Feeling, Cognition, and Conation

Stout, G. F.; J. Brough and Alexander Bain 1889-1890. Symposium: Is the Distinction of Feeling, Cognition, and Conation Valid as an Ultimate Distinction of the Mental Functions? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1(3): 142-156.

The first meaning given to the phrase "mental function" is based on a logical analysis of the constituent conditions of consciousness according to which it involves: (a) a subject which is conscious, (b) an object of which it is conscious, and (c) the relation between them which, regarded as a function of the subject, may be called the state or act of being conscious. It is maintained that the ultimate distinction between mental functions is not a distinction between different kinds of objects or between different modes of behaviour on the part of objects. It is rather a distinction between different ways of being conscious - different relations in which the pure ego may stand to one and the same object. The same presentation may, it is contended, be an object both of intellectual apprehension and of desire. The difference is purely a difference in the attitude of the subject. (Stout, Brough & Bain 1889-1890: 142)

Both semiosis and discernment are, thus, "mental function" going by another name. As these distinctions pervade functional linguistics, it may be said that the latter, too, are nothing more than the attitude taken by the conscious subject. This is why it should be taken as false to view any given utterance to carry an intrinsic function of one type or another - it is up to the interpreting consciousness to determine the function - or, better yet, functions in plural, with their interrelations and "hierarchy".

Among recent English writers on Psychology there is only one, so far as I know, who has definitely taken up this position. Dr. Ward recognises three distinct and irreducible facts - attention, feeling, and objects or presentations. Attention and feeling are functions of the subject, and as such stand in a relation of exclusive antithesis to objects and their interactions. This division by no means coincides with that into intellect, feeling, and volition. Attention is regarded as the subjective function common both to intellect and volition. The difference between them is constituted by the difference in the nature of the object attended to, according as these are motor or sensory. (Stout, Brough & Bain 1889-1890: 143)

This is arguable. The conflation of attention and intention marks both out as Secondness. Though it must be questioned why feeling is excluded from attention - can we not attend to our feelings or control them through volition?

I do not, however, intend to deny that there is a sense in which intellectual apprehension, feeling, and volition can be legitimately regarded as subjective functions. (Stout, Brough & Bain 1889-1890: 144)

(Re-)Presentation.

It is represented as striking in upon the flow of ideas so as to combine, separate, strengthen, repress or otherwise modify the contents of consciousness. (Stout, Brough & Bain 1889-1890: 145)

Reads like a list of operations involved in the association of ideas.

On one of the leading questions connected with our present subject the delivery of introspection is decided and unambiguous. Feeling on the one hand, and intellectual presentation on the other, are for consciousness fundamentally and irreducibly distinct. Presentations in the limited application of the word are capable of synthesis and analysis; they form wholes of discriminated and interrelated elements. They are capable of being reproduced and associated; in other words they may recur again and again in clear consciousness, and they tend to recur in the same combinations. Feelings, on the other hand, are transient concomitants of ever fluctuating conditions. They are incapable of being directly identified and distinguished, or of being constituent parts in a totality of discriminated and interrelated elements. Inasmuch as they cannot be identified as the same at different times, it is meaningless to speak [|] of them as being reproduced or associated. It will, I think, be found that these statements are strictly and universally true, if we take due care to distinguish between pure feelings of pleasure and pain on the one hand, and the vague modifications of organic and muscular sensation which accompany them on the other. (Stout, Brough & Bain 1889-1890: 146-147)

I am not at all sure that modern neuroscience would back up this absolute distinction between feeling and thought. While I would agree that feelings "are incapable of being directly identified and distinguished", as I have argued many times against the notion that all emotions necessarily have (identifiable) objects (per Brentano), I am at the same time sure that feelings can be reproduced and associated wilfully.

We have to consider whether, as thus defined, intellect, feeling, and volition, are ultimate mental functions. It is possible to regard intellect as a special development of feeling or volition? Can volition be properly regarded as a special modification of intellect or feeling? Is it legitimate to treat feeling as an outgrowth of volition or intellect? Each of these questions must, I think, be answered decidedly in the negative. (Stout, Brough & Bain 1889-1890: 148)

I am still unable to shake what I heard from a random philosophy podcast, that thought might be an epiphenomenon - that what we call "thinking" is completely explained away by the interplay of feeling and volition.

The part played by motor activity in giving unity to mental action is quite as important as the part it plays in producing change, although, as far as I am aware, no psychologist has explicitly noticed the point. The unity of the individual consciousness seems to depend on the successive salience and dominance of special presentations which constitute in turn the focus of the total mental activity from moment to moment. This is expressed in ordinary language by saying that we can only think of one thing at a time. (Stout, Brough & Bain 1889-1890: 149)

Sounds exactly like the experiments conducted by Peirce in the first American psychology laboratory.

I finally come into nearest sympathy with Professor Bain. He adopts at the outset, a threefold classification of Mental States, and declares Volition a distinct fact from Feeling (Senses and Intellect, p. 2); distinguishes Volition from Feeling as superadding the characteristic of energy put forth (p. 5); describes, in a threefold aspect, the several detailed states (p. 74); remarks the failure of Herbart to ignore the primitive character of Volition (p. 670); and assigns activity as a cause which gives to our sensations the character of compounds, while itself is a simple and elementary property (Emotions and Will, p. 303). Yet finally he regards the modes of Consciousness growing up in the course of voluntary action as all either emotional or intellectual (p. 554), and admits as feasible a certain approach to a unity in mind by treating Volition as a complex fact made up of feeling and bodily activity (p. 557). Volition, then, may be a unique fact of consciousness, just as Association might be, but is not a unique element, mode, or function. (Stout, Brough & Bain 1889-1890: 153)

Bain does indeed seem to be the main culprit. I shall have to make a foray into his books.

That the ultimate constituents of mind are three, and no more than three, is the first point for discussion. To deny this is to maintain either that two of the alleged constituents can be resolved into one, or that the three taken together are not exhaustive, and must be supplemented by some fourth mode of mental agency. (Stout, Brough & Bain 1889-1890: 154)

Aesthetics, free play, and spirituality are all historical candidates (though admittedly not "mutually exclusive"). Besides raising the question of collapsing the three into two and the impossibility of adding a fourth, this symposium was a dud, a dead end.