Chapter 2

It must be confessed that an adequate analysis of cognitive relatedness on scientific lines is not to be found in Spencer's works. I am not sure that it is yet to be found in the works of any other philosopher, though there are many signs that the difficult problems it involves are receiving serious attention. This much seems certain, for those who accept the spirit, though not perhaps the letter, of Spencer's teaching: that there it is as a constitutive mode of relatedness in the realm of nature, and that, if it forms part of the evolutionary scheme, if it is present in the conclusion, so far reached, though it was absent in the physico-chemical premises, if it is to be included in a philosophy of science it must be dealt with by that philosophy on lines strictly analogous to those on which any other relational problem is treated. Firmly as we may believe in the reality of Source, we must not call to our aid some psychic entity, some entelechy, someélan vital, to help us out of our difficulties; for one and all of these lie wholly outside the universe of discourse of science; and not one of them affords the smallest help in solving a single scientific problem in a manner that is itself scientific.

We have seen that Spencer believed that the task of psychology is to investigate the correlation of external and internal relations, and, in that sense, itself to correlate them within a scientific interpretation. Now the outcome of the former correlation is some form of behaviour or conduct on the part of the organism. No doubt such behaviour affords data to be dealt with in subsequent cognition. But it implies the prior cognition which leads up to it; and it is this prior cognition, abstracted from the behaviour to which it leads, that we have to consider. It is so terribly complex that it is difficult to deal with it comprehensibly in a brief space. Let me, however, try to do so, at least in tentative outline. There occurs, let us say, an external event in the physical world, such as the motion of a billiard-ball across the table; and when during its progress this stimulates the retina, there is an internal physico-chemical process which runs its course in retina, optic nerves, and the central nervous system. We may regard these two processes, external and internal, asso far, of like physical order. With adequate knowledge the two could, in some measure, be serially correlated as such. But the physico-chemical processes in the organism are not only of this physical type. They are vital or physiological as well. And this makes a real difference. Of course this statement is open to question. But I, for one, believe that there are specific relations present in physiological processes,quavital, other than those of the physico-chemical type—relations which are effective and which require a distinctive name. So far I am a vitalist. At some stage of evolution these new modes of effective relatedness came into being, whereas in the fire-mist and for long afterwards they were not in being. None the less when they did actually come into being, under conditions of which we are at present ignorant—though not so ignorant as we were—they were dependent upon, and, for our interpretation, they logically imply, the physico-chemical relations which are also present. In any given case they further imply, throughheredity-relatedness, the evolutionary history of the organism in which they obtain. This so-called historical element in biology no doubt involves a characteristic vital relationship. But, I take it, the physico-chemical constitution of any inorganic compound, and of any molecule therein, has also its history—has relationship to past occurrences within its type, which have helped to make it what it is. Still, in the organism the relation to past happenings has a quite distinctive form which we deal with in terms of heredity. See, then, how we stand so far. The internal physiological process implies a long chain of heredity-relationships through which the organism is prepared for its occurrence. It also implies a physico-chemical basis, an underlying[70]physico-chemical process. And this implies as a condition of its occurrence, the external event, the passage of the billiard-ball across the table. In a broad sense we may say that the inner process knows the external event which is a condition of its occurrence. But we have not yet reached cognition of the psychological type.

Before passing on to indicate, in tentative outline, the nature of this higher mode of relatedness, I pause to note two points. The first is that knowing in that extended sense which I have borrowed,[71]is essentially selective in its nature. The physiological process, in the case I have taken, knows only that external event which is directly before the eyes and which is serially correlated with changes in the retinal images through the stimulation of specialized receptors. Of other external events it has no such knowledge. Compare this with the gravitative knowledge—if a yet wider extension of the meaning of the word be permitted—which the earth has of the sun and all the other members of the solar system—nay more, in degreesperhaps infinitesimal, of all other material bodies in the universe. The motion of the earth in its orbit implies the whole of this vast field of gravitative relatedness. The existing orbital motion at any moment implies, too, the preceding motion which it has, in a sense, inherited from the past. Abolish the rest of the universe at this moment and the earth's motion would cease to be orbital. In virtue of its 'inheritance from the past', it would continue at uniform velocity in one direction. The continuous change of direction and velocity we observe, is a response which implies gravitative knowledge. In a sense, then, the whole solar system is known by the earth as it swings in its orbit.

The second point may be introduced by a question. Granted that we may say, in a very liberal sense, that the earth in its motion has this gravitative knowledge—is such knowledge accompanied by awareness? We do not know. But the point I have in mind is this, that the question itself is vague. Awareness of what? There must be awareness of something; and a definite question should be directed towards the nature of that something. For example: is the earth aware of its own motion? Or is it aware of the solar system? Or is it aware of the relation of the one to the other? If it be said that the second of these is meant when we ask whether the knowledge is accompanied by awareness, well and good. The answer will serve to define the question. Take now a case of biological knowledge. Are the plants in the cottager's window, when they grow towards the light, aware of a process in their own tissues? Or are they aware of the sunshine? Or are they in some measure aware of the connexion between the one and the other? To all these questions we must answer, I suppose, that we do not know. Butit may have been worth while to ask them in a definite way.

We pass, then, to cognition in the usual acceptation of the term—to what we speak of as knowledge in the proper and narrower sense. My contention is that this is a mode of relatedness which science must endeavour to treat on precisely the same lines as it deals with any other natural kind of relatedness. At some stage of evolution it came into being, whereas in the fire-mist, and for long afterwards, it was not in being. None the less when it did come into being, it was dependent on, and for our interpretation it logically implies, underlying physiological processes, as they in turn imply physico-chemical processes, in each case serially correlated. It is pre-eminently selective. And just as any physiological process, however externally conditioned, is grounded in[72]the constitution of the organism, as such, so too is any cognitive process grounded in the constitution of the organism as one in which this higher type of relatedness has supervened. Again, just as the physiological constitution implies a prolonged racial preparation, describable in terms of that mode of relatedness we name heredity, so, too, does any cognitive process imply, not only this racial preparation of the biological kind, but also an individual preparation of the psychological kind—implies relatedness to what we call, rather loosely, prior experience—which itself implies a concurrent physiological preparation.

Now there can be no doubt that awareness is a characteristic feature of the knowledge of cognition, whether it be present or absent in knowledge in the more extended sense. We must just accept this as what appears to be a fact. In science we do not pretend to say why facts are what they are and as they are. Wetake them as they are given, and endeavour to trace their connexions and their implications. Accepting, then, awareness as given, we must ask: Awareness of what? It is sometimes said that cognition is aware of itself. I am not sure that I understand what this means. If we are speaking of the cognitive relation, which is an awareness relation, the question seems to be whether a relation of awareness is related to itself. But of course if a field of cognitive relatedness be regarded as a complex whole, any part may be related to the rest, and the rest to any part. That kind of self-awareness—if we must so call it!—is eminently characteristic of cognition in the higher forms of its development. On these terms cognition is aware of itself—though the mode of statement savours of ambiguity.

Let us next ask whether there is awareness of the underlying cortical process. If we are speaking of direct awareness, apparently not. The correlation between the two is only discoverable through a very elaborate and complex[73]application of further cognition in interpretative knowledge. We only know the correlated cortical process by description, as Mr. Bertrand Russell would say,[74]and never by direct acquaintance.

Parenthetic reference must here, I suppose, be made to psycho-physical parallelism. But it shall be very brief. The sooner this cumbrous term with its misleading suggestions is altogether eliminated from the vocabulary of science the better. The locus of the so-called parallelism is, we are told, the cortex of the brain. But the cortical process is only an incident—no doubt a very important one, but still an incident—in a much wider physiological process, the occurrence of which, in what we may speak of as primary cognition, implies events in the external world. It is of these events that thereis direct physical, physiological, and cognitive knowledge. Of course there are also inter-cortical relations which underlie the relations of those ideal cognita (Spencer's faint class) that supplement the primary cognita which imply direct stimulation of sensory receptors (Spencer's vivid class). It is questionable whether any form of cognition, properly so called, is possible in their absence. Now I see no objection to labelling the fact (if it be a fact) that the cognitive process implies a physiological process in which, as in a larger whole, the cortex plays its appropriate part, by the use of some such convenient correlation-word as psycho-physical; but only so long as this does not involve a doctrine of parallelism; so long as it merely means that cognition implies, let us say, certain underlying cortical changes. Of course it implies a great deal more than cortical process only; but this may perhaps be taken for granted. My chief objection to the word 'parallelism' is that it suggests two separate orders of being, and not two types of relationship within one order of being for scientific study.[75]We do not speak of parallelism between physiological and physico-chemical processes. We just say that scientific interpretation proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a kind that physiological process implies a physico-chemical basis. So too, I urge, we should be content to say that scientific interpretation proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a kind that cognitive process implies a physiological basis.

It may be said that Spencer accepted the so-called identity hypothesis which does not lie open to the objection that it suggests two orders of being. He believed[76]'that mind and nervous action are the subjective and objective faces of the same thing', though 'we remainutterly incapable of seeing or even imagining how the two are related'. Well, we may call them in one passage the same thing, we may speak, in another passage, of the antithesis between them as never to be transcended, and we may try to save the situation by reference to duality of aspect. But this kind of treatment does not help as much towards a scientific interpretation. It is true that, in yet another passage, speaking of the correlation of the physical and the psychical, Spencer says:[77]'We can learn nothing more than that here is one of the uniformities in the order of phenomena.' Then why not leave it at that? And if there be a constant and uniform correlation which is 'in a certain indirect way quantitive', it would seem that wedosee, as far as science ever professes to see, 'how the two are related.' We see, or conceive, how they are related in much the same way as we do in the case of the connexion between the physiological and the physico-chemical, and in numberless other cases. Both parallelism and identity will have to go by the board in a philosophy of science. They must be replaced by the far more modest hypothesis, which seems to express all that they really mean for science, that cognition always implies certain physiological processes in the organism.

If we do speak of mind and nervous action as two faces of the same thing, it seems pretty certain that the one face is not directly aware of the other. When we speak of awareness in cognition we must therefore, it appears, exclude any direct awareness of concurrent physiological processes. Of what, then, is there awareness? Primarily perhaps of some occurrence in the external world. But the difficulty here is that, in the simplest case of human cognition there is awareness of so many things and in such varying degrees. Theremay be primary awareness of events in the external world (Spencer's vivid series), awareness of the relations involved in these occurrences as such, of the relations of these to ideal re-presentations of like kind (Spencer's faint series), of the relations of any or all of these to behaviour as actually taking place or as ideally re-presented; and all in different degrees within a relational meshwork of bewildering complexity, which we have not, as yet, adequately unravelled. The essential point to bear in mind is that the cognitive relation always involves relatedness ofmany terms, and that its discussion involves the analysis of what, in the higher phases of its existence, is probably the most complex natural occurrence in this complex world.

I cannot here follow up further the difficult problem of cognition[78]—save to add one or two supplementary remarks. First: it is, I suppose, fairly obvious that any given field of cognitive relatedness comprisesallthat is then and there selectively cognized. Just as, in the very extended sense of the word 'knowledge', the earth knows, in gravitative fashion, the whole solar system, as does also any one of the planets, so, in the restricted sense, is knowledge co-extensive with all that is, selectively, in cognitive relationship with the organism or that part of the organism which is the locus of awareness. I speak here of the locus of awareness in just the same sense as I might speak of the earth as a locus of gravitative knowledge of the solar system. The locus of awareness is just a specialized portion of the whole relational web. In other words, the relatedness is of the part-whole kind, where whole means rest of the whole other than the specific part. In any such integrated system the part implies the whole—which, by the way, is quite a different matter from saying thatthe part includes the whole, or, as I understand the words, is equivalent to the whole. But, whereas gravitative knowledge is reciprocal—the sun knowing the earth in the same fashion as the earth knows the sun—cognitive knowledge is not reciprocal. My cognitive awareness of a spinning-top does not imply that the spinning-top is in like manner aware of me. The part knows the whole in a way that the whole does not know the part. The relationship of the part to the rest of the whole is not reciprocal or symmetrical. This we must just accept as a given feature of cognitive relatedness.[79]

Another very important point is that cognitive relatedness is effective. By this I mean that just as, when the earth is in gravitative relation to the sun and the other planets (the constitution of nature being what it is), changes take place because the parts of the system as a whole are in this field of effective relatedness; so too, when the organism is in cognitive relation to its environment, changes in this system also take place just because a part of the whole system is in cognitive relatedness to the rest of the system. That means that the cognitive relation really counts—that it is not merely an epiphenomenal accompaniment of changes which would be precisely the same if it were absent. The 'sum of energy' presumably remains constant. There is no necessary interference with physical principles. But we know of so many cases in which the direction of change may be changed without any alteration of the 'amount of energy', as the phrase goes, that I see no reason, based on physical science,[80]for denying this kind of effectiveness, within a field of cognitive relatedness, if the facts seem indubitably to point to its existence. To assert that the presence or absence ofcognitive relatedness makes absolutely no difference appears to me, I confess, little short of preposterous; to urge that it may be brought under the rubric of physico-chemical relatedness surely involves the ignoring of differentiating features, which science should not ignore. But, on the other hand, to invoke an immaterial psychic entity[81]—unless this merely names the relatedness itself[82]as gravitation names the gravitative relatedness—appears to me quite unwarranted in the scientific universe of discourse.[83]

I must, however, draw to a conclusion. I cannot but think that Spencer failed to bring cognition and the conscious awareness it involves into really close touch with the rest of his philosophy of science. No such double-aspect theory as he accepted affords a satisfactory avenue of scientific approach. But where Spencer failed, who has come within measurable sight of success? We are only just beginning to see our way to stating the problem in such a form as to bring it within the purview of science. What we must insist on, as followers, at a distance, of Herbert Spencer, is the treatment of this type of relatedness on lines similar to our treatment of other types of relatedness within one order of nature.

Surveying his work as a whole, we may confidently assert that Spencer brought to a conclusion a great task, and was himself great in its execution. The present generation can, perhaps, hardly realize how potent his influence was on the thought of the latter half of the last century. Many of his conclusions ran counter to those which were, in his day, widely accepted. If only they seemed to him to be true, however, he held to them with a tenacity which his opponents branded as obstinacy. But as he himself said:

'It is not for nothing that a man has in him sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of his time. While he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the future; and his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. Not as adventitious therefore will the wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world.'[84]

NOTES

[1]Fragments of Science, vol. ii, p. 132.

[2]Essays, vol. i (American reprint), p. 3.

[3]Op. cit., p. 32.

[4]Op. cit., p. 58.

[5]Cf. W. K. Clifford,Lectures and Essays, vol. i, p. 95.

[6]More Letters, vol. ii, p. 235.

[7]Memories and Studies, p. 139.

[8]Ibid., p. 140.

[9]Autobiography, vol. i, p. 212.

[10]James,op. cit., p. 124.

[11]Autobiography, vol. i, p. 211.

[12]First Principles, Sixth (Popular) Edition, p. 446 (hereafter F. P.).

[13]Principles of Psychology, Third Edition, vol. i, p. 508 (hereafter Ps.).

[14]Ps., vol. i, p. 627.

[15]Ibid., p. 158.

[16]F. P., p. 155.

[17]Ps., vol. ii, p. 484.

[18]There is 'intrinsicforce by which a body manifests itself as occupying space, and thatextrinsicforce distinguished as energy'. F. P., p. 150.

[19]'Divest the conceived unit of matter of the objective correlate to our subjective sense of effort and the entire fabric of physical conceptions disappears.' F. P., p. 151 note. Cf. Ps., vol. ii, pp. 237, 239.

[20]F. P., p. 171.

[21]e.g. 'Social changes take directions that are due to the joint actions of citizens determined as are those of all other changes wrought by the composition of forces.' 'The flow of capital into business yielding the largest returns, the buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, the introduction of more economical modes of manufacture, the development of better agencies for distribution, exhibit movements taking place in directions where they are met by the smallest totals of opposing forces.' F. P., pp. 193-6.

[22]Creative Evolution, English translation, p. 53.

[23]Op. cit., pp. 385, 6.

[24]According to Dr. Carr's interpretation of M. Bergson, 'The whole world, as it is presented to us and thought of by us, is an illusion. Our science is not unreal, but it is a transformed reality. The illusions may be useful, may, indeed, be necessary and indispensable, but nevertheless it is illusion.'Problem of Truth, p. 66.

[25]Creative Evolution, p. 389.

[26]'But, when I posit the facts with the shape they have for me to-day, I suppose my faculties of perception and intellection such as they are in me to-day; for it is they that portion the real into lots, they that cut the facts out of the whole of reality.' C. E., p. 389.

[27]Creative Evolution, p. 389.

[28]Op. cit., p. 387.

[29]Introduction to Metaphysics, English translation, p. 8 andpassim.

[30]e.g. 'Organisation can only be studied scientifically if the organised body has first been likened to a machine.' C. E., p. 98. Science is, I think, generally used by M. Bergson forintellectualknowledge in contradistinction to intuitional knowledge.

[31]F. P., p. 184.

[32]Essays, vol. iii, p. 14.

[33]Essays, vol. iii, p. 366.

[34]F. P., p. 156.

[35]'There remained to assign a reason for that increasingly-distinct demarkation of parts, &c.... This reason we discovered to be the segregation, &c.... This cause of the definiteness of local integrations, &c.' F. P., p. 440.

[36]F. P., p. 43.

[37]Essays, vol. iii, p. 47.

[38]F. P., p. 176.

[39]F. P., p. 154.

[40]Proceedings Aristotelian Society, 1912-13, p. 1.

[41]Popular Scientific Lectures, English translation, p. 254.

[42]Lectures and Essays, vol. i, p. 111.

[43]'But when we ask what this energy is, there is no answer save that it is the noumenal cause implied by the phenomenal effect.' F. P., p. 154. It is towards this and like statements that my criticism is directed. There can be no objection to the treatment, by physicists, of energy as an entity in the sense given below in note 82. Those phenomena to which 1/2mv2has reference are fundamental realities for physical science.

[44]In a statement of the law of gravitation we may substitute the words 'in a degree' for 'with a force'; we may speak of 'the measure of attraction' instead of 'the force of attraction'.

[45]System of Logic, Bk. III, ch. v, § 3, Eighth Edition, vol. i, p. 383.

[46]Ibid., § 3 and § 5, pp. 379 and 389.

[47]Ps., vol. ii, p. 93; cf. p. 97. One has now, however, to add the realm of subsistence.

[48]As a more technical example the following may be given:—The difference in properties of isomers is caused by difference of internal molecular structure notwithstanding identity of chemical composition.

[49]If we take spark as cause and explosion as effect there isobviously no proportionality between the cause and its effect. Thus M. Bergson speaks of the spark as 'a cause that acts by releasing'; and he adds that 'neither quality nor quantity of effect varies with quality or quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable'.Creative Evolution, p. 77. Compare what Spencer introduced into the Sixth edition of F. P. (pp. 172-3), concerning 'trigger action which does not produce the power but liberates it'. According to the treatment in the text there can be no 'proportionality' unless both ground and conditions are taken into account.

[50]Spencer says (F. P., pp. 169-70) that 'the transformation of the unorganised contents of an egg into the organised chick is a question of heat' ['altogether a question of heat', in the Third Edition], and tells us that 'the germination of plants presents like relations of cause and effect as every season shows'. But he also says that 'the proclivities of the molecules determine the typical structure assumed'. Obviously here the 'heat supplied' falls under (3) of the text, and 'the proclivities of the molecules' is his notion of what should fall under (2).

[51]See Index to F. P.,sub verbo'integration'.

[52]e. g. 'Diminish the velocities of the planets and their orbits will lessen—the solar system will contract, or become more integrated.'Essays, vol. iii, p. 28. Mere condensation is often spoken of as integration. But then the term is used with bewildering laxity. Cf. James,Memories and Studies, p. 134.

[53]I retain in this connexion the current term physico-chemical. It seems that the basal type of relatedness here is electrical. It may be said that when we come down to the atom thethings inrelation are electrical, are electrons, are positive and negative charges. So be it. But is it not theelectrical relatednessthat is constitutive of the atom as such?

[54]'A large number of physical properties', says Nernst, 'have been shown to be clearly additive; that is, the value of the property in question can be calculated as though the compound were such a mixture of its elements that they experience no change in their properties.' But other properties are not additive. 'The kind of influence of the atom in a compound is primarily dependent on the mode of its union, that is, upon the constitution and configuration of the compound. Such non-additive properties may be called constitutive.' Quoted by E. G. Spaulding inThe New Realism, p. 238.

[55]System of Logic, vol. i, Bk. III, ch. vi.

[56]Problems of Life and Mind, Series II, p. 212.

[57]Of course if a particular physico-chemical change (a) is correlatedwith a particular physiological or vital change (b), then (b) implies (a) as (a) implies (b). The statement in the text refers to the implications of classes of change. There may be physico-chemical relatedness without any correlated vital relatedness; but there does not appear to be any vital relatedness which is not correlated with physico-chemical relatedness.

[58]Essays, vol. iii, pp. 31, 55.

[59]Ps., vol. ii, p. 484.

[60]F. P., p. 178.

[61]An ordinal correlation is one that couples every term of a series (a) with a specific term of another series (b) andvice versain the same order in each. Cf. Spaulding inThe New Realism, p. 175. I shall sometimes speak of such correlation as serial.

[62]Principles of Biology, Edition of 1898, pp. 117, 120.

[63]Op. cit., p. 122.

[64]Ps., vol. i, p. 208.

[65]F. P., p. 61. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 134.

[66]Ps., vol. i, p. 132. James well says 'Spencer broke new ground here in insisting that, since mind and its environment have evolved together, they must be studied together. He gave to the study of mind in isolation a definite quietus, and that certainly is a great thing to have achieved'.Memories and Studies, p. 140.

[67]Ps., vol. i, p. 206.

[68]Ps., vol. i, p. 124.

[69]F. P., p. 120. Ps., vol. ii, p. 472. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 98.

[70]The word underlying is used in the sense of occupying a lower position in the logical hierarchy above indicated. If any one likes to speak of the physico-chemical and the vital as two aspects of one process, he is free to do so. And if he likes to say that the vital is caused by the physico-chemical, let him do so; but he must define the exact sense in which he uses the ambiguous word cause. The word inner in the text means within the organism.

[71]See S. Alexander, 'On Relations: and in particular the Cognitive Relation.'Mind., vol. xxi, N. S., No. 83, p. 318.

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