STRUCTURE AND GROWTH OF THE MIND PREFACE WE bring to the study of the mind not merely an acquaint aflce with the facts of experience but an explanation of them, to which we have been introduced, and are bound, by no less tried an authority than our mother tongue. The explanation v has been formed without debate, as if there were no alterna tive but to model the mind, its powers, and its working, on the ordinary notion of a physical thing. It has given us a good working knowledge of our own and other minds and it is not set ...
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STRUCTURE AND GROWTH OF THE MIND PREFACE WE bring to the study of the mind not merely an acquaint aflce with the facts of experience but an explanation of them, to which we have been introduced, and are bound, by no less tried an authority than our mother tongue. The explanation v has been formed without debate, as if there were no alterna tive but to model the mind, its powers, and its working, on the ordinary notion of a physical thing. It has given us a good working knowledge of our own and other minds and it is not set aside by excluding from psychology the problems that it undertakes. These are of two sorts one concerning the causes, the other concerning the functions, of experience. It gives the causes of experience sometimes in physical, sometimes in mental terms it gives the mental causes sometimes as faculties, sometimes as experience it regards the faculties as forces acting together or against one another and it regards experiences either in the same way, or even as a matter with a chemical action. We are as willing to give up this kind of explanation as the corresponding explanation of physical things but, as there, the only effectual way is to substitute a better and that is a matter of study, and not merely of changing an opinion. The demand goes deeper when to the causes we add the functions of experience. The question of jesting Pilate is no part of psychology, but there is no more certain source of confusion than to ignore the question how a thought claims, and rightly claims, to be true. We may be ready to give up the familiar answer which is easily seen to be meta vii viii STRUCTURE AND GROWTH OF THE MIND phorical and impossible but in order to substitute another, though there is no doubt about it, we have to undertake what seems at first like a revolution against common sense. Here again it is a question not of changing one opinion for another, but of making a study in order to understand, just as it is in the corresponding revolution where physics trans forms our ordinary notion of material things, their powers and qualities. As little can we be satisfied with the metaphors which explain the functions of experience other than knowledge. We may ignore its functions, treating experience as so much complexity of feeling or state of consciousness and an analysis of the kind is indispensable. But if this is to take experience as barely and empirically as possible, it is also to take it as abstractly as possible and, as always, the ignoring brings dispute and confusion, if we do not begin by observing the full fact from which we make the abstraction. There is not less but more reason for a systematic knowledge of experience when we consider that, as some one has said, psychology is no longer one study but a cyclopaedia. Unless we understand what is meant by an explanation of experience, and know how the questions are connected, and serve the purposes of one another, the division of the labour must appear a strife and not an organisation. The want of such a knowledge is not confined to the psychological speculations that one meets in general literature, and that so often suggest the physical theorising of those who refuse to enter by the toilsome way of mechanics. It is found in those who think that experience has no function, and in those who limit the mind to what they think the brain capable of being and doing, as well as in those who think themind capable of anything. There is, finally, the same need if we consider not what psychology requires, but what is requjred of psychology. In theory there are not merely the obvious demands of the PREFACE ix normative sciences, viz. logic, ethics, and aesthetics, but those of philosophy and neurology and in practice there are the demands of education and medicine. The gradual separation of psychology and - philosophy in the course of last century was not without its bitterness on both sides...
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Add this copy of Structure & Growth of the Mind to cart. $7.00, good condition, Sold by James Cummings Bookseller rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Signal Mountain, TN, UNITED STATES, published 1907 by Macmillan of London.
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This book has hardback covers. Ex-library, With usual stamps and markings, In fair condition, suitable as a study copy. No dust jacket. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 1100grams, ISBN:
Add this copy of Structure & Growth of the Mind to cart. $22.61, fair condition, Sold by Victoria Bookshop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bere Alston, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1907 by 1907.
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This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has hardback covers. In good all round condition. No dust jacket. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 1100grams, ISBN:
Add this copy of Structure and Growth of the Mind to cart. $32.37, new condition, Sold by Paperbackshop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bensenville, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by Hardpress Publishing.
Add this copy of Structure Growth of the Mind to cart. $32.37, new condition, Sold by Paperbackshop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bensenville, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by Hardpress Publishing.
