Herrick, Body-Mind Controversy. 423 



it appears. We cannot agree that these are the only possible solutions 

 of the problem, and we may add that any form of parallelism, sensu 

 stricio, is simply an evasion of the issue. To say that brain-event 

 and mind-event are cotemporaneous or consecutive is to offer no ex- 

 planation of a fact of observation. It produces no scientific convic- 

 tion that the next brain-event will be accompanied by a mind-event. 

 It is no sense a theory — it is but a denial of the possibility of a theory. 

 Many things that pass as parallelistic theories really go further and 

 produce or assume a real tie between the two series, perhaps via some 

 other element. This is especially true of functional theories. In the 

 approach of the discussion of causation, which is evidently crucial in 

 this connection, the necessity of determining what is meant by matter 

 is encountered and frankly met: "For if at the present day there is 

 a point on which philosophers show some approach to agreement it is 

 that matter does not exist, in any such sense as the plain man supposes ; 

 that it has no existence independently of the mind." We think that 

 this statement is true only as to the first clause, or that the second 

 statement is at least misleading. There are very few philosophers who 

 would deny the existence independent of the mind of something corre- 

 sponding to the concept of matter in the mind ; certainly the author 

 himself does not consistently do so and yet he will not carry all phil- 

 osophers with him to the extreme of identifying the thing back of 

 matter with mind as such. What philosophy and modern science tend 

 so generally to agree upon is that the matter concept as such is 

 erroneous in so far as it sets up a category of creation incongruous 

 with all else in the universe and places it outside of the sphere of ex- 

 perience. 



After spending forty-five pages in discussing "The Facts," the 

 author confesses that "In the course of this study, nothing has been 

 established to the advantage or detriment of any particular casual the- 

 ory. We carry away from it a single positive result: the law of psy- 

 chophysical correlation." This law states that consciousness as a 

 whole never occurs except in connection with a brain-process, and 

 that particular mental states never occur except in connection with 

 particular brain-events. It would seem that important limitations may 

 be necessary even in the application of this "law." Brain processes 

 must be taken in a very wide sense and the "mental states" of course 

 refer to those of human experience and would not prejudice the possi- 

 bility of "psychic modes" corresponding to other types of what may be 

 called intrinsic aspects of other physical processes. 



"Any view which ascribes physical action to the mind, no matter 



