THE PROBLEM OF PSYCHOLOGY. By _E. W. Scripture_.
THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. I. By _H. R. Marshall_.
SCHOPENHAUER’S CRITICISM OF KANT. By _W. Caldwell_.
DISCUSSION: On the Origin of Music. (1) By _R. Wallaschek_;
(2) By Prof. _J. McK. Cattell_; The Coefficient of External
Reality. By Prof. _J. Mark Baldwin_.
CRITICAL NOTICES: James’s “The Principles of Psychology”;
Pfleiderer’s “Development of Theology in Germany”; Keynes’s
“Scope and Method of Political Economy”; Lehmann’s “Die Hypnose
und die damit verwandten normalen Zustände.”
As all sciences treat, to a great extent, of the same objects, they
can be separated only according to _how_ they treat things. On this
principle, Mr. Scripture divides sciences into Special Sciences,
General or Philosophical Sciences, and Didactic Sciences. The Special
sciences are, I, the Mathematical Sciences, treating the _forms_ of all
experience; II, the Phenomenal Sciences, treating of the _contents_
of all experience; the second class is divided into the Physical
Sciences, which treat experience from its objective side, and Mental
Sciences, which treat experience from its subjective side. The group
of Mental Sciences is best divided, according to Wundt’s scheme, into
the sciences of mental processes, Psychological Sciences; the sciences
of mental products, Philological Sciences; and the Sciences of mental
development, Historical Sciences. Psychology as a science of mental
phenomena has a two-fold relation to the physical sciences: it is
complementary to them, a necessary auxiliary; they are complementary
to it, accessories in psychological investigation. States of mind
always remain states of mind; they cannot be resolved into motions of
particles of matter, and it is a fundamental axiom that _mental phenomena
cannot influence or be influenced by material phenomena_. But we are
justified in talking about a nervous stimulation becoming a percept, a
muscular contraction following an act of will, as long as we remember
that these are only substitutes for unknown quantities. Physiology
investigates nervous changes; Psychology, mental changes; Physiological
Psychology, the relations between the two. Mental phenomena are of two
kinds, mental processes and mental products. Psychology is the science
of mental processes; it seeks the exact description and explanation
of the operations of our inner experience. The relation of Psychology
to Philosophy is a burning question. Metaphysics, or Philosophy in
the narrower sense, seeks from the agreement of the results of all
other sciences to establish a system of the principles that underlie
all existence, i. e. a theory of the universe, material and mental.
After the general principles have been determined by metaphysics,
philosophy has the duty of correcting the special sciences when they
set up one-sided hypotheses, and of helping where they are unable to
proceed alone. Psychology is considered a part of philosophy, but as
a special science, treating mental processes from its own standpoint,
it is distinct from psychology as a general science treating mind,
relations of mind and matter, etc., from the standpoint of philosophy.
The latter should be termed Philosophical Psychology. The relation of
Psychology to Logic depends on what the latter is. Logic is a science of
thought, but thought is also a subject of psychology. Psychology treats
thoughts as we think them; Logic, as we ought to think them. Each of the
sciences, Epistemology, the doctrine of knowledge, and Methodology, the
doctrine of methods, treats of thought for its own distinct purpose.
The former determines what the truth is; the latter determines how we
ought to think. The didactic sciences are of two kinds: the sciences of
the general principles or ends to be obtained, and the sciences of the
means to attain these ends. Among the former is General Pedagogy, which
determines the ends to be sought for in education. Psychology furnishes
the foundation of fact; the science of general pedagogy judges which of
these facts are desirable, in much the same way as epistemology judges
which are true.
In a former article (_Mind_ No. 56) Mr. Marshall showed that Pleasure
and Pain are primitive qualities which, under proper conditions, _may_
appear with any psychosis, whatever be its content. He now finds that
all the most notable pleasure-pain theories may in the first instance
be placed in four groups, determined by the emphasis of certain kinds
of pleasure or pain. An examination of pleasure-pain theories shows,
_first_ that there is a general agreement, with but few dissenting
voices, that all pleasure is at bottom the same thing, and that all pain
in its essence is a single psychological phenomenon, and further that
pleasures and pains are unifiable; _second_, that there are certain facts
so marked in experience as to have become the basis of the majority of
pleasure-pain theories. Mr. Marshall proceeds to consider the theory that
“the activity of the organ of any content if efficient is pleasurable,
if inefficient is painful.” He concludes that pleasures and pains are
involved with the nutritive conditions of the active organ, and lays
down the principle that “all pleasure-pain phenomena are determined by
the action in the organs concomitant of the conscious state, as related
to the nutritive conditions of the organs at the time of the action.”
The difference between the hypernormality of pain and of pleasure,
turns upon the fact that pleasure is obtained where the organ has been
_rested_. Rest in an organ which is sometimes active means storage of
energy derived from blood supply; and action after rest means the use
of stored energy. But as action of an organ after rest gives a psychic
content which is pleasurable, we have the working hypothesis: “Pleasure
is experienced wherever the physical action which determines the content
involves the use of stored force—the resolution of potential into actual
energy; or, in other words, whenever the energy involved in the reaction
to a stimulus is greater in amount than the energy of the stimulus.”
By a similar process of reasoning we obtain the hypothesis: “Pain is
experienced whenever the physical action which determines the content
is so related to the supply of nutriment that the energy involved in
the reaction to the stimulus is less in amount than the energy of the
stimulus.” We may also say in general, “Pleasure and pain are primitive
qualities of psychic states which are determined by the relation
between activity and capacity in the organs, the activities of which
are concomitants of the psychosis.” Mr. Marshall then supplies the
psychological interpretation of the physiological phenomena attendant on
the pleasures of Rest and of Relief, and of the pain of Obstruction or
hindered activity. He concludes the present article with the statement
that the physical concomitants of pleasure-pain phenomena are to be found
in general qualities common to all processes which are at the basis
of our conscious life; and that this is corroborated by introspective
analysis of pleasures and pains. Mr. Marshall’s idea does not appear to
us as a happy solution of the problem.
The object of Mr. Caldwell’s paper is to explain Kantism through
Schopenhauer, who claimed to be Kant’s only true successor in philosophy.
Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that Kant’s only real discovery,
given in the “Æsthetic,” was that Space and Time were known by us _a
priori_. The principle of Causality is the only element of value he
finds in the “Analytic,” and a much simpler account could have been
given of it. The “Dialectic” represents the Negative side of the
Critical Philosophy, which although conclusive, might have been stated
more simply. In Ethics Kant rendered the immortal service of showing,
by his attribution of a noumenal freedom to man, compensating for his
phenomenal necessary determination, “that the kingdom of virtue is not
of this world”; although the _K. d. prakt. V._ is only an application
to ethics of the principles already reached in the sphere of the Pure
Reason. Schopenhauer finds the _K. d. Urtheilskraft_ to contain the
characteristic defect of Kant’s whole Philosophy—the starting from
indirect instead of direct knowledge. Lastly, the criticism of the
Teleological Judgment only shows what the _K. d. r. V._ already showed,
the subjectivity of what we may call the ontological categories.
According to Schopenhauer, the chief tendency of the Kantian philosophy
is to establish “the total diversity of the real and the ideal.” The
Ideal he explains as “the visible, spatial appearance with the qualities
that are perceived on it,” and the Real as the “thing-in-and-for-itself,”
which is the reality underlying and determining the world of experience,
and, as such, a real and not a hypothetical entity. Schopenhauer never
speaks of it in the plural, as Kant does, and so keeps consistently to
a monistic point of view. He says, “The way in which Kant introduced
such a thing-in-itself and sought to reconcile it with his philosophy
was faulty.” This concerns Kant’s method, against which Schopenhauer
directs the full force of his criticism. The fundamental principle
of Kant’s method Schopenhauer takes to be the starting from indirect
reflective knowledge: Philosophy is for Kant a science of conceptions,
while for himself it is a science _in_ conceptions; philosophy being a
conceptualised or _generalised_ statement of our knowledge. Schopenhauer
sees all Kant’s errors contained in the following sentence from the _K.
d. r. V._: “If I take away all thought” (through the categories), “from
empirical knowledge, there remains absolutely no knowledge of an object,
for through mere perceptions nothing at all is thought.” In endeavoring
to construct a philosophy out of pure conceptions Kant failed to solve
the problem, in having the thing-in-itself left on his hands. This proved
to Schopenhauer that the path of abstract reflection was closed as the
path of philosophy. Mr. Caldwell demurs to Schopenhauer’s statement
that the “Æsthetic” is Kant’s only discovery, yet as the “Æsthetic”
shows the tendency to conceptual abstraction, his view of Space and Time
is of extreme importance. It is of the “Logic” of the _K. d. r. V._
that Schopenhauer’s criticism is materially and formally most radical.
He gives a different account of the functions of the Soul, rejecting
altogether the faculty-distinctions of Kant: he associates Kant’s faculty
of Understanding more with Sense and the category of Cause with the
spatio-temporal or perceptual construction of the world, and holds the
other eleven categories to be mere blind windows put into a scheme
through Kant’s love of symmetry; and, secondly, he holds Kant’s account
of Reason to be utterly false, and substitutes his own doctrine of the
thing-in-itself for Kant’s three Ideas of Reason. By Reason Schopenhauer
means the power the mind has of forming general conceptions and of
knowing by way of conception or idea, the matter for conceptions and
ideas being of course derived from Perception. Reasoned knowledge is an
abstraction from perceived knowledge, and all knowledge, as Schopenhauer
says, is originally and in itself perceptive. The confusion in Kant’s
account of the elements entering into knowledge, is Schopenhauer’s
reason for holding that Kant can only have had the fundamental principle
of his method imperfectly present to his mind. His whole difficulty
in relating the elements of knowledge to each other arose from the
fact that he in his thought likened the categories to conceptions
through want of an explicit and persistent recognition of the nature of
conception. Schopenhauer himself classifies the categories according to
the planes or stages of experience they characterise: the perceptual,
the mathematical, the logical, and the ethical in order. The categories
are all abstractions, but not conceptions or notions. Conceptions are a
particular kind of abstractions, and so are categories: to conceptions
_material_ entities correspond, but to categories only relations or
forms. Knowledge consists in the detection of relations existing between
the different planes or sections of the perceptual continuum, the
difference in perceived things being that some are immediately and others
only mediately perceived. The true reason of Schopenhauer’s revolt from
the method of conceptions is to be found in the difficulties in which he
felt himself involved by the theory of Subjective Idealism. Philosophy,
he says, is a search for the Thing-in-itself, but he tells Kant that from
the idea nothing but the idea follows, and that the path of Reflexion
or Knowledge is closed as the path of philosophy. Had Schopenhauer kept
more true to his ruling that knowledge is originally and in itself
perception, he would not have maintained that the world is my idea. The
Thing-in-itself is the shadow cast by the Reflective or Abstracting
Understanding. With both Kant and Schopenhauer it is primarily invented
to get rid of the difficulty bred of a belief in an abstraction or
unreality, and as it is a pure mental fiction, we may safely deny that
there is any such thing in reality.
Mr. Wallaschek finds the origin of music in a rhythmical impulse in man.
The sense of rhythm arises from the general appetite for exercise, which
recurs in rhythmical form owing to sociological as well as psychological
conditions. On the one hand, there is the social character of primitive
music, compelling a number of performers to act in concert. On the
other hand, our perception of time-relations involves a process of
intellection, by means of which the mind is able to comprehend them as
a whole. Since music is produced not merely as an auditory impression
and expression, but also in order to evoke reflexion, it must contain
the qualities of time-order and rhythm. Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory of
the origin of the general appetite for exercise is said to afford the
most valid explanation. It is the surplus vigor in more highly evolved
organisms, exceeding what is required for immediate needs, in which play
of all kinds takes its rise. We owe our musical faculty to the time-sense
rather than to our sense of hearing. The perception of particular
tones and tunes plays a very low part, if any, in primitive music. In
almost all the examples furnished by ethnology, we see that music is
the expression of emotion, which is also one of the sources of human
language. Mr. Spencer is said to be wrong, however, in thinking that
musical modulation originates in the modulations of speech Music and
speech have a reciprocal influence, and primitive human utterance, using
sound-metaphors and onomatopœia, may resemble primitive musical tones.
Nevertheless, an early separation of distinct tones and indistinct sounds
seems to have taken place, not as a transition from the one as prior to
the other as succeeding, but as a divergence from a primitive state which
is, strictly speaking, neither of the two.
Professor Cattell objects that the theories of Darwin and Spencer on the
origin of music, describe what probably took place, rather than explain
why it was necessary that it should have taken place. As to Spencer’s
explanation of harmony, he affirms that it amounts to saying that harmony
gives pleasure because it is pleasant. After referring to the connection
of harmony with the existence of overtones, Prof. Cattell states that
music is not, as commonly supposed, a creation of the imagination, freer
than the other arts from a physical basis, but is rather a discovery and
a development. All the combinations of music are latent in the sounds Of
nature, and the history of music bears witness to the gradual adoption of
such as are more remote. The difference in voices rests on the overtones
present, and the immense emotional effects of music are due to the fact
that music expresses the emotion of the human voice, using and developing
those combinations of tones which the voice uses when moved by sorrow and
joy, despair and exultation.
By the _Coefficient_ of External Reality, Professor Baldwin means the
something which attaches to some presentations in virtue of which we
attribute reality to them; while others, not having the coefficient,
are discredited. Diametrically opposed solutions of this question
are held. To one class of writers, the coefficient of the reality
of an image is its independence of the will; to another class, the
coefficient is subjection to the will. If we make a distinction between a
memory-coefficient of reality—that is, the something about a memory which
leads us to believe it represents a real experience—and a sensational
coefficient, that is, the criterion of present sensational reality, we
see that those two kinds of reality differ in their relation to the
will. A present sensible reality is not under the control of any will,
but a memory coefficient is subjected to will, in the sense that we
are able to get the image again as a sensation by repeating the series
of voluntary muscular sensations which were associated with it in its
first experience. This memory-coefficient of external reality must be
distinguished from the coefficient of memory itself; the latter being
the feeling that an image has been in consciousness before, i. e.
recognition, or sense of familiarity. A true memory is an image which I
can get at will by a train of memory-associates, and which, when got, is
further subject to my will. (London: Williams & Norgate.)
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. July, 1891. Vol. I. NO. 4.