If it is true that misery loves company, those persons who feel
despondent over the present situation in philosophy may console
themselves with the reflection that things are not so bad as they might
be. Our friends, the psychologists, are afflicted even as we are. The
disagreements of experts as to both the subject-matter and the method of
psychology are as fundamental as anything that philosophy can show. A
spirit of revolt is abroad in the land, and psychology is once more on
trial. The compact which provided that psychology should be admitted to
the rank of a natural science, on condition that it surrender its
pretension to be the science of the soul and confine itself to the study
of consciousness, is no longer considered binding. The suspicion is
growing that consciousness is nothing more nor less than an attenuated
form of the soul that it pretends to displace. Consequently the
psychology without a soul to which we have just become accustomed is now
attacked on behalf of a psychology without a consciousness, on the
ground that this latter standpoint alone can give assurance against
entangling alliances between psychology and metaphysics.
From the side of philosophy this situation is interesting, not only to
such as may crave the comfort that springs from the spectacle of
distress, but also to those who take a more hopeful view of present-day
tendencies. The question that is at issue is fundamentally the question
of the nature of consciousness, which is quite as important to
philosophy as to psychology. On the one hand it is maintained that
psychology has to do with consciousness and that its distinctive method
is the method of introspection. On the other hand it is urged that
psychology is nothing more nor less than a study of behavior, that it is
not a science at all, unless the existence of consciousness is denied or
at least ignored, and that the method of introspection is a delusion and
a snare. The two standpoints are not always clearly formulated, nor can
we say that every system of psychology is true to type. It is, in fact,
the lack of clearness in the fundamental concepts that makes the status
of psychology a matter of so much uncertainty.
The situation presents an apparent anomaly. Both parties profess to deal
with facts of observation, yet the claim of the introspectionist that he
observes facts of consciousness is met by the assertion of his rival
that there is no consciousness to be observed. How can this be, unless
we assume that introspection presupposes an esoteric principle, like the
principle of grace in religion? It seems evident that we have to do here
with some deep-seated misconception regarding the facts that are
supposed to constitute the subject-matter for observation and
description.
A common procedure on the part of introspectionism is to assert the
existence of consciousness as something which is indeed indefinable, but
which admits of observation and description. But this procedure is no
longer justified. In the first place, the assertion that consciousness
exists is not the statement of a fact but the designation of a problem.
What is the nature of the fact that we call consciousness? If the
common-sense individual, who assents so readily to the proposition that
we all know consciousness, be asked to differentiate between
consciousness and the objects of consciousness, he is dazed and
helpless. And, secondly, the assertion of indefinability involves us in
a difficulty. The indefinability of consciousness has sometimes been
likened to that of space, but in this latter case we find no such
confusion between space and the objects in space. It is clear, however,
that if consciousness is not something distinguishable from objects,
there is no need to discuss consciousness, and if it is distinguishable,
it must be distinguished before we are entitled to proceed with
observation and description. Definition is indispensable, at least to
the extent of circumscribing the facts that are to be investigated.
Moreover, if consciousness cannot be defined, neither can it be
described. What is definition, after all, but a form of description? To
assert, in effect, that consciousness is indefinable because it is
indescribable, and that for this reason we must be content with
description, is both a flagrant disregard of consistency and an
unwarranted abuse of our good nature.
This difficulty leads on to another, for doubts, like lies, have a
singular propensity to breed more of their kind. If consciousness is
something that everybody knows, why should it be necessary to look to
the psychologist for a description of it? if the study of consciousness
brings to light any new fact, that fact by definition is not a conscious
fact at all, and consequently is not the kind of thing that we set out
to describe. Consciousness, in short, cannot be analyzed; it cannot be
resolved into elements or constituents. It is precisely what it is and
not some product of our after-thought that we are pleased to substitute
for it.
These familiar considerations do not, indeed, decide the issue between
the rival theories of psychology, but they serve to suggest that our
introspective psychology has been too easily satisfied in the conception
of its specific problem or subject-matter. As a matter of fact, the work
that has been done in the name of psychology has been peculiarly barren
of results, so far as a consciousness _an sich_ is concerned, although
it has led to a wealth of material pertaining to adaptive behavior. Its
solid achievements lie in the domain, not of consciousness, but of
instinctive, habitual, and intelligent adaptation. It teaches us little
that has to do unequivocally with consciousness as distinct from things,
but it teaches us much concerning stimulus and response, attention and
habit, conflict and adjustment. The doctrine that psychology is a
science of behavior is justified at least to the extent that it
emphasizes a factor, the importance of which introspectionism has
consistently refused to recognize. Whatever conclusion we may ultimately
reach regarding the nature of consciousness, the whole drift of
psychological and biological investigation seems to indicate that an
adequate conception of consciousness and of the distinctive problem of
psychology can be attained only on the basis of a painstaking reflection
on the facts of behavior.
I
It is evident that the attempt to ascertain the nature of consciousness
and of psychology from the standpoint of behavior is committed to the
assumption that the behavior in question is of a distinctive kind. The
justification of this assumption will enable us to formulate the
definitions which we seek. Discussions of conscious behavior ordinarily
emphasize the similarity between conscious and reflex behavior rather
than the difference. An attitude of expectancy, for example, is usually
conceived as a sort of temporary reflex. Certain nervous connections are
organized for the occasion, so that, when a given stimulus arrives, it
will induce its appropriate response. This situation is best
exemplified, perhaps, in simple reaction-experiments, in which the
subject makes a certain predetermined response upon presentation of the
stimulus. The process is supposed to be of the reflex type throughout,
the only difference being that ordinary reflexes are relatively
permanent and unvarying, whereas a prearranged response to a stimulus
has to do with a reflex that is made to order so as to meet the
exigencies of the moment.
For certain purposes such a description of conscious behavior is no
doubt sufficiently accurate. Our present concern, however, is with the
differences between these temporary organizations and ordinary
reflexes. In order to bring out these differences, let us introduce a
slight complication into our reaction-experiment and suppose that the
subject is to make one of two alternative responses, according to the
nature of the stimulus. His state of expectancy is accompanied by a
certain bodily "set" or preparedness for the coming event, although the
precise nature of the event is a matter of uncertainty. His nervous
system is in readiness to respond this way or that, or rather, it has
already started to act in both of the alternative ways. If the subject
is to respond with the right hand to one stimulus and with the left hand
to the other, both hands are in a state of activity before the stimulus
appears. The organization of the temporary reflex through the agency of
the cerebral cortex could not be achieved were it not for the fact that
all the movements entering into the organization are nascently aroused
before the spring is touched which permits the act to unroll itself in
orderly sequence.
The various successive movements, then, which make up our temporary
reflex achieve their relationship to one another from the fact that they
are started simultaneously, and this peculiarity constitutes a
distinctive feature. Apparently this feature is absent from true
reflexes. An act of swallowing, performed unconsciously, may start the
complicated processes of digestion, but it is merely the first act of a
series. There is no evidence that the movements of the stomach and of
the other organs concerned in digestion must be presupposed before the
act of swallowing can take place. The swallowing may start the other
processes, but we cannot say that these other processes react back upon
the first act and make it one of swallowing rather than something else.
Yet this "back stroke" is precisely what is necessary in our
reaction-experiment, for it is by virtue of this fact that the
organization of the temporary reflex becomes a possibility. The first
response cannot take place until the last is provided for. Thus the
immediate act of looking has embodied in it the activity that is to
follow later. The looking is not simply with the eye, but with the hands
that are to complete the response. The optical response is a response
which, in the language of Bergson, prefigures or sketches out the act of
a later moment. The nervous system is enabled to act as a unit, because
the movements that are to occur at a later time are represented in the
first stage of the complete act. The first stage, accordingly, does not
occur independently, but _as_ a preliminary to the second. With an
imperfect organization of the entire response, it may happen that the
subsequent movements are not suppressed until their proper moment
arrives, but appear in advance of their scheduled time. In writing, for
example, we frequently omit words or add to a word the final letter of
some word that belongs to a subsequent part of the sentence. An error of
this sort could hardly occur so readily in the course of an act that
belongs to the type of the true reflex.
Lest the reader suspect that this is _a priori_ physiology, I may quote
the following from a prominent neurologist: "No simple sensory impulse
can, under ordinary circumstances, reach the cerebral cortex without
first being influenced by subcortical association centers, within which
complex reflex combinations may be effected and various automatisms set
off in accordance with their preformed structure. These subcortical
systems are to some extent modifiable by racial and individual
experience, but their reactions are chiefly of the determinate or
stereotyped character, with a relatively limited range of possible
reaction types for any given stimulus complex.
"It is shown by the lower vertebrates, which lack the cerebral cortex,
that these subcortical mechanisms are adequate for all of the ordinary
simple processes of life, including some degree of associative memory.
But here, when emergencies arise which involve situations too complex to
be resolved by these mechanisms, the animal will pay the inevitable
penalty of failure--perhaps the loss of his dinner, or even of his life.
"In the higher mammals with well-developed cortex the automatisms and
simple associations are likewise performed mainly by the subcortical
apparatus, but the inadequacy of this apparatus in any particular
situation presents not the certainty of failure, but rather a dilemma.
The rapid preformed automatisms fail to give relief, or perhaps the
situation presents so many complex sensory excitations as to cause
mutual interference and inhibition of all reaction. There is a stasis in
the subcortical centers. Meanwhile the higher neural resistance of the
cortical pathways has been overcome by summation of stimuli and the
cortex is excited to function. Here is a mechanism adapted, not for a
limited number of predetermined and immediate responses, but for a much
greater range of combination of the afferent impressions with each other
and with memory vestiges of previous reactions and a much larger range
of possible modes of response to any given set of afferent impressions.
By a process of trial and error, perhaps, the elements necessary to
effect the adaptive response may be assembled and the problem solved.
"It is evident here that the physiological factors in the dilemma or
problem as this is presented to the cortex are by no means simple
sensory impressions, but definitely organized systems of neural
discharge, each of which is a physiological resultant of the reflexes,
automatisms, impulses, and inhibitions characteristic of its appropriate
subcortical centers. The precise form which these subcortical
combinations will assume in response to any particular excitation is in
large measure determined by the structural connections _inter se_....
"From the standpoint of the cerebral cortex considered as an essential
part of the mechanism of higher conscious acts, every afferent stimulus,
as we have seen, is to some extent affected by its passage through
various subcortical association centers (i.e., it carries a quale of
central origin). But this same afferent impulse in its passage through
the spinal cord and brain stem may, before reaching the cortex,
discharge collateral impulses into the lower centers of reflex
cooerdination, from which incipient (or even actually consummated) motor
responses are discharged previous to the cortical reaction. These motor
discharges may, through the 'back stroke' action, in turn exert an
influence upon the slower cortical reaction. Thus the lower reflex
response may in a literal physiological sense act _into_ the cortical
stimulus complex and become an integral part of it."[37]
It seems clear, then, that conscious behavior involves a certain
_process_ of organization which constitutes a differential. The units
entering into this process are "definitely organized systems of neural
discharge," the antecedent organization of these several systems being
due either to the inherited or to the acquired structure of the nervous
system. Given a certain amount of plasticity, the nervous system builds
up specific forms of response for certain objects or situations, and
these forms of response subsequently become the material from which new
organizations or new modes of response are constructed. The achievements
of the past, accordingly, become stepping-stones to new achievement. The
new organization, moreover, is not determined by a mechanism
antecedently provided, but has a peculiar flexibility, so as to meet the
demands of a new situation. That is, a new mode of procedure is adopted.
Instead of being a purely mechanical reaction, the response that results
from the situation is tentative or experimental in character, and "by a
process of trial and error, perhaps, the elements necessary to effect
the adaptive response may be assembled and the problem solved."
We may add at once that the reorganization which is required to
constitute conscious behavior varies a great deal in extent. In an act
that is more or less habitual, a comparatively slight modification of
the corresponding organized system of neural discharge will suffice to
harmonize the conflicting elements, whereas on other occasions a more
extensive modification is required. But in any case it appears that
there is a certain impropriety in describing conscious behavior in terms
of a temporary reflex, since the study of this behavior is concerned
with the organization of the discordant elements, not as a result, but
primarily as a process. In a reflex act we may suppose that the stimulus
which evokes the first stage in the response is like the first in a row
of upstanding bricks, which in falling knocks down another. That is, the
reflex arc is built up by agencies that are quite independent of the
subsequent act. The arc is all set up and ready for use by the time the
reflex act appears upon the scene. In the case of conscious activity, on
the other hand, we find a very different state of affairs. The arc is
not first constructed and then used, but is constructed as the act
proceeds; and this progressive organization is, in the end, what is
meant by conscious behavior. If the course of a reflex act may be
compared with traveling in a railroad train, the progress of a conscious
act is more like that of a band of explorers, who hew their path and
build their bridges as they go along. The direction of the act is not
determined from without but from within; the end is internal to the
process.
This process of organization and purposive direction is exemplified in
every act of attention. Is that noise, for example, a horse in the
street, or is it the rain on the roof? What we find in such a situation
is not a paralysis of activity, but a redirection. The incompatibility
of responses is purely relative. There is indeed a mutual inhibition of
the responses for hoof-beats and rain respectively, in the sense that
neither has undisputed possession of the field; but this very inhibition
sets free the process of attention, in which the various responses
participate and cooeperate. There is no static balancing of forces, but
rather a process in which the conflict is simply a condition for an
activity of a different kind. If I am near a window facing the street,
my eye turns thither for a clue; if the appeal to vision be eliminated,
the eye becomes unseeing and cooeperates with the ear by excluding all
that is irrelevant to the matter in hand. In this process the nervous
system functions as a unit, with reference to the task of determining
the source and character of the sound. This task or problem dominates
the situation. A voice in an adjoining room may break in, but only as
something to be ignored and shut out; whereas a voice in the street may
become all-absorbing as possibly indicating the driver of the
hypothetical horse. That is, the reason why the conflict of responses
does not end in a deadlock, but in a redirection, is that a certain
selectiveness of response comes into play. Out of the mass of more or
less inchoate activities a certain response is selected as a
rallying-point for the rest, and this selection is of a purposive
character. The selection is determined by reference to the task in hand,
which is to restore a certain harmony of response. Accordingly, that
response is selected which gives promise of forwarding the business of
the moment. By virtue of this selective character, one of the
constituents of the total activity becomes exalted among its fellows and
is entrusted with the function of determining further behavior.
The purpose of the discussion, up to this point, is to put forward this
selective or teleological character as the fundamental and
differentiating trait of conscious behavior; and our task, accordingly,
is to give an account of the nature and _modus operandi_ of this
purposive control. This control, it is evident, consists in giving
direction to behavior with reference to results that are still in the
future. The basis for this anticipation of the future is furnished by
the nascent responses which foreshadow further activity, even while they
are still under the thraldom of the inhibitions which hold them back.
These suppressed activities furnish a sort of diagram or sketch of
further possible behavior, and the problem of consciousness is the
problem of making the result or outcome of these incipient responses
effective in the control of behavior. Future results or consequences
must be converted into present stimuli; and the accomplishment of this
conversion is the miracle of consciousness. To be conscious is to
have a future possible result of present behavior embodied as a present
existence functioning as a stimulus to further behavior. Thus the
qualities of a perceptual experience may be interpreted, without
exception, as anticipations of the results of activities which are
as yet in an embryonic stage. The results of the activity that is
as yet partly suppressed are already expressed or anticipated in the
perception. The present experience may, as James says, "shoot its
perspective far before it, irradiating in advance the regions in
which lie the thoughts as yet unborn."[38] A baseball player, for
example, who is all "set" to field a ball as a preliminary to a further
play, sees the ball, not simply as an approaching object, but as
ball-to-be-caught-and-then-thrown-to-first-base. Moreover, the ball,
while still on the way, is a ball-that-may-bound-to-the-right-or-
to-the-left. The corresponding movements of the player to the right or
left, and the act of throwing, although present only as inhibited or
incipient acts, are nevertheless embodied in the visual experience.
Similarly my couch looks soft and inviting, because the optical
stimulation suggests or prompts, not only the act of lying down, but
also the kind of relaxation that is made possible by a comfortable bed.
So likewise the tiger's jaws and claws look cruel and horrible, because
in that perception are reflected the incipient movements of defense and
recoil which are going on in the body of the observer. Perception, like
our air-castles, or like dreams in the Freudian theory, presents what is
at best but a suggestion or program in the guise of accomplished fact.
This projection, however, of our submerged activities into our
perceptions requires a more precise statement. According to the
foregoing contention, the appearance, for example, of a razor's edge as
sharp is the sensory correlate of an incipient response which, if it
were to attain full-blown perfection, would be the reaction to a cut.
By hypothesis, however, the response is inhibited, and it is this
inhibition which calls forth the perception of the object. If the
response encountered no obstruction, adaptation would be complete and
perception would not occur. Since there is a blocking of the response,
nature resorts to a special device in order to overcome the difficulty,
and this device consists in furnishing the organism with a new type of
stimulus. The razor as perceived does not actually cut just now, but it
bodies forth the quality 'will cut,' i.e., the perceived attribute
derives its character from what the object will, or may, do at a future
time. That is, a perceived object is a stimulus which controls or
directs the organism by results which have not yet occurred, but which
will, or may, occur in the future. The uniqueness of such a stimulus
lies in the fact that a contingent result somehow becomes operative as a
present fact; the future is transferred into the present so as to become
effective in the guidance of behavior.
This control by a future that is made present is what constitutes
consciousness. A living body may respond to an actual cut by a knife on
purely mechanical or reflex principles; but to respond to a cut by
anticipation, i.e., to behave with reference to a merely possible or
future injury, is manifestly an exhibition of intelligence. Not that
there need be any conscious reference to the future as future in the
act. Merely to see the object as "sharp" is sufficient to give
direction to conduct. But "sharp" is equivalent to "will cut"; the
quality of sharpness is a translation of future possibility into terms
of present fact, and as thus translated the future possibility becomes a
factor in the control of behavior. Perception, therefore, is a point
where present and future coincide. What the object _will_ do is, in
itself, just a contingency, an abstract possibility, but in perception
this possibility clothes itself in the garments of present, concrete
fact and thus provides the organism with a different environment. The
environment provides a new stimulus by undergoing a certain kind of
change, i.e., by exercising a peculiar function of control. This control
is seeing, and the whole mystery of consciousness is just this rendering
of future stimulations or results into terms of present existence.
Consciousness, accordingly, is a name for a certain change that takes
place in the stimulus; or, more specifically, it is a name for the
control of conduct by future results or consequences.
To acquire such a stimulus and to become conscious are one and the same
thing. As was indicated previously, the conscious stimulus is correlated
with the various inherited and acquired motor tendencies which have been
set off and which are struggling for expression, and the uniqueness of
the stimulus lies in the fact that the adaptive value of these nascent
motor tendencies becomes operative as the determining principle in the
organization of the response. The response, for example, to "sharp" or
"will cut" is reminiscent of an earlier reaction in which the organism
engaged in certain defensive movements as the result of an actual
injury. That is, the response to "sharp" is a nascent or incipient form
of a response which at the time of its first occurrence was the
expression of a maladaptation. The response that is induced when an
object is seen as sharp would be biologically bad, if it were completed,
and the fact that the object is seen as sharp means that this result is
foreshadowed and operates as a stimulus to prevent such maladaptation.
Similarly the couch which meets my weary eye becomes a stimulus to
repose because the nascent activity which is aroused would be
biologically good if completed. In any case the character of the
stimulus is determined by the adaptive value which the incipient
activity would have if it were carried out. Consciousness, accordingly,
is just a future adaptation that has been set to work so as to bring
about its own realization. The future thus becomes operative in the
present, in much the same way as the prospects for next year's crop may
be converted by the farmer into ready money with which to secure the
tools for its production.
To justify this conclusion by a detailed and extensive application of
this interpretation to every form of quality and relation would carry us
beyond the limits of the present undertaking. It is a view, however,
which offers possibilities that have not as yet been properly
recognized. Certain considerations, besides those already discussed, may
be mentioned as giving it an antecedent plausibility. As regards simple
sense-qualities, there is abundant reason for believing that Locke's
doctrine of "simple ideas" is a violent perversion of the facts. To
assume that the last results of analysis are the first things in
experience is to give a fatal twist to psychology and to commit us to
the fruitless agonies of epistemology. The original "blooming, buzzing
confusion" with which experience starts becomes differentiated into
specific qualities only to the extent that certain typical and organized
forms of response are built up within the body. Sense-qualities, in
other words, are functionally not simple but extremely complex; they owe
their distinctiveness or individuality to the fact that each of them
embodies a specific set of cues or anticipations, with reference to
further experiences. The difference between a quality like "sharpness"
and a quality like "red" lies in the fact that the former is a
translation of a relatively simple possibility, viz., "will cut,"
whereas the latter embodies a greater variety of anticipations. The
perception of red, being the outcome of many comparisons and
associations, presupposes a complex physical response which contains
multitudinous tendencies to reinstate former responses; and the combined
effect of these suppressed tendencies is the perception of a color which
offers possibilities of control over behavior in such directions as
reminiscences, idle associations, or perhaps scrutiny and investigation.
A similar explanation evidently applies to abstract ideas, which neither
admit of reduction to "revived sensations" nor compel the adoption of a
peculiarly "spiritual" or "psychic" existence in the form of
unanalyzable meanings. Here again a complex mode of response must be
assumed, having as its correlate an experience describable only in
terms of its functioning, which is such as to enable the organism to act
intelligently, i.e., with reference to future results, which are
sufficiently embodied in the experience to secure appropriate behavior.
Again, this point of view offers a satisfactory solution for the
time-worn puzzle of relativity. If perception is just the translation of
future possible stimulations into present fact, there is assuredly no
justification for the notion that perception distorts the facts or that
discrepancies among different perceptions prove their "subjectivity."
There remains but one test by which the correctness or validity of
perception may be judged, viz., whether the perceived object proves to
be the kind of stimulus which is reported or anticipated in the present
experience.
So far our discussion has emphasized the anticipatory character of the
conscious stimulus. Future consequences come into the present as
_conditions_ for further behavior. These anticipations are based,
indeed, upon previous happenings, but they enter into the present
situation as conditions that must be taken into account. But to take
them into account means that the conscious situation is essentially
incomplete and in process of transformation or reconstruction. This
peculiar incompleteness or contingency stands out prominently when the
situation rises to the level of uncertainty and perplexity. To borrow
the classical illustration of the child and the candle, the child is in
a state of uncertainty because the neural activity of the moment
comprises two incompatible systems of discharge, the one being a
grasping and holding, the other a withdrawal and such further movements
as may be induced by contact with fire. Hence the candle has the
seductiveness of a prize, but at the same time carries the suggestion of
burning the fingers. That is, the perceived object has a unique
character of uncertainty, which inheres in it as a present positive
quality. We are here confronted with genuine contingency, such as is
encountered nowhere else. Other modes of behavior may be uncertain in
the sense that the incoming stimulation finds no fixed line of discharge
laid down for itself within the organism. In seeking to convert itself
into response it may either sweep away the obstructions in its path or
work itself out along lines of less resistance, in ways that no man can
foretell. There may be moments of equilibrium, moments when it remains
to be seen where the dam will break and the current rush through. Such
uncertainty, however, is the uncertainty of the bystander who attempts
to forecast what will happen next. It is not the uncertainty that
figures as an integral part of conscious behavior.
This inherent uncertainty means that conscious behavior, as contrasted
with the mechanical character of the reflexes, is essentially
experimental. The uncertainty exists precisely because an effort is
under way to clear up the uncertainty. The resort to eye or ear or to
reflective thinking is suggested by the corresponding nascent responses
and is an endeavor to secure something which is still to seek, but
which, when found, will meet the requirements of the situation.
Translating this process into terms of stimulus and response, we may
say that the conscious stimulus of the moment induces the investigation
or scrutiny which presently results in the arrival of a stimulus that is
adequate to the situation. The stimulus, in other words, provides for
its own successor; or we may say that the process as a whole is a
self-directing, self-determining activity. Stimulus and response are not
successive stages or moments, but rather simultaneous functions or
phases of the total process. Within this process the given situation is
the stimulus because it is that aspect or function which guides the
subsequent course of the activity, while the bodily movements are the
response because they already embody the activity that is to follow. The
significant circumstance here is that stimulus and response resist the
temporal separation that we find in a purely reflex act; stimulus and
response are bound together as correlated functions in a unitary,
self-directing process, so that these twain are one flesh.
Situations of uncertainty and expectancy, as exemplified by the familiar
child-candle incident, are of interest, because they emphasize both the
anticipatory character of experience and the peculiar reconstruction of
the stimulus. These situations, however, differ merely in degree, not in
kind, from other experiences; their merit is that in them the
distinctive character of conscious life is writ large. To say that they
are conscious situations is to say that they are so constituted that the
possibilities of a subsequent moment are embodied in them as a positive
quality. In them the present moment embodies a future that is
contingent. And similarly the response has neither the predetermined
organization of the reflex nor the aimless character of a response that
issues in a set of random movements. It is, so to speak, of a
generalized character, like the paleontological specimens that
foreshadow in their structure the advent of both fish and reptile. This
form of organization, however, while exemplified most strikingly in
situations of uncertainty, pertains to all conscious behavior. In
uttering a sentence, for example, we know in advance what we are going
to say, yet the sentence shapes itself into definite form only as we
proceed; or perhaps we get "stuck," and by hemming and hawing bear
witness that a struggle for a certain kind of organization is going on.
The same word in different contexts is a different word in each
instance, by virtue of the coloring that it takes on from what is to
follow after. And this is equally true of our most casual experiences.
The auditory or visual object that we happen to notice and immediately
afterwards ignore is apprehended with reference to the possibility of
warranting further attention, or else it presents itself as an intruder
that is to be excluded in order that we may go on with the concern of
the moment. All experience is a kind of intelligence, a control of
present behavior with reference to future adjustment. To be in
experience at all is to have the future operate in the present.
This reference to the future may be in the nature of an end or goal that
controls a series of activities or it may be of a momentary and casual
kind. In any case the character of the stimulus changes with the
progress of the act. The book on the table must become successively
book-to-be-reached-for, book-to-be-picked-up, and book-to-be-opened,
unless the process is to drop back to the type of reflex. This
development of the stimulus gives genuine continuity, since every moment
in the process comes as a fulfilment of its predecessor and as a
transition-point to its successor. In a purely mechanical act response
follows stimulus like the successive strokes of a clock. It is a
touch-and-go affair; the stimulus presses the button and then subsides,
while the neural organization does the rest. In conscious behavior, on
the other hand, stimulus and response keep step with each other. A mere
succession of stimuli would reduce conscious behavior to a series of
explosive jerks, on the principle of the gasoline engine. To be
conscious at all is to duplicate in principle the agility of the
tight-rope performer, who continuously establishes new co-ordinations
according to the exigencies of the moment and with constant reference to
the controlling consideration of keeping right side up. The sensory
stimulus provides continuously for its own rehabilitation or appropriate
transformation, and in a similar way the neural organization is never a
finished thing, but is in constant process of readjustment to meet the
demands of an adaptation that still lies in the future.
It is this relationship of present response to the response of the next
moment that constitutes the distinctive trait of conscious behavior. The
relatively unorganized responses of the present moment, in becoming
reflected in the experienced object, reveal their outcome or meaning
before they have become overt, and thus provide the conditions of
intelligent action. In other words, future consequences become
transformed into a stimulus for further behavior. We are confronted here
with a distinctive mode of operation, which must be properly recognized,
if we are to give a consistent and intelligent account of conscious
behavior. On the other hand, if we refuse to recognize the advent here
of a new category, intelligence becomes an anomaly and mystery deepens
into contradiction. Since intelligence or consciousness must be provided
for somehow, we are forced back upon either interactionism or else
epiphenomenalism, more or less disguised under a euphonious name, such
as psycho-physical parallelism or the double-aspect theory. That is, the
relation of stimulus and response is either reduced to plain cause and
effect or else is rejected altogether and supplanted by a bare
concomitance of the physical and mental series. In either case conscious
behavior is reduced to the type of reflex action, the only issue between
the two doctrines being the question whether or not it is necessary or
permissible to interpolate mental links in the causal chain.
According to the doctrine of parallelism, conscious behavior is nothing
more than a complicated form of reflex, which goes on without any
interference on the part of mind or intelligence. Intelligence adds
nothing to the situation except itself; it carries no implications or
new significance with regard to conduct. The psychic correlate is
permitted to tag along, but the explanations of response remain the same
in kind as they were before they reached the level of consciousness.
"Mere complexity should not becloud the issue. Every brain process, like
every reflex activity, is presumably the result of physico-chemical
processes. The assumption of a mysterious intuition or 'psychic force'
adds nothing to the mechanistic explanation, even when the latter is
most fragmentary. The interactionists go out of their way unnecessarily
in assuming a special activity of consciousness to account for the
dislocation of reactions from sensations. The nervous organization
suffices to explain it. Distant-stimuli and central stimuli co-operate
to bring about anticipatory reactions; foresight is but the conscious
side of this process. The phenomenon is _both_ physical and mental."[39]
The passage just quoted is fairly typical. Since the mental is an aspect
or concomitant of the physical it is clearly entitled to an occasional
honorable mention, but the fact remains that the explanation of behavior
is to be given wholly in terms of neural organization. The mental is
quite literally an "also ran." To say that a physico-chemical process is
also mental is of no particular significance as long as it is implied
that the end or goal of the process plays no part in shaping the course
of events. The mental simply gives dignity to the occasion, like the
sedan chair with no bottom, in which the Irishman's admirers, according
to James's story, ran him along to the place of banquet and which
prompted the hero to remark: "Faith, if it wasn't for the honor of the
thing, I might as well have come on foot."
It is this empty show of respect which the interactionists seek to
avoid when they make the mental a distinct link in the causal sequence.
The physical first causes the mental, and the mental in turn brings
about a change in the physical. In this way a certain importance is
indeed secured to mental facts, but it appears that, so far as purposive
action is concerned, we are no better off than we were before. The
mental is simply another kind of cause; it has as little option
regarding its physical effect as the physical cause has with regard to
its mental effect. Non-mechanical behavior is again ruled out, or else a
vain attempt is made to secure a place for it through the introduction
of an independent psychic agency.
It is true, indeed, that we are under no antecedent obligation to
maintain the existence of an activity that is not entirely reducible to
the type of everyday cause and effect. But neither does scientific zeal
and incorruptibility require us to do violence to the facts in order to
secure this uniformity of type. Not to speak at all of the difficulties
inherent in this dualism, it seems undeniable that some facts
persistently refuse to conform to the type of mechanism, unless they are
previously clubbed into submission. Foresight and the sense of
obligation, for example, must learn to regard themselves as nothing more
than an interesting indication of the way in which the neural machinery
is operating before they will fit into the scheme. And similarly the
progress of an argument is no way controlled or directed by the end in
view, or by considerations of logical coherence, but by the impact of
causation. Ideas lose their power to guide conduct by prevision of the
future, and truth and error consequently lose their significance, save
perhaps as manifestations of cerebral operations. Since reasoning
involves association, it must be reducible to bare association; the
sequence of the process is just sequence and nothing more. A description
of this kind is on a par with the celebrated opinion that violin music
is just a case of scraping horse-hair on catgut. Everything that is
distinctive in the facts is left out of account, and we are forced to
the conclusion that no conclusion has any logical significance or value.
In the end these difficulties, and in fact most of our philosophic ills,
may be traced back to the prejudice that experience or knowing is a
process in which the objects concerned do not participate and have no
share. This assumption commits us at once to various corollaries and
thus breeds a set of abstractions that pass themselves off as entities
and add themselves to the world of our experience as demonstrable facts.
In philosophy, as in the financial world, there is a constant temptation
to do business on a basis of fictitious capitalization. Our abstract
physico-chemical processes, with their correlates, such as passive,
independent objects, souls, minds, or absolutes, do not represent actual
working capital, but watered stock, and their inevitable tendency is to
convert the legitimate business of philosophy into a campaign of
exploitation, which is none the less exploitation because it is
frequently done in the interests of what are supposed to be the
spiritual values of man. A careful inventory of our assets brings to
light no such entities as those which have been placed to our credit.
We do not find body and object _and_ consciousness, but only body and
object. We do not find objects that remain indifferent to the
experiential process, but rather objects that exhibit a flexibility and
mobility which defy all description. We do not find a self-sufficient
environment or absolute _to_ which intelligence must needs adjust
itself, but an environment that is at odds with itself and struggling in
the throes of a reconstruction. The process of intelligence is something
that goes on, not in our minds, but in things; it is not photographic,
but creative. From the simplest perception to the most ideal aspiration
or the wildest hallucination, our human experience is reality engaged in
the guidance or control of behavior. Things undergo a change in becoming
experienced, but the change consists in a doing, in the assumption of a
certain task or duty. The experiential object hence varies with the
response; the situation and the motor activity fit together like the
sections of a broken bowl.
The bearing of this standpoint on the interpretation of psychology is
readily apparent. If it be granted that consciousness is just a name for
behavior that is guided by the results of acts not yet performed but
reflected beforehand in the objects of experience, it follows that this
behavior is the peculiar subject-matter of psychology. It is only by
reference to behavior that a distinctive field can be marked off for
psychological enterprise. When we say that the flame is hot, the stone
hard, and the ice cold and slippery, we are describing objects and
nothing more. These qualities are, indeed, anticipations of future
possibilities, but this means simply that the objects are described in
terms of their properties or capacities as stimuli of the organism. Such
an account leaves out of consideration certain changes which things
undergo when they exercise the function of controlling or directing
changes in the adjustment of the body. A quality, such as "sharp" or
"hot," is not mental or constituted by consciousness, but the function
of the quality in giving direction to behavior through certain changes
which it undergoes is consciousness. The changes that take place in
things as a result of association, attention, or memory, are changes
that have no significance, save with regard to their function as stimuli
to new adjustments. Psychology, therefore, is properly a study of the
conditions which determine the change or development of stimuli; more
specifically it is a study of the conditions which govern such processes
as those by which problems are solved, lessons are memorized, habits and
attitudes are built up, and decisions are reached. To call such study
"applied" psychology is to misunderstand the proper scope and purpose of
the subject. Psychology frequently has occasion to draw extensively upon
physics and physiology, but it has its own problem and its own method of
procedure.
That this view of conscious behavior should involve an extensive
reinterpretation of familiar facts is altogether natural and inevitable.
If consciousness is a form of control, the question, for example, what
is "in" consciousness and what is not must be interpreted with reference
to this function of control. In a sense we perceive many things to
which we are not paying attention, such as the light in the room or the
familiar chairs and bookcases. These are perceived "marginally," as we
say, in the sense that the presence of these objects affects the total
adjustment of the moment in such a way that the experience _would_
become a clue to these objects if they were withdrawn. And similarly we
may speak of marginal sensations of strain or movement, to indicate
possible clues to certain bodily activities which are factors in the
process. These marginal perceptions or images are not actual existences,
but are symbols and nothing more. The significance of these symbols is
that they point to certain conditions by which the experiences in
question are determined. Thus the question whether a given experience
involves certain "sensations" is just a question whether certain bodily
or extra-bodily conditions are involved in the experience. If this
reference to conditions is ignored and experience is explained in terms
of sensory material that blends and fuses and otherwise disposes itself,
the explanation is no longer science but sleight-of-hand. Psychology has
no proper concern with such mythical constituents of consciousness; its
business is with things as related to conduct, which is to say that
psychology is a science of behavior.