Mary Whiton Calkins
Psychology as Science of Self
II. The Nature of the Self
Mary Whiton Calkins (1908b)
First Published in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 5,
64-68.
ONCE more to take account of stock, the following conclusions have been reached:
The basal fact of psychology, implied both by idea and by mental function, is
the conscious self;[1] this self stands in close relation to a body; and its
varying experiences may, in part, be "explained" and classified by reference to
correlated non-physical phenomena in particular by reference to nerve
excitations, to muscular contractions, and to organic accommodations and
controls. This self, finally, is no philosopher's or epistemologist's self: it
should not, for example, be characterized as free, responsible, or endless, and
the question of its more or less ultimate reality is never raised.[2] The
psychologist takes for granted, without meta- [p. 65] physical reflection and on
the ground of every-day observation that there are conscious selves, just as the
botanist starts from the observation that there are plants, and the neurologist
from the observation of nerve structures.
But it may well be urged that, the self, as so far considered, is a very empty
sort of phenomenon to which, as yet, no positive characters have been
attributed. Why, it may be objected, protest that the basal fact of psychology
is not idea and not function, but self, if all that one actually knows of the
self could as well be stated in terms of idea and of function -- that is, if one
knows nothing of the self save that, on the one hand, it is sensationally,
affectively and relationally conscious, and, on the other hand, that it
functions adaptively or selectively? This is a fair question, but not (I think)
unanswerable. On the contrary, the self is found to have certain positive
characters, which do not belong to idea or to function. The self is, in the
first place, in some degree permanent or persistent. By "persistence" is not
meant the ultimate self-identity, which may well be part of the self as
conceived by the philosopher, but rather the kind of identity of which one is
immediately conscious notably in anticipating and in recognizing. Not only
mental imagery, but the consciousness of myself as "the same ego then as
now,"[3] is essential to recognition; and the direct consciousness of
self-identity is as immediate a constituent of any anticipation as the
sensational and affective consciousness involved in it. It is plain that this
character of immediately experienced persistence differentiates the self from
its ideas. Every one admits, since Hume so brilliantly expounded the truth, that
identity can not lie attributed to ideas (mental structures or contents) because
these are, by hypothesis evanescent and fleeting. It follows that identity is a
character of the self, not of the idea; and the fact that we are directly
conscious of identity as part of our unambiguously mental experience becomes the
most persuasive argument for the existence of a self which is not a mere series
of ideas. It is not, on the other hand, at first sight so evident that
persistence belongs to self, not to mental function. For, it may be urged,
"functions . . . persist as well in mental as in physical life. We may never
have twice exactly the same idea . . ., but general functions like memory [are]
persistent."[4] But, if one scrutinize the real meaning of the statement "memory
-- or reason, or will -- is a persistent function," one finds it to be [p. 66]
simply this, that one and the same self at any tithe may remember, or reason, or
will. The special function of remembering or of reasoning has as little
permanence as the particular idea: that which persists is the rememberer or the
reasoner.
The self is, in the second place, not only persistent, but inclusive; it is, in
other words, a complex of ideas, functions, experiences. This is the character
of the self which gives to the idea and function conceptions of psychology their
hold on psychological thought; for against ideas or functions regarded as parts,
or aspects, of the self no crucial objection need ire urged. There is little
need of further comment, for the complexity of self is admitted on any view of
it.
A third significant character of the self is its uniqueness. This uniqueness is,
of course, experienced most clearly in our emotional and volitional
consciousness: when we reflect upon it we may describe it as a consciousness of
a this which-could-not-be-replaced-by-another.[5] Now we simply are not
conscious of ideas and functions as, in this sense, unique. A given self, with a
different idea, is still this self; whereas a given idea is this or that idea
according as it belongs to this or that self. I am I whether I see or hear,
whether I fear or hope, but another self's vision or fear, however similar, is
not this experience, but another. The emphasized consciousness of uniqueness may
be described as individualizing consciousness and is a distinguishing character
of certain experiences, notably of emotion and of will.
The fourth of these fundamental characters of the self is its relatedness. I
think of myself not only as unique, but as related, not only as a
this-not-another, but as a this-in-relation-with-another.[6] In other words,
whether perceiving or thinking, feeling of willing, I am always conscious of
something-other-than-myself to which I stand in some relation, receptive or
assertive; and according as I am more emphatically conscious of myself, or of
this "other," the relation may be termed egoistic or altruistic. This immediate,
or direct, awareness not only of "myself," but of an other-than-self, is, as
Ward and Stout insist, a truth to be admitted and not argued by the
psychologist.[7] For the metaphysician and the epistemologist, indeed, "duality
of subject anti object" presents a problem; for the, psychologist it is an
admitted character of experience. It is important to note also that the
immediately experienced self-relatedness differs from the relations inferred to
exist between ideas in that the relation of one idea to another is an addi- [p.
67] tion to the "idea," not an inherent part of it.[8] The term "mental
function," on the other hand, when function is not limited to the strictly
biological, might be used as a synonym for self-relation.[9]
The psychologist has next to characterize the other-than-self, or environment.
This may be of various types: it may be personal -- that is, the self may be
conscious of itself as related to other selves, or the environment may be
abstractly conceived as the ideas or functions of the self -- that is, the self
may relate itself to its own past or future, as in recognition and in some
phases of willing; or, finally, the environment, may be realized as "impersonal"
or "external." The first of these forms of the other-than-myself is, however, to
my thinking, most significant. I can not, indeed, describe or distinguish myself
except in terms of my relatedness to other selves:[10] if I drop out of my
conception of myself the consciousness of being child, brother, friend, and
citizen, I simply lose myself. The awareness of impersonal object, and still
more the consciousness of idea, or function as distinct from self, are certainly
later and less essential than the primary consciousness of other self -- as is
indicated by the child's early tendency to personify inanimate objects.[11]
These Condensed and abstract statements are, I realize, insufficient to make
vivid or every plausible this doctrine of the self. But, before attempting, in
the following section, the more detailed desertion of consciousness in these
terms I wish to emphasize the truth that all these characters of the self are
immediately experienced. Only as such, I hold, have we a right to rise them in
describing consciousness.[12] For though psychology like every science, [p. 68]
deals with concepts reflectively formed, not with immediate experiences,[13] yet
the peculiarity of psychology is precisely this, that it has to do with the
concept of immediate experience. That which can not be immediately experienced
is, in other words, no object of psychology. Now, the commonest objection to the
doctrine that psychology is science of the self is the belief that
self-consciousness is a relatively late stage in conscious experience.[14] This
objection is due, I think, to the neglect of the distinction between the
ever-present inchoate self-consciousness of each experience and the reflective
consciousness of self which I have tried, in this paper, to formulate. In the
former sense only, all consciousness is self-consciousness, that is, one never
is conscious at all without an awareness, however vague, confused, unanalyzed,
and unexpressed, of oneself-being-conscious. (Of course, I make this assertion
on the basis of my own ...
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