The elements of experience and their integration, or modalism / by Henry J. Watt.

  • Henry J. Watt
Date:
1911
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The elements of experience and their integration, or modalism / by Henry J. Watt. 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.

    33/96 (page 159)
    and psychological independence of these two classes of sensation would constitute a gross extravagance of sensory mechanism1. We are therefore confirmed in our previous opinion (p. 140) that the sensations of position from one joint, or from various joints for that matter, are to be considered as differing in order. The derivative nature of the sensation of position is sometimes supported by reference to the fact that we gradually lose a clear sense of the position of the arm if the attention is distracted and every movement and contact of the arm with other parts of the body is prevented (cp. 30, p. 155); the sensation of position, it, is held, is only an after-effect of that of move- ment. But such an argument is worthless. The facts can be explained by a theory of adaptation similar to that commonly accepted for touch, that pressure is only felt where there is a quick change of pressure over a given area (8). The facts, therefore, support the primacy of the articular movement as little as that of tactual movement, as against the simple sensation from the “ spot.” Psychologically the facts may indi- cate the presence of the aspect of intensity in articular sensation. A semblance of extensity seems to be given in the different voluminosity of the sensation of movement from the thigh compared with that from the little finger. We should then have the full complement of attri- butes in this sensation, all of which, however, owing to the peculiar physiological conditions of the case, are much clearer and more easily observed in the complex of movement than in the single elementary sensation of position. Labyrinthine. Our awareness of the motion of the body as a whole may also legitimately be conceived as a form of motion and as based upon sensations of position of the body as a whole. This view is also opposed to current theory, which treats the two kinds of experiences as different kinds of sensation. Physiological investigation supports the latter in so far as two separate sets of sense-organs are found, one for each group of sensations. But this is only apparently a difficulty. For it is well known that the various parts of the skin and of the retina, which contain very frequent repetition of the same sense-organ, are not 1 The physiological problem of the sensory mechanism, of which at the present time we know next to nothing [cp. 30, p. 25], is in this case, as in all others, quite irrelevant, for it is quite possible that it consists of a very complicated form of physiological integra- tion. This is unimportant to psychology, so long as the sensation evoked possesses the full number of attributes, including order. It would, on the other hand, be a highly important fact for psychology, if it suggested to us the lines of psychological integration. We find a physiological integration, for example, in the labyrinthine organs of position and movement. J. of Psych, iv 11