In nine pages (that is, in no fewer than nine pages, and no more than nine and a half pages), using what we’ve learned from the They Say, I Say text:
0) Introduce your reader to your essay;
1) explain Alexander’s difference between implicit and explicit bias, and one of the ways she supports the claim that implicit bias exists (from the first and second page of the assigned excerpt); those. … So when we talk about locking up more and more people, what we’re really talking about is locking up more and more black men.”37 Another commentator noted, “It is unnecessary to speak directly of race [today] because speaking about crime is talking about race.”38 Indeed, not long after the drug war was media campaign a few years after the drug war was announced in an effort to publicize horror stories involving black crack users and crack dealers in ghetto communities. Although crack cocaine had not yet hit the streets when the War on Drugs was declared in 1982, its appearance a few years later created the perfect opportunity for the Reagan administration to build support for its new war. Drug use, once considered a private, public-health matter, was reframed through political rhetoric and media imagery as a grave threat to the national order.
Jimmie Reeves and Richard Campbell show in their research how the media imagery surrounding cocaine changed as the practice of smoking cocaine came to be associated with poor blacks.35 Early in the 1980s, the typical cocaine-related story focused on white recreational users who snorted the drug in its powder form. These stories generally relied on news sources associated with the drug treatment industry, such as rehabilitation clinics, and emphasized the possibility of recovery. By 1985, however, as the War on Drugs moved into high gear, this frame was supplanted by a new “siege paradigm,” in which transgressors were poor, nonwhite users and dealers of crack cocaine. Law enforcement officials assumed the role of drug “experts,” emphasizing the need for law and order responses—a crackdown on those associated with the drug. These findings are consistent with numerous other studies, including a study of network television news from 1990 and 1991, which found that a predictable “us against them” frame was used in the news stories, with “us” being white, suburban America, and “them” being black Americans and a few corrupted whites.36
The media bonanza inspired by the administration’s campaign solidified in the public imagination the image of the black drug criminal. Although explicitly racial political appeals remained rare, the calls for “war” at a time when the media was saturated with images of black drug crime left little doubt about who the enemy was in the War on Drugs and exactly what he looked like. Jerome Miller, the former executive director of the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, described the dynamic this way: “There are certain code words that allow you never to have to say ‘race,’ but everybody knows that’s what you mean and ‘crime’ is one of those. … So when we talk about locking up more and more people, what we’re really talking about is locking up more and more black men.”37 Another commentator noted, “It is unnecessary to speak directly of race [today] because speaking about crime is talking about race.”38 Indeed, not long after the drug war was ramped up in the media and political discourse, almost no one imagined that drug criminals could be anything other than black.
A survey was conducted in 1995 asking the following question: “Would you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that person to me?” The startling results were published in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education. Ninety-five percent of respondents pictured a black drug user, while only 5 percent imagined other racial groups.39 These results contrast sharply with the reality of drug crime in America. African Americans constituted only 15 percent of current drug users in 1995, and they constitute roughly the same percentage today. Whites constituted the vast majority of drug users then (and now), but almost no one pictured a white person when asked to imagine what a drug user looks like. The same group of respondents also perceived the typical drug trafficker as black.
There is no reason to believe that the survey results would have been any different if police officers or prosecutors—rather than the general public— had been the respondents. Law enforcement officials, no less than the rest of us, have been exposed to the racially charged political rhetoric and media imagery associated with the drug war. In fact, for nearly three decades, news stories regarding virtually all street crime have disproportionately featured African American offenders. One study suggests that the standard crime news “script” is so prevalent and so thoroughly racialized that viewers imagine a black perpetrator even when none
exists. In that study, 60 percent of viewers who saw a story with no image falsely recalled seeing one, and 70 percent of those viewers believed the perpetrator to be African American.40
Decades of cognitive bias research demonstrates that both unconscious and conscious biases lead to discriminatory actions, even when an individual does not want to discriminate.41 The quotation commonly attributed to Nietzsche, that “there is no immaculate perception,” perfectly captures how cognitive schemas—thought structures—influence what we notice and how the things we notice get interpreted.42 Studies have shown that racial schemas operate not only as part of conscious, rational deliberations, but also automatically—without conscious awareness or intent.43 One study, for example, involved a video game that placed photographs of white and black individuals holding either a gun or other object (such as a wallet, soda can, or cell phone) into various photographic backgrounds. Participants were told to decide as quickly as possible whether to shoot the target. Consistent with earlier studies, participants were more likely to mistake a black target as armed when he was not, and mistake a white target as unarmed, when in fact he was armed.44 This pattern of discrimination reflected automatic, unconscious thought processes, not careful deliberations.
Most striking, perhaps, is the overwhelming evidence that implicit bias measures are disassociated from explicit bias measures.45 In other words, the fact that you may honestly believe that you are not biased against African Americans, and that you may even have black friends or relatives, does not mean that you are free from unconscious bias. Implicit bias tests may still show that you hold negative attitudes and stereotypes about blacks, even though you do not believe you do and do not want to.46 In the study described above, for example, black participants showed an amount of “shooter bias” similar to that shown by whites.47 Not surprisingly, people who have the greatest explicit bias (as measured by self-reported answers to survey questions) against a racial group tend also to have the greatest implicit bias against them, and vice versa.48 Yet there is often a weak correlation between degrees of explicit and implicit bias; many people who think they are not biased prove when tested to have relatively high levels of bias.49 Unfortunately, a fairly consistent finding is that punitiveness and hostility almost always increase when people are primed—even subliminally—with images or verbal cues associated with African Americans. In fact, studies indicate that people become increasingly harsh when an alleged criminal is darker and more “stereotypically black”; they are more lenient when the accused is lighter and appears more stereotypically white. This is true of jurors as well as law enforcement officers.50
Viewed as a whole, the relevant research by cognitive and social psychologists to date suggests that racial bias in the drug war was inevitable, once a public consensus was constructed by political and media elites that drug crime is black and brown. Once blackness and crime, especially drug crime, became conflated in the public consciousness, the “criminal blackman,” as termed by legal scholar Kathryn Russell, would inevitably become the primary target of law enforcement.51 Some discrimination would be conscious and deliberate, as many honestly and consciously would believe that black men deserve extra scrutiny and harsher treatment. Much racial bias, though, would operate unconsciously and automatically—even among law enforcement officials genuinely committed to equal treatment under the law.
Whether or not one believes racial discrimination in the drug war was inevitable, it should have been glaringly obvious in the 1980s and 1990s that an extraordinarily high risk of racial bias in the administration of criminal justice was present, given the way in which all crime had been framed in the media and in political discourse. Awareness of this risk did not require inti- mate familiarity with cognitive bias research. Anyone possessing a television set during this period would likely have had some awareness of the extent to which black men had been demonized in the War on Drugs.
The risk that African Americans would be unfairly targeted should have been of special concern to the U.S. Supreme Court—the one branch of government charged with the responsibility of protecting “discrete and insular minorities” from the excesses of majoritarian
2) explain how one of Stein’s arguments (from the assigned excerpts), e.g. about the existence of decisions from one’s past as possibly serving as an explanation of unconscious thoughts, can used to support the existence of the unconscious; non-psychic individual experience. (The pure experience of the reduction is non-psychic when it becomes as well as when it be-came.) Soul is not to be sep; rated from life.
Scheler has emphasized that there is an experience of life ascension and one of life decline.” This is an experience and not an objective possession or the verification of discernible stages of development. The continuum of life itself is given to us as such and not as a composite of stretches connecting high points. Fur-thermore, the ascension to these points, the development and not only its results, is given to us. (Of course, in order to perceive the result, we must first becorre conscious of” this development, i.e., make it objective. For example, we become conscious of our strength waning when we notice we are weak. Correspondingly, in “higher psychic life” we become conscious of an inclination disappearing when we find i no longer present, etc.) Nor is it a mere metaphor to compare vur development with that of a plant; it is a genuine analogy in the previously defined sense of comprehending that something bel gs to the same type.
Bodily “states”
are no dinerent: “feeling sick” has little to do
with “pain.” For instance, on can feel very healthy with a painful bodily injury such as a broke” aim with complications, etc. One can also feel very ill without pain. I look at this “state” in the other and bring it to givennes t myself in empathic projection.
The attentive observer sees variety of single traits in the whole disease picture which remain hidden from the fleeting glance.
This is what the “schooled vw of the physician has over the lay person. The diagnosis he mikes on the basis of this picture is no longer made thanks to empay, hut thanks to his knowledge that this “clinical picture” is an ilect of the cause in question. Thus he thinks he “sees” carcinora by yellow: sunken cheeks, or he sees tuberculosis by the red sots and unnatural gleam of the eyes.
But this clinical picture itsell this distinguishing of the variety of types of illnesses on which al diagnosis is based, is yielded to him by his talent for empathy cu vared by focusing on this group of phenomena and by long pra. ice in extensive differentiation. Of course, this empathy mostly case at the first introductory level, not proceeding to projection ito the ill condition. And the physician’s relationship to his paint. with whose welfare he is en trusted, is no different from the gardener’s relationship to his plants, whose thriving he oversees. He sees them full of fresh strength or ailing, recovering or dying. He elucidates their condition for himself empathically. In terms of cause, he looks for the cause of the condition and finds ways to influence it.
(k) Causality” in the Structure of the Individual
Again, the possibility of such causal reflection is based on empa-thy. The foreign individual’s physical body as such is given as a part of physical nature in causal relationships with other physical objects. He who pushes it imparts motion to it: its shape can be changed by blows and pressure: different illumination changes its color, etc. But these causal relationships are not all. As we know, the foreign physical body is not seen as a physical body, but as a living one. We see it suffer and carry out effects other than the physical. Pricking a hand is not the same as pounding a nail into a wall, even though it is the same procedure mechanically, namely, driving in a sharp object. The hand senses pain if stuck, and we see this. We must disregard this artificially and reduce this phenomenon in order to see what it has in common with the other one. We “see” this effect because we see the hand as sensitive, because we project ourselves into it empathically and so interpret every physical influence on it as a “stimulus” evoking a psychic response.
Along with these effects of outer causes, we comprehend effects within the individual himself. For example, we may see a child actively romping about and then becoming tired and cross.
We then interpret tiredness and the bad mood as the effects of movement. We have already seen how movements come to givenness for us as alive movements and how tiredness comes to givenness. As we shall soon see, we also comprehend the “bad mood” empathically. Now, we may not infer the causal sequence from the data obtained, but also experience it empathically. For example, we comprehend interpsychic causality similarly when we observe the process of contagion of feelings in others while we ourselves are immune to the infectious material. Perhaps when the actor says, “You can hear nothing but sobbing and women weeping.” we perceive a suppressed sob in all parts of the audi ence. And, projecting ourselves into this soul-stirring spirit, we become seized by the mood portrayed. In this way we get an image of the causal process being enacted.
Finally, we also perceive how an individual affects the outer world by every action that changes physical nature, by impulsive as well as willful ones. For example, when I observe the “reac-tion” to a stimulus when a stone flying toward someone is driven from its course by a “mechanical” resistance movement, I see a causal process into which psychic connecting links have been inserted. Projecting myself into the other, I interpret that object as a stimulus and experience the release of the counter-move-ment. (Such processes can take place unnoticed, but it is entirely unjustified to designate them as “unconscious” or as “purely physiological.”) Then I experience the stone’s diversion from its course as the effect of the reaction.
Suppose I see someone act on a decision of will. For example, on a bet he may pick up a heavy load and carry it. Then I empathically grasp how the action issues from a volition, here appearing as the primum movens of the causal process and not as a connecting link in a series of physical causes. We have the effect of the psychic on the physical given phenomenally and also the psychic on the psychic without the mediation of a physical connecting link. This latter is so, for example, in the case of contagion of feeling not caused by a bodily expression, even if it is mediated by a form of expression to make interpretation of the experience possible.”* But whether or not this effect is physically mediated or purely psychic, it certainly has the same structure as phenomenal causal relationships in physical nature.
Now Scheler is of the opinion, in agreement with Bergson, that there is an entirely new kind of causality in the psychic domain not existing in the physical domain.” This new kind of efficacy is to consist of the fact that every past experience can in principle have an effect on every future one without mediating connecting links, thus without being reproduced, either. Also coming events can affect present experience. In a broader sense, he says that psychic causality is not dependent on a limitation of every experience by what went before. Rather, in its dependence on the totality of experience, it depends on the individual’s entire life. In the first place, if we were to stick to the last formulation, we would have to completely accept the fact that every experience is conditioned by the entire series of previous experiences. But we would also have to accept that every physical occurrence is conditioned by the entire chain of causality. The fundamental difference here is that “the same causes have the same effects” in the physical domain while in the psychic domain it can be shown that the appearance of the “same causes” is essentially excluded. But he who strictly supports the relationship of causing to caused experience could hardly demonstrate a new kind of efficacy.
Let us try to make this clear by examples of what we have in mind. 10 A deliberate decision on a problem put to me continues to direct the course of my action long after the actual decision without my being “conscious” of this as present in current action.
Does this mean that an isolated past experience determines my present experience from that time on? Not at all. This volition that remained unfulfilled for a long time has not fallen “into forgottenness” during this time, has not sunk back into the stream of the past, become “lived life” in Scheler’s terms. It has only gone out of the mode of actuality over into that of non-actuality, out of activity into passivity. Part of the nature of consciousness is that the cogito, the act in which the “I” lives, is surrounded by a marginal zone of background experiences in each moment of experience. These are non-actualities no longer or not yet cogito and therefore not accessible to reflection, either.
In order to be comprehended, they must first pass through the form of the cogito, which they can do at any time. They are still primordially present, even if not actually, and therefore have efficacy. The unfulfilled volition is not dead, but continues to live in the background of consciousness until its time comes and it can be realized. Then its effect begins. Thus, it is not something past which affects the present, but something that reaches into the present. Therefore, we quite agree that a reproduction of the volition does not set the action in motion. A nd, indeed, we will go even further and say that volition would not. be in a position to do this at all. A forgotten volition cannot have an effect. and a
“reproduced” volition is not an alive one. either, but a represented one. As such it is unable to affect an v behavior (as little as in a dark room we can produce the fantasy of a burning lamp to provide the necessary light for reading). It must first be relived, lived through again, in order to be able to have an effect.
Future events which “throw their shadows in advance” are no different. Scheler gives an example from James!01 who, under the influence of an unpleasant logic course he had to teach after-noons, undertook many unnecessary activities the entire day before simply so that he would find no time for the burdensome preparation. Yet he did not “think about it.” Every expectation of a threatening event is of this type. We turn our attention to another object to escape the fear, but it does not vanish. Rather, it remains “in the background” and influences our entire conduct.
As a non-actual experience not specifically directed, this fear has its object in the expected event. This is not completely present, but constantly tends toward going over into actual experience, toward pulling the “I” into itself. The fear constantly resists giving itself to this cogito. Its rescue is in other actual experiences that are still blocked in their pure course by that background experience.
And of what finally concerns the efficacy of the whole life on every moment of its existence [Daseins) we must say: Everything living into the present can have an effect, irrespective of how far the initiation of the affecting experience is from “now.” Experiences of early childhood can also endure into my present, even though pushed into the background by the profusion of later events. This can be clearly seen in dispositions toward other per-sons. I do not “forget” my friends when 1 am not thinking of them. They then belong to the unnoticed present horizon of my world. My love for them is living even when I am not living in it. It influences my actual feeling and conduct. Out of love for some-one, I can abstain from activities which would cause displeasure without “being conscious” of this. Likewise, animosity against a person, inculcated into me in my childhood, can make an impression on my later life. This is true even though this animosity is pushed entirely into the background and I do not think of this person at all any more. Then, when I meet the animosity again, it can go over into actuality and be discharged in an action or else be brought to reflective clarity and so be made ineffectual. On the contrary, what belongs to my past, what is temporarily or permanently forgotten and can only come to givenness to me in the character of representation by reminiscence or by another’s ac-count, has no effect on me. A remembered love is not a primordial feeling and cannot influence me. If I do someone a favor because of a past preference, this inclination is based on a positive opinion of this past preference, not on the represented feeling.
All that has been said shows that the cases Scheler brings up do not prove that there is a difference in the phenomenal structure of efficacy in the physical and in the psychic domains. We have not found a “long-range effect” in the psychic domain. And in the domain of mechanical causality, we also have a parallel accumulation of latent strength and an effectiveness of hidden strength such as we have found here. For example, accumulated electrical energy first “affects” at the moment of discharge.
Finally, we also have analogous circumstances in bodily pro-cesses. The appearance of illness is preceded by an “incubation period” in which the cause gives no indication of its presence by any effect. On the other hand, one can ascertain numerous changes in an organism long before one can find their cause. In spite of the similarity of the causal phenomenon, we cannot here deny profound differences between physical and psychic causal-ity. Yet, to demonstrate this we need an exact study of the dissimilar structure of psychic and physical reality.
(1) The Foreign Living Body as the Bearer of Phenomena of
Expression
We have become acquainted with the foreign living body as the bearer of a psychic life that we “look at” in a certain way. Now there is still a group of phenomena that disclose a further domain of the psyche to us in a peculiarly characterized way. When I
“see” shame “in” blushing, irritation in the furrowed brow, anger in the clenched fist, this is a still different phenomenon than when I look at the foreign living body’s level of sensation or perceive the other individual’s sensations and feelings of life with him. In the latter case I comprehend the one with the other. In the former case I see the one through the other. In the new phenomenon what is psychic is not only co-perceived with what is Now, as we saw on a lower level in considering the living body as the center of orientation, the constitution of the foreign individual was a condition for the full constitution of our own individ-ual. Something similar is also found on higher levels. To consider ourselves in inner perception, i.e., to consider our psychic “I” and its attributes, means to see ourselves as we see another and as he sees us. The original naive attitude of the subject is to be absorbed in his experience without making it into an object. We love and hate, will and act, are happy and sad and look like it. We are conscious of all this in a certain sense without its being compre-hended, being an object. We do not meditate on it. We do not make it into the object of our attention or even our observation.
Furthermore, we do not evaluate it nor look at it in such a way that we can discover what kind of a “character” it manifests. On the contrary, we do all this in regard to foreign psychic life.
Because this life is bound to the perceived physical body, it stands before us as an object from the beginning. Inasmuch as I now interpret it as “like mine,” I come to consider myself as an object like it. I do this in “reflexive sympathy” when I empathically comprehend the acts in which my individual is constituted for him. From his “standpoint,” I look through my bodily expression at this “higher psychic life” here manifested and at the psychic attributes here revealed.
This is how I get the “image” the other has of me, more accurately, the appearances in which I present myself to him. Just as the same natural object is given in as many varieties of appearances as there are perceiving subjects, so I can have just as many
“interpretations” of my psychic individual as I can have interpreting subjects.”* Of course, as soon as the interpretation is empathically fulfilled, the reiterated empathic acts in which 1 comprehend my experience can prove to be in conflict with the primordial experience so that this empathized “interpretation” is exposed as a deception. And, in principle, it is possible for all the interpretations of myself with which I become acquainted to be wrong.
But, luckily, I not only have the possibility of bringing my experience to givenness in reiterated empathy, but can also bring it to givenness primordially in inner perception. Then I have it immediately given, not mediated by its expression or by bodily appearances. Also I now comprehend my attributes primordially and not empathically. As we said, this attitude is foreign to the natural standpoint, and it is empathy that occasions it. But this is not an essential necessity. There is also the possibility of inner perception independent from this. Thus in these contexts empathy does not appear as a constituent, but only as an important aid in comprehending our own individual. This is in contrast with the interpretation of our own living body as a physical body like others, which would not be possible without empathy.
Empathy proves to have yet another side as an aid to comprehending ourselves. As Scheler has shown us, inner perception contains within it the possibility of deception. Empathy now offers itself to us as a corrective for such deceptions along with further corroboratory or contradictory perceptual acts. It is possible for another to “judge me more accurately” than I judge myself and give me clarity about myself. For example, he notices that I look around me for approval as I show kindness, while I myself think I am acting out of pure generosity. This is how empathy and inner perception work hand in hand to give me myself to myself.
3) explain Brentano’s infinite regress argument (from the assigned excerpts) against the existence of unconscious mental phenomena; 5. What positive criterion shall we now be able to provide? Or is there perhaps no posi- tive definition which holds true of all mental phenomena generally? Bain thinks that in fact there is none.* Nevertheless, psychologists in earlier times have already pointed out that there is a special affinity and analogy which exists among all mental phenomena, and which physical phenomena do not share.
Every mental phenomenon is characterized by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental)† inexistence of an object, and what we might call, though not wholly unambiguously, reference to a content, direction toward an object9 (which is not to be understood here as meaning a thing),10 or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way. In presentation something is presented, in judgement something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on.‡
This intentional in-existence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it. We can, therefore, define mental phenom- ena by saying that they are those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within themselves.11
Brentano here uses “content” synonymously with “object.” He later came to prefer the term “object.”
10 As we have noted, Brentano subsequently denies that we can have anything “irreal” as object; we can have as object only that which would be a substance or thing if it existed.
* Lecture on Metaphysics, I, 432.
11 Brentano later acknowledged that the way he attempted to describe consciousness here, adhering
to the Aristotelian tradition which asserts “the mental inexistence of the object,” was imperfect. The so-called “inexistence of the object,” the immanent objectivity, is not to be interpreted as a mode of being the thing has in consciousness, but as an imprecise description of the fact that I have something (a thing, real entity, substance) as an object, am mentally concerned with it, refer to it. There are more details on this point in the Supplementary Essays and the Introduction. The Table of Contents speaks more appropriately of “reference to an object.” See note 20.
12 Here, too, we are concerned with the question already mentioned in Note 1, whether it belongs to the essence of every act of consciousness to be a consciousness of something. Opinions are still divided on this most elementary question in psychology. There is still a distinction drawn today, as there was before Brentano, between objective acts of consciousness and mere states of consciousness. Brentano assails this doctrine with arguments which have remained unrefuted and indeed have gone largely unnoticed. His Untersuchungen zur Sinnespsychologie has, in particular, been largely ignored.
70 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint
6. Another characteristic which all mental phenomena have in common is the fact that they are only perceived in inner consciousness, while in the case of physical phenomena only external perception is possible. This distinguishing characteristic is emphasized by Hamilton.*
It could be argued that such a definition is not very meaningful. In fact, it seems much more natural to define the act according to the object, and therefore to state that inner per- ception, in contrast to every other kind, is the perception of mental phenomena. However, besides the fact that it has a special object, inner perception possesses another distinguish- ing characteristic: its immediate, infallible self-evidence. Of all the types of knowledge of the objects of experience, inner perception alone possesses this characteristic. Conse- quently, when we say that mental phenomena are those which are apprehended by means of inner perception, we say that their perception is immediately evident.
Moreover, inner perception is not merely the only kind of perception which is imme- diately evident; it is really the only perception in the strict sense of the word.† As we have seen, the phenomena of the so-called external perception cannot be proved true and real even by means of indirect demonstration. For this reason, anyone who in good faith has taken them for what they seem to be is being misled by the manner in which the phenomena are connected. Therefore, strictly speaking, so-called external perception is not perception. Mental phenomena, therefore, may be described as the only phenomena of which percep- tion in the strict sense of the word is possible. This definition, too, is an adequate charac- terization of mental phenomena. That is not to say that all mental phenomena are internally perceivable by all men, and so all those which someone cannot perceive are to be included by him among physical phenomena. On the contrary, as we have already expressly noted above, it is obvious that no mental phenomenon is perceived by more than one individual. At the same time, however, we also saw that every type of mental phenomenon is present in every fully developed human mental life. For this reason, the reference to the phenomena which constitute the realm of inner perception serves our purpose satisfactorily.
7. We said that mental phenomena are those phenomena which alone can be perceived in the strict sense of the word. We could just as well say that they are those phenomena which alone possess real existence as well as intentional existence. Knowledge, joy and desire really exist. Color, sound and warmth have only a phenomenal and intentional exis- tence.14
There are philosophers who go so far as to say that it is self-evident that phenomena such as those which we call physical phenomena could not correspond to any reality. According to them, the assertion that these phenomena have an existence different from mental exis- tence is self-contradictory. Thus, for example, Bain says that attempts have been made to
†
* 14
[Translators’ note: The German word which we translate as “perception” is “Wahrnehmung” which literally means taking something to be true. The English word does not reflect this literal meaning so this paragraph only makes sense if we bear in mind the German word.]
Mental Science, 3rd ed., p. 198.
This passage also makes clear what Brentano intended as the object of outer perception; “color, sound, heat,” in brief, sense-qualities, that someone having a sensation senses—what is sensed—but not “landscapes” or “boxes.”
II
Inner Consciousness*
1. Disputes about what concept a term applies to are not always useless quarrels over words. Sometimes it is a question of establishing the conventional meaning of a word, from which it is always dangerous to deviate. Frequently, however, the problem is to discover the natural boundaries of a homogeneous class.
We must have a case of the latter sort before us in the dispute about the meaning of the term “consciousness,” if it is not to be viewed as mere idle quibbling over words. For there is no question of there being a commonly accepted, exclusive sense of the term. The surveys of the different uses of this term made by Bain,† in England, and by Horwicz‡ in Germany, show this beyond any doubt. Sometimes we understand it to mean the memory of our own previous actions, especially if they were of a moral nature, as when we say, “I am not conscious of any guilt.” At other times we designate by it all kinds of immediate knowledge of our own mental acts, especially the perception which accompanies present mental acts. In addition, we use this term with regard to external perception, as for example when we say of a man who is awakening from sleep or from a faint that he has regained consciousness. And, we call not only perception and cognition, but also all presentations, states of consciousness. If something appears in our imagination, we say that it appears in consciousness. Some people have characterized every mental act as consciousness, be it an idea, a cognition, an erroneous opinion, a feeling, an act of will or any other kind of mental phenomenon. And psychologists (of course not all of them) seem to attach this meaning in particular to the word when they speak of the unity of consciousness, i.e. of a unity of simultaneously existing mental phenomena.
For any given use of the word, we shall have to decide whether it may not be more harmful than helpful. If we want to emphasize the origin of the term, doubtless we would have to restrict it to cognitive phenomena, either to all or to some of them. But it is obvi- ous that there is rarely any point in doing so, since words often change from their original meaning and no harm is done. It is obviously much more expedient to use this term in such a way as to designate an important class of phenomena, especially when a suitable name for it is lacking and a discernible gap is thereby filled.* For this reason, therefore, I prefer to use it as synonymous with “mental phenomenon,” or “mental act.” For, in the first place,
*
† ‡ *
Just as we call the perception of a mental activity which is actually present in us “inner perception,” we here call the consciousness which is directed upon it “inner consciousness.”
Mental and Moral Science, Appendix, p. 93. Psychologische Analysen, I, 211 ff.
Cp. the remark of Herbart, Lehrbuch zur Psychologie, I, Chap. 2, 17, and Psychologie als Wissenschaft, I, Sect. II, Chap. 2, 48.
Inner Consciousness 79
the constant use of these compound designations would be cumbersome, and furthermore, the term “consciousness,” since it refers to an object which consciousness is conscious of,† seems to be appropriate to characterize mental phenomena precisely in terms of its distinguishing characteristic, i.e., the property of the intentional in-existence of an object, for which we lack a word in common usage.
2. We have seen that no mental phenomenon exists which is not, in the sense indicated above, consciousness of an object. However, another question arises, namely, whether there are any mental phenomena which are not objects of consciousness. All mental phenomena are states of consciousness; but are all mental phenomena conscious, or might there also be unconscious mental acts?
Some people would just shake their heads at this question. To postulate an unconscious consciousness seems to them absurd. Even eminent psychologists such as Locke and John Stuart Mill consider it a direct contradiction. But anyone who has paid attention to the foregoing definitions will hardly think so. He will recognize that a person who raises the question of whether there is an unconscious consciousness is not being ridiculous in the same way he would be had he asked whether there is a non-red redness. An unconscious consciousness is no more a contradiction in terms than an unseen case of seeing.‡
Most laymen in psychology, however, will immediately reject the assumption of an unconscious consciousness, even without being influenced by false analogies associated with this expression. Indeed, two thousand years had to go by before a philosopher appeared who taught such a thesis. Naturally philosophers were well familiar with the fact that we can possess a store of acquired knowledge without thinking about it. But they rightly con- ceived of this knowledge as a disposition toward certain acts of thinking, just as they conceived of acquired character as a disposition toward certain emotions and volitions, but not as cognition and consciousness. One of the first men who taught that there is an uncon- scious consciousness was Thomas Aquinas.* Later on, Leibniz spoke of “perceptiones sine apperceptione seu conscientia,” and “perceptiones insensibiles,”† and Kant followed his example. Recently, the theory of unconscious mental phenomena has found numerous pro- ponents even among men who in other respects may adhere to doctrines which are not exactly congenial. The elder Mill, for example, states that there are sensations of which we are not conscious, because of habitual inattention. Hamilton teaches that the train of our ideas is often connected only by intermediate steps of which we are not conscious. Lewes, likewise, believes that many mental acts take place without consciousness. Maudsley con- siders the existence of unconscious mental activity a proven fact, and makes it one of the principal considerations in favor of his physiological method. Herbart speaks of ideas of
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[Translators’ note: “von welchem das Bewusstsein Bewusstseinist.” This linguistic support for the recommended usage of “Bewusstsein”, depending as it does on the structure of the German word, does not apply to the English word “consciousness.”]
We use the term “unconscious” in two ways. First, in an active sense, speaking of a person who is not conscious of a thing; secondly, in a passive sense, speaking of a thing of which we are not conscious. In the first sense, the expression “unconscious consciousness” would be a contradiction, but not in the second. It is in the latter sense that the term “unconscious” is used here.
See below, Sect. 7.
Nouveaux Essais, II, 1. Monadology, 14. Principles de la nature et de la grace, 4.
80 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint
which we are not conscious, and Beneke believes that only those ideas which possess a rel- atively high degree of intensity are accompanied by consciousness. Fechner, too, says that psychology cannot ignore unconscious sensations and presentations. Wundt,‡ Helmholtz, Zöllner and others maintain that there are unconscious inferences. Ulrici advances a whole series of arguments in support of his claim that not only sensations, but also other mental acts such as love and desire often go on unconsciously. And von Hartmann has worked out a complete “Philosophy of the Unconscious.”
Nevertheless, however numerous the ranks of those who speak in favor of unconscious mental phenomena have become, the theory is still far from having attained general recog- nition. Neither has Lotze adopted it, nor have the famous English psychologists Bain and Spencer rallied to it. Even John Stuart Mill, who generally expresses the highest respect for the opinions of his father, has not refrained from opposing his doctrine on this issue. More- over, even among those who assert that there are unconscious ideas, there are many who do this only because they attach a different meaning to these terms. This is true of Fechner, for example, who, when he speaks of unconscious sensations and ideas, clearly gives the terms “sensation” and “idea” different meanings from the ones we ascribe to them—so much so that he does not understand them to mean a mental phenomenon at all.1 According to him, all mental phenomena are conscious, and, therefore, with regard to this matter, he is an opponent of the new conception.* By using the term “consciousness” in a different sense, Ulrici, likewise, denies any unconscious mental act in our sense.† We may well say that Hartmann, too, uses the term “consciousness” to refer to something different from what we do. He defines consciousness as “the emancipation of the idea from the will…and the opposition of the will to this emancipation,” and as “the bewilderment of the will over the existence of the idea, which existence the will does not want but which, nevertheless, is sensibly present.” This definition, if it does not just refer to something purely imaginary, at least seems to bear upon something different from what we called consciousness.‡ The reasons which he advances, however, at least show that he is an advocate of unconscious mental activities in the sense in which we speak of them.
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At least in his early work, Vorlesungen über Menschen- und Tierseele. Some passages of his Physiologische Psychologie, as it stands now, seem to indicate that he has retreated from the acceptance of unconscious mental activities.
This is clearly shown in a passage of his Psychophysics, II, 438: “Psychology cannot abstract from unconscious sensations and ideas, nor can it even abstract from the effects of unconscious sensations and ideas. In what way, then, can a thing which does not exist produce an effect? Or in what manner does an unconscious sensation or idea differ from a sensation or idea which we do not have at all?” In answer to the first question, Fechner states that there is really no sensation but something with which sensation stands in a functional relationship. “Sensations, ideas, have, of course, ceased actually to exist in the state of unconsciousness, insofar as we consider them apart from their substructure. Nevertheless, something persists within us, i.e. the psychophysical activity of which they are a function, and which makes possible the re-appearance of sensation, etc.”
In Gott undMensch, I, 283, he says that “in general we have an immediate feeling of our inner states, processes, impulses and activities,” and that there is no doubt “that this feeling accompanies all sensory impressions (perceptions), even those which are most commonplace,” that in this way “we also feel that we see, hear, taste, etc.”
Philosophie der Unbewusstsein, 2nd ed., p. 366. Contemporaries also use the word in this sense.
Inner Consciousness 81
The lack of unanimity among psychologists on this point cannot come as a surprise, since we have encountered disagreements at every step of our investigations. But in this case it provides no reasonable ground for concluding that the truth cannot be known with certainty. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the question is such that some people may believe that the impossibility of answering it is obvious on the face of it and, there- fore, while it can be the object of ingenious intellectual games, it cannot be the object of serious scientific investigation. For it is self-evident and necessarily the case that there can be no unconscious ideas in the domain of our experience, even if many such ideas should exist within us; otherwise, they would not be unconscious. It would seem, therefore, that one cannot appeal to experience as proof against them. For the same reason, however, one cannot testify to their existence, either. Forsaken by experience, how are we supposed to decide the question?
In answer to this charge the defenders of unconscious consciousness have rightly pointed out, nevertheless, that what cannot be directly experienced can perhaps be deduced indirectly from empirical facts.* They have not hesitated to gather such facts, and to offer a great variety of arguments as proof of their contention.2
3. There are four different ways in which one might proceed here with some hope of success.
First, we could try to prove that certain facts given in experience demand the hypothesis of an unconscious mental phenomenon as their cause.
Secondly, we could attempt to prove that a fact given in experience must bring about an unconscious mental phenomenon as its effect, even though none appears in conscious- ness.
Thirdly, we could try to show that in the case of conscious mental phenomena the strength of the concomitant consciousness is a function of their own strength, and that, because of this relationship, in certain cases in which the latter is a positive magnitude, the former must lack a positive value.
Finally, we could attempt to prove that the hypothesis that each mental phenomenon is an object of a mental phenomenon leads to an infinite complexity of mental states, which is both intrinsically impossible and contrary to experience.
7. Hearing as the presentation of a sound is a mental phenomenon and certainly one of the simplest examples of one. Nevertheless, if all mental phenomena are conscious, a simple act of hearing seems not to be possible without an infinite complication of mental states.
First of all, no mental phenomenon is possible without a correlative consciousness; along with the presentation of a sound we have a presentation of the presentation of this sound at the same time. We have, therefore, two presentations, and presentations of very different sorts at that. If we call the presentation of a sound “hearing,” we have, in addition to the presentation of this sound, a presentation of the hearing, which is as different from hearing as hearing is from sound.
But this is not the end of it. If every mental phenomenon must be accompanied by con- sciousness, the presentation of hearing must also be accompanied by consciousness, just as the presentation of the sound is. Consequently, there must also be a presentation of it. In the hearer, therefore, there are three presentations: a presentation of sound, a presentation of the act of hearing, and a presentation of the presentation of this act. But this third presentation cannot be the last one. Since it too is conscious, it is present in the mind and in turn its pre- sentation is also presented. In brief, the series will either be infinite or will terminate with an unconscious presentation. It follows that those who deny the existence of unconscious mental phenomena must admit an infinite number of mental activities in the simplest act of hearing.
It also seems self-evident that the sound must be contained by way of presentation not only in the act of hearing but also in the concomitant presentation of the hearing. In addition, the sound will be presented again for a third time in the presentation of the presentation of the act of hearing, while the act of hearing will only be presented for the second time. If this is the case, we have here a new ground for infinite complexity, inasmuch as the infinite series of phenomena is not made up of equally simple phenomena, but is a series of phenomena whose individual components themselves become more and more complex, ad infinitum.
This hypothesis seems to be very doubtful, in fact it is obviously absurd,* and no one will want to adhere to it. So how can we possibly persist in the denial of unconscious mental acts?
If we do not suppose the existence of an unconscious consciousness, there is only one hypothesis which seems to allow us to avoid the conclusion that there is an infinite compli- cation of mental life. This hypothesis assumes that the act of hearing and its object are one and the same phenomenon, insofar as the former is thought to be directed upon itself as its own object. Then either “sound” and “hearing” would be merely two names for one and the same phenomenon, or the difference in their meaning might consist only in the fact that the term “sound” is used to designate the external cause, which formerly had usually been considered to be similar to the phenomenon within the person hearing and was therefore said to manifest itself in the act of hearing, while in fact it eludes our presentation.
4) explain experimental evidence having to do with the existence or nonexistence of unconscious thoughts or biases that you have discovered in a peer-reviewed article, and use it to support your thesis;
5) argue for or against one of the claims made by Brentano or Stein in light of the research you present in 4);
6) defend either your thesis or your argument in support of your thesis against someone who could disagree with it; and
7) you are permitted to have one extra form of support, or one extra naysayer and response, but not both.
