Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/41

A DEFENCE OF PHENOMENALISM IN PSYCHOLOGY. 27 that psychologists have in practice, but as a rule upon no clear principle, confined to a large extent the scope of their inquiries within the limits of phenomenalism. To lay down and to defend a principle of such limitation is the object of this article. 1 1 1 must notice here an attempt to limit the scope of psychology by defining its standpoint as " individualistic ". I have remarked elsewhere (Appearance, 309) that this attempt is in principle mistaken. It would be absurd to suppose that metaphysical questions cannot be raised from an individualistic standpoint. Hence, whatever the phrase may be meant to mean, it as it stands is useless. And I cannot think that l)r. Stout is successful so far as he adopts this formula, or generally in his definition of the sphere of psychology (Analytic Psychology, i., pp. 1-12). He, in my opinion, fails to demarcate psychology from metaphysics, which latter he defines in what seems to me an erroneous manner. It is indeed possible that Dr. Stout's view and mine may be really the same, but, if so, I cannot think that his view has been clearly formulated. Psychology, he says, investigates the history of the individual consciousness, and it is not concerned with validity or worth, but with existence, and with what appears to the individual mind. But I cannot see how that by itself is enough to divide it from metaphysics. The real question surely is as to how it is to study the history and processes of the individual mind. Is psychology limited to phenomenalism in the sense which I have given to that term, or may it go beyond this, and if so how far ? Dr. Stout, it seems to me, fails altogether to answer this vital question. I will briefly illustrate my meaning. I may wish, for instance, in study- ing the history of the individual mind, to ask fundamental questions about the relation of its plurality to its unity, and also to discuss the ultimate reality of its time-process. Is anything of this kind to be permitted in psychology ? Or I may wish to maintain the doctrine that the history of the individual is in a sense explained by a fundamental underlying volition or conation. Are we as psychologists to debate this ? One man again may propose to reduce all Association to Redintegration, and another may seek to stop him by arguing that really there is no identity in things but only resemblance. Is this plea to be admitted in psychology and discussed there, or, if not, on what ground ? Now to reply that psychology is not concerned with the validity of cognitions would, it seems to me, be idle. If you mean by cognitions the cognitions of that individual consciousness which we are studying, that surely would be irrelevant, for we are not, I presume, supposing that this particular con- sciousness is entertaining these special cognitions about itself. But if on the other side you possibly meant that psychology is not to judge of truth at all, that would be obviously untrue, and certainly no one could maintain it. It is quite true that psychology has not to investigate the truth of the cognitions of the mind which it studies, as such, but I wholly fail to understand how, with this, we have divided it from metaphysics. But I should add that I probably have not understood what Dr. Stout means by metaphysics. The vital question seems to be this : Does Dr. Stout mean to confine psychology to events and the laws of events ? Does he mean to assert that, since psychology is not concerned with more than this, it is at liberty to use fictions, and that the question of truth is not to be raised in it except so far as truth means whatever serves best to explain the course of mere events? I cannot understand how it is that, if Dr. Stout really holds these doctrines, he should not have expressed them