist doesn’t know what he is going to create before he does it. It
seems that in some matters our organic body is wiser than ourselves,
or rather wiser than our very immature consciousness. When we have
developed our consciousness by the discovery of the organic laws of our
own natures we may be able to make human life more beautiful.”