LECTURE XIV. CONSCIOUSNESS,-ATTENTION IN GENERAL. In the former part of our last Lecture, I concluded the argument against Reid's analysis of Consciousness Recapitulation. into a special faculty, and showed you that, even in relation to Perception, (the faculty by which we obtain a knowledge of the material universe,) Consciousness is still the common ground in which every cognitive operation has its root. I then proceeded to prove the same in regard to Attention. After some observations touching the confusion among philosophers, more or less extensive, in the meaning of the term reflection, as a subordinate modification of attention, I endeavored to explain to you what attention properly is, and in what relation it stands to consciousness. I stated that attention is consciousness applied to an act of will or desire under a particular law. In so far as attention is an act of the conative faculty, it is not an act of knowledge at all, for the mere will or desire of knowing is not an act of cognition. But the act of the conative faculty is exerted by relation to a certain law of consciousness, or knowledge, or intelligence. This law, which we call the Law of Limitation, is, that the intension of our knowledge is in the inverse ratio of its extension,-in other words, that the fewer objects we consider at once, the clearer and more distinct will be our knowledge of them. Hence the more vividly we will or desire that a certain object should be clearly and distinctly known, the more do we concentrate consciousness through some special faculty upon it. I omitted, I find, to state that I think Reid and Stewart incorrect in asserting that attention is only a voluntary act, meaning by the expression voluntary, an act of freewill. I am far from maintaining, as Brown and others do, that all will is desire; but still I am persuaded that we are frequently determined to an act of attention, as to many other acts, independently of our free and deliberate volition. Nor is it, I conceive, possible to hold that, though immediately determined to Attention possible without an act of freewill. an act of attention by desire, it is only by the permission of our will that this is done; consequently, that every act of attention is. still under the control of our volition. This I cannot maintain. Let us take an example:- When occupied with other matters, a `person may speak to us, or the clock may strike, without our having any consciousness of the sound; but it is wholly impossible for us to remain in this state of unconsciousness intentionally and with will. We cannot determinately refuse to hear by voluntarily withholding our attention; and we can no more open our eyes, and, by an act of will, avert our mind from all perception of sight, than we can, by an act of will, cease to live. We may close our ears or shut our eyes, as we may commit suicide; but we cannot, with our organs unobstructed, wholly refuse our attention at will. It, therefore, appears to me the more correct doctrine to hold that there is no consciousness without attention, without concentration, but that attention is of three degrees or kinds. The first, a mere vital and irresistible act; the second, an act determined by desire, which, though involuntary, may be resisted by our will; the third, an act determined by a deliberate volition. An act of attention, — that is, an act of concentration, - seems thus necessary to every exertion of consciousness, as a certain contraction of the pupil is requisite to every exercise of vision. We have formerly noticed, that discrimination is a condition of consciousness; and a discrimination is only possible by a concentrative act, or act of attention. This, however, which corresponds to the lowest degree, to the mere vital or automatic act of attention, has been refused the name; and attention, in contradistinction to this mere automatic contraction, given to the two other degrees, of which, however, Reid only recognizes the third. Attention of three degrees or kinds. Nature and importance of attention. Attention, then, is to consciousness, what the contraction of the pupil is to sight; or to the eye of the mind, what the microscope or telescope is to the bodily eye. The faculty of attention is not, therefore, a special faculty, but merely consciousness acting under the law of limitation to which it is subjected. But whatever be its relations to the special faculties, attention doubles all their efficiency, and affords them a power of which they would otherwise be destitute. It is, in fact, as we are at present constituted, the primary condition of their activity. Having thus concluded the discussion of the question regarding the relation of consciousness to the other cognitive faculties, I 1 See Reid, Active Powers, Essay ii. ch. 3. Works, p. 587.—ED. Can we attend to more than a single object at once? proceeded to consider various questions, which, as not peculiar to any of the special faculties, fall to be discussed under the head of consciousness, and I commenced with the curious problem, Whether we can attend to more than a single object at once. Mr. Stewart maintains, though not without hesitation, the negative. I endeavored to show you that his arguments are not conclusive, and that they even involve suppositions which are so monstrous as to reduce the thesis he supports ad impossibile. I have now only to say a word in answer to Dr. Brown's assertion of the same proposition, though in different terms. In the passage I adduced in our last Lecture, he commences by the assertion, that the mind cannot exist, at the same moment, in two different states,- that is, in two Brown's doctrine, that the mind cannot exist at the same moment in two different states. This doctrine maintained by Locke. states in either of which it can exist separately, and concludes with the averment that the contrary supposition is a manifest absurdity. I find the same doctrine maintained by Locke in that valuable, but neglected, treatise entitled An Examination of Père Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all Things in God. In the thirty-ninth section he says: "Different sentiments are different modifications of the mind. The mind or the soul that perceives, is one immaterial, indivisible substance. Now, I see the white and black on this paper, I hear one singing in the next room, I feel the warmth of the fire I sit by, and I taste an apple I am eating, and all this at the same time. Now, I ask, take modification for what you please, can the same unextended, indivisible substance have different, nay, inconsistent and opposite, (as these of white and black must be,) modifications at the same time? Or must we suppose distinct parts in an indivisible substance, one for black, another for white, and another for red ideas, and so of the rest of those infinite sensations which we have in sorts and degrees; all which we can distinctly perceive, and so are distinct ideas, some whereof are opposite as heat and cold, which yet a man may feel at the same time?" Leibnitz has not only given a refutation of Locke's Essay, but likewise of his Examination of Malebranche. In reference to the passage I have just quoted Leibnitz says: "Mr. Locke asks, 'Can the same unextended, indivisible substance, have different, nay, inconsistent and opposite modifications, at the same time?' I reply, it can. What is inconsistent in the same object, is not inconsistent in the representation of different objects which we conceive at the same moment. For nitz. Opposed by Leib Aristotle opposed to foregoing doctrine. His view, as paraphrased by Philopo nus. this there is no necessity that there should be different parts in the soul, as it is not necessary that there should be different parts in the point on which, however, different angles rest." The same thing had, however, been even better said by Aristotle, whose doctrine I prefer translating to you, as more perspicuous, in the following passage from Joannes Grammaticus, (better known by the surname Philoponus,)-a Greek philosopher, who flourished towards the middle of the sixth century. It is taken from the Prologue to his valuable commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle; and, what is curious, the very supposition which on Locke's doctrine would infer the corporeal nature of mind, is alleged, by the Aristotelians and Condillac, in proof of its immateriality. "Nothing bodily," says Aristotle, “can, at the same time, in the same part, receive contraries. The finger cannot at once be wholly participant of white and of black, nor can it, at once and in the same place, be both hot and cold. But the sense at the same moment apprehends contraries. Wherefore, it knows that this is first, and that second, and that it discriminates the black from the white. In what manner, therefore, does sight simultaneously perceive contraries? Does it do so by the same? or does it by one part apprehend black, by another white? If it does so by the same, it must apprehend these without parts, and it is incorporeal. But if by one part it apprehends this quality, and by another that, this, he says, is the same as if I perceived this, and you that. But it is necessary that that which judges should be one and the same, and that it should even apprehend by the same the objects which are judged. Body cannot, at the same moment and by the same part, apply itself to contraries or things absolutely different. But sense at once applies itself to black and to white; it, therefore, applies itself indivisibly. It is thus shown to be incorporeal. For if by one part it apprehended white, by another part apprehended black, it could not discern the one color from the other; for no one can distinguish that which is perceived by himself as different from that which is perceived by another." So far, Philoponus. 1 Remarques sur le Sentiment du Père Malebranche; Opera Philosophica, edit. Erdmann, p. 451.-ED. 2 The text of Aristotle here partially paraphrased, (Proœm, f. 35 ed. 1535), and more fully in Commentary on texts, 144. 149, is as follows; — Η καὶ δῆλον ὅτι ἡ σὰρξ οὐκ ἔστι τὸ ἔσχατον αἰσθητήριον· ἀνάγκη γὰρ ἦν ἁπτόμενον αὐτοῦ κρίνειν τὸ κρῖνον. Οὔτε δὴ κεχωρισμένοις ἐνδέχεται κρίνειν ὅτι ἕτε ρον τὸ γλυκὺ τοῦ λευκοῦ, ἀλλὰ δεῖ ἑνί τινι ἄμφω δῆλα εἶναι. Οὕτω μὲν γὰρ κἂν εἰ τοῦ μὲν ἐγὼ τοῦ δὲ σὺ αἴσθοιο, δῆλον ἂν εἴη ὅτι ἕτερα ἀλλήλων· Δεῖ δὲ τὸ ἓν λέγειν ὅτι ἔτερον· ἕτερον γὰρ τὸ γλυκὺ τοῦ λευκού. Λέγει ἄρα τὸ αὐτό· “Ὥστε ὡς λέγει, οὕτω καὶ νοεῖ καὶ αἰσθάνεται. Ὅτι μὲν οὖν οὐχ οἷόν τε κεχωρισμένοις κρίνειν τὰ κεχωρισμένα, δῆλον Criticism of Brown's doctrine. Dr. Brown calls the sensation of sweet one mental state, the sensation of cold another; and as the one of these states may exist without the other, they are consequently different states. But will it be maintained that we cannot, at one and the same moment, feel the sensations of sweet and cold, or that sensations forming apart different states, do, when coëxistent in the same subject, form only a single state? On this view comparison impossible. The doctrine that the mind can attend to, or be conscious of, only a single object at a time, would, in fact, involve the conclusion that all comparison and discrimination are impossible; but comparison and discrimination being possible, this possibility disproves the truth of the counter proposition. An act of comparison or discrimination supposes that we are able to comprehend, in one indivisible consciousness, the different objects to be compared or discriminated. Were I only conscious of one object at one time, I could never possibly bring them into relation; each could be apprehended only separately, and for itself. For in the moment in which I am conscious of the object A, I am, ex hypothesi, unconscious of the object B; and in the moment I am conscious of the object B, I am unconscious of the object A. So far, in fact, from consciousness not being competent to the cognizance of two things at once, it is only possible under that cognizance as its condition. For without discrimination there could be no consciousness; and discrimination necessarily supposes two terms to be discriminated. No judgment could be possible were not the subject and predicate of a proposition thought together by the mind, although expressed in language one after the other. Nay, as Aristotle has observed, a syllogism forms in thought one simultaneous act; and it is only the necessity of retailing it piecemeal and by succession, in order to accommodate thought to the imperfection of its vehicle, language, that affords the appearance of a consecutive existence. Some languages, as the Sanscrit, the Latin, and the Greek, express the syntactical relations by flexion, and not by mere juxtaposition. ὅτι δ' οὐδ' ἐν κεχωρισμένῳ χρόνῳ, ἐντευθεν. Ωπσερ γὰρ τὸ αὐτὸ λέγει ὅτι ἕτερον, τὸ ἀγαΤὸν καὶ τὸ κακόν, οὕτω καὶ ὅτε θάτερον λέγει ὅτι ἕτερον καὶ θάτερον, οὐ κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς τὸ ὅτε· λέγω δ', οἷον νῦν λέγω ὅτι ἕτερον, οὐ μέντοι ὅτι νῦν ἕτερον. ̓Αλλ ̓ οὕτω λέγει, καὶ νῦν, καὶ ὅτι νῦν· ἅμα ἄρα. Ωστε ἀχώριστον καὶ ἐν ἀχωρίστῳ χρόνῳ. De Anima, lib. iii. c. 2, 11. Cf. 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, with the relative commentary by Philoponus. ED. 1 This is said by Aristotle of the act of judgment; but the remark applies to that of reasoning also. See De Anima, iii. 6: 'Ev ols τὸ ψεῦδος καὶ τὸ ἀληθές, σύνθεσίς τις ἤδη νοημάτων ὥσπερ ἐν ὅντων. To δὲ ἓν ποιοῦν, τοῦτο ὁ νοῦς ἕκαστον. -ED. |