[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
subjectivity any place at all in the natural world. This dogma would rather deny the
existence of introspection, or at least marginalize its significance, than acknowledge that,
four hundred years after the Scientific Revolution, we still have no scientific means of
exploring consciousness directly. In this regard, we are right now in a dark age; but the
extent of our ignorance of mental phenomena is obscured by the extraordinary progress
that has been made in the physical sciences, including modern neuroscience.
More than a century ago, James set forth a research strategy for a science of the
mind that is at all times person-centered, but his proposals have rarely been adopted
because of their incompatibility with scientific materialism. What made him all the more
threatening was that he was concerned not only with the details and methodology of the
empirical study of the mind but with examining the philosophical assumptions of
scientific materialism itself.22 A central aim of James s view of psychology was to
reestablish the presence of mental phenomena in the natural world. In making this point,
he was simultaneously rejecting the Cartesian, theological notion of all activities of the
human soul occurring outside of nature and the materialist premise that subjective states
either do not exist or else must be equivalent to objective, physical processes. Pointing
out that the psychology of his day was hardly more developed than physics before
Galileo,23 James envisioned the possibility of psychology discovering how individuals
could control the conditions of their own mentation an achievement that would, he
thought, dwarf the discoveries of the other sciences.
To open the way to explore these issues scientifically, James presented
psychology as the study of subjective mental phenomena and their relations to their
objects, to the brain, and to the rest of the world; and he argued that introspective
observation is always the first and foremost method by which to study these issues.24 But
introspective study, he argued, must be complemented with comparative research, such as
studying the behavior of animals, and experimentation, such as experimental brain
science. He said that while introspection is no sure guide to truths about our mental
states, as he freely acknowledged, it may also not be as thoroughly misleading as it is
commonly presented to be.
It is easy to respond to James s proposal by pointing out that introspection has
already been tried by the introspectionist school of psychology and failed miserably.
However, the type of tedious, automatonlike, internal observation that was used in the
introspectionist school was so boring and unfruitful that even James dissociated himself
from such experimental research. These early introspectionists, in their zeal to acquire
objective, scientific knowledge of subjective mental states, treated their human subjects
like primitive laboratory animals. Their objective solution to the fallibility of
introspection was to apply external, artificial constraints on their introspecting subjects,
thereby reducing the sophisticated, human ability of introspection to a primitive,
robotlike process of internal monitoring. After academic psychology treated human
subjects like laboratory animals and found that they did not live down to that standard, it
should come as no surprise that it then shifted its primary focus to behavioral studies of
more primitive laboratory animals.
A Re-evaluation of Introspection
A century ago, James commented on the status of the psychology of his day as
follows.
It must be frankly confessed that in no fundamental sense do we know where our
successive fields of consciousness come from, or why they have the precise inner
constitution which they do have. They certainly follow or accompany our brain states,
and of course their special forms are determined by our past experiences and education.
But, if we ask just how the brain conditions them, we have not the remotest inkling of an
answer to give; and, if we ask just how the education moulds the brain, we can speak but
in the most abstract, general, and conjectural terms. 25
Since that time, especially during the past few decades, neuroscientists have made major
advances in discovering ways in which the brain influences mental processes, but they
remain in the dark as to the origins of states of consciousness and the nature of their
precise inner constitution. Moreover, it is important not to overlook the fact that
neuroscience has made such progress in part by relying on subjects firsthand accounts of
their own mental states. Study of the brain by itself, without reliance on subjective
accounts of mental phenomena, can reveal very little about the relationship between the
brain and mind.
Thus, insofar as behaviorist and neuroscientific models rely on firsthand accounts
of experience, they continue to depend on introspection. But while marvelous advances in
technology and methodologies have been made for studying the brain, no advances have
been made in refining individuals introspective abilities. As long as this lack of parity
continues, the fallibility of firsthand observations and accounts of subjective experiences
can only limit their contribution to these other approaches to understanding the mind and
its relation to the brain and behavior. If we could substitute for introspection some
technology that could actually detect consciousness and other subjective mental
phenomena, this could be a real option. But we now lack such technology, and scientific
materialists faith in future neuroscientific breakthroughs is no substitute for our present
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]