A manual of psychology.

  • Stout, George Frederick, 1860-1944.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of psychology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    27/684 (page 7)
    § 3.] § 3. Consciousness.—If wo analyse such processes as those of looking-, listening, smelling, or tasting, we find that they involve two distinct and disparate groups of facts. On the one hand, they are modes of conscious- ness, specific kinds of experience ; oil the other, they imply I occurrences taking place in the bodily organs of sensei which do not, as such, enter into the conscious experience/ of the subject. For instance, a man in looking at an object moves his eyeballs; this involves the existence and operation of a muscular apparatus; but the operation of this muscular apparatus is not, as such, a constituent of his conscious state. It exists for the consciousness of the psychologist or physiologist, who is analysing- the visual process; but it does not form part of the act of looking at an object so far as this is an experience of the subject who sees the object. The subjective experience is conditioned by, bnt it does not contain the muscular process. We may express this by saying that though the muscular pro- cess is a psychological fact, in the sense that it is a fact that psychology must take account of, yet it is not a psychical fact, viz., a fact of consciousness. The term psychological is wider than psychical: all psychical facts are psychological facts, but not all psychological facts are psychical facts. A psychical fact must be in some way or other an experience of the subjoct whose processes the psychologist is investigating. A psychical fact is a fact of consciousness ; but what is consciousness? Properly speaking, definition is impossible. Everybody knows what consciousness is because everybody is conscious. It is not, howovor, enough simply to say this. Confusion would bo sure to arise if wo passed the question by in this manner. The difficulty is that con- sciousness has manifold modes and degrees; and there is