Parallelism

“ But even supposing this objection well taken, it can no longer be regarded as an objection specifically to the doctrine of parallelism, for the view of the mind in question is becoming increasingly popular, and it is now held by influential interactionists as well as by parallelists. One may believe that the mind consists of ideas, and may still hold that ideas can cause motions in matter. ”

“ Attention thus involves no activity of consciousness itself, but consists solely in changes taking place in the conscious content according to the laws of association, and is therefore perfectly intelligible on the parallelism theory.
But if consciousness has no power to interfere with the movement of our ideas, this is at least not true of the Ego, the most characteristic of all mental facts, which manifestly exerts a predominating influence in our mental life. What is to be made of the Ego upon the parallelism theory? ”

“ From this point of view Parallelism steps in as a most graceful and useful handmaid to Exposition. But the charm of it, is what first is felt. "So God created man in his image ": that sounds like prose, however weighty. But when Parallelism breaks in with its balanced couplet—
In the image of God created he him,
Male and female created he them,— [3]
then we know we are in the presence of Poesy—a most fitting place, surely, for her first appearance! ”

“ But, furthermore, looking and thinking through the theory of parallelism, we can see something of special significance for the doubter's world. Men often forget that new relations of things mean new things, or at least new characters for the old things. Thus, mind and matter, or man and nature, if become, or found to be, parallel, are no longer the mind and the matter, the spiritual man and the physical world, that they were. ”

“ I have been considering above the world as it is conceived to be by the parallelist, but, to the reader who may not incline towards parallelism, I wish to point out that these reasonings touching the freedom of the will concern the interactionist just as closely. They have no necessary connection with parallelism. The interactionist, as well as the parallelist, may be a determinist, a believer in freedom, or he may be a "free-willist." ”

“ Poetic Parallelism is that beautiful, measured reduplication of thought, whereby the same sentiment or fact or promise is doubly expressed, the second time with a difference, still within the general scope of the first; the variation serving not only to cluster together beauties of speech, such as synonyms, contrasts, subservient natural images, and so forth, but to fix the general scope and outlook of the couplet or stanza, the one line hinting the limit to which the other may be assumed to submit, or defining the subject to which it also relates. ”

“ All these objections certainly carry great weight, but they are not capable of killing the doctrine—they only scotch it. I think there is a radical vice in parallelism, which till now has not been sufficiently indicated, and I ask what can really remain of the whole edifice when this vice has been once exposed?
Parallelism implies a false idea, which we have already come across when discussing materialism. It is the idea that a phenomenon of consciousness constitutes one complete whole.
The error proceeds from the use of concepts which cause the reality to be lost sight of. ”

“ Moreover, they are dynamic with the same reality and teleologic for the same end. To correspond to something, as parallelism makes matter and mind correspond to each other, is not, and cannot be, simply to have a certain character, self-contained and generally static; it is, and apparently it must be, to have a constant call to action, a constant motive to go beyond self, and so to make one's nature mediative or instrumental. ”

“ Parallelism, or at least the inner meaning of it, simply imposes certain conditions on a still real causation. These conditions, too, necessarily involve a significant, even a revolutionary change in the nature and value of any cause, but beyond peradventure they are unavoidable conditions. Thus, every active thing having any part in the causation of the world must always be only one among other active things, each also with some part. Then, secondly, all active things must co-operate, in, if not actually through their differences working together and harmoniously for what is real. ”

“ Yet we may be sure that the facts upon which the doctrine of parallelism rests will never be set aside by any new discoveries, and will find their place in that final theory toward which we are slowly moving. ”

“ Pairs of the third type are made up of words parallel in meaning. This class somewhat overlaps the second; many terms that are frequently confused are parallels, and parallelism is of course a cause of confusion.
Parallels are words that show likeness in meaning. Likeness, not sameness. Yet at one time actual sameness may have existed, and in many instances did. Nowadays this sameness has been lost, and the words have become differentiated. As a rule they still are closely related in thought; sometimes, however, the divergence between them is wide. ”

“ It may stimulate those who are really competent to understand both terms in the comparison to tell us where the parallelism is real and where it is only apparent; and it may help to accustom ordinary readers to look for and expect resemblances in systems in which an earlier age would have seen nothing but contrasts. ”

“ But since the distinction and the interrelation between the rational and the empirical forms the point of departure for the critical system, and this point of departure requires at the same time the moulding and shaping of the empirical by the rational and the rejection of the psychological appearance; a mere parallelism is altogether impossible, but an interrelation is included, and a task set for the effort and labor which constantly makes the rational penetrate the empirical. At the very outset we have the exclusion of the parallelism and the assertion of the interrelation. ”

“ Psycho-physiological parallelism is partly a matter of pure definition, partly a matter of philosophical considerations. This school defines a psychic object as one belonging to a single subject, one individual only, while a physical object is one belonging to many subjects. ”

“ Parallelism, by establishing a fixed and invariable relation between the physical and the moral, ends by denying the rôle of this last, since the physical mechanism is sufficient to draw to itself all the effects which general belief attributes to the moral. ”

“ However ingenious authors may be, the day is quickly reached when parallelism drives their audience to a wearisome consciousness that the speeches have all been heard before, that the next step in the plot can be foretold to a nicety. ”

“ Repetition embodies the principle of uniformity. Now we have found repetition to be a leading characteristic of parallelism; accordingly a close connection may be divined to exist between congruence and parallelism. Furthermore we have just elaborated in outline the principles of normality, pointing out how the property has its origin in the interplay of the relations of extension and cogredience. But—as we know from experience—a leading property of normality is symmetry, namely, symmetry round the normal. ”

“ It is important that this parallelism should be recognized, that the unity of these truths may be finally accomplished in the living; therefore we repeat, Is this any more possible than that the full control of the soul should be at once possessed? ”

“ Now, while it is easy to conceive a physical basis for the sensational content of consciousness, it is difficult to conceive one for the activities of consciousness itself, and the question arises, how these are to be harmonized with the parallelism theory. ”

“ It may be thought that the objection taken above to parallelism and materialism is personal to myself, because I have put it forward as the consequence of my analysis of the respective shares of thought and matter in every act of cognition. ”

“ There are no complex sentences, only short simple ones, and the manner of expression is direct and definite, but, in order that they may not tire the ear by monotony, they are, by means of parallelism, systematically interwoven so as to form one consistent whole. ”

“ Assuming the uniformity of nature, I carry forward and backward both the mental and the material series. A uniformity is observed in each, and a parallelism is observed between them, whenever observations can be made. ”

“ It follows that, if n states of the material universe are determinants of the material universe, then n states of a given man's mind are determinants of the whole material and mental universe—assuming, that is to say, that psycho-physical parallelism is true. ”

“ The theory of psychophysical parallelism involves no doubt in the minds of the majority of its upholders the further assumption of some unity underlying both the physical and psychical series which may one day be discovered to be susceptible of scientific expression and interpretation. ”

“ And, lastly, as something not formally asserted by parallelism but still far from incongruous with it and, as seems to me, even demanded by its inner meaning, all active things must be always acted upon as well as acting. ”

“ No more are we entitled to conclude, because the physical fact is hung on to a cerebral state, that there is any parallelism between the two series psychical and physiological. When philosophy pleads that the theory of parallelism is borne out by the results of positive science, it enters upon an unmistakably vicious circle ”

“ For whereas the parallelism first mentioned states a real correspondence between psychical processes and neural processes, but leaves open the question of a possible interaction between matter and mind, modern psychophysical parallelism is a pure hypothesis concerning the relation of psychical facts to physical theories, on the ground of which—as we shall presently see—any interaction between matter and mind is expressly denied. ”

“ If he imagines the lengths of the sides to change, he cannot exclude the con­scious­ness of the correlative change in the angle; and presently, when his mental power is sufficiently developed, he perceives that if he continues to lengthen the sides in imagination, the lines approach parallelism as the angle approaches zero: yielding a conception of the relations of parallel lines. Here the con­scious­ness has risen into the stage of definite conception. ”

“ But this parallelism would be most wonderful indeed if it were a true parallelism consisting of two different and distinct lines. The simplest conception of the case is the monistic view, which considers the parallelism as an identity. Both motion and feeling are abstract conceptions. A motion exists of itself no more than a feeling. The reality from which the ideas motion and feeling have been abstracted is one inseparable whole, which if viewed as an objective process appears as motion, and if viewed from the subjective side appears as feeling. Feelings can only be felt, not seen ”

“ Very often, certain parallelists, after thinking they have discovered the duality of nature, endeavour to bring it back to unity by supposing that the two faces of the reality are as two effects of one unique reality, inaccessible to our senses and underlying appearances. ”

“ These four parallelisms will appear the more significant the more we contemplate them. While the points specified, are points in which societies agree with individual organisms, they are points in which individual organisms agree with each other, and disagree with all things else. ”

“ The parallelists on this point go very much further than the materialists; the latter at least concede that the consciousness is of some use, since they compared it to a function or a secretion, and, after all, a secretion is a useful liquid. The parallelists are so strongly convinced that mechanism is alone efficacious that they come to deny any rôle to thought. The consciousness for them has no purpose: yet it keeps company with its object. ”

“ In any piece of exposition there must be unity, and this principle will dispense with everything that is not essential to the theme; there must be judicious massing, that those parts of the essay deserving emphasis may receive it; and there must be a coherence between the parts, large and small, so close and intimate that the progress from one topic to another shall be steady and without hindrance. Unity, Mass, and Coherence should be the main considerations in composition the aim of which is to explain a term or a proposition. ”

“ When the radical idea branches out into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive series be formed of senses in their nature collateral? The shades of meaning sometimes pass imperceptibly into each other, so that though on one side they apparently differ, yet it is impossible to mark the point of contact. ”

“ Then relations of activity, tying terms into series involving [Pg 45] change, tendency, resistance, and the causal order generally. Finally, the relation experienced between terms that form states of mind, and are immediately conscious of continuing each other. The organization of the Self as a system of memories, purposes, strivings, fulfilments or disappointments, is incidental to this most intimate of all relations, the terms of which seem in many cases actually to compenetrate and suffuse each other’s being. [27]
Philosophy has always turned on grammatical particles. ”

“ Finally, and most plausibly, it may be argued that minds have evolved in answer to final causes, and that organic evolution must adopt the principles of psychology rather than prescribe to it.
The interactionist seems to be in a worse plight than the parallelist in the conflicts with our sister sciences, but the case is different before the court of common sense. The present writer can not conceive how the parallelist gets outside the limits of consciousness. Why does he want any thing to run parallel with the only thing he knows? ”