Phaneroscopy

1.332-336      G-c.1905-4

  332. The triad, feeling, volition, cognition, is usually
regarded as a purely psychological division. Long series of
carefully planned self-experiments, persistent and much varied,
though only qualitative, have left me little doubt, if any, that
there are in those elements three quite disparate modes of
awareness. That is a psychological proposition; but that which
From "Phaneroscopy or the Natural History of Concepts," c. 1905.
|p167

now concerns us is not psychological, particularly; namely the
differences between that of which we are aware in feeling,
volition, and cognition. Feeling is a quality, but so far as there
is mere feeling, the quality is not limited to any definite
subject. We hear of a man whose mind is jaundiced. That phrase
well expresses feeling without reason. Feeling also as such is
unanalyzed. Volition is through and through dual. There is
the duality of agent and patient, of effort and resistance, of
active effort and inhibition, of acting on self and on external
objects. Moreover, there is active volition and passive
volition, or inertia, the volition of reform and the volition of
conservatism. That shock which we experience when anything
particularly unexpected forces itself upon our recognition
(which has a cognitive utility as being a call for explanation of
the presentment), is simply the sense of the volitional inertia
of expectation, which strikes a blow like a water-hammer when
it is checked; and the force of this blow, if one could measure
it, would be the measure of the energy of the conservative
volition that gets checked. Low grades of this shock doubtless
accompany all unexpected perceptions; and every perception
is more or less unexpected. Its lower grades are, as I opine, not
without experimental tests of the hypothesis, that sense of
externality, of the presence of a non-ego, which accompanies
perception generally and helps to distinguish it from dreaming.
This is present in all sensation, meaning by sensation the
initiation of a state of feeling, -- for by feeling I mean nothing but
sensation minus the attribution of it to any particular subject.
In my use of words, when an ear-splitting, soul-bursting
locomotive whistle starts, there is a sensation, which ceases when
the screech has been going on for any considerable fraction of a
minute; and at the instant it stops there is a second sensation.
Between them there is a state of feeling.
  333. As for pleasure and pain, which Kant and others have
represented to be of the essence of feeling, whether it be merely
because they and the section of the psychological world for
which at this moment I have the presumption to speak apply
the word feeling to different modifications of awareness, or
whether there be a faulty analysis on the one part or the other,
we certainly do not think that unadulterated feeling, if that
element could be isolated, would have any relation to pain or
|p168

to pleasure. For in our opinion if there be any quality of
feeling common to all pleasurable experiences or components of
experience, and another one quality of feeling common to all
that is painful (which we are inclined to doubt, to say the
least), then we hold the opinion that the one is the feeling of
being attracted, the other that of being repelled, by the present
state of experience. If there be two such feelings, they are
feelings of states of volition. But perhaps pleasure and pain are
nothing more than names for the state of being attracted and
that of being repelled by present experience. Of course,
feelings accompany them, but under the latter hypothesis no
feeling would be common to all pleasures, and none to all pains.
If we are right, the position of the hedonists is preposterous, in
that they make mere feelings to be active agencies, instead of
being merely conscious indications of real determinations of
our subconscious volitional beings. [I may mention that their
talk (however it may be with their thought) is further
preposterous as seeming to make pain a mere privation of pleasure,
although it is plain that it is pain that indicates an active, and
pleasure only a passive, determination of our volitional being.]
  334. As for volition, I would limit the term in one way and
extend it in another. I would limit it to the momentary direct
dyadic consciousness of an ego and a non-ego then and there
present and reacting each upon the other. In one, the action is
generally more active, in the other more passive; but precisely
what this difference consists in I do not feel sure. I think,
however, that the will to produce a change is active, the will to
resist a change is passive. All sensation is essentially, by its
very definition, active. The objection to this is that, according
to it, the voluntary inhibition of a reflex should not give a sense
of effort; and probably the definition of the distinction between
the sense of externality in willing and in perception requires a
supplement or other slight modification on this account. But
the important point [is] that the sense of externality in
perception consists in a sense of powerlessness before the
overwhelming force of perception. Now the only way in which any force
can be learned is by something like trying to oppose it. That
we do something like this is shown by the shock we receive
from any unexpected experience. It is the inertia of the mind,
which tends to remain in the state in which it is. No doubt
|p169

there is a marked difference between the active and intentional
volition of muscular contraction and the passive and
unintentional volition that gives the shock of surprise and the sense of
externality. But the two are to be classed together as alike
modes of double consciousness, that is, of awareness, at once
and in the same awareness, of an ego and a non-ego....

# 7. SHOCK AND THE SENSE OF CHANGE*

  335. Some writers insist that all experience consists in
sense-perception; and I think it is probably true that every
element of experience is in the first instance applied to an
external object. A man who gets up out of the wrong side of the
bed, for example, attributes wrongness to almost every object
he perceives. That is the way in which he experiences his bad
temper. It cannot, however, be said that he perceives the
perversity which he wrongly attributes to outward objects.
  336. We perceive objects brought before us; but that
which we especially experience -- the kind of thing to which
the word "experience" is more particularly applied -- is an
event. We cannot accurately be said to perceive events; for this
requires what Kant called the "synthesis of apprehension,"
not however, by any means, making the needful
discriminations. A whistling locomotive passes at high speed close beside
me. As it passes the note of the whistle is suddenly lowered
from a well-understood cause. I perceive the whistle, if you
will. I have, at any rate, a sensation of it. But I cannot be
said to have a sensation of the change of note. I have a
sensation of the lower note. But the cognition of the change is of a
more intellectual kind. That I experience rather than
perceive. It is [the] special field of experience to acquaint us with
events, with changes of perception. Now that which
particularly characterizes sudden changes of perception is a shock.
A shock is a volitional phenomenon. The long whistle of the
approaching locomotive, however disagreeable it may be, has
set up in me a certain inertia, so that the sudden lowering of
the note meets with a certain resistance. That must be the
fact; because if there were no such resistance there could be no
shock when the change of note occurs. Now this shock is quite
unmistakable. It is more particularly to changes and contrasts

  * Ibid.
|p170

of perception that we apply the word "experience." We
experience vicissitudes, especially. We cannot experience the
vicissitude without experiencing the perception which undergoes
the change; but the concept of experience is broader than that
of perception, and includes much that is not, strictly speaking,
an object of perception. It is the compulsion, the absolute
constraint upon us to think otherwise than we have been
thinking that constitutes experience. Now constraint and
compulsion cannot exist without resistance, and resistance is effort
opposing change. Therefore there must be an element of
effort in experience; and it is this which gives it its peculiar
character. But we are so disposed to yield to it as soon as we
can detect it, that it is extremely difficult to convince ourselves
that we have exerted any resistance at all. It may be said that
we hardly know it except through the axiom that there can be
no force where there is no resistance or inertia. Whoever may
be dissatisfied with my statement will do well to sit down and
cipher out the matter for himself. He may be able to formulate
the nature of the oppositional element in experience, and its
relation to ordinary volition better than I have done; but that
there is an oppositional element in it, logically not easily
distinguished from volition, will, I make no doubt at all, be his
ultimate conclusion.