Part 10 (1/2)
We have now, perhaps, sufficiently reviewed sense-illusions, both of waking life and of sleep. And having roughly cla.s.sified them according to their structure and origin, we are ready to go forwards and inquire whether the theory thus reached can be applied to other forms of illusory error. And here we are compelled to inquire at the outset if anything a.n.a.logous to sense-illusion is to be found in that other great region of presentative cognition usually marked off from external perception as internal perception, self-reflection, or introspection.
_Illusions of Introspection defined._
This inquiry naturally sets out with the question: What is meant by introspection? This cannot be better defined, perhaps, than by saying that it is the mind's immediate reflective cognition of its own states as such.
In one sense, of course, everything we know may be called a mental state, actual or imagined. Thus, a sense-impression is known, exactly like any other feeling of the mind, as a mental phenomenon or mental modification. Yet we do not usually speak of introspectively recognizing a sensation. Our sense-impressions are marked off from all other feelings by having an objective character, that is to say, an immediate relation to the external world, so that in attending to one of them our minds pa.s.s away from themselves in what Professor Bain calls the att.i.tude of objective regard. Introspection is confined to feelings which want this intimate connection with the external region, and includes sensation only so far as it is viewed apart from external objects and on its mental side as a feeling, a process which is next to impossible where the sensation has little emotional colour, as in the case of an ordinary sensation of sight or of articulate sound.
This being so, errors of introspection, supposing such to be found, will in the main be sufficiently distinguished from those of perception. Even an hallucination of sense, whether setting out from a subjective sensation or not, always contains the semblance of a sense-impression, and so would not be correctly cla.s.sed with errors of introspection.
Just as introspection must be marked off from perception, so must it be distinguished from memory. It may be contended that, strictly speaking, all introspection is retrospection, since even in attending to a present feeling the mind is reflectively representing to itself the immediately preceding momentary experience of that feeling. Yet the adoption of this view does not hinder us from drawing a broad distinction between acts of introspection and acts of memory. Introspection must be regarded as confined to the knowledge of immediately antecedent mental states with reference to which, no error of memory can be supposed to arise.
It follows from this that an illusion of introspection could only be found in connection with the apprehension of present or immediately antecedent mental states. On the other hand, any illusions connected with the consciousness of personal continuity and ident.i.ty would fall rather under the cla.s.s of mnemonic than that of introspective error.
Once more, introspection must be carefully distinguished from what I have called belief. Some of our beliefs may be found to grow out of and be compounded of a number of introspections. Thus, my conception of my own character, or my psychological conception of mind as a whole, may be seen to arise by a combination of the results of a number of acts of introspection. Yet, supposing this to be so, we must still distinguish between the single presentative act of introspection and the representative belief growing out of it.
It follows from this that, though an error of the latter sort might conceivably have its origin in one of the former; though, for example, a man's illusory opinion of himself might be found to involve errors of introspection, yet the two kinds of illusion would be sufficiently unlike. The latter would be a simple presentative error, the former a compound representative error.
Finally, in order to complete this preliminary demarcation of our subject-matter, it is necessary to distinguish between an introspection (apparent or real) of a feeling or idea, and a process of inference based on this feeling. The term introspective knowledge must, it is plain, be confined to what is or appears to be in the mind at the moment of inspection.
By observing this distinction, we are in a position to mark off an _illusion_ of introspection from a _fallacy_ of introspection. The former differs from the latter in the absence of anything like a conscious process of inference. Thus, if we suppose that the derivation by Descartes of the fact of the existence of G.o.d from his possession of the idea to be erroneous, such a consciously performed act of reasoning would const.i.tute a fallacy rather than an illusion of introspection.
We may, then, roughly define an illusion of introspection as an error involved in the apprehension of the contents of the mind at any moment.
If we mistake the quality or degree of a feeling or the structure of a complex ma.s.s of feeling, or if we confuse what is actually present to the mind with some inference based on this, we may be said to fall into an illusion of introspection.
But here the question will certainly be raised: How can we conceive the mind erring as to the nature of its present contents; and what is to determine, if not my immediate act of introspection, what is present in my mind at any moment? Indeed, to raise the possibility of error in introspection seems to do away with the certainty of presentative knowledge.
If, however, the reader will recall what was said in an earlier chapter about the possibility of error in recognizing the quality of a sense-impression, he will be prepared for a similar possibility here.
What we are accustomed to call a purely presentative cognition is, in truth, partly representative. A feeling as pure feeling is not known; it is only known when it is distinguished, as to quality or degree, and so cla.s.sed or brought under some representation of a kind or description of feeling, as acute, painful, and so on. The accurate recognition of an impression of colour depends, as we have seen, on this process of cla.s.sing being correctly performed. Similarly, the recognition of internal feelings implies the presence of the appropriate or corresponding cla.s.s-representation. Accordingly, if it is possible for a wrong representation to get subst.i.tuted for the right one, there seems to be an opening for error.
Any error that would thus arise can, of course, only be determined as such in relation to some other act of introspection of the same mind. In matters of internal perception other minds cannot directly a.s.sist us in correcting error as they can in the case of external perception, though, as we shall see by-and-by, they may do so indirectly. The standard of reality directly applicable to introspective cognition is plainly what the individual mind recognizes at its best moments, when the processes of attention and cla.s.sifying are accurately performed, and the representation may be regarded with certainty as answering to the feeling. In other words, in the sphere of internal, as in that of external experience, the criterion of reality is the average and perfect, as distinguished from the particular variable and imperfect act of cognition.
We see, then, that error in the process of introspection is at least conceivable. And now let us examine this process a little further, in order to find out what probabilities of error attach to it.
To begin with, then, an act of introspection, to be complete, clearly involves the apprehension of an internal feeling or idea as something mental and marked off from the region of external experience. This distinct recognition of internal states of mind as such, in opposition to external impressions, is by no means easy, but presupposes a certain degree of intellectual culture, and a measure of the power of abstract attention.
_Confusion of Internal and External Experience._
Accordingly, we find that where this is wanting there is a manifest disposition to translate internal feelings into terms of external impressions. In this way there may arise a slight amount of habitual and approximately constant error. Not that the process approaches to one of hallucination; but only that the internal feelings are intuited as having a cause or origin a.n.a.logous to that of sense-impressions. Thus to the uncultivated mind a sudden thought seems like an audible announcement from without. The superst.i.tious man talks of being led by some good or evil spirit when new ideas arise in his mind or new resolutions shape themselves. To the simple intelligence of the boor every thought presents itself as an a.n.a.logue of an audible voice, and he commonly describes his rough musings as saying this and that to himself.
And this, mode of viewing the matter is reflected even, in the language of cultivated persons. Thus we say, ”The idea struck me,” or ”was borne in on me,” ”I was forced to do so and so,” and so on, and in this manner we tend to a.s.similate internal to external mental phenomena.
Much the same thing shows itself in our customary modes of describing our internal feelings of pleasure and pain. When a man in a state of mental depression speaks of having ”a load” on his mind it is evident that he is interpreting a mental by help of an a.n.a.logy to a bodily feeling. Similarly, when we talk of the mind being torn by doubt or worn by anxiety. It would seem as though we tended mechanically to translate mental pleasures and pains into the language of bodily sensations.
The explanation of this deeply rooted tendency to a slightly illusory view of our mental states is, I think, an easy one. For one thing, it follows from the relation of the mental image to the sense-impression that we should tend to a.s.similate the former to the latter as to its nature and origin. This would account for the common habit of regarding thoughts, which are of course accompanied by representatives of their verbal symbols, as internal voices, a habit which is probably especially characteristic of the child and the uncivilized man, as we have found it to be characteristic of the insane.
Another reason, however, must be sought for the habit of a.s.similating internal feelings to external sensations. If language has been evolved as an incident of social life, at once one of its effects and its causes, it would seem to follow that it must have first shaped Itself to the needs of expressing these common objective experiences which we receive by way of our senses. Our habitual modes of thought, limited as they are by language, retain traces of this origin. We cannot conceive any mental process except by some vague a.n.a.logy to a physical process.
In other words, we can even now only think with perfect clearness when we are concerned with some object of common cognition. Thus, the sphere of external sensation and of physical agencies furnishes us with the one type of thinkable thing or object of thought, and we habitually view subjective mental states as a.n.a.logues of these.