426 INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 



reconstruction and it is not possible to predict what kind of 

 form they will ultimately take; but all indications are that 

 strict causality has dropped out permanently. This relieves 

 the former necessity of supposing that mind is subject to 

 deterministic law or alternatively that it can suspend deter- 

 ministic law in the material world." x Thus in the realm of 

 physical phenomena there is no longer any reason for assert- 

 ing that nature is completely causal in character. 



But on the other hand there are important data which 

 are not strictly in the field of physics. These are discerned 

 by an examination of the methods of knowing objects. When 

 one examines the character of our knowledge of physical 

 objects he is impressed by an important fact. We know them 

 not directly but through the medium of symbols — pointer 

 readings. Our knowledge of space, time, motion, force, and 

 so on is merely that of numbers on recording instruments. 

 The inner nature of objects — if they have any inner nature 

 at all — is forever hidden from our awareness. Now one of 

 the physical objects which we know in this way is the human 

 brain. Our knowledge of the brain is such as is obtained by 

 measuring its volume, its duration, motions exhibited in it, 

 its heat, its energy, and so on. But in this "one case — 

 namely, for the pointer readings of my own brain — I have 

 an insight which is not limited to the evidence of the pointer 

 readings. That insight shows that they are attached to a 

 background of consciousness." 2 Introspection therefore 

 comes into the picture, and affords a method for getting at 

 the inner nature of the brain. Thus we can know the inner 

 nature of our own brain in a way in which we cannot know 

 the inner natures of ordinary physical objects. Hence, 

 "there is nothing to prevent the assemblage of atoms con- 

 stituting a brain from being of itself a thinking object in 

 virtue of that nature which physics leaves undetermined 

 and undeterminable." 3 Introspection reveals something 

 which cannot be revealed by science, and yet cannot be 

 gainsaid by science. The traditional solution to the problem 



1 Nature of the Physical World, p. 332. 2 Ibid., p. 259. 3 Ibid., p. 260. 



