RECORDS OF MEETINGS OF 1908 463 



Afternoon Session. ' 



The usual afternoon session was adjourned to hear the following lecture 

 at Columbia University: 



E. B. Titchener, The Laws of Attention. 



Eiening Session. 



H. C. Warren, Feeling and Other Sensations. 



Warner Brown, Time in Verse. 



H. L. Hollingworth, The Time of Movement. 



Adolf Meyer, The Concept of Substitutive Activity and the 



Relation of Mental Reaction Types to Psychia- 

 tric Nosology. 



Summary of Papers. 



Professor Titchener discussed the question as to the number of distin- 

 guishable levels of clearness which are simultaneously present in the same 

 consciousness. After a comprehensive review of the literature and a careful 

 examination of the doctrines which hold to three or four levels, the lecturer 

 concluded that there was no real evidence of more than two distinct levels: 

 that of clearness, or attention, and that of obscurity, or inattention. For 

 example, in looking at one of the common puzzle pictures, in which a face is 

 concealed, the moment the face appears to the observer the picture as a 

 whole, which up to that moment had been clear, drops at once into obscurity, 

 and there is no appearance of a gradual fading into obscurity through a 

 series of intermediate gradations. It is true, however, that both at the level 

 of obscurity and, more certainly still, at the level of clearness there may exist 

 slight differences in the prominence of the different elements present. This 

 is illustrated by the differing prominence of the different elements of a rhythm 

 even though all lie in the field of attention. There may also, as between 

 different states of consciousness, be differences in the level of clearness and 

 in that of obscurity; the narrower the field of attention, the greater is the 

 disparity between the level of clearness and the level of obscurity. 



Professor Warren said that the supposed radical distinction between 

 feeling and sensation was supported by three separate claims. (1) Evi- 

 dence from introspection. This is inconclusive. Admitting the vast differ- 

 ence of sort between so-called feelings and visual sensations, for example, 



