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Compared with the empirical personality, the pure ego is a much more difficult subject to study. The «I» is that which is conscious at every given moment, while the empirical person is only one of the conscious objects. In other words, the pure «I» is the thinking subject. The question immediately arises: what is this «thinking subject»? Is it one of the transient states of consciousness or something deeper and more permanent? The fluidity of our consciousness represents the very embodiment of change. Meanwhile, each of us voluntarily considers his «I» as something constant, not changing. This circumstance prompted most philosophers to assume behind the changing states of consciousness the existence of some unchanging substratum, an agent that causes such changes. This doer is the thinking subject. This or that particular state of consciousness is a mere tool, a means in his hands. Soul, spirit, transcendental «I» — these are the heterogeneous names for this least changeable subject of thought. Without yet subjecting these concepts to analysis, we will try to define as accurately as possible the concept of a changeable state of consciousness.
Unity and variability of consciousness
Already speaking about the measurement of sensations from the point of view of Fechner, we have seen that there is no reason to consider them complex. But what is true of the sensations of the simplest qualities extends to thoughts of complex objects consisting of many parts. This position, unfortunately, runs counter to the widespread prejudice and therefore requires more detailed proofs. From the point of view of common sense, as well as from the point of view of almost all psychological schools, there is no doubt that a thought is composed of exactly as many ideas as there are elements in the object of thought, and these ideas are, apparently, mixed, but in their essences are separate. “There is no difficulty in admitting that an association unites the ideas of an indefinite number of individuals into one complex idea,” says J. Mill, “because this is a well-known fact. Don’t we have the idea of »army»? And isn’t this idea a complex of ideas of an indefinite number of people?
Many such quotations could be cited, and the reader at first sight is perhaps ready to lean in their favour. Suppose he thinks, «There is a deck of cards on the table.» If he begins to think with himself, then something like the following thoughts will come to his mind: “Am I not thinking about a deck of cards? Isn’t the idea of the cards the idea of the deck? Am I not thinking about the table at the same time, and finally about the legs of the table? Does not my thought include partly the idea of a deck and partly the idea of a table? Further, is not the idea of a part of each card associated with each part of the deck, and the idea of a part of each leg with the idea of a part of the table? Isn’t each of these parts an idea? But then, is not my thought a certain complex of ideas, each of which corresponds to some knowable element?
Such considerations are astonishingly unfounded, even if they seem to be commendable. When we imagine a complex of ideas, each of which expresses a certain element of a perceived fact, we do not imagine anything that would give us knowledge of the whole fact at once. According to the hypothesis of the complex of ideas under consideration, the idea that, for example, gives us knowledge of the ace of spades, should not be involved in the idea of the leg of the table, because, by virtue of this hypothesis, the knowledge of the latter fact needs a special special idea; the same must be extended to all other ideas, each of which will be alien to the content of the other. And yet, in fact, the human mind, knowing the cards, knows both the table and its leg, all these things are known to it in certain relationships to each other and, moreover, at once. Our concepts of abstract numbers (8, 4, 2) are for the cognizing mind the same single sensations as the concept of unity. The idea of a couple is not a couple of ideas. The reader may ask me, «Isn’t the taste of lemonade equal to the taste of lemon plus the taste of sugar?» No, I will object to this, you cannot mix a combination of substances with a combination of sensations. Physical lemonade consists of lemon and sugar, but its taste is not the simple sum of the tastes of sugar and lemon, for, of course, in the taste of lemonade you will least find the taste of pure citric acid on the one hand, and the taste of sugar sweetness on the other. These flavors are completely absent in lemonade. There is a taste in lemonade that to a certain extent resembles both lemon and sugar, but this taste in any case represents a peculiar state of consciousness.
Separate states of consciousness cannot mix. The idea that our ideas are only combinations of smaller elements of consciousness is not only unbelievable, it contains a logical impossibility. Those who express this thought overlook the most characteristic features that we know about combinations.
All combinations known to us are the result of the effects exerted by the units (which we call those entering into combinations) on some entity different from themselves. Without this representation of the mediating factor, the concept of combination has no meaning.
In other words, entities (whether you call them forces, material particles, or psychic elements) cannot combine by themselves with each other into something qualitatively new; no matter how great their number. Each in the sum either remains what it was, and the sum appears to exist in itself only to an outside observer who has lost sight of the constituent elements and considers it directly, only as such, or the sum may exist as a factor acting on which some other entity external to it. We say that H2 and O give water and thus exhibit new properties, but this water is nothing but the old atoms in a new arrangement: H-O-H; the new properties consist only in the combined effect produced by the atoms in their new arrangement (in the form of water) on the external environment, for example, on our sense organs and on various reagents in which the chemical properties of water are manifested. In exactly the same way, the forces of many people are added together when they pull the rope together, the forces of many muscle fibers are added together, applied to one tendon.
In a parallelogram of forces, it is not the forces that add up to the resultant diagonal, but the body on which they act moves in the direction of the resultant. Similarly, musical sounds do not combine by themselves into consonances or dissonances. Consonances and dissonances are the names for the combined effects of sounds on the external environment — on the ear.
When sensations are taken as elementary units, the essence of the matter remains unchanged. Take a hundred of them, mix them up, put them together as closely as possible (if that can mean anything) — and yet each sensation remains the same as it was, closed in on itself, blind, alien to other sensations and their meaning. . Having formed such a group of 100 sensations, we will get some 101st sensation, a new act of consciousness will arise, embracing the group as such and representing a completely new fact. By virtue of some curious law of nature, 100 initial sensations separately could precede their creative synthesis (after all, we often get acquainted with the constituent elements before we meet them combined into a sum), but there is no real identity between them and their sum, and vice versa; one cannot deduce one from the other, or in any intelligible sense speak of the evolution of a sum from a set of terms.
Let’s take some phrase of 12 words and distribute these words one by one among 12 persons, put them in a row or collect them in a close group — and let each person mentally pronounce his word with the greatest possible intensity, and yet it will not occur to anyone whole phrase. True, we are talking about the «spirit of the century», about the «people’s feeling» and, in general, we personify «public opinion» in various ways. But we are well aware of this conditional mode of expression, and we never think that «spirit», «opinion» or «feeling» refer to some additional collective consciousness, and do not serve to designate the totality of consciousness of individual individuals, denoted by the words «age». ”, “people”, “society”.
Separate consciousnesses do not merge into a higher complex consciousness. This fact has always served in psychology as an irresistible argument of spiritualists against the adherents of associationism. The latter argue that the mind consists of many separate ideas associated into one. “There is,” they say, “in our minds an idea a and an idea b. So there is also the idea of a and b taken together, i.e., a+b.” Saying this is like saying that in algebra the square a + the square b = the square (a+b), that is, [a2+b2= (a+b)2]=a2+2a+b2]. Such an assertion is obviously absurd. The idea a + the idea b are not identical with the idea a + b; here — one idea, there — two; in the latter case, that which knows a knows also b; in the first case something that knows a is deliberately signified as not knowing b. In short, two ideas, by virtue of the laws of logic, can never be expressed by one idea. If any idea (for example, the idea a + b) follows in experience two separate ideas (a and b), then we must consider it the product of later special factors in comparison with the factors that brought into existence the preceding ideas a and b.
However, if one admits the existence of a stream of consciousness at all, then it would be easiest to assume that existing ideas are always conscious as a separate stream of this stream. When many objects are perceived in the brain, numerous processes can take place. But the mental phenomenon related to these numerous processes represents one whole stable or transient state of consciousness perceiving heterogeneous objects.
Soul as a combining principle
Representatives of spiritualism in philosophy have always been inclined to assert that simultaneously cognizable (heterogeneous) objects are cognized by something, and this something, according to these philosophers, is not a purely passing thought, but some simple and unchanging spiritual essence, which is affected by combining , numerous ideas. In this case, it makes no difference to us whether we call this entity «soul», «spirit» or «I» — its main function will still be the role of a combining environment. In the soul we will meet a bearer of knowledge, different from the stream in which, as we have indicated above, the mysterious process of knowledge could be carried out with such simplicity. Who really is the cognizing subject: an unchanging spiritual essence or a transient state of consciousness? If we had other, hitherto unforeseen grounds for admitting the soul into our psychology, then, by virtue of these grounds, it might turn out to be a cognizing subject as well. <...> It is impossible to fully explain the assumption of the soul, but it can figure in psychology only as a primary, indecomposable fact.
But there are other motives in favor of the assumption of the soul in psychology, the most important of which is the feeling of personal identity.
Feeling of personal identity
In the foregoing chapter we showed that the thoughts whose existence is certain do not run erratically in our head, but seem to belong to this and not to another particular person. Each thought, among many others, can distinguish akin from those alien to it. Kindred thoughts seem to vividly feel their kinship, which cannot be said at all about thoughts that are alien to one another; as a result, my personality of yesterday is felt to be identical with my personality that is inferring at this moment. As a purely subjective phenomenon, this judgment presents nothing particularly mysterious. It belongs to a large class of judgments of identity, and it is no more remarkable to express the idea of identity in the first person than in the second or third; the mental process seems to be essentially identical, whether I say: «I am identical with my personality in the past» or: «This pen is the same as it was yesterday.» One is just as easy to think of as the opposite. The whole question is whether such a judgment would be correct. Does the identity actually take place in this case?
Identity in personality as a cognizable element.
If in the judgment «My personality is identical with my yesterday’s personality» we understand personality in the broadest sense of the word, then it is obvious that in many respects it is not identical. As a concrete person, I am different from what I was: then I was, for example, hungry, but now I am full; then I walked — now I rest; then I was poorer — now richer; younger then, older now, and so on. And yet in other respects, which we may recognize as the most significant, I have not changed. My name, my profession, my relations with others have remained the same; my abilities and memory reserve have not changed in a noticeable way since then. Besides, my then and present personalities are continuous; the changes there occurred gradually and never touched my whole being at once.
Thus, my personal identity with myself is in no way different in character from the identity established between some material aggregates. This is an inference based either on the similarity in essential features, or on the continuity of the compared phenomena. The term personal identity should have only that meaning which is guaranteed by the said grounds; it should not be understood in the sense of an absolute, metaphysical unity in which all differences must be obscured. Personality in its present and past is identical only in so far as there really is identity in it — nothing more. Its identity is generic. But this generic identity exists with just as real generic features, and if from one point of view I represent one person, then from another I can just as well be considered many personalities.
The same can be said about the sign of continuity; it communicates to the personality only the unity of «continuity», wholeness, some quite definite empirical property — and nothing more.
Identity in personality as a cognitive element
Everything that has been said so far has referred to personality as a knowable element in consciousness. In the judgment «I am identical with myself» we understood «I» in the broadest sense of the word, as a concrete person. Now let’s try to consider the «I» from a narrower point of view, as a cognizing subject, somehow, to which all the specific properties of a person are related and by which they are known. Wouldn’t it then turn out that the «I» at different intervals of time is absolutely identical? Something that constantly goes beyond its limits of the present, consciously assuming to itself the personality of the past and excluding from itself that which does not belong to the latter as alien, is this something not a certain constant, unchanging principle of spiritual activity, which is always and everywhere identical with itself?
In the realm of philosophy and in everyday life, the prevailing answer to this question is in the affirmative; and yet this thought is difficult to justify by subjecting it to logical analysis. If there were no transient states of consciousness, then indeed we could assume that the unchanging principle, absolutely identical with itself, is in each of us an unceasingly thinking subject. But if we recognize individual states of consciousness as real facts, then there is no need to assume any substantial identity for the cognizing subject.
Yesterday’s and today’s states of consciousness do not have any substantial identity, because while some of them are here, there, others have irretrievably died, disappeared. Their identity is functional, since both cognize the same objects, and since the past of my personality is one of these objects, they relate to it in the same way, favoring it, calling it their own and opposing it to all other cognizable things. This functional identity of personality appears to us to be the only kind of identity that must be admitted from the facts of experience. A series of persons with a past of exactly the same content are perfectly adequate bearers of that empirical personality identity that each of us actually has. Psychology, as a natural science, must admit the existence of a stream of mental states that is completely analogous to similar thought processes in a successive series of persons, and, moreover, a stream of such mental states, each of which is associated with complex objects of knowledge, experiences various emotions in relation to them and acts between them. them a well-known choice.
From all that has been said, the following logically follows: psychology deals only with certain states of consciousness. To prove the existence of the soul is a matter of metaphysics or theology, but for psychology such a hypothesis of the substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
How our «I» appropriates the content of personality
But why does each successive state of consciousness appropriate the past content of the personality? I mentioned above that my past life experience appears to me in such a sympathetic light, in which the past experience of others never appears to me. Let’s try to find a proper explanation for this. My real personality is felt by me with a touch of kinship and warmth. In this case, there is a heavy warm mass of my body, there is also the core of my spiritual personality — a feeling of inner activity. Without the simultaneous consciousness of these two objects, it is impossible for us to realize real personality.
Any object located at a distance, if it satisfies these conditions, will be recognized by us with the same feeling of warmth and affinity.
But what distant objects actually satisfy this condition? Obviously, those, and only those, who satisfied this condition before, during their existence. We will always remember them with a feeling of lively sympathy; to them, perhaps, the impulses of our inner activity will actually incline again. The natural consequence of this will be that we will begin to assimilate the past states of our consciousness with each other and with the present feeling of sympathy and intimacy in our personality and at the same time separate them as a group from foreign objects that do not satisfy this condition in exactly the same way as An American pastoralist, having released for the winter herds and herds to graze on some wide western prairie, in the spring, when a buyer appears, from the mass of animals belonging to various persons, selects and sorts those belonging to him and having a special sign.
Something completely analogous is presented to us by our past experience. The experience of others, however much I may know about it, is always devoid of that living stigma that the objects of my own past experience possess. That is why Peter, waking up in the same bed with Paul and remembering what they both thought about before going to sleep, appropriates and identifies the pretty ones as his own and never feels the inclination to confuse them with the cold and pale images in which Paul’s spiritual life appears to him. . Such a mistake is just as impossible as it is impossible to mix your body, which you see and feel, with the body of another person, which you only see. Each of us, waking up, says: “Here is my old personality again,” just as he could say: “Here is the old bed again, the old room, the old world.”
In the same way, during our waking hours, although one state of consciousness dies, constantly being replaced by another, yet this other state of consciousness among the objects of knowledge finds its predecessor and, seeing in it, in the manner described above, an uncooled vitality, favors it, saying: «You are mine, you are part of the same consciousness as I am.» Each later thought, embracing and cognizing previous thoughts, is the ultimate successor and owner of their content. According to Kant, something is happening here analogous to how if elastic balls were endowed not only with movement, but also with the awareness of this movement, and the first ball communicated its movement and awareness to the second, which would communicate both, along with its awareness and movement. to the third, until finally the last ball contained all that was communicated by others and was conscious of it all as its own.
Thanks to such a focus, when a nascent thought immediately picks up a disappearing one and appropriates its content, a connection is formed in our consciousness between the most distant elements of our personality. Whoever possesses the last element of consciousness, also possesses the penultimate one, for he who possesses the possessor also possesses the possessed. It is impossible to indicate any features in personal identity, the existence of which could be proved by experience and which would not have been indicated by us above; it is impossible to imagine how the transcendental principle of unity (if it were present in this case) could unite material for a certain purpose or be known not as a product of a stream of consciousness in which each subsequent part cognizes and, cognizing, embraces and appropriates everything that preceded it. , being a representative of the entire past stream, with which it cannot (really) be identified.