The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness
REVIEWS :Author: Edwin Gr. Boring. New York: The Century Co., 19dd. xn -f- 251 pp.
The critic of Professor Boring’s venture into epistemology and psychophysiology finds himself disarmed at the outset by the author’s frank disclosure of his purposes. If the tenor of the work is thoroughly speculative, psychology itself must take the blame, since the speculation is in large part merely the making explicit of the secret and seldom expressed beliefs of contemporary psychologists. True, the airing of one’s inner convictions when done, as here, with a vengeance, may easily prove embarrassing; but at least we are left with the hope that the mind of psychologists taken as a group may benefit by such a Freudian catharsis.
The subject matter of “The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness” falls easily into two divisions: the philosophical, represented by the earlier and later chapters; and the psychophysiological, as contained in the main body of the work. In a review of the present scope one is reluctantly compelled for the most part to ignore the latter; the adequate treatment of Boring’s presentation of the theories of the dimensions of consciousness, intensity, quality, etc., demands more space and specific expert attention than can be given here. It may be remarked, however, that this part of the book is capable of standing alone as a useful handbook of such theories, whatever the outcome of the more general speculations in the first and last parts.
The reader of the philosophical sections will observe readily that they have the familiar flavor of philosophy as written by the psychologist, by one, indeed, who admits (p. 15) “a limited acquaintance with the writings of philosophers.” Such a limitation is to be regretted, for after all the mindbody problem, the chief concern of these chapters, has been so thoroughly discussed by philosophy as to make it convenient for any new discussion not only to show where it fits into tradition, but also, which is of more importance, to show cause for its departures from, and conflicts with, tradition. Nor is this criticism turned aside by an appeal to any complete novelty in the author’s views, for he himself recognizes their similarity to those of other men, both in psychology and in philosophy. One cannot help feeling that what appears to the common run of psychologists as the utmost sophistication may seem almost naive to the professional philosopher when the matter under discussion is so well within the province of philosophy.
While unfortunate, this is naturally not to be taken for a flaw in Boring’s theory, which has a right to judgment upon its own merits. The central doctrine of the book is the contention that consciousness is a real entity, as real as any of the terms dealt with by physical science, and hence capable of treatment in a truly scientific manner. This point of view develops from the consideration that scientific reality is always inferential, whether in physics or in psychology, so that we are forced to give up the appeal to immediate data of any kind. Whereas sensations were once the “given” of psychology, it has been found that they were constructed of certain attributes, and with the doctrine of the conscious dimensions the attributes themselves are stripped of their quondam claim to immediacy. It is assumed?with what justification the reader may judge for himself?that consciousness has been shown to be essentially sensory, and in consequence the aim of psychology is the complete description in terms of the successors to the attributes, the dimensions of quality, intensity, extensity, and protensity, with the possible addition of Titchener’s attensity.
With the disappearance of immediate data as the subject matter of psychology, the psychologist is at liberty to deal with consciousness as made up of meanings. Meanings are relational; therefore consciousness is relational. The problem of introspection, however, still remains. Of what sort of reality are we aware when we introspect? Early in the book (p. 14) we meet with the devastating statement that “consciousness is a physiological event,” which apparently leaves the psychologist high and dry, a scientist without a science. We do not believe, however, that this is intended to be a complete statement, nor that Prof. Boring would hold to it in its isolated form. What he seems to mean, drawing from the context of the whole work, is that consciousness is our knowledge of certain physiological (particularly neurological) events, which is so different as to restore to us the science of psychology after having threatened to abolish it forever. Now, the criterion of our knowledge of anything is our ability to make a discriminative response with regard to it. We return then to introspection with the understanding that the reality it refers to is neural, and that as a sign of introspection the pressing of one key rather than another may be as adequate as the verbal statement of ‘’ introspection.
Our main dissatisfaction is with the doctrine of the correlation- between sensations and neural processes, in which the author sets up as an ideal the perfect identification of the two: “If we were to find a perfect correlation between sensation A and neural process a, a precise correlation which we had reason to believe never failed, we should then identify A and a” (p. 14). This seems to the writer to be a hopeless line of attack, and even worse, a wrong concept as to the nature of sensation. After all, speaking at a commonsense level, Aristotle knew a little about sensations though he was entirely ignorant of the existence of neural processes. While one can carry such an argument too far, it serves at least to indicate the nature of our dissatisfaction. Sensation, however defined, must be something that could be recognized by the psychologist who is yet not a physiologist. This is a serious disagreement, for it means that we do not believe possible the achievement of the primary purpose of this book, the reduction of psychological events to physiological ones: “We shall not be satisfied until introspective and physiological data have become so closely related that we cannot distinguish the one from the other” (p. 31). Physiological explanations of psychological events we may agree to; but not such a final identification of the two. Unfortunately this is not the place for the justification of our opinion. At any rate, we emerge rather surprized at ourselves, with a behavioristic?if not materialistic?point of view. Consciousness has once more been defined in terms of response; one more sweep of the broom has been directed at the cobweb of immediate data. The reviewer recently had occasion to remark of Prof. E. O. Tolman’s “Purposive Behavior in Animals and Man” that it was, in its denial of immediacy and its behavioristic definition of consciousness, an interesting sign of the times. It is therefore a source of gratification to come upon Professor Boring’s book within a few months, and to discover that the times have so soon brought forth another illustration of the tendency, including in its exposition of a behavioristic theory of meaning the statement that Professor Tolman’s book “most explicitly presents this view” (p. 237). Whatever may be our disagreement with it on various points, we believe that ‘’ The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness’’ represents another step toward a common ground from which psychologists will at last be able to work upon their problems as a group with a uniform and welldefined purpose, and that for this reason it is to be commended. Francis W. Irwin University of Pennsylvania
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