Abstract
Experience grows through progressive adaptation of thought to fact. Mutual adaptation of thoughts produces the ordered, simplified and consistent system that we conceive as the ideal of science. My thoughts are directly accessible only to me, as my neighbor’s only to him, belonging as they do to the mental field. Only when linked with physical features like gestures, facial expression, words, actions can I venture more or less certain inferences by analogy from my experience, which comprises physical and mental parts, to that of others. That same experience moreover teaches me to recognize my thoughts as depending on my surroundings, which includes my body and other people’s behaviour. We cannot exhaustively consider the mental by ‘introspection’: this must go along with examining the physical.
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Notes
Cf. A 4, p. 159.
Cf. A. Fouillée, La psychologie des idées-forces, Paris 1893. This correct and important notion is there presented at rather great length in two volumes.
Mistaking this fact during subsequent reflection produces repentance, which is sensible and important only for future repetitions of the same or similar situations. And there it is not punishment or expiation that matter but only a change of attitude. The question of freedom and responsibility can refer only to whether an individual is sufficiently developed mentally to take into account the effect on himself and others when deciding on his actions. Cf. the views maintained by A. Menger in his remarkable book Neue Sittenlehre ( Jena 1905 ). The courageous truthfulness that he evinces in all his writings deserves our respect.
The views maintained in the writings of H. Driesch derive from philosophical foundations that are totally different.
On this point I have already made some comments: ‘Vorlesungen über Psychophysik’, Zeitschr.f. praktische Heilkunde, Vienna 1863, pp. 148, 168, 169.
Lamettrie, Oeuvres philosophiques, précédées de son élogement par Frédéric II, Berlin 1796.
Hero’s Works, published by W. Schmidt, Leipzig 1869, Vol. 1.
What remains of Kempelen’s speaking machine is in the physical collection of the Technical College of Vienna (communication from Prof. A. Lampe).
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© 1976 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Mach, E., Hiebert, E.N. (1976). A Psycho-Physiological Consideration. In: Knowledge and Error. Vienna Circle Collection, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1428-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1428-1_2
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