all). Make it seem like (2). What do you do to make it seem like (1)? Shut your eyes; imagine a sheet of cardboard with the folded edge away from you, open your eyes and look at the figure. Which was it like, (1), (2) or (3)? Make it seem like (3). Which appearance is hardest to obtain: (1), (2) or (3)? Experiment 23. How many blocks are there in Fig. 79? Continue looking at it steadily. What happens? Experiment 24. How many different appearances can you get FIG. 80. from Fig. 80? Describe each of them. Why does it seem like an object of three dimensions rather than of two only, when it really is all in one plane? Experiment 25. How many different appearances can you get from Fig. 81? Describe each of them. Which is the easiest to get and retain? Why? 7. In what other experiments have you found the alternation of one impression with another in somewhat the same way as happens in Experiment 22. 8. Illustrate from your record of Experiment 22 the statement: "What thing is perceived will depend upon past experience." 9. Illustrate similarly; "What thing is perceived will depend upon the state of mind at the time of perceiving." FIG. 81. 10. Illustrate similarly; "Perception is of definite and probable things." II. Illustrate similarly the influence of frequency of connection in determining what percept a given sense stimulus will arouse. 12. From your records of Experiments 19 to 25 gather all the facts you can in support of any statements made in this chapter. Arrange these facts in lists, each under the statement which it supports. References A. James, Briefer Course, II. (17-27), XX. (316-334). Titchener, Dutline, §§ 27-30. B. Ebbinghaus, Grundzüge, §§ 44-47. James, Principles, XVII. (9-31), XIX. (82-133). CHAPTER XVI THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN ONE MENTAL STATE AND ANOTHER § 45. Associations of Ideas The Problem Stated. The problem of this section may be stated in several ways. Given any mental state not due to a sense stimulus, how came it to be present? Given any mental state, what other mental state will it call up? What in addition to sense stimuli determines the order of our thoughts? What laws account for the ways in which mental states are connected among themselves? These four questions are substantially the same. The first member of the connection, i.e., the mental state that calls up, may be termed the antecedent, the stimulant or simply Thought I; the second member of the connected pair, i.e., the mental state that is called up, may be termed the consequent, sequent, resultant or simply Thought 2. Thought I may be a mental state of any sort; but Thought 2 cannot be a sensation or percept or any feeling that results directly from a sense stimulus, for then the connection would necessarily be not mentalmental, but physical-mental. Thought 2 is generally, perhaps always, an image, a feeling of meaning or intellectual relationship, or a judgment. The complex states of mind which we ordinarily experience are the results of both the antecedent thought and of sense stimuli; a man does not often have a series of mental states due to purely mental connections. What he sees and hears, the feelings of his own body, and other sensory stimuli, color his thoughts and may redirect them. Still in day dreams, in serious thought on intellectual problems and in the flow of undisturbed memories, when little attention is paid to the physical world and to the warmth or cold or pain or movements of the body, the course of thought is almost exclusively explainable as the result of purely mental connections. And in any case we can study the influence of the present thought in determining the future apart from that of the sense stimuli which are also acting. The General Law of Association in the Case of Purely Mental Connections.-Probably none of the purely mental connections are inborn, unlearned. Nature does not apparently provide any ready-made apparatus for such connections as thinking of six when one thinks of three and three. Our rich inheritance of connections between sense stimuli and mental states, sense stimuli and acts, and mental states and acts, is in sharp contrast to our utter poverty with respect to connections between one mental state and another. Nature gives only the general capacity to form such connections as soon as images, feelings of meaning and judgments have been acquired. One important result of the fact that all purely mental connections are due to nurture is that there is far less uniformity among human beings in the mental-mental than in the physical-mental connections. Light rays of a certain vibration-rate produce in seeing persons the feeling of red with comparatively small variations, but the sight of the color will arouse in one the thought of red, in another of roth, in another of rouge, in another of corado, according to the connections which have been acquired. |
