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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    art can render our knowledge of them more certain than it is in itself. There is no logic for this portion of our knoAvledge/'' The first sentence, whatever is known to us by consciousness is known beyond the possibility of question^^ is a generalisation of our experience of consciousness in regard to knowledge, and the remainder of the paragra})h is an amplitication of the generalisation. It is not said that if we are conscious we must believe we are conscious; no one doubts this necessity of belief; but the proposition is, that what- ever we necessarily believe to be seen is truly seen — or whatever is hiown immediately to our consciousness, is known to us beyond the possibility of question. It is plainly just the common generalisation of ex])erience, that in acquiring knowledge a man is bound to take the evidence of his senses. Let us apply the generalisation, however, as it stands to the hallucinations of the insane. These are known by consciousness exclusively, and in no other w%ay, of whatever kind they may be. They may be of subjective origin, that is, be depen- dent wholly upon morbid encephalic changes, or they may be partly objective, that is, the impressions of an object may be the exciting causes of the internal changes upon which the hallucuiations depend, yet the object itself appears to be sometfiivig else—is so transformed as to be presented to the consciousness as a thing wholly dilferent. In any case the individual may either accept or question the data of consciousness as to what he sees or feels, bodily or mentally not unfrec[uently, in the early stage of the mental disease they are questioned—are known to be false or impossible. It is only as the disease advances that he at last ceases to doubt them, and eventually affirms that what is so known to him by consciousness must be beyond the possibility of question. Of course the pure logician, inexperienced in such cases, thinks he will make short work of the patient's hallucinations, and immediately bombards him with a series of the most unanswerable syllogisms; but the hallucinated pooh- poohs them all with, There is no logic for this portion of my knowledge; / am sui-e of what / see and feel and know. Now what practical end does the old a priori method serve in cases of this kind ? Doubtless the bystander will be enabled thereby to prove that the data of this man's consciousness are erroneous, or absurdly contrary to facts and the order of nature, but that is a poor practical result of a large system, for common sense will do all that. As for the cure of these hallucinations, or any principle to help us therein, it tells nothing. But there is a much more important question than this to be con- sidered. Many persons have hallucinations as to their experience of ■what they have felt and seen Avhich differ from those of the insane in the important circumstance, that they are not absurd, fantastic, or opposed to our experience of the order of nature. As to such, it is to be carefully observed that they do not carry with them their own contradiction; they can only be proved to be erroneous by witnesses. Now when such hallucinations are presented as evidence in courts of