The Mind and the Brain

International Scientific Series.

Volume LXXXIX.

(The International Scientific Series)

Edited by F. Legge

THE MIND AND THE BRAIN

by

ALFRED BINET

Directeur du Laboratoire de Psychologie a la Sorbonne

Being the Authorised Translation of

_L'Ame et le Corps_

London Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co. Ltd Dryden House, Gerrard Street, W. 1907

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE DEFINITION OF MATTER

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The distinction between mind and matter--Knowable not homogeneous--Criterion employed, enumeration not concepts

CHAPTER II

OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS ONLY SENSATION

Modern theories of matter--Outer world only known to us by our sensations--Instances--Mill's approval of proposition, and its defects--Nervous system only intermediary between self and outer world--The great X of Matter--Nervous system does not give us true image--Mueller's law of specificity of the nerves--The nervous system itself a sensation--Relations of sensation with the unknowable the affair of metaphysics

CHAPTER III

THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER ARE ONLY SYMBOLS

Physicists vainly endeavour to reduce the role of sensation--Mathematical, energetical, and mechanical theories of universe--Mechanical model formed from sensation--Instance of tuning-fork--No one sensation any right to hegemony over others

CHAPTER IV

ANSWERS TO SOME OBJECTIONS, AND SUMMARY

Objections of spiritualists--Of German authors who contend that nervous system does give true image--Of metaphysicians--Common ground of objection that nervous system not intermediary--Answer to this--Summary of preceding chapters

BOOK II

THE DEFINITION OF MIND

CHAPTER I

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN COGNITION AND ITS OBJECT

Necessity for inventory of mental phenomena--Objects of cognition and acts of cognition--Definition of consciousness

CHAPTER II

DEFINITION OF SENSATION

Sensation defined by experimental psychology--A state of consciousness--Considered self-evident by Mill, Renouvier, and Hume--Psycho-physical according to Reid and Hamilton--Reasons in favour of last definition--Other opinions examined and refuted

CHAPTER III

DEFINITION OF THE IMAGE

Perception and ideation cannot be separated--Perception constituted by addition of image to sensation--Hallucinations--Objections anticipated and answered

CHAPTER IV

DEFINITION OF THE EMOTIONS

Contrary opinions as to nature of emotions--Emotion a phenomenon _sui generis_--Intellectualist theory of emotion supported by Lange and James--Is emotion only a perception? Is effort?--Question left unanswered

CHAPTER V

DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--THE RELATION SUBJECT-OBJECT

Can thoughts be divided into subject and object?--This division cannot apply to the consciousness--Subject of cognition itself an object--James' opinion examined--Opinion that subject is spiritual substance and consciousness its faculty refuted

CHAPTER VI

DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--CATEGORIES OF THE UNDERSTANDING

Principle of relativity doubted--Tables of categories: Aristotle, Kant, and Renouvier--Kantian idealism--Phenomenism of Berkeley examined and rejected--Argument of _a priorists_--The intelligence only an inactive consciousness--Huxley's epiphenomenal consciousness--Is the consciousness necessary?--Impossibility of answering this question

CHAPTER VII

DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--THE SEPARABILITY OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS FROM ITS OBJECT--DISCUSSION OF IDEALISM

Can the consciousness be separated from its object?--Idealists consider the object a modality of the consciousness and thus inseparable, from it--Futility of this doctrine--Object can exist without consciousness

CHAPTER VIII

DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--THE SEPARATION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS FROM ITS OBJECT--THE UNCONSCIOUS

Can ideas exist without consciousness?--No consciousness without an object--Can the consciousness die?--Enfeeblement of consciousness how accounted for--Doubling of consciousness in hysterics--Relations of physiological phenomena to consciousness--Consciousness cannot become unconscious and yet exist