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Can Unconscious Cerebration be proved?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

William W. Ireland
William W. Ireland*
Affiliation:
Scottish National Institution for the Education of Imbecile Children, Larbert, Stirlingshire
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Extract

Unconscious cerebration is regarded as so important a discovery that two well-known scientific men have contended for the priority of its publication, and while some people are anxious to give it fresh applications and illustrations, others proclaim it to the public as a new demonstration of science, accepted by physiologists, and stable enough to uphold new theories founded upon it. After having carefully considered the evidence upon which the theory of unconscious cerebration is supposed to rest, I am disposed to think that the facts, or assumed facts, may be explained in a simpler manner, and that the theory itself is superfluous and unproved. For an exposition of what is understood by unconscious cerebration, and on what grounds it is believed to exist, I have used a work called, “The Principles of Mental Physiology,” by Dr. Carpenter, the well known physiologist, who claims to have worked out the theory in his own mind, without knowing that any other had preceded him, and whose recognised reputation is a sufficient guarantee that the argument, in his hands, is sure of being well stated. The term itself seems far from being a happy one. Dr. Carpenter tells us that it has been found readily intelligible; he objects to “unconscious reasoning” as a contradiction in terms, and yet his own description seems either to imply unconscious reasoning, or unfelt feeling; and the difficulty of finding an appropriate term for this class of operations, is really owing to the difficulty of conceiving what these operations really are. In fact, to state them clearly, is to render the theory incredible. To call thought cerebration, may show the desire of a writer to assign thought as the product of brain action; but it is neither warranted by true philosophy, nor by the popular and scientific uses of speech. When the liver secretes bile, one does not say that it hepatates; or when a man breathes, we do not say he pulmonates.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 21 , Issue 95 , October 1875 , pp. 366 - 387
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1875 

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References

∗ I have also used Dr. Carpenter's “Principles of Enman Physiology.” Fourth Edition, London, 1853.Google Scholar

∗ See Sir William Hamilton's “Lectures on Metaphysics,” Lecture XIV., vol. i., p. 254.Google Scholar

∗ Those who have not already studied the question will find examples of the play of comparison, association, ideal anticipation, judgment and inference in the use of the senses, in the “Westminster Review” for July, 1872, in an article entitled, “Recent Experiments with the Senses,” and in the works there quoted, especially “Helmholtz's Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik.” It requires a careful study of optics to learn how much of the mental action enters into our vision of the phenomenal world. As the Reviewer remarks, “If a part of an impression, however elementary it may seem, is sometimes overcome and changed into its opposite, by a mere element of inference or effect of experience, it is clear that it is not the pure result of the nervous stimulation, but depends, in part at least, on further and cerebral processes. In this way, for example, we know that a person's recognition of a colour is in part an act of inference. The science cf optics is full of the most startling illustrations of the displacement of inferences, so rapid and mechanical that they easily appear intuitions to persons ignorant of these facts.”Google Scholar

∗ July, 1875.Google Scholar

∗ Dr. Laycock in his learned work “Mind and Brain,” Edinburgh, 1860, vol. ii., p. 101, gives an explanation of those processes which I am ready to accept, save that the words “thought ceases” might convey an erroneous impression. “The best illustrations,” writes Dr. Laycock, “of this kind are afforded by the phenomena of sleep and somnambulism, and by those manifested under the influence of alcohol, opium, chloroform, hachisch, and other nervine irritants and anœsthestics. During the waking conscious state, all the external senses instinctively co-operate in verification without the knowledge of the individual, and so place him in fitting relation with the external world. When they cease to transmit impressions unitedly, from changes in the co-ordinating sensory ganglia, unconsciousness begins to approach; and when the senses are at last shut up, so that no affinitive impressione reach the ideagenic tissue, sensation, perception, and thought cease, and all verification ends. If, however, the impressions reach the tissue, and are not co-ordinated, then false thoughts will arise; for while there is no correct knowledge of the external world, the impressions themselves excite ideagenic changes. These result either in somnambulistic or delirious acts and thoughts. Chloroform sometimes developes this state of somnambulistic activity, and the world of dreaming becomes a world of reality to the individual.”Google Scholar

∗ January, 1875. Translated from “L'Union Médicale,” July 21 and 28, 1874, by F. G. Huse, M.D.Google Scholar

∗ Sir William Hamilton's “Lectures on Metaphysics”, Vol. i., page 368.Google Scholar

† Dr. Carpenter gives in another place what might be a third solution of the question : of which, however, I have no intention of availing myself : “Looking at nerve force,” he says, “as a special form of physical energy, it may be deemed not altogether incredible that it should exert itself from a distance, so as to bring the brain of one person into direct dynamical communication with that of another, without the intermediation either of verbal language or of movements of expression. A large amount of evidence, sifted with the utmost care, would be needed to establish even a probability of such communication, but would any man of science have a right to say that it is impossible?”Google Scholar

∗ Op. Cit., p. 629.Google Scholar

∗ Sir William Hamilton's “Lectures on Metaphysics,” vol. i., p. 357.Google Scholar

∗ “Journal of Mental Science,” July, 1873.Google Scholar

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