The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Professor Ladd's Criticism of James's Psychology
DISCUSSIONS.
PROFESSOR LADD'S CRITICISM OF JAMES'S PSYCHOLOGY.
There seem to me to be two features in James's Psychology of epoch-making importance: (1) its point of view, its conception of psychology as a natural science; (2) its contention that all our so-called ideas at any moment form one undivided mental state.
Professor Ladd (Review, No. 1) confines himself almost entirely to the first of these. He criticises it on the following grounds: (1) that psychology as a natural science is not a science; (2) that it can never become one; (3) that as Professor James conceives it, it excludes nearly all the scientific data and conclusions of psychology, — among them, nearly all those of physiological psychology, and all of introspection psychology as explanatory science; (4) that Professor James himself does not treat psychology as a natural science, that the "metaphysics of physics is interwoven into the very texture of both his volumes," thereby illustrating the fact that his conception is impracticable and erroneous.
Of the first argument it is sufficient to say that it is not to the point as criticism of a book that is described by its author as "mainly a mass of descriptive details."
But psychology is not only not a natural science now, it can never become one. "The attempt to establish psychology as a natural science upon such an extremely tenuous and cloudy foundation as our present or prospective knowledge of cerebral 'explosions' and 'overlappings' is doomed to failure from the very beginning." How does Professor Ladd know? How has he been able to measure the possibilities of the human mind? And, supposing he is right, has the limit of human achievement in this direction been already reached? If not, it would seem worth while for investigators to prosecute their inquiries in this field a little longer. Moreover, if Professor Ladd is right, the best way to prove it is to treat psychology as a natural science precisely in the sense in which Professor James conceives it. The first condition not only of solving a problem, but of proving that it is insoluble is to clearly conceive it. As Professor James puts it in his shorter work, "To work an hypothesis for all it is worth is the real and often the only way to prove its insufficiency." From Professor Ladd's own point of view, therefore, just such a clear and definite formulation of the problem of psychology as Professor James makes seems to me to have a very high value.
Professor Ladd's opinion that Professor James's conception of psychology excludes the entire domain of physiological psychology, is due to his failing to note the force of "last" in the passage he quotes. Professor James says the last word of a psychology that seeks to be clear using "last" in the sense of "ultimate" — will consist in "a blank unmediated correspondence, term for term, of the succession of states of consciousness with the succession of total brain-processes." In other words, if the problem of psychology as natural science is ever completely solved, its solution will consist in the discovery of this blank unmediated correspondence. In the preface, he makes it unnecessary for us to infer his meaning. He says in so many words that he has regarded the mere laws of coexistence of our passing thoughts as integers with brain-states, as "the ultimate laws" of psychology. He has certainly nowhere hinted that any derivative laws which have already been, or may hereafter be established have no place in the science. Professor Ladd is right when he says that Professor James's conception excludes introspective psychology as explanatory science. But is it explanatory science from Professor Ladd's own point of view? Not unless he believes that ideas or states of consciousness continue to exist after we cease to be conscious of them. An idea that does not exist cannot explain anything. Those who believe that they only exist when we are conscious of them must limit introspective psychology to description and classification, no matter how they conceive the science.
But he contends that Professor James does not adhere to his conception of psychology, that he " postulates some of those deeper lying entities and then puts them through a course of conjectural processes in order to explain other [conscious] processes which are not conjectural, but are indubitably known to exist." Professor James does assume the brain in the same practical common-sense way in which physiology assumes it, in the same way in which astronomy assumes the existence of the heavenly bodies and an objective space in which they move; do these sciences forsake the point of view of natural science in making these assumptions? But if the physical natural sciences can assume an external, material world, why may not psychology assume an internal, immaterial world? Because the physical sciences make no use whatever of their metaphysical assumptions. Whatever the metaphysical creed of the student of physical science, whether he be Berkleyan, Lotzian, Spencerian, Positivist, or Natural Realist, is a matter of absolute indifference to physical science. Physical science deals only with phenomena — makes no use of their metaphysical ground or condition. But that is precisely what Professor Ladd wants psychology to do. He insists that we have as good a right to say that the mind thinks as that the brain acts. So we have; and those who agree with Professor James will not object to it if he uses "mind" in the same sense in which physiologists use "brain." To physiologists the word "brain" practically means cerebral phenomena; that is, all the brain they make use of in their explanations. If Professor Ladd will use "mind" simply as a designation of mental phenomena, he will agree with Professor James. If he says that mental phenomena cannot exist without a metaphysical ground or condition, and that therefore we ought to take it into account in all our study of mental phenomena, then he ought to hold that we should take into account the metaphysical ground or basis of material phenomena in all our study of them, and that the distinction between science and metaphysics should be abolished.
Professor James's view that all our so-called ideas at any moment form one undivided mental state Professor Ladd dismisses very briefly. He calls it " the extraordinary way in which the unity of each 'thought' [that is, 'field of consciousness' no matter how highly elaborate and complex] is insisted upon, to the prejudice and neglect of careful analysis of the many elements or factors that may enter into the constitution of that thought," and with that he leaves it.
But is it true, extraordinary or not? Do the mental states of which I am conscious at any moment constitute one undivided and indivisible whole? Or is each sensation, each thought, each distinguishable element of consciousness separate from, and independent of, every other? We may classify the answers to this question under three heads: the Associationists say that the various perceptions, reflections, etc., of which we are conscious at any one moment are independent bits of thought that seem to be one because they exist together; the Transcendentalists, Pure Egoists, and Spiritualists say that they are separate and independent, but that they are bound together in the unity of consciousness by their metaphysical basis, by that entity or being which constitutes the metaphysical possibility of there being such facts as human states of consciousness at all. Professor James says that they are parts of an indivisible whole — that you might as well look for a break, or crack, or rent, or division in a toothache as in the total field of consciousness within our view at any moment.
The theory of the Associationists has been refuted so often, — by Professor James, among others, — that it seems useless to waste time upon it. It is based, as has been shown a thousand times, on a confusion of relations between parts of the total field of consciousness with a consciousness of these relations. What do they mean by thoughts coexisting together? Either the together is a meaningless pleonasm and their theory is false because the great majority of coexisting thoughts do not seem to be parts of a whole, or it adds something to the thought of coexisting; coexisting and coexisting together being different things. Now there are two kinds of coexistence that can be predicated of thoughts. Coexistence in time and coexistence in consciousness. But coexistence in time will not account for the consciousness of coexistence. If the Associationist resorts to coexistence in the same consciousness, to explain the facts, he gives up his case. Either his "same consciousness" is Professor James's indivisible mental state or the unity of consciousness which is really a unity of — consciousness of the second theory.
As to this theory, the following alternative will certainly be admitted: Either the Transcendental Being, or Pure Ego, or Spiritual Substance is represented in consciousness or it is not. If it is not, we need not take any account of it in describing the facts of consciousness. When we ask: How are states of consciousness possible? their metaphysical condition is the all-important matter. But as I can describe a play of Shakespeare without saying anything about its authorship, so I can describe the facts of consciousness without saying anything about their metaphysical ground, unless this ground is a part of, or is in some way represented in, these facts themselves. But in the latter case, the representation becomes a part of the facts to be described, and as long as my aim is description only, I can and must ignore the metaphysical reality whose shadow forms a part or the whole of the object I am trying to describe.
From this it follows that the same argument that overthrows the Associationist's theory, establishes Professor James's. He maintains that all the facts of which we are conscious at any moment form an undivided mental state. As a natural-science psychologist, he gives no explanation of it. Looking simply at the facts, raising no question as to their metaphysical basis, he contends that they form one whole, else they would not be known to each other. The unity of consciousness upon which the Transcendentalists rightly lay such stress, is a unity of consciousness — not a unity of unconsciousness — not a unity of the transcendental ground of consciousness. Give to "unity of consciousness" the sense which the facts demand, and it means and can only mean the conscious unity in which all the parts of the field of consciousness form parts of an undivided whole.
These considerations, it appears to me, make it necessary for us to accept some such theory as Professor James has advanced of personal identity and substantiality. What can the identity of a metaphysical being do towards giving us a belief in our identity? Nothing whatever so long as it remains, from the point of view of our thought, a purely metaphysical being. Only as it becomes more, only as it transcends itself and becomes represented in consciousness, only as the identity that is out of consciousness projects its shadow, so to speak, across consciousness, can it furnish the foundation for a belief to conscious beings.
We cannot, therefore, throw upon Professor James the responsibility of finding in consciousness the data for our belief in personal identity if we do not accept his natural-science conception of psychology. Whatever view we take of it, we all agree with him in holding that a description of the facts of consciousness is a part of its business. And if among the facts to be described are the data that lead to the belief in personal identity, our obligation to find them is as strong as his is. When the data are found, of course, psychology, as natural science, must find the coexisting brain-states of which they are the mental correlates, but the data that will do for us will do for Professor James.
From this point of view it is evident that another of Professor Ladd's criticisms fails to hit the mark. "We are told in general," he says, "that psychology only assumes that thoughts successively occur and that they (the thoughts) know objects in a world which the psychologist also knows. But how thoughts can know 'objects in a world,' and in what respect the psychologist's knowledge of this world differs from the knowledge of the objects in this world, by his thoughts; and how the knowledge of the psychologist is going to be identified by himself with the knowledge of the objects by the psychologist's thought; — we find it difficult to understand as a matter of cerebral psychology." Are any of these questions more difficult to answer from Professor James's point of view than from Professor Ladd's? According to Professor James — and I think Professor Ladd would agree with him — the first one, "how thoughts can know objects in a world," is a question that psychology has nothing to do with: that is the business of the Theory of Knowledge. But every one of them presses upon Professor Ladd with his conception of psychology quite as strongly as upon Professor James. Both admit that a description of the facts of consciousness is a part of the business of psychology, and when the facts are correctly described Professor Ladd's questions will be answered. No possible or conceivable insight into the metaphysical ground of consciousness can alter in the slightest degree the facts of consciousness. They are what they are no matter how they came to be what they are. Also they are what they are whether Professor James can or cannot find the brain-states that coexist with them. When he can tell us the brain-states that invariably coexist with them, he can explain them in the scientific sense; when Professor Ladd can tell us their metaphysical cause, he can explain them in what we all admit to be the deepest sense. But the facts do not ask leave either of science or metaphysics to be until the explanations they are looking for have been found. And when we know the facts, I repeat, we know the answers to all these questions that Professor Ladd seems to think that Professor James is under peculiar obligations to answer.
The same line of thought furnishes the reply to another of Professor Ladd's criticisms. "The problem of self-consciousness," he says, "is not one of blank unmediated correspondences between certain series of particular thoughts and other series of particular known brain-processes. It is the far graver and profounder problem of trying to tell how there comes to be an actual distinction made between thoughts and thinker; and how some thoughts are irresistibly referred by the thinker to the thinker as not himself but his thoughts; while other thoughts are referred by the same thinker to things as knowledge which the same thinker has of what is not his thoughts." This " far graver and profounder problem" must be solved — according to Professor Ladd, since he excludes Professor James's conception — either by description of the facts of consciousness or by metaphysical explanation of them. So far as it can be solved by description, psychology, as natural science, has no more difficulty with it than psychology conceived in any other way. The ascertainment and description of the various elements in the stream of consciousness, and the ascertainment of their nervous correlates, constitute the entire business of psychology as a science. Say that the explanations of such a psychology do not explain, say that the discovery of the ultimate laws of coexistence between thoughts and brain-states leave us with far graver and profounder problems on our hands, and I shall admit it. But the same is true of every other science. If every science had completely solved its problem we should still need a metaphysic of the universe.
From the point of view we have now reached it ought to be unnecessary to show that Professor Ladd has completely misapprehended Professor James's suggestion that we "'pool' our mysteries into one great mystery, the mystery that brain-processes occasion knowledge at all." It is admitted by all parties that brain-processes occasion some kinds of conscious action. What a priori right have we to limit the occasioning power of brain-processes? If matter can occasion so much, who can say, apart from an actual investigation of the facts, that it cannot occasion all? To say that from the very nature of certain facts of consciousness their occasion cannot be found in brain-processes, is to lay claim to a far greater knowledge of the brain and its capacities than any one can consistently lay claim to who insists so forcibly and emphatically as Professor Ladd does on our ignorance of cerebral physiology.
Even from his own point of view, I do not believe that Professor James's suggestion is open to his criticism. Why is it that the soul acts now in this way, now in that, remembers now this and now that? Professor Ladd would surely admit that it is because of a difference in its environment, a difference in the conditions with which it is confronted. A complete explanation of the activities of the soul cannot be given — he would surely say — until we know, not only what the soul is, but the conditions under which it acts. While Professor Ladd and the metaphysicians are telling us what the soul is, how shall we learn the conditions under which it acts, save by a study of the relations between brain-processes and mental states? Surely metaphysics and natural-science psychology have no right to regard each other as rivals. Possibly Professor Ladd is right when he says that natural-science psychology cannot solve her problem. But if so, he must admit that we can never know what we must know in order to have a complete knowledge of mental phenomena. Perhaps the Positivists are right when they say that we can never comprehend the metaphysical ground of mental phenomena, that we cannot even know that there is such a ground. But if so, they must admit that the ultimate laws of psychology will be only blank correspondences stupidly standing out from a background of impenetrable darkness. But whether the problems of one or both is insoluble, they are at any rate different, and each has a perfect right to attempt the solution of its problem until the solution is proved to be impossible.
OHIO UNIVERSITY.