Modern materialism and emergent evolution / by William McDougall.

  • McDougall, William, 1871-1938
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Modern materialism and emergent evolution / by William McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    guidance of our actions, the mechanistic assumption at once appears far more extravagant. The causal relation is not an obvious and striking feature of natural events, not one that, like the physical properties of things, might be expected somehow to impress itself on the organism ; it is not itself a causal agency. It is so obscure a feature of physical reality that, as we have seen, some philoso¬ phers deny altogether its reality or objectivity, asserting that it is merely a way in which we falsely conceive things to be related. Yet David Hume’s attempt to display our thinking of causation as the consequence merely of the repeated experience of certain successions of impressions (and to be in fact nothing more than a revival of such successions in the mind) is admitted on all hands to have failed completely. We believe we discover causal relations in the physical realm. We believe that our thinking of those relations has causal efficacy in guiding our actions as we manipulate physical things. And both beliefs are verified in the completest possible way, namely, pragmatically by the continually renewed successes of both beliefs in leading us to our desired goals. And be it noted that the verifica¬ tion of the second belief is at least as complete as that of the former. The two beliefs must stand or fall together ; for they have the same evidence and verification. Indeed, the second belief is the more fundamental; the former derives from and depends upon it. Our belief in causal relations in the physical realm is verified only by the success of our thinking of them as guidance to our own causal