- Baldwin, James Mark 1907a. Thought and Language
- Baldwin, James Mark 1896a. The Genesis of Social "Interests"
- Maudsley, Henry 1889. The Double Brain
Baldwin, James Mark 1907a. Thought and Language. Psychological Review 14(3): 181-204. [DOI: 10.1037/h0074382]
In the first place, it may be pointed out that logical meanings constitute a context of thoughts. The prelogical meanings of all sorts, the individuated contents established by processes earlier than explicit judgment, are taken up in the organized system of experience which is the objective thought-world of the thinker. It is first of all the thinker's experience, controlled in the inner processes of judgment and acknowledgment, whatever further reference or confirmation it may have as being true to or cognizant of 'reality.' (Baldwin 1907a: 181)
Mõtleja objektiivne mõttemaailm korrastab ka ebaloogilisi tähendusi.
Furthermore and third, this common character and meaning of the subject matter of thought was found to rest genetically or prelogically upon a process that is both social and experimental: the process described in our earlier discussions under the term 'secondary conversion.' We found that the context of knowledge, considered as a confirmed and established body of data, was in very essential ways due to the recognition and use of the contents of the minds of one's social fellows. (Baldwin 1907a: 182)
Teadmiste kontekst on hädavajalik ühiskonnakaaslaste mõistuste sisu äratundmiseks.
All but the original substantive parts of experience - the parts found directly convertible into the hard coin of persisting and recurring fact - was actually set off from the fugitive and private images of fancy, through such secondary and essentially social conversion process. It was in the further development of this motive, it will be remembered also, that the marks of knowledge as general, universal, and even singular were derived. The conclusion that knowledge - in any mode that is not subpersonal nad so subsocial - is a 'social outcome rather than a private possession,' summed up our results in the matter. (Baldwin 1907a: 182)
Reminiscent of Clay's distinction between fugitive and durable modifications of mind. The subpersonal/subsocial distinction is reminiscent of Morris's distinctions, where private/fugitive symbols are termed "post-language" symbols.
Finally we may point out, in addition to the foregoing, a character of thought which has not as yet been adverted to; one that fixes genetically both the social motive and the experimental motive as now put in evidence. It is the linguistic character of thought. Thought is a system of predications or assertions that may be embodied in a more or less explicit system of symbols for purposes of inter-personal communication. (Baldwin 1907a: 183)
The conditional "may be" is probably the most important point.
The old problem put in the question, 'Is thought possible without speech,' has no real significance except so far as it is set genetically or from the point of view of the comparative origin and development of these two great functions. (Baldwin 1907a: 183)
Nevertheless it's a question that crops up constantly, something we cannot get over.
For the purposes of linguistic theory, this may be called the 'personal' or 'dynamic' point of view. It recognizes the fact that the person is the source of new accretions of social meaning, and the dynamic movement of such meaning is made possible only as the results of personal thought find adequate and appropriate expression. It considers language as a live thing, flexible in its growth with the development of thought, divergent and varying in its comparative system of symbolism. (Baldwin 1907a: 184)
Signs grow, from one to many.
But the further question as to the conservation, the conventionalizing - in the large sense, the socializing - of meanings, whereby they show themselves more than personal, and in an important sense also less than personal, is equally urgent. This question may be put sharply thus: how can a system of symbols serving as expression of a dynamic movement of personal thought, also serve as the embodiment of established and conventionalized social meaning? (Baldwin 1907a: 184)
Also "crystallization" and "ossification".
This inquiry has direct enforcement from the side of the psychology of what is called 'intercourse.' There is no purely 'personal' intercourse; all intercourse is in its constitution inter-personal. Its intent is to be understood as well as to be expressed. It becomes necessary to enlarge the theory of expression to make its unit one of common meaning. The lowest functional term of expression is in some crude sense [|] 'intercourse' - the development of common meaning. Turning, therefore, to the theories of language reached from the social side, we find a second type. (Baldwin 1907a: 184-185)
Denying the existence of intrapersonal communication?
The Social or Static Theory. The theory of common symbolic meaning would seem not to find its problem in the first instance in personal expression. Its problem is not how personal meaning could become common in its expression, but how a conventionally common meaning could be the vehicle of genuine personal experience. Would not any system of symbolic meanings become, just by the rigidity and static character that its social fixity would impart, unavailable for personal purposes? (Baldwin 1907a: 185)
It is kinda amazing that he finds this problematic at all.
Indeed, the function of language, we are told by the static theorists, does not extend to the expression of what is personal as such. It comes to reflect personal interest only by being first of all conventional and common. The demand of intercourse is for a symbolism to express meanings already understood and accepted. It is only by social generalization that a meaning can become eligible for linguistic embodiment at all. Witness the fact that feeling and impulse, so far as they are not thrown into descriptive form as knowledge, cannot be given common linguistic rendering. Music may be cited: what does music really express? It is only so far as a meaning has taken on a form that gives it currency in society that it is made a matter of intelligible speech. (Baldwin 1907a: 185)
This is where I concur wholeheartedly. The limits of language are most palpably felt at the prescipice of feeling.
Upon this type of theory a view is based which makes language a static, stereotyped system of forms. The classics, being no longer living and growing but dead, offer the models of literary form. Any current modes of speech and language that do not fit into these models, so far fall short of the instrumental adequacy that facile social intercourse demands. (Baldwin 1907a: 185)
"But the widened conception of context of situation yields more than that. It makes clear the difference in scope and method between the linguistics of dead and of living languages. The material on which almost all our linguistic study has been done so far belongs to dead languages." (Malinowski 1923: 306)
Just as there is a sphere of personal experience that is ineligible to common and symbolic expression, so there is a sphere of common and public experience that is ineligible to strictly personal and private uses. In their range, in short, personal meanings and social meanings overlap but do not coincide. Consequently, there is the requirement all the way along that the symbols of conventional expression be so far as possible flexible in order to embody the accretions to personal experience; and on the other hand, that they be fixed enough to embody the habitual and conventionalized meanings of historical and common experience. This requirement is embodied in the view, now fast gaining ground, that language is a growing organic thing, relatively satisfactory for the epoch and the gorup; but by no means containing or requiring a system of fixed and stereotyped meanings. (Baldwin 1907a: 186)
Kinda abstract; could do with examples.
The interest at work may be of this or that sort according as this or that group of meanings ordinarily called a 'topic' is being pursued. This in turn varies with all the dispositional or other tendencies or motives coming to consciousness in the individual. The content itself, so considered as a subject-matter of thought, has relations, discovered or not discovered, in a larger whole of meaning. For example, the item 'horse' may have very different lines of import developed according as I am conversing with a horseman, a naturalist, a dealer, or a veterinary surgeon. In each case only those ramifications of meaning that are relevant to the common interest of the parties to the situation are elucidated and further advanced. (Baldwin 1907a: 192)
Relevance Theory at large.
How the more superficial sorts of comprehension of a subject are possible might be made subject of further remark; here it may suffice to say that when they are thus of the superficial sort, it is pseudo-thinking; it gives meanings that remain in large part either in a mode not yet judgmental, or so habitual as to be under mere reality-feeling, or again they are mere material for schematic use in this way or that when judgment upon their further relevancies is actually achieved. (Baldwin 1907a: 193)
I feel personally attacked. Mostly because this is my first closer acquaintance with Baldwin and his terminology is yet foreign and largely incomprehensible.
If genuinely receptive, indeed, the attitude of the hearer is one of continuoun thinking. His selective interests are not severely taxed, since the relevant information is directly supplied to him. But the meanings suggested to him are, in the first instance, merely proposed, assumptive, experimental. Each item added to the whole requires assimilation by some process complementary to that whereby, in the contrasted case, he tests in the social environment the meanings of his own suggestion. (Baldwin 1907a: 193)
In contrast to phatic communion, which is unreflective - the hearer might not be thinking, or even listening, at all.
And there must also be supposed a form of correlation between these two types of meaning, considered as being in a situation in which the speaker and hearer get the same subject-matter at the same time - as indeed they must lest intercourse lose its commonness and so be futile. (Baldwin 1907a: 194)
Dorothy Lee, once again, having hit the nail on the head.
Baldwin, James Mark 1896a. The Genesis of Social "Interests". The Monist 7(3): 340-357. [DOI: 10.5840/monist18977329]
The outcome serves to afford a point of departure for the view which we may entertain of the person as he appears to himself in society. If it be true, as all the evidence goes to show, that what the person thinks of himself is a pole or terminus at one end of an opposition in the sense of personality generally, and that the other pole or terminus is the thought he has of the other person, the alter, then it is impossible to take his thought of himself at any time and say that in thinking of himself he is not essentially thinking of the alter also. (Baldwin 1896a: 341)
The looking glass self.
The acts now possible to himself, and so used by him to describe himself in thought to himself, were formerly only possible to the other; but by imitating that other he has brought them over to the opposite pole, and found them applicable with a richer meaning, and a modified value, as true predicates of himself also. If he thinks of himself in any particular past time, he can single out what was then he, as opposed to what has since become he; and the residue, the part of him that has since become he, that was then only thought of - if it was thought of as an attribute of personality at all - as attaching to some one whom he was acquainted with. (Baldwin 1896a: 342)
Sounds like a psychological interpretation of the old saying, kes teisele nime annab, see ise seda kannab.
So the truth we now learn is this: that each and all of the particular marks which I now call mine, when I think of myself, has had just this origin; I have first found it in my social environment, and by reason of my social and imitative disposition, have transferred it to myself by trying to act as if it were true of me, and so coming to find out that it is true of me. And further, all the things I hope to learn, to acquire, to become, all - if I think of them in a way to have any clear thought of my possible future - are now, before I acquire them, simply elements of my thought of others, of the social alter, or of what considered generally we may calle the "socius." (Baldwin 1896a: 342)
The imitation theory of selfhood: I can become what I see around me.
But we should also note that what has been said of the one pole of this dialectical relation, the pole of self, is equally true of the other also - the pole represented by the other person, the later. What do I have in mind when I think of him as a person? Evidently I must construe him, a person, in terms of what I think of myself, the only person whom I know in the intimate way we call "subjective." (Baldwin 1896a: 343)
I am the measure against which I evaluate others.
So my thought of any other man - or all other men - is, to the richest degree. that which I understand of myself, together with the uncertainties of interpretation which my further knowledge of his acts enables me to conjecture. It think him rational, emotional, volitional, as I am; and the details of his more special characteristics, as far as I understand them at all, I weave out of possible actions of my own, when circumstances call me out in similar ways. But there is always the sense that there is more to understand about him; for as we have seen, he constantly, by the diversities between us which I do not yet comprehend, sets me new actions to imitate for my own growth. (Baldwin 1896a: 343)
The triad. The ending, the "growth", has a very positive ring to it.
Or we take a group of individuals together as we find them is society and ask how it is that these individuals could have come together. All this without so much as consulting the single person psychologically as to the view he has of his own social life, his opportunities, and his obligations! (Baldwin 1896a: 344)
How indeed.
To bring our development of the sense of personality, therefore, into view of these questions, let us attack one of the main points in the theory of society which recent discussion has tended to formulate. This point is that which concerns the "interests" of the individual. What are the interests of the individual, and how do they stand related to the interests of the community, state, social group, in which the individual lives? (Baldwin 1896a: 345)
The order is somewhat off. According to size, it should run: individual → social group → community → state.
But this sense of equal interest, desert, because of identical position in the evolution of selves, what is this but the sense of justice in the abstract, and in the concrete, the feeling of sympathy with the other? (Baldwin 1896a: 346)
A definition of sympathy: identification of interests.
This is true just in so far as there is a certain typical other self whose relation to me has been that of social give and take by which the whole development of a sense of self of any kind has been made possible. (Baldwin 1896a: 346)
Reminiscent of "the give and take of utterances". Stored for paraphrasis.
We find that such a child shows, in the very first stages of his sense of himself as a being of rights, duties, etc., a very organic nature. He is occupied mainly with the business of learning about himself, other people, and nature. He imitates everything, being a veritable copying-machine. He spends the time not given to imitating others very largely in practicing what he has picked up by his imitations, and in the exploiting of these accomplishments. (Baldwin 1896a: 347)
Found a title.
But on the other hand, there are persons to whom his attitude has a right to be different. In the case of these the dialectic has gone farther. He has mastered all their features, he can do himself what they do, he anticipates no new developments in his intercourse with them; so he "ejects" them, as the psychological expression is; for an "eject" is a person whose consciousness has only those elements in it which the individual who thinks of that consciousness is able, out of his own store of experience, to read into it. It is ejective to him, for he makes it what he will, in a sense. (Baldwin 1896a: 348)
Not at all certain if this is Bosanquet's meaning of "eject".
Now the further advance which he makes in this general sense of social situation as a whole, is in the line of carrying this same adaptability of attitude into his relation to each of the persons whom he knows. (Baldwin 1896a: 351)
Something along the lines of "reading the room".
He learns the signs of warmth, of good humor, of sorrow, of joy, hope, love, jealousy, giving them added interpretation all the time which his own imitation of them enables him to make by realising what they mean in his own experience. (Baldwin 1896a: 351)
Semiotics of the context of situation, it looks like.
He thinks of the other, the alter, as his socius, just as he thinks of himself as the other's socius: and the only thing that remains more or less stable, in the midst of the whole growth, is [|] the fact that there is a growing sense of self which includes both terms, the ego and the alter. In short, the real self is the social self, the socius. (Baldwin 1896a: 352-353)
An alternative formulation of the looking glass self.
But in the larger social whole of adult life both elements are so complex - the solidified self of the individual's history is so fixed, and the social suggestions of the community are so varied and conflicting - that the outcome of the fusion is a thing that no man can prophesy. (Baldwin 1896a: 355)
Possibly something to connect with "social meaning". I expect him to have much more to say about "suggestion".
Maudsley, Henry 1889. The Double Brain. Mind 14(54): 161-187. [JSTOR]
In the former case the loss of one organ would mean so much subtraction of function only, a loss which might be made good by the increased action of the other that was left; in the latter case the loss of one half would not be a lessening only, but a laming function, which could not be compensated by any increased action of the remaining half. (Maudsley 1889: 162)
Noted for the odd use of "function". Similar to the oddity of "the function of language" (Baldwin 1907a: 185, above).
When we reflect upon the intimate constitution and structural connexions of the brain, it seems the natural conclusion that it is not formed of two distinct organs any more than the body is formed of two distinct bodies; that, like the body, it is a bilateral structure. Essentially it is a great aggregate of nerve-centres and nerve-tracts, part of, and administering organ in, a circle of communication between the organism and its medium, nowise a separate and paramount centre of authority, a sort of supreme organ apart, as ordinary language might seem sometimes to imply; an aggregate with which all parts of the body are in communion, mediate or immediate, in which they may be said to have direct or indirect representation, through which the whole works in each part and each part in the whole; and it is bound, therefore, by its constitution and relations, however great the separateness of its halves in respect of some functions, to be fundamentally a double organ ministering to one function, the function of one body. It represents at the same time the halves of the body and the unity of the whole whereof itself is part. (Maudsley 1889: 162)
Sounds a bit like Uexküll's "functional circle". Loving the use of "communion" here: "the halves of the double brain [...] are respectively in communion with and representative of similar organs and structures of the body" (ibid).
It is almost universally admitted now that each cerebral hemisphere contains the centre of voluntary movements and of sensory perceptions for the opposite side of the body; experiments on animals and observations of disease in man having apparently put the conclusion beyond all reasonable question. (Maudsley 1889: 163)
Once again reminiscent of Uexküll, voluntary and sensory mirroring the Wirk- and Merkwelt.
For we may note here that it does not matter whether the associated centres in such case lie close together so as apparently to form one organ or not; if they are closely united in structure by fibres of association, and habitually associated in function, they are practically one notwithstading that they lie some distance apart. (Maudsley 1889: 164)
Neat expression, could be used metaphorically for the quality, size or strength of mental associations.
But the main reason is, perhaps, that years are required to learn the exceeding nice, exact, numerous and complex movements of speech, which really go along in their acquisition and development pari passu with the acquisition and development of reason, whereas the simpler, fever and less fine movements of writings may be taught in a few months. Words being the symbols of reasoning, the definite fixing of them and of the fine shades of their meaning - the nice and exact organisation of their proper nervous substrata - need long time and work, but once they have been acquired it is not so difficult to [|] substitute other symbols for them; if a person, therefore, who has lost the use of his right hand retains his power of speech and reasoning, it ought to be little more difficult, if not easier, to teach him to write with the left hand than it was to teach him in the first instance to write with his right hand. (Maudsley 1889: 165-166)
The "question, 'Is thought possible without speech,' has no real significance" (Baldwin 1907a: 183, above), even though it keeps on cropping up.
[...] that the hemispheres act together by a sort of immediate sympathy or induction during the alternating instants that we are conscious of their respective doings, [...] (Maudsley 1889: 167)
The corpus callosum is an organ of sympathy? It does look like "sympathy" and "communion" were very common words in scientific discourse before the world wars.
What is it that unifies their action? The end or aim in view. And what is the end or aim? The conception or foresight of the act, its ideal accomplishment, which is derived from experience - either individual working experience, when it is exact, full and capable, or observation of the build-up experience of others, when it is vague and general only, incapable of unifying successfully the movements of the two bodies, capable only of supplying them with a general purpose to direct the work of gradual adaptation through repeated trials and patient practice. The purpose is complete and definite only when the effect can be completely and definitely accomplished. (Maudsley 1889: 170)
Reminiscent of Baldwin's later treatment of imitation, e.g. "But there is always the sense that there is more to understand about him; for as we have seen, he constantly, by the diversities between us which I do not yet comprehend, sets me new actions to imitate for my own growth" (Baldwin 1896a: 343, above).
Certainly perceptions are not the mere impressions on sense which they seem to be when we have acquired them, but are acts of inference or judgment grounded on experience: so easy and natural to us are they when formed that we fail to remember that we were not born with them, and to realise how slow and tedious their acquisition was actually. The first movements of the infant are notably uncertain, irregular, uncombined; they become definite, regular, and are combined by parctice; more and more so day after day by insensible degrees, until they attain an automatic ease and exactitude. (Maudsley 1889: 170)
Adjectives of automatism.
No doubt there is a certain innate predisposition or inclination of the hemispheres to enter into joint action, a sort of waiting readiness, not otherwise than as in two bodies which, without previous instruction, accomplish a sexual union that is entirely new to them; and at any rate they can do together simultaneously what one might have to do successively, and so save time. (Maudsley 1889: 171)
"But it is still less possible to admit that a man and a woman would on the first occasion, or even without any reason, part and form new unions if they were both attached so strongly to the same person - an attachment which, as in so many examples, sometimes amounted to a real passion." (Malinowski 1913)
The eye in perceiving or apprehending literally grasps, like the hand, only it grasps the image, not the object; and if the object be indistinct and uncertain, as it is when it is a long way off, the eye, like the hand, makes repeated grasps, as it were, until it hits on the fit one - searches and tries, in fact, until it succeeds in the fit motor apprehension. (Maudsley 1889: 171)
Define:apprehend - To take into custody; arrest. Understand. To become conscious of, as through the emotions or senses; perceive. Analogy between thought and eyesight. Another name for a process of consciousness, from the motive force of a stimulus or object, the spontaneous contrivance of what should be done about it, and then the "arrest" of a rational conclusion. Baldwin's theory of meaning concerns the communication of that conclusion from one person to many, and the concurrent process of imitation whereby the conclusions generally or habitually held of "common sense", is rendered unto the individual. He formulates this common sense in pleasing language: it preserves and embodies "the fruits of social and historical tradition" (Baldwin 1907a: 187).
"Kas sõnu kasutatakse faatilises suhtluses eeskätt selleks, et edasi anda tähendust, mis on sõnadel sümboolselt olemas?" (Malinowski 2020: 311) - kas hariliku või ühiskondliku läbikäimise keelelises sümbolismis on sõnadel tähendus? Kuidas on see võimalik, et me saame kohandada isiklikku kogemust, omi mõtteid, edasi anda ilma oluliste moonutusteta? Eriti kui need on väga kokkuleppelised, sattumuslikud - juhuslikult ühiseks keeleharjumuseks kujunenud väljendid ja väljendused, nö klišeed. Üks populaarne vastus on, et häälitsuste õhkamisel on emotsionaalne tähendus, mida võib olla oluliselt rohkem kui keeles sõnastiku järgi väljendatud tähistajad kirja panduna väljendavad. Selle häguse ja mõõtmatu dimensiooni eitab Malinowski seetõttu, et kui nö "kaastundeavaldustes" (expressions of sympathy) saab tuvastada "eesmärk[i] luua ühist meeleolu" (the purpose of establishing a common sentiment), "siis on see ühelt osapoolelt varjamatult võlts" (avowedly spurious on one side). Kui keegi üritab meiega klišeid vahetades ühist meeleolu tekitada, siis on see Malinowski järgi ühele osapoolele võlts. Seda saab lugeda kaheti: see, kes üritab "tundmusi" (sentiments) jagada ei ole siiras, see on ühiskondlik etteaste, võlts, feik (nt matuse leinatraditsioonidesse võib kuuluda emotsionaalne etteaste, mida ei saada siiras kaastunne - näitleja tegelikult ei tunne seda, mida ta esitab - a la Durkheim 1915: 397); teisest käest võib seda lugeda ka "tundmuste" sihtmärgi kohta - Chase (1863: 477) valgustab, et tundmus ei ole kunagi paljas tunne, vaid hinnang, mida saadab tunne. Tundmus ei ole isegi mitte hinnanguline tunne, vaid tundeline hinnang. Veel enam Chase tsiteerib Comte't, tundmus "eeldab mingisuguste ühiskondlike suhete olemasolu [ja] määrab [iseloomuliku kalduvuse või iseloomu-kalduvuse], mida [isendid] peavad üksteisele neis suhetes jätma [(impress)]" (vt samas, 477). Peale selle, et tundmused on määratluse järgi juba eos jagatud, juba nö ühiskondliku ja ajaloolise traditsiooni osa, siis peab küsimuse all seisma "tundmustaja" ja "tundmustatava" vaheline nö ühine ajalugu. Viimast omakorda võib võtta ühiskonnatasandite läbilõikes: kas nad on osa samast laiemast ühiskonnast, nt riigist või kultuurist; kas nad kuuluvad samadesse või seotud ühiskonnagruppidesse; kas neil on omavahelist suhtlusajalugu; ja viimase ning mitte-ebaolulise äärmusena mitte-suhtlustatud teadmised, nt parasotsiaalne interaktsioon. St sama ühiskond, ühiskonnaosadus, läbikäimine, ja tuntus. Siin kohtub viimane, väikseim ja väiklaseim positsioon uuesti tundmustaja ühepoolsusega: ta ei pruugi jagada tundmustatavaga samu ühiskondlikke tundmusi, aga tegutseda iseka või enesekeskse tundmuse ajendil, mispuhul saab meeldivast läbikäimisest ebameeldiv pseudoosadus, millel on, erinevalt puhtinimlikust osadusest, suhtlussituatsioonist väline eesmärk - nt Henk Haverkate (1988) on selline purist, aga seda võib välja lugeda ka faatilise osaduse "kasutusest" (futility, vt Lee 1940: 367 - does not transcend the act itself). Puhtinimlik osadus on jällegi positiivselt kasutu, meeldiv.
Presumably it is where the individual [|] is labouring to grasp some new thought, to compass a new apprehension, or where he is giving strong attention to a process of reasoning - where, in fact, new adjustments and new combinations of nerve-plexuses to new facts and relations are being made - that the process of associating the hemispheres to act together in one function is going on. (Maudsley 1889: 171-172)
"Apprehension, by means of sensation alone, fills only one moment, that is, if I do not take into consideration a succession of many sensations." (Kant 1855: 127) - "Apprehension is the Kantian word for perception, in the largest sense in which we employ that term." (Meiklejohn 1855: 127; footnote)
The fullest voluntary attention would seem to demand their conjoint action; perhaps the proportions and relations of things thus obtain representation in more adequate conceptions; there may be a strength and grasp of thought in the union which there could not be in the single action; and at any rate there will be a saving of time and wear by their doing together simultaneously what the one would have to do successively. (Maudsley 1889: 172)
Clay (1882: 205) would insist that "voluntary attention" is redundant, all true attention is voluntary, involuntary attention being quasi-attention. Substantially, perceiving and conceptualizing the object are modes of representation (Kant 1855: 224-225).
So it is perhaps that we need the joint action of the hemispheres to apprehend best intellectually, just as we need the joint action of the two hands to apprehend or grasp best physically, and the joint action of me there is notably a part which I see with one eye only, a part of it which I see with the other eye only, a much larger, in fact the greatest, part which I see with both eyes, the fileds of their visual consciousnesses coinciding there; instead of seeing two objects, as I probably did in the first instance when I began to see, I combine the two images, blending into one perception that which my eyes see in common in the object, and uniting it to that which either eye sees. (Maudsley 1889: 172)
The object grasped is missing. I don't need the joint action of two hands to grasp a pen and write. Or to use a computer mouse. I don't think this equation between "apprehend[ing] best intellectually" and "grasp[ing] best physically" is all that solid. Some things can be grasped with one hand, some things can best apprehended with one eye closed (e.g. telescoped), why can't some things be best intellectually apprehended in a single hemisphere? (cf. Fry 1977: 130-131)
Now just as in vision, once the image has been acquired by experience, the momentary impression of the object on one eye is a sign quite sufficient to awaken it fully - (and a mere sign it is, which without the previous instruction we should no more be able to interpret into the object than we should [|] be able to understand the words of an entirely unknown language) - so may it be in thought that, once the idea has been acquired by experience, the least suitable stimulus to either hemisphere suffices to excite it fully. (Maudsley 1889: 172-173)
Inchoate semiotics. Sounds like signs of cheese - that fuzzy feeling or intuition of an object that constitutes perception.
It is obvious that he might have the ordinary feelings and thought of life, and behave like other persons in the ordinary relations of life, while many subtle defects were hidden under the show of complete soundness. (Maudsley 1889: 173)
That's a judgment... or whatever Baldwin called it - is it an assertion or assumption? Maudsley both assumes and asserts (?) that a person with one hemisphere "entirely destroyed by disease" could still function in everyday life or "ordinary relations of life":
- "Human beings are to each other the sources of the greatest felicity which they are capable of enjoying, while the love of sex adds additional attractions to all the ordinary relations of life." (Henry M'Cormac - 1837: 337)
- Thus God bears testimony to His Anointed through the ordinary operations of his providence in the ordinary relations of life, through the calm coulse of history and of nature, through the spiritual bent of good men and the conscience of wicked men, through the investigations of science, the dogmas of theology, and the work of Scripture." (Lange 1872: 509)
- "No in some measure, he who is deeply conversant in the tragic phrase, in the swelling language of compassion, of generosity, and of love, finding no parallel in his common intercourse with mankind, will not so readily open his heart to the calls on his feeling, which the vulgar distresses of his fellow-creatures, or the ordinary relations of life, may occasion." (Anon 1892: 168)
It is perhaps easier to conceive that one hemisphere may do well the ordinary work of thinking, feeling and willing when the function of the other is entirely suspended or abolished than it is when its function is not abolished entirely, so leaving the sound one free play, but is deranged or discordant. (Maudsley 1889: 174)
The triad. ╙ - below, "the ordinary processes of thought, feeling and will" (ibid, 174).
The person would most likely think double, as he sees double when disorder of the action of the eyes, giving visual results contrary to his uniform experiences, causes him to see one object as two objects; in which case notably he is sometimes able after a while to learn to disregard the second object - all the more easily when the two objects are wide apart than when they are close together or overlay. (Maudsley 1889: 174)
The one man band falls apart, loses its fantasy.
When we exert will, either to think closely or to do resolutely, we draw upon the affective life or life of feeling for [|] the driving force. The intellect deals only with the clearness or dimness, the definiteness or indefiniteness of ideas, it supplies no motive energy; all the ideas in the world might pass through it without there being any feeling or desire in relation to them - without appetence or inappetence; it would never experience the least motive of indulgence towards one rather than another, would never tend to one rather than another. The desire tinging any idea, the affective tone or element of the idea, its motive power, comes from the affective life. Now as it is certain that ideas belong to the cerebral hemispheres, being elaborated and performed there, so it is certain that the sources of the passions or affections of mind are distributed through the whole body; they spring and flow from the organic life, of which the so-called sympathetic system of nerves is the ministering nervous machinery. And here let it be noted that recent inquiries go to prove the sympathetic system not to be the separate and quasi-independent nervous system which it has been customary to regard it; so far from being a different system from the cerebro-spinal, it would appear to be actually neither more nor less than the splanchnic distribution or system of the cerebro-spinal. There are not, in fact, two nervous systems, but there is one nervous system with its different distributions. (Maudsley 1889: 174-175)
There's a lot to unpack here but I think I've found a serviceable secondary definition of motivity.
- "The method employed by myself was the similar application of the electrodes, of the secondary spiral of Du Bois-Reymond's induction coil, connected with a cell of the mean electro-motive power of 1 Daniell." (Ferrier 1886: 223)
- "But this is not the case, for the strength of the sensation is dependent only on the strength of the motive impulse, passing outwards from the centre, which acts on the innervation of the motor nerves." (Wundt 1863: 222 in Ferrier 1886: 385)
- "The motive to action is thus the resultant of a complex system of forces; the more complex, the wider the experience, and the more numerous the associations formed between actions and their consequences, near and remote. Actions so conditioned are regarded as mature or deliberate, in contradistinction to impulsive volitions, but the difference is not in kind but only in degree of complexity; for in the end, actions conditioned by the resultant of a complex system of associations, are of essentially the same character as those conditioned by the simple stimulus of a present feeling or desire, where no other associations have as yet been formed capable of modifying it." (Ferrier 1886: 440)
Again, it is certain that the life of feeling is fundamental to the life of thought; it goes before it in the order of development and lies deeper in the individual nature - is rooted in the organic life and constitutes really the basic unity of the Ego, all whose passions and emotions are determined in character according as their exciting causes help or hinder its self-expansion. (Maudsley 1889: 175)
Recently saw a quote to this effect pulled from M.L. in Päevade Sõnad.
The fundamental note of the organic life, as of all life, is attraction and repulsion - to ensure what is profitable, to eschew what is hurtful, to it; and the organs of animal life inspired by it are really its means and instruments to accomplish this end. Their function is to sustain and maintain the organism by procuring food, by securing what is helpful and repelling what is hurtful to it, by embracing what is agreeable and shunning what is disagreeable - in fact, to protect and defend and further life in all ways. (Maudsley 1889: 175)
An utilitarian addition to the opposition between contact (attraction) and avoidance (repulsion).
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