James, książki, Philosphy
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THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
1
The Principles of Psychology
By William James
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THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
2
CHAPTER XVII.
SENSATION.
After inner perception, outer perception! The next three chapters will treat of the processes by
which we cognize all times the present world of space and the material things which it contains.
And first, of the process called Sensation.
SENSATION AND PERCEPTION DISTINGUISHED.
The words Sensation and Perception
do not carry very definitely discriminated meanings in
popular speech, and in psychology also their meanings run into each other. Both of them name
processes in which we cognize an objective world; both (under normal conditions) need the
stimulation of incoming nerves ere they can occur; Perception always involves Sensation as a
portion of itself; and Sensation in turn never takes place in adult life without Perception also
being there. They are therefore names for different cognitive functions, not for different sorts of
mental
fact
. The nearer the object cognized comes to being a simple quality like 'hot,' 'cold,' 'red,'
'noise,' 'pain,' aprehended irrelatively to other things, the more the state mind approaches pure
sensation. The fuller of relations an object is, on the contrary; the more it is something eased,
located, measured, compared, assigned to a function, etc., etc.; the more unreservedly do we call
the state mind a perception, and the relatively smaller is the part it which sensation plays.
Sensation, then, so long as we take the analytic point of
[p. 2]
view, differs from Perception only
in the extreme simplicity of its object or content.
[
1
] Its function is that of mere
acquaintance
with a fact. Perception's function, on the other hand, is knowledge about [
2
] a fact; and this
knowledge admits of numberless degrees of complication. But in both sensation and perception
we perceive the fact as an
immediately
present outboard reality, and this makes them differ from
'thought' and 'conception,' whose objects do not appear present in this immediate physical way.
From the
physio-
[p. 3]
logical point of view both sensations and perception differ from
'thoughts' (
in the narrower sense of the word
) in the fact that nerve-currents coming in from the
periphery are involved in their production. In perception these nerve-currents arouse
voluminous associative or reproductive processes in the cortex; but when sensation occurs
alone, or with a minimum of perception, the accompanying reproductive processes are at a
minimum too.
I shall in this chapter discuss some general questions more especially relative to Sensation. In a
later chapter perception will take its turn. I shall entirely pass by the classification and natural
history of our special I sensations, such matters finding their proper place, and being sufficiently
well treated, in all the physiological books. [
3
]
THE COGNITIVE FUNCTION OF SENSATION
A pure sensation is an abstraction
; and when we adults talk of our 'sensations' we mean one of
two things: either certain objects, namely simple
qualities
or
attributes
like
hard, hot, pain
; or
else those of our thoughts in which acquaintance with these objects is least combined with
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THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
3
knowledge about the relations of them to other things. As we can only think or talk about the
relations of objects with which we have
acquaintance
already, we are forced to postulate a
function in our thought whereby we first become aware of the
bare immediate natures
by which
our several objects are distinguished. This function is sensation. And just as logicians always
point out the distinction between substantive terms of discourse and relations found to obtain
between them, so psychologists, as a rule, are ready to admit this function, of the vision of the
terms or matters meant, as something distinct from the knowledge about them and of their
relations
inter se
. Thought with the former function is sensational, with the latter, intellectual.
Our earliest thoughts are almost exclusively sensational. They merely give us a set of
thats
, or
its
, of subjects [p. 4] of discourse, with their relations not brought out. The first time we see
light
,
in Condillac's phrase we are it rather rather than see it. But all our later optical knowledge is
about what this experience gives. And though we were struck blind from that first moment, our
scholarship in the subject would lack no essential feature so long as our memory remained. In
training-institutions for the blind they teach the pupils as much
about
light as in ordinary schools.
Reflection, refraction, the spectrum, the ether-theory, etc., are all studied. But the best taught
born-blind pupil of such an establishment yet lacks a knowledge which the least instructed seeing
baby has. They can never show him what light is in its 'first intention'; and the loss of that
sensible knowledge no book-learning can replace. All this is so obvious that we usually find
sensation I postulated as an element of experience, even by those philosophers who are least
inclined to make much of its importance, or to pay respect to the knowledge which it brings. [
4
]
[p. 5]
But the trouble is that most, if not all, of those who admit it, admit it as a fractional
part
of the
thought, in the old-fashioned atomistic sense which we have so often criticised.
Take the pain called toothache for example. Again and again we feel it and greet it as the same
real item in the universe. We must therefore, it is supposed, have a distinct pocket for it in our
mind into which it and nothing else will fit. This pocket, when filled, is the sensation of
toothache; and must be either filled or half-filled whenever and under whatever form toothache is
present to our thought, and whether much or little of the rest of the mind be filled at the same
time. Thereupon of course comes up the paradox and mystery: If the knowledge of toothache be
pent up in this separate mental pocket, how can it be known
cum alio
or brought into one view
with anything else? This pocket knows nothing else; no other part of the mind knows toothache.
The knowing of toothache
cum alio
must be a miracle. And the miracle must have an Agent. And
the Agent must be a Subject or Ego 'out of time,' -- and all the rest of it, as we saw in Chapter X.
And then begins the well-worn round of recrimination between the sensationalists and the
spiritualists, from which we are saved by our determination from the outset to accept the
psychological point of view, and to admit knowledge whether of simple toothaches or of
philosophic systems as ultimate fact. There are realities and there are 'states of mind,' and the
latter know the former; and it is just as wonderful for a state of mind to be a 'sensation' and know
simple pain as for it to be a thought and know a system [p. 6] of related things. [
5
] But there is no
reason to suppose that when different states of mind know different things about the same
toothache, they do so by virtue of their all
containing
faintly or vividly the original pain. Quite
the reverse. The by-gone sensation of my gout was painful, as Reid somewhere says; the
thought
of the same gout as bygone is pleasant, and in no respect resembles the earlier mental state.
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THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
4
Sensations, then, first make us acquainted with innumerable things, and then are replaced by
thoughts which know the same things in altogether other ways. And Locke's main doctrine
remains eternally true, however hazy some of his language may have been, that
"though there be a great number of considerations wherein things may be compared one with
another, and so a multitnde of relations; yet they all
terminate in
, and are concerned about, those
simple ideas [
6
] either of sensation or reflection, which I think to be the whole materials of all
our knowledge. . . . The simple ideas we receive from sensation and reflection are the
boundaries
of our thoughts; beyond which, the mind whatever efforts it would make, is not able to advance
one jot; nor can it make any discoveries when it would pry into the nature and hidden causes of
those ideas." [
7
]
The nature and hidden causes of ideas will never be unravelled till the next between the brain
and consciousness is cleared up. All we can say now is that sensations are
first
things in the way
of consciousness. Before perceptions can come, sensations must have come; but sensations
come, no psychic fact need have existed, a current is enough. If the nerve-current be not given,
nothing else will take its place. To quote the good Locke again:
"It is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or
variety of thoughts, to invent or frame [p. 7] one new simple idea [i.e. sensation] [
8
] in the mind.
. . I would have any one try to fancy any taste which had never affected his palate, or frame the
idea of a scent he had never smelt; and when he can do this, I will also conclude that a blind man
hath ideas of colors, and a deaf man true distinct notions of sounds." [
9
]
The brain is so made that all currents in it run one way. Consciousness of some sort goes with all
the currents, but it is only when new currents are entering that it has the sensational
tang
. And it
is only then that consciousness directly
encounters
(to use a word of Mr. Bradley's) a reality
outside itself.
The difference between such encounter and all conceptual knowledge is very great. A blind man
may know all
about
the sky's blueness, and I may know all
about
your toothache, conceptually;
tracing their causes from primeval chaos, and their consequences to the crack of doom. But so
long as he has not felt the blueness, nor I the toothache, our knowledge, wide as it is, of these
realities, will be hollow and inadequate. Somebody must
feel
blueness, somebody must have
toothache, to make human knowledge of these matters real. Conceptual systems which neither
began nor left off in sensations would be like bridges without piers. Systems about fact must
plunge themselves into sensation as bridges plunge their piers into the rock. Sensations are the
stable rock, the
terminus a quo
and the
teminus ad quem
of thought. To find such termini is our
aim with all our theories -- to conceive first when and where a certain sensation maybe had, and
then to have it. Finding it stops discussion. Failure to find it kills the false conceit of knowledge.
Only when you deduce a possible sensation for me from your theory, and give it to me when and
where the theory requires, do I begin to be sure that your thought has anything to do with truth.
Pure sensations can only be realized in the earliest days of life
. They are all but impossible to
adults with memories and stores of associations acquired. Prior to all impressions on sense-
organs the brain is plunged in deep sleep and consciousness is practically non-existent. Even the
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THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY
5
first weeks [p. 8] after birth are passed in almost unbroken sleep by human infants. It takes a
strong message from the sense-organs to break this slumber. In a new-born brain this gives rise
to an absolutely pure sensation. But the experience leaves its 'unimaginable touch' on the matter
of the convolutions, and the next impression which a sense-organs transmits produces a cerebral
reaction in which the awakened vestige of the last impression plays its part. Another sort of
feeling and a higher grade of cognition are the consequence; and the complication goes on
increasing till the end of life, no two successive impressions falling on an identical brain, and no
two successive thoughts being exactly the same. (See above, p. 230 ff.)
The first sensation which an infant gets is for him the Universe
. And the Universe which he latter
comes to know is nothing but an amplification and an implication of that first simple germ
which, by accretion on the one hand and intussusception on the other, has grown so big and
complex and articulate that its first estate is unrememberable. In his dumb awakening to the
consciousness of
something there
, a mere
this
as yet (or something for which even the term this
would perhaps be too discriminative, and the intellectual acknowledgment of which would be
better expressed by the bare interjection 'lo!' ), the infant encounters an object in which (though it
be given in a pure sensation) all the 'categories of the understanding' are contained
. It has
objectivity, unity, substantiality, causality, in the full sense in which any later object or system of
objects has these things
. Here the young knower meets and greets his world; and the miracle of
knowledge bursts forth, as Voltaire says, as much in the infant's lowest sensation as in the
highest achievement of a Newton's brain. The physiological condition of this first sensible
experience is probably nerve-currents coming in from many peripheral organs at once. Later, the
one confused Fact which these currents cause to appear is perceived to be many facts, and to
contain man qualities. [
10
] For as the currents vary, and the brain-paths are moulded by them,
other thoughts with other 'objects' come, and the 'same thing' which was apprehended as a
present
this
soon figures as a past
that
, about which many unsuspected things have come to light.
The principles of this development have been laid down already in Chapters XII and XIII, and
nothing more need here be added to that account.
"THE RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE."
To the reader who is tired of so much
Erkenntnisstheorie
I can only say that I am so myself, but
that it is indispensable, in the actual state of opinions about Sensation, to try to clear up just what
the word means. Locke's pupils seek to do the impossible with sensations, and against them we
must once again insist that sensations 'clustered together' cannot build up our more intellectual
states of mind. Plato's earlier pupils used to admit Sensation's existence, grudgingly, but they
trampled it in the dust as something corporeal, non-cognitive, and vile. [
11
] His latest followers
[p. 10] seem to seek to crowd it out of existence altogether. The only reals for the neo-Hegelian
writers appear to be
relations
, relations without terms, or whose terms are speciously such and
really consist in knots, or gnarls relations finer still
in infinitum
.
"Exclude from what we have considered real all qualities constituted by relation, we find that
none are left." "Abstract the many relations from the one thing and there is nothing. . . . Without
relations it would not exist at all." [
12
] "The single feeling is nothing real." "On the recognition
of relations as constituting the
nature of
ideas, rests the possibility of any tenable theory of their
reality."
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