Mary Whiton Calkins
Psychology as a Science of Self
III. The Description of Consciousness
Mary Whiton Calkins (1908c)
First Published in Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 5,
113-122.
THE main problem of this section is the following: to indicate briefly how the
doctrine of the self as basal fact of consciousness is essential to the adequate
description of our actual experience. I have described the self, in the
preceding section, as persistent, inclusive, unique, and related; and I must now
try to show that these distinctions are always implied in a full account of any
experience.
This proposed description of consciousness, in terns of the characters of the
conscious self, can not take the place of the so-called structural analysis of
consciousness into elements. On the contrary, the structural analysis, which is
common to all forms of psychology, must supplement the description peculiar to
self-psychology. From the structural standpoint consciousness, though conceived
as self, is regarded (spite of its inherent relatedness and persistence) as if
in artificial isolation from surrounding phenomena and as if momentary. The
results of the analysis of consciousness, thus conceived, are the so-called
elements of consciousness. Concerning the nature of these elements there is, as
is well known, much discussion. I have elsewhere argued[1] for the recognition
of three groups of them: (1) sensational, or substantive, elements, (2)
attributive elements (including at least affections and feelings of realness),
and (3) relational elements. For lack of time I shall not here repeat my reasons
for this classification since my present concern is rather to outline and to
estimate the different forms of psychological procedure than to discuss any one
of them in detail. It is, however, worthy of note that the tendency of
contemporary psychology is everywhere toward a supplementation of the older
view[2] which recognized only sensational, or at most sensational and affective,
elements. Structural psychologists who, like [p. 114]
Titchener, oppose the doctrine are, I think, misled by their inclination to
classify psychic phenomena by reference to physiological distinctions.[3]
Since, however, the basal fact of psychology is the conscious self, immediately
known as persistent, inclusive, unique, and related, it is evident that a
structural analysis, although essential, does not supply a complete description
of any conscious experience. Such analysis is, in fact, subsidiary to the study
of these characters of the self as other-than-momentary-and-isolated. It must be
borne in mind, throughout, that -- on this view -- our consciousness always
includes in varying proportion and degree the awareness of the inclusiveness,
the persistence, the uniqueness, and the relatedness of the self: only,
therefore, as emphasized, or as further differentiated, may these characters
serve to distinguish one form of consciousness from another. So far, now, as I
can observe, the consciousness of myself as including self is equally present in
all kinds of experience and is not, therefore, a distinguishing mark of any; the
awareness of persistence is emphasized in recognition, in anticipation, and in
the other experiences which involve a consciousness of past or of future; the
emphasized consciousness of uniqueness -- in other words, the individualizing
consciousness -- is a factor in many kinds of experience (It should be noted
that although uniqueness is primarily a character of the self -- not merely the
I, or myself, and the related other self, but even the impersonal object of
consciousness may be individualized.) The consciousness, finally, of at least
two sorts of self-relatedness is characteristic of all sorts of experience. My
consciousness is always known (immediately or reflectively) as either receptive
or assertive, and as either egoistic or altruistic -- that is, as emphasizing
either my central subject-self [p. 115] or else that other-than-self, to which I
am related. And when this "other" is an other self, then the altruistic
consciousness becomes a sharing, or sympathetic, experience.
For brevity's sake I propose, in place of a detailed description from both these
standpoints, an annotated summary of the main results of such a description of
consciousness; an in order that the summary may in some sense represent the full
conclusions of this
[p. 116] series of papers I shall include an enumeration of the more important
physiological and biological phenomena which I have treated as explaining, or at
least as serving to classify, consciousness.[6] I must, however, say explicitly
that only the general outline of this scheme is drawn with confidence. It will,
I trust, be modified not only by my critics, but by myself, and it needs at many
points to be filled in by the results of observation, both experimental and
purely introspective.[7]
I ought not to discuss in detail these different experiences, so briefly
described, for, in essentials, this account of consciousness closely resembles
that, which I have elsewhere given. Certain amplifications and corrections of my
earlier statements must, however, be mentioned. The first of these is purely
verbal: I have replaced the terms "passive" and "active" by the more closely
descriptive expressions "receptive" and "assertive." By this usage I hope to
meet the objection that consciousness is never rightly viewed as passivity,
while I retain a distinction in itself important.[8]
A more important amendment of my teaching is the following: I have tried to
differentiate carefully between immediate and inferred distinctions; that is,
between the immediately experienced factors of a given consciousness and the
characters which, in the effort to classify, we reflectively attribute to it.[9]
This change, I [p. 117] think, meets the most frequent objection of detail to my
description of conscious experiences. I have heretofore said that perception and
imagination, indistinguishable on the basis of structural analysis (since both
are sensational), may be opposed in that the perceiver is conscious of himself
as sharing the experience of unparticularized other selves. To this account of
perception many of my critics have replied by the assertion that their
consciousness in perceiving certainly does not include this awareness of
similarly conscious other selves.[10] No one, however, has denied that we
reflectively make this distinction, that we say "I was perceiving, for these
others also shared my experience" or "I imagined it, for no one else shared the
vision." This means that even though there be no immediately experienced
difference between perception and imagination there is still a distinction in
psychological terms -- that is, that we reflectively describe perception as a
sharing, a common experience. The description of imagination as
self-consciousness is (as, indeed, I have always taught) in exclusively
reflective terms. Not at the time of imagining, but in later psychologizing
moments, does one compare one's imagining with one's perceiving and realize its
privacy.
A third amplification of my earlier account of consciousness is the distinction
of the other-than-self, of whom one is always conscious, according as it is
personal or impersonal, that is, self or not-self.[11] In this way I have tried
to meet the objection of those of my critics who believe that I have heretofore
conceived the [p. 118] relations of the self as too exclusively personal,
leaving out of account the fact that the self is aware of its relations to
situations, objects, and ideas, as well as of its relations to persons.[12] It
is evident that most of the characters which I attribute to consciousness hold
equally whether or not the other-than-self be conceived as personal or
impersonal, as self or as external. The self may be receptive in relation to
person or to thing, it is "altruistic" when it lays stress on the
other-than-self, however regarded; it may individualize other self or object.
Only the conception of sharing or sympathizing requires the conception of the
other-than-self as personal.
It is noticeable that this explicit recognition of the other-than-self as either
impersonal or personal facilitates the description of perception and thought by
ascribing to each a twofold object.[13] In perceiving and in thinking I am
conscious (immediately or reflectively) not only of selves who share my
experience, but of the impersonal object of our common experience; and both
together constitute the total object of my consciousness, that is to say, my
environment. Similarly, sympathetic emotion and faith in a person may have
impersonal as well as personal object: for instance, I may sympathize with
Lieutenant Peary in his yearning for the North Pole. In egoistic emotion and in
will, on the other hand, my object is either personal or impersonal. Thus, I
dislike person or thing, and I dominate other self or impersonal environment. It
should be noticed that the impersonal object of emotion or of will is
distinguished in the following way from the impersonal object of imagination or
of perception: both objects are particularized, that is, looked on as unique,
but the object of emotion or of will is always immediately known as particular,
whereas the object of perception or imagination is only reflectively
individualized. My admiration or my distaste for ...
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