The absurdity of any mind-body relation : delivered on 19 May 1932 at University College London / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The absurdity of any mind-body relation : delivered on 19 May 1932 at University College London / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/32 (page 9)
    I shall argue, be no possible relation between mind and living body. Mind and life are identical properties of what we term living matter—a peculiar form of activity, differing from that of lifeless matter, in the inherent purposive, self-directive, and finally purpose- felt struggle for existence. If this is so, the hypothesis of psycho-physical parallelism falls to the ground. According to it, there exist side by side two activities, the one psychological or spiritual, the other physiological or material, the one knowing nothing of and being uninfluenced by the other. Strictly speaking, the hypothesis should be termed ‘ psycho-physiological rather than psycho¬ physical, parallelism. For it implies either an im¬ passable dualism between mind and living nervous substance, or the superposition of one concomitant over the other. Its only attempt to escape such dualism or reciprocal epiphenomenalism, thus established be¬ tween consciousness and brain substance, is by sup¬ posing that the psychological and physiological acti¬ vities are comparable, say, to the opposite convex and concave surfaces of a mirror—two inevitably present surfaces of some inherently unknowable tertium quid. Equally impossible becomes the hypothesis of inter- actionism, which frankly posits an even wider gulf between mind and living matter, each of which is assumed to follow its own laws and to be able to act on the other, just as an operative and his machine might at one time interact, now in co-operation, now in antagonism, and at yet another time act in inde¬ pendence of one another. Give a person a sufficient dose of alcohol, and his intoxicated brain-substance acts on his independently active mind, causing him to