( 213) to the idea 'mane'? Clearly, to understand the relation of genus to species we must take into account, not only what the logicians termed the 'intension' of the concept, but also what they termed its 'extension.' By 'intension' is meant the qualities possessed in common by all the examples of the class which the general idea or concept represents. Thus, the intension of horse is composed of all the qualities belonging to all horses, and the intension of animal is composed of all the qualities belonging to all animals: evidently the intension is less, the more general the concept. The extension of a concept consists of all the individuals which belong to the class represented by the concept. Thus, the extension of horse is all the horses in existence, and the extension of animal is all the animals in existence. Evidently the extension is less, the less general the concept. Now, the extension of a concept would seem to constitute the type of movement combination which we have called a 'set of movements,' as contrasted with a 'system of movements.' We have a set of movements when a number of movements or movement systems are related only in that they all have a movement or small movement system in common. Thus, all the words which stand for opposites, like 'dark,' 'light,' 'large,' ' small,' 'high,' ' low,' belong to a set of movements connected simply by their common inclusion of the feeling of opposition and the word 'opposite.' Movement systems which belong to the same set of movements are commonly of about the same degree of complexity. Thus, when we pass from the idea of a whole to the idea of a part, while we go from a larger to a smaller movement system, in that the intension of the whole is greater than that of the part (there are more features belonging to a whole horse than to a mane), the two systems have about the same extension; that is, they put into readiness sets of movements, referring to individual horses and manes, of about the same size. On the other hand, when we pass from the idea of a species to that of a genus, while we again go from a larger and more complex to a smaller and less complex movement system, we at the same time pass from
(214) a movement system which tends to set in readiness a comparatively small set of movements (ideas of different kinds of horses) to one which tends to set in readiness a larger set of movements (ideas of different kinds of animals).
The study of the possible physiological basis of such processes as are involved in the 'feelings' or 'awarenesses' of the relations of subordination and superordination, whole and part, strongly suggests that they are attitudes which in some way depend on the number and complexity of the movement systems which a given system tends to set into action. What would he the difference between the activity of associative dispositions, that is. kinaesthetic processes, involved in the extension of a concept and the activity involved in its intension? The principal difference seems to he this: the movements which represent the intension are linked together in a true simultaneous movement system: each one of them is connected by associative dispositions with all the others. The characteristics which make up our idea of the meaning or intension of the word 'tree,' are all equally necessary to the system as a whole. But the movements which represent the extension are not so linked: an individual tree has features, which must be involved whenever it is thought of as an individual, that are actually incompatible with those of other individual trees. In the case of the simpler concepts we can think of the intension of the concept in a single generic image, so unified is the movement system involved in the intension. But the extension of a concept can never operate as a single whole or system to determine the direction of associative dispositions. In the extension, thought as it were scatters; in the intension, it grasps.
When we pass in thought from a concept of less intension to one of greater intension, as when we pass from the idea of 'tree' to the idea of 'elm tree,' the movement system is enlarged : an elm tree is a tree plus certain features that distinguish it as an elm. At the same time the unity of the effect is not disturbed: in other words, no mutually incompatible reac-
(215) -tions tend to be excited. When the change is in the opposite direction, and we pass from the less general, from 'dog,' let us say, to 'animal,' the movement system is restricted in its scope: certain associative dispositions that were previously active are now inhibited. On the other hand, if we consider the processes underlying extension, when an idea of less extension, such as 'dog,' gives place to one of greater extension, such as 'animal,' there is an increase in the number of incompatible movements that are set up, alternately, of course: thoughts and images connected with a variety of individual dogs may give place to thoughts and images connected with the much greater variety of animals. That the 'feelings' of greater and less extension and of greater and less intension are due to peculiar motor reactions occasioned by these differences in the behavior of movement systems, but not further describable because they do not, like some of the other attitudes we have assumed as the basis of imageless processes, develop into more widespread bodily disturbances, would seem the most plausible explanation of them.
After this survey, all too hasty and superficial. of some of the imageless processes that can he named. and thus may be presumed to have a kinaesthetic basis which is for each process more or less uniform, let us turn to the other class. those which cannot be named. The inkling of a half-forgotten name is something individual: it is not like any other inkling, and yet it is not recognizably sensational. The meaning of a word, while it may often be an image, is quite as often something for the time being at least imageless; but it is something specific — as Woodworth says, "nothing else but the particular feeling of the thought in question." The physiological basis for imageless processes of this kind must be different in each case: it cannot be any form of general motor attitude.
Imageless thoughts of the non-namable kind seem to occur under two different conditions. On the one hand, as in the case of an 'inkling,' they occur when something is blocking the associative processes. I am inclined to think that they do not
(216) occur when associative processes are intrinsically weak, but rather when they are partially interfered with by incompatible processes. We can practically always distinguish introspectively between the case where we have wholly forgotten a name or a word and have no chance of recovering it, and the case when it is almost on the tip of our tongue and is worth trying for. In the former case the associative processes are weak and ineffective; in the latter case, when we have an inkling, they are fragmentary. The state of things in the latter case may be conceived somewhat as follows: a fairly complex movement system is set into activity, but some of its parts are wholly inhibited by certain incompatible innervations already on the field. The result is that the system is fragmentary, and the associative dispositions which depend on the system as a whole are prevented from being excited. The fragmentary character of an inkling is often revealed to introspection; we can be sure at times of the general rhythm of the word or phrase we are looking for, or of its first letter. I was once trying to recall a technical term in marine insurance, 'general average.' Something was wholly inhibiting the second word: the first word was active, apparently, just enough to set into action the associative dispositions connecting it with the word 'special'; thus, for a long time I could get no further inkling than a two-word rhythm and the word 'special,' which however was naturally unable to suggest 'average.'
On the other hand, imageless processes apparently occur when thinking is especially rapid and easy. We take a mental glance at a whole field of knowledge, and the glance occupies but an instant, yet we know what we have glanced at. Thus Külpe, observing in Bühler's thought experiments, says that he had momentarily the whole development of ancient skepticism, in three periods, before him in outline. In such cases the imageless character of the thought certainly seems most plausibly explained as due to the condensation of the imagery; to the fact that many image processes occur simultaneously
(217) and without the analysis which would require time to perform. Bühler, it is true, rejected what he termed the condensation theory of thoughts, that they are condensed and abbreviated sets of ideas, on the ground that such a condensation ought not to make them lose all the characters of images, such as intensity and quality. But if we remember that for a sensation or an image to possess quality and intensity for introspection requires attention to be directed to those aspects; that is, requires specific motor reactions to be made to them; and that this could not be done simultaneously for a great number of images, we must admit that a loss of the characteristics of images is precisely what we should expect of a condensed and telescoped train of images. When an extremely complex movement system, involving possibilities of a great variety of images, functions as a single whole in calling up other movement systems, as when Külpe thought about ancient skepticism in an instant of time, the consciousness produced by slight delay in its functioning will be a composite of elements each of which alone would be a recognizable image with the proper characters of an image; the whole mass of which, however, will certainly be imageless.
Besides condensation as a cause of the loss of the image characters in thoughts, we have the increasing prominence of the kinaesthetic elements in images as the movement systems on which they are based become more fully organized. It will be remembered that a movement system is formed when a number of movements, each of which has originally a stimulus of its own, come to be dependent for their excitation each on the kinaesthetic processes resulting from some other movement in the system. Thus, every motor pathway in a movement system has connections with two sensory pathways, one that of its original stimulus, which may have been visual, auditory, or of any other modality; the other, that of its kinaesthetic stimulus; and the consciousness that accompanies any delay in its functioning is a fusion of kinaesthetic sensation with the centrally excited sensation or image of its original stimulus.
( 218) Now the more thoroughly organized the system, the less delay is likely to occur, and the more consciousness tends to be restricted to the kinaesthetic processes, which are necessary, rather than to extend itself to the images of other modalities. Thus Book (13) found that in learning to typewrite processes of other modalities gradually gave way to kinesthetic processes. As a movement system becomes thoroughly organized, then, its conscious accompaniment tends to become kinaesthetic, and kinesthetic fusions are for reasons which we have sufficiently indicated, often unlocalized and hence often unrecognized for what they are. To express the truth that every idea has both an imaged (anschaulich) and an imageless (unanschaulich) content, we should say that every idea has a non-kinesthetic and a kinaesthetic content. "Every idea," says Koffka (63), "has its unanschaulich content, and this may occur alone without the anschaulich foundation with which it was originally united." I am not sure that I understand Woodworth's (158) doctrine of imageless perception, but when he says of the 'mental reaction' which according to him constitutes 'perception': "It is something new, not present in the sensations, but theoretically as distinct from them as the motor reaction is. It adds new content which cannot be analyzed into elementary sensations; so that the sensory elements which are often held to supply, along with the feelings, all the substance of consciousness, in reality furnish but a fraction of it, and probably a small fraction. Each perceptual reaction is specific and contributes specific content," he seems to me to mean exactly what I mean by the kinaesthetic component of every idea. Certainly, when he goes on to identify the 'perceptual reaction' with form qualities, — that is, with the shape and size of spatial objects, the temporal form of rhythms, and the like, — he is ascribing to it precisely one of the functions of the kinaesthetic components of images. (It will be borne in mind that when I speak of the kinesthetic or unanschaulich components of images, the kinaesthetic processes are themselves peripherally excited: the doctrine of
(219) tentative movements requires that all kinaesthetic processes shall result from actual muscular contraction.)
From our general point of view, finally, we can attack the problem of meanings and avoid McDougall's (73) conclusion that they form in themselves a refutation of the doctrine that association is fundamentally the association of movements.
McDougall seems to think that the existence of meanings as imageless processes disproves a motor theory of association. But we have seen that a process may be imageless to introspection, and yet have the same kind of physiological basis as ordinary sensations. The fact is that an idea and its meaning are based on systems that are equivalent for associative purposes. The practical value of a word is that it, a comparatively simple movement system, has the same tendencies to excite other movement systems that is possessed by what may be a much more complex movement system, its meaning. A meaning is not merely that which is suggested by a word: if this were so, then 'black' might be the meaning of 'white,' since the word 'white' almost instantly suggests the word 'black.' It is that which suggests nothing that the word itself does not suggest. When we express a thought, and some one else attempts to express it for us, we say, No; that is not what I mean,' the instant the speaker's words set up movement systems that are incompatible with those already active in our own minds, thus giving us the relational experience of contradiction. Obviously the same word may mean different things at different times, that is, in different contexts: obviously the context helps to determine the associations it will call up. Obviously the same image may stand for a particular object or for a general idea: the same drawing of a triangle may mean an isosceles triangle or triangle in general, according as its associative tendencies are limited and directed, by the constellating effect of the context or by a directing idea. To say that the triangle means an isosceles triangle is the same thing as saying that its associative tendencies are identical
(220) with those of an isosceles triangle, and any incompatibility between them will be felt as a contradiction: to say that it means triangle in general, is to say that its associative tendencies will be identical with those of triangle in general, and only incompatibilities between these two sets of associative tendencies will give rise to the attitude of contradiction.
Notes
Essay on the Human Understanding (1689). Frazer's edition, Volume I p. 124.
Grundzüge der Psychologie (Leipzig, 1902).www.psychspace.com心理学空间网
