On consciousness : (abstract) / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946.
Date:
1925?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On consciousness : (abstract) / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    f Reprinted from the Proceedings op the Royal Society op Medicine, 1925, Vol. XVIII (Section of Psychiatry), pp. 9—15.] i ' ~ ,7 ~ 1 m. i.. • * '*- • 4 , . \ “ f’| ’ ^ • -/ »r z' • f ♦ 4 ON CONSCIOUSNESS. By Charles S. Myers, M.D., F.R.S. (ABSTRACT.) The present classification of modes of consciousness into cognitive, affective and conative modes is recognized as unsatisfactory. The cognitive consciousness, in so far as it involves self-activity, is itself conative. The affective consciousness comprises far more than affective tone—pleasure and displeasure. (Indeed, I consider it doubtful whether these two are as primitive and elementary as has hitherto been supposed.) It may cover every kind of feeling, not merely emotional, hut also intellectual—feelings of familiarity, certainty, relationship, &c. A more acceptable scheme, if it included feeling, would be to classify the modes of consciousness on the basis of a distinction between doing and what is done, between the act or process and its product, e.g., between the act of remembering and what is remembered, the process of sensing and the sensation, &c. According to this scheme, consciousness is classifiable along the lines of self-activity and the outcome of self-activity. It is fairly obvious that if only one response to a given stimulus were possible, consciousness would be of little value and would hardly have arisen. Its utility arises when (a) alternative reactions are possible, (b) when some sort of choice has to be made between them for the benefit of the organism as a whole, and (c) when, as in an important emotional situation, it is essential that no other conflicting reaction be made by the self to another simultaneous experience. Consciousness is thus a selector, by the individual, of alternative responses. It is also a selector ol alternative stimuli. If, owing to uniformity of external Conditions or to the immobility of the organism, the organism were unable to alter its relation to the environment, consciousness again would hardly have arisen. One of its most important functions is to maintain an environment that is favourable and to avoid one that is unfavourable, whether that environment be a physical one, say in the form of external nourishment or temperature, or a mental one, say in the form of appropriate or noxious thoughts. These, then, are the main functions and conditions of consciousness; and in realizing them we realize still more clearly how all consciousness must form part of 1 self-consciousness,” by which I mean not necessarily the knowledge, the awareness of the self, but the involvement of that highest integration of activities which is known as the self within the indivisible, “individual” organism. Consciousness thus functions as the co-ordinator of all the past and present experiences of the organism so as to give direction to the selection of its future activities and environ¬ ment, in compliance with the organism’s sanctions and ends. It has been too common an error to regard the simple in life as prior to the complex. We are apt to forget that the most lowly unicellular organism eats, breathes, secretes, excretes, reproduces, and exhibits irritability, contractility, and even apparent choice and ability to learn by experience, whereas in the higher organism such functions are specialized in its different tissues. The vague complex, CHARLES MYEFw LIE I ARY JMTIUNAL INSTITUTE0,: INDUSTRIALPSYCiiULu H, WELBEGK STREET, LONDON, W,l.