390 



SGIENGE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 401. 



causal relation between mind and organic proc- 

 esses — a majority of psychologists, perhaps, 

 refuse to admit such a relation — but be- 

 cause it imi^lies that there is a great 

 gulf fixed between 'real' things in the 

 world, phenomena, and epiphenomena, the 

 conscious 'foam' of existence. Por the wide 

 use of the term, modern biologists must surely 

 share responsibility with modern monists. It 

 will interest the psychologist, even if it does 

 not instruct him, to hear from biology the 

 authentic statement that 'consciousness is too 

 familiar to all men to be summarily cast aside 

 and dismissed.' But, for psychology, mental 

 facts are not a whit more important -or more 

 valuable if consciousness turns out to have a 

 siirvival value. They are important to their 

 own science just because they are a body of 

 facts of experience that are capable of being 

 worked into a system. The argument from 

 the survival value of consciousness — an argu- 

 ment that has had at least twelve years of pop- 

 ularity — gives, it will be generally admitted, 

 some support to the position of the interaction- 

 ist. But however relevant the argument may 

 appear to biology, it does not persuade the psy- 

 chologist that the facts of consciousness are 

 one iota more real or more important than he 

 had before considered them to be. Even 

 though he adopt the theory, he will fi.nd no 

 reason for making a radical change in his 

 attitude toward mind. Hence, should the very 

 most 'essential function' of consciousness 

 prove to be the 'dislocation' of reactions, it is 

 biology and not psychology that will need to 

 be apprehensive of the effect upon the organ- 

 ism of so serious a luxation. 



There is one further point in President 

 Minot's address that I shall venture to criti- 

 cise, although it is more a matter of general 

 methodology and of the science of knowledge 

 than of psychology. In reviving the argu- 

 ment that sensations are symbols, labels, not 

 images; that 'external reality' is a 'series of 

 undulations' or a series of 'vibrations of the 

 air' and not colors and sounds, which have 

 no 'objective' existence, the author falls into 

 the ancient fallacy that, somehow, men can be 

 consciotis of an external world that is 

 'screened from' consciousness. The fallacy 



appears here in an aggravated form. The 

 'dislocation' argument implies that conscious- 

 ness is made up of sensations, but sensations 

 have no objective reality, and yet we know 

 through sensations — thanks to the ' biological 

 study of consciousness ' — ' that the objective 

 world is real.' If we grant that the 

 concepts of any single science may be taken as 

 representing the ' real ' world, we may still ask 

 why the exceptional honor should be done to 

 physics when it is the biologist who ' must 

 necessarily become more and more the supreme 

 arbiter of all science and philosophy.' Why 

 should the biologist, when he is casting about 

 for a real world, adopt the ' doll-idea ' of the 

 physicist ? Perhaps it is done in return for the 

 service which physics — by the loan of her 

 ' real ' undulations — has rendered biology in 

 settling ' the debate in favor of the view that 

 the objective world is real.' But the logic of 

 the article seems to require that the most real 

 thing be an organic reaction, or an adjustment, 

 or the evolution of species, and not a dis- 

 turbance of the air or the ether. However, if 

 — as President Minot urges — all science is, 

 after all, ' symbolic ' as ' aU sensations are 

 symbols of extreme reality,' why should we 

 ' make believe ' in the reality of any of her 

 ideas ? If sciences as well as sensations display 

 a ' peculiar untruthfulness to the objective,' 

 why deceive ourselves with ' pseudo-opinions ' 

 — why ' come to fight with shadows and to fall ' 

 — when ' behind in consciousness ' there ' is 

 the sense of unreality ' ? The practical advan- 

 tages of getting on in the world, of ' prophesy- 

 ing ' the results of reactions, will hardly atone 

 for so gross a self-deception. 



Science, as well as popular belief, still 

 cherishes its pseudodoxia epidemica. Of these, 

 none is more amazing than the claim of a 

 single science to hold the quintessence of 

 human knowledge ; to stand as the ' supreme 

 arbiter of science and philosophy.' One ex- 

 pects to find this lack of perspective in the 

 various forms of occultism, but one is inevi- 

 tably dismayed to find it in science. The vari- 

 ous borders of knowledge everywhere overlap. 

 Were this not true, hope of ever knowing the 

 cosmos would be vain. As a consequence, 

 there will always be the possibility of dispute 



