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Overview
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.
Excerpt from book:
as such, this is an open question, yet it is a gain of no little importance that such a question may be set aside. The equality of facts becomes our rule so soon as we make the problem of evolution a psychophysical one. We may legitimately use such a combination of the mental and the purely vital as that cited above — the case of recognition- marks— without stopping to inquire in what sense a mental fact, such as recognition, can have causal value in the determination of purely physical characters in the next generation. That may be discussed in psychology, or in biology, and it must be discussed in genetic philosophy ; but in a department in which the psychophysical as such is the type of phenomenon expressly taken up for examination, the divorce of the two, and even the recognition of a dualism between them, is unwarranted. § 3. Psychophysical Parallelism With the general understanding now arrived at, we may take a preliminary survey of the field in the light of certain current hypotheses. Among these is what is known as ' psychophysical parallelism.' This principle, as ordinarily stated, supposes a thoroughgoing concomitance between the two terms of the psycho- physical relation, mind and body. It states the general fact that certain changes in the organic, in those brain and nerve processes with which consciousness is associated, are always accompanied by changes in consciousness, and also, that this last is a statement which can be converted — so that it is also true that all changes in consciousness are accompanied by organic changes, in the brain and nerves.1This principle, now made the assumption of experimental work in psychophysics, would seem to involve, and also to be supported by, certain other formulas which are a part of general scientific procedure. 1 M...
Synopsis
This is a reprint of the first edition of a text originally published in 1902 by The Macmillan Company. In this treatise, noted psychologist Baldwin (Princeton U.) explains his ideas regarding the mechanism that mediates the influence of individual adaptations on the course of phylogenetic evolution. Included in the appendices are full citations of writings by some of Baldwin's contemporaries regarding organic selection and orthoplasty, followed by reviews of three books on related topics. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR