Psychology / by Henry J. Watt.

  • Henry J. Watt
Date:
[1913]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Psychology / by Henry J. Watt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/102 (page 14)
    of quantitative expressions of their differences can be justified only by convention and utility. Apart, therefore, from certain more or less probable, systematic considerations of a philosophic nature, we know only that certain units or processes of mind are dependent for their occurrence upon the occurrence of certain units or processes of matter, and vice versa. In so far as these material units are multiplied, there will also be a certain multiplication or extension of the qualitative units of mind they evoke. Thus we obtain a very rough and restricted parallelism between the two systems. If we do not know the creative source of our spiritual units, we can at least look for a pro¬ vocative material companion for each, in some hope of finding one. But it would be folly to point to a com¬ plicated brain-process as explanation of some compli¬ cated, and as yet inexplicable, mental process. Nor can we imagine we advance knowledge by “ explaining ” the peculiarities of our experiences in terms of the muscular movements they evoke. It is very import¬ ant to discover the bodily antecedents, accompaniments, and consequences of mental processes, but they are no explanation thereof. Complex processes in each sphere can be explained only in terms of its own units or ele¬ ments. These we must take as given or created in the form beyond which we are unable to reduce them. We ■ may also ascribe to them all those properties or powers which we can identify in them by inspection, aided by an examination of the regularities of their behaviour in, i or contribution to, complex processes. These units and i their properties will, then, form our basis of explanation, which should be such that we can thoroughly accept the effect after consideration of the nature of the combining unitary causes. If things become too complicated for this ideal completeness of explanation, we must be content to state our knowledge as at least a rule of de¬ pendence of one process upon another, in the same way as we state our knowledge of the dependence of the mind upon the body.