The sensory basis and structure of knowledge / by Henry J. Watt.

  • Henry J. Watt
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The sensory basis and structure of knowledge / by Henry J. Watt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    case. This discipline is satisfied in showing how often and how swiftly apparently grievous disorders of conduct, that seem merely to be of physical origin, are removed by treatment of the patient’s mind. It infers that the disorder of conduct in such cases had its origin in mental disorder. Against this, we find the serious claim that similar dis¬ orders of the mind can be removed by thoroughly ridding the body of all focal infections, when the mind as automat¬ ically resumes its orderly course.1 Whichever of these theories may ultimately prevail, the purely psychological standpoint adopted by psychoanalysis will surely persist and retain its own relative value as an easy, direct, and often sufficient, method. Of their own nature and according to the opinion of the vast majority of psychologists experiences fall into three groups, (i) The sensory-cognitive system includes all sensations and their complexities, perception, concep¬ tion, imagination, memory, thought, reasoning, and the like. (2) The emotive system includes all non-sensory feelings, especially pleasure and displeasure, all the emo¬ tions such as fear, anger, love, and all the sentiments, such as reverence, dignity and gratitude, etc. (3) The conative system includes the work of the appetites, such as hunger and sex, the “ instinctive ” expression of emotion, the expression of voluntary decisions, and so on. It is, of course, impossible to study these three systems in complete isolation from one another. They interweave continually with one another in every moment of life. But to a large extent they can be treated separately. The sensory-cognitive system, for example, stands for many purposes, apart from the emotive system and even from the conative too. We try to hear, see, perceive, and think correctly and exactly without the interference of our emotions and our prejudiced wills, even although there may be no wholly unmotivated cognition. Scientific observation must be exact in its dependence upon the agreed circumstances, which are nearly always physical, and it must be impartial. It must consist of cognitive 1 Cotton, H. A., The Defective, Delinquent and Insane. London, 1921.