Intensity differences of sensations / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946.
Date:
[between 1924 and 1929?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Intensity differences of sensations / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    law held approximately, but they believed that the relation^ ship should be stated between stimlus and errors of obser? vation and not between stimulus and sensation. It is plain that the force of the quantity objection is removed if the objection can be applied with equal potency to the physical world. Experiencially it is not true that a weight of a kilogram is one thousand one gram weights any more than it is true that there are a thousand candle lights in an electric arc. In either physics or psychology magnitude does not imply multiplicity. Measurement is merely a method of establishing relationship to a unit. If an object is a meter long, one does not experience it as one hundred centimeters or a thousand millimeters or in any way, by mere measure^ ment, rob it of its uniariness or resolve it into parts. The modern view of intensity of sensation seems to me, therefore, inescapable. Sensory experience can vary in quality, in duration, in intensity, and sometimes in extent. Different ces in any one of these dimensions are unlike differences in any other. Differences of intensity can be recognized as such and are as experiencially obvious as any differences that ever occur. In general, I think it may be said that the various attributes of sensation have prospered according as reasonable phy^ siological correlates have been found for them. Moreover, in the psychophysical mechanism that underlies attributive experience, it is not to be expected that the physical aspect will be completely changed in kind. Perceived extensity, for example, is taken to depend upon extension of excitation in the brain; and perceived duration must be correlated with persistence of central excitation. The doctrine of the specific energy of nerves was an attempt to deal with quality in the same manner; we perceive, said Johannes Muller, not the qualities of objects but the qualities of the nerves of sense themselves. Intensity has long been considered to be the correlate of degree of excitation in nerve^fiber. On the quantity objection in general and the answer to it, see E. G. Boring, Am. J. Psychol., 1921, 32, 451—460.