On the principles and method of a practical science of mind : a reply to a criticism / by Thomas Laycock.

  • Thomas Laycock
Date:
1862
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the principles and method of a practical science of mind : a reply to a criticism / by Thomas Laycock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    cession of our own mental states, we cannot penetrate into the con- sciousness of lower animals—we can only conclude, in fact, as to the nature of their actions by a fallacious method of drawing analogies which has led to fundamental errors in the hands of careless or incompetent inquirers. We find that we perform certain acts leading to certain ends consciously, i. e., with feeling, or desire, or will; and we infer that wlien lower animals perform similar acts they are in similar conscious states. But the whole doctrine of reflex action (extended by me from the spinal cord and medulla oblongata to the encephalic gangha on the one hand, and to the sympathetic ganglia and tissues of plants and animals devoid of nervous system, on the other), proves that these and multitudes of similarly adapted actions either probably or actually take place without consciousness. Hence the data of consciousness are only immediately available to the inquirer, as to our own actions, or to those of the lower animals most closely allied to us; so that some naturalists have doubted whether insects feel. But we can compare the adapted acts of lower organisms, whether plant or animal, with our own consciously adapted acts, and then we can compare the vital changes under which these latter occur •ndth the corresponding states of consciousness in us, because they are presented as im- mediately to our inner sense as external objects are to our outer sense. Now this process, the insuperable difficulty of the old school, which despairs of ever proving any connexion between states of consciousness and vital changes, becomes the best avail- able starting-pohit for mquiries in mental science, for w^e observe what are the ends attained by living things, and formularise the order of attainment as a law, and then compare the ends we attain with these and with the laws of succession of our own consciousness which coincide with them. We thus develop a method which enables us to combine biological with mental laws, and so not only include plants and animals in our inquiry, but extend our generalisations to the relations of all living tis- sues, whether nerve or not; finally arriving at the most general laws of the vital forces in their relations with the teleological phe- nomena of organisms. These general laws are the first principles of a mental science to be used deductively. Dr. Bushnan will find this method not only carefully marked out in my work, but systematically developed and a])plied so as to illustrate specially the nature and laws of the appetites and deshes of man, and the circumstances which modify them.'^ These, then, are the reasons why 1 conclude a wider generahsation than the old psychology affords or attempts is neces- sary to the development of a practical mental science, and the proofs of its uses.