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
Catalogue details

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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    close temporal contiguity, and hence arms-full can come to cause the word “box.” They cannot cause the box itself, because this is governed by physical laws independent of the child’s body; but they can cause the word. (The above law, however, may be explained on orthodox physical lines by the properties of nervous tissue, and does not demand a fundamental distinction between physiology and physics.) If, therefore, images were not empirically undeniable, I should not consider them theoretically necessary in order to account for the occurrence of words in the absence of their objects. William James, in his Essays in Radical Himpiricism, developed the view that the mental and the physical are not distinguished by the stuff of which they are made, but only by their causal laws. This view is very attractive, and I have made great endeavours to believe it. IJ think James is right in making the distinction between the causal laws the essential thing. There do seem to be psychological and physical causal laws which are distinct from each other.* We may define psychology as the study of the one sort of laws, and physics as the study of the other. But when we come to consider the stuff of the two sciences, it would seem that there are some particulars which obey only physical laws (namely, unper- ceived material things), some which obey only psychological laws (namely, images, at least), and some which obey both (namely, sensations). Thus sensations will be both physical and mental, while images will be purely mental. The use of words actually pronounced or written is part of the physical world, but in so far as words obtain their meaning through images, it is impos- sible to deal adequately with words without introducing psychology and taking account of data obtained by intro- spection. If this conclusion is valid, the behaviourist theory * I do not pretend to know whether the distinction is ultimate and irreducible. I say only that it is to be accepted practically in the present condition of science.