Boris Sidis

“ Furthermore, the concept "experience" cannot stand by itself, it implies assumptions; an experience must be of something that lies outside that experience. I have an experience of a house yonder, but the house yonder is not an experience unless regarded from a metaphysical or epistemological standpoint, but then we overstep the boundaries of psychology which deals with experiences of individual organisms and enter the field of philosophy that deals with experience in general. ”

“ Science furnishes our knowledge of the external world, but science is essentially not self-conscious, and it cannot therefore on its own grounds answer the question as to the validity of its knowledge. ”

“ The activity of consciousness is not a form of motion, and the two therefore, cannot be converted into each other. Mental activity is but figuratively termed energy, just as a well reasoned argument may be characterized as clear and lucid, but it does not mean that one can see a candle shining through it. The energy of mental phenomena is as much the energy of physical and physiological sciences as the idea of a brick is a brick itself and made up of clay. ”

“ In short, psychology assumes the validity of its knowledge, its general validity for all knowing subjects, also knowledge of an externally existing object, analyzed from the subjective standpoint into its psychological elements. Psychology, therefore, has really far more assumptions at its basis than any other natural science, for in addition to the assumption of the existence of an external world it must assume a knowing or sensitive subject, and also the interrelation of the two. ”

“ It now remains for us to examine the psycho-physiological hypothesis. This last hypothesis fully accepts the difference between the two series of facts, the material and the mental, but instead of going to look for "the other side," instead of going into metaphysics, it takes the two different series as its data, and considers them as co-ordinate. It does not trouble itself as to whether there is a soul behind the scenes, all it has to consider is facts, phenomena that can be observed and experimented upon. ”

“ Heat, it is reasoned, can be converted into electricity, electricity into magnetism, magnetism into motion, motion into sound or light, and the same may be done in reverse order; the energy of physiological processes therefore is converted into mental, or psychic energy. The whole reasoning is wrong. We must remember that what underlies all these different physical phenomena is various forms of molecular and molar motion, and when one order of physical phenomena passes into another, it is after all only the transformation of one form of motion into another form. ”

“ Psychology explains the subject and object in consciousness, and that only in relation to the question of "how,"―how we come to know this or that object, but whether there is an object or subject independent of the experiencing thought what the nature of that object or subject is, whether of mental experience stuff or of some extra-mental material, is a question that does not belong to the domain of psychology. ”

“ The science then that deals with immediate experience must postulate mediate experience as one of its fundamental presuppositions. Thus we come once more to the conclusion, and this time from quite a different standpoint, that psychology as science in general has its presuppositions, and that it furthermore presupposes all the presuppositions of the natural sciences. ”

“ It is usually taken for granted by many medical men, and even by some scientists, neurologists, physiologists, biologists, who do not happen to think out clearly the more theoretical aspects of their investigations, that brain processes are the direct cause of mental phenomena and that psychology therefore is nothing but a chapter in physiology. ”

“ Evidently psychology requires presuppositions to supplement the abstracted mediate aspect of the unitary experience. For the voluntaristic school will surely admit that unitary experience is given neither in the mediate aspect nor in the immediate aspect alone, and as science deals either with the one, or with the other, presuppositions are ipso facto also indispensable in psychology. ”

“ For if the consciousness be of the anoetic type, to borrow the term from Stout, there is neither mediate, nor immediate experience; if the consciousness is of the noetic type it is questionable as to what we mean by "immediate." For it may be contended with the modern realist that the knowledge of the object as given in sensation is immediate, while the knowledge of sensation itself with which psychology deals is not immediately given; it requires a long training before this is separated and sifted from experience ”

“ The Voluntaristic school in denying all presuppositions in psychology starts with a purely metaphysical speculation of the idealistic stamp, namely, in postulating that the external object of psychic experience is identical with that same experience. Psychology or any other science must reject unhesitatingly such metaphysical speculations. ”

“ Furthermore, were it possible that a physiological process should be converted into a mental process, the law of conservation of energy would have to be given up, and along with it the whole edifice of modern science would tumble to the ground. ”

“ Should we care to look for more proofs as to the validity of correlation of psychic with neural, or physical processes, we can also find it in another branch of experimental physiology, namely, physiological psychology. ”

“ Psychological knowledge, general for all subjects must be assumed, as well as general knowledge of the objective world. The psychologist, like other scientists, must assume that his experiences are so conditioned, that though they may be unique, still if others were to be put under the same conditions and confronted with the same external realities, they would pass through similar experiences. ”

“ The process of dissolution progresses from the highest most complex, least stable functions, memory, intelligence, will and so on, to the lower, less complex and more stable functions, reading, writing, playing, etc., finally reaching to the very lowest, to the simplest co-ordination of movements, mastication, swallowing, etc. A post-mortem examination of the brain uniformly reveals a profound degeneration of the brain cells. In the various forms of epilepsy and in most cases of chronic insanity, ending in dementia, we find on examination as a rule, some degeneration of the brain cells. ”

“ The reason why it is thought that physical processes give rise to mental, lies in the fallacious analogy taken from the law of convertibility and equivalence of energy in the activity of physical processes. ”

“ Study the brain and you will know all about psychic life. This view is certainly fallacious. A psychic fact as we have pointed out is radically different, different in kind from a physical, mechanical fact. One cannot, therefore, give rise to the other. ”

“ In alcoholic intoxication, for instance, we first meet with an unloosening of higher psychic inhibitions; in the initial stage of intoxication there is an apparent heightening of mental and motor activity, and then as the quantity of the poison absorbed by the blood and conveyed to the cerebro-spinal nervous system is increased, a progressive paralysis of psychomotor life sets in. ”

“ When intellectual activity rose in intensity there was also a parallel rise in temperature, thus the temperature was found to be higher, when poetry was recited silently than when the same was done aloud. ”

“ Moreover, psychology even from the standpoint of the voluntaristic school requires more presuppositions than the natural sciences. For experience, even if it be immediate, must still be of something other than itself. The sensation white is of something white, the touch sensation hard is of something hard, the pain sensation prick is of something sharp, and so on. ”

“ Psychic and physiological series are no doubt intimately related, but their relation is not causal, they do not stand to each other in relation of invariable succession characteristic of cause and effect, but in that of co-existence. ”