Psychology : briefer course / by William James.

  • William James
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Psychology : briefer course / by William James. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    by the condition of our circulation th-an by our logical grounds. Whether a man shall be a hero or a coward is a matter of his temporary ' nerves/ In many kinds of insanity, though by no means in all, distinct alterations of the brain-tissue have been found. Destruction of certain definite portions of the cerebral hemispheres involves losses of memory and of acquired motor faculty of quite determi- nate sorts, to which we shall revert again under the title of aphasias. Taking all such facts together, the simple and radical conception dawns upon the mind that mental action may be uniformly and absolutely a function of brain-action, varying as the latter varies, and being to the brain-action as effect to cause. This conception is the 'working hypothesis' which underlies all the 'physiological psychology' of recent years, and it will be the working hypothesis of this book. Taken thus absolutely, it may possibly be too sweeping a statement of what in reality is only a partial truth. But the only way to make sure of its unsatisfactoriness is to apply it seriously to every possible case that can turn up. To work an hypothesis ' for all it is worth' is the real, and often the only, way to prove its insufficiency. I shall there- fore assume without scruple at the outset that the uniform correlation of brain-states with mind-states is a law of na- ture. The interpretation of the law in detail will best show where its facilities and where its difficulties lie. To some readers such an assumption will seem like the most unjus- tifiable a priori materialism. In one sense it doubtless is materialism: it puts the Higher at the mercy of the Lower. But although we affirm that the coming to pass of thought is a consequence of mechanical laws,—for, according to another 'working hypothesis,' that namely of physiolog}^, the laws of brain-action are at bottom mechanical laws,— we do not in the least explain the nature of thought by affirming this dependence, and in that latter sense our proposition is not materialism. The authors who most unconditionally affirm the dependence of our thoughts
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