Reflex

“ Supposing also that emotions, desires, sensations, and "motives" in general, occupy the same relation to the volition, which they precede, as the stimulus of reflex action, and are also the effect determined solely by an external stimulus, we have action in every respect like the reflexes. We are prepared to admit that a great many actions are so mediated. ”

“ Now the moment an emotion is causally accounted for, as the arousal by an object of a lot of reflex acts which are forthwith felt, we immediately{382} see why there is no limit to the number of possible different emotions which may exist, and why the emotions of different individuals may vary indefinitely, both as to their constitution and as to the objects which call them forth. For there is nothing sacramental or eternally fixed in reflex action. Any sort of reflex effect is possible, and reflexes actually vary indefinitely, as we know. ”

“ There are some things one says in life—as well as things one does—which come automatically, by reflex action, as the physiologists say (meaning, no doubt, action without reflection, just as lucus is said to be derived ‘a non lucendo’) . Closing one’s eyelids, when something seems to be flying into the eye, is one of those actions, and saying “May I carry the little girl up the stairs?” ”

“ When we come to examine the evidence for this hypothesis, we find it to move in a circle: the brain is said to be the exclusive seat of sensation, because reflex actions can be effected after its removal; and reflex actions are said to be insentient because they take place in the absence of the brain. ”

“ That a reflex action is determined by the sensory mechanism, no one disputes;468 whether the reaction of a sensory mechanism shall be called a sensation or not, is a question of terms. I have shown why it must be so called if anything like coherence is to be preserved in physiological investigations; and I have more than once suggested that the fact of intellectual processes taking place at times with no more consciousness than reflex actions, is itself sufficient to show that a process does not lapse from the mental to the mechanical sphere simply by passing unconsciously. ”

“ Imagine my efforts at teaching the training class psychology! The other day we were struggling with the subject of reflex action, and one of the girls handed in this definition as she had understood it from me! "Reflex action is of a activity nervous. It is sometimes the don't understand of what it is doing and stops many messages to the brain and sends the motion to the legs." ”

“ The higher function of nerve action, which we call the intellect, as distinguished from simple reflex action and from instinct, is the choice among different responses to the stimulus of external realities. As conditions of life become more complex, the demands of external realities become more exacting. ”

“ Most people know something of what is meant by reflex action. The nerves which pass from the various organs to the brain convey with, great rapidity messages to its various parts, which are answered by reflected waves of impulse. ”

“ Reflex action is thus a marvelous provision of nature for our comfort, health, and safety. Its vast influence is not realized, as its numberless acts are so continually going on without our knowledge. In fact, the greater part of nerve power is expended to produce reflex action. ”

“ Is there not here much more than what our modern physiologists are prone to call [Pg 247] automatic movements, the results of reflex sensorial action? The more I study the lower animals, the more firmly am I persuaded of the existence in them of psychical faculties, such as consciousness, intelligence, will, and choice! ”

“ The result is a more or less massive organic feeling that attention is going on. This organic feeling we usually treat as part of the sense of our own activity, although it comes in to us from our organs after they are accommodated. Any object, then, if immediately exciting, causes a reflex accommodation of the sense-organ, which has two results—first, the feeling of activity in question; and second, the object's increase in clearness. ”

“ Such a useful movement is known in physiology as a reflex action. Every act, even the free voluntary act, is, physiologically speaking, a reflex action, differing from the spinal reflex of the brainless frog only in its vastly greater complexity. ”

“ Nerve-currents run in through sense-organs, and whilst provoking reflex acts in the lower centres, they arouse ideas in the hemispheres, which either permit the reflexes in question, check them, or substitute others for them. All ideas being in the last resort reminiscences, the question to answer is: How can processes become organized in the hemispheres which correspond to reminiscences in the mind? ”

“ The sense-organs and the bodily muscles which favor their exercise are adjusted most energetically in sensorial attention, whether immediate and reflex, or derived. But there are good grounds for believing that even intellectual attention, attention to the idea of a sensible object, is also accompanied with some degree of excitement of the sense-organs to which the object appeals. ”

“ By reflex nervous action is meant, action which one part of the nervous system exerts over another part, without any intermediate action on the brain, and consequently without consciousness; or which, if it does pass through the brain, at least produces its effects independently of the will. ”

“ Reflex sensibility, or sensibility conducing to reflex movements, also undergoes a change, and it does so in the direction of increase, as might be expected from the consideration that with the temporary abolition of consciousness the inhibitory influence, which we know the higher nerve-centers to be capable of exerting upon the lower, is presumably suspended. ”

“ What is known as reflex nervous action is one of the most wonderful of the activities of the nervous and mental mechanism, and the knowledge thereof usually comes as a surprise to the average person, for he is generally under the impression that these activities are possible only to the central brain. ”

“ In other words, the reaction of reflex arcs is controllable by the mechanism to whose activity consciousness is adjunct. The reflexes controlled are often reactions but slightly affecting consciousness, but consciousness is very distinctly operative with the centres which exert the control. It may be that the primary aim, object and purpose of consciousness is control. ”

“ Meanwhile, we can already see one consequence and one point of connection with the reflex-action theory of mind. Any mind, constructed on the triadic-reflex pattern, must first get its impression from the object which it confronts; then define what that object is, and decide what active measures its presence demands; and finally react. The stage of reaction depends on the stage of definition, and these, of course, on the nature of the impressing object. When the objects are concrete, particular, and familiar, our reactions are firm and certain enough,—often instinctive. ”

“ Secondary Reflex Action.—Everyday experience teaches that any voluntary action becomes easier by repetition. A given act performed a number of times under conscious direction establishes a condition in the nervous system that enables it to occur without that direction and very much as reflex actions occur. ”

“ Before we can leave the subject of nervous activity, there are some special kinds of reflexes to be spoken of, and there are also some additional things to say about the working of the emotions. When we speak of special reflex actions we have in mind some of the most useful of our own reflexes. They are not different from the simple reflexes that are described in Chapter X, except that they involve a larger number of sense organs and many muscles, and are correspondingly more complicated. ”

“ Every brain process, like every reflex activity, is presumably the result of physico-chemical processes. The assumption of a mysterious intuition or 'psychic force' adds nothing to the mechanistic explanation, even when the latter is most fragmentary. The interactionists go out of their way unnecessarily in assuming a special activity of consciousness to account for the dislocation of reactions from sensations. The nervous organization suffices to explain it. ”

“ The formation of sudden, irreversible conclusions on the slenderest evidence is less distant from reflex action than is the formation of deliberate and modifiable conclusions after much evidence has been collected. And similarly, the quick passage of simple emotions into the particular kinds of conduct they prompt is less distant from reflex action than is the comparatively-hesitating passage of compound emotions into kinds of conduct determined by the joint instigation of their components. ”

“ It is true that the resulting compound psychical changes do not take place with the same readiness and automatic precision as the simple reflex action instanced; it is true that some individual experiences seem required to establish them. ”

“ A vast amount of our activities are reflex, and in such action an efferent stimulus follows an afferent promptly and quite mechanically. It is only where efferent stimuli do not immediately become entirely transmuted into outwardly moving impulses that mental action comes in and an animal feels. ”

“ No one denies that most of the reflex actions often have conscious sensations preceding and accompanying them, but these are said not to be essential to the performance of the actions, because they may be absent and the actions still take place. It is notorious that we breathe, wink, swallow, etc., whether we are conscious of these actions or not. Our conclusion therefore is that these peculiar states of Consciousness are accessory, not essential to the performance of these actions. ”

“ Others, finding that{102} reflex and semi-automatic acts may, notwithstanding their appropriateness, take place with an unconsciousness apparently complete, fly to the opposite extreme and maintain that the appropriateness even of the higher voluntary actions connected with the hemispheres owes nothing to the fact that consciousness attends them. ”

“ It treats instincts as a further development of reflex actions, and as forerunners of intelligence,—which is probably true of many. But when it ascribes their formation to the mere 'multiplication of experiences,' which, at first simple, mould the nervous system to 'correspond to outer relations' by simple reflex actions, and, afterwards complex, make it 'correspond' by 'compound reflex actions,' it becomes too mysterious to follow without more of a key than is given. The whole thing becomes perfectly simple if we suppose the reflex actions to be accidental inborn idiosyncrasies preserved. ”

“ But first, what kind of motor reactions upon objects shall we count as instincts? This, as aforesaid, is a somewhat arbitrary matter. Some of the actions aroused in us by objects go no further than our own bodies. Such is the bristling up of the attention when a novel object is perceived, or the 'expression' on the face or the breathing apparatus of an emotion it may excite. These movements merge into ordinary reflex actions like laughing when tickled, or making a wry face at a bad taste. Other actions take effect upon the outer world. ”

“ The other element, beginning with that immediate passage of a single stimulus into a single motion, called reflex action, presently comes to be a set of associated discharges of stimuli producing associated motions; constituting instinct. Step by step arise more entangled combinations of stimuli, somewhat variable in their modes of union, leading to complex motions, similarly variable in their adjustments ”

“ In regard to reflex actions, or those which are merely automatic, inasmuch as they are intended to provide for certain important functions without thought or volition, their development is naturally in the inverse ratio of psychical elevation, and man is consequently, in this respect, in no way superior to lower animals. ”

“ All conscious action, and in a less degree even unconscious or reflex action, implies attention; when the mind “attends” to any given external object, the organ through the medium of which information regarding that object is conveyed to the mind is set in motion. ”

“ With this gradual dawn of consciousness as revealed to subjective analysis, we should expect some facts of physiology, or of objective analysis, to correspond; and this we do find. For in our own organisms we know that reflex actions are not accompanied by consciousness, although the complexity of the nerve-muscular systems concerned in these actions may be very considerable. ”

“ The reflex motions of simple irritations, being modified in higher spheres by the rich material of experience consisting of memory-images, and by the possibility of forethought created through experience, become volitions. ”

“ Under normal conditions man’s superior and inferior centers with their corresponding upper, critical, controlling consciousness together with the inferior automatic, reflex centers and their concomitant subconscious consciousness, keep on functioning in full harmony. ”

“ It will be found that the majority of our daily actions are performed in this way and that, owing to the solidification in memory of such and such sensations, feelings, or ideas, impressions from the outside call forth movements on our part which, though conscious and even intelligent, have many points of resemblance with reflex acts. ”

“ We have formed a habit. Habits are really acquired reflex actions. They are the result of nature's method of training. The conscious part of the brain has trained the cerebellum or spinal cord to do certain things that, at first, were taken charge of by the cerebrum. ”

“ To us now, these organic reflexes seem but part and parcel of the special sensation whose tone they form, and which they accompany even when that sensation, so far as its mere intensity goes, might be deemed indifferent. ”