Chapter VII: Part 7

Implication belongs to the reconstruction of the object. As long as no question has arisen, the object is what it means or means what it is. It does not imply any feature of itself. When through conflict with the experience of the individual some feature of the object is divorced from some meaning the relationship between these becomes a false implication. When a hypothetically reconstructed object finds us anticipating a result which accords with the nature of such objects we assert an implication of this meaning. To carry this relation of implication back into objects which are subject to no criticism or question would of course resolve the world into elements connected by external relations, with the added consequence that these elements can have no content, since every content in the face of such an analysis must be subject to further analysis. We reach inevitably symbols such as X, Y, and Z, which can symbolize nothing. Theoretically we can assume an implication between any elements of an object, but in this abstract assumption the symbolic logician overlooks the fact that he is also assuming some content which is not analyzed and which is the ground of the implication. In other words this logician confuses the scientific attitude of being ready to question anything with an attitude of being willing to question everything at once. It is only in an unquestioned objective world that the exceptional instance appears and it is only in such a world that an experimental science tests the implications of the hypothetically reconstructed object.

The guess is happy because it carries with it the consequences which follow from its fitting into the world, and the guess, in other words the hypothesis, takes on this happy form solely because of the material reconstruction which by its nature removes the unhappy contradiction and promises the successful carrying out of the conflicting attitudes in the new objective world. There is no such thing as formal implication.

Where no reconstruction of the world is involved in our identification of objects that belong to it and where, therefore, no readjustment of conduct is demanded, such a logic symbolizes what takes place in our direct recognition of objects and our response to them. Then "X is a man implies X is mortal for all values of X" exactly symbolizes the attitude toward a man subject to a disease supposedly mortal. But it fails to symbolize the biological research which starting with inexplicable sporadic cases of an infectious disease carries over from the study of the life history of infusoria a hypothetical reconstruction of the history of disease and then acts upon the result of this assumption. Research-science presents a world whose form is always universal, but this universal form is neither a metaphysical assumption nor a fixed form of the understanding. While the scientist may as a metaphysician assume the existence of realities which lie beyond a possible experience, or be a Kantian or Neo-Kantian, neither of these attitudes is necessary for his research. He may be a positivist--a disciple of Hume or of John Stuart Mill. He may be a pluralist who conceives, with William James, that the order which we detect in parts of the universe is possibly one that is rising out of the chaos and which may never be as universal as our hypothesis demands. None of these attitudes has any bearing upon his scientific method. This simplifies his thinking, enables him to identify the object in which he is interested wherever he finds it, and to abstract in the world as he conceives it those features which carry with them the occurrence he is endeavoring to place. Especially it enables him to make his thought a part of the socially accepted and socially organized science to which his thought belongs. He is far too modest to demand that the world be as his inference demands.

He asks that his view of the world be cogent and convincing to all those whose thinking has made his own possible, and be an acceptable premise for the conduct of that society to which he belongs. The hypothesis has no universal and necessary characters except those that belong to the thought which preserves the same meanings to the same objects, the same relations between the same relata, the same attributes of assent and dissent under the same conditions, the same results of the same combinations of the same things. For scientific research the meanings, the relations with the relata, the assent and dissent, the combinations and the things combined are all in the world of experience. Thinking in its abstractions and identifications and reconstructions undertakes to preserve the values that it finds, and the necessity of its thinking lies in its ability to so identify, preserve, and combine what it has isolated that the thought structure will have an identical import under like conditions for the thinker with all other thinkers to whom these instruments of research conduct are addressed. Whatever conclusions the scientist draws as necessary and universal results from his hypothesis for a world independent of his thought are due, not to the cogency of his logic, but to other considerations. For he knows if he reflects that another problem may arise which will in its solution change the face of the world built upon the present hypothesis. He will defend the inexorableness of his reasoning, but the premises may change. Even the contents of tridimensional space and sensuous time are not essential to the cogency of that reasoning nor can the unbroken web of the argument assure the content of the world as invariable. His universals, when applied to nature, are all hypothetical universals; hence the import of experiment as the test of an hypothesis. Experience does not rule out the possible cropping up of a new problem which may shift the values attained. Experience simply reveals that the new hypothesis fits into the meanings of the world which are not shaken; it shows that, with the reconstruction which the hypothesis offers, it is possible for scientific conduct to proceed.

But if the universal character of the hypothesis and the tested theory belong to the instrumental character of thought in so reconstructing a world that has proved to be imperfect, and inadequate to conduct, the stuff of the world and of the new hypothesis are the same. At least this is true for the scientist who has no interest in an epistemological problem that does not affect his scientific undertakings in one way nor another. I have already pointed out that from the standpoint of logical and psychological analysis the things with which science deals can be neither ultimate elements nor sense-data; but that they must be phases and characters and parts of things in some whole, parts which can only be isolated because of the conflict between an accepted meaning and some experience. I have pointed out that an analysis is guided by the practical demands of a solution of this conflict; that even that which is individual in its most unique sense in the conflict and in attempts at its solution does not enter into the field of psychology--which has its own problems peculiar to its science. Certain psychological problems belong to the problems of other sciences, as, for example, that of the personal equation belongs to astronomy or that of color vision to the theory of light. But they bulk small in these sciences. It cannot be successfully maintained that a scientific observation of the most unique sort, one which is accepted for the time being simply as a happening in this or that scientist's experience, is as such a psychological datum, for the data in psychological text-books have reference to _psychological_ problems. Psychology deals with the consciousness of the individual in its dependence upon the physiological organism and upon those contents which detach themselves from the objects outside the individual and which are identified with his inner experience. It deals with the laws and processes and structures of this consciousness in all its experiences, not with _exceptional_ experiences. It is necessary to emphasize again that for science these particular experiences arise within a world which is in its logical structure organized and universal. They arise only through the conflict of the individual's experience with such an accepted structure. For science individual experience _presupposes_ the organized structure; hence it cannot provide the material out of which the structure is built up. This is the error of both the positivist and of the psychological philosopher, if scientific procedure gives us in any sense a picture of the situation.

A sharp contrast appears between the accepted hypothesis with its universal form and the experiences which invalidate the earlier theory. The reality of these experiences lies in their happening. They were unpredictable. They are not instances of a law. The later theory, the one which explains these occurrences, changes their character and status, making them necessary results of the world as that is conceived under this new doctrine. This new standpoint carries with it a backward view, which explains the erroneous doctrine, and accounts for the observations which invalidated it. Every new theory must take up into itself earlier doctrines and rationalize the earlier exceptions. A generalization of this attitude places the scientist in the position of anticipating later reconstructions. He then must conceive of his world as subject to continuous reconstructions. A familiar interpretation of his attitude is that the hypothesis is thus approaching nearer and nearer toward a reality which would never change if it could be attained, or, from the standpoint of the Hegelian toward a goal at infinity. The Hegelian also undertakes to make this continuous process of reconstruction an organic phase in reality and to identify with nature the process of finding exceptions and of correcting them. The fundamental difference between this position and that of the scientist who looks before and after is that the Hegelian undertakes to make the exception in its exceptional character a part of the reality which transcends it, while the scientist usually relegates the exception to the experience of individuals who were simply caught in an error which later investigation removes.

The error remains as an historical incident explicable perhaps as a result of the conditions under which it occurred, but in so far as it was an error, not a part of reality. It is customary to speak of it as subjective, though this implies that we are putting the man who was unwittingly in error into the position of the one who has corrected it. To entertain that error in the face of its correction would be subjective. A result of this interpretation is that the theories are abstracted from the world and regarded as something outside it. It is assumed that the theories are mental or subjective and change while the facts remain unchanged. Even when it is assumed that theories and facts agree, men speak of a correspondence or parallelism between idea and the reality to which it refers. While this attitude seems to be that of science toward the disproved theories which lie behind it, it is not its attitude to the theories which it accepts. These are not regarded as merely parallel to realities, as abstracted from the structure of things. These meanings go into the makeup of the world. It is true that the scientist who looks before and after realizes that any specific meaning which is now accepted may be questioned and discarded. If he carries his refection far enough he sees that a complete elimination of all the meanings which might conceivably be so discredited would leave nothing but logical constants, a world with no facts in any sense. In this position he may of course take an agnostic attitude and be satisfied with the attitude of Hume or Mill or Russell. But if he does so, he will pass into the camp of the psychological philosophers and will have left the position of the scientist. The scientist always deals with an _actual_ problem, and even when he looks before and after he does so in so far as he is facing in inquiry some actual problem. No actual problem could conceivably take on the form of a conflict involving the whole world of meaning. The conflict always arises between an individual experience and certain laws, certain meanings while others are unaffected. These others form the necessary field without which no conflict can arise. They give the man of research his ([Greek: pou sto]) upon which he can formulate his problem and undertake its solution. The possible calling in question of any content, whatever it may be, means always that there is left a field of unquestioned reality. The attitude of the scientist never contemplates or could contemplate the possibility of a world in which there would be no reality by which to test his hypothetical solution of the problem that arises. Nor does this attitude when applied to past discarded theories necessarily carry with it the implication that these older theories were subjective ideas in men's minds, while the reality lay beside and beyond them unmingled with ideas. It always finds a standpoint from which these ideas in the earlier situation are still recognized as reliable, for there are no scientific data without meanings. There could be no history of science on any other basis. No history of science goes back to ultimate elements or sense-data, or to any combination of bare data on one hand and logical elements on the other. The world of the scientist is always there as one in which reconstruction is taking place with continual shifting of problems, but as a real world within which the problems arise. The errors of the past and present appear as untenable hypotheses which could not bear the test of experiment if the experience were sufficiently enlarged and interpreted. But they are not mere errors to be thrown into the scrap heap. They become a part of a different phase of reality which a fuller history of the past records or a fuller account of the present interprets, giving them thereby their proper place in a real world.[36]

The completion of this program, however, awaits the solution of the scientific problem of the relation of the psychical and the physical with the attendant problem of the meaning of the so-called origin of consciousness in the history of the world. My own feeling is that these problems must be attacked from the standpoint of the social nature of so-called consciousness. The clear indications of this I find in the reference of our logical constants to the structure of thought as a means of communication, in the explanation of errors in the history of science by their social determination, and in the interpretation of the inner field of experience as the importation of social intercourse into the conscious conduct of the individual. But whatever may be the solution of these problems, it must carry with it such a treatment of the experience of the individual that the latter will never be regarded merely as a subjective state, however inadequate it may have proved itself as a scientific hypothesis. This seems to me to be involved in the conception of psychology as a natural science and in any legitimate carrying out of the Hegelian program of giving reality and creative import to individual experience. The experience of the individual in its exceptional character is the growing-point of science, first of all in the recognition of data upon which the older theories break, and second in the hypothesis which arises in the individual and is tested by the experiment which reconstructs the world. A scientific history and a scientific psychology from which epistemology has been banished must place these observations and hypotheses together with erroneous conceptions and mistaken observations _within_ the real world in such a fashion that their reference to the experience of the individual and to the world to which he belongs will be comprehensible. As I have indicated, the scientific theory of the physical and conscious individual in the world implied in this problem has still to be adequately developed. But there is implied in the conception of such a theory such a location of the process of thought in the process of reality as will give it an import both in the meaning of things and in the individual's thinking. We have the beginning of such a doctrine in the conception of a functional value of consciousness in the conduct of living forms, and the development of reflective thought out of such a consciousness which puts it within the act and gives it the function of preparation where adjustment is necessary. Such a process creates the situation with reference to which the form acts. In all adjustment or adaptation the result is that the form which is adjusted finds that by its adjustment it has created an environment. The ancients by their formulation of the Ptolemaic theory committed themselves to the world in which the fixed values of the heavenly over against the earthly obtained. Such a world was the interpretation of the experience involved in their physical and social attitudes. They could not accept the hypothesis of Aristarchus because it conflicted with the world which they had created, with the values which were determining values for them. The same was true of the hypothesis of Democritus. They could not, as they conceived the physical world, accept its purely quantitative character. The conception of a disinterested truth which we have cherished since the Middle Ages is itself a value that has a social basis as really as had the dogma of the church. The earliest statement of it was perhaps that of Francis Bacon. Freeing investigation from the church dogma and its attendant logic meant to him the freedom to find in nature what men needed and could use for the amelioration of their social and physical condition. The full implication of the doctrine has been recognized as that of freedom, freedom to effect not only values already recognized, but freedom to attain as well such complete acquaintance with nature that new and unrecognized uses would be at our disposal; that is, that progress should be one toward any possible use to which increased knowledge might lead. The cult of increasing knowledge, of continually reconstructing the world, took the place both of the ancient conception of adequately organizing the world as presented in thought, and of the medieval conception of a systematic formulation on the basis of the statement in church dogma of social values. This modern conception proceeds from the standpoint not of formulating values, but giving society at the moment the largest possible number of alternatives of conduct, i.e., undertaking to fix from moment to moment the widest possible field of conduct. The purposes of conduct are to be determined in the presence of a field of alternative possibilities of action. The ends of conduct are not to be determined in advance, but in view of the interests that fuller knowledge of conditions awaken. So there appears a conception of determining the field that shall be quite independent of given values. A real world which consists not of an unchanged universe, but of a universe which may be continually readjusted according to the problems arising in the consciousness of the individuals within society. The seemingly fixed character of such a world is found in the generally fixed conditions which underlie the type of problems which we find. We determine the important conditions incident to the working out of the great problems which face us. Our conception of a given universe is formed in the effort to mobilize all the material about us in relation to these problems--the structure of the self, the structure of matter, the physical process of life, the laws of change and the interrelation of changes. With reference to these problems certain conditions appear fixed and become the statement of the world by which we must determine by experimental test the viability of our hypotheses. There arises then the conception of a world which is unquestioned over against any particular problem. While our science continually changes that world, at least it must be always realized as there. On the other hand, these conceptions are after all relative to the ends of social conduct which may be formulated in the presence of any freedom of action.

We postulate freedom of action as the condition of formulating the ends toward which our conduct shall be directed. Ancient thought assured itself of its ends of conduct and allowed these to determine the world which tested its hypothesis. We insist such ends may not be formulated until we know the field of possible action. The formulation of the ends is essentially a social undertaking and seems to follow the statement of the field of possible conduct, while in fact the statement of the possible field of conduct is actually dependent on the push toward action. A moving end which is continually reconstructing itself follows upon the continually enlarging field of opportunities of conduct.

The conception of a world of existence, then, is the result of the determination at the moment of the conditions of the solution of the given problems. These problems constitute the conditions of conduct, and the ends of conduct can only be determined as we realize the possibilities which changing conditions carry with them. Our world of reality thus becomes independent of any special ends or purposes and we reach an entirely disinterested knowledge. And yet the value and import of this knowledge is found in our conduct and in our continually changing conditions. Knowledge for its own sake is the slogan of freedom, for it alone makes possible the continual reconstruction and enlargement of the ends of conduct.

The individual in his experiences is continually creating a world which becomes real through his discovery. In so far as new conduct arises under the conditions made possible by his experience and his hypothesis the world, which may be made the test of reality, has been modified and enlarged.

I have endeavored to present the world which is an implication of the scientific method of discovery with entire abstraction from any epistemological or metaphysical presuppositions or complications. Scientific method is indifferent to a world of things-in-themselves, or to the previous condition of philosophic servitude of those to whom its teachings are addressed. It is a method not of knowing the unchangeable but of determining the form of the world within which we live as it changes from moment to moment. It undertakes to tell us what we may expect to happen when we act in such or such a fashion. It has become a matter of serious consideration for a philosophy which is interested in a world of things-in-themselves, and the epistemological problem. For the cherished structures of the metaphysical world, having ceased to house the values of mankind, provide good working materials in the hypothetical structures of science, on condition of surrendering their metaphysical reality; and the epistemological problem, having seemingly died of inanition, has been found to be at bottom a problem of method or logic. My attempt has been to present what seems to me to be two capital instances of these transformations. Science always has a world of reality by which to test its hypotheses, but this world is not a world independent of scientific experience, but the immediate world surrounding us within which we must act. Our next action may find these conditions seriously changed, and then science will formulate this world so that in view of this problem we may logically construct our next plan of action. The plan of action should be made self-consistent and universal in its form, not that we may thus approach nearer to a self-consistent and universal reality which is independent of our conduct, but because our plan of action needs to be intelligent and generally applicable. Again science advances by the experiences of individuals, experiences which are different from the world in which they have arisen and which refer to a world which is not yet in existence, so far as scientific experience is concerned. But this relation to the old and new is not that of a subjective world to an objective universe, but is a process of logical reconstruction by which out of exceptions the new law arises to replace a structure that has become inadequate.

In both of these processes, that of determining the structure of experience which will test by experiment the legitimacy of the new hypothesis, and that of formulating the problem and the hypothesis for its solution, the individual functions in his full particularity, and yet in organic relationship with the society that is responsible for him. It is the import for scientific method of this relationship that promises most for the interpretation of the philosophic problems involved.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND PSYCHOLOGY

BOYD H. BODE

If it is true that misery loves company, those persons who feel despondent over the present situation in philosophy may console themselves with the reflection that things are not so bad as they might be. Our friends, the psychologists, are afflicted even as we are. The disagreements of experts as to both the subject-matter and the method of psychology are as fundamental as anything that philosophy can show. A spirit of revolt is abroad in the land, and psychology is once more on trial. The compact which provided that psychology should be admitted to the rank of a natural science, on condition that it surrender its pretension to be the science of the soul and confine itself to the study of consciousness, is no longer considered binding. The suspicion is growing that consciousness is nothing more nor less than an attenuated form of the soul that it pretends to displace. Consequently the psychology without a soul to which we have just become accustomed is now attacked on behalf of a psychology without a consciousness, on the ground that this latter standpoint alone can give assurance against entangling alliances between psychology and metaphysics.

From the side of philosophy this situation is interesting, not only to such as may crave the comfort that springs from the spectacle of distress, but also to those who take a more hopeful view of present-day tendencies. The question that is at issue is fundamentally the question of the nature of consciousness, which is quite as important to philosophy as to psychology. On the one hand it is maintained that psychology has to do with consciousness and that its distinctive method is the method of introspection. On the other hand it is urged that psychology is nothing more nor less than a study of behavior, that it is not a science at all, unless the existence of consciousness is denied or at least ignored, and that the method of introspection is a delusion and a snare. The two standpoints are not always clearly formulated, nor can we say that every system of psychology is true to type. It is, in fact, the lack of clearness in the fundamental concepts that makes the status of psychology a matter of so much uncertainty.

The situation presents an apparent anomaly. Both parties profess to deal with facts of observation, yet the claim of the introspectionist that he observes facts of consciousness is met by the assertion of his rival that there is no consciousness to be observed. How can this be, unless we assume that introspection presupposes an esoteric principle, like the principle of grace in religion? It seems evident that we have to do here with some deep-seated misconception regarding the facts that are supposed to constitute the subject-matter for observation and description.

A common procedure on the part of introspectionism is to assert the existence of consciousness as something which is indeed indefinable, but which admits of observation and description. But this procedure is no longer justified. In the first place, the assertion that consciousness exists is not the statement of a fact but the designation of a problem. What is the nature of the fact that we call consciousness? If the common-sense individual, who assents so readily to the proposition that we all know consciousness, be asked to differentiate between consciousness and the objects of consciousness, he is dazed and helpless. And, secondly, the assertion of indefinability involves us in a difficulty. The indefinability of consciousness has sometimes been likened to that of space, but in this latter case we find no such confusion between space and the objects in space. It is clear, however, that if consciousness is not something distinguishable from objects, there is no need to discuss consciousness, and if it is distinguishable, it must be distinguished before we are entitled to proceed with observation and description. Definition is indispensable, at least to the extent of circumscribing the facts that are to be investigated. Moreover, if consciousness cannot be defined, neither can it be described. What is definition, after all, but a form of description? To assert, in effect, that consciousness is indefinable because it is indescribable, and that for this reason we must be content with description, is both a flagrant disregard of consistency and an unwarranted abuse of our good nature.

This difficulty leads on to another, for doubts, like lies, have a singular propensity to breed more of their kind. If consciousness is something that everybody knows, why should it be necessary to look to the psychologist for a description of it? if the study of consciousness brings to light any new fact, that fact by definition is not a conscious fact at all, and consequently is not the kind of thing that we set out to describe. Consciousness, in short, cannot be analyzed; it cannot be resolved into elements or constituents. It is precisely what it is and not some product of our after-thought that we are pleased to substitute for it.

These familiar considerations do not, indeed, decide the issue between the rival theories of psychology, but they serve to suggest that our introspective psychology has been too easily satisfied in the conception of its specific problem or subject-matter. As a matter of fact, the work that has been done in the name of psychology has been peculiarly barren of results, so far as a consciousness _an sich_ is concerned, although it has led to a wealth of material pertaining to adaptive behavior. Its solid achievements lie in the domain, not of consciousness, but of instinctive, habitual, and intelligent adaptation. It teaches us little that has to do unequivocally with consciousness as distinct from things, but it teaches us much concerning stimulus and response, attention and habit, conflict and adjustment. The doctrine that psychology is a science of behavior is justified at least to the extent that it emphasizes a factor, the importance of which introspectionism has consistently refused to recognize. Whatever conclusion we may ultimately reach regarding the nature of consciousness, the whole drift of psychological and biological investigation seems to indicate that an adequate conception of consciousness and of the distinctive problem of psychology can be attained only on the basis of a painstaking reflection on the facts of behavior.

I

It is evident that the attempt to ascertain the nature of consciousness and of psychology from the standpoint of behavior is committed to the assumption that the behavior in question is of a distinctive kind. The justification of this assumption will enable us to formulate the definitions which we seek. Discussions of conscious behavior ordinarily emphasize the similarity between conscious and reflex behavior rather than the difference. An attitude of expectancy, for example, is usually conceived as a sort of temporary reflex. Certain nervous connections are organized for the occasion, so that, when a given stimulus arrives, it will induce its appropriate response. This situation is best exemplified, perhaps, in simple reaction-experiments, in which the subject makes a certain predetermined response upon presentation of the stimulus. The process is supposed to be of the reflex type throughout, the only difference being that ordinary reflexes are relatively permanent and unvarying, whereas a prearranged response to a stimulus has to do with a reflex that is made to order so as to meet the exigencies of the moment.

For certain purposes such a description of conscious behavior is no doubt sufficiently accurate. Our present concern, however, is with the differences between these temporary organizations and ordinary reflexes. In order to bring out these differences, let us introduce a slight complication into our reaction-experiment and suppose that the subject is to make one of two alternative responses, according to the nature of the stimulus. His state of expectancy is accompanied by a certain bodily "set" or preparedness for the coming event, although the precise nature of the event is a matter of uncertainty. His nervous system is in readiness to respond this way or that, or rather, it has already started to act in both of the alternative ways. If the subject is to respond with the right hand to one stimulus and with the left hand to the other, both hands are in a state of activity before the stimulus appears. The organization of the temporary reflex through the agency of the cerebral cortex could not be achieved were it not for the fact that all the movements entering into the organization are nascently aroused before the spring is touched which permits the act to unroll itself in orderly sequence.

The various successive movements, then, which make up our temporary reflex achieve their relationship to one another from the fact that they are started simultaneously, and this peculiarity constitutes a distinctive feature. Apparently this feature is absent from true reflexes. An act of swallowing, performed unconsciously, may start the complicated processes of digestion, but it is merely the first act of a series. There is no evidence that the movements of the stomach and of the other organs concerned in digestion must be presupposed before the act of swallowing can take place. The swallowing may start the other processes, but we cannot say that these other processes react back upon the first act and make it one of swallowing rather than something else. Yet this "back stroke" is precisely what is necessary in our reaction-experiment, for it is by virtue of this fact that the organization of the temporary reflex becomes a possibility. The first response cannot take place until the last is provided for. Thus the immediate act of looking has embodied in it the activity that is to follow later. The looking is not simply with the eye, but with the hands that are to complete the response. The optical response is a response which, in the language of Bergson, prefigures or sketches out the act of a later moment. The nervous system is enabled to act as a unit, because the movements that are to occur at a later time are represented in the first stage of the complete act. The first stage, accordingly, does not occur independently, but _as_ a preliminary to the second. With an imperfect organization of the entire response, it may happen that the subsequent movements are not suppressed until their proper moment arrives, but appear in advance of their scheduled time. In writing, for example, we frequently omit words or add to a word the final letter of some word that belongs to a subsequent part of the sentence. An error of this sort could hardly occur so readily in the course of an act that belongs to the type of the true reflex.

Lest the reader suspect that this is _a priori_ physiology, I may quote the following from a prominent neurologist: "No simple sensory impulse can, under ordinary circumstances, reach the cerebral cortex without first being influenced by subcortical association centers, within which complex reflex combinations may be effected and various automatisms set off in accordance with their preformed structure. These subcortical systems are to some extent modifiable by racial and individual experience, but their reactions are chiefly of the determinate or stereotyped character, with a relatively limited range of possible reaction types for any given stimulus complex.

"It is shown by the lower vertebrates, which lack the cerebral cortex, that these subcortical mechanisms are adequate for all of the ordinary simple processes of life, including some degree of associative memory. But here, when emergencies arise which involve situations too complex to be resolved by these mechanisms, the animal will pay the inevitable penalty of failure--perhaps the loss of his dinner, or even of his life.

"In the higher mammals with well-developed cortex the automatisms and simple associations are likewise performed mainly by the subcortical apparatus, but the inadequacy of this apparatus in any particular situation presents not the certainty of failure, but rather a dilemma. The rapid preformed automatisms fail to give relief, or perhaps the situation presents so many complex sensory excitations as to cause mutual interference and inhibition of all reaction. There is a stasis in the subcortical centers. Meanwhile the higher neural resistance of the cortical pathways has been overcome by summation of stimuli and the cortex is excited to function. Here is a mechanism adapted, not for a limited number of predetermined and immediate responses, but for a much greater range of combination of the afferent impressions with each other and with memory vestiges of previous reactions and a much larger range of possible modes of response to any given set of afferent impressions. By a process of trial and error, perhaps, the elements necessary to effect the adaptive response may be assembled and the problem solved.

"It is evident here that the physiological factors in the dilemma or problem as this is presented to the cortex are by no means simple sensory impressions, but definitely organized systems of neural discharge, each of which is a physiological resultant of the reflexes, automatisms, impulses, and inhibitions characteristic of its appropriate subcortical centers. The precise form which these subcortical combinations will assume in response to any particular excitation is in large measure determined by the structural connections _inter se_....

"From the standpoint of the cerebral cortex considered as an essential part of the mechanism of higher conscious acts, every afferent stimulus, as we have seen, is to some extent affected by its passage through various subcortical association centers (i.e., it carries a quale of central origin). But this same afferent impulse in its passage through the spinal cord and brain stem may, before reaching the cortex, discharge collateral impulses into the lower centers of reflex cooerdination, from which incipient (or even actually consummated) motor responses are discharged previous to the cortical reaction. These motor discharges may, through the 'back stroke' action, in turn exert an influence upon the slower cortical reaction. Thus the lower reflex response may in a literal physiological sense act _into_ the cortical stimulus complex and become an integral part of it."[37]

It seems clear, then, that conscious behavior involves a certain _process_ of organization which constitutes a differential. The units entering into this process are "definitely organized systems of neural discharge," the antecedent organization of these several systems being due either to the inherited or to the acquired structure of the nervous system. Given a certain amount of plasticity, the nervous system builds up specific forms of response for certain objects or situations, and these forms of response subsequently become the material from which new organizations or new modes of response are constructed. The achievements of the past, accordingly, become stepping-stones to new achievement. The new organization, moreover, is not determined by a mechanism antecedently provided, but has a peculiar flexibility, so as to meet the demands of a new situation. That is, a new mode of procedure is adopted. Instead of being a purely mechanical reaction, the response that results from the situation is tentative or experimental in character, and "by a process of trial and error, perhaps, the elements necessary to effect the adaptive response may be assembled and the problem solved."

We may add at once that the reorganization which is required to constitute conscious behavior varies a great deal in extent. In an act that is more or less habitual, a comparatively slight modification of the corresponding organized system of neural discharge will suffice to harmonize the conflicting elements, whereas on other occasions a more extensive modification is required. But in any case it appears that there is a certain impropriety in describing conscious behavior in terms of a temporary reflex, since the study of this behavior is concerned with the organization of the discordant elements, not as a result, but primarily as a process. In a reflex act we may suppose that the stimulus which evokes the first stage in the response is like the first in a row of upstanding bricks, which in falling knocks down another. That is, the reflex arc is built up by agencies that are quite independent of the subsequent act. The arc is all set up and ready for use by the time the reflex act appears upon the scene. In the case of conscious activity, on the other hand, we find a very different state of affairs. The arc is not first constructed and then used, but is constructed as the act proceeds; and this progressive organization is, in the end, what is meant by conscious behavior. If the course of a reflex act may be compared with traveling in a railroad train, the progress of a conscious act is more like that of a band of explorers, who hew their path and build their bridges as they go along. The direction of the act is not determined from without but from within; the end is internal to the process.

This process of organization and purposive direction is exemplified in every act of attention. Is that noise, for example, a horse in the street, or is it the rain on the roof? What we find in such a situation is not a paralysis of activity, but a redirection. The incompatibility of responses is purely relative. There is indeed a mutual inhibition of the responses for hoof-beats and rain respectively, in the sense that neither has undisputed possession of the field; but this very inhibition sets free the process of attention, in which the various responses participate and cooeperate. There is no static balancing of forces, but rather a process in which the conflict is simply a condition for an activity of a different kind. If I am near a window facing the street, my eye turns thither for a clue; if the appeal to vision be eliminated, the eye becomes unseeing and cooeperates with the ear by excluding all that is irrelevant to the matter in hand. In this process the nervous system functions as a unit, with reference to the task of determining the source and character of the sound. This task or problem dominates the situation. A voice in an adjoining room may break in, but only as something to be ignored and shut out; whereas a voice in the street may become all-absorbing as possibly indicating the driver of the hypothetical horse. That is, the reason why the conflict of responses does not end in a deadlock, but in a redirection, is that a certain selectiveness of response comes into play. Out of the mass of more or less inchoate activities a certain response is selected as a rallying-point for the rest, and this selection is of a purposive character. The selection is determined by reference to the task in hand, which is to restore a certain harmony of response. Accordingly, that response is selected which gives promise of forwarding the business of the moment. By virtue of this selective character, one of the constituents of the total activity becomes exalted among its fellows and is entrusted with the function of determining further behavior.

The purpose of the discussion, up to this point, is to put forward this selective or teleological character as the fundamental and differentiating trait of conscious behavior; and our task, accordingly, is to give an account of the nature and _modus operandi_ of this purposive control. This control, it is evident, consists in giving direction to behavior with reference to results that are still in the future. The basis for this anticipation of the future is furnished by the nascent responses which foreshadow further activity, even while they are still under the thraldom of the inhibitions which hold them back. These suppressed activities furnish a sort of diagram or sketch of further possible behavior, and the problem of consciousness is the problem of making the result or outcome of these incipient responses effective in the control of behavior. Future results or consequences must be converted into present stimuli; and the accomplishment of this conversion is the miracle of consciousness. To be conscious is to have a future possible result of present behavior embodied as a present existence functioning as a stimulus to further behavior. Thus the qualities of a perceptual experience may be interpreted, without exception, as anticipations of the results of activities which are as yet in an embryonic stage. The results of the activity that is as yet partly suppressed are already expressed or anticipated in the perception. The present experience may, as James says, "shoot its perspective far before it, irradiating in advance the regions in which lie the thoughts as yet unborn."[38] A baseball player, for example, who is all "set" to field a ball as a preliminary to a further play, sees the ball, not simply as an approaching object, but as ball-to-be-caught-and-then-thrown-to-first-base. Moreover, the ball, while still on the way, is a ball-that-may-bound-to-the-right-or- to-the-left. The corresponding movements of the player to the right or left, and the act of throwing, although present only as inhibited or incipient acts, are nevertheless embodied in the visual experience. Similarly my couch looks soft and inviting, because the optical stimulation suggests or prompts, not only the act of lying down, but also the kind of relaxation that is made possible by a comfortable bed. So likewise the tiger's jaws and claws look cruel and horrible, because in that perception are reflected the incipient movements of defense and recoil which are going on in the body of the observer. Perception, like our air-castles, or like dreams in the Freudian theory, presents what is at best but a suggestion or program in the guise of accomplished fact.

This projection, however, of our submerged activities into our perceptions requires a more precise statement. According to the foregoing contention, the appearance, for example, of a razor's edge as sharp is the sensory correlate of an incipient response which, if it were to attain full-blown perfection, would be the reaction to a cut. By hypothesis, however, the response is inhibited, and it is this inhibition which calls forth the perception of the object. If the response encountered no obstruction, adaptation would be complete and perception would not occur. Since there is a blocking of the response, nature resorts to a special device in order to overcome the difficulty, and this device consists in furnishing the organism with a new type of stimulus. The razor as perceived does not actually cut just now, but it bodies forth the quality 'will cut,' i.e., the perceived attribute derives its character from what the object will, or may, do at a future time. That is, a perceived object is a stimulus which controls or directs the organism by results which have not yet occurred, but which will, or may, occur in the future. The uniqueness of such a stimulus lies in the fact that a contingent result somehow becomes operative as a present fact; the future is transferred into the present so as to become effective in the guidance of behavior.

This control by a future that is made present is what constitutes consciousness. A living body may respond to an actual cut by a knife on purely mechanical or reflex principles; but to respond to a cut by anticipation, i.e., to behave with reference to a merely possible or future injury, is manifestly an exhibition of intelligence. Not that there need be any conscious reference to the future as future in the act. Merely to see the object as "sharp" is sufficient to give direction to conduct. But "sharp" is equivalent to "will cut"; the quality of sharpness is a translation of future possibility into terms of present fact, and as thus translated the future possibility becomes a factor in the control of behavior. Perception, therefore, is a point where present and future coincide. What the object _will_ do is, in itself, just a contingency, an abstract possibility, but in perception this possibility clothes itself in the garments of present, concrete fact and thus provides the organism with a different environment. The environment provides a new stimulus by undergoing a certain kind of change, i.e., by exercising a peculiar function of control. This control is seeing, and the whole mystery of consciousness is just this rendering of future stimulations or results into terms of present existence. Consciousness, accordingly, is a name for a certain change that takes place in the stimulus; or, more specifically, it is a name for the control of conduct by future results or consequences.

To acquire such a stimulus and to become conscious are one and the same thing. As was indicated previously, the conscious stimulus is correlated with the various inherited and acquired motor tendencies which have been set off and which are struggling for expression, and the uniqueness of the stimulus lies in the fact that the adaptive value of these nascent motor tendencies becomes operative as the determining principle in the organization of the response. The response, for example, to "sharp" or "will cut" is reminiscent of an earlier reaction in which the organism engaged in certain defensive movements as the result of an actual injury. That is, the response to "sharp" is a nascent or incipient form of a response which at the time of its first occurrence was the expression of a maladaptation. The response that is induced when an object is seen as sharp would be biologically bad, if it were completed, and the fact that the object is seen as sharp means that this result is foreshadowed and operates as a stimulus to prevent such maladaptation. Similarly the couch which meets my weary eye becomes a stimulus to repose because the nascent activity which is aroused would be biologically good if completed. In any case the character of the stimulus is determined by the adaptive value which the incipient activity would have if it were carried out. Consciousness, accordingly, is just a future adaptation that has been set to work so as to bring about its own realization. The future thus becomes operative in the present, in much the same way as the prospects for next year's crop may be converted by the farmer into ready money with which to secure the tools for its production.

To justify this conclusion by a detailed and extensive application of this interpretation to every form of quality and relation would carry us beyond the limits of the present undertaking. It is a view, however, which offers possibilities that have not as yet been properly recognized. Certain considerations, besides those already discussed, may be mentioned as giving it an antecedent plausibility. As regards simple sense-qualities, there is abundant reason for believing that Locke's doctrine of "simple ideas" is a violent perversion of the facts. To assume that the last results of analysis are the first things in experience is to give a fatal twist to psychology and to commit us to the fruitless agonies of epistemology. The original "blooming, buzzing confusion" with which experience starts becomes differentiated into specific qualities only to the extent that certain typical and organized forms of response are built up within the body. Sense-qualities, in other words, are functionally not simple but extremely complex; they owe their distinctiveness or individuality to the fact that each of them embodies a specific set of cues or anticipations, with reference to further experiences. The difference between a quality like "sharpness" and a quality like "red" lies in the fact that the former is a translation of a relatively simple possibility, viz., "will cut," whereas the latter embodies a greater variety of anticipations. The perception of red, being the outcome of many comparisons and associations, presupposes a complex physical response which contains multitudinous tendencies to reinstate former responses; and the combined effect of these suppressed tendencies is the perception of a color which offers possibilities of control over behavior in such directions as reminiscences, idle associations, or perhaps scrutiny and investigation. A similar explanation evidently applies to abstract ideas, which neither admit of reduction to "revived sensations" nor compel the adoption of a peculiarly "spiritual" or "psychic" existence in the form of unanalyzable meanings. Here again a complex mode of response must be assumed, having as its correlate an experience describable only in terms of its functioning, which is such as to enable the organism to act intelligently, i.e., with reference to future results, which are sufficiently embodied in the experience to secure appropriate behavior. Again, this point of view offers a satisfactory solution for the time-worn puzzle of relativity. If perception is just the translation of future possible stimulations into present fact, there is assuredly no justification for the notion that perception distorts the facts or that discrepancies among different perceptions prove their "subjectivity." There remains but one test by which the correctness or validity of perception may be judged, viz., whether the perceived object proves to be the kind of stimulus which is reported or anticipated in the present experience.