HUMAN CONTROL 



perience. I do not understand this. I 

 accept it as a datum of experience. 



Our common and trustworthy experience 

 is that mental acts (thoughts, emotions, 

 volitions, and the like) are causative fac- 

 tors in human conduct. This can be 

 articulated with the rest of the natural his- 

 tory of living only by recognizing that 

 these acts are protoplasmic functions. 

 Even in those cases where we do not know 

 the whole of the process, where we are 

 ignorant of the organs involved, we must 

 assume that the mental process, the expe- 

 rience which we actually have, has its struc- 

 tural and physiological correlates. The 

 process, as a whole, including both the 

 known and the unknown components, is 

 causally related with the rest of my vital 

 processes. When therefore, we say that 

 conscious experience is a causative factor 

 in human behavior it must be understood 

 that we regard this experience as one part 

 only of a protoplasmic activity involving 

 structural changes in the nervous system, 

 whether we know what these latter are or 

 not. Thinking is a part of living and all 

 living involves structural alterations of 

 the vital substance. 



There is a certain minimum mass of 



[43] 



