Synopsis
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Excerpt from book:
V CHAPTER II THE SPECIAL FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS A. THE ELEMENTS OF MENTAL LIFE § 4. Sensation I. The Newly Discovered Kinds of Sensations We shall discuss first the simplest facts of mental life, later their complications. It has often been objected that such a treatment is not in harmony with the fact that we are more familiar with the complications than with the simpler facts. But we are also more familiar with our body than we are with muscle cells, nerve cells, and blood corpuscles, and yet we do not object to beginning the study of biology by a study of the structural elements and their chief properties. No one understands this to mean that the cells of various kinds existed first separately and were then combined into the body which consists of them. No one should believe that the simple mental states existed separately and were then combined into those complications with which we have become familiar in everyday life. Simple mental states are abstractions. But we cannot hope to understand the complexity of mental life without using abstractions. Through the sense organs our mind receives information about the external world. The traditional classification of the sensations divided them into five groups. But the dis- tinction of five senses has been found to be insufficient. At least twice as many must be distinguished. When psychologists tried to explain all human knowledge in terms of experience, they met with some difficulty in the description of our experience of solid bodies. 'i-jj-Lu-J. sjjsatitm was found to be insufficient for this explanation, since it informs us only of the side-by-side position of things, that is, of only two dimensions. It was soon recognized that the movements of our limbs were important factors in this experience, and t...