Problems of science and philosophy : the papers read at the joint session of the Aristotelian Society, the British Psychological Society, and the Mind Association, held at Bedford college, London, July 11th-14th, 1919.

Date:
1919
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Problems of science and philosophy : the papers read at the joint session of the Aristotelian Society, the British Psychological Society, and the Mind Association, held at Bedford college, London, July 11th-14th, 1919. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    images, we find a difference according to the nature of the images. Images of private sensations can be localized where the private sensations would be, without causing any gross or obvious violation of physical laws. Images of words in the mouth can be located in the mouth. For this reason, there is no primd facie objection to regarding them, as Watson does, as small sensations: this view may or may not be true, but it is not capable of being rejected without more ado. In regard to all private sensations, the distinction between image and sensation is not sharp and definite. But visual and auditory images are in quite a different position, since the physical event to which they would point if they were sensations is not taking place. Thus the crucial phenomena as regards introspection are images of public sensations, 2.¢., especially visual and auditory images. On grounds of observation, in spite of Watson, it seems impossible to deny that such images occur. But they are not public, and, if taken as sensations, contradict the laws of physics. Reverting to the case of visualizing a friend in a chair which, in fact, is empty, you cannot locate the image in the body because it is visual, nor (as a physical phenomenon) in the chair, because the chair, as a physical object,isempty. Thus it seems that the physical world does not include all that we are aware of, and that introspection must be admitted as a source of knowledge distinct from sensation. I do not, of course, mean to suggest that visual and auditory images are our only non-physical data. I have taken them as affording the strongest case for the argument; but when they are admitted, there is no longer any reason to reject other images. Our criticism of fact, as against Watson, has led us to the conclusion that it is impossible to escape the admission of images as something radically distinct from sensations, par- ticularly as being not amenable to the laws of physics. It remains to consider a possible criticism of theory, namely, that