The Primary World of Senses A Vindication of Sensory Experience by Erwin Straus, Jacob Needleman (Transl.)

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The Trimary World
of Senses
The
Primary World
of Senses
A VINDICATION OF SENSORY EXPERIENCE
Erwin Straus, m.d.
Translated from the German by Jacob Needleman
THE FREE PRESS OF GLENCOE
COLLIER-MACMILLAN LIMITED, LONDON

Copyright © 1963 by The Free Press of Glencoe
A Division of The Macmillan Company
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-15351

0NUOJ
To My Wife
Preface to the Second Edition (1956)
Over twenty years have elapsed since this book was first
published—time enough to become reconciled to the idea that fate
meant me to remain an author of first editions. However, when Dr.
Springer, my German publisher, suggested the preparation of a
second edition, I did not hesitate for long, although I had some
doubts whether I could step twice into the same river. The task has
proven even more difficult than I had expected. Neither a simple
reprint, nor yet a complete revision would have been appropriate.
The progress of neurophysiology, however remarkable in its scope,
has not contributed any theoretical developments which would have
led me to alter my basic conceptions. Rather, I found that I owed
this book a certain piety. I recall the session of a medical society
in Berlin where, some time in 1931 or 1932, I presented for the first
time my critique of Pavlov’s doctrines. During the discussion, one
of the professors arose, not in order to refute me, but in order to
set me right. He was shaken, he said. His words conveyed the horror
of a man finding the sanctuary defiled. Nowadays, one no longer
expects such awe before Pavlov’s message. But criticism has mostly
been confined to particulars. The principles have hardly been
challenged at all. The speculations of objective psychology have
simply substituted new constructs for the older physical models.
The neat scheme of the telephone switchboard has yielded its place
to the networks of giant computers, and to the feedback mechanisms
of guided missiles. Old wine was poured into new, more splendid
vessels. The gulf between the rigorous demand for technical knowl-
Vll
viii Preface to Second Edition
edge and the tolerant acceptance of psychological naivetes has

widened even more. The hybrid terminology developed by cyber¬
netics—blending the style of fairy tales with the formulas of ultra¬
modern technology—has further contributed to the confusion. Ma¬
chines are said to receive information, to exchange data, to make
decisions, and to pursue goals. Such an anthropomorphic interpreta¬
tion of the functioning of machines becomes transformed almost
imperceptibly into a mechanomorphic interpretation of human and
animal conduct. The very question whether any neuropsychological
constructions are justifiable thus assumes increasing urgency. The
answer need not wait for further discoveries. This book tries to prove
that, in principle, the problem admits of an unequivocal solution.
In order to contribute toward a clarification of the basic issues,
I added to the text of the first edition an expanded analysis of the
phenomenal content of experience. Since I wanted to preserve the
original plan of the work as a whole, I inserted these additions as
distinct sections. The new part, entitled “Man Thinks, Not the
Brain,” found its place between Parts II and III of the first edition.
To the last part of the book, now Part IV, two chapters have been
added, “On Being Awake” and “The Spectrum of the Senses.” I
ought also to mention such shorter additions as the “Prefatory Re¬
marks” to Chapters A and C as well as the sections “Singularity and
the Possibility of Unification” and “Physics Refutes Physicalism.”
In order to tighten the text I omitted some passages from the
first edition. Even so, it proved impossible to avoid an occasional
repetition.
References to the literature in Parts I, II, and IV of this edition
have been taken over unaltered from the first edition. In Part III, I
was able to draw upon contemporary literature as well. I have not
striven for completeness. On technical grounds alone such com¬
pleteness would not have been possible. I want to emphasize, there¬
fore, how indebted I feel in general to the work and thought of
Binswanger, Buytendijk, v. Gebsattel, Merleau-Ponty, Zutt, and
many others. As this manuscript was approaching completion I be¬
came acquainted with some of Husserl’s late writings, published
posthumously. I was happy to find there a measure of agreement
in areas of common concern.
I also wish to thank Dr. Otto Guttentag, San Francisco, and Pro¬
fessor Heinrich Kluver, Chicago, for critical advice. Dr. Springer
met all my requests with the greatest generosity. In the collaboration
with the publisher, the geographic distance became transformed
into landscape proximity.
Erwin Straus
Acknowledgment
Parts of this translation were completed with the assistance of

the late Dr. R. Krambach of London and Professor V. Gourevitch
of Wellesley College. In this regard, the translator wishes also to ack¬
nowledge the special contribution made by Professor Bayard
Morgan of Stanford University.
Contents
Preface to the Second Edition (1956) vii

Acknowledgment ix
A. Introduction: The Dependence of Modern Psychology

on Cartesian Philosophy 3
(a) Prescientific Opinion 3
(b) Descartes’ Doctrine of Sensation 5
(c) The Sensing Subject and the Subject of Sensations 12
(d) The Atomistic Concept of Time in Psychology 19
(e) Pavlov’s Theory of Conditioned Reflexes: A Late
Offspring of Cartesian Philosophy 24
Part I Critique of the Doctrine of Conditioned

Reflexes
A. The Relation Between Theory and Observation in
Pavlov’s Work 29
B. General Presuppositions 37
(a) Metaphysical Rationalism 37
(b) The Elimination of the Phenomenal 40
1. THE SECONDARY QUALITIES 2. THE SPATIAL ORDER
3. THE DEGREE OF EXACTNESS OF THE EXPERIMENTS
XI
Xll Contents
(c) The Problem of Translation 45

(d) Confusing the Causal with the Intentional 49
(e) The Localization of Sensation in the Organism 51
(f) The Separation of Sensation and Movement 54
(g) Temporal Succession and Temporal Unity 56
(h) The Mosaic Theory 60
C. Some Difficulties Confronting the Application of Pavlov’s

Theory 62
(a) The So-called Orientation Reflexes 63
(b) The Temporal Order of Conditioned Reflexes 64
(c) The Optimum of Reflex Formation 65
(d) Generalization and Differentiation of Conditioned
Reflexes 67
(e) Trace Reflexes 70
Part II Stimuli, Signs, and Signals

A. The Nature of the Signal 77
(a) The Signal as the Middle Link in a Three-Link
Situation 77
(b) The Relation to the Indifferent Situation 80
(c) The Material Constitution of the Signal 81
(d) The Relation to the Differentiated Situation 83
B. Resolution of the Difficulties 84

(a) “Orientation Reflexes’’ and the Problem of the
Familiar and the Unfamiliar 85
(b) The Antecedence of the Conditioned Stimulus and
the Problem of the “Inbetween” 88
(c) The Optimum of Reflex Formation and the Problem
of the Hiatus 89
(d) Cortical Irradiation and Concentration, and the
Problem of the General and the Particular 91
(e) Trace Reflexes and the Problem of Emptiness 98
CONTENTS Xlll
Part III Man Thinks, Not the Brain

A. Surrounding Field and Surrounding World 105
(a) The Credo of Objective Psychology 105
(b) Scientific Behavior Is an Essential Theme of
Behavior Science 107
(c)The Basic Rules of Objective Psychology 112
(d)Consequences of the Basic Rules 114
(e)Attempts at Revising the Basic Schema 116
(£)A Psychological Author Conversing with Himself as
a Writing Psychologist 119
P(g) Motion and Action 122
(h) The Psychological Presupposition of the Statement:
“Animals Learn” 134
(i) Observer and Observation 138
B. Signs Are Not Stimuli 139

(a) A Behavioristic Theory of Speech and the Linguistic
Facts 139
(b) Language Learning 145
(c) Are “Words” Equivalent Stimuli? 147
(d) The Sign Is No Substitute 148
(e) The Essence of the Sign 149
(f) The Sound As Sign 152
(g) The Psychology of Prediction 153
C. Stimuli Are Not Objects 158

(a) The Observing and the Observed Brain 158
(b) Theories of Reproduction and Projection 162
(c) The Experience of Distance 164
(d) The Relationship Between an Experiencing Being
and the World Is Entirely Different from the Rela¬
tionship Between an Organism and a Stimulus 166
(e) On Communication 173
(f) The Brain as Mediator Between the Physical and
the Phenomenal World 179
(g) Science, a Human Creation 183
XIV Contents
Part IV Sensing and Movement Considered

Historiologically
A. Preliminary Characterization of Sensing 189
(a) Prefatory Remarks 189
(b) On Expansive and Constrictive Learning 192
(c) The World in Which the Animal Understands Us.
Symbiotic Understanding 194
(d) The Alingual World 196
(e) The Primary Grasping of Expression 199
B. Sensing Considered as a Mode of Communication 202

(a) Unity and Plurality of the Senses 202
(b) The Doctrine of the Immanence of Sensations 206
(c) New Insights Articulated Within Traditional
Theory 209
(d) The Synesthesias—Vital Freedom and Vital
Bondage 214
(e) Singularity and the Possibility of Unification 219
C. The Relationship Between Sensing and Moving 231

(a) Prefatory Remarks 231
(b) The Unity of Sensation and Movement 233
(c) The Reification of Motion 236
(d) The Prescientipc View and the Viewpoint of
Science 238
(e) “Within” and “Without” are Phenomena of the
Field of Action 241
(f) Totality and Limit 247
(g) Concerning the Now and the Here 249
(h) Movement and Motor Process 253
(i) The Atomistic Theory of Motion 254
(j) Learning Movements 256
(k) Motion and Actual Situation 260
(l) Automatic Motion 264
(m) Starting-Point and Goal 266
(n) Descartes and the Ontology of Ability 268
CONTENTS XV
D. On Being Awake 272
E. Critique of Epiphenomenalism 289

(a) The Physiology and Psychology of the Senses 289
1. RETURN TO THE INTEGRITY OF THE EXPERIENCE
2. SENSORY DATA MEDIATE BETWEEN PHYSICS AND
PHYSIOLOGY 3. HARMONIOUS FUNCTION AND PROPER
FUNCTION 4. THE DISCREPANCIES 5. PHYSICS REFUTES
PHYSICALISM
(b) The Epiphenomenalism of Gestalt Psychology 304

1. UNITY AND UNIFICATION 2. THE SINGULAR IN ITSELF
AND FOR US
F. The Difference Between Sensing and Knowing 312
G. The Difference Between Sensing and Perceiving 316

(a) Perception Requires a Universally Objective
Medium 316
(b) The Space of Landscape and the Space of
Geography 318
1. THE HORIZON 2. THE JOURNEY 3. THE PLAN
4. LANDSCAPE PAINTING
(c) The Sounds of Nature and Music 323
(d) The Family of Nature and the Family of Man 325
(e) The Theme of Perception Is the Factual 328
H. Traditional Psychology of Space and Time 331

(a) The Separation of Spatial and Temporal Data from
Quality and Intensity 331
(b) The Problem of Space 334
(c) The Problem of Time 346
I. Sense-Certainty 351
(a) The Primacy of Self-consciousness 351
(b) Perceiving and Imagining 353
(c) Toward a Theory of Hallucinations 357
J. Development of the Theme Through the Phenomenon of

Gliding 362
Contents
K. The Spectrum of the Senses 367
L. The Spatial and Temporal Form of Sensing 379

(a) Distance (Feme) as a Spatio-Temporal Form of
Sensing 379
(b) The Leap and the Goal 386
(c) Indifferent (schicksalsloser) Space 388
(d) The Problem of Orientation 390
(e) The Contrast Between Physical (Perfective) and
Psychological (Presentational) Knowledge 392
Notes 397
Indexes 417
The Trimary World
of Senses
c?=Q-
A. Introduction: The Dependence
of Modem Psychology on
Cartesian Philosophy
(a) Prescientific Opinion
THE SENSES, AEIVE AND ANIMATED, ARE ORGANS OF BOTH MEN AND
animals. Animals, we believe, do not perceive, think, or act the way
man does; nor do we think them capable of recalling the past as past
or of anticipating in imagination what is to come. Yet we are sure
that animals see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and smell with
their noses; in short, we are convinced that through their sensory ex¬
perience the environment is revealed to them. At least all those who
are in daily contact with animals share this conviction. The farmer,
the breeder, the hunter, and the lover of animals do not doubt that
animals perceive them in manifold ways. The rider urges his horse
on with a word of encouragement; he slows it down with a different
tone; he lets it feel the spur or quiets it with a few friendly pats.
There exists a communication between animal and man rooted in
the sensory experience of the animal. A horse shying away from a
piece of paper on the road may have seen something quite different
from that which the rider saw, but it is obvious that it saw. We have
every reason to assume that the world we live in as humans is differ¬
ent from the world of animals. Man has the gift—some people think
3
4
Introduction
the fateful gift—of rising above the sphere of sensory experience.

Though he has not left it altogether behind, he is denied any return
to the sphere of pure sensing. Animals, on the other hand, are wholly
limited to the province of sensory experience in their environmental
relations.
From this contrast between human and animal behavior follows
the fact that—and I wish to emphasize its particular importance at
the very beginning of my investigation—sensing is not a form of cog¬
nition according to my theory of sensing. Sensing is not a first step
toward a lower form of cognition as compared to the higher forms of
perceiving, conceiving, and thinking; nor are sensations “sensory ele¬
ments of cognition,” mere material determined by stimuli and trans¬
formed into perceptions by the very power of attention, memory, and
practice.
Later on we will have to examine more thoroughly the relation
between sensing, knowing, and, especially, perceiving. But before
this can be done successfully, sensing as such must be correctly under¬
stood. To describe sensing, to define its essence, is the very aim of this
investigation. Sensing, not sensations, is thus its theme. By the very
choice of the expression sensing, by the gerundive use of the verb, I
hope to clarify and to point toward a phenomenon that has almost
completely eluded attention in spite of the numerous inquiries into
sensation. Indeed, its obscurity is due to the very manner in which
these investigations have been conducted.
The doctrine of sensations is far from being empirical. From an¬
cient times until the present, sensation has been subjected to the
continuous pressure of an elaborate philosophical dogmatism. Even
the most extensive use of experiments could not immunize nine¬
teenth-century psychological research against the influence of the
traditional doctrines. Experiments alone do not guarantee pure
empiricism.
Neither is the theory of sensation written in the plain unbiased
language of description. The influence of philosophy is in no way-
limited to science and its teachings. Philosophical thoughts, discov¬
eries, and modes of seeing have slowly spread from a small group to
ever-increasing circles; they dominate—though mostly unnoticed
and often distorted—the thought and language of the average man.
“Plain description” is a mere answering of questions. Our questions
are those of our epoch. They are prescribed to us by historic actu¬
ality; they are anticipated in the thoughts and words of the language
of our age. The questions determine what will appear to be particu¬
lar and remarkable in the phenomena. Even though the answers may
DEPENDENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY ON CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY 5
strive to arrange themselves into a system of the objectively authen¬

tic, we ourselves remain tied by our questions—especially by the
implicit ones—to tradition and thus to prejudice. No one ever starts
from a radical beginning. As soon as we begin to think, we continue
the thoughts of former generations.
(b) Descartes’ Doctrine of Sensation

The powerful, centuries-long influence of Cartesian philos¬
ophy—its methodology and metaphysics, with the well-known dis¬
tinction between two finite substances, res extensa and res cogitans
—is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in the doctrine of sensa¬
tions. Contemporary psychology of sensation and perception remains
dependent on Descartes—dependent in the sense that psychology
has adopted decisive tenets of his philosophy without further ques¬
tion, and has thus made it impossible for psychology to investigate
phenomena fundamentally and without prejudice.
This historical context can be elaborated in detail. However,
the discrimination between those Cartesian ideas that continue to
influence science directly and immediately, and those modified by
later philosophical theories and the opinions of “common sense,’’
would have to be made a topic of special inquiry, for which there
is no place here. Recalling the historical connection serves only to
clarify the present subject matter; it is not the main purpose of this
work. Nevertheless, the recollection of it is indispensable, since the
findings of psychology are even today partly determined by the
methodology and ontology of Descartes. Therefore, an attempt to
criticize and to evaluate these results can only succeed if at the same
time the presuppositions are also examined.
Let us thus recall the following statements in Descartes’ Medita¬
tions: “I am a thing that thinks, that is to say, that doubts, affirms,
denies, that knows a few things, that is ignorant of many, that wills,
that desires, that also imagines and perceives; although the things
that I perceive and imagine are perhaps nothing at all apart from
me and in themselves, I am nevertheless assured that these modes of
thought that I call perceptions and imaginations, inasmuch only
as they are modes of thought, certainly reside (and are met with) in
me.’’1
Sensations, then, are a mode of consciousness along with true
knowledge, judgment, imagination, and volition. Sensation differs
6 Introduction
from knowledge insofar as the latter is a clear and distinct, the for¬
mer a dark and confused “knowing.”
Sensation is thus objectively characterized by a deficiency, by a
lack of that moment that is the mark of true knowledge. Sensation to
Descartes is a deficient mode of knowing.
There are still other motives that contributed to the devaluation
of sensations and the reduction of their value as reality. Sensations
deceive; they are apt to present nonthings as things; coldness, for
example, which is merely a lack of warmth, is nevertheless experi¬
enced as a specific quality. The idea of cold presents coldness as
something real and positive.2 “The power of imagination which is
in one ... is in no wise a necessary element in my nature or in the
essence of my mind; for although I did not possess it I should doubt¬
less ever remain the same as I am now.”3
Consciousness (cogitatio), of which both sensation and cognition
are modes, encompasses, according to Descartes, “everything that is
in us in such a way that we observe it directly by our own effort and
have an inner knowledge of it.”4
The meaning of immediacy is made clear in another paragraph
of the Meditations.5 Descartes says there: “Finally, I am the same
who feels, that is to say, who perceives certain things, as by the or¬
gans of sense, since in truth I see light, I hear noise, I feel heat. But
it will be said that these phenomena are false and that I am dream¬
ing. Let it be so; still it is at least quite certain that it seems to me
that I see light, that I hear noise and that I feel heat. That cannot
be false; properly speaking it is what is in me called feeling [sentire]-,
and used in this precise sense that is no other thing than thinking
[>cogitare].” The statement, “it is at least quite certain,” expresses the
belief that sensation as such is to be considered as a mode of con¬
sciousness in reference to the self-conscious ego, and not in relation
to the object. The ego, however, in which sensations and imagina¬
tions occur, is the pure ego; it is not the psychological or phenomenal
subject and certainly not man in his corporeality.
To be sure, Descartes is not consistent in his conception of the
ego.6 The ego has not been developed into the purely transcendental
subject, but as a finite substance—as my mind, as my soul—has been
identified with the empirical subject. It is indeed significant that
modern psychology has embraced the Cartesian concept of the sub¬
ject in all its ambiguity. It accepts what is accidental and provisional
in the Cartesian insights, as well as their essential and irrevocable
aspects.
Actually and immediately sensed are the ideas of those qualities
DEPENDENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY ON CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY
7
(to wit, of colors, light, smells, tastes, sounds) that occur in conscious¬
ness. These sensations, although immanent in consciousness, give
rise to the belief that we perceive certain things entirely outside of
our consciousness, that is, bodies which produce these ideas in us.7
Certain experiences seem to confirm this opinion, in particular
the fact “that these ideas presented themselves to me without my
consent being requisite so that I could not perceive any object, how¬
ever desirous I might be, unless it were present to the organs of
sense.”8 The connection of experiences makes it possible and neces¬
sary to interpret the sensed ideas in such a fashion that in them
states and processes in one’s own body—like hunger or thirst—or
the qualities of other things existing separately from one’s own body
—are “vaguely and confusedly” perceived. Ideas perceived through
the senses are more expressive and vivid than those which we pro¬
duce as our own thoughts. But in the basic mode of being there is
no absolute difference between them. Experience suggests that sen¬
sations are ostensibly dependent on bodily processes.
As mere ideas of colors, light, and the like, sensations to Descartes
lack any intrinsic contact with physical things. This relationship is
only inferred; we surmise it with a high degree of probability. Yet
the relationship is justifiable only if both the material things outside
and those in our bodies with which we seem to be so closely con¬
nected exist in reality. Descartes derives the final reason for this sup¬
position from a proof of the existence of God who cannot be a
of consciousness—are therefore abysmally remote from the being of

external things; and equally remote is the ego from the world.
On many occasions Descartes expresses the opinion that mind
and body are linked together in spite of the radical diversity be¬
tween the two substances. Nevertheless, at one point in his Medita¬
tions he claims “that I am not only lodged in my body like a pilot
in a vessel, but that I am very closely united to it, and so to speak
so intermingled with it that I seem to compose with it one whole.”9
But in another passage Descartes sets forth the belief that mind and
body are unified as a composite, “like flesh and bones,” not as a gen¬
uine unit formed by nature. “For I have indeed never seen nor un¬
derstood that human bodies have consciousness. I only noticed that
it is the same human creature which has consciousness and also a
body.” The formulation given in the Sixth Meditation is even more
emphatic: “And although possibly ... I have a body with which I
am very intimately conjoined ... it is certain that ... I am entirely
and absolutely distinct from my body and can exist without it/’ The
8 Introduction
formulation of pure thoughts, therefore, is not related to the func¬

tion of the brain.
One particular passage in the Passions de I’ame (and it is only
one among many others) specifically describes how the dependence
of sensing on bodily processes is to be imagined: “Those [percep¬
tions] which we relate to the things which are without us, to wit to
the objects of our senses, are caused, at least when our opinion is not
false, by these objects which exciting certain movements in the or¬
gans of the external senses, excite them also in the brain by the in¬
termission of the nerves, which cause the soul to perceive them. Thus
when we see the light of a torch, and hear the sound of a bell, this
sound and this light are two different actions which, simply by the
fact that they excite two different movements in certain of our nerves,
and by these means in the brain, give two different sensations to the
soul, which sensations we relate to the subject which we suppose to
be their causes in such a way that we think we see the torch itself
and hear the bell, and do not perceive just the movements which pro¬
ceed from them.”10
In a strictly mechanistic psychological work, called I’Homme,11
Descartes describes in elaborate detail how sensations are produced
by external stimuli. There he says of visual sensations that motions
caused by external objects in the sensory organs, nerves, and brain
provide for the Soul (because it is so closely united with the machine
of the body) the occasion of apprehending the various ideas of color
and light. In strict analogy, he maintains that in respect to the other
senses the mechanical movements in the sensory organs and brain
provide the Soul with the occasion for the reception of sensations.
The relation of the subject to sensations in this description is
that of pure receptivity. This relation is the very basis of an epiphe-
nomenalistic theory. Sensations come about against the will of the
subject, they are alien to it. Sensations do not have any direct com¬
munication with the ego. Neither are they in direct communication
with the woild. Only through an act of judgment performed by the
will is a relationship to the external world finally established. The
subject as such remains extramundane. It contemplates the ideas
within the body. The subject itself is at rest, not in a state of becom¬
ing. “For although all the accidents of mind be changed, although,
or instance, it thinks certain things, wills others, perceives others,
etc., despite all this it does not emerge from these changes a differ¬
ent mind: the human body on the other hand becomes a different
thing from the sole fact that the figure or form of any of its portions
is found to be changed.”12 r
/ / I o/
Sensations, then, are “occasioned” by a stimulation of the sensory

organs. The contact between mind and body, between consciousness
and corporeal existence, is characterized only by a complete lack of
communication. Thereby we must not forget that Descartes con¬
ceives the bodies of men and animals as machines. The Passions (I, 6)
contains a paragraph with the characteristic title: “How all the mem¬
bers may be moved by the object of the senses and by the animal
spirits without the aid of the soul.” The doctrine of the reflexes origi¬
nated with Descartes although he did not use the term. Without
knowledge of the anatomical facts, he describes the pathways of the
reflexes, which in his opinion guide the animal spirits (interpreted
by Descartes as minute corpuscles) from the periphery to the brain
and back to the periphery. The observation of involuntary reactions
to painful stimuli led Descartes to a rash generalization, the concept
of reflex movement. It is a necessary postulate of his system. His
physiology of the nervous system, deduced from the Principles rather
than from observation, resembles in many aspects that constructed
by Pavlov. It is different insofar as Descartes affirms the existence
of the mind, at the same time connected with and separated from
the processes in the body machine. The body is nothing more than
a machine. The living body differs from the dead one, just as a watch
with a wound spring differs from a watch with a broken one.13 Being
alive is not a particular mode of Being.
Man is a combination of mind and body. In the brain, especially
in the pineal body, the mind is most closely joined with the body.
Because of its inseparable attachment I recognize my body as my
own; furthermore, I believe that I feel hunger in my body and pain
in its parts. (The spatial relations of body and soul have been the
cause of numerous misunderstandings; even today these misunder¬
standings have their aftereffects, as proved by the “problem” of so-
called outward projection.) Pain makes it known to the mind that
the body is not well.
The body as such, is a machine. Sensations are attributed to af¬
ferent motions of the animal spirits within the body.14 These mo¬
tions, in turn, release other motions of animal spirits, producing the
motions of muscles and limbs. Even if there weremo soul, everything
in the body could take exactly the same course that it does now. The
soul is not the life principle of the body. Motions of the spirits in
the brain present something to the mind; similar motions are accom¬
panied by similar presentations. The same external causes call forth
the same motions of the animal spirits in the body and through them
the same impressions in the soul. The nerves react in the same way
io Introduction
to stimulation at different levels. Sensation and motion are two dif¬

ferent processes. No inner connection exists between motion and
sensation; such a relationship cannot exist, for motion belongs ex¬
clusively and entirely to the res extensa, sensation to the res cogitans.
The distinction between the substances not only leads to a di¬
chotomy of mind and body. With it, the mind is radically severed
from the physical world. Sensations participate in the extramundane
character of the mind. Even as sensing beings we are extramundane,
we consider all bodies, ours and others, as extended objects in physi¬
cal space. We need not debate here the still powerful influence of
the idea of the extramundane character of the mind on the theory
of the sensations and perceptions. For this theme will come up again
and again, because we are going to prove that sensing must be un¬
derstood as a “sympathetic”—that is, an intramundane—experience.
The interplay of body and mind remains a metaphysical riddle.
With it, the nature of sensations remains enigmatic. To the follow¬
ers of Descartes, sensations have no reality, or only a reduced reality
compared with mathematical knowledge. Sensations are signs for
what is useful or damaging to the body. But when we interpret them
as particular qualities of corporeal things it is said that we deceive
ourselves. This deception has to be revealed and then corrected by
mathematical science. In themselves—as cogitations, as pensees—
sensations are ideas, and as ideas they are inert, static, pure quality.
They are but momentary; time, however, is composed of moments.
That is why sensations in the plural seem to present themselves as a
quantity of independent perceptions. This interpretation opens the
door to the theory of elements in psychology.
In Cartesian philosophy, all the theories of sense psychology of
the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries are already performed_
expressis verbis—not in such a way that we have to read into
Descartes’ work only what we would like to find in it. The first
step is already decisive—namely, the opinion, inseparably con¬
joined with the Cartesian metaphysics of substances, that sensation
is a kind of cognition, although a cognition of a lower rank, being
obscure and confused. From the basic metaphysical conception, there
follows an unbroken chain of thought up to a fully-developed
mechanistic physiology.
As early as in the Meditations, and thus in the closest connection
with the metaphysical foundation of modern science, we find the
model for physiological psychology, the doctrine of the reflexes, the
theorem of constancy, the law of specific sensory energies. In his
later works, Descartes turned his attention much more to details
DEPENDENCE OF PSYCHOLOGY ON CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY II
and so we find there the models for a hypothesis of cerebral localiza¬

tion and for mechanistic theories of expression,15 of memory, and of
attention. Many experimental results and observations classified in
later days as empirical are, for the most part, a consequence of the
fact that we look at the world through glasses ground by Descartes.
In the foreword to his Principles, he compared science to a tree.
Its roots are metaphysics, the trunk general physics, and the branches,
the separate sciences, divided into three main groups: medicine,
mechanics, and morals. Since Descartes did not limit himself to draw¬
ing an outline of metaphysics and general physics, we have an au¬
thentic interpretation of those particular scientific theories which
he considered to be in agreement with his metaphysical principles.
Our discussion must therefore reach the basic tenets even when deal¬
ing only with particular problems. The frequent demand for experi¬
mental verification can only mean that a strictly unbroken logical
chain leads from the most general assumptions and propositions to
the experimental examination of particular phenomena, so that the
results of experiments will ultimately decide the right or wrong of
the principles.
In opposition to Descartes, sensualism teaches that all knowledge
is derived from sensations that precede it in time. But it disregards
completely the diverse modes of communication, and consequently
the essential difference between sensing and knowing.
Sensualism gains the possibility of deriving cognition from sen¬
sation only by a preceding tacit assimilation of sensing to knowing.
The impact of sensualism, lasting from the beginning of modern
times to the present, does not contradict, in my judgment, the thesis
that the theory of sensation depends on Descartes’ metaphysics. Sen¬
sualism proves rather that the failure to distinguish between the
modes of communication affects the understanding of both sensing
and knowing to the same extent.
In later days, indeed beginning with some of Descartes’ contem¬
porary opponents (Gassendi and Hobbes), knowing and sensing were
no longer distinguished as modes of consciousness (modi cognita-
tionis), but as psychic functions (actus cogitandi). Modern psychology
holds the same view. In a situation thus changed, one would expect
an attempt to define first of all the subject of sensing and the mode
of communication particular to sensing. But that did not happen.
Instead, psychologists were satisfied with the aforementioned assimi¬
lation of sensing to knowing. Modern psychology considers the ob¬
ject of sensing as if it were an object of knowledge; it treats the
sensing subject as if it were a subject of knowledge, and finally it
12 Introduction
considers the mode of communication in sensing as wholly corre¬

sponding to that of cognition.
If I should ever hope to contribute something new to this much
belabored field, it will be my task to render the implicit questions
of tradition explicit and to lay bare and oppose dogmatic prejudices.
In order to say what sensing actually is, I will have to say what, con¬
trary to tradition, it is not.
Sensations
Sensing—not sensations—is the theme of my inquiry. This
thought does not yet convey much meaning in spite of its pointed
wording, for the term sensation is understood in too many different
ways. Some people identify sensations with physiological processes,
the stimulation of the sensory organs, the sensory nerves, and areas
of the brain; others interpret sensations as “a kind of knowledge in
reference to objects” (Pfander) and insist on a strict separation of
sensations, as something psychic, from the physiology and the object
of sensations. A third group, probably the most numerous, identifies
sensations with sensory data. Of all the connotations of the word
sensation—and we have by no means listed all of them here—the
last one appears to the majority as the most important.
Sensations are presumably the result of a physiological or psycho-
physiological process. They are thought to be what is sensed. They
are believed to have—as indicated by the grammatical form of the
noun the character of finite things. Substantive categories are ap¬
plied to them. When we read, “Sensations are either simple, that is, a
color, a sound, or composite, such as a rainbow,” or, “Sensations
often continue after the stimuli have ceased,” when we furthermore
call to mind the naive use of the plural, sensations, les sensations, we
can no longer doubt that “thingness” is applied to sensations.
James opposed the restriction of the sensations to the objectively
complete and limited, to the “substantive parts.” He insisted that,
besides the substantive parts of the stream of consciousness, the
transitive parts” must also be taken into consideration. Such loosen¬
ing of the theory of sensations is, no doubt, important but does not
modify the original theory. We do not believe that we have attained
our goal when, following James, we distinguish substantive and tran-
sitive parts in the stream of consciousness and place sensing in con¬

tradistinction to sensations.
In passing, let me add two more comments to my so far negative
characterization. The above arguments indicate my intention to sep¬
arate quite strictly sensing from perceiving. Finally, in my explora¬
tion of sensing, my attention is not directed to the physiological
process, to the production of sensations. I will avoid physiological
hypotheses; it seems to me that they belong perhaps at the end, but
certainly not at the beginning of a psychological doctrine of sensing.
The separation of sensing from knowing and perceiving, the re¬
jection of the thing-like structure of sensations, was a preliminary
reference to the “how” and the “what” of sensing. But I have scarcely
mentioned the “who,” the sensing subject. It is not by chance that
the subject has been placed at the end. For little enough has been
said by psychology about the subject of sensations. Froebes, for ex¬
ample, explains sensations as “direct sensory responses of conscious¬
ness to external stimuli, disregarding all additions by memory. . . .”
The subject of sensing is turned here into pure subject, into a time¬
less subject; it is transformed into consciousness, into a soul, into
an abstract ego, obviously limiting what there is of importance to
be said about it. Thus, in conventional descriptions, the theme of
the subject of sensations is ended even before it has really begun.
The Cartesian subject is originally alone with himself. In the
process of thinking, he ascertains his own being. By the process of
interpreting his thoughts, he indirectly assures himself of the exist¬
ence of God and of the reality of corporeal things.
The empirical subject of sensations retained the character of the
pure ego; it is a timeless or a time-alienated ego. But this subject is
also thought to be man among men, animal among animals, an ego
in his own world. The subject of sensations enters the stage in the
borrowed costume of the Cartesian subject. The misinterpretation
of sensing, however, does not only ruin the theory of sensing but will
also affect the psychology of thinking and the logic of knowledge.16
Some of his ideas even captivated Descartes’ opponents during
the hottest period of controversy. The succeeding generation is
dominated no less by hidden than by open Cartesianism. The turn¬
ing away from the everyday attitude, from the natural confidence
in sensory experience and its reliability, the turn to a worldless, un-
corporeal consciousness is soon considered as a matter of course. Yet,
at the same time, this disembodied consciousness is called “our” con¬
sciousness.
About a half century after the publication of the Meditations,
H Introduction
Locke published his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The

title was not without polemic intention. Locke states that his pur¬
pose is to investigate the origin, the certainty, and the scope of
human knowledge. He attacks Descartes’ doctrine of the innate ideas.
With his sensualism and his psychologistic epistemology, he certainly
belongs to the ranks of Descartes’ opponents. Nevertheless, the hu¬
man mind of which Locke speaks, or thinks he speaks, often re¬
sembles the res cogitans itself.
It is from the point of view of Cartesian philosophy that Locke
argues against Descartes and his doctrine. Locke adopts without
further ado Descartes’ stages of certainty—from the intuitive evi¬
dence of the ego cogito to the demonstration of the existence of God,
and from the insight into the veracity of God to the acceptance of
an outside world as probably existing. The semantic difference, how¬
ever, indicates the change of intellectual climate.
Faithful to his method, Descartes speaks—at least in the Medita¬
tions—in the singular: I, ego. This ego does not signify the man,
Ren£ Descartes, the empirical, bodily person, but is to be understood
as pure res cogitans. But Locke always writes “we, our mind,” even:
“We have knowledge of our own existence by intuition,” although
in his opinion each individual can have such knowledge only of
himself. Descartes relegates the body to the realm of the res extensa.
From there he apprehends a particular body as especially closely
tied to himself, the res cogitans. Since Locke followed suit, accepting
the viewpoint of the immanence of consciousness, he could not in¬
terpret body and corporeal existence otherwise. Yet he did not stick
to this point of view, but spoke quite naively of our senses and sen¬
sory organs, to which he brought “sensations” into causative relation.
I, we, us, our mind—these must, according to Locke, be understood
as a phenomenologically reduced consciousness (“the mind . . . has
no other object but its own ideas”). But in this same chapter he uses
the expressions “I,” “we,” “us,” with reference to man and human
existence. A theoretical construction replaces observation. It decides
before all experience, and in contradiction to observation, what, sup¬
posedly, is found in experience.
Descartes made it his task to undermine the natural confidence
of daily life, to unmask it as an illusion. Our belief in the reality
of the “outside world,” which we imagine we perceive immediately
in our sensory experience, springs from a prejudice; one should
rather say from a “post-judice.” It is, as it were, a habit we drag along
from our uncritical childhood years. At that time of growth we were
particularly close to our body. Because sensations impart to the body
—with certain limitations—that which is either useful or harmful,

we have become accustomed (in accordance with the importance of
our corporeal existence during childhood) to experience in the sen¬
sations—as it were, immediately—the reality of a corporeal world.
Descartes took pains to undermine the common certainty about
the reality of the outside world. Locke, on the other hand, tried to
found our belief in “a world outside of us.” Once again childhood
and childhood experiences are used as explanation. “Sensations” are
primarily but “ideas” which, as such, enter the stage of conscious¬
ness; among them the mind discovers some which it has not pro¬
duced itself, and which it therefore brings into causative relation to
things that affect it from outside. The world is thus not experienced,
but thought; it is posited in judgment. Our belief in the outside
world does not originate in a childhood illusion but is gradually
acquired from early days on.
Locke usually takes pains to write in a simple, dry style; only
seldom does he rise to any pathos, as at the beginning of the second
book where he extols empiricism as a basic principle. He says, “Let
us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all
characters, without any ideas. How is it to be furnished? Whence
comes it by that vast store in which the busy and boundless fancy
of man has filled it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it
all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer in one
word: from experience.”
"The emphatic reference to experience, which Locke invokes like
a muse, in no way means that the author proceeds empirically, that
he will turn toward experience. “Experience” is, with Locke—just
as with many of his present-day successors—a dogmatic principle
used in order to construct genetically the familiar experience of the
world and to deduce it from the gradual acquisition of single ideas,
their accumulations and combinations. Just as a house is built from
single bricks, so the experience of an adult is likened to a composite
of many single sensations. The doctrine of the sensory data as the
basic materials of experience dependent on stimuli—the secondary
qualities—as the original material of experience takes its start from
Locke’s reinterpretation of the Cartesian consciousness. During the
few years separating Locke’s Essay from the Meditations, the Carte¬
sian revolution of thinking had come to a standstill; it had grown
torpid and rigid. Without noticing it, Locke popularized Descartes’
solipsism and prepared the ground for the acceptance of his theory
of sensation through psychology and physiology in its most radical
form. “I,” Descartes wrote, “am entirely and absolutely distinct from
i6 Introduction
my body and I can exist without it. I further find in myself faculties,
employing modes of thinking peculiar to themselves, to wit, the fac¬
ulties of imagination and feeling without which I can easily conceive
myself clearly and distinctly as a complete being.” Thus, strictly
speaking, sensations can be understood only with regard to man_
that is, to that which is composed of body and mind. Sensations are
an addition to pure intellect which could also exist without them.
Locke, however, holds sensations to be “simple ideas,” the temporal
beginning of our knowledge and the material of which knowledge is
composed. Sensations belong to our mind. Because this mind is un¬
derstood as extramundane, uncorporeal consciousness, sensations, too,
are taken out of the natural connection of experiencing and the
corporeal bemg-in-the-world. In Descartes’ system, sensations, com¬
pared with the rationalistic standards of clarity and distinctness are
vague and confused ideas. Locke’s “simple ideas” fulfill at least the
demand of precision or, strictly speaking, distinctness. Nevertheless,
they are degraded to ideas of secondary qualities which, being only
subjective, reside in consciousness. In Locke’s own thinking we do
not find any original reason for this devaluation of the sensations,
still less for his high esteem of the primary qualities. His interpre-
tation of reality takes over Descartes’ doctrine. The reality of the
wor c is posited as a proposition. It is predicated, not experienced.
The prelogical sphere of the immediate experience of reality is en¬
tirely neglected. The theoretical solipsism that followed from Des-
T uGCreS in L°cke’S interPretation a psychological
ct. It has in this form continued to operate throughout the cen-
tunes Heud s doctrine of reality testing is an odd attempt to find
a solution for the problem which Freud accepted from tradition as
a matter of course. The Id and the “unconscious” are solipsistic con¬
ceptions, late descendants of Cartesianism.
iectT!>lethea“rîenCei-0f ??CharjaCteristicS of the transcendental sub-

j to the real soul of the individual, it is true, had already been
LTTrea/thinr^d He™°tein *e Meditations: “But I am, how¬
ever, a real thing and really exist, but what kind of thine? I have
answered: a thing which thinks.”” Already in the Principles the I
nm-lbeff°mn3 WG ^ finally in the treatise 1’Homme, not published
until ^ Descartes’ death, there prevails an entirety different con
ption coriesponding to the change of theme. There Descartes savs
a the very begnrningt ■■Ces homines seront composes cTmmTnZ
d un ame cl d'un corps." In the course of his transformation from
the pure ego to the psychophysical person, the subject retains the
charactenst.cs of the res cogitans. The empirical subject as,imf
lated to the transcendental subject. J assimi-
*7
“I am certain that I am a thinking thing” (Sum certus me esse

rem cogitantem). With these words, the third Meditation connects
with the results of the second Meditation. The res cogitans confronts
the res extensa. There the attributive term is expressed by the present
participle, here by the past participle. In truth, however, the being
of the res cogitans is not interpreted through a process of knowing
still to be accomplished, but rather through completed and finite
knowledge. From the evidence of the cogito sum, and after that from
the validity of mathematics and from everything which has been
recognized clearly and distinctly—thus, from the accomplished
knowledge—we comprehend what the being of the res cogitans is.
Human knowledge is elevated above itself; it is rated one degree too
high. This interpretation of human knowing that uses the perfect
and complete knowledge as standard has continuously veiled the
psychological problems of knowing and sensing.
Whether the theory of sensations leads one to interpret this sub¬
ject as a theoretical subject or as consciousness as such; whether the
subject is objectified as a receiver of stimuli; whether, according to
Mach, the ego is considered lost, or, with Hume, interpreted as a
bundle of perceptions; finally, whether one concedes that an “I
think” accompanies consciousness in every psychic act—in all these
reflections the sensing subject is not a living human being. That, of
course, is the main point. From the long list of negations, we have
arrived at the first positive definition. We conceive sensing as a mode
of “being alive” (Lebendiges Sein).
If sensing is a mode of being alive, this being alive must also be
directly apprehended in sensing itself. Life as such does not manifest
itself in all phenomena that can be examined in living creatures,
nor does it become comprehensible in the various statements about
living creatures. Living creatures have, among other attributes,
weight. An architect in building a house or a bridge takes the weight
of human bodies into account, and so does the engineer in construct¬
ing a car. The carrying capacity is made to meet the contemplated
load. And in principle it is quite irrelevant whether one has to allow
for the weight of human bodies, sacks of flour, or iron bars. For by
measuring weight in kilograms—that is, by equating living beings
in a certain relation to a definite amount of water of an exact degree
of heat—we affirm that the living creature has not been understood
in its mode of being alive. The carrying capacity, the highest per¬
missible load, can be computed as total weight from the addition of
the individual weights. But a sum of weights is not a sum of human
beings. By calculating the carrying capacity, one rightly disregards
the fundamental biological facts of the monadic structure of the in-
i8 Introduction
dividual; one merely takes into consideration that living beings are
also bodies of a certain weight.18
Such an approach to the essence of sensing cannot result in a
meaningful presentation. In defining sensing as a mode of being alive
we have thus indicated at the same time the purpose of our inves¬
tigation. The first stipulation sets a positive task, the solution of
which should show time and again that being alive is an intrinsic
character of sensing. Therefore we cannot be satisfied with paying
lip service to this definition and returning afterward to the conven¬
tional interpretation of phenomena.
In order to characterize sensing from the beginning as a mode of
being alive I have chosen the gerundive participle sensing in contra¬
distinction to the substantive “the sensations” as our central theme.
Thereby I wish to express that the very mode of experiencing which
I call sensing has in itself the character of change, and thus a definite
temporal structure.
Perhaps I can elucidate further the semantic implications of what
I mean by substituting for the rather jaded term “sensing” (Emp-
finden) the partly synonymous term “feeling” (spiiren). “To feel”
(spiiren) has a twofold meaning: it signifies both an active and a
passive awareness. Feeling (spiiren), when it means enduring, signi¬
fies precisely the temporal meaning of sensing.
When someone feels (verspilrt) pain, something is done to him.
He who feels (endures) pain is certainly no longer a calm observer
receiving impressions with disinterested passivity. If someone feels
pain, everything inside of him comes into motion. The world bursts
upon him, threatening to overpower him. To sense pain means to
experience the immediacy of disturbance in the relation to the
world. To sense pain means therefore to sense oneself at the same
time, to find oneself changed in relation to the world, or more ex¬
actly, changed in one’s somatic communication with the world.
In traditional theory, the subject of sensing has been hidden in a
haze of generalities or lost in transcendental remoteness. The sub¬
ject is indeed bound to disappear, for in traditional theory he is con¬
fined to mere statements which are but generalities. The sensory
data are indicators of the existence of objective general data in ob¬
jective space and objective time. The subject can manifest himself as
an individual only when deceived. As a matter of fact, the expression
subjective has for quite some time implied the merely subjective,
even deceptive. Removed from time and becoming, the subject re¬
ceives impressions indifferently and unmoved. Strictly speaking, we
are saying almost too much by talking about impressions and re-
J9
ception. Impressions leave only physiological traces behind while

the subject remains identical with himself, unchanged. Sensations
march past him in a long procession. One impression follows the
other. True, they are arranged in proper order as to the one-after-
the-other of objective time; but they are as such timeless and, as
many people believe, spaceless qualities. The relation of the subject
to sensing is a mere “having”; the subject has sensations, but he does
not sense. It is a strange world of the dead that is supposed to be the
beginning and the foundation of psychic life.
(d) The Atomistic Concept of Time

in Psychology
If sensing is neither knowledge nor a mechanical event but a
mode of being alive, it must be understood as a category of becom¬
ing. Becoming implies change and modification; all becoming is a
becoming different. It implies direction and continuity.
The possibility of understanding sensing as becoming is already
endangered whenever we speak of experiences in the plural. The
use of the plural in psychology is not limited to the doctrine of sen¬
sations. James, for instance, mentions one definition of psychology:
“The description and explanation of states of consciousness as such.
States of consciousness are things, like sensations, desires, emotions,
acts of cognition, logical considerations, decisions, volitions, and the
like.”19 This definition seems quite harmless; apparently it does not
prejudice anything. But actually it forces upon psychology a method
which from the very first step determines all possible results of in¬
quiry in a definite way. The effect of this definition can be felt even
in special investigations, for example in the formulation of ques¬
tions for the observation of stroboscopic illusions of movement.
Empirical psychology finally incorporated the categories of thing¬
ness in the space-and-time-order of physics. This process, initiated
by Descartes, culminated in the creation of that time concept called
atomistic. The concept of time atomism was formulated by Hume,
although his conception of time had already been anticipated by
Descartes. According to Hume, time is a composition of indivisible
moments. “The time, as it exists, must be composed of indivisible
moments.” Where we have no consecutive separated perceptions,
Hume concluded, we have no experience of time. Therefore, time
20
Introduction
cannot have the characteristics of a continuum; for the discrete per¬

ceptions, the “indivisible parts” of which it is supposedly composed
are themselves nontemporal. The invariant time particles, constitut¬
ing the whole of time are, as such, timeless. In them, time stands still.
Sensory perceptions or impressions are, for Hume, the basic stuff
of experience. Ideas correspond to impressions. Both “impressions”
and “ideas” are isolated structures, strictly separated from each
other. They are posited by Hume in the plural. The assumption of a
plurality of impressions compels me to inquire into the function of
counting and the conditions of the “computability” of objects. Even
if there were no need for reflection on the function of counting, the
problem of computability demands a solution. If there is a plurality
of distinct impressions, I require a demonstration of what it is that
separates them from each other.
Material objects can be counted because they appear separated
from each other in space, which separates them and encompasses
them at the same time. There is nothing to be counted on a homoge¬
neous surface occupying our whole field of vision; nor can we count
water in a glass. What we can count are drops of water. If we are
to determine how many drops of water there are in a glass of water,
the drops have to be separated by some method from each other. The
water has to be dripped, for example, through a burette.
But what is it that separates experiences from each other? It can¬
not be space. Then what about time? The assumption of a plurality
of experiences requires that the single experiences are separated from
each other by an interval of empty time. However, it is just this as¬
sumption which Hume rejects. He denies the substantiality of time
as well as an experience of time independent of sensory impressions.
Time is composed of “indivisible parts” which are given with the
sensory impressions. In between, there is nothing and nothing is
experienced.
Of an “in-between,” according to Hume, we have no impressions
and consequently no ideas. Time has the character of contiguity
rather than continuity. Hume’s admission that he cannot really ex¬
plain the order of time because it is not given with the impressions
nor produced by the subject, is at the same time an admission that
he cannot present us with a principle of the separation of im¬
pressions.
Hume, it is true, discusses the association of impressions, but he
does not even see the need to account for the dissociation, or the sep¬
aration of experiences, which precedes all associations. The assump¬
tion of a plurality of impressions seems a foregone conclusion if we
consider the impressions as states of other human or animal organ¬

isms. Then objective space and objective (transient) time become
the principium individuationis. Thus Hume’s psychology pushes on
toward a physiological psychology for which the assumption of sep¬
arated impressions is no longer problematic. But for that very reason
the inner connection of experiences remains an everlasting enigma.
Only that can be connected which had been previously separated.
The doctrine of the separation of experiences has to precede the
theory of their interconnection. The hiatus is the first problem. Even
in the arguments between Gestalt psychology and the older school,
this decisive question had not been tackled. Quite characteristic is
the lack of interest in the problem of time and the obvious bias of
Gestalt psychologists for physiological psychology. Experiencing is
understood as a succession of experiences, subjected to the categories
and intuitive forms in which we think about and comprehend nat¬
ural objects. The one-after-the-other of experiences is determined by
their succession in objective time. The diversity of experiences seems
to be determined through the diversity of the objective time-loci to
which they belong. The order of one-after-the-other of experiences
is substituted for the experience of the one-after-the-other.20
The doctrine of elements in psychology is not the result of in¬
adequate observations; it is the fulfillment of a methodical demand
of the mathematical natural sciences.
Time atomistics is founded on theology. “For all the courses of
my life may be divided into an infinite number of parts, none of
which is in any way dependent on the other; and thus from the fact
that I was in existence a short time ago it does not follow that I must
be in existence now, unless some cause at this instance, so to speak,
produces me anew, that is to say conserves me. It is as a matter of
fact perfectly clear and evident to all those who consider with atten¬
tion the nature of time, that in order to be conserved in each mo¬
ment in which it endures, a substance has need of the same power
and action as would be necessary to produce and create it anew, sup¬
posing it did not yet exist, so that the light of nature shows us
clearly that the distinction between creation and conservation is
solely a distinction of the reason.”21 Time atomistics is derived from
the interrelation of finite and infinite substances, from the relation
of God and the world; for that very reason, time atomistics itself
can serve as a link in the chain for a proof of the existence of God.
The theologically founded doctrine of the atomistic structure of time
best suits the needs of mathematical science. The eternally creating
God renews the world from moment to moment. All created things
22
Introduction
are finite.22 If single moments exist independently from each other,

then a continuum of time does not exist—nor does a becoming. Only
the discontinuous can be exactly measured and counted. Further¬
more, each single moment having been created finite and limited,
can be entirely understood because it can be entirely surveyed. The
single occurrence is recognized as being finished and complete, as
an event that has already taken place.
It is not easy to determine whether, in Descartes’ theory of time,
logic has determined ontology or ontology has determined logic.
But it is evident that his method cannot be separated arbitrarily
from his metaphysics; they remain always connected with each other.
In his philosophy, the formal principles correspond to the material;
in other words, his principle of evidence of clearness and distinctness
determines equally his theory of knowledge and his ontology of the
world.23
At the end of his Meditations, Descartes arrives at the conclusion
that one need not fear “that falsity may be found in matters every
day presented me by my senses.” It is true, things do not perhaps exist
in exactly the way we perceive them through our senses, “because
this sensory perceiving is in many cases rather dark and confused.”
With regard to the goal of scientific knowledge, sensing becomes
a deceptive process, but only for him who would accept knowl¬
edge conveyed by the senses for the totality or finality of experience.
Only with regard to the true being, only in metaphysics, can that
which the senses present be ultimately degraded to a world of ap¬
pearance, of deception, of not-being (p) 6v). If one strives for true
knowledge, one must penetrate the surface of appearance and guard
himself against its deception.
Posterity has secularized Descartes’ metaphysics. It has abandoned
the theory of substances and foregone the proof of the existence of
God. It merely wants to adhere to his method of philosophizing. Em¬
pirical science does not take over the Cartesian dichotomy in its origi¬
nal but in its modified form. Its naturalistic interpretation also
points back to Descartes. In his Passions Descartes has with strange
naivete transferred the doctrine of substances to the objects of the
“outside world.” Here he describes human beings in their plurality—
their appearance in space-time existence—as composed of body and
soul. The question of the seat of the soul arises. Descartes does not
treat it in a casual way. He attacks the problem seriously and em¬
phatically. The transference of the metaphysical distinction to ob¬
jects of the natural world makes the question unavoidable. The
shortcomings of his attempted solution to the problem are no reason
for belittling his intention. They only reveal the difficulties inherent
in such a sudden transition from metaphysics to natural science and
anthropology.
After this turn from metaphysics to anthropology, it was to be
expected that soon an explanation of human existence in its entirety
would be attempted according to the principles of mechanics. In
metaphysics, consciousness still took precedence over corporeal ex¬
istence. Pure thinking and free volition were to be excepted from
the subordination under corporeal being. But later philosophers
no longer had any reason to respect these limitations. They contin¬
ued on the road which Descartes himself had taken in his anthropo¬
logic-physiological writings. There thinking and willing took their
respective places as mere psychic functions among the others, just
like sensing, imagining and remembering. If man is seen as a mere
thing among things, there is no reason, and indeed no justification,
to abandon a mechanical interpretation.
The metaphysical depreciation of the world of the senses makes
the destruction of the deceptive appearance imperative. One would
truly like to get to know the real actors of this shadow play. The
fleeting should gain support from the lasting, the secure. The baser
being is but the refuse of the better one. Sensory qualities will there¬
fore have to be understood and explained on the basis of the true
being.
In Western Christianity the philosophical debasement of the
world of the senses gains its full impact through religious pathos.
For the world of the senses is at the same time the world of the finite,
of the temporal—of the transitory world of evil.
Neither knowledge nor salvation plays any part in the life of
animals. The animals as well as man, insofar as he is “flesh,” live in
this transitory, deceptive world. He who wants to understand the
living animal in its world must stoop to and lovingly remain in this
world of appearance. Although sensing is not a legitimate process
of knowing, it is nevertheless a fully authorized topic for knowledge.
Sensing can be called deceptive only insofar as it is considered to be
antecedent of, material for, or the road toward knowing. But if one
severs sensing as a mode of living experience from cognition, one
is no longer justified in labeling sensing as deceptive, as confused
and obscure, and as subjective. For only in the sphere of knowledge
do we find the true and the false, the clear and the confused. Our
attempts to understand sensory experience may fail; this shows that
our knowledge of sensing—but not sensing itself—is confused and
unclear. Our knowledge of sensing becomes clear and distinct only
Introduction
when we learn to grasp it in the manner in which it presents itself.

To understand sensing, one should not begin by despising it.
(e) Pavlov’s Theory of Conditioned

Reflexes: A Late Offspring of
Cartesian Philosophy
It is not easy to free oneself from the dominance of old habits.
Even though one may recognize them one does not by any means
get rid of them. Unaware, one lapses again into the old habits. This
is particularly true of old thinking habits, which may still secretly
control us although we have openly foresworn them.
Therefore I would like to inaugurate with a critique the detailed
presentation of the ideas I have sketched in this introduction. I select
for this purpose a modern and widely known, extremely mechanistic
and atomistic physiological theory of mental life—Pavlov’s theory of
conditioned reflexes. It is, notwithstanding its originality, a belated
fulfillment of Cartesianism.24 Descartes had already anticipated
everything in principle and much in particular. True, the nomencla¬
ture emphasizes the interest taken in the motor processes. However,
a mechanistic theory of motion is impossible without a mechanistic
interpretation of the sensation. The mechanism of “centrifugal” in
both motor and vegetative occurrences demands for its complement
the mechanism of “centripetal” processes. Pavlov has thoroughly
complied with this postulate. His theory, for the most part, is indeed
an atomistic theory of sensation. It is deemed superior to psychologi¬
cal experiments with human subjects in that it examines sensations
by way of their motor and vegetative effects, and not through state¬
ments made by the persons tested. Although for Pavlov the sen-
sorium and the motorium are two completely separate segments of
the central nervous system, in his test arrangements he made the
connection between sensations and movements the main problem
of his investigations. Against his basic convictions and against his
real tendency, Pavlov took a step in the direction of liberating the
sensations from the isolation in which they are usually examined.
The isolation of the sensations, their treatment as discrete forms, as
occurrences of self-contained, pure perception—all this makes first
possible the interpretation of the sensations as a preliminary stage
of knowledge. The isolation is founded again in time atomistics, as

can easily be seen. For sensations can be isolated only if the event
of reception takes place at the moment t0 and everything else that
depends on the sensation at a different time point, t1 or tx. Sensations
can be isolated only if the principle of isolation is carried through
completely. The often-heard remark that the isolation of sensations
is but an intellectual abstraction, and that one knows very well that
isolated sensations cannot be picked out from the web of experiences,
is an argument that does not hold. Whether sensations can actually
be isolated or not is not decisive. What is decisive is the purpose for
which the abstraction has been made. But here it aims at isolation;
it transforms sensation into pure reception. Sensations are no longer
understood as phenomena of living being and becoming. Pavlov
could not, and did not intend to, free himself from this pattern of
isolation. And yet not the propositions of his theory but the results
of his experiments shattered this scheme. Our criticism will have to
show that the junction is not what Pavlov assumed it to be. In mak¬
ing the junction between sensorium and motorium, Pavlov has never¬
theless rendered an extraordinary service to our own inquiry, which
attempts to comprehend sensing as a mode of living being.
Parti ©Q. CRITIQUE OF
THE DOCTRINE OF
CONDITIONED
REFLEXES
A. The Relation Between
Theory and Observation
in Pavlov’s Work
IN 1492, COLUMBUS LEFT CADIZ TO REACH INDIA BY SAILING WEST-

ward. He landed on a small isle of the Americas. Twice he returned
to the new world, yet until the very end he insisted that he had
reached India by a western route, in spite of objections raised by his
own contemporaries. History knows many inventors and discoverers
who found something different from what they intended. A few
among them did not recognize the true significance of their accom¬
plishments, and some, like Columbus, even misunderstood and re¬
jected it. Pavlov, with his theory of conditioned reflexes, belongs to
this group.
A critique of Pavlov’s theory must therefore be constructive.
Criticism could easily be confined to three negative aspects. First,
one might call into question the reliability of the experimental re¬
sults; next, accepting the findings, one might be content to prove
Pavlov’s theory erroneous without attempting to put something bet¬
ter in its place. Finally, in order to justify such an attack, one could
try to discredit Pavlov’s investigation altogether, claiming that his
experiments are but artifacts of the laboratory setting, which by no
means duplicate the natural life of animals and human beings, and
are therefore neither relevant to psychic life nor of any merit in
understanding it.
I do not intend to follow such a line of purely negative criticism,
29
Critique of the Doctrine of Conditioned Reflexes
3°
for I have no reason whatsoever to doubt the accuracy of Pavlov’s

observations and the adequacy of the descriptions of his experiments.
On the contrary, if Pavlov reports that in a series of experiments on
a certain day one of the test animals, after the third sounding of a
trumpet, secreted eight drops of saliva, we may be sure that there
were exactly eight drops, no more, no less.
I accept Pavlov’s records without a single qualm, but I strictly
divorce them from his interpretation of his experiments. My criti¬
cism will be turned against Pavlov’s theory, in spite of a full ac¬
knowledgment and acceptance of his observations.
This separation of the experimental findings from the theory
must, I assume, stun many of Pavlov’s followers. They believe that
anyone who accepts the findings must also be in agreement with
the theory. The arrangement of the tests is, in their opinion, so
simple, the conditions of the experiments so transparently clear, that
for them the theory' is a direct distillate from the observations. They
do not see any line of demarcation between experimental findings
and their interpretation. Where, therefore, could a cut be made?
But these enchanted followers obviously do not realize the actual
complexity of the experimental design or the many presuppositions
on which Pavlov’s theory is founded. To investigate the general
premises of Pavlov’s work and examine step by step the unforeseen
and perplexing results of his experiments will be my next task.
No doubt, among Pavlov’s many followers there are only a few
who have repeated and verified his experiments or—what is even
more important—read his writings in the original. The great ma¬
jority knows Pavlov only second- or third-hand, from hearsay, from
popular descriptions or, under the most favorable conditions, from
presentations in science classes and the abstracts in textbooks and
compendia. But I am going to show later that even reference books,
by definition committed to accuracy, fail at decisive points in their
description of the experimental design and arrangements. The au¬
thors themselves have obviously fallen prey to the suggestive ideas
of the simple pattern of the experimental arrangements; they have
unintentionally reduced complex order to an assumed simplicity.
The rapid dissemination of the theorems of the conditioned
reflex is also due to a series of historically accidental moments which
I will have to report on in passing. Let us consider the following
situation. Pavlov’s work has continued for more than fifty years, but
the fertility of his method seems not yet exhausted. Again and again
new experimental arrangements are contrived, new observations are
added, and the theory strives to conquer and subject ever new fields.
When at the age of fifty Pavlov set to work on his successful observa-
THEORY AND OBSERVATION IN PAVLOV’S WORK 31
tions, he was already a scholar of renown. It was therefore his very

rare good fortune, in the second half of his life, to come upon a great
discovery which was for him a most decisive event. This discovery,
far from being the finale and the crown of his work, opened to him
a vast field of new research. He labored to develop a physiology of
the cerebral hemispheres in line with the creation of an objective
psychology.
The execution of such a task demanded much detailed work.
Pavlov and his many assistants followed up his initial observations
with a series of experiments throughout the next two decades. One
experiment variation followed another, often leading to new ques¬
tions and to surprising results not anticipated at the beginning of
the theory. The first two decades of Pavlov’s research were a period
of conquest in a new field. There was no time to pause, to reflect,
or to consolidate the already-gathered evidence. This mode of ex¬
pansive research is mirrored in the style of his scientific publications.
We do not have a single survey or summarizing description from this
period; Pavlov and his coworkers reported on the new findings in
lectures and in scattered papers. From these many publications, only
a few have been translated into German and other world languages.
The effect was that in non-Russian countries Pavlov’s theory became
famous before it was fully known.
A few instances will suffice to illustrate this situation. In the year
1901, Pavlov started his research on conditioned reflexes. In 1904 he
received the Nobel Prize. The award was given in recognition of
earlier accomplishments. But it was not until 1926 that a collection
of his lectures was brought out in the German language, and only
in 1929 was a systematic account, the Legons sur L’Activite du
Cortex Cerebral, published in Paris, a translation of a book pub¬
lished in 1927 in Russian. Until then, no detailed presentation was
available which would allow a thorough study and a precise exami¬
nation of the theory beyond a mere re-examination of the experi¬
mental setting.
Strangely enough, this flaw helped rather than hurt the spread
of Pavlov’s theory. Was not the pattern of his experiments, “The
temporal coincidence of two stimuli,” lucidly simple? Were his ob¬
servations not reliable beyond doubt, and could they not very easily
be repeated and varied? The theory of the functions of isolated an¬
alyzers and of the temporal connections of new pathways corre¬
sponded in its simplicity with the pattern of the experiments; it
seemed directly deduced from the observations, and with it the whole
theoretical interpretation of psychic life.
The rapid spread of the theory favored by the intellectual climate
32
of that period was in no small degree due to Pavlov’s personality.

His literary publications testify indeed to the passionate enthusi¬
asm of the researcher, to his unswerving belief in the metaphysi¬
cal truth of the natural sciences. His description of the experiments,
the protocols which are quoted whenever they are of importance,
impress us as the very testaments of complete reliability. There is
above all the constant effort not to gloss over any difficulties, no¬
where to evade embarrassing questions, never to deceive or dupe the
reader. All this lends a captivating authority to the dry and repeti¬
tive presentation of Pavlov, reaching far beyond any effects of cun¬
ning and cleverness. We call this influence captivating because the
reader—caught by the personal straightforwardness of the author
rather than by his arguments—finally comes to the conclusion that
Pavlov’s theory must be as true and objective as are his observations.
And it is exactly the acceptance of his theory which lends promi¬
nence to the whole doctrine. For only thus, as a definite interpreta¬
tion of the essence of life and ultimately of the essence of man, does
it concern all of us. Without the theoretical interpretation, Pavlov’s
findings would have been of interest only to some specialists, to the
physiologist of nutrition, or to a limited group of clinicians. It is
the theory which elevates the doctrine to the supreme level; the the¬
ory consecrates the findings.
' The convinced follower of Pavlov will therefore vigorously reject
that separation of observation and interpretation which appears to
me justified and necessary. For he will probably argue as follows:
(1) there is a possibility of purely objective observations and de¬
scriptions, free from any presuppositions; (2) Pavlov’s experimental
design is simple and perfectly lucid; (3) the theory directly follows,
as an evident generalization from the results obtained by the experi¬
ments; (4) these results, carried through in all possible variations
and verified in each case, provide ever-renewed proof of the theory.
But all these assumptions, every one of them, are inconclusive.
If, therefore, someone transfers Pavlov’s doctrine, as a heuristic
hypothesis, to new fields of science, for instance, to psychology, peda-
gogy, or sociology, he acts like a man signing an insurance policy
without first reading the fine print. Such a man may believe: There
is nothing to it; I pay my premiums and, in case of a fire, the insur¬
ance company will pay for the damage. But when things become
serious, he will be grieved to discover that the schema he thought so
simple is charged with a series of additional provisions.
The same holds true for the theory of conditioned reflexes. The
basic phenomenon from which Pavlov started is a phenomenon well
THEORY AND OBSERVATION IN PAVLOV’S WORK 3S
known to all of us. At one time or another everyone has had the
experience of having the sight of some tasty dish make his mouth
water. It is quite another question whether this very familiar phe¬
nomenon can also be as easily comprehended. We must be on guard
not to take for granted phenomena which we ourselves produce at
ease, and without intent. They remain unproblematic only as long
as we have not yet made an effort to understand them.
By no means self-evident but highly problematic indeed is the
very first step which Pavlov takes on the road to the exploration of
observable behavior. For he divides the phenomenon of approach¬
ing into two separate and only extraneously connected processes:
that of the conditioned, and that of the unconditioned, reflex. But
in splitting the temporal continuum of approach into two discrete
moments he has already conjured up all the questions that we will
have to examine. Obviously, Pavlov himself did not recognize the
matter at hand in his field of inquiry. Rather, he relied upon tradi¬
tional doctrines, confiding in them as the natural methods of ob¬
servation. All further steps of exploration are already predetermined
thereby.
The fission of the integral phenomenon of approaching into two
essentially autonomous processes enables Pavlov to turn his full at¬
tention to the variability of the “stimuli of conditioned reflexes.”
Their variability is indeed highly surprising and, in some cases, ac¬
tually amazing. For one can train some dogs to react to ellipses with
a selected proportion of diameters serving as optical “signals.” How¬
ever, this possibility of turning each and every thing into a stimulus
of the conditioned reflexes is entirely a function of the milieu of
Pavlov’s laboratory. Only in these surroundings do Pavlov’s experi¬
ments prove successful.
One must not forget that, after having been prepared for the
experiments by the opening of a saliva-fistula, experimental animals
are kept for the duration of the experiment in an environment com¬
pletely at variance with their natural surroundings. The laboratory
is hermetically sealed off from the external world. No light gets in
from the outside, no noise penetrates its walls, there are no scents;
nothing happens there. The animal is a captive in an atmosphere
of uniform, immutable silence. After some days allowed for adapta¬
tion, the experiments are started. The animals are tied to a frame
on the table, the registering apparatuses are attached, and the dog
is left all by himself in the deadly silence of the laboratory box. From
an adjacent room, the experimenter observes the animals without
their being aware of this situation. All “stimuli” are applied to the
34 Critique of the Doctrine of Conditioned Reflexes
animal by way of mechanical devices. Every imaginable care has

been taken to exclude any changes in the laboratory room; this, in
Pavlov’s terminology, means that all stimuli which the experimenter
does not want to apply in this particular instance are eliminated.
The Pavlovian laboratories are characterized by a complete mo¬
notony and barrenness which prevails (and must prevail) if the ex¬
periment is to succeed. In such surroundings, any sound acquires a
significance quite different from that which it would have in the
natural environment with its changing lights, noises, and scents,
populated by humans, animals, and things in motion. But are we
at all justified in speaking of significance? This, indeed, is here a
decisive question. According to Pavlov, we are not entitled to use
that term. To him, the so-called monotony appears as nothing but
a number of individual stimuli comparatively small in relation to
the objective duration of the experiment. But now it is our turn to
ask: How can this interpretation of monotony be accepted? Is it
permissible? What are its unexplored implications? Must we not talk
about significance? Are stimuli nothing but isolated excitations of
sensory organs?
For the time being, I cannot yet answer these questions. I want
to stress, however, that the setting of the laboratory is not an indiffer¬
ent arrangement to be evaluated in merely technical terms. These
so-called preparatory requirements of the experiment present funda¬
mental problems in themselves.
It is important to realize that Pavlov interprets all modifications
of the situation as individual stimuli. For this, too, is an interpre¬
tation of the phenomena fraught with consequences and not at all
a matter of course. The insufficient analysis and account of the
milieu of the laboratory, together with an erroneous theory of ab¬
straction, lead to the “physiological” theorem of the irradiation and
concentration of excitation. Also, only under the peculiar conditions
of this laboratory can sleep be experimentally produced in the way
Pavlov described it. It would indeed be daring to deduce from these
observations a general theory of sleep.
Later on, I will have to examine why Pavlov neglected the par¬
ticular conditions of his experiments upon which he based his the¬
ory. At this moment, I want to emphasize above all that the belief
in a lucid pattern of the experimental design is not borne out by
the facts. The simplicity is but a superficial one. It owes its sham
existence to a scotoma for the actual problems, resulting in a naive
anticipation of theoretical decisions.
Among the great number of supplementary conditions indis-
THEORY AND OBSERVATION IN PAVLOV’S WORK 35
pensable to the successful establishment of conditioned reflexes, one

needs to be mentioned here: it is the temporal relation between
conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. Pavlov’s experiments have
shown that the conditioned stimulus must always precede the oc¬
currence of the unconditioned response.
Only then, when an optical or an acoustical signal precedes the
feeding a number of times, can a conditioned reflex be formed. Pav¬
lov himself reports that many hundreds of repetitions did not pro¬
duce a conditioned reflex when the respective signals were applied
during or after the feeding. But a conditioned reflex could be in¬
duced through a few applications of the same stimuli, provided that
they preceded the feeding. We are confronted here with the phenom¬
enon of a definite temporal order and direction, a phenomenon to
which we attribute fundamental significance.
In a French treatise on psychology,1 Pieron, nevertheless, de¬
scribes the formation of a conditioned reflex as follows: “Un chien
reôit dans la bouche de la poudre de viande, qui le fait saliver. En
meme temps (sic) on lui fait entendre un son de diapason, ou on
projette sur lui de la lumi^re, ou encore on lui gratte la peau.”
Obviously, this description is incorrect at a decisive point. A con¬
ditioned response fails to occur when the sound of a trumpet is
sounded simultaneously with the feeding. It is true that Pieron is not
the only one who shows little concern in this respect. Pavlov also oc¬
casionally refers to the simultaneity of the stimuli, but only after
having unambiguously stated at the beginning that the conditioned
stimulus has to come first. Descriptions, such as given by Pieron and
others, may well lead to the unwarranted assumption that condi¬
tioned reflexes are phenomena which could be interpreted according
to Gestalt principles. However, the qui-pro-quo which carelessly
turns sequence into simultaneity conceals the phenomenon of direc¬
tion and approach so significant for a formulation of the problem.
Pavlov’s physiology grows out of a universal atomistics; it rests
upon an atomistic interpretation, as well, of such phenomena as ap¬
proach, modification, and direction. Any physiology of the human
central nervous system is highly hypothetical. But Pavlov’s theory in¬
deed surpasses almost any other by the number of its unverified hy¬
potheses. Any physiology of the central nervous system must simply
admit propositions already established in physics and chemistry,
anatomy, and general biology, and above all in psychology. True, not
every individual science can return with its questions to the very be¬
ginning. Happily, the specialist restricts himself to the work within
the confines of his own field. But if one undertakes to explain soul
and mind, life and consciousness, in physiological terms, and if any¬

one gives such radical answers as does Pavlov, he must first have
raised the fundamental questions. Pavlov, however, accepts with an
astonishing naivet^ some concepts of physics as the universal cate¬
gories of his explanation of the world. These are concepts, it must be
said, of elementary physics as it has been taught during the past cen¬
tury in high schools and presented to medical students in universi¬
ties. With such armament, Pavlov at the same time feels prepared to
construct a physiology of the brain and an objective psychology. He
considers these categories to be self-evident: he does not realize the
problematic character of his primitive physics. This alone accounts
for the fact that he could label “objective” a psychology which is
based on a crude reduction of the phenomenally given, a psychology
which ignores the content of experience. For “to investigate objec¬
tively” means here to think and to speak in concepts of physics. It
means nothing else but to penetrate the deceptive appearance of the
phenomena and to press forward to their supposedly true essence,
namely, the physical mechanisms. Finally, this objective psychology
claims to be a simple description of facts.
Yet any description is already theory. The very language we learn
dictates a definite interpretation of the world. We see the world
through the medium of language, and this language is that of our
parents. It is also the language of our generation; it binds us to tradi¬
tion. Not only is the scientific interpretation of the world tied to the
past through scientific language and terminology. Prescientific, every¬
day interpretation shares the same tradition. In the course of cen¬
turies, everyday interpretation of the world has gradually been
shaped according to current scientific interpretation. The dogmas of
grandparents become the facts of current common sense. Anyone ad¬
dicted to pure description is particularly bound by the dogmatics of
the past. If, during the second half of the last century, the common¬
place interpretation of the world had not already been thoroughly
mechanistic, Pavlov could hardly have thought his physicalism to be
such a self-evident theory, nor could he have attracted so many fol¬
lowers. Pavlov did not realize that his theory was not the beginning
but the end of a long development of Western thinking.
Any theory, even the most complex one, is still bound to the ver¬
nacular. Again and again, at important points, a theory uses ex¬
pressions from everyday language, thinking, and writing, without
giving an account of their exact meaning. The meanings of expres¬
sions are rendered in approximations, just so far that colloquial
understanding is possible. This will do in everyday life where speak-
GENERAL PRESUPPOSITIONS
37
ing primarily subserves understanding, but not comprehension, of a

subject matter among men. Because scientific knowledge cannot limit
itself to mere conversational understanding, because it must go be¬
yond this—indeed away from it and toward the comprehension of
the subject matter—science has to develop a language of its own
which cannot always be pleasing or generally “intelligible.” How
easily do we understand each other when we use expressions like
“new,” “suddenly,” or “in between”? How difficult it is, however, to
grasp their exact meaning or to set forth the nature of an experience
in which something appears as new or sudden, or which enables us to
grasp the relationship “in between.” In our daily life we allude to
facts generally familiar but not understood. In science we demand an
intelligible elucidation of the facts; we pass from mere demonstra¬
tion to explication. We shall see how Pavlov, by a merely demon¬
strative use of certain expressions, entirely missed some very
important problems. Ease of communication concealed the difficulty
of comprehension.
The following detailed presentation of Pavlov’s general presup¬
positions and the difficulties incurred will confirm that his theory is
not, as he claims, objective and empirical, but on the contrary totally
permeated by unexamined metaphysical and epistemologic assump¬
tions. Pavlov exemplifies well the thesis that those who cry loudest
against philosophy are most often the victims of naive philosophical
speculation.
GB. General Presuppositions
(a) Metaphysical Rationalism
THE CRITIQUE OF PAVLOV’S THEORY WILL SERVE TO DEVELOP MY
own conception of the essence of sensing by contrasting it with a

highly mechanistic theory. This critique of Pavlov’s general presup-
positions is meant to be at the same time a critique of the presupposi¬

tions of any atomistic theory of sensation. Pavlov is very outspoken
about these issues. However, these presuppositions are not his alone
—they represent neither his personal merit nor his personal failing.
Rather, they have been passed on to him from the past, by many di¬
rect and indirect ways. Our critique of the general presuppositions is,
finally, a criticism of Pavlov’s naive natural philosophy and meta¬
physics.
Pavlov has gained world fame not as a biologist but as a meta¬
physician. Brain-anatomical and brain-physiological discoveries have
not been wanting during the last decades. Among them are some
which can be considered first-rate scientific achievements. But fa¬
miliarity with the names of the authors and acquaintance with their
discoveries is limited to a small circle of specialists. If Pavlov’s theory
had been purely neurophysiological, one could undertake to enumer¬
ate the names of the genuinely interested experts. I repeat, then; it is
Pavlov the metaphysician who is widely praised. Indeed, the recog¬
nition of Pavlov’s theory and official endorsement by the present
Russian government is due to its philosophical materialism and not
to any hypotheses concerning ganglion cells or nerve tracts and their
connections.
Pavlov would no doubt have fought tooth and nail against the
“reproach” of being a nature philosopher and metaphysician. There¬
fore, before I prove my assertion indirectly by uncovering his gen¬
eral presuppositions, I wish to make quite sure that in many passages
Pavlov revealed his metaphysical tendencies without any reserve.
He clearly expressed that the goal of all the work in which he en¬
gaged since the turn of the century was to create a physiology of the
brain, based on strictly objective observations. Physics, especially me¬
chanics and chemistry, ought to serve as the methodological pxoto-
type and as the objective basis of this physiology. From psychology,
nothing was to be expected; strict objectivity ruled out any leaning
to psychology, including even the use of psychological concepts and
terms. It would be a reversal of the actual relation, Pavlov held, to
make a physiology of the cerebrum dependent upon psychology. As
for the relationship of these two sciences, it was physiology which
gave and psychology which received. By solving the problem, by com¬
pleting the physiology of the highest nervous activity, it would be
possible to “explain those phenomena so obscure to us, which run
their course within us.”1
Should psychic life turn out to be explicable in mechanistic
terms, and should this explanation bring to completion the task of
39
psychology, then psychic life must be mechanical. That, indeed, is

Pavlov’s opinion. At first it may appear that the rejection of psychol¬
ogy and the founding of physiology upon mechanics is to conform to
methodological and epistemological considerations, but it soon be¬
comes obvious that Pavlov’s mode of research is determined by meta¬
physical assumptions. “Those manifestations of life which are termed
psychic—and this holds also in the objective observation of animals
—are to be distinguished from purely physiological phenomena only
by their complexity. But then does it make any difference whether
one distinguishes them from the simpler physiological manifestations
by calling them ‘psychic’ or ‘neurally complex’?”2 Pavlov therefore
does not hesitate to speak of the living substance, nor to identify the
organism in its environmental relations with the physical body and
in its conditions of equilibrium. From mechanical motion to tropism,
from tropism to animal motion, and from animal motion to human
action is but a gradual progression. It is a series of increasing com¬
plexity. “For are not the movements of a plant toward light and the
searching for truth by means of mathematical analysis both phenom¬
ena belonging to one and the same order? Do they not form the
extreme links of an almost infinite chain of adaptations as they arise
everywhere in the living world?”3
Pavlov’s basic metaphysical view leads to two consequences. Real
being is grasped by physics. Physical science has not only the merits
of exactitude and objectivity, it also apprehends reality. The subjec¬
tive, the psychic, is depreciated accordingly. The results of psychol¬
ogy are not only less exact and less objective, they do not even
represent reality; the psychic is a world of appearances which must
be explained by physics. From the very beginning, Pavlov puts his
trust in the possibility of subjecting psychic life to “engineering” by
means of objective research. “Guided by the similarity or identity of
various kinds of manifestations, science will sooner or later apply the
accrued results of objective research to our subjective world and will
thus, quite suddenly, brightly illuminate our nature which is now
veiled by darkness. It will illuminate the mechanism and life-value
of that which most concerns and binds man, the mechanism of his
spiritual life and torments.”4
In this manner, Pavlov already described in his first publication
(1903) the goal of his new investigations. Reviewing the results of
twenty years of research, he exulted in strangely chiliastic prophesy:
“As my work progressed, my doubts disappeared one by one—and
now I am absolutely and inexorably convinced that chiefly here, on
this very path, will be realized the final triumph of the human intel-
4o Critique of the Doctrine of Conditioned Reflexes
lect over his highest and holiest problem, the triumph in the task of
understanding the mechanism and laws of human nature. And only
thus can arise the true, the full, and secure happiness of man. May
the intellect of man celebrate one triumph after another over all-
encompassing nature; may it not only conquer the entire hard surface
of the earth for its own human life and activity but also gain the
waters with their tides, and the air space which encloses the globe;
may it for its manifold ends hurl vast charges of energy from one
point of the earth to another, annihilating the obstacles of space and
time; this and much more. But this same human nature with this
same intellect, should it be guided by undefined obscure powers
dwelling within its own boundaries, can only lead itself into unfore¬
seen material losses and unspeakable suffering in wars and revolu¬
tions with all the accompanying terrors that breed bestiality and
brutality among men. Only the youngest science, only it, shall rescue
man from the prevailing darkness and the present outrage in the
sphere of interhuman relations.”5
Thus mankind is to be saved by conditioned reflexes. Pavlov ap¬
parently does not see that he seeks to improve the present brutality of
interpersonal relations by an even worse brutality, namely by that
of mechanical training which would destroy humanity altogether, to¬
gether with freedom and moral responsibility. Let us hope therefore,
that we are spared these wonders of training. But let us not forget
either that what emerges as Pavlov’s later vision is already planned
in its foundations. Man can become happy by mechanization only
because he himself is nothing but a complex structure of mech¬
anisms, a thing among things: so says Pavlov.
Elimination of the Phenomenal

1. The Secondary Qualities. Wherever one opens Pavlov’s sum¬
mary of his work, one finds him speaking of dogs again and again.
The dogs are often described with quite a bit of wit, presented as in¬
dividuals with their own names. We learn of their temperament. We
hear that they are frightened or shy, aggressive or friendly. We find,
in addition, descriptions of how one blows a trumpet in front of the
animals or flashes a sign before them, how they are subjected to pain,
and how they are fed.
The casual reader might easily think that Pavlov is concerned
with dogs who hear tones and noises, see colors, figures, and lights,
who sniff scents and feel pain. But that is not the case. Pavlov, it is
GENERAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 41
true, speaks of a dog who hears, but what he actually means is an

organ of Corti excited by sound waves. He speaks of a dog who sees
this or that, but what he really means is a retina which is excited by
light. He speaks also of “pain-sensations located in the skin” of the
animals, but here he means the receptors of sensory nerves which are
excited mechanically or by warming, cooling, or faradization.
Nor is eating considered an action of the animal. Eating is a sum
total of reflex motions, released by the chemical and mechanical con¬
tacts of the mucous membranes of the mouth with certain substances.
The action of eating is composed of individual, separate muscular
contractions and of the secretions of the salivary glands.
To speak of reactions of dogs to colors and sounds, of seeing and
hearing, of eating and other activities, is for Pavlov merely a make¬
shift device by which he can make himself understood more quickly.
In reality, the whole phenomenal world is to be done away with once
and for all—such is the demand of objective psychology.
The world we live in, which appears to us full of color and sound,
is nothing but a somehow ordered interpenetration of countless
physical processes. Objective psychology understands the world as a
sum total of individual occurrences, processes which take place
around the animal, some of which affect the so-called sense organs.
The nervous system of the animal is a complicated aggregate: in its
sensory part a group of cells and conductors sensitive to light, sound,
and pressure. Indeed, the whole dog is nothing but a biological ap¬
paratus, which again reminds us that Pavlov, like Freud, expected
that, one day in the future, physics and chemistry would provide a
complete explanation of all the processes of psychic life.
Pavlov does not doubt that, instead of “seeing,” one could—in¬
deed must—say, “excitation of the retina.” For if one equates seeing
with the excitation of the retina, then the left side of this equation—
or, actually, nonequation—expresses the subjective, provisional, de¬
ceptive, while the right side expresses the objective, the final, true,
and real. And who would not, had he the choice, choose the betterl
Pavlov completely disregards the fact that the distinction between
experiencing and physiological process is most ambiguously and in¬
adequately expressed by the distinction between the subjective and
the objective. Nor does he realize that, before eliminating the phe¬
nomenal and reinterpreting and replacing it by mechanical proc¬
esses, one must at least examine the structure of the phenomenal and
of the cf>aiveo0<u, and consider whether it allows such a reduction; and
he also forgets that the reinterpretation itself and its procedure orig¬
inally belong to the experienced world.
The lesser epistemic value of the “subjective” does not take any-
thing away from its reality. We may bypass for the moment the ques¬
tion of whether the habitual epistemological evaluation of the sub¬
jective is conclusive, for this lias no relevance whatsoever for the
existence of the subjective. Is it the psychologist’s concern that origi¬
nal experience, measured against the ideal of mathematical physics,
is fraught with errors and deceptions, and even worse, that the sub¬
jectivity of sensing is totally alien to that ideal and incommensurable
with it? Does the investigator, be he psychologist or physiologist,
have the right to dictate how the object of his observations ought to
be? Must he not, rather, take that object as it is?
The fact that experiencing cannot be mastered rationally nor
penetrated by mathematical formulas might be sufficient reason to
dispute the possibility of an exact science of experiencing modelled
after mathematical physics. Pavlov would be justified in rejecting
psychology only on the assumption that physics is the exclusive
model and prototype of all sciences. Pavlov does not, however, repu¬
diate psychology but rather the sphere of the psychic, whose idea of
reality he questions.
We see that Pavlov’s materialistic metaphysics is founded upon a
metaphysical rationalism which, without scruple, equates Being with
that which can be expressed in mathematical formulae. Such pre¬
suppositions, and the reference to the lesser epistemological value
usually attributed to the subjective in the antithesis subjective-objec¬
tive, first allows Pavlov to start with the rejection of the phenom¬
enal and to replace it with its physiological and physical substitutes.
Objective psychology is not concerned with colors and sounds; it
replaces them with light and sound waves. On the total scale of waves
known by physics, a small portion is defined as light or sound. Only
events occurring within these limits are sensory stimuli. Through the
indispensable concepts of stimulus and stimulus threshold, sense
physiology and the anatomy of the central nervous system (which is
dependent on it) are much more closely tied to the phenomenal than
is physics. One can speak of an optical or acoustic sector of the cen¬
tral nervous system only with reference to the phenomena of light
and sound. Our hearing determines this nerve, this central area as an
acoustic field, in both human physiology and pathology and in ani¬
mal experiments. Accordingly, Pavlov does not use physically defined
agents; rather, he works with stimuli which exist for him, the experi¬
menter, as optic and acoustic data. The phenomenal, which was to be
eliminated in regard to the test animal, thus keeps its hold on the
experimenter and guides him in his experiments.
2. The Spatial Order. The phenomenal, then, is not as fully mas-
43
tered by objective psychology as it is by physics. The elimination of

“secondary qualities” does not quite succeed. But what about the
primary qualities and the spatial order? If one substitutes the excita¬
tion of the retina for seeing, the excitation of Corti’s organ for hear-
ing, the phenomenal spatial order must disappear together with
everything else that is phenomenally given.
Now let us watch a dog who evades an obstacle, jumps over a
hedge, leaps up at its master, and ducks before his threateningly
raised hand. As it appears to us, the attitude of the animal is deter¬
mined by the phenomenal spatial order which dictates its way. Pav¬
lov, however, cannot acknowledge such a performance as directed
toward the environment, for he considers the organism as an isolated
apparatus. Therefore, things in their objective spatial order alone
can produce the sequence of excitations of the analysators of the
retina and finally of those cells on which movement depends. The
spatial order of the central nervous system, with its pathways, con¬
stitutes the actual spatial system to which all processes must be
related.
We just observed a dog and noticed that he changed his direction
at spot A, described a circle around an obstacle O, and at spot B, be¬
hind the obstacle, turned back to his previous course. We are inclined
to assume that the phenomenal spatial order of the three spots A, O,
and B, the one-after-the-other of A, O, and B, the interposition of O
between A and B, determined the movements of the animal. This in¬
terpretation means that we assume that the animal itself has moved,
has followed a course and that the spots A, O, and B, are marks on
the road. Pavlov sees it in quite a different light. For him there exists
no self-movement of the animal, and therefore no road and no road-
marks. What we call “to move oneself” is, in Pavlov’s opinion, actu¬
ally composed of a series of mechanical single movements occurring
in the motor apparatus that we call an organism. These motions are
controlled by a complicated steering mechanism. How does the steer¬
ing come about? The motor apparatus is steered by the ever-changing
arrangements of optical stimuli. Supposedly no meaningful connec¬
tion exists between the organism and the road; there is no inner
connection between the steering apparatus and the motor apparatus.
The phenomenal spatial order is said to be irrelevant in regard to the
ordered behavior of the animal in its environment. It is not the order
of the different spots out there on the road which decides the motor
process in the organism; decisive alone is the order of the excitation
in the optical sector. It is the spatial order of the central nervous sys¬
tem on which everything depends. The manifoldness of the phenom-
44
enal spatial order is thus reinterpreted as a temporal series of

stimulated spots in the central nervous system.6
3. The Degree of Exactness of the Experiments. Let us further
examine whether the experiments satisfy at least the demands of ac¬
curacy which must be made after the elimination of the phenom¬
enal.
Conditioned reflexes are relatively stable variants which regulate
the behavior of the animals for a while. Constancy of behavior indi¬
cates that accidental apparatuses have been formed in the nervous
system. The constancy of behavior supposedly rests on their uniform
function. Let us now assume: A dog has been trained to react to an
ellipse of a certain diameter—an indication, according to Pavlov,
that a fairly firm relationship has been established between a group
of analysators in the optical sector stimulated by the illuminated el¬
lipse, and the salivation center. According to Pavlov’s premises, the
group of analysators is not allowed to change. In other words, the
success of the experiment depends on the exactness of the arrange¬
ments as measured in micromillimeters. For if the spatial configura¬
tion of the nervous system is decisive, the accuracy must be kept
within the limits of the microscopic structure of the light sensitive
parts of the retina, otherwise the same analysators could not be af¬
fected. Although test animals can be trained to differentiate between
two ellipses of different diameter ratio, it will not suffice that on
repetition of the tests only a part of the previously excited analysators
should be stimulated again. Exact correspondence is required. That
the arrangement of Pavlov’s experiments cannot guarantee the re¬
quired degree of exactness is obvious. The animal would have to be
placed so exactly on the table that the distance of the retina from the
illuminated surface would correspond exactly—as measured in mi¬
cromillimeters—to the position taken before. Furthermore, the lon¬
gitudinal axis of the cranium must not deviate from the previous
positions, even by some fractions of a second. Finally, because of the
uniform function of binocular vision, no lateral displacement is per¬
missible. Actually, the accuracy required by the presuppositions is
never attained in Pavlovian experiments. The ratio of exactitude ob¬
tained, compared to that theoretically demanded, may be 1:10,000.
Thus the relation of primary to secondary qualities in objective
psychology is treated in a rather contradictory manner. To summar¬
ize: The starting point of observation is the behavior of an animal in
and toward its environment. The explanation of its behavior is of¬
fered in terms of events occurring within the organism. The en¬
deavor to detach the organism from its environment (the emphasis
45
is on the word its) is so strong that it ultimately leads to a complete

isolation. The organism exists as an almost independent world in an
environment of entirely different structure. The borderlines are
formed by the integument of the organism and especially by the
organs of sense. The organism has no relation to its environment
except for the fact that its border areas can be excited from outside.
The spatial structure of the environment is without real consequence
for the organism. Decisive, rather, are the spatial limits, the spatial
structure, and the spatial order of the system of the analysators. But
this spatial order is nevertheless established in the phenomenal
world, where the primary qualities have not yet been purified in the
purgatory of the abstractions of physical concepts, and where the sec¬
ondary qualities enjoy all the happiness of sensuous splendor.
(c) The Problem of Translation
Pavlov attempts to reduce sensing to physiological processes,

and the physiological processes to mechanical occurrences. What
sensing is, is not to be expressed in the language suitable to it; it is
rather to be translated into the terminology of physics.
Good translations are scarce, even scarcer than good originals. In
every translation the original suffers because it has to be adapted to a
foreign language. The original is modified in such a way as to fit
eventually into the idiom of the language into which it is translated.
Just the same thing happens if one tries to reduce sensing or ex¬
periencing generally to physiological or physical processes.7 The
particularity of the material into which sensing is to be translated
makes it necessary to consider sensory experience in such a way and
only in such a way that a translation actually becomes possible. The
intention to explain experience by mechanical concepts blocks the
very sight of the experiences themselves; it entails the mechanization
of experiencing itself in its content and structure. Pavlov and all
those who tried to elaborate a mechanical physiology of experiencing
have done so, thoroughly.
The objectification and atomization of experiencing is the most
important preparatory step. Any association theory needs elements,
the connection of which it can investigate. Both associationist psy¬
chology and associationist physiology start therefore with the creation
of elements appropriate to the principle of association. Isolation pre¬
cedes association in research, yet it does not follow experiencing in
46
line with its natural articulation. The experience atom is to corre¬

spond to the thing atom.8
The principle of translation guiding Pavlov and most physiologi¬
cal psychologists differs considerably from the translation of one lan¬
guage into another one. No translator would ever think of translating
verbatim, so that, with the texts written one above the other, the
translation would follow, word for word, each turn of the original.
Such a translation would have to do extreme violence to the language
into which one translates, and would not be intelligible for all that.
However, objective psychology—for which psychic experiences
are nothing but concomitant phenomena of physiological processes
—is compelled to translate word by word—that is, it must blindly
and dogmatically accept Spinoza’s assumption that the order of expe¬
riencing and the order of physical events can be brought to perfect
congruity.
Objective psychology must thus give an account of what it means
by unity in experiencing and unity in physiology, and furthermore,
what it means by equal, similar, and different; for the one unity is to
be compared with the other unity, the equal has to be related to
equal, the similar to similar, and the different to different.
G. E. Muller once exemplified the notion of a general paralleliza¬
tion of sensations and excitations in five axioms, of which I will
quote here the second and fourth.9
Axiom 2. To an equality, a similarity, a disparity of sensations corre¬

sponds an equality, a similarity, a disparity of the psycho-physical processes,
and vice-versa. The greater the similarity of the sensations, the greater is
the similarity of the processes.
Axiom 4. To each qualitative alteration of the sensation corresponds a
qualitative alteration of the process; to each intensive alteration of the
sensation corresponds likewise an alteration of the process, and vice-versa.
If the qualitative or intensive modification is pure, the same is true of the
modification of the process.
We ask first: What does “one” mean in these axioms? What is

“one” process? What is “one” sensation? Let us assume that someone
reads aloud one sentence of four lines from a book. Does this imply
that the meaning of the sentence is one? Is the understanding of this
meaning one understanding, or is the meaning of the sentence a com¬
posite one strictly corresponding to the number of words or the num¬
ber of sounds? No doubt, phonetically a considerable number of
excitations is involved. From Pavlov’s point of view, the meaning
seems to be composed of single excitations. Consciousness proceeds
step by step with the acoustic stimulation of certain brain cells.
47
Muller’s axioms do not simply state a correspondence between a

single experience and a single nervous excitation, they claim that a
similarity of two sensations corresponds to a similarity of two proc¬
esses in the nervous system. A strange proposition! Looking at a
photograph of a man, we may find it similar to the original human
specimen. But does such a visible similarity correspond to a similarity
of the underlying processes? Or is this example too extreme?
However, anyone who tries to limit the similarity stipulated in
the axioms to “elementary” sensations, that is, to two nuances of red
or blue, but denies a correspondence between the similarity of com¬
plex sensations and that of physiological processes, does he not
compare one similarity—that of elementary sensations—with another
similarity, that existing between complex sensations. Similarities
themselves are compared; between them a similarity of a “second
power” may either be found or missed. If the one similarity meets the
conditions asked for by the axioms and the other does not, then the
two similarities are of a different kind and therefore dissimilar. We
thus get into great difficulties, regardless of whether or not we dis¬
pute that both similarities as such satisfy the proposition.
Let us therefore examine whether there is not a means to remove
the whole difficulty. Muller, it is true, refers to a similarity of two
sensations and a similarity of two processes. Perhaps this is merely an
inaccurate mode of expression. What he meant was that two or sev¬
eral sensations resemble each other, as do two physiological processes.
Similar processes are, however, certainly different processes, or
else they would not be distinct from each other. They may be differ¬
ent as to location, that is, occur on different nerve paths, or they may
be different in time sequence. In any case, they have to be thought of
as being separate from each other, the one existing independently of
the other. The “being similar” is not an attribute pertaining to the
one or to the other of the two processes; it stands out only in the
very relationship, in the comparison of one with the other. One proc¬
ess, however, does not compare itself with another process. Therefore
we are left with the following alternative: Either the similarity we
noticed in comparing two sensations is something to which no physi¬
ological process corresponds because one sensation in itself cannot
have the characteristic of similarity, or a physiological process corre¬
sponds to the similarity of the sensations, in which case this must be a
third process, since the first two refer to single sensations. Thus it
does not help much to talk of similar sensations instead of a similar¬
ity of sensations. If we want to stick to the axioms, we will have to
discuss how far we might get with the hypothesis of a third process
and a third sensation as the very sensation of similarity. Let us as-
sume that two similar physiological processes produce a third, which

occurs in all those cases where similarities are observed. Then a phys¬
iological process of the same type would correspond to the similarity
of color nuances and to the similarity between a photograph and the
original. Unfortunately, the second axiom distinguishes between
greater and lesser similarities. Perhaps to the greater similarity—
which ostensibly rests on a comparison of one similarity with a differ¬
ent one—the same physiological process corresponds only in greater
intensity than to the intermediate or lesser similarity. But if we aban¬
don this hypothesis and assume two different similarities we arrive at
a progressus ad infinitum. If similarity can cause so much embarrass¬
ment, what are we going to do about dissimilarities and differences?
Pavlov could not neglect the problematics of translation. As
much as he refused to acknowledge the reality or the authenticity of
experience, he as the observer himself is rooted in the phenomenal
world. If experiencing is to be explained by nervous mechanisms,
there is no other choice than to begin with an account of that which
is to be explained and of the means of explanation. The question as
to the possibility of translating cannot be avoided. Together with it
will emerge the question as to the psycho-physiological correspond¬
ence of equality, similarity, and disparity.
But Pavlov might ask in angry defense: “By what right do you
impose on me the duty to reflect on the meaning of the concepts:
unity, equality, diversity? My experiments show such a demand is
unwarranted and will only retard the course of practical research.
Let us look at the dog over there. It has been trained to react to a
stimulus of blue light; no reaction is caused by stimulation with red
light. What in the world could make us assume in this case that the
animal compares and differentiates? My experiments prove that
there exists a connection between blue-sensitive parts of the optical
sector and the saliva-center, and that there is, on the other hand, no
such connection between this center and the parts sensitive to red
light. Both processes take place quite independently of each other.
An engineer who determines or calculates that a certain iron struc¬
ture will withstand a load of five tons but would break down under a
load of ten tons would certainly not dream of expecting the metal to
compare and to differentiate.”
That is quite correct. Of course, a bridge is not engaged in sci¬
ence; it is the engineer who prepares a scientific calculation dealing
with units, indispensable in any procedure of counting and measur-
ing. The very nature of calculation rests on comparison and differen¬
tiation. The engineer, it is true, will be content with the fact that
man has the aptitude to count, to measure, and to compare. He is
49
completely occupied with the application of these functions, and he

directs his attention exclusively to the matter counted, measured,
and compared. In the end, he will be satisfied if the natural course of
events confirms his calculation.
Pavlov, too, compares. His physiological hypotheses rest upon the
comparison of reactions. In contradistinction to our engineer, how¬
ever, he is not satisfied with the results of comparison but claims that
he can explain and deduce the comparison itself from the physiologi¬
cal processes. Therefore, he is duty bound to reflect on unity, equal¬
ity, and similarity. Understanding itself must then become a problem
with him as it must with every psychophysicist.
Confusing the Causal with

Intentional
If cognition is the problem, knowing must, as it seems, reflect
upon itself. But Pavlov does not reflect.
The question of how man is able to gain knowledge of nature is
answered with reference to the fact that natural events beget knowl¬
edge. Man, the empirical individual, is the subject of knowledge; it is
in him that the process of knowing takes place. Thus the process will
be assimilated to the structure of the known, the phenomenal con¬
tent to the physiological process, and intentionality will be replaced
by causality. “Sensory sensation,” said Johannes Muller, “is not the
conduction of a quality or a state of external bodies to consciousness;
it is rather the conduction of a quality or a state of a sensory nerve to
consciousness, brought about by an external cause, and these quali¬
ties are different in the different sensory nerves; they are the sensory
energies.”
“The sensory nerves, it is true, sense in the beginning only their
own states, or the sensorium senses the states of the sensory nerves;
but because the sensory nerves as bodies share the qualities of other
bodies; because they are extended in space; because they can be af¬
fected by stimulations and because they can be altered by heat and
electricity, they impart to the sensorium, when changed by external
causes, besides their state also qualities and changes of the outer
world which are different for every sense according to its qualities
and sense energies.”10
The opinion that we sense the states of our sensory nerves domi¬
nates the psychology of the senses. The content of sensing, or as it is
5« Critique of the Doctrine of Conditioned Reflexes
expressed in traditional terminology, the content of the sensations,

is thought to have such a relation with neural functions that any par¬
ticularity in the sensations corresponds to a particular condition of
the nerve centers. The phenomenal characteristics of sensing are not
established through an analysis of sensing itself. Decisive is, rather,
the question whether particular receptors, particular nerve path¬
ways, and particular cortical areas can be defined.
If sensations are nothing but states of the sensory nerves reflected
in consciousness, and if these states are rigorously determined by ex¬
ternal and internal influences, there can be no doubt as to the
method of research. The first and foremost task is to determine the
kind and order of the external stimuli and to infer from them the
kind and order of the sensations.
Objective psychology claims to be a natural science; it is proud to
emulate physics, to apply its methods. But that is exactly what it does
not do. Physics establishes relations between variations. Pavlov,
however, and all his followers try to establish a relation between one
sensation and one stimulus. The causal view has thus been tinged
with intentional characteristics. In perceiving we are directed
toward a thing, e.g., a cupboard standing in front of us; it is in¬
tended as an object of perceiving, not as its cause. This peculiar
character of intentional reference has been fused with the causal
relation, whereby the latter is falsified and intentionality vanishes
from sight altogether. However, the relation stimulus-sensation can
only be established in the realm of intentionality.
The fact that one can demonstrate chemical processes in function¬
ing nerves, the fact that action-currents can be shown and the
chronaxy measured, does not refute our assertion. Whoever analyzes
chemical processes, whoever observes action-currents by physical
instruments, or measures the chronaxy, performs chemical and
physiological research and nothing else. The results of his investiga¬
tion will never reveal that he examined events on a living organism.
Reference to living organisms makes anatomy and physiology bio¬
logical sciences. Familiarity with the existence of living creatures
precedes all anatomic and physiologic investigations; it cannot be
deduced from them.
We speak of physical and chemical investigations of sensory
organs, having drawn our knowledge of the organism and of sensory
experience from other sources. Physical and chemical analyses per se
do not take into account that the examined objects are living bodies.
Retrospective reflection transforms the physical and chemical data
into physiological facts. Anyone who believes that the totality of
such data could represent the whole acts in theory as Genghis Khan
51
did in practice, when he buried prisoners of war alive in the

ramparts of his camp, using bodies of human beings as building
material. Genghis Khan has proven by this fact that it can be done,
but he has not proven that human bodies are building material.
(e) The Localization of Sensation in the

Organism
Pavlov’s misinterpretation of experiencing, which we dis¬

cussed in the preceding paragraph, leads him to this assumption:
Sensations are localized in the sensory organs, in the nerve-tracts;
optic sensation has its locus in the optic nerve from the retina to the
area striata. Analogous conditions supposedly exist in regard to the
other modes of sensing and to consciousness itself.
Corresponding to a certain intensity of excitation, it also is
localized, although not, it is true, in one definite spot of the central
organ. Its position moves from place to place with the sequence of
excitations. “From this position I visualize consciousness as a nerv¬
ous act of a definite region of the cerebrum-hemispheres which com¬
mands at a given moment under given conditions a definite optimal
(probably a medium-strong) excitability. . . . The region with the
optimal activity is of course not fixed; on the contrary it wanders
constantly in the field of cerebrum-hemispheres subject to the rela¬
tion existing between the centres and also influenced by external
stimuli. Accordingly the region with diminished excitability is also
modified. If we could look through the cranium and if the spots of
the cerebrum-hemispheres with optimal excitability were illumi¬
nated we would notice that there wanders across the hemispheres of
a consciously thinking human being a light-spot with strange, irregu¬
lar contours, constantly changing in form and size and surrounded
by a more or less extensive shadow.’’11
Obviously Pavlov accepts a theory of localization which assigns
to all objective details of experience specific location in spatially
separated apparatuses of the nervous system. Pavlov’s doctrine of
localization is built upon the presupposition that this spatial rela¬
tion is also reflected in the content of the sensations.
Spatial distinctness—location and situs—is an essential element
of the physiological function and cannot be separated from it. Epi-
phenomenalism certainly is consistent when it lets experiencing
share in the localization and spatial limitation of functions and
52
thereby interprets experiencing as an event within the organism. For

in doing otherwise it would have sacrificed its fundamental prin¬
ciple. But in doing so, or in trying to do so, epiphenomenalism be¬
comes involved in difficulties which hamper the psychology of space,
and lead to the arguments between nativists and empiricists and to
the curious doctrine of “outside projection.” We will return to this
problem later on.
First, however, we have to examine by what right a cerebral
localization was assigned to sensing or indeed to consciousness.12 No
one could claim that Pavlov’s opinion is supported by any direct
observation. It is an assumption, inferred from a series of deductions.
What are its presuppositions?
One could say in Pavlov’s defense that the picture of the gleam
of light wandering around in the brain is but a metaphor. The
simile, one could argue, implies spatial indefiniteness; it is just an
awkward expression for the lack of situs of consciousness. Yet such
an interpretation surely does not agree with Pavlov’s opinion and
intention. One could also maintain that the simile preserves the
unity of consciousness. Just as the light beams of a car moving on a
highway illuminate first a tree and another tree, then a bridge and
a house, one after the other, different loci in the brain are illumi¬
nated; but Pavlov does not consider a movable source of light; he
imagines many different stationary lights flashing up whenever suffi¬
ciently fed by a current. The simile finds its real analogy in the
illuminated advertising signs where, by means of a complicated
switchboard, different groups of electrical bulbs are made to flash up
in rapid succession; the spectator, however, sees, for example, a glass
into which champagne is poured, etc. Pavlov imagines a similar
switchboard to be active in the brain. Only one important item is
missing: the spectator who reads the illuminated advertisement.
First the unity of consciousness has been abandoned. Next fol¬
lows the elimination of the self. If experience can be fully explained
as a series of events within an organism, there is no room for a self
which has a personal relation to its environment. If the individual
is nothing but a thing, influenced by its (physical) surroundings
and reacting to them, what meaning would be left for the possessive
pronouns: mine, yours, his? All possessive relations—not only the
economic ones—everything of which someone can say “mine,” are
founded therein, that there exists a self which relates to the world.
If it does not exist, all possessive relations are a mere illusion. It
would be ridiculous to ascribe possession to a thing, to make it the
owner of something. It is rather baffling that a psychology, claiming
to be objective and empirical, ignores the fact of possessive relations.
53
One moment of reflection suffices to realize the difficulties which

present themselves and the problems which arise here. Is the inter¬
relationship I-my body physically definable? If not, does this inter¬
relationship lack any “objective” significance? How do we differen¬
tiate the relation I-my body from the fact that an arm or a leg
belongs to my body? And does such a relationship differ from the
belonging of a table leg to a table, of a key to a lock? If, following
colloquial usage, we concede that a leg belong to a table we
obviously do not refer to a strictly physical relation. The table is a
table only for the user, but not in itself. The static, as it were,
morphological wholeness of the wooden structure is just a reflection
of that vital wholeness which is imparted by the words: my body,
my arm. The possessive relation unfolds in a pure state only in the
context of living being. The arm belongs (gehort) to me, it listens
(hort), as it were, to me. Any separation is a mutilation. This rela¬
tionship of belonging together is not a static morphological one, but
rather a relation of becoming-together (Miteinanderwerden). The
moments of wholeness and of vital temporality remove the possessive
relation entirely from physicalistic considerations. Nevertheless its
reality cannot be denied. That it has no legitimate place in physics
demonstrates that physics as a science rests upon a radical transfor¬
mation and leveling off of the manifoldness of the phenomenal
world. If psychology wants to respect the facts, then it should think
twice before sacrificing the self. For if there is no self all actions
would be but reactions; sensations and motions would be processes
strictly separated from each other, like input and output. Mechanis¬
tic psychology culminates by necessity in a radically solipsistic con¬
ception of man. The individual is incarcerated in the prison of his
body; he is kept in solitary confinement, from which there is no
escape. The I-world relations and the I-Thou relations are nothing
but phantasma.
The solipsistic isolation of the organism must lead on to other
perplexing problems. It seems to justify the question as to the gene¬
sis and the motives of “our belief in the reality of an outside world.”
Since sensory organs are in and function within the organism, the
adaptation of the content of sensations to the underlying neural
processes transforms the “being-in” into an attribute of the sensa¬
tions themselves. It seems a pertinent question to ask: How can they
be projected outward? An explanation is looked for in how “the
soul” reaches from its solitude, from the immanence of its sensations,
over to the world. The world is “outside”; the sensations are “in¬
side”; what mediates between the “inside” and the “outside”?
Descartes created the problem which in changing forms has been
54
with us down to the present day. Physiological psychology has tried

in vain to find a solution. Is it now up to us to seek a new solution?
Or is it not the problem which needs to be corrected? And should
only then the true meaning of the “within-without” become mani¬
fest and allow a better understanding of sensing and moving?
(f) The Separation of Sensation

and Movement
Objective psychology places the organism in objective space
and objective time; thereby it presupposes anatomy. Regardless of
one’s conception of the interrelation of individual organs they re¬
main parts, separated in space. Their functions are processes sep¬
arated in time. Since objective psychology interprets experiencing
epiphenomenologically, it is bound by its method to atomistic con¬
cepts. It considers experiences—in the plural—as presenting the un¬
problematic material for its investigations.
Therefore, the question as to the kind of interrelation between
sensing and moving has to be raised. Are we confronted with an ex¬
clusively external (anatomic-physiological) association of sensorium
and motorium, an external connection of centripetal and centrifugal
paths and of impulses? Is there an intrinsic connection between
sensing and moving?
No doubt Pavlov knows only of external connections. In a con¬
ditioned reflex four originally separated processes are linked to¬
gether; through training the initial four are reduced to three. The
pattern at the beginning of the training is as follows:
1
E-► A
2
M ---F
4
>r Sg.
From the ear E runs a centripetal excitation 1 to the acoustic center

A; from there a centrifugal excitation 2 moves to the subcortical
“feeding center” F. At almost the same moment a centripetal im-
55
pulse 3 arrives there which has been released through the mechan¬
ical or chemical stimulation of the mucous membranes of the mouth
M caused by the intake of food. From the “feeding center” there
consequently runs an impulse 4 to the salivary glands Sg and the
masticatory muscles. The processes MF, FSg belong together by “na¬
ture”; they constitute an unconditioned reflex. The impulse AF is in¬
duced by F’s own excitation, for the excitation moves, strangely
enough, from the sensory field A to the “feeding center” F only when
the latter has already been excited. One excitation, it seems, has
been attracted by another excitation. Because of frequent repetition
of the coupled stimuli, a synaptic link has been established which
thereafter enables an excitation arriving at A presently to proceed
to F immediately. There it excites the inert center F and produces
the process 4: FSg.
Originally the conditioned reflex consists of four parts, two cen¬
tripetal and two centrifugal processes. In the fully established reflex,
one part has been omitted, and the completed conditioned reflex is
made up of three separate parts—not related to each other by na¬
ture in their functions. If one were to claim that it is, after all, the
same excitation which runs from E to A and continues from A to F
and finally from F to Sg so that there must be some inner connec¬
tion, one would be deceived by a poor simile. The term “path” sug¬
gests something running on these paths like a railroad car runs on
its tracks. But it need not be stated that an excitation is not some
material movable thing traveling from E to A, turning there to F
and finally arriving at Sg. Nevertheless, when reading Pavlov’s writ¬
ings one often gains the impression that he does not think of or¬
ganic structures which are stimulated, but rather takes excitations
to be oddly material phenomena. Pavlov’s theory comes thus even
closer to the Cartesian physiology and its mechanics of the animal
spirits.
In many modern buildings, we find escalators which do not move
continuously. They are set in motion by the user himself without
his actual purposive action. Approaching the staircase the passenger
interrupts an invisible light beam. Thereby, the electrical conduc¬
tivity is altered in a machine part sensitive to light. A current is
automatically closed, a motor starts, and the escalator is put into
motion.
All these events, beginning with the passenger moving toward
the escalator and ending with the release of the machinery, although
intelligently connected by a pre-arranged plan, have nothing to do
with each other.13 No more intimate connection, according to Pav-
56
lov, exists between the hearing of sound and the secretion of saliva,
that is, the processes 1 and 4 of the conditioned reflex.
(g) Temporal Succession

and Temporal Unity
I will use an additional example to test the validity of
Pavlov’s chronological presuppositions. Let us assume we are listen¬
ing to a piece of music reproduced on a pianola. While the hammers
of the clavichord are set in motion as required by the instruction of
the composition, the processes serving the mechanical reproduction
of sounds are so many independent events. When the notes of the
second bar are played, those of the first bar have irretrievably gone.
Each note has its particular place in objective time. The event A
excludes the events B and C.14 When B occurs, A has already hap¬
pened, and C has not yet come about.
While the sounds are produced one after the other and reach our
ear one after the other, we nevertheless hear this one-after-the-other
as a unified sequence. This unity is not the product of a blending
of the notes, nor does it consist of a series of neighborhood rela¬
tions connecting each tone with the preceding and the following one.
The unity extends over the whole. It does not originate through a
combination of the sound actually present with that which just faded.
Nor is it created with the help of memory out of the temporal flux
as something static, comparable to the score. We apprehend the
unity already while listening; it is not constructed in retrospect.
Even an unmusical person is capable of noticing an untimely
end of the piece, caused accidentally by some fault in the mech¬
anism. We hear the unity already in anticipation of what is to come.
From the physical point of view, a sudden break in a melody is
equal to the end at the presumedly correct place, but not so for our
listening. We notice the incompleteness, that is, we experience the
unity as a whole unfolding in time. In order words, we organize our
experience as becoming beings. Attending a concert, we do not listen
enraptured for half an hour to tones which sound one after the
other to finally acknowledge after the last chord has died down:
“This, now, has been a symphony.” No, we hear the symphony al¬
ready from the very beginning, the first bar as a unity striving for
completion. It is in the same way that we understand a spoken or
57
printed sentence from the first word as a whole in the process of

being completed (an accomplishment deranged in certain forms of
dyslexia). We can comprehend them as a growing whole if in any
given time interval we experience the particular data as something
incomplete (unganz). Such apprehension is possible only because
we, as living, becoming, beings experience ourselves in a state of
becoming.
I consider music to be the best example for the unfolding of a
unity in the sequence of one-after-the-other, because music is more
closely tied to the material sound than the meaning of a sentence
to the material nature of the word. The meaning of a sentence can
be detached from the words insofar as different words, words of am
other language, can replace the words used originally. The content
of a speech can be “epitomized” and reported. Music, on the other
hand, demands a definite, not reversible, succession of sounds; it
demands rhythmic and dynamic precision. It can be neither sum¬
marized nor reported. Nevertheless, music can be recorded and re¬
produced. While the mechanism runs off and we hear the opus, we
grasp its unity and its intrinsic value.
The mechanism is there, but so is the unity and the intrinsic
value of the work. The question is whether this unity can be ex¬
plained by the one-after-the-other of the mechanism. We know how
Pavlov and the objective psychologists deal with this question. They
maintain that an explanation is possible and that they are able to
give it. I reject the explanation of objective psychology as inade¬
quate, and I intend to prove its failure by the very findings of ob¬
jective psychology.
Let us therefore leave the sphere of pure sound and proceed to
the zoo where we hear the hoarse roar of hungry animals waiting to
be fed. Anyone who has watched the feeding of these beasts of prey
will recall how they become restless long before the fixed time, how
this restlessness increases when the keeper comes closer with the meat
cart, how the animals one after the other stand up and wildly reach
through the bars with their claws for the pieces of meat, which are
dangled before them on a fork. Should we ask children watching the
scene why the animals were so restless a short time ago, they may well
answer that the animals had been hungry and were waiting for the
feeding, that the smell and the creaking of the meat cart made them
aware that feeding time was near. Should we now continue to ask,
“Why did the lion draw himself to full length and put his claws
through the bars?” the children would probably fall into suspicious
silence, confronted with such a silly question. But then, these are
58
children who have not yet heard of objective psychology and who do
not know that this question is by no means silly but indeed very
difficult to answer; in fact, so difficult that not even grownups have
an answer to it. A minute ago the children smiled at the man with
the silly question, and now it is the psychologist’s turn to smile at
the children’s naive reply: “Waiting,” “Approaching”; for these are
anthropomorphic expressions which exact science cannot admit to its
vocabulary.
The noise of the cart wheels does not come closer. At a given
moment—we will call it tx—acoustic waves reach the ear of an ani¬
mal and finally stimulate the acoustic center, an excitation which
transmitted to the motor region causes at a given moment t2 contrac¬
tions of several muscles. In everyday parlance, we describe such a
complex of muscle contractions as a “jumping about” and interpret
it as a sign of psychic restlessness. The objective psychologist, how¬
ever, ought not to maintain seriously that hunting animals look for,
chase, and capture game. Such is the nature of its nervous system that
the excitation of the nervus olfactorius so influences the motor
apparatus of the animal that it is turned in the direction of the olfac¬
tory stream and the animal body is moved from places of lesser den¬
sity to places of greater density and intensity of scents until it finally
falls upon the prey. One can no longer speak of scenting, chasing,
expecting. All movements are mechanical processes of motion re¬
leased by preceding sensory excitations.
The explanation of the behavior which caught our particular
attention, which was the moment when the lion reared up and
reached for the prey, has to follow the same line. Here, too, the
objective psychologist must not speak of an animal grasping and
reaching for food. Nothing of the sort is to be found in objective
psychology. When a piece of meat was offered to the lion, the light
beams hitting its retina caused an optical excitation, which through
synaptic connections with centrifugal pathways produced a contrac¬
tion of the erectors of the trunk. Consecutive optical impressions
caused the forelegs to be stretched forward through the bars and to
make contact with the meat.
In this manner, objective psychology, that is, mechanically-
oriented physiology, has tried since Descartes to explain regulated
motion, or the moving of oneself. But if the mechanistic theory is
wrong, and wrong in principle, what principles are to replace those
used by objective psychology so that we may arrive at a better and
truer understanding of the phenomena?
Naive common opinion holds, just as did the children, that the
59
animals expect the arrival of food. Objective psychology, allowing

only for a succession of single moments, rejects this commonplace
opinion. I dispute the correctness of the time-atomistic way of think¬
ing and draw again near to everyday opinion. I maintain that the
turning of one’s attention, and aiming, grasping, approaching, are
phenomena which do not come about by a combination of single
processes and that they can therefore not be explained by such an
aggregate. Because we hold these afore-mentioned phenomena to
be basic phenomena for a being which in sensing and moving is di¬
rected toward its world, there arises the need to discuss the spatial
and temporal order appertaining to sensing and moving.
To demonstrate how profoundly the physical and the physiolog¬
ical order of space and time differs from the one we are looking for
here, we need only to point out:
1. In the process of approaching, the point toward which I am
directed becomes meaningful and effective as a goal as long as I have
not yet reached it. Whatever it may be, it could not constitute a goal
were it not for the fact of my “not yet being there.” This “not yet”
is attributed to the goal even when it has already come in sight.
This phenomenon of “not yet” appears only in the basic context of
the changeability of becoming. Thus the space-time order and ar¬
ticulation characteristic of a sensing and moving being differs
radically from that order of space and time in which physics and
physiology conceive corporeal events.
2. In the psychology of the nineteenth century, the problem of
so-called outward projection has been thoroughly discussed. The
reasons which might cause the soul “to project in an interpretive
fashion and objectivate” the excitations and sensations which arise
in the organism (Lotze) have been pondered over. The same ques¬
tion must be asked, in an even more pointed form, with reference
to temporality. Suppose that I am reaching for a piece of paper
which lies at a short distance in front of me. I reach for the paper.
That means that I have seen this white something and that I am
still seeing it. But as a scientist I know that, when I see something,
light beams reflected from the visible object have already reached
my retina and made an “impression” on my nervous system, for it
is an axiom of the theory of reflexes that the centripetal process pre¬
cedes in time the muscular movement, which in our case produces
the effect of reaching. Thus I am quasi-reaching into the past. The
same condition obviously prevails in all voluntary movements. This
proposition, however, is paradoxical. Strictly speaking, it contradicts
everyday experience. The question of whether this paradox can be
6o Critique of the Doctrine of Conditioned Reflexes
solved and the method which might be used to solve it will have to
be examined. But that the problem arises proves that the space-time
order of physics may not be immediately transferred to psychology.
It furthermore proves that the true space-time form of psychic life
is still a subject to be explored, and that finally the problem of the
relation between the two orders has to be discussed.
(h) The Mosaic Theory

Until now we have dealt with presuppositions which were
either not recognized by Pavlov and had first to be unearthed or,
although of a highly problematic nature, were considered by him to
be self-evident. In the following paragraph, we will discuss some of
his ideas regarding the structure and function of the nervous system
as they are explicitly formulated in Pavlov’s publications.
Pavlov depicts the nervous system of the mammals and of man
as composed of a great number of elementary formations which
ascend from the periphery to the central organ and from there
descend again to the periphery. The anatomic units are at the
same time physiological units; they are in their centripetal part “an¬
alyzers.” Each analyzer is tuned to one specific, physically-defined
excitation.15 Corresponding to the anatomic and physiological or¬
ganization of the analyzers, the centers have the structure of a
“mosaic.” Numerous paths lead from the terminals of the analy¬
zers to the origin of the centrifugal fibers. These pathways are partly
determined by nature; in addition, there exist numerous other tracts
which will be opened by use, in a definite temporary organization,
to the varying demands of the traffic. The pathways, firmly estab¬
lished by nature, are those of the unconditioned reflexes. The con¬
ditioned reflexes come about by the temporary connection of variable
pathways. Pavlov describes the pattern like a kind of switch box
which is regulated mainly in the sensory terminals. He emphasizes
“that the centre point of the nervous activities must be looked for
in the very receptive part of the central stage.”16 “The centrifugal
part of the reflex-tracts, however, as can easily be imagined, is merely
a performing part; the same muscles may be used for a thousand
different purposes, each time decided by the activity of the receptor
apparatus; the latter determines the combination into which the
cells of this or that motor nerve have to enter.” The cerebral hemis¬
pheres enact “an analysis and a synthesis of the impulses flowing to-
GENERAL PRESUPPOSITIONS 6l
wards them.” “The cerebral cortex breaks down the whole com¬
plexity of the outer world into extraordinarily fine fragments, and
reunites them again into new complexes, connecting them by condi¬
tioned temporary tracts to this or that unconditioned activity, be it
a motor, a secretory, a vasomotor or a sexual one, etc.”
The model for this conception of the nervous system has been
furnished by technology, that is, the system of a telephone network
with its central station, its isolated lines, and the manifold possi¬
bilities of single connections. Let me stress again that Pavlov con¬
siders the stimulus to be physically determined. The same physical
stimulus is supposed to be always answered by the same physiological
reaction. How far this principle of constancy can be upheld, and to
what extent it has been disproved by the results of sense psychology,
has been thoroughly stated by Kohler long ago. Pavlov, however,
took little notice of objections founded on principles. Stubbornly
clinging to his mechanistic hypothesis, he disregarded everything
that psychology had ascertained by its observations on human beings.
There are good reasons to separate animal psychology from human
psychology and to avoid rash generalizations and transferences from
one department into the other. On the other hand, one cannot sim¬
ply ignore sense psychology and form one’s own arbitrary hypotheses
about the function of the nervous system. After all, nobody would
think of racing the Twentieth Century Limited in a stagecoach.
Pavlov labels and interprets the conditioned reflex as a signal; in
my opinion, quite correctly. But he assumes that this signal is made
up of two parts. I stress this fact at the end of this chapter because
I am going to discuss in the following chapter the threefold organ¬
ization of the signal. The signal resulting from the connection of
two processes—conditioned and unconditioned reflex—is, according
to Pavlov, something new. This, too, we will have to bear in mind.
My critique of the general presuppositions has been extensive.
But the blame for the copiousness of its argument should not be laid
entirely at my door. It is, rather, caused by the extraordinary claim
of Pavlov’s doctrine to offer a complete and final explanation of the
psychic and intellectual life of man and animal. Weighed against
this claim, the critique of the presuppositions is barely sufficient and
in no way exhaustive.
With an incarnate empiricist, criticism of the presuppositions
will find no favor anyhow, whether it be long and explicit or if it
contents itself with brief outlines. Against any examination of the
presuppositions, the empiricist will emphasize the experiments, their
conclusiveness, and their usefulness. But of what value are Pavlov’s
many thousand experiments in themselves detached from their the¬

ory? Who, in all the world, cares about whether or not a dog lost a
few drops of saliva after hearing the sound of a trumpet? I repeat,
therefore: Only the theoretical interpretation bestows meaning and
value upon the experiments. Therefore, it is not superfluous but
indeed essential to investigate whether the theory is compatible
with the principles of scientific understanding and the basic facts of
psychological knowledge. I have tried to do that very thing in this
chapter. In doing so, I grew very doubtful as to whether the fun¬
daments of Pavlov’s theory were strong enough to support the whole
edifice. I will still have to investigate whether the theory adapts it¬
self easily and smoothly to the observations, or whether makeshifts
are necessary again and again in order to make the theory fit the
findings.
C. Some Difficulties
Confronting the Application
of Pavlov’s Theory
ONE SPEAKS OF DIFFICULTIES MET IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF A

theory when within its sphere of jurisdiction phenomena are ob¬
served which the theory fails to explain without supplementary
hypotheses. Each ad hoc invented hypothesis diminishes the value
of a theory, even if such additions can he brought into accord with
the initial proposition. Yet, a theorist may by his own observations
be forced to assumptions which no longer tally with his axioms. Such
is the case with the theory of the conditioned reflexes. Pavlov’s re¬
search has brought to light findings which strictly contradict his
original presuppositions. Nevertheless, the findings are facts, and as
DIFFICULTIES IN THE APPLICATION OF PAVLOV’S THEORY
63
such, they require a complete, unequivocal theory. If Pavlov’s origi¬

nal theory does not do justice to his findings, it must be replaced by
a different one. On the following pages, I will discuss some of the
difficulties which challenge Pavlov’s theory. I do not claim to offer a
critique complete in every item. Insofar as we can show the inade¬
quacy of the theory in significant examples, there is no need to go
into all details.
Orientation
The difficulties manifest themselves from the very beginning

of the experiments, for it turns out that the dogs must not be sub¬
jected to training as soon as they have been brought into the labora¬
tory. If this rule is not observed, frequent repetition is of no avail;
no conditioned reflex comes about. The animals must first get used
to the laboratory and feel at ease in the unaccustomed surroundings.
The objective psychologist will not simply acknowledge this fact,
for the animal organism is supposed to be an apparatus, not essen¬
tially different from a machine built by the hand of man. But are
there any machines which have to adjust themselves to new sur¬
roundings?1 Pavlov tries to explain the need for acclimatization
through the mechanistic concepts of reflexology. The formation of
conditioned reflexes is inhibited by disturbing stimuli. In the ani¬
mals which have just been brought into the laboratory, orientation
reflexes have become effective.
Orientation reflexes are reflexes of a most peculiar kind. They are
also called “what-is-that” reflexes. But are reflexes which ask ques¬
tions—reflexes which try to orient themselves—reflexes at all? Is
questioning itself compatible with the principle of reflex?
Pavlov would perhaps reply that the designation of a “what-is-
that” reflex was used only as a joke. But are not all jokes ultimately
meant very seriously? In our context, too, the interrogative form
does not appear accidentally.
Orientation reflexes are unconditioned reflexes. Which stimulus
corresponds to them? The answer is: “The new” is the stimulus of
the orientation reflexes. If so, we have to ask, is “the new” a legiti¬
mate concept of physics? Since only actual, single processes occur in
the physical world, there cannot be anything new. The concept of
the “new” is not a physical, but an historical notion. It refers to the
individual life history of a becoming being; it refers to experiences

and not to events.
The orientation reflexes manifest another strange quality not
compatible with the original concept of a reflex. They become ex¬
tinct, although they are unconditioned reflexes. Most surprisingly
they become extinct through the repetition of the stimuli.
To explain these phenomena, Pavlov, even at the beginning of
his investigations, is forced to introduce the concept of inhibition.
Inhibition supposedly rests on excitation of a partial system of the
nerve machine, which either prevents the functioning of other par¬
tial systems or stops those which are already active. For the orienta¬
tion reflexes disturb the formation of the conditioned reflexes. The
function of conditioned reflexes in dogs whose training has already
been concluded can in a similar way again be arrested; for instance,
by the pressure of a filled bladder or by the sight of another dog
which has been brought into the laboratory.
Pavlov does not take into consideration at all that a difference of
reactions may depend on disparity between the parts of behavior and
the total behavior, on a modification of the basic situation which
provides a specific physiognomy and validity to each aspect of be¬
havior. The animal in a new or familiar environment, the animal
tired and satiated with food, or the animal alert and hungry, the
animal alone in a room or in the company of its own kind: all these
variations are not regarded as changes in the basic situation. It is
the same machine on which, according to outside influences, now
this and now that partial system is set going. Strangely enough, the
American school of psychology, founded by Watson, which in its es¬
sential aspects is in general agreement with Pavlov’s doctrine, has
taken the name of behavior psychology, although according to its
basic concepts there cannot be any question of spontaneous behavior.2
(b) The Temporal Order of

Conditioned Reflexes
In following the procedure of the experiments, we become
acquainted with a condition applying generally to the formation of
the conditioned reflex. It is the requirement of temporal precedence
of the stimulus of the conditioned reflexes, already mentioned in
our introduction. This fact, simply ignored or overlooked by many
authors, was observed and described by Pavlov, who also tried to
DIFFICULTIES IN THE APPLICATION OF PAVLOV’S THEORY 65
explain it. He believes a cortical excitation, that is, that of the con¬
ditioned reflex, can only be linked to a subcortical center which is in
a state of excitation. But this assumption does not explain why the
connection fails to arise when the stimulus of the conditioned reflex
is given simultaneously with that of the unconditioned reflex or is
followed by it. Why has the stimulus of the conditioned reflex to
precede?
We cannot command nature what to do and what not to do. But
we are amazed when we are confronted by phenomena which are not
in conformity with the anticipated basic laws of nature. The condi¬
tioned reflex depends on the connection of a powerful, uncondi¬
tioned process with a weaker, less stable “conditioned” one. If the
more powerful process is to attract the weaker process, the weaker
must—according to the findings—have started some time before the
more powerful process begins to function. The unconditioned reflex
would therefore already have developed its effect before the effect
actually occurred. Perhaps the connection can come about only at
the moment of the beginning of the subcortical excitation? The
precedence of the stimulus of the conditioned reflex would then be
a kind of guarantee that this conditioned reflex coincides with the
just-released unconditioned excitation. But this interpretation of the
process cannot be correct. For it is necessary that the conditioned
stimulus (as I will call it briefly) takes place a perceptible amount
of time before the start of the unconditioned one. Indeed, the whole
operation is still more complicated. The conditioned stimulus need
not even last until the unconditioned occurs. Between them—for ex¬
ample, some sound serving as stimulus for the conditioned reflex and
the feeding—a more or less extended interval may elapse. It is there¬
fore sufficient that the conditioned stimulus has occurred when the
unconditioned one begins.
Translated into the language of time atomistics, this means that
an effect precedes an event which has not yet happened or one which
has already ceased to be. The theory of the reflexes, therefore, cannot
give a sufficient explanation for one of the most basic facts of its
own observations.
(c) The Optimum of Reflex Formation
There is no unequivocal relation betrveen the conditioned

reflex and the intensity of the conditioning stimulus. The position
of the optimum varies markedly in the different sensory areas. Thus,
temperatures of 0 and 50 centigrade, for example, are favorable foi

the development of the conditioned reflexes—more favorable, in any
case, than temperatures of 5 and 45 centigrade. But in training an
animal to react to acoustic stimuli, one will discover that loud noises
are less suitable than soft ones. In regard to pain stimuli, also, the
less intensive are favorable, the more intensive ones unfavorable for
the training.
In addition to intensity, the number of repetitions of the pre¬
paratory tests necessary for the complete development of the con¬
ditioned reflexes claims interest. I have already mentioned that,
although the test might have been repeated a hundred times, a con¬
ditioned reflex will not come about if the conditioning stimuli are
offered after the feeding. On the other hand, a few repetitions will
do, that is, if the same stimulus is applied at the right time, say
shortly before the beginning of the feeding. As a rule, about twenty
repetitions are sufficient for a simple training.
Sometimes one single experience may result in the formation of
a conditioned reflex. The number of the repetitions depends partly
on what else is happening between the individual periods of train¬
ing. Let us assume that a conditioned stimulus has been offered a
hundred times during the training with “reinforcement,” and let us
compare this procedure with the result of a training where 100 stim¬
ulations with reinforcement are interspersed by 100 stimuli without
reinforcement. We will find that, in the first case, many fewer repe¬
titions are needed. By a further variation of the experiments, we
apply the stimulus A with reinforcement a hundred times, but in
addition we feed a hundred times after the stimuli B, C, and D. Such
a test arrangement produces still another result which deviates from
the previous ones.
If the desired connection comes about purely mechanically, then
the three different test arrangements should actually lead to the
same result. For in each one the same factor, 100 stimuli with rein¬
forcement, has been used. At first glance it is difficult to understand
why its effect should be weakened either when a stimulation with¬
out reinforcement is used, or when a feeding is followed by other
stimuli.
To illustrate the difficulty with which we are confronted here,
let us compare the supposed mechanisms of the training with a dif¬
ferent but simple mechanical process: two places, A and B, are to
be connected by a ditch which requires a hundred shovels full of
earth to be dug. This would correspond to our first experiment. The
second experiment, where a hundred stimuli with reinforcement
alternate with a hundred stimuli without reinforcement, would

correspond to a case in which a shovel of earth is thrown up one
hundred times, but in between the spade will be merely inserted a
hundred times. The mere digging in of the spade will not prejudice
the excavation with one hundred full shovels. Nor need one dig
more than one hundred shovels full for the distance A B if another
ditch is dug at the same time from A to C.
Once again, Pavlov used the concept of “inhibition” to explain
the difference in results. But how can the mere omission of feeding,
the so-called lack of reinforcement, inhibit the processes of stimula¬
tion with feeding? Pavlov claims that an inner inhibition must be
assumed, and that it can only be inferred from the total result.
Let me briefly draw attention to the fact that the actual condi¬
tion of the test animal is not without consequence in the formation
of the conditioned reflex. The dogs must not be too satiated or too
hungry. That they must not be too satiated is easily understandable
in view of Pavlov’s presuppositions—but what about hunger? It
should increase the excitability of the “feeding-center.” And, as we
have learned, those very excitations supposedly bring about the con¬
nection between the conditioned and the unconditioned process.
Finally, the kind of unconditioned reflex used also affects the
success or failure of the training. The same conditioned stimuli can
be favorable in one case and unfavorable in another. Painful faradi¬
zations may, for example, produce conditioned reflexes if they are
followed up by feeding, but they are not suitable if subsequently an
acid is poured into the mouth of an animal. According to Ischlond-
sky, a follower of Pavlov, the excitation is thought in the first case
to be diverted from the defense center to the feeding center, because
the feeding center is stronger than the defense center. In contrast,
the acid center is supposed to be weaker than the defense center, so
that in this arrangement the training proves a failure. More drastic
examples of ad hoc, invented hypotheses can scarcely be imagined.3
Generalization Differentiation
of Conditioned Reflexes
There is another group of amazing phenomena which are de¬
scribed as generalization and differentiation of stimuli, and which
are physiologically interpreted as an irradiation and concentration
of excitation processes. The observation is as follows: A clog has been

trained to react to a certain note, say C. If the reflex has been well
established and stabilized, a strange occurrence will be observed. It
is no longer necessary to sound the note C; almost any other note
will do. Quite similarly, a conditioned reflex can be brought about
by touching any spots on the skin after the animal has been condi¬
tioned to react to a stimulus applied to just one specific spot of the
skin. If a particular ellipse has been made the signal of the condi¬
tioned reflex, the animal may be offered ellipses of quite different
diameters. It will always react in the same way. Pavlov calls this ex¬
tension of the readiness to react, generalization.
As long as the original schema of the experiment remains un¬
changed, the results will not change either. Even if during the pre¬
paratory tests the feeding is for a hundred or a thousand repetitions
always preceded by, and only by, the sounding of the note C, later
on the animal will nevertheless react to all notes of the whole scale.
The reaction will change only when the arrangement has been basic¬
ally modified. If the C has always been followed by reinforcement,
while, following A and D, reinforcement has been omitted several
times, then secretion of saliva fails to appear after the sound of the
A, the D, or any other tone, while it will still be obtained by the
sound C. This differentiation, as Pavlov calls it, can gradually be
carried very far. It is, however, of importance to start the differenti¬
ation with stimuli which are separated by large intervals. The result
will be doubtful, if at the beginning of the differentiation the A and
the B next to it have been chosen. Progress will be rapid, however,
with most of the dogs if after the A the F sharp (or any other of the
much higher or much lower notes) has been sounded. If the differ¬
entiation is to be continued until the test animals have learned to
differentiate closely adjoining stimuli—for example, two sounds
separated by a half tone—the differentiation with greater intervals
has first to be sufficiently established by frequent repetitions.
Pavlov explains the phenomena of generalization and differentia¬
tion by the assumption of an irradiation and concentration of the
excitation in the cortical area. He believes that at the start of the
tests—when in spite of the sole utilization of the note C a condi¬
tioned reflex could be obtained by any of the other notes—the cere¬
bral excitation produced by the note C has been spread over the
whole acoustic area. The excitation wave would therefore not only
be transmitted from this location—that is, from the analyzer tuned
to the C—to the subcortex, but also on any other tract. All the paths
leading from the acoustic field to the “feeding center’’ would be

simultaneously activated during the first stage of the training.
In the second stage, however, when only the C is “reinforced,”
but feeding no longer follows the sounding of other notes, the ex¬
citation is gradually concentrated on the starting point, thanks to
inner inhibition. The excitation no longer flows from the cortical
analyzer of the A or the F sharp to the subcortex. The road over
A or F sharp has been barred; the excitation remains concentrated
on the C and only from there can it reach the feeding center. Against
this “physiological” theory, a series of serious objections must be
raised:
1. The hypothesis of the irradiation contradicts Pavlov’s own
presuppositions concerning the specific tuning of the analyzers to
particular single stimuli.
2. The hypothesis of irradiation is at variance with every experi¬
ence of sense physiology, for it practically claims that, while hearing
the note C we subliminally hear all the other notes at the same time,
or that with the excitation of one area of the skin all the other areas
are also excited, and this in a specific way with their respective local
signs. The hypothesis of irradiation could only be advanced by ob¬
jective psychology because it completely ignores the phenomenal
given.
3. Strangely enough, the differentiation succeeds just when the
reflexes have been stabilized; that is, just when the “contacts” have
been firmly closed. Paradoxically, differentiation meets with better
success the firmer the paths have been established by frequent repe¬
titions.
4. The differentiation must begin with stimuli which are as dis¬
tinct as possible from each other. This makes necessary the addi¬
tional assumption that the excitation loses more and more of its
intensity when spreading over the area of the analyzers. For then
the analyzers placed at the greatest distance from the center of the
excitation would have the weakest contacts. Consequently, the re¬
spective paths could be inactivated much more easily. If this assump¬
tion were correct, differentiation should be more easily accomplished,
as long as the connections are on the whole still loose at the start of
the training. But we have seen that just the opposite is true.
5. Differentiation of symmetric areas of the skin, situated close
to each other but not represented in the same cerebral hemisphere,
should therefore be more successful than the differentiation of two
homolateral areas. For what is decisive is the distance between the
analyzers in the brain and not the distance between the receptors
7°
of the skin. This assumption has not been verified by the tests, as
far as I can make out.
6. Pavlov calculates for the conditioned reflex a conduction ve¬
locity of the nervous excitation which is very much smaller than
anything else known or assumed in neurophysiology.
(e) Trace Reflexes

The difficulties I have discussed so far are minor ones in com¬
parison with those I will now subject to a critical inspection.
We know that in the conventional experiment, the conditioned
stimulus must precede the unconditioned one by about three to five
seconds; furthermore, it must still continue at the start of the feed¬
ing. However, this pattern, as mentioned before, permits some very
strange variations. By a gradual delay of the feeding, one can obtain
a “retarded” conditioned reflex effect. The retardation may be ex¬
tended to half a minute and even to five minutes after the beginning
of the conditioned reflex. This is astonishing, indeed, because now
time functions as a determining factor of the conditioned reflex. But
comparisons with mechanical time-regulated apparatuses are bound
to fail. For there is neither a distance to be travelled (as in the case of
a fuse) nor a particular combination of positions, for example, an
arrangement of wheels which has to be reached (as with an alarm
clock), nor is there any substance which is gradually used up or has
to be added gradually. All comparisons with technical apparatuses
which serve to produce a definite result at a predetermined moment
—all explanations according to the principle of delayed release—
are inadequate. But I will not bother at this stage about the theo¬
retical interpretation, for I have not yet mentioned all the peculiar
experiments belonging to this group. Besides the “retarded” condi¬
tioned reflex, we have to consider the “trace reflexes.”
While in the case of the retarded conditioned reflex, the stimulus,
for example, the ticking of a metronome, continues until the feed¬
ing begins, an animal can also be trained in such a way that its se¬
cretion of saliva begins only when or after the conditioned stimulus
has been stopped. A conditioned reflex might be produced at the
cessation of a trumpet sound. But it is true that an additional condi¬
tion must be fulfilled: the sound must suddenly break off, it must not
gradually die away. A combination of the feeding with the gradually
fading or the just faded sound does not produce a conditioned reflex.
It is possible, on the other hand—and this is the strangest part of it

—to interpolate a pause and to postpone the feeding. If an animal
or a human being is regularly fed some time after the termination
of the conditioned stimuli, the conditioned reaction will also occur
only after a pause. With children it is possible to retard the condi¬
tioned reaction up to ten minutes.
Why are these phenomena called “trace reflexes”? Because Pav¬
lov assumes that, in these cases, the connection between the feeding
center and the excitation of the cortical cells is not established by
the conditioned stimulus itself, but between the feeding reflex and
the trace which the conditioned stimulus leaves in the cerebral cells.
After the cessation of stimulation, the excitation in the brain cells
is supposed to continue and to diminish gradually. One moment of
this slow fading of the excitation is supposed to coincide with the
beginning of the “feeding reflex.” This is a strange hypothesis.
The traces are supposed to be operative for over ten minutes.
But what is good for one stimulus is good for the other. If the exci¬
tation has such an extended “after effect,” the same must be true
for the innumerable other stimuli which affect the analyzers in
the course of minutes. How is it possible that by a few repeated stim¬
ulations order can be brought to this tangled maze of excitations and
traces of excitations, an order which the conditioned reflexes them¬
selves indicate? And how, above all, is a conditioned reflex to come
about by a single excitation, as it has been observed in work with
children?
Furthermore, is the hypothesis of trace reflexes compatible with
the general principles of physiology? Obviously it does not bother
about the threshold laws. Finally, this hypothesis will have to be sup¬
plemented by the assumption that an excitation remains existent as
such while diminishing in intensity. A trace reflex cannot be con¬
nected with the recovery phase of an excited cell. The excitation
would have to continue like a dent in a rubber ball which, while
slowly levelling and flattening out again, remains, as it were, this
dent. The hypothesis of the trace reflex strictly contradicts the tenets
of physiology as to stimulus, excitation, and recovery. It remains
unintelligible how the long after effects could be brought into har¬
mony with the stipulated rapid adaptation to the continuous influx
of new stimuli. In spite of all the biased assumptions, the hypothesis
of the trace reflexes does not even explain all the phenomena in
question. For it has been found that the “trace reflexes” are free
from any of the specificity so characteristic for the common condi-
tioned reflex. “If, e.g., with a dog, a reflex has been formed on the
traces of skin-excitation, saliva secretion does not only occur after
a stimulation of the skin, but also with other stimuli of all sorts,
e.g., those of sounds, noises, smells, etc.”4
According to Pavlov’s theory, not only the whole tactile area of
the brain must have been excited by the stimulation of the skin at
one particular spot. This effect will also irradiate all over the acous¬
tic, olfactory, and optic analyzers. In other words, when feeling
pain at one particular spot of the body, one, so to say, not only feels
pain everywhere but one also smells, sees, and hears it. Indeed, the
trace of the after effect of an excitation in one sense area would have
to correspond exactly to the after effects and the decrease of inten¬
sity in other areas. That the thresholds of the stimulation and the
discriminative thresholds differ in the various sense areas, that the
energy quantities necessary for the excitation of sight, of smell, of
taste, and the like, vary according to the organs of sense—all these
facts have been disregarded. It is truly amazing to notice how ob¬
jective psychology passes by these objective, measurable data of
physiology.
In any case, what is one to say of these final consequences of
Pavlov’s doctrine? When I suggested that this theory leads itself
ad absurdum, I was thinking particularly of this very hypothesis of
the trace reflex. For a theory which commences with the assumption
of a specific tuning of the analyzers and ends at the opposite pole
by ascertaining their complete unspecificity, cancels itself out.
In Pavlov’s school, one experiment follows the other. Instead
of pausing for an examination of the strength of the theoretical
foundation, all good is expected to come from ever-new test arrange¬
ments. Instead of clarifying the decisive problems, the continued
experimentation leads only to greater confusion. The theorist is often
accused of boundless speculation. In Pavlov’s case, we may—with
no less justification—speak of boundless experimentation.
In his attempt to interpret the phenomena discovered in his ex¬
periments, Pavlov is finally confronted with insurmountable diffi¬
culties. Do we have to charge these shortcomings entirely to Pavlov,
or rather to the fact that the limits of physiological theory have been
reached? If we keep to the phenomenally comprehensible, we may
say that a dog, secreting saliva after the abrupt discontinuation of a
noise, does not react to the sound or its trace, but to the silence fol¬
lowing the noise and contrasting with it. As the “unspecificity” of
the “trace reflex” demonstrates, silence is an intermodal phenome¬
non which we call darkness in the optical sphere, silence in the
acoustical sphere, and emptiness in other sense areas. Now, can

physiology somehow explain or comprehend at all, by its own efforts,
the phenomenon of the void? Let me close the chapter with this
question which I will try to answer later on.
Part II e^L STIMULI,
SIGNS,
AND SIGNALS
IN THE PRECEDING CHAPTER, I CONSIDERED SOME OF THE DIFFICUL-
ties encountered by Pavlov’s theory. I did not try to pursue critically,
nor in every direction, Pavlov’s extensively ramifying exposition.
Rather, I attempted to point out a few embarrassing problems
just enough to explode the legend that his theory is perfectly
consistent throughout, and that his experimental results are in per¬
fect harmony with it. The elucidation of these difficulties was also
to lead to a formulation of the problems which could further our
own positive intentions. The phenomena observed by Pavlov exist,
and they remain unshaken even if his own explanation of them col¬
lapses. But on collapse of his theory, it becomes a matter of utmost
urgency to ask: How must sensory experience be constituted so that
the so-called “conditioned reflexes” are possible?
Nature
(a) The Signal as the Middle Link in a

ThreedLink Situation
AT THE OPENING OF PAVLOV’S MONOGRAPH, CONDITIONED RE-

flexes are designated as signals. Indeed, as one considers the entire
manifestation of the conditioned reflex, this designation appears
justified and appropriate. We know that the conditioned stimuli—
colors, sounds, or whatever—must precede the feeding. They put the
animal into a state which can be interpreted as preparatory to tak¬
ing food. They seem to announce the arrival of food. In short, they
signal an occurrence important for the animal.
77
Stimuli, Signs, and Signals
78
According to Pavlov, we would have to say that the conditioned

stimuli seem to signalize the approach of prey and food. Otherwise,
we would be describing physiological occurrences in analogy with
human experience. Actually, Pavlov claims the signals are nothing
but reflexes. (“Le signal est un reflexe.”)1 Thus, the reflex is not a
signal, but the signal is a reflex. The entire theory of the conditioned
reflex attempts to explain how the stimuli for a conditioned reflex
ultimately simulate the function of signals. It suffices to recall here
that the signal, that is, the fully-developed conditioned reflex, is,
according to Pavlov, the result of two originally separate processes.
The amalgamation of the two parts of a conditioned reflex succeeds,
as we saw earlier, by eliminating one constituent of the uncondi¬
tioned reflex. It is important that there be two parts, no more and
no less. The formula for the signal could, according to Pavlov, be
symbolized in the following manner:
cR uR,
Does this interpretation correspond to the nature of a signal?

Let us suppose that a dog with well-developed reflexes has been
placed on the laboratory table for new experiments. The experi¬
menter has gone to the observation room adjacent. He would like
to begin his experiments. But to his surprise, none of the previously
tried and effective stimuli works. He may ring a bell, start a metro¬
nome oscillating, create light ellipses, or by means of various me¬
chanical contrivances scratch the ordinarily docile and patient
animal on various parts of its body. All of this is to no avail—all
stimuli fail. Why? What has happened?
The explanation is perfectly simple. What has happened—surely
I may make this assumption—is that, unnoticed, a cat has found its
way into the laboratory. The experimenter is unaware of its pres¬
ence, but the dog has smelled and seen it, and reacts to the scent of
the animal with anxiety and rage. All the bell ringing, the light
flashing, the scratching, are of no concern to him. But I am again
anthropomorphizing animal behavior. So, in order not to offend the
principles of objective psychology, I shall have to be satisfied with
saying that, in the new situation created by the intrusion of the cat,
all well-developed conditioned reflexes fail to operate.
Although all this was but an experiment of my imagination, for
which no exact records are available, it suffices as an example that
will make clear an essential aspect of the signal. Whether a signal is
effective or not depends on the situation in which it occurs or, more
THE NATURE OF THE SIGNAL
79
Precisely, on the situation which precedes it. For the moment the
signal rings out, or appears—that is to say, the moment it appears
effective the situation is changed. The signal changes the situation
which preceded it.
I therefore preface any further clarification with this proposition:
The signal is the middle link of a three-link relationship. It marks
the transition from an indifferent situation to a differentiated one.
It stands between the two.
If any sensory datum is to function as a signal, it must satisfy
the condition of being a “transition,” and that of being “in be¬
tween”; it must indicate the direction from a neutral to a differenti¬
ated situation. We must now discuss how these conditions can be
met in particular cases. ^ ^
The formula for a signal is thus not, as Pavlov puts it, cR uR
but ought rather to be written as I—>S—*D, where I stands for the
indifferent, and D for the differentiated situation.
In addition, it must be stated here that the process can also occur
in the opposite direction: D—»S->I. In that case, the signal marks
the transition from a tense to a relaxed situation. The trumpet sig¬
nal from Fidelio may serve as an example here. The sound of the
trumpet announces the turning point of the action; the dramatic
tension, having reached its climax, finds its resolution.
This reversal of direction does not change the essential struc¬
ture of the signal. In both cases, I-»S-»D, as well as D-»S-»I, it is
characterized by its triadic structure. It marks a transition stage; it
stands between two situations, one neutral, the other differentiated,
and it points in a specific direction. In accordance with Pavlov’s par¬
ticular experiments, I shall consider mainly the form I-^S^D and
only occasionally take account of the reversal D—>S->I.
In a daily round of activities, the pattern I—>S-^D is also by far
the more common. Still, frequency does not decide what is essential
and what is not.2
To use an even more striking example from a field outside of
Pavlov’s experimental design, let us examine train signals, or better
still, road signs. The train signals stand between two stretches of
the track, between the stretch just traveled and the stretch yet to
be traveled. They separate these two stretches, marking as a hiatus
the transition from an indifferent situation to a differentiated one.
As for road signs, they announce hazards on the road ahead: curves,
intersections, merging traffic, railroad crossings, and the like.
The signal stands in relation to both a preceding and a subse¬
quent situation. In its structure and in its effect, it is tied to the
8o
structure of the preceding and the subsequent situation. Thus, re¬

gardless of whether we are dealing with a situation of the pattern
or with one of the pattern D-»S-»I, the S remains depend¬
ent upon both the D and the I. The indifferent as well as the differ¬
entiated situation determine whatever can be used as a signal.
Since, in the main, we want to take our bearings by the pattern
j_>S-»D, let us first consider the signal in its relation to the indif¬
ferent situation.
(b) The Relation to the Indifferent Situation

By setting myself the task of examining the relationship be¬
tween the signal and the indifferent situation, I have already over¬
shot my aim. Indeed, once I have called a situation neutral, I have
already pointed to the essential aspect of the preceding situation,
and thus to the relationship between the signal and that situation. I
still have to prove that the situation must, in fact, be indifferent.
Let us, therefore, pretend we do not yet know anything about
the nature of the signal or of its triadic structure. Furthermore, let
us pretend that we do not as yet know anything about the fact that
the signal marks a transition, that it announces a change from an
indifferent situation to a differentiated one, or vice versa. In order
to gain access to an understanding of the function of the signal, let
us examine a situation in which a properly practiced signal has failed
to function. Let us suppose that the engineer of a train, who for
many years has conscientiously performed his job, has gone through
a stop signal and has caused a serious train wreck. The subsequent
investigation revealed that during the fatal trip, shortly before the
train had reached the signal, a pipe had sprung a leak and the en¬
gineer’s platform had been flooded by steam. Both engineer and
stoker, in their fright and confusion, tried at first to repair the leak
and thus overlooked the signal.
For a signal to be effective, the situation must be neutral. It must
release me. Neutrality is not, however, a fixed, objective property of
the environment acting upon the organism in various ways. Neu¬
trality is to be understood only as an attitude of the living being
toward its environment. If my example had been about an old, de¬
crepit machine, frequently given to springing leaks, or if the same
damage had occurred on previous occasions, if the makeshift repairs
had repeatedly broken down and been patched up again, then the
81
same “stimuli” would have had an entirely different effect, precisely

because they would have had an entirely different significance.
A situation becomes neutral when the immediate environment
arouses no concern. An environment void of importance is some¬
thing that also exists, and in such an environment, too, “stimuli”
are active.
There is a certain danger that the terms insignificant and mean¬
ingless, as used in this context, might be misunderstood, because
everyday language is not very rigorous in discriminating among the
various synonyms for meaninglessness, and it is especially careless
in using the adjectives meaningless, significant, and insignificant.
That much should be clear that in this context the term “indiffer¬
ent” does not qualify a situation in general, nor in the average. A
situation may be important for one person and trivial for another
one. It may be important for me today and passe tomorrow. The
triad I-S-D is not one of mere sequence; their temporal relation is
that of historical or biographical time. The indifferent situation is
not static; it is directed to future possibilities.
(c) The Material Constitution of the Signal

The signal marks the transition from a neutral to a differen¬
tiated situation. It terminates the neutral situation, and yet it does
not belong to the differentiated situation. It announces the differen¬
tiated situation, and yet it no longer belongs to the neutral situation.
The signal is closely related to both the differentiated and the neu¬
tral situation, yet it is neither of these. It is a strange hybrid. Its
hybrid nature must also determine the various aspects of its material
constitution. Let us examine this assumption: The signal is supposed
to terminate a neutral situation. It must therefore be separable from
it, and it must be clearly distinguishable from everything that hap¬
pens in the neutral situation. At the same time, the signal may not
be differentiated since, if it were, it would invite some confrontation
with the situation, be it to linger and relish, or to fight and flee. The
driver of a vehicle is required to heed signals, and to heed them as
nothing but signals. He is not supposed to be tempted or captivated
by them, any more than he should be frightened or threatened by
them. Signals, therefore, must be conspicuous without being “stim¬
ulating,” and they must warn without alarming; they must be both
neutral and noticeable. Within the realm of human existence, signals
82
can easily be constructed and made to serve a useful purpose by con¬

vention. By designing them in a particular form, we make sure that
they will never occur in the neutral situation, but that they will
stand out from it. It is perfectly easy to construct them in such a
way that they are neither stimulating nor alarming.
For a signal to be effective, it must be learned. In the human
realm, practice through speech, explanation, and agreement is not
difficult. The novice is told that only if he sees this particular sign
may he do this or that. The signal marks the transition from I to D;
to do so effectively, it must actually occur only there and always
there. Indeed, the signal regulates the manifold possibilities of tran¬
sition from a neutral to a differentiated situation. It announces the
approach of the differentiated situation. But it can function ade¬
quately only if all approaches to a differentiated situation of a par¬
ticular kind are blocked, to be opened up only by the signal in
question. The signal thus has the character of being in between, of
only, and of always. It is in conformity with these requirements that
signals are both constructed and explained.
We cannot make agreement with animals. Nor can we construct
signals which they would notice without being captivated, tempted,
or frightened. Nor yet can we, under normal conditions, construct
signals artificially. If we make them conspicuous in order to distin¬
guish them from the neutral situation, they will tempt or frighten
the animal, thus bringing about a differentiated situation. If, on the
other hand, we choose from the natural environment of the animal
just any everyday object which neither tempts nor frightens, then
we do not make a signal which is sufficiently distinct from the neutral
situation.
Yet Pavlov has shown us that one can train animals for signals.
He has shown that artificial structures comparable to human signals,
as well as stimuli as they are found in the everyday environment of
animals, can function as signals. How is this possible? What are the
conditions for training? If our interpretation of the signal is correct,
it must be confirmed by Pavlov’s experiments and, conversely, it
must help to resolve the difficulties encountered in Pavlov’s experi¬
ments. Materially, the signal used to train animals must also satisfy
the condition of marking a transition from I to D. This actually
proves to be the case. In order to train an animal successfully to re¬
spond to specific artificial signals, it is necessary to start out by re¬
moving it from its natural environment. Its freedom of movement
must be severely restricted. In contrast to a freely roaming creature,
or even to a wild dog that provides for its own food by searching in
83
many places and in many ways, a dog strapped into Pavlov’s condi¬
tioning apparatus is barred from any access to the differentiated sit¬
uations of feeding, except for the one or two ways allowed by the
experimenter. Thus, the experimental arrangement itself imposes
from the outset a constriction of the situation such as is required
by a well-functioning signal. The factor “only” is provided by the
experimental setting.
Stimuli that are perfectly standard in the animal’s natural en¬
vironment are first carefully eliminated from the laboratory. Subse¬
quently, they are reintroduced. But this time they are allowed to
appear only at the moment preceding the feeding.
In this way, the precedents of the experiment create a neutral sit¬
uation. By a kind of impoverishment, the environment is so restricted
that ordinary processes and common stimuli may eventually as¬
sume abnormal prominence. Finally, by restricting the animal’s free¬
dom of movement to a bare minimum, the experimental setup also
sensitizes the dog to every detail of the transition to the differenti¬
ated situation. The radical transformation of the natural environ¬
ment into the artificial milieu of the experimental box makes the
animal susceptible even to artifacts, that is, stimuli totally foreign
to its natural environment.
The material constitution of conditioned reflexes also fulfills
the essential requirements of a true signal. I shall have the oppor¬
tunity to demonstrate this in detail in Section B, below.
(d) The Relation to the Differentiated

Situation
Signals exist because all of us, animal as well as human, find
ourselves in situations and these situations can change from neutral
to differentiated or vice-versa, because in each situation we are in
transition, and because we experience change. To experience change
does not mean that one complex of stimuli has been replaced by
another. To experience change means that, with or without a change
of stimuli, the relationship between the self and the world is modi¬
fied in its significance. A signal is neither a mere addition nor a sub¬
stitution of stimuli for those actually present. When the signal
appears, the situation changes from neutral to differentiated. Because
84
the signal stands “in between,” its appearance evokes a state of ten¬
sion which may become oppressive and even unbearable if the dif¬
ferentiated situation is delayed for too long. If, for any reason, it
fails altogether to occur, this unresolved tension may engender a
disagreeable aftertaste, a feeling of emptiness, or even of irritation
and anger.
Because the S stands between the I and the D, not just any stim¬
ulus will serve as a signal. It also follows that a stimulus suitable as
a signal in the sequence I—>S—may fall in the sequence D—»S—»I.
Indeed, experiments in the training of animals clearly show that a
stimulus which easily becomes a signal when the differentiated situa¬
tion results in fulfillment of a need remains ineffective when the
differentiated situation is dangerous or painful.
Obviously, the material constitution of the signal must be closely
related to the properties and to the material constitution of the ante¬
cedent as well as of the subsequent situation. All three relationships
—S and I, S and D, I and D—must be taken into account.
GB. Resolution oj the Difficulties

ONCE THE SIGNAL IS UNDERSTOOD, ALL THE DIFFICULTIES OF PAV-
lov’s theory suddenly vanish. Phenomena which at first completely
surprised us and the experimenter will at once cease to be disturbing
and strange. Whereas at first we were astonished to realize that the
stimuli of the conditioned reflexes must precede those of the uncon¬
ditioned reflexes in time, we are now in a position to understand
why this is so, and also why it could not be otherwise.
Even if we really do succeed in removing all the obstacles which
forced Pavlov into ever new detours, we will still be far from our
own goal. We will merely have reached the point from which we
get the first clear view of the ascent proper. New and ever more dif¬
ficult problems will arise. The customary interpretation of sensation
and of the motion of animals and man will prove inadequate. Fun-
RESOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTIES
85
damental questions concerning these matters will have to be raised

anew, and in a radically different manner than heretofore.
(a) “ Orientation Reflexes” and the Problem

of the Familiar and the Unfamiliar
We saw that the training of a dog should not be undertaken
immediately after it is brought into the laboratory. If this rule is
not observed, the training will prove a failure because no condition¬
ing takes place. Only after the animals have spent some time in the
new environment can experiments be expected to be successful.
There is no need to repeat all the difficulties which Pavlov encoun¬
tered at this point, how he sought to solve these problems by the
assumption of “orientation reflexes,” and what objections can be
raised against such a hypothesis.
However, if it is true that in Pavlov’s experiments the animals
are actually trained to respond to signals—in other words, that they
learn to make a transition from an indifferent to a differentiated
situation—then we should not be surprised that a situation must
become familiar and thereby neutral before it can be distinguished
from a differentiated situation, and hence before a signal can be
inserted between the two. But, it may be asked, does the expression
that the situation “becomes neutral” mean something quite differ¬
ent from Pavlov’s terms, “appearance and disappearance of orienta¬
tion reflexes”?
The answer to this question is that the concept of orientation
does not fit into the reflex system. Man and animal in orientating
themselves reach out beyond the present and strive for fulfillment
and completion of a situation at first experienced as incomplete and
partial. All this is unintelligible if viewed in terms of the reflex the¬
ory. The very notion of orientation has no legitimate place within
the framework of Pavlov’s theory.
The “new” which supposedly arouses the orientation reflex has
a temporal structure completely foreign to the reflex theory and to
its conception of time. Indeed, time, for the reflex theory, consists
of a succession of points along a scale. Each event has its discrete
place. Therefore, no event can be “new.” If there were new events
in the order of time as it is conceived by the reflex theory, there
would also have to be old events, or even repeated events. This is
86 Stimuli, Signs, and Signals
nonsense, since each event takes place once only, and does so pre¬
cisely at its given time. To an observer, something can appear new
or old, known or unknown, differentiated or neutral. To him, an
event may appear for the first time, or after many repetitions. In itself,
however, an event is only this unique occurrence. We do not ques¬
tion that things may be either new or old, known or unknown, dif¬
ferentiated or neutral. But one can only speak of old and new with
reference to historical time.
Objective psychology is committed to an atomistic conception of
time wherein each event must always be viewed as wholly self-con¬
tained. These isolated segments can never be brought into any real
relationship with one another—hence, they cannot be brought into
a temporal relationship either.
Orientation implies some familiarity; familiarity implies recog¬
nition. A new dimension of time must then be acknowledged. Things
are familiar or unfamiliar within a temporal horizon.
The one temporal structure cannot be deduced from the other.
If something appears as familiar to me, I apprehend it both as ac¬
tually present and as having occurred before. A situation is supposed
to be this individual event, present and unique, and yet it is sup¬
posed to have a generic character. This generic character cannot be
arrived at by an abstraction from the particular. Does it not, rather,
point to a more basic stratum of experience?
We must draw a sharp distinction between these two kinds of
questions: (1) Those that inquire into the circumstances which de¬
termine in a given case whether something is experienced as known
or as unknown, as differentiated or as neutral; and (2) those that
inquire into how it is at all possible to experience something as
known or as unknown, as new or as old. In terms of objective time,
the experience of something as known is no more enigmatic than
that of something as unknown, nor is the experience of the alien and
the novel any easier to understand than the experience of the fa¬
miliar and the traditional. Its place on the scale of objective time
cannot determine whether an event assumes the character of the
novel, the unknown, the alien. Something is novel and alien only
in its relationship to the familiar and to the known.
We always find ourselves in situations which are either familiar
or foreign, precisely because experience consists in the incessant con¬
frontation of the self with the world. The confrontation of the self
with the world is originally very general. The relation between the
world and the self is not the result of putting together single, dis¬
crete events by a process of abstraction. Rather, the relationship
RESOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTIES 87
constitutes the ground for all discrete experiences. Experiences as

such can, in turn, only be understood as so many constrictions, con¬
solidations, and definitions of this totality. The transition from the
alien to the familiar is also a transition from a vague, undefined
generality to one that is determinate. In every new experience, we
are first of all confronted afresh by this perfectly general relation¬
ship. At first blush every moment is undefined and unknown. The
circumstances determine whether or not it will reveal itself as one
known and familiar.
An example may help to clarify what I have been saying. Let us
remain entirely within the realm of Pavlov’s experiments. Let us
imagine a situation in which a dog is brought into the laboratory
for the first time, and is strapped into the experimental set-up for,
let us say, half an hour, from 4:00 to 4:30. During this time, the
physical environment remains completely unaltered. The claim is
thus perfectly justified that at 4 o’clock, at 4:05, and at 4:30 the same
physical stimuli act upon the dog’s organism. Indeed, they are alike
in kind but they differ in their temporal manifestation. Throughout
the entire experiment, things happen which are alike and yet are
evidently not the same. The physical events at the beginning of the
half hour have long since ceased when the later events occur. Their
sameness does not eliminate their radical and very real difference.
This difference is due to their separation in time. Actually, what
happened at the beginning was what it was, regardless of any sub¬
sequent changes. It is therefore not legitimate to speak of discrete
occurrences as being the same or different, old or new, known or
unknown. Every occurrence is what it is, and in itself it is neither
old nor new, known nor unknown, same nor different.
Yet we humans do experience changing situations as the same
or as different, as old or as new, as alien or as familiar. As Pavlov’s
experiments show, and as we know from many other observations,
animals, too, find themselves now in familiar, now in alien situa¬
tions. Thus, both human and animal experience must be consti¬
tuted in a fundamentally different way from physical occurrences.
All attempts at explaining familiarity by means of a mechanistic
theory of memory, a theory of “fusion” of present contents with “res¬
idues of earlier ideas,” must fail. All these attempts simply treat
discrete processes as identical, totally disregarding their radical dif¬
ferences. Much effort is spent in explaining familiarity and familiar¬
ity alone, while it is overlooked that the unknown, the alien, the
new, raise as many problems as the known, the familiar, the old.
With our analysis of the signal, Pavlov’s first difficulty is no longer
88 ,
Stimuli, Signs and Signals
perplexing. However, other and more important problems emerge

which can only now be grasped and formulated.
The Antecedence of the Conditioned

Stimulus and the Problem of the
“Inbetween”
If, as we found, the signal stands between two situations, it
must obviously precede the differentiated situation, and therefore
the conditioned stimulus must precede the unconditioned stimulus.
We need not cast about for tortuous physiological theories, nor need
we explain how an occurrence could be manifest before having
started, or after having ended. But once again new and more difficult
questions arise. We ought not be misled into believing that we know
what is meant by something being “in between,” just because the ex¬
pression is familiar and readily understood in everyday language.
Is the relationship designated by the adverb between only a spe¬
cial case of the general relationship next to} In everyday language,
we speak of something being “inbetween,” either in space or in time.
But is inbetween a purely spatial relationship?
Let us suppose a place B lies between A and C. Does this merely
mean that “B is next to A and to C,” or that “A, B, and C are points
along a straight line”? If we are satisfied with such a definition, A, B,
and C should be interchangeable, and it would be equally proper to
say that C lies between A and B, or that B lies between A and C.
Clearly, to speak of A, B, and C as points along a straight line is no
more satisfactory for an understanding of what is meant by “be¬
tween” than is the definition of B as located next to A and C.
To be “between” means something else. Given three stationary
objects, I can see at one glance that one of them is located between
the other two. But if I want to assure myself of B’s position between
A and C, I must take A as my point of departure, set out in the direc¬
tion of B, and go on in that direction beyond B itself, up to C. Fi¬
nally, having reached the end point C, I must turn back towards the
starting point A. It is only by such a process of exploration that the
self-contained frame around B becomes evident.
And now we must ask: Is such an orientation really spatial? Is di¬
rection itself really an exclusively spatial phenomenon? Were we not
RESOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTIES 89
compelled to enlist the aid of time in determining what is meant by

inbetween ’? If this applies even to an apparently pure spatial defi¬
nition of the “inbetween,”1 what about such configurations as we
encountered in studying the signal? The signal stands inbetween a
neutral and differentiated situation. It announces the approach of a
differentiated situation. It must, therefore, be possible to experience
advancing toward something. An experience is not confined within a
moment. The experienced present is open towards an indeterminate
future. What is “not yet” already reaches into the present.
To understand what “to be inbetween” means, what is involved
in approaching something, or what a signal is, is impossible within a
framework of exclusively objective time and space. And as a conse¬
quence, it is impossible to understand the entire world of sensing
and moving within such a framework. We must, rather, first explore
the spatial and temporal forms of sensing and moving.
(c) The Optimum of Reflex Formation

and the Problem of the Hiatus
I encountered a third difficulty in trying to account for the pe¬
culiarities of experimental reflex formation. The relative position of
the optimum along the scale of stimulus intensities varies surpris¬
ingly from one sense modality to the next. It is also far from self-
evident why the number of trials required for successful conditioning
varies so widely under different circumstances. Further, it was
pointed out how conditioning depends on the state of the animals.
Finally, the relationship of the signal stimulus to the situation fol¬
lowing it was indicated. To summarize briefly, I found that a stim¬
ulus may function adequately as a signal in one setting while failing
completely in another. For instance, a moderately painful stimulus
will be effective when followed by agreeable food but remains in¬
effective when followed by such unpleasant “food” as acid.
A signal announces the transition from a neutral to a differenti¬
ated situation. It must, therefore, be manifestly distinct from the
neutral situation without, however, becoming different in itself.
The laboratory situation makes it possible to isolate the experi¬
mental animals from some stimuli that are natural to their
environment, such as sounds, for example. Other stimuli, such as
temperature, can, of course, never be completely eliminated. If
9«
temperature is to serve as a signal, it is necessary to employ grada¬

tions of hot and cold which are clearly distinct from a comfortable
and therefore neutral temperature. In the light of this, we can easily
understand that 0° C acts more effectively than 5° C, and that 50 C
is better suited for experimental purposes than 45° C.
With sound it is different. With some care, it is possible to achieve
deathly silence in the laboratory. Then even the faintest noise will,
by contrast, alter the situation. Under such conditions, a soft, gentle
sound serves better as a signal than a loud noise which would only
create a disturbing, differentiated situation. It could not announce
the transition to still another differentiated situation.
This is in keeping with the experience that the experimental ani¬
mals must neither be very hungry nor completely sated. They should
be just a little hungry. Under these conditions they search, and are
oriented to go from the neutral towards the approaching differenti¬
ated situation. The starved animal, on the other hand, is already in
a differentiated situation. The commonly used stimuli for condition¬
ing reflexes do not sufficiently contrast with this situation to function
effectively as signals.
A signal indicates the transition from a neutral to a differentiated
situation. It is, therefore, in-between. But this is not by itself suffi¬
cient to make it a good signal. A good signal is, furthermore, charac¬
terized by the “only” and the “always.” Only when the signal appears
does a differentiated situation follow, and the differentiated situation
always follows when the signal appears. It is, therefore, not surpris¬
ing that very few trials are required for conditioning when the signal
stimulus is regularly followed by feeding (reinforcement), and when
the feeding only follows the signal stimulus. If, on the other hand,
after application of the conditioned stimulus the animal is sometimes
fed and sometimes not, or if the stimulus is varied, conditioning will
require many more repetitions. It is entirely unnecessary to resort to
the hypothesis of complicated inhibitions in order to explain these
occurrences.
A wild animal in search of food must put up with many things
and suffer many pains. A slight pain, such as is caused by a small gal¬
vanic current, can therefore still be taken as a signal for feeding. An
animal conditioned to electric shocks may gradually come to accept
even somewhat stronger currents as signals, if they are signals for
feeding. If, however, the first unpleasantness of the current is fol¬
lowed by merely another unpleasantness, viz. the exposure to acid,
then the faradic stimulation ceases to act as a transition to a differen¬
tiated situation; instead, it becomes itself a differentiated situation
91
from which the animal seeks to escape. An hiatus separates this situa¬
tion from the next one, in which the painful stimulation has been
stopped. The animal flees from the unpleasant situation, looking
backwards, so to speak, while in a true signal situation it looks for¬
ward toward what is approaching. This is why extremely painful
stimuli cannot act as signals for feeding.
The manner in which the flow of experiences is organized, where
the superficial and where the deep hiatuses occur, in short, what
makes up one integral experience, depends upon the situation of the
animal both at the beginning and at the end of the experiments.
(d) Cortical Irradiation and Concentration,

and the Problem of the General and
the Particular
Pavlov named the phenomena now to be considered “generali¬
zation” and “differentiation” of conditioned stimuli. These names
indicate that Pavlov himself recognized the problem of the general
and the particular which arises at this point. In keeping with his
point of view, he seeks for a physiological explanation, and he be¬
lieves he has found it in the hypothesis of irradiation and concentra¬
tion of neural excitation. He considers it self-evident that every
sound, in fact every stimulus whatsoever, can only act as this single,
specific stimulus. The sound “a” is nothing but itself; it is certainly
not sound as such. Yet the experiments show, on the contrary, that
an animal does not react to a single, specific sound only. Pavlov in¬
terprets the animal’s general response to sound as such as a reaction
to a multitude of single sounds, physiologically due to a spreading of
the excitation from the first specific analyser over the whole acous¬
tic field. The general is only an illusion. Such an illusion occurs be¬
cause the same response follows any number of distinctly different
stimuli. If an animal conditioned to the sound a, also salivates in re¬
sponse to c or g, it does not, according to Pavlov, react to sound as
such. The peculiar structure and function of the CNS is supposed to
be the cause of like responses to different stimuli. The conditioning
for a did not simply set up a path between the cortical focus corre¬
sponding to a and the subcortical feeding center. Rather, by a spread¬
ing of the stimulus to the other analysers in the acoustical field.
connections with the cells corresponding respectively to c, to g, and

other sounds are supposed to have been formed. The cells and the
paths remain distinct. Despite the fact that the same common re¬
sponse is elicited by varying stimuli, each of these stimuli is always
supposed to be nothing but this single, individual, and specific stim¬
ulus. And how could it be otherwise? Does not a have a definite wave
length and frequency which differ entirely from the wave length and
the frequency of c, and which in turn differ entirely from those of g?
Surely, then, one cannot seriously speak of sound as such. Sound as
such would have to be of a wave length simultaneously equal to those
of a, c and g. There can be no experience of sound as such: it is only
an illusion.
If, to such an argument, we countered with the observation that
we actually do distinguish sensations according to their modality,
that we do experience sounds, however different from one another
they may be, as belonging together, and as distinct from all colored
things, however different from one another they may be, Pavlov
would presumably acknowledge these facts. But he would not ac¬
knowledge them as valid objections. He would explain the distinc¬
tion between sensory modalities, between sounds and colors, as a feat
of abstraction and of attention. If he were to do this—although I can¬
not cite a specific passage in which he does—he would remain en¬
tirely within the mainstream of the tradition founded by Locke,
Berkeley, and Hume.
The nominalist doctrine assumes that primary data are always
single, individual, and particular. Its intention is therefore to show
how, from this individual and singular, we arrive at the general. The
procedure seems simple and clear. Mental experience corresponds to
processes in the organism. The organism is one particular thing
among other things. Certain events set off certain processes in the
organism which are accompanied by consciousness. Precisely in the
same way as these inner and outer events are said to be singular, sen¬
sations are viewed as so many single and particular data. But neither
the prescientific nor the scientific interpretation of the world can in
any way ascertain how the world must appear in original experience.
Just how the world appears to us as becoming beings is the real psy¬
chological problem.
Let us consider the following situation: A young man who has
been raised in some quiet locale in the country comes to a big city
where for the first time in his life he sees a Chinese. Certainly he will
see this Chinese as singular, yet he does not see his very peculiarity;
rather, he sees him as a man of peculiar and strange countenance. I
93
say that he sees a human being and already the very term human
being points to something general. But this strange looking man,
however different, is not simply indeterminate. Rather, his being dif¬
ferent is sufficiently determinate to allow recognizing a second Chi¬
nese for what he is—namely, another member of the same species.
Nobody will believe that our friend has to chance upon ten, twenty,
or thirty other Chinese before he could acquire a general idea of a
Chinese. In fact, just the opposite is true. Only if he had the oppor¬
tunity of meeting many Chinese within a short time would he notice
the differences among them. In the beginning, they all look alike to
him. If three months later he again meets the first Chinese, every¬
thing will be as on the first occasion, except that now his acquaint¬
ance will have become particularized. He actually then descends to
the particular from the general, from the one to the many. In the en¬
counter, he is confronted by the Chinese as this singular individual,
but the individuation is determined solely by the situation of the
encounter. Every moment of experience differs from every other mo¬
ment as this particular and singular moment. But what we meet in
such an encounter is still not something particular just because it be¬
longs to the individual moment. If it is indeed true, as this first
example seems to indicate, that the general, not the particular, is first
experienced, and that we only reach the particular by successive dif¬
ferentiations of the general, then the moment can only be a qualifica¬
tion of an encompassing relationship between the world and the self,
which is fulfilled in an historical continuum of becoming. The rela¬
tionship between the world and the self is itself general, or, more
correctly, wholly encompassing. The single moments stand in the
same relation to it as does the particular to the general. Thus, the
later would always be related to the earlier as the particular is to
the general.
The way in which children learn to speak is a striking example.
To a child, every female is at first “mommy” and every male “daddy.”
A little later it distinguishes the mother from the aunts and the
father from the uncles. The word “bow-wow” is at first used by the
child to designate all kinds of animals, living and artificial. It is only
in the course of time that it learns to distinguish and to name the dif¬
ferent species, and within the species individual creatures. Language
develops from the general to the particular, and in so doing it follows
the general course of development which we in our development
take. It is not the word which makes possible our thinking in general
concepts; the word, rather, is itself general because the thing it signi¬
fies is general.
94
For millennia, men have learned how to speak in exactly the same
way, from one generation to the next. Thus we find at the beginning
of Aristotle’s Physics: “Children, too, at first call all men father and
all women mother. Later, they distinguish between each single per¬
son.”2 Nobody teaches children to call all men daddy, all women
mommy, and many-legged moving things bow-wow. They would not
even understand such teaching. Each finds the same road on his own
as he makes his first attempts at speaking. We regard this uniform
development as an expression of an essential law of mental develop¬
ment.
Aristotle cites this observation as an example for the claim that at
first the more composite is clearer and better known to us and that its
elements and principles only subsequently become manifest to us.
We should therefore proceed from the general to the particular. “For
it is the whole that is best known to sense-perception, and the general
is a kind of whole. . . . We must advance from that which is better
known and clearer to us, towards that which is clearer and more
knowable by nature.”3
The adult, as long as he learns by experience, proceeds exactly as
does the infant. An experienced doctor has not derived his general
idea of illness from the knowledge of a thousand cases but, on the
contrary, he has organized the general phenomenon of being ill into
many diseases, and the diseases into many different developments.
Any expertness, whether it is a matter of scientific experience or of
everyday practice, of artistic skill or of competence in a trade, of
achievement in sports or of gastronomic pleasures, is arrived at in the
same manner: the road always leads from the general to the par¬
ticular.
Thus far, the general and the particular were understood in my
considerations exclusively in their relationship to us, in accordance
with the distinction drawn by ancient science between the relation¬
ship of things in themselves in contrast to their relationship to us.
This “initially better known to us” is a theme—if not the funda¬
mental theme—of psychology.
The temptation is strong to conceive of the general and the par¬
ticular as they might be thought of by an “intellectual archetype”
whose mode of being remains obscure. But regardless of whether I
think in terms of the particular, the many singulars, or of the gen¬
eral—the one in many—as a thinking being I have already relin¬
quished my primary relationship to the world. The general, which
in the course of life confronts us directly, is not general because it is
thought general, but because the relationship between the self and
its world is general.4
95
This is also why our experience of the general does not depend
on language. It does not derive first of all from discursive thought,
but already occurs in the realm of sensing; it is not alien to animal
experience.
Before we return to Pavlov’s observations, some things must be
clarified more fully. The opinion that the primary given is but an in¬
dividually perceptible entity—something singular and particular—
requires careful scrutiny. Indeed, if the primary given were but
singular and individual, then each moment would evidently have to
be self-contained and independent, strictly separated from every
other moment. There would be no internal connection between
single moments. They would be, and they would forever remain,
separate from each other, like so many pearls on a necklace. The
pearls are joined by a bond that is entirely extrinsic to them. Simi¬
larly, strictly distinct moments are united in an extrinsic relationship
by means of physiological processes in the organism. In all this, the
singular experience always remains solitary. Impressions follow one
another in an objective time sequence, where each has its particular
place. According to this view, there can be no essential difference be¬
tween a man’s first cry and his last sigh. The beginning is not a real
beginning, the end not a real end, and the middle is therefore also
not a real middle. Nor is transition a real becoming; each moment is
singular, occupying its place within time. We need only to recall
once again Hume’s statement that the I (ego) is merely a “bundle of
ideas,” and his rigorously developed doctrine of the atomism of time,
to realize that this theory of the general and the particular and this
conception of time must be interlaced. Basic to them is the elimina¬
tion of any concept of becoming.
If, however, the relationship of the self to the world is general, if
the self itself is in the process of becoming, if each moment is merely
a constriction of that process, an alteration in continuous becoming,
then the single moments must be entwined in an intrinsic context.
I assumed in an earlier example that a young man on his first en¬
counter with a Chinese was immediately aware of his strange counte¬
nance, strange to be sure, but only in relation to the accustomed and
the familiar. In comparison with the accustomed, with the past, the
appearance of a Chinese, met for the first time, is peculiar. He is
strange solely in contrast to what he is not. But this is true of every
moment of experience. As the present moment, it is different from all
moments that are past: it is this particular moment. But this particu¬
lar moment itself is soon past, distinct from another new moment.
With respect to the past, it is a particular moment, whereas with re¬
spect to the future it is general. Each moment is a modification of a
continuum, a transition from the definite past to the as yet indefinite

future.5
This Janus-head character is part of each impression, because it is
the experience of a subject in the process of becoming. Each moment
is set off as a figure against a temporal background. This background
has its own peculiar structure: It is what no longer is and what is not
yet. In primary experience, each moment is given to us as distinct
from what is no more, and what is not yet.
Pavlov’s hypothesis of generalization and differentiation has re¬
quired a lengthy discussion. It would perhaps not have been neces¬
sary to go to these lengths in order to understand Pavlov’s
experiments. But I did not want to break up an integrated considera¬
tion, and Pavlov’s experiments provided a welcome opportunity for
the above reflections.
I maintain that animals, too, experience the general—for exam¬
ple, sound. They have this experience not because they think in gen¬
eral terms, but because the relationship of an experiencing being to
the world is a general relationship, whereas the singular moment is
merely a constriction of this relationship. The content of each mo¬
ment is determined in part by that from which it is distinct, that is,
by what it no longer is, as well as by what it is to be. How, otherwise,
could animals experience signals, which are midway between an un¬
differentiated and a differentiated situation and which announce the
transition from the one to the other?
And now let us examine somewhat more closely the experiments
in which generalization and differentiation occur.
The natural environment of dogs is filled with sounds and noises
of various kinds. In Pavlov s laboratory, all sounds and noises are,
from the very beginning, totally absent. If, perchance, a noise does
enter the laboratory, or if acoustic stimuli are deliberately intro¬
duced, each sound or noise stands out sharply against the preceding
silence. Through this contrast they gain in significance. Thus, one of
the essential conditions for the formation of signals is fulfilled. In the
scheduled environment of the laboratory, every sound is first of all
sound as such in contrast to the preceding silence.
Moreover, a free-roaming animal can find its food in many differ¬
ent ways. In Pavlov s laboratory, too, the feeding could be coupled
with many different kinds of stimuli. But in experiments proper
feeding always follows one particular stimulus, such as a particular
sound produced by a particular instrument. Thus the laboratory en¬
vironment of the animal, in comparison with its natural environ¬
ment, is decidedly restricted and impoverished. This restriction starts
97
before the conditioning and it continues throughout the training in

the laboratory. If, after being fully conditioned to one tone the ani¬
mal, nevertheless, reacts to a large number of different sounds, it does
react to sound as such, but only because the transition to the differ¬
entiated situation proceeds by way of acoustic rather than optical or
tactile stimuli. The response to sound as such has been achieved, de¬
spite the general nature of the animal’s reaction, by means of restric¬
tion and particularization. I have elsewhere illustrated6 this process
of restriction with the following example: “Here is a meadow which
could be approached from all directions. One fine day its owner puts
a fence around his land and leaves only a small opening through
which from now on all must pass who want to enter the meadow. At
the open spot nothing has been changed by the construction of the
fence. Nor has a new relationship been established between the
fenced-in area and its environment. Indeed, it used to be possible to
approach the meadow from the open spot, as well as from any place
along the fence. The open spot is the only one which has remained
unchanged. It has become distinct solely because the rest of the bor¬
der-line to which it belongs has been closed off for the remainder of
its length. The formation of a signal proceeds in a completely analo¬
gous manner.”
We know that conditioning can reach the point where the animal
eventually reacts to but one specific sound. The animal has learned
how to distinguish. The specificity of the signal arises from a con¬
stantly narrowing constriction. There is actually no contrast between
the two processes which Pavlov distinguishes as generalizing and dif¬
ferentiating. The response to “sound as such” is due to a process of
constriction and exclusion, as much as is the later response to a single
sound. Both the generalization and the differentiation of Pavlov are
possible only by virtue of the relationship between general and par¬
ticular which prevails in all sensing.
If, then, there is no such thing as generalization and differentia-,
tion in the Pavlovian sense, there need be no irradiation and concen¬
tration of stimulation within the nervous system either. These
processes were, after all, only hypothesized in order to explain gen¬
eralization and differentiation. From a false interpretation of these
phenomena, a false physiological theory of nervous functions was de¬
veloped.
Pavlov thought that psychology could only be derivative from an
objective physiology. But regardless of who is right in the interpreta¬
tion of the phenomena just described, the physiology of the CNS
must always depend on the psychological interpretation of the phe-
nomena. One could only speak of irradiation and concentration if

generalization and differentiation in the sense assumed by Pavlov
really existed. But in order to prove or disprove this, an understand¬
ing of the basic forms of experience is required. Thus, a particular
physiological hypothesis must be based on a general psychological
theory. The involved path to the principles is required not only for a
refutation of the above suppositions; acceptance and refutation alike
require testing of the general psychological presuppositions. Experi¬
ments can prove or even render probable the validity of a hypothesis
only after its possible relevance has already been determined. But
such a question may have to be settled in an entirely different man¬
ner than might be supposed by a fanatical experimenter.
(e) Trace Reflexes and the Problem

of Emptiness
The last difficulty which I discussed was that of the trace re¬
flexes. It was learned that a dog can be so conditioned as to salivate
some time after the sudden cessation of a sound. It was further
learned that an animal so conditioned will also salivate when stimuli
never used before, stimuli in a different modality from that in which
the animal had been conditioned, are made to stop suddenly. I re¬
jected Pavlov’s explanation. How can I now explain these phe¬
nomena?
In some musical compositions, very effective use is made of the
full pause. In the midst of a symphonic movement all instruments
suddenly become silent. The effect of this silence on the listener is,
by contrast, most dramatic. But is this effect based solely on the sud¬
den cessation of acoustic stimuli? Can we unhesitatingly use the word
sudden in regard to this cessation? Do we not thus confuse physi¬
ological with psychological consideration? Is suddenness not intrin¬
sically related to expectation? Even if the state of expectation has its
basis in physiological processes, these processes are certainly not iden¬
tical with the processes of acoustic stimulation.
I hold that the animals in Pavlov’s experiments respond to si¬
lence, and that silence becomes a signal for them. Although contrast
is necessary in order to bring out silence, the effects are those of the
silence proper. The undifferentiated situation is created by the pre¬
ceding uniformly enduring stimulus against which the silence is set
99
off as announcing a transition stage. According to my conception of

the signal, there is no essential difference between a silence which in¬
terrupts a noise and a noise which interrupts a silence. Only when
preceded by a silence does a sound readily become a signal. We are
not faced with any new problem if in the series I-S-D the silence oc¬
curs as I instead of S.
Animals are supposed to respond to silence. But from the phys¬
ical standpoint, silence is nothing, or at least a lack, a mere absence
of sound waves. Physiologically, only a state of rest of the sensory
organ could correspond to this nothingness. How can nothing cause
something? Yet experiments show that silence causes something.
They show even more: Silence is an intermodal phenomenon. Silence
is but a mode of emptiness for the sense of hearing. Once the animal
has grasped emptiness in one sensory modality as a signal of expecta¬
tion, it also reacts to emptiness in other modalities. If this were so,
nothing would cause something, and would even, while being noth¬
ing, be transferable from one sensory modality to another. Are these
assumptions not too bold, or altogether foolish?
One is here actually faced with a most significant decision. Either
one admits that animals cannot possibly react to silence because si¬
lence is nothing—and nothing cannot cause something—or one must
abandon the physical point of view and the notion of equating ex¬
perience in all its particulars with processes in the organism. This
means giving up the theory of epiphenomenalism.
So far I have refrained from speaking about hearing silence. Nor
do I now wish to claim that silence is heard in the same way as are
sounds and noises. But no matter whether I hear a painful silence, or
one that is pleasing, in terms of experience, this silence belongs to
auditory phenomena even if it remains cognitively empty.
A musical example will illustrate the way in which silence can be
perceived. Beethoven’s violin concerto begins with four drum beats.
In the score, we find four quarter notes, so that the entire measure is
considered filled up with sound. The four beats, which are heard as
four distinct beats can, however, also be interpreted physically and
physiologically as crescendos and decrescendos. But later on, when
the strings take up the theme, four one-eighth beats, separated by
eighth intervals, are noted in the score. The bar is no longer wholly
filled with sound. Sound alternates with silence. In music, each tone
has its precisely determined place in time, its precise beginning and
end. We hear both the onset of a tone and its cessation. The tone is
limited in time. But any boundary also separates two things. Against
what, then, in my example, is each tone set off? I would say it is set off
lOO Stimuli, Signs, and Signals
against the silences, and that silence properly belongs to the auditory
realm. Only if silence itself is part of the audible can we hear the four
beats with their onset and their cessation, that is, only then do we ac¬
tually hear the tone in its temporal structure, as this structure is
indicated by written musical notation. If, on the other hand, one
argued that silence does not belong within the realm of the audible,
one would have to concede that we do not really hear the onset and
the cessation of a tone—in other words, that we do not perceive its
development in time. The boundary which circumscribes the tem¬
poral structure of the tone would then not separate sound from si¬
lence, sound and pause, or sound and no sound. We could hear only
the tone, not its beginning or its end. Beginning and end would be
boundaries separating a consciousness with sound content from one
without such content. While we thought we heard four beats follow¬
ing each other in quick succession, we actually would have ascer¬
tained the following: “Now I heard something, now I did not, now
again, now again not,” and so on. The boundary would thus run be¬
tween sound and visual impression, or between sound and thought.
This is a strange assumption, entirely at odds with the fact that sound
and rhythm, as well as sound and temporal structure, are closely re¬
lated, just as it is at odds with the very structure of music. For only
if we hear sounds in their temporal sequence, only if we actually
hear their onset and their cessation—and that means only if we can
hear silence—can there be music. And, since there is music, I believe
it admissible to conclude that we perceive silence as an auditory
phenomenon.7
I would have to face many difficulties had I to decide whether to
designate silence as a negative phenomenon. In any event, I would
immediately enter an essential qualification and caution against the
conclusion that emptiness and silence are nothingness. Indeed, si¬
lence is perceived, and emptiness is experienced.
This paradox is familiar to us in everyday life. We meet it with
every negation, not only in a negative judgment properly speaking
but even more strikingly in every denial of a wish or of a request.
The other person, hearing only the “no,” hears the words, under¬
stands them, and the “no” works its effect.
Yet silence is not like the emphatic and harsh “no”: It is more
like the image of the omitted reply. Answers and silence exist only in
the actuality of conversation. Answers are sentences—sometimes just
single words and gestures—but not all sentences are answers If one
utters the word “four” all by itself, it has little meaning; but it does
have a meaning in answer to the question, “How much is two times
RESOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTIES lOl
two?” It becomes the answer to a particular question only within the

historical context of a conversation.
In conversation alone do we find statement and counterstatement,
question and answer. Conversation arises in a community of speakers
based on reciprocity, and is prior to any given statement by one of
them. While the speakers talk about something, they also converse
with one another. Every genuine question, seeking for an instructive
answer, arises from a sense of want, of incompleteness. The ques¬
tioner turns to the other person in the expectation of completion.
There is a reciprocal relationship of fulfillment between a question
and an answer. The question looks forward to the answer, the an¬
swer looks back to the question, because that is the relationship in
which the two speakers stand to one another. Some questions may re¬
main unanswered, but this need not stop the conversation. The place
for the answer is there; it merely remains unfilled. It is because the
conversation continues, even when there is no answer, that the lack
of completion is experienced as silence.
Silence and not speaking are not one and the same thing, except
from a physical standpoint. Nor is silence and the lack of sound
waves one and the same thing. Silence is experienced as emptiness
because, within the context of our primary relationship to the world,
we ask questions which remain unanswered. All sensory impressions
are answers to questions; they are not simply there in the way in
which the physiological processes underlying them are. We receive
sensory impressions insofar as we orient ourselves within our primary
relationship with the world by questing, seeking, expecting. Here,
too, we may be left without answers. We then experience silence, or
any of the other manifestations of emptiness.
We have learned from Pavlov’s experiments that animals also re¬
spond to emptiness. We must conclude from this that they sense the
world about them, to which—anticipating a response—they are di¬
rected in searching. If this is so, we must further conclude that the
phenomena which Pavlov called conditioned reflexes cannot really
be reflexes at all. It does not explain phenomena to speak of them as
the supposed epiphenomena of hypostatized physiological processes.
And it adds to the confusion to resort to a theory of isomorphism in
order to account for the relationship between experience and physi¬
ological processes. We do not reject such a theory because it has not
yet been proven, but because we consider it basically impossible.
Reflexes occur in an organism. The phenomena which are ex¬
plained as conditioned reflexes, however, are not to be interpreted as
simply occurring within an organism, but must be understood as
ways in which living beings relate to the world. Pavlov’s basic mis¬
take, which he inherited from Cartesian philosophy by way of natu¬
ral science, is the view that it is possible to explain any relationship
to the world as a process in the organism, that a situation can be ex¬
plained as a situs, and that the process of becoming can be under¬
stood as an objective time sequence.
Our interpretation is supported by the fact that, despite the great
amount of research in the field of conditioned reflexes, no adequate
proof has been adduced for conditioned tendon reflexes. The forma¬
tion of conditioned reflexes is successful if—as in feeding or in hurt¬
ing—the relationship to the world has been altered. Conditioning is
unsuccessful, on the other hand, in the case of those reflexes which—
like tendon phenomena—are actually nothing but processes within
the individual organism.
We therefore come to the conclusion that animals are indeed ca¬
pable of experiencing signals, that is, approach, the phenomenon of
the in-between, and the other features which we have described as
characteristic of the signal. We are thus confronted by the funda¬
mental question: How must sensation be constituted for such expe¬
riences to become real?
Part III e=£L MAN THINKS,
NOT THE BRAIN

A. Surrounding Field
and Surrounding World
(a) The Credo of Objective Psychology
PAVLOV, HAVING WORKED UNTIRINGLY RIGHT UP TO THE END OF

his life, died in 1936, crowned with glory. Pavlov is dead, but his
work lives on. In the old world, as in the new world, and on both
sides of the Iron Curtain, scholars take great pains to expand upon
and to propagate the doctrine of the conditioned reflexes. The num¬
ber of the disciples, followers, and apostles is legion. True, changes
have been made; new experiments have led to new observations and
new observations have necessitated additional hypotheses. As is usu¬
ally the case, separate groups have been formed after leaving the
orthodox fold. Above all, among neurophysiologists, probably only a
few are still determined to defend seriously Pavlov’s speculations
about the structure and activity of the brain. But this did not do any
damage to Pavlov’s basic conceptions. One has endeavored to replace
the defective parts by a better construction, to reinforce the founda¬
tions of the shaky building, and to strengthen logically and epistemo¬
logically the theory of objective psychology.
It would lead much too far afield to record the opinions of all the
schools, which are often in conflict with one another, to weigh their
arguments, and to define one’s own attitude with respect to all the
details of historical development since Pavlov’s death. It is of greater
importance to attempt a fundamental critique. This task is made
easier because, in spite of all differences, objective psychologists—to
105
io6 Man Thinks, Not the Brain
give them their collective name—agree on one fundamental prin¬

ciple.
At the Hixon Symposium of 1948, a conference of a small number
of outstanding psychologists, physiologists, and psychiatrists, Lashley
(as speaker for this group) formulated an “article of common faith’’
upon which, he thought, all the participants could agree. This “ar¬
ticle” states that all phenomena of behavior and mind will ultimately
become describable in terms of the mathematical and physical
sciences.1
No objection was raised. This was scarcely to be expected, even if
the article of faith had been intended to be put to the vote before a
great international forum. Had some of the opponents, such as Sher¬
rington 2 or Eccles 3 spoken, they would have been voted down by a
compact majority. Descartes would have been no stranger at such a
meeting. He could have pointed out that he had advanced the same
postulate centuries ago, although he had limited it to animal be¬
havior and to the human body. By adding “and of mind” to the
words “of behavior” the conference had modified and radicalized his
opinion on a decisive point.4
My interpretation of the behavior of animals in the Pavlovian ex¬
periments brings me in opposition to both Descartes and Lashley.
The believers in Lashley’s article of faith, which may be called
the credo of objective psychology in the broadest sense, are found in
very different groups, both radical and moderate. Their changing in¬
terpretation of the common faith can be brought under the following
scheme of categorical statements:
(1) There is no consciousness. (2) There might be consciousness,
but there is no proof of its existence or its mode of operation. (3) The
question of whether there is a consciousness or not is irrelevant, for it
cannot be explored by scientific, that is, objective methods. (4) There
is consciousness. However, because all consciousness is only an at¬
tendant phenomenon of brain processes, the task of the explora¬
tion of its laws is reduced to the clarification of the physiological
processes on which it is based. (5) There exists an immediate experi¬
ence, but it cannot become an object of research. (6) Whether or not
there is consciousness and whether it plays a particular role in con¬
trolling behavior are obsolete questions, superseded by the facts.
Our predecessors tried to prove that behavior and nervous functions
are completely correlated, and that the former is caused entirely by
the latter. They have tried to relate perceiving, remembering, learn¬
ing, thinking, and acting to brain activities, and to understand the
brain itself as a machine. All that was, at best, theoretical interpreta-
SURROUNDING FIELD AND SURROUNDING WORLD 107
tion, but never cogent proof. We, today, have advanced, for we have
discovered a practical and peremptory demonstration. We have suc¬
ceeded in building machines that think and plan, that discover
errors and correct mistakes. Descartes’ idea that animals could be
compared with automatons is no longer a speculative hypothesis, for
today we are capable of constructing automatons which compete
with man. We no longer have to establish the fact that brains are
machines, for we have machines that are brains.
In this scheme, the formulation of which is adapted to examples
in modern publications with adequate exactness, the subject in ques¬
tion is consciousness, not the experiencing being. The scheme follows
colloquial usage; it makes clear that the Cartesian division of body
and soul still continues and keeps even those under its spell who re¬
ject it. For what is contested is the very fact that there exists con¬
sciousness as an autonomous essence, as a kind of substance which
can affect bodily processes. Psychophysical parallelism and the doc¬
trine of the psychophysical reciprocal effect are both descendants of
Cartesianism. Instead of consciousness, we intend to speak here of
the experiencing being. The objective significance of this change in
terminology, what is gained by it, and the new problems arising from
it will become evident as we proceed in our discussion.
Scientific Behavior Is an Essential
Theme of Behavior Science
A discussion with objective psychologists can be productive

and a resolution of differences becomes possible only if, to begin
with, both parties meet on some common ground. Such common
ground is not difficult to find. In all of our discussions, arguments,
and disputes we must start from the assumption that there is some¬
thing that we call psychology, more generally, that there exists some¬
thing we call science. However, if we are to interpret knowledge and
science as such, whether logically, epistemologically, or anthropologi¬
cally, we first take them as actually given. Knowledge and science are
realities in the sphere of human behavior. For this very reason, they
become a theme of psychology itself. It is true they are not its sole
subject but they are a pressing one. The science of psychology must
be capable of presenting the psychological potentiality of science. In
io8 Man Thinks, Not the Brain
other fields of science, it may be taken for granted that man can see,
hear, perceive, observe, experiment, measure, and demonstrate, that
he can formulate his findings in words, communicate past events,
and predict and verify future ones. In other fields, the scholar may
devote himself exclusively to the facts he sees and perceives; but in
psychology the sight of the visible and the perception of the per¬
ceptible is the very problem. A psychology whose principles render
its adherents fundamentally incapable of comprehending the nature
of perception and communication, as well as of understanding the
possibility of proof and prediction, would be incapable of giving an
account of the act of observing. Such a psychology would have failed
in its proper task.
The demand that psychology must be capable of reverting to the
behavior of the observer will hardly find favor amongst the objective
psychologists. In addition to those who, without bothering much
about all such problems, rush to the laboratories in order to begin
with concrete detailed research, there are a few who explicitly define
their attitude towards the problem of psychology in science. They re¬
ject such a proposal. Without hesitation, the problem is thrust aside,
not merely as unimportant or superfluous, but as unsolvable.
The possibility of observation and description, they claim, must
be taken as given in psychology in the same way as in physics. But
why? It is part of immediate experience. “Immediate experience”:
these words sound as if they signified pure, genuine, and therefore
absolutely certain experience. But that is not the meaning. Immedi¬
ate experience is so immediate that it really cannot be experienced
at all. The older psychologists still assumed, it is said, that immediate
experience could be directly observed and analyzed by a kind of
inner sense. The objective psychologists do not share this opinion.
Immediate experience, they like to say, is the matrix of all sciences.
It is accessible only with the help of physics or physiology. It can.
Boring5 writes, quoting Wundt, be inferred again only inductively
by reconstruction. But nothing is said as to the basis on which this
reconstruction is to come about. Further treatment of the problem is
relegated to philosophy.
The psychologist has no other choice but to take the immediate
experience and everything connected with it for granted and he, as
Spence has it, “then proceeds to his task of describing the events oc¬
curring in it and discovering and formulating the nature of the rela¬
tionships holding among them.”6 Another author7 counsels the
psychologists in almost identical words that, like the physicists, “they
must now take immediate experience for granted and then proceed
to develop maps, rules and equations for finding one’s way about.”
This interpretation of immediate experience seems partly to follow
the philosophical tradition of sensualism, for the original elements
of experiencing are no longer accessible to us, as Locke has already
pointed out. We are always too late. We can only reconstruct imme¬
diate experience in its original form. Objective psychology, to be
sure, deviates from Locke by skipping everyday experience and
leaps at a bound into science, physics, and psychology. Many ques¬
tions are thus left unanswered. We never learn on what basis the
reconstruction can take place, what is to become of the experience of
all those human beings who are not natural scientists, or how pre-
scientific knowledge finds its rationale in science. We have every rea¬
son to doubt that starting at once with the drafting of the “maps” is
good advice, or that it will work at all. The first thing a cartographer
does is to look around in this our world, and it is in this world that
he designs the pattern of a map using exact measurements and bas¬
ing his procedures on intricate methodical deliberations. The result
is a map which has to be perceived in its material form so that its ab¬
stract significance may be grasped. We can sketch into our map men,
animals, and vehicles, and depict their movements. But it is an ab¬
surd idea to assume that the task of the psychologist is solely con¬
cerned with those kinds of artifacts without regard for their creator
and the conditions of their creation. The leap from immediate expe¬
rience into science would indeed be unavoidable if the boundaries
of immediate experience had to be extended so far that they included
the whole of daily existence. Actually, objective psychology favors
this interpretation. In addition to the interpretation of immediate
experience just discussed, we are suddenly confronted with a second
one hardly compatible with the first one: Immediate experience is
the personal experience of an empirical person, namely, of the sci¬
entist. Atoms and electrons, we are taught, are systematic construc¬
tions which the physicist infers from his immediate experience. “The
data of all sciences have the same origin—namely the immediate ex¬
perience of an observing person, of the scientist himself. That is to
say, immediate experience, the initial matrix out of which all sci¬
ences develop, is no longer considered a matter of concern for the
scientist qua scientist. He simply takes it for granted and then pro¬
ceeds to his task of describing the events occurring in it.”8
The physicist observes and describes, so it seems, not the events
in nature or in his laboratory, but in his immediate experience. In
these speculations the scientist appears as a deus ex machine. Sud-
no Man Thinks, Not the Brain
denly he stands there—around him as around the “mothers” in

Goethe’s Faust—neither space nor time. Thrust into nothingness, he
deduces atoms and electrons as physical constructions from his im¬
mediate experience. “Scientific empiricism holds to the position that
all sciences, including psychology, deal with the same events, namely
the experiences or perceptions of the scientist himself.”9 Now we are
confronted with still another complication. The subject is here the
scientist, that is, an empirical person encountered as a being in this
world who perceives, observes, and describes. In the act of perceiving,
he discovers the world for himself. His experiencing and perceiving
are, however, interpreted as experiences and perceptions as though
they were things which occur in immediate experience. The per¬
ceived object and the perceiving of the object are, as it were, con¬
tracted into one. The sunrise would thus not be conceived as the
phenomenon of the rising sun in the universe on the horizon of the
observer, but as an event in the immediate experience of the physi¬
cist. The question of how he himself can exist as a flesh and blood
human being becomes increasingly urgent, but no answer is offered.
The physicist constructs physics out of his immediate experience.
In his descriptions he uses human language, but there are no human
listeners around him. To whom do his descriptions mean anything?
Is he not condemned to grotesque soliloquies? “The behavior-scien¬
tist who claims to study such perceptual behavior in his subjects is
thus asked” say Bergmann and Spence,10 “to start uncritically from
his own perceptions. ... In the schema outlined by the scientific
empiricist, the experiences of the observing scientist do indeed have
a privileged, even unique position.” Suddenly, now, the fronts have
been completely changed. The physicist, like the psychologist, de¬
scribes events, each in his personal and immediate experience. A
straight road leads from here to the theory of introspective solipsism.
The original intention to prove theoretically the methodical postu¬
lates of objectivity and public verifiability has failed. Therefore, the
demand that all scientific concepts, psychological ones included,
must be defined from a physicalistic basis appears quite unfounded.
But these claims were thought to be axiomatically certain, long be¬
fore one tried subsequently to prove them. When the behaviorists
united in a common front with the logical positivists and the adher¬
ents of operationalism, those postulates had already been set up as
inviolate dogmas.11 They also held in common the principle of phys-
icalism and the conviction that physics is the science, and therefore
that scientific psychology has to accept the methods of physics_ex¬
periment and measurement. Thus, psychological research is limited
to the “objectively” observable and measurable.
The interpretation of immediate experience as an inaccessible,

hidden foundation of science served a good purpose. If its reasoning
was legitimate, objective psychology was no longer obliged to con¬
cern itself with the world of man and man in his world. It could im¬
mediately turn its attention to observation in the sense of the
observed and forget the observer and the observing. But in the long
run, the strain of repression proved to be too strong. As we have
seen, the observing and describing psychologist must at least ac¬
knowledge his own disqualification. For the sake of the dogma, how¬
ever, he insists just the same on the exclusive use of “objective”
methods in describing the behavior of all other human beings and
animals. This leads to a peculiar ambiguity, to a psychological
Averroism. “The empiricist scientist should realize that his behavior,
symbolic or otherwise, does not lie on the same methodological level
as the responses of his subjects. ... In studying his subjects, includ¬
ing their symbolic responses (object language), the behavior scien¬
tist himself uses a different language (pragmatic metalanguage) .”12
Translated into plain English, this precept means that the person
being tested can never become a partner of the observer.
S and O do not speak a common language, thus excluding
from psychological research the very province of communication and
mutual understanding. What is left, at the most, is but a small part
of the whole of all possible psychology. The objective psychologist
himself can hardly believe seriously in his knowledge. He talks with
other people, he attends congresses, he gives lectures and is pleased
by the applause of his audience, or angered if someone contradicts
him; he has a family, wife, and children whom he does not treat as
machines according to the rules of his trade. Through his science he
has not gained a single insight for his own use. On the contrary, were
he to take his own teaching seriously, he would condemn himself to
complete autism.
Radical programs are easily formulated; to carry them through
true to principle is quite a different story. A psychology which de¬
mands proofs for consciousness and is unable to find them—(as if the
possibility of proving were not sufficient proof), a psychology which
demands objective observation and takes the observation as given—
such a psychology can obviously not even take the first step without
trespassing on forbidden ground. As a matter of fact, objective
psychology cannot exist without a black market furnished with contra¬
band from the psychology of living experience. For by its observa¬
tions, descriptions, and communications it belongs to the human
world. The scholar acts and talks, he is pleased or he suffers, he is a
man like all other men. While stating his case, he belongs to a world
112 Man Thinks, Not the Brain
the existence of which he denies in his statements. But his state¬

ments make sense only if a locus for his statements is given.
Objective psychology demands the radical reduction of original
experience. That is easier said than done. The paradoxical behavior
of the objective psychologist who denies what he presupposes pre¬
vents an exact phenomenological analysis of the everyday world in
which he, as researcher, moves about. This defect, in turn, promotes
the naive use of psychological concepts of experience in the frame¬
work of seemingly radical reduction. The objective psychologist
speaks of stimulus and response, but he often treats this relation as
if it were a relation of an experiencing being to his world. Radical
renunciation of the familiar attitude and the strict application of
psychological reduction is, even for the most convinced supporter
of objective psychology, an extremely difficult task, one left unsolved
by the acknowledgement of the principle. Let us, therefore, examine
how far the understanding of objective psychology reaches insofar
as it strictly adheres to its basic rules, and insofar as it rejects every¬
thing that might contradict its own principles. Four closely con¬
nected themes are generated:
(1) The basic rules, according to which objective psychology
must proceed, have to be defined. (2) It must be determined to what
extent, if any, objective psychology remains true to its basic rules
in pursuing its program. (3) Furthermore, it will have to be decided
whether a form of behavior such as “learning”—a favorite theme of
objective psychology—fits into the rigid framework of its principles
of interpretation. (4) The last and most important task is to give an
answer to the question: How far does the self-understanding of ob¬
jective psychology go? Can it comprehend the behavior of the ob¬
server?
The Basic Rules of

Psychology
1. Objective psychology’s range of interpretation is severely
restricted in its possibility of interpretation by physicalism, which
compels it to reduce all human and animal behavior to motor
processes in an organism. And the movement of an organism in its en¬
vironment is taken first, perhaps, as the paradigm. Objective psychol¬
ogy cannot stop here. It must forge ahead to reduce this relation to
SURROUNDING FIELD AND SURROUNDING WORLD “3
motor processes in an organism, for it will reach its goal only if it is

capable of explaining how—according to generally established cor¬
relations—a unique organism, influenced by present and affected by
past stimuli, moves about or is actually moved. Thus, Skinner says:
“By behavior, then, I mean simply the movement of an organism
or of its parts in a frame of reference provided by the organism itself
or by various external objects or fields of force.”13
Tolman, like many others, calls behavior a conditional variable.
Environmental stimuli and physiological needs, or extero- and in-
tero-ceptive stimuli, are the initial independent variables; they set
behavior going. The resulting behavior is then steered by other
variables. Tolman’s formula: B = f (S, P, H, T, A) is a quasi-math-
ematical expression for the functional relation of the behavior B to
stimuli (S), physiological needs (P), and other factors. Clark Hull,
Mowrer, and other neobehaviorists have, like Tolman and Spence,
elaborated on the reflex patterns of Watson and Pavlov, and have
presented them in diagrams and formulas that look like physical
equations. All these additions do not contest the first principle that
the behavior of men and animals must be reduced to “molar and
molecular” motor processes in the organism.
2. Motor processes in the organism are single occurrences, tied to
their loci in space and time. Changes at any point x of the system
are characterized by the term dx/dt as used in physics. Even the
excitations continuing in a reverberating circuit are—regardless of
the permanence of the total motion in the activated system—single
excitation processes, recurring periodically in the different sectors
of the system. That is, they are likewise processes limited to their
actual positions in time. While the observer of this “static motion”
may see a constant form, the individual parts of reverberating cir¬
cuits are in continually changing phases, just as the form of a water¬
fall remains the same, although from moment to moment new masses
of water rush down over the rocks. Repetition is an historical cate¬
gory. Physical occurrences as such are always single events; they can¬
not step twice into the stream of time. Each one has its own number
in time’s register.
3. The direction of processes in the organism is from the stimulus
to the reaction, from the afferent to the efferent pole, regardless of
whether inner or outside excitations, exteroceptive or interoceptive
stimuli, are concerned. The direction of motion, designated by the
formula S^R (stimulus = response) is maintained even if the end
of the motor effect acts again upon the beginning, or the original
position. According to objective psychology, the circle of configura-
ii4 Man Thinks, Not the Brain
tion (Gestaltkreis) has to be broken into a succession of processes

which can be expressed by the schema: S—>R; R—»S: Sp Sx—>Ri;
Ri—>SX: S2; S2-*R2, etc. The behavior conditioned by the motor
discharges follows the stimuli in time. It is not focused upon them,
because it lacks the reciprocal relationship. The muscular jerk fol¬
lowing the stimuli is not goal directed, it is determined by the past—
an empty thrust. Every action is sensomotor reaction, or sham action.
Experimenting, too, is affected by this “paralysis.”
4. Within the organism, individual excitations can be united to
larger units in accordance with the principle of contiguity (merely
synchronicity or merely temporal succession) or according to the
principle of causality (one-sided or reciprocal modification). Several
afferent impulses act on a common efferent terminal path.
5. The apparently meaningful adjustment of the organism to
the particularity of an actual situation has to be understood as an
after effect of similar situations to which it has been exposed in the
past. Adaptation is the result of a temporary or lasting change of
the organism, the result of so-called “learning.”
6. The space-time relation between the independent and de¬
pendent variables are to be determined in conformity with the physi¬
cal concepts of space and time.
(d) Consequences of the Basic Rules

From these basic rules, there follows a series of consequences
which are of great importance for psychology.
1. Searching for, and fleeing from, must not be conceived as aim-
directed motions. Objective psychology cannot, as such, acknowledge
acts which anticipate future motions in the sense of the “at-towards”
or the “away-from.” The behavior of the stimulus-directed organism
is a continuous succession of situations in the physically-defined
surrounding field. The organism passes through a close series of pres¬
ences. Its time horizon does not go beyond the actual time differen¬
tial, its space horizon is reached at the immediate borderline of the
encircling field.
Popular opinion regards attacking and defending, searching and
fleeing, as highly characteristic modes of behavior involving move¬
ments, whose significance is unmistakable. According to its basic
laws, objective psychology must apprehend them as continuous al¬
terations of distances, as decreases or increases. An experiencing be-
ing can move towards visible, distant objects. An organism, driven

and steered by stimuli, has no relationship to distance. We can ap¬
proach an object but not a stimulus.
2. In order to be able to search or to flee, the organism would
have to be capable of finding its bearing in its field of action. Orien¬
tation demands a position from which space in its full range can
be comprehensively surveyed so that we can determine our own po¬
sition in relation to the environment. It is the position and attitude
of being face to face with the things in the world. An organism in
the sense of objective psychology, is a highly complex piece of mat¬
ter, a body amongst other bodies, which exchanges energy with its
immediate surroundings. It is, like any other physical structure,
fitted into the general order of space-time events. By itself it cannot
determine its “where”; it cannot grasp the topography apportioned
to it.
3. The organism which is guided by stimuli has a certain rela¬
tionship to the encircling field, but it has no relation to the world.
It cannot—in the original sense of the expression—have an attitude
toward anything, neither toward the environment as a whole, nor
toward particular objects or localities.
4. Avenues can only be discovered in a landscape presenting it¬
self to awareness. Lost in the impenetrable fog of incomprehension,
no avenues are available for the organism pushed along the space-
time line (expressed in the formula dx/dt). Since there are no ave¬
nues for the organism, neither direct ones nor detours, there cannot
be any signposts. Signs, like stopsigns and arrows, mark a road, but
only insofar as the road presents itself as capable of being marked,
that is insofar as it is an open or hidden connection of readily pass¬
able tracts.
5. Because the organism has no relation to its environment nor
to objects, it cannot act. Its physical motion lacks the meaning of
intentional movement. Its clash with objects does not signify an
effort to change them, the absorption of substances from the environ¬
ment does not mean making them a real part of oneself, nor does the
utterance of sounds mean expressing oneself. In the machine, which
follows the S->R schema, the afferent stimulus, it is true, is linked
to the efferent one. But the stimulus knows nothing of the motorium
and the motor effects, the muscle knows nothing of the stimuli it
receives or of the muscles it directs, and the organism has no knowl¬
edge of its environment.
6. The organism cannot discriminate. To be sure, it can respond
to different stimuli with different reactions, but different reactions
Man Thinks, Not the Brain
do not discriminate or grasp the meaning of discrimination itself.

Wood reacts differently to water and to fire, although it cannot be
said to discriminate between water and fire. Gunpowder reacts in a
different way to fire than it does to sand, but the fire does not dis¬
criminate between gunpowder and sand. We, the observers, can
discriminate between the modes of behavior by comparing the sep¬
arate processes. We make comparisons between our present and the
long bygone past; we compare New York with Berlin without mov¬
ing a stone from its place. Comparison is a transcendent relation
which brings together the elements of comparison in relation to a
common third element, yet leaves them as separate entities. The
organism cannot discriminate because it cannot compare. Stimuli
and excitations either coincide as several separate processes or they
combine and are modified in different ways. In the first case, the
possibility of a unifying combination is lacking; in the latter, the
separate entities necessary to make a comparison possible have been
lost. In both cases a tertium comparationis is lacking.
7. The organisms ordered into their surrounding fields have no
common environment. They cannot influence each other or com¬
municate with each other. They are elements in a heap, rather than
partners in a group.
Attempts at Revising the Basic Schema

Many attempts have been made to strip off the straitjacket,
to break through the narrow formula, or to widen it. These attempts
failed—they had to fail—for the basic thesis precludes any compro¬
mises. Inconsistency and contradiction provide the only way out.
Thus, the question of purpose arises in Tolman’s writings. He
stresses the ability of the organism to react appropriately14 to proc¬
esses in the environment, but he cannot refrain from establishing
aims and choice of means as those factors which as “intervening
variables”15 within the organism are supposed to loosen the rigid
mechanism of stimulus and reaction. Purposes and aims, however,
cannot be quantified and itemized together with stimuli and other
causal agents in a common account; they cannot be located in the
same psychological field. The time structure of the stimulus-reaction
schema excludes any consideration of anticipating tendencies. Yet,
letters are patient. S, P, H, F, A can be bracketed together, even
though S denotes external stimuli, P physiological needs, H heredity.
SURROUNDING FIELD AND SURROUNDING WORLD “7
A age or maturity, and T preceding training. And the formula, fur¬

ther elaborated with reference to the “intervening variables,” B = fx
(la, lb, Ic, Id . . . H, T, A), also looks imposing on paper. The in¬
trinsic difficulties become manifest only if the disparate terms of
this so-called equation are to be reduced to a common denominator.
Tolman uses the letters Ia-Id as symbols for such variables as “de¬
mands,” discriminanda, manipulanda, and “means-end fields,” ex¬
pressions so vague and ambiguous that they easily short circuit
heterogeneous view's. The word manipulanda, for example, will
surely have to be applied to objects, which demand a certain mode
of manipulating, of handling. A typewriter with its keyboard might
perhaps serve as an example for a manipulandum in the human
sphere. The manipulanda, however, are supposed not to be objects
“outside,” but rather factors which are interposed between the
stimulus and reaction and which intervene in the moved organism.
Such a factor can neither understand nor comply with an order, it
cannot direct itself towards objects, it cannot act, it cannot aim, nor
can it use any means for any purpose. In Tolman’s equation, the “in¬
tervening variables” are designed and meant as physiological factors,
but they are treated as if they were experiencing persons.
Hull,16 more consistent than Tolman in the application of the
principles, defines goals as objects which terminate tensions of needs.
“Subjective” definitions are thought to be superfluous. According to
Hull and Mowrer, satisfaction can be understood and measured as
tension reduction, if not directly, at least indirectly as a hypothetical
factor which, operative within the organism mediating between the
exactly measurable stimuli and reactions, balances the account. In
order to eliminate any subjective misinterpretation, Hull prefers in
his psychological equations to designate by letters such factors which
he postulates as a basis for his measurements. A sentimentalist might
shudder at these formulas. He will certainly doubt whether they
could represent all the misery of mankind or its slender happiness.
But that is not their purpose; such things are done by writers of
belles lettres. The task of a psychologist demands much more so¬
briety. It is the undaunted revealing of the laws, according to which
the position of an organism shifts from X to Y in a given time. But
why all this great display of endeavor, time, intellectual energy, if,
in the end, it produces only answers to trivial and indifferent ques¬
tions? Such an objection hardly alarms the positivist. We are not
striving for empty knowledge, he says. Science finds its justification
in its practice. As Tolman has it, “The ultimate interest of psychol¬
ogy is solely the prediction and control of behaviour.”
1x8 Man Thinks, Not the Brain
In former times, the value of paper money was guaranteed. It

could be exchanged for gold. Such a promise was to strengthen the
confidence in notes. In a similar way, psychological formulas are
today accepted as promissory notes in the hope that the psychological
factors denoted by letters can be exchanged, one day, for the pure
gold of psychological concepts. Opinions differ as to when this will
come about. Some, like B. F. Skinner, feel this day is still in the
remote future. They advise one to content oneself with the psycho¬
logical phenomena and their correlations; one should, as it were,
treat man and animal as “empty organisms”—an expression used to
convey the provisional abandonment of any recourse to physiology.
At the other extreme, we meet scholars like Hebb who believe that
the knowledge of physiological events we command today is already
sufficient to form the basis of psychology.
Hebb’s attitude to the problem of thinking and knowing is a
characteristic example. He sees in these phenomena the last essen¬
tial obstacle obstructing the completion of a mechanistic psychology.
He surmises that here, too, a solution can be found if “thought” is
introduced as a factor into the motor process as “some sort of process
that is not fully controlled by environmental stimulation and yet
closely cooperates with that stimulation.”17 There is no reason why
thoughts should not be called factors which determine behavior,
that is, the behavior of thinking beings. But that is not the meaning
of Hebb’s suggestion. He aims at changing thoughts into factors
which direct the motions of an organism together with, or in addi¬
tion to, other factors, as, let us say, atmospheric pressure and the
oxygen content of the blood, or the optical stimuli and the 17-ketos-
teroicls. Every meaning conceived in thinking, even as abstract an
idea as the ratio of the circumference to the radius of a circle ex¬
pressed by the number pi, is transformed into a mere ens rationis
(Gedankending). Thinking and that which is thought, fuse and be¬
come the thought which, as a factor or as a chain of factors, takes
part in determining the motion of the body. It is the physiology of
the brain which will disclose the true and ultimate explanation of
thinking. Hebb presumes thinking to be a certain form of transmis¬
sion of an excitation from the sensory to the motor cerebral cortex.
If Hebb were right, his own thoughts would be nothing but trans¬
missions of excitations from the sensory to the motor cortex of his
brain. How such single events within their temporal and local limits
could be able to present themselves and communicate themselves
remains quite unintelligible. A transmission of excitations can hardly
be aware of itself. Inadvertently, Hebb and all those who share his
SURROUNDING FIELD AND SURROUNDING WORLD n9
view claim for themselves an exceptional position. Their theory

must not be applied to themselves. Here, however, it is not possible
to withdraw into the inaccessible sphere of immediate experience.
The contradiction shows up when the application of the doctrine
to a common generally accessible experience is attenrpted; to a book,
its author, and his theorems.
(f) A Psychological Author Conversing

with Himself as a Writing Psychologist
Hebb, the author, and Hebb, the mechanistic psychologist,
live in two different worlds. The author writes a book in which he
sets down his thoughts and opinions. He gives expression to the
theme which the title of the book announced. For months he is busy
with the composition of his manuscript. He plans, devises, alters,
until after much toil the work is ready for the printer. What he has
to say he draws from his knowledge acquired during years of learn¬
ing, extended by his own observations, and increased by the reading
of the books of other scholars. The author sends the completed man¬
uscript to a publisher to be printed, that is, for reproduction and
publication. With his book he addresses a community of readers
whose understanding, agreement or criticism he looks forward to.
The psychologist says to the author: How can you be so naive? You
really know better than that. Not a single word of what you have
said is true. Your thoughts are transmissions of excitations in your
brain. How could you possibly express them? Such excitations con¬
trol your motor behavior together with the traces of former stimuli,
which, as you know only too well, you have to comprehend as your
learning, your observation, and your reading. This whole stimulus
constellation causes a reaction, commonly called “writing.” It is
described in scientific terms, however, as a molar reaction of muscles.
The irregular marks produced by the writing hand on paper operate
immediately as actual stimuli which, in turn, have an effect on the
so-called writing movements. During the months when you say you
worked on the manuscript, stimuli and reactions succeeded each
other in great number. You cannot maintain in all seriousness that
such a steadily progressing chain of stimuli and reactions can cir¬
culate around a single object—the manuscript—or around a theme!
In the chain of stimuli and reactions, each event has its unique po-
sition in time. There is nothing but a succession where every mo¬

ment excludes every other moment. The movements of the muscles
which put the letter “H” on paper are already gone when the “E”
follows, and so on, all the way through the length of the manuscript.
You object that it was really you who composed the manuscript and
it was you who revised it again and again until it almost came up
to your expectations. But you cannot maintain that you are capable
of working at a theme, of planning, of remedying faults, and correct¬
ing errors. These so-called errors have the same relationship to the
mechanical process of cause and effect as the so-called truths. You
should be the last to indulge in such eccentric ideas. You cannot
work on an object, for your relationship to the object is none other
than to receive stimuli and to have motor reactions. You cannot
plan, for your nervous system has no knowledge of time, of possi¬
bilities, of projects. Everything in your organism is strictly deter¬
mined by the past. You cannot be ahead of yourself, you cannot
direct yourself towards objects, or consider modifications of an object.
Your eye is a receptor of stimuli—nothing else. The other things
you said about the relations with a publisher, about print and re¬
production, are indeed inexcusable relapses into animistic and men-
talistic conceptions. For it is exactly the great merit of our doctrine
that we have done away with all these superstitions. To be able to
negotiate with a publisher you would have to perceive and under¬
stand him as another person, and for that purpose you would have
to conceive yourself as a person, namely as one using the pronoun
“I ” But after having so successfully reduced psychology to processes
in an organism, it became evident to us that: “All one can know
about another’s feelings and awareness is an inference from what he
does—from his muscular contraction and glandular secretions. ... If
one is to be consistent, there is no room here for a mysterious agent
that is defined as not physical and yet produces physical effects. . . .
Mind’’ can only be regarded, for scientific purposes, as the activity
of the brain, and this should be mystery enough for anyone. . . ,”18
To be completely consistent, you should also interpret your own
feelings and awareness as activities of the brain. Then hearing and
seeing become mere electrical and chemical processes in the nerve
cells. The other, the fellow man, is but an unscientific term for
certain stimulus combinations. If you get rid of your mentalism,
it will become clear that you exist in complete isolation as an or¬
ganism. You are locked up within yourself, completely alone, yet you
do not understand your solitude. Thoughts are transmissions, factors
which adapt your organism to stimulus constellations, and therefore
it is sheer absurdity to talk of communicating your thoughts to a

reader. For the sake of argument let us assume you have knowledge
of other organisms—though, to be sure, I do not know how—and
they of you; all they could perceive of you would be “muscle con¬
tractions” and “gland secretions.” Your feelings and perceptions are
hidden from them. What is foolishly called communication is but
the relation of cause and effect between two organisms. The proc¬
esses in your brain cannot be transferred to another brain. Even if
it were the case that there were excitations in one nervous system
which caused reactions which then acted as stimuli on a second brain
and produced in both systems similar afferent excitations, such a
concurrence could never even be noted.
The psychologist will probably never succeed in convincing the
author, for then he would not have written his book at all. Because
he has written it, it is rather strange that the author allowed the
psychologist to put a word in. The explanation for this ambivalent
behavior may be as follows: Many objective psychologists are vio¬
lently repelled by everything they call animistic or mentalistic. With
the same intensity, on the other hand, they are fascinated by the
idea of physiological mechanisms. The mentalistic seems to them
deceptive, spookish, unreal—a metaphysical abomination. Over and
against such principles, mechanism radiates as the true being, ab¬
sorbing their total interest. They fail to see that in the order of
experience they confuse the immediately accessible with the deduced,
the primary with the secondary. They fail to grasp that mechanism
cannot understand itself, that the knowing individual transcends
that which is known, that to a certain extent, man must be more
powerful than his work, the maker more powerful than his product.
They fail to understand that in all their interpretations they are
inescapably caught up in the sphere of saying, meaning, and know¬
ing. Thus, they see neither reason nor need to meditate on the
strangeness of their own behavior and their own actions. They talk
quite ingeniously about predictions and controls without investi¬
gating the psychological conditions under which predictions and
controls are possible, whether they fit at all into their own system.
They think, act, and talk as if stimuli were directly accessible, meas¬
urable and easily manipulatable. Objects perceived in sensory experi¬
ence like a colored bottle, a ringing bell, or a food dish are held to
be stimuli. The fundamental difference between the relationship of
an experiencing being to the world of objects and of an organism
to stimuli is ignored.
(g) Motion and Action

This fatal error has been forced upon objective psychology,
to be sure, by its own methods. It went into battle with the greatest
optimism. Inspired by the belief in the irresistible power of the
simple mechanism, it was certain it would be able eventually to move
mountains, although it was quite willing to be content to start with
molehills. The formula, “stimulus-reaction” seems very simple and
clear in principle. Actually, however, it narrows freedom of thought
to an extreme degree. Objective psychology has made its task very
difficult for itself. Its theoretical views deviate so far from everyday
notions that a strict and conscientious fulfillment of its demands
requires quite exceptional effort. It requires an unrelenting intel¬
lectual asceticism. Only the closest attention will prevent a relapse
into familiar thought habits. Objective psychology has prescribed
a rigorous regimen for itself; it has a salt-free diet in which even
the smallest grain of attic salt is prohibited. Extreme dietetic pre¬
scriptions cannot be endured for long—sooner or later the moment
comes when the patient can stand it no longer and then secretly
tastes the forbidden fruits.
How can anybody observe human beings or animals in nature
or during an experiment without viewing them as seeking and flee¬
ing, on the way to this or that goal, oriented in relation to their
environment by discerning and acting, expressing themselves and
communicating? Animals in a maze, animals which learn to find
their way and to distinguish the signs on the paths, have been the
theme of innumerable experiments. In reports of these experiments,
we frequently hear of environment, of ways and round-about ways
of differentiating and learning, but we hear also of stimuli and
muscle movements. What does that really mean? Are the basic rules
respected, or are modes of observations, the “scientific,” the “objec¬
tive,” and the ’’introspective” way of thinking used alternatively?
One would have to know how the following expressions are to be
understood in accordance with the basic rules: Environment, way,
seeking, and avoiding.
On perusing the literature of objective psychology, it is surpris¬
ing that the essential distinction between “encircling field” and “en¬
vironment” is missing. It might be the case that this difference has
not been taken into consideration. It might even be that the ex¬
pression “environment” is used, but what is actually meant is the
surrounding field understood as a region, out of which or traveling

through which, stimuli meet an organism at its particular location.
It might be that the encircling field is meant in the first place in
rather a vague way, but in the execution of the program it is dis¬
placed by the meanings which the word “environment” evokes.
The words environment and world around us enforce the asso¬
ciation of ideas in which animal or man appear as if they were
capable of behaving in a definite way towards their environment.
But behavior is not supposed to be understood as a meaningful be¬
havior directed to the environment, but only as a consequence of
motions in the physically-defined space. The psychologist’s behavior
in his experiments with and observation of animals is, it is true,
directed toward his environment, but he is not inclined to grant
the same possibilities to the organism. Whether the psychologist op¬
erating under such presuppositions can ultimately comprehend his
own behavior is precisely the question.
The positivist longs for the day when he will be able to predict
and direct human behavior like a billiard player the billiard balls.
He dreams that he might one day, with unfailing mastery, assume
the role of the player in a far more grandiose game. He must reserve
for himself an exceptional position in this future world puppet show.
He is the director, all the other players are the controlled and di¬
rected puppets. His own behavior cannot again become the theme
of psychology. For then, prediction and control would have to be
predictable and controllable, and all our efforts would only lead to
a regressus ad infinitum. Since the objective psychologist is capable
of observing the behavior of the player, he is compelled to make two
contradictory statements: He asserts that, insofar as he the psycholo¬
gist is involved, qua psychologist, the possibility of prediction and
control has to be accepted as given. In the same breath, he maintains
that prediction and control are to be explained scientifically insofar
as the player’s behavior is in question. To my way of thinking, the
behavior of the player and that of the billiard ball are entirely differ¬
ent modes of behavior. We define the behavior of the player as be¬
havior towards the environment; the behavior of the ball as a being
moved in a surrounding field.
In order to be able to play, the billiard player must comprehend
the spatial structure of the billiard table as a whole as well as in
its parts. Furthermore, he must comprehend the position of his ball
in relation to the other balls on the board. Table and ball are avail¬
able to him as objects. In his experiment, that is, the game, he looks
upon the table as invariant, upon the balls as variables. By a little
124 ,
Man Thinks Not the Brain
exertion on his part, their position can be altered within the frame¬
work of the system without its destruction. Variable, therefore, sig¬
nifies that the actual position realizes only one of many possibilities,
that other constellations can be brought about in the future. The
player must also know about himself, his actions, (not the motions of
his muscles) when manipulating his instrument, that is, the billiard
cue. He calculates his shot by anticipating a determinate effect. His
action is thus more than a motor reaction to stimuli, it is an action
in relation to visible and tangible variable objects. The billiard ball,
strictly speaking, is moved. It moves according to the energy, the
direction, and the point of application of the cue together with the
influences it sustains from the immediately adjoining fragments of
the table at any given time. In surveying the whole, the player
chooses one of the possible routes for the course of his ball; often,
instead of a straight route, a well-calculated, round-about way. The
ball moves under the particular physical conditions of the actually
chosen course.
The player has a relation to distance, the ball has not. Just as
a page in a book borders only on the preceding and the following
one, just as a drop in the water swims next to and together with
other drops, thus the ball is enclosed in, and limited to, its surround¬
ing field. Without any telepathic gifts, it is influenced only by the
immediate surrounding field and reacts upon this very field. This
limitation remains in force even when a particle is understood as a
part in a physical field, and man and animals as parts in a psycho¬
logical one.
Lewin19 formulates this as “one of the basic statements of psycho¬
logical field theory . . . that any behavior or any other change in a
psychological field depends only upon the psychological field at the
given time.” Spence20 quoting Lewin adds: “I find it difficult to be¬
lieve that any present-day psychologist believes that other conditions
than those of the present moment determine the behavior at this
moment.” Behavior, he says, is not a function of past and future
situations. Spence perhaps misjudges the views of his contemporary
psychologists; there may be some who would not hesitate to claim
that an animal, leaping at its prey, that a man, reaching for some¬
thing, that an orator, starting a sentence with the intention of com¬
pleting it, are bent towards something which is still in the future.
Perhaps there are a few who believe that the personal space-time
order cannot be reduced to a physical one. In any case, Spence21 can
only speak for those psychologists who put living beings reduced to
an organism on a par with the billiard ball and its behavior. Those
SURROUNDING FIELD AND SURROUNDING WORLD
!25
who try to reduce behavior to a series of presences should be the

first to limit the organism to the surrounding field, for in the con¬
tinuity of space-time points there are no leaps. There are no possi¬
bilities of being directed toward remote objects or of sustaining their
influences. In consequence, the organism, as understood by the “con¬
temporary psychologists,” can receive stimuli, but it has no relation
to objects.
Objectivity reveals itself in the sensory horizon only in the re¬
lationship to distance, organized as near and far, and here and there.
An experiencing being can apprehend in the position of the vis-a-vis
the relationship of the parts to each other and to the whole; he can
direct himself towards the objects. The nervous system of an or¬
ganism, fixed in its position in the totality of the space-time line of
the occurrence, cannot grasp this occurrence, just as a point cannot
grasp the line of which it is a part. Occurrence in its particularity
can be determined in the whole of the space and time order, the
position of a point in space can be determined only in perspective,
in the vis-a-vis. Only from such a position can the billiard player
hit the ball towards a goal. Distance, vis-a-vis, perspective, and ob¬
jectivity are but different moments in the relation of experiencing
beings to their world. They alone render possible both the simplest
modes of behavior of animals and the most sublime knowledge of
man.
Billiards served as an example for the preliminary characteriza¬
tion of the contrast between a relation to the environment and
behavior in the surrounding field. However, psychologists do not ex¬
periment with billiard balls, but with men and animals. What can
a rat in a maze be compared with? With the billiard player or with
the billiard ball? In my opinion, it corresponds to the behavior of
the player. According to the teachings of objective psychology, how¬
ever, the way it moves corresponds to that of the ball. Objective
psychology says roughly: A rat is made in an infinitely more com¬
plicated way than a billiard ball; therefore its performance is much
better. Not only is a guidable engine built into the rat’s body, not
only does it produce its own fuel, but the steering is automatic and
still variable in a high degree. The actual stimuli and the after ef¬
fect produce temporary or lasting alterations in the nervous system.
In consequence, under certain additional conditions, reward and
punishment, the nervous system of the animal is modified in a
unique way. The animal thus altered will behave differently on
repetition of the original stimulus constellation than it did at first.
The animal has learned! A billiard ball comes to rest in its course
wherever the propelling forces have taken it. Whether the ball will
hit the two other balls depends on the skill of the player and not
on the “experience” of the ball. Hit by a bungler it will miss the
goal—which is not the goal it has chosen itself—even if this very
ball belonged to a master who had performed wonders with it in
the past. The ball does not learn. The rat, however, does! That ani¬
mals learn to find their way was an accepted fact learnt from daily
experience long before any experiments were made. The problem is,
how is the learning accomplished? We believe that only experiencing
beings who can conduct themselves in relation to their environment
are able to learn. Objective psychology thinks otherwise.
Relationships which are clear enough to permit experiments, for
instance, the behavior of an animal in a maze, searching for food,
guided by pathmarkers in contact with the food, become thoroughly
confused if one seriously tries to present them as a series of stimuli
and reactions. In order to explain behavior, objective psychology
needs an organizing principle. The task is twofold. Stimuli and re¬
actions have to be joined by connecting links in such a way that the
organism adapts itself to the situation; in other words, the surround¬
ing field and environment must be united somehow, since it is not to
be assumed that the organism orients itself towards the environment
on the basis of visual anticipation. The adaptation can, accord¬
ing to the teachings of objective psychology, take place only after¬
wards. The collision with the objects scattered in the surrounding
field is supposed to lead, retroactively, to a selection within the chaos
of a crowd of stimuli. Some of the contacts between organism and
surrounding field lead to a reduction of tension (satisfaction, gratifi¬
cation), others to increase of tension (pain). By virtue of the plas¬
ticity of the nervous system (synapse formation, engrams, excitation
areas, “feedbacks,” etc.), the organism is adjusted to the repetition
of one sort of contacts and to the avoidance of others. Ordered be¬
havior is thus always the result of past experiences. It would be more
accurate to speak of events befalling an organism (Widerfahrnisse),
since it is never actively directed towards actual situations. The or¬
ganism, or more exactly its nervous system, has been modified by the
influence of former occurrences in such a way that the behavior of
the organism appears to meet the demands of the environment. From
the given presuppositions, it may be seen that adaptation is by neces¬
sity always an adaptation to individual situations. Now we are again
confronted by the problem of generalization which gave Pavlov so
much trouble.
Learning to find one’s way is an often-repeated theme of psycho¬
logical experiments. It is important to understand what such a
process means in the sense of objective psychology, and above all

what it ought not to mean and which meanings have to be excluded.
It certainly does not mean that the environment has become more
intelligible to the animal while it was learning. In our everyday life,
we assume that someone knows his way about better in a town be¬
cause he learned to build up out of the single impressions of streets
and places a picture of the entire street plan. In this totality, each
street has its determinable position. This enables the man who
knows, having learned, how to find his way from any starting point
to any given point. His horizon has been widened by learning; he
has gained more freedom of movement. The rat in the maze, on the
contrary, has lost its freedom of movement. The after effects of past
excitations restrict it to one definite route.
Within the visible horizon, we grasp the area as a whole as well
as in parts, we understand the relationship of one part to the preced¬
ing and adjacent ones; we distinguish a road from trackless country
by appraising the terrain for our purpose. We apprehend further¬
more our own position in relation to the environment, we set our
feet and adjust our steps in accordance with the constantly changing
character of the environment. The organism—in the context of ob¬
jective psychology—has no relation to its environment. It grasps
neither the topography, nor its own position; neither its “where,”
nor its “from where,” and “where to.”
Let us assume someone is waiting for a bus. At the very moment
when the vehicle arrives and stops, he must put his foot on just the
right place on the footboard, not anywhere short of or next to it in
empty space. This is not difficult for anyone who grasps the dynamic
unity of what is occurring and who can adapt his own behavior ac¬
cordingly. The situation is quite different for an organism, which
without any understanding of the actual circumstances is directed
solely by the accumulated neural traces, however they may be in¬
terpreted.
If we as seeing beings cross a spacious square, then the same area
appears to us in changing perspectives. Each step is a phase, the con¬
tinuation of a preceding one and the preparation for the following
one on the route. Crossing the terrain connects the two opposite sides
with each other. On this very route, we can return to our starting
point. In our experience we cross the same place, regardless of the
inversion of the stimuli. That which on the way out was the termi¬
nal, is now the starting point on the same road. That, which in going
there presented itself on the right, now on the way back becomes
visible on the left, although in a changed perspective.
The pattern of the stimulus-reaction doctrine demands different
interpretations. For want of a better expression one might perhaps

say the organism is moved, as it were, through a “dark” space, dark
to be understood as being without quality, i.e. without any reference
to visibility.22 Now, an animal body equipped with photo-receptors
moves in this dark space. The receptors do not see, they react to
light-energies which flow through space. There is no vis-a-vis of eye
and object. Influenced by the light the retina, as it functions, changes.
It has no relation to the topography of the environment. In the proc¬
ess of walking the seeing individual experiences step by step phases
of a motor action which combine one with the other and supplement
each other mutually. The seeing individual as the uniting center
brings together the multiplicity of the presented impressions in the
sense of a traversed route. With the transition from experience to
stimulus, from environment to surrounding field there disappears
the possibility of orientation in the topography of the area. It has
to be replaced by the topography of the retina which does not change
during the locomotion; the distribution and the organization of the
light-receptive elements is determined once and for all. A sequence
of sensory states takes the place of spatial orientation. The connec¬
tion existing in the visible situation has been broken, it has been
cut up into unrelated fragments. The changing stimuli are discon¬
tinuous in spite of their rapid sequence, and so are the motor-effects
which follow them. The afferent excitations unleash muscle-actions,
single steps one after the other, but they do not unite to form to a
continuous process of walking along the road. The “seeing walker”
follows the pathway which extends before him. He advances into
the space of action which lies in front of him open to his future.
Such an organization and temporal structuration of space does not
exist for the photo-receptor. It is of the utmost importance to recall
the difference of the time-relations. If as seeing persons—from the
psychological point of view—we turn toward something, toward a
possible goal, then—from a physiological point of view—some stim¬
uli coming from there have already reached the retina and excited
it. The reactions of an organ in the stimulus-reaction pattern are
determined exclusively by the past. As far as the retina and its ex¬
citation are concerned, there does not exist any zone of future hap¬
penings, there are no passable roads ahead.
One has to be on one’s guard against thinking of the retina as
an organ that sees, and one will also have to avoid imagining
stimuli as objects and ascribing to them an object’s stability and
constancy. Optical stimulations follow each other in close succession.
Their intervals are determined by the restitution capacity of the
retina, its power to respond to optical excitations in the shortest

time, to neutralize at once the condition just sustained, and to make
itself sensitive once again for subsequent stimuli. The retina tries
to expunge again each impression as quickly as possible. Each and
every small part of the retina is bombarded by salvos of stimuli.
These numerous excitation states follow each other in intervals of
milli-seconds, without any inner connection. For the principle of ac¬
tual excitability is, as demonstrated by the after images, the prompt
suppression of the preceding excitation state. It is always the entire
retina which changes from one state to another. In this succession
of excitations, the visible continuity of a road has been lost in the
discontinuity of the stimuli.
Where there is no road, neither can there be road signs. The
observer perceives the signs used in the training experiments, for
example, the triangle or the circle, as objects in the same way as he
comprehends objectively the whole maze and its possible path com¬
binations. But insofar as he belongs to the school of objective psy¬
chology, he does not hesitate to call stimuli all that which appears
objective to himself with reference to the test animals. He fails to
accomplish the necessary radical shift from the conceptual system
of objects to that of stimuli.
The observer puts up two distinguishable signs on the path which
he can see. These signs differ for him in a characteristic way from
each other. He is capable of using and appreciating them as sign
posts. In the vast confusion of stimuli which cannot be ordered into
the unity of a pathway, even triangles or circles are not punctuation
marks to guide the understanding. They are, rather, stimuli which
occur without particular distinction in the midst of many others
within the conglomeration of excitations. The observer restricts his
attention to two variables visible to him. These selected “stimuli”
have no privileged position for the nervous system of the test animal.
Indeed, if the rat were capable of distinguishing between several
routes, if it knew it was on its way to the feeding-trough or to an
electrified grill then the circles and triangles would have a par¬
ticular signal value. This, however, cannot occur in the discontinuity
of the stimuli. Here, no path can be comprehended as a unity which
could serve as the background for the road sign.
Objective psychology has tested its main hypotheses by experi¬
ments and, so it believes, found them confirmed. Not made for their
own sake, experiments serve to discover general laws which are also
valid outside the laboratory. The basic idea of the psychological
experiment is to isolate the many factors which in their interplay
13° Man Thinks, Not the Brain
determine behavior, and then to study each one separately, as it were,

in a pure culture. It is left to the art of the experimenter to contrive
models which make it possible to imitate natural conditions, to limit
them without disturbing them. Two provisions are necessary for
any experiment: the central test conditions and also the marginal
conditions which, acting as a screen, shield the experiment against
the influence of undesired factors at the moment. A particular danger
for the psychological experiment is that, unnoticed, the marginal
conditions jeopardize the value of the entire test. The experiment
becomes artificial. The results refer no longer to single factors which
in their essence act universally, but to particular modes of behavior
belonging exclusively to the artificial conditions of the test.
In the laboratory, a rat can be trained to react to insignificant
signs like triangles and circles. It can be guided by them to find its
way to its food. Everything seems to be in the best of order—the
guiding hypothesis has been proved and proved splendidly. The
adaptation to the actual situation “has been learned”; it is a specific
accomplishment. It demonstrates the after effect of past experience.
A number of repetitions had been necessary to direct the organism
by means of the retroactive effect of reward and punishment.
But outside of the laboratory this does not hold true. Observa¬
tions of animals which are permitted to move about in complete or
comparative freedom lead to quite different results. Such everyday
experiences, it is true, lack the glory of a scientific apparatus, but
still they are not less reliable. At least, they often fulfill the criteria
of repetition, prediction, and control of behavior. When we meet a
team of mules somewhere in the mountains, we may assume quite
confidently that this small caravan will have reached its destination
in a few hours. The animals follow the long, narrow path, their
movements always in keeping with the constantly changing condi¬
tions of the terrain. The mule driver takes for granted the perform¬
ance of his animals. He assumes that they can see and in seeing they
apprehend the peculiarity of the road and behave accordingly. Yet,
he is only a simple man. The scientist looks deeper, that is why he
is puzzled. His customary explanations fail. The animals sin against
his theory! The steering apparatus of these machines must react
intelligibly to an indiscernible multitude of variable factors. The
innumerable constantly changing stimulus constellations during the
long journey have to steer the motorium with exactness every mo¬
ment, and this with such precision that the four hooves are set down
exactly at the right spot. They must not miss by an iota, or the ani¬
mal will fall into the yawning abyss. The animals do not distinguish
131
between triangles and circles—they distinguish between steep and

flat, stone and soil, bridge and water. They do not even confine them¬
selves to these gross differentiations, but actually attain a grasp of
the finer details. According to theory, a suitable motor reaction
should have been connected with which each of the many thousand
stimulus constellations in repeated trials under the influence of pun¬
ishment and reward. But tomorrow our good mule will trot along
with the same reliability on a different road never used before. It did
not have much of a chance to “learn by experience,” for one wrong
step, one punishment could mean the end of its plodding. To have
recourse to equivalent stimuli does not help, for the animal does
not answer similar stimuli with equal reactions, but adapts itself
to the ever-changing specific situations with exactly corresponding
specific actions. The same road is furthermore not always the iden¬
tical road. Sunshine and rain, morning and evening, heat and cold,
all modify the stimulus constellations from day to day. The animals
walk along as prescribed or permitted by the integrative mechan¬
isms of their nervous system. But they do not walk mechanically,
they do not repeat the motor processes in a rigid form from one time
to the next. At the head of the team, in the middle, at the end,
or even trotting by themselves, each time they adjust their step
differently but always in accordance with the specific situation.
Maybe the driver is right after all. The animals grasp the environ¬
ment, they comprehend their own “where” and “where to,” they
have a sense of direction—in short, they move as living beings in
their environment.
Marginal conditions confine an experiment to definite limita¬
tions. There is a beginning and an end. In an experiment, one can
distinguish the period of learning and the period in which learning
has taken place. The experimenter decides on the goal—usually un¬
known to the test person or the test animal. He then finds out what
preparations will be necessary to reach the goal. But in nature, things
are different. There, the piece of music does not end with the con¬
cluding chord which the experimenter has entered in his score. In
nature, each goal is not only an ending, it is at the same time the
beginning of a new period. Thus we burden the theory of learning
with a further problem.
Let us assume someone is learning to drive an automobile. At
the driving school, he has to take a certain curve repeatedly until
certain “neural tracts start to function promptly.” Later on, when
the driver encounters the same or a similar situation, it is assumed
that those engrams are activated and cause corresponding motor
reactions. Suppose the pupil has become a professional driver. Day

in and day out he travels the highway which is naturally no less sub¬
ject to change than the mountain path of our mules. With every
mile the driver adds new stimulus traces to his nervous system. But
just how could the stimulus traces function appropriately in a situa¬
tion, how could a blind mechanism lead to continuously meaningful
results? The stimulus constellations not only vary, in a certain sense
they contradict each other. With a change in the weather, in the
light, in the thousand hazards of traffic, the same street changes from
moment to moment. One has therefore to raise the question: Must
not the driver’s reactions become increasingly dull with “increasing
experience” instead of gaining in precision? The hypothesis of a
network of neutral fibres which respond to similar stimuli with uni¬
form combinations does not help much. The more similarities these
tracts absorb, the more gross are the omissions of reaction which
depend on them. But the driver of the car cannot be content with
approximate reactions—his actions must, at every moment, corre¬
spond to the changing situation with absolute exactitude.
The objective psychologist likes to poke fun at the mysticism of
his “mentalistic” colleagues. But it is certainly, if not a mystery, in
any case a profound enigma, how an organism should manage to
bring together and at the suitable time appropriate stimuli and re¬
actions. It is conceivable that a being which can grasp the archi¬
tectonic structure of a staircase adjusts his total behavior to the
spatial structure seen. On the other hand, it is hardly conceivable
that excitations of the retina can cause muscle fibrilles to contract
in such a way that the body is dispatched up and down the stairs
unharmed. It is conceivable that a child learns to imitate sounds
he has heard. But it is hardly conceivable that—and why—acoustic
stimuli should affect the entire musculature which takes part in
sound formation in such a way that a configuration similar to the
sound of the stimulus escapes the lips of the stimulated organism.
It is conceivable that a driver can keep his car on the road which
he sees in front of him, but it is hardly conceivable that optical
stimuli could have the same effect, while at the same time it is as¬
serted that the physiological pathways which are the basis of the
learning process come about under the influence of reward and pun¬
ishment. If that were the case, the driver would scarcely have a
chance of ever learning his job.
The temporal position of the so-called re-enforcement is doubt¬
ful. That a rat quickly learns the route to its food is not surprising
as long as we regard it as an experiencing being. But this simple
situation looks quite different when we translate the event into the
*33
terminology of stimulus and reaction. Satisfaction or pain is sup¬

posed to influence the function of the synapses retroactively. How
does that come about? At the moment the animal comes into contact
with the food, the “stimulus” chosen for the experiment, for ex¬
ample, the triangle sign, has long since faded away. The reward
could therefore only reactivate the excitation traces corresponding
to the road-sign triangle retroactively. This stands in opposition to
the assertion that satiation reduces existing tensions. It actually in¬
activates all traces and synapses and silences the whole harmony of
the hemispheres.23 That obviously cannot be the case for the selected
stimulus. The joy of having found the food is supposed to link
retroactively the synapses between the afferent trace “triangle” and
the pathway of the motorium which at a certain point of the way
had caused the rat to turn, let us say, to the left. If, on later runs,
the sign of the triangle affects the receptors of the rat again, it will
once more be directed towards the correct way “to the left.” But even
this is not yet the end of the matter.
The rat, which has learned to react to the sign of the triangle,
has already made up its mind, even before entering on the last part
of the path, to use the alley or trap door marked by the triangle,
which leads to the food. The most remarkable thing, however—
remarkable from the point of view of the basic hypothesis—is that
the rat turns promptly to the right instead of to the left whenever
it.is put into the maze in such a fashion that it approaches the way
marked triangle from the opposite direction.
The total number of stimuli which reach an animal sniffing about
in the maze is extraordinarily large, many times larger than the
number of objects visible to the observer. If we estimate the cortical
optic excitation time as no less than 0.05-0.1 seconds, then the rat
which has been running about in the maze for only a minute will
have experienced the considerable number of approximately one
thousand “stimuli.” This quantity includes many different things,
such as stimuli which lead the animal to a wrong track as well as the
few which lead him to the right one. How, then, does it come to the
correct one? If the repetitions necessary for learning are extremely
large, if during the training only one stimulus is kept constant and
all the others were modified, one could imagine the effect to
be to some extent comparable with the principle of the “steady
drops.” But the relatively small number of repetitions required for
learning contradicts this explanation too. The objective psycholo¬
gists do not pay sufficient attention to the problem because they
forget and neglect all other stimuli which affect the organism in
favor of the two signs, triangle and circle, of importance to them.
4 34 ,
Ich will von Atreus Soehnen, von Cadmus will ich singen,
doch meine Saiten toenen nur Liebe im Erklingen.
(Of Atreus’ sons I sing, of Cadmus I will tell,

but from my lyre’s string it’s love which casts its spell.)
This is a verse in one of Schubert’s lieder. Of stimuli and reactions,

of Pavlov the objective psychologist wants to sing, but unnoticed—
and thus without complaint—his strings resound of phenomena and
of things. Objective psychology wants to explain the behavior of
animals as motion in the surrounding field. But without noticing it,
it slips into a different interpretation and substitutes for the sur¬
rounding field the world around; for the organism which reacts to
stimuli, an acting being.24
Objective psychology overestimates the conclusive evidence of the
experiments and the efficiency of its theory, because it has—unawares
—sacrificed it. Its consistent application leads to absurdity. In any
case, the objective psychologist must reserve for himself an excep¬
tional position, and to what extent this is done will become clear
when I explain the statement “animals learn” in all of its psycho¬
logical consequences.
(h) The Psychological Presupposition of the

Statement: “Animals Learn”
The proposition, “animals learn” is a statement about the
behavior of animals. At the same time it refers to the behavior of
the observer who formulates this proposition. The observer implic¬
itly asserts and claims the following points about himself:
1. I can see. I, here, in my seeing can grasp objects over there.
I, in my seeing, stand in relationship to the other.
2. I can express myself linguistically about what I have seen.
3. I can observe, for example, how rats behave in a maze.
The “simple” observation: Rat A 18 has run through alley 7 is,
however, not at all a simple optical registration comparable to some
recording of an event on film. The observation is not a copy. It gains
its full meaning only by contrasting the actual route—the only
process the apparatus registers—with potential routes. The actual
135
becomes comprehensible as the actual only by reason of other po¬

tentialities.
4. By the sentence, “animals learn” the observer furthermore says
about himself: In the maze which I see as static, I discover a series
of routes. Mentally, I break up the total impression into parts which
go to make up several meaningful unified tracts. These tracts or
routes stand out from a tractless environment; although themselves
at rest, they present possibilities of moving from place to place, from
a start to a finish. Roads have a beginning and an end and are there¬
fore seen as space-time extensions in the static field of the maze.
5. The rat moves on such paths; its action requires time. Now I
see it; no, I saw it at the beginning of its course, and now I see it in
ever-changing aspects, there and there and there, until it has reached
its goal. I summarize this whole temporal sequence in the unity of
proposition and meaning: The rat runs from A over B to C, so that
in spite of the transitory and changing impression the running ani¬
mal appears as one and the same object. Summarizing all phases, I
speak of one motion.
6. The observer says about himself furthermore: I can compare
and distinguish. If I state the rat has learned to react to a triangle
sign, I mean, with regard to myself, that I observed that the rat
behaved during its tenth run differently from the preceding nine
attempts. I compare, I summarize, I distinguish the present behavior
from the former. I notice that the rat has changed its behavior. It
proceeded from a state S to a state T; and it is I who noticed this
change. Both states are present to my mind, therefore I can dis¬
tinguish by comparing. As soon as the rat has learned the correct
route, it has suffered a change of state: the original state S has now
vanished. But not for me. How else could I speak of “learning,”
whereby I do refer to the transition from S to T and thus to the
preceding state? By the fact of comparing them, I bring together the
two modes of behavior as potentialities. The state S is still at my
disposal, but not at the disposal of the rat.
7. I differentiate between triangle and circle, and by that I really
mean differentiate. The differentiations which objective psychology
ascribes to the rat are not of the same order. Assuming that the rat
turns at the signal “circle” into an alley leading to the right and at
the signal “triangle” into one, leading to the left, the objective psy¬
chologist then assumes that two different and convenient apparatuses
have been formed in the rat organism. The stimulus “triangle” is
connected with the routes turning to the left, the stimulus “circle”
iB6 ,
with effectors turning to the right. Each particular stimulus is fol¬

lowed by one single specific reaction which is quite independent of
the other and has nothing to do with it. Discrimination, objective
psychologists assume, is actually a separating, a spatial dividing, in
the way a sieve separates large and small pebbles without differen¬
tiating between them. Pebbles of the proper dimension will pass
through the meshes without coming into contact with them at all.
At the end of the sifting, the heap of pebbles which at the begin¬
ning was a pile of stones of different sizes is separated into two
groups. The large ones lie on the one side, the small ones on the
other side of the sieve. Each group has been assigned a particular
place in space. We grasp the difference in size, however, by combin¬
ing in our mind the groups which are spatially separated and by
comparing them and differentiating between them with regard to
their size. Objective psychology stresses the significance of discrim¬
ination as a fundamental process in the field of psychology. But it
overlooks the fact that different reactions by no means imply dis¬
crimination without further ado. If different reacting and discrimi¬
nating had the same meaning, one would have to say that a slot
machine which accepts a dime but rejects two nickels discriminates,
while the salesman next door who accepts both as legal tender does
not discriminate. All contrivances built by man discriminate by
spacial separation. Their discrimination is thus actually only a
process of separating. Men and animals can also react differently
without differentiating. We may completely surrender to one reac¬
tion and then to quite a different one, like a little child, who changes
from tears to laughter without even grasping the difference in his
behavior. Even when we are capable of discriminating, we often can¬
not give an account of the difference. When we are awake we dis¬
tinguish between being awake and dreaming. But that does not en¬
able us to explain the difference between the two states. And so it is
in many other instances.
Let us return to our problem of observing the discriminatory
power of an animal in a maze. If we ourselves responded to the
signal “triangle” with a specific reaction A and to the signal “circle”
with a completely separate reaction B, as the animal is supposed to
do, with such coordination of A to triangle and of B to circle, we
would not be in the position at all to discern how the rat has be¬
haved in one case and how in the other. It is not sufficient that we
react differently. We must ourselves grasp the difference between
triangularity and circularity, both as variations of the general theme
—the enclosed surface.
8. By the statement, “animals learn,” I mean that I have noted
J37
a progress in their behavior. Not only have I compared the indi¬

vidual trial runs as they follow each other, I have also compared all
of them to a standard. This standard is that of adaptation or pur¬
posiveness. Animals which have learned something behave with more
purpose, although they are not supposed to know anything about
purposiveness. But I, observing the learning of animals, refer by
necessity to purposiveness. I observe, for instance, that the rat at
the first run turned into seven side roads or dead ends, while at the
tenth trial it ran without a mistake—if I may use this expression.
Although it did not run in a straight line, it ran straight away to
the goal—its food trough.
9. In my experiments dealing with the problem of the learning
of animals, I count the number of runs of an animal necessary for
the learning; I compare its performance to those of other animals
under equal experimental conditions or under certain variations of
the experiment. In short, in my statement, “animals learn” I refer
to the possibility of repetition. Objective psychology assumes that
the learning rat or, more correctly, its nervous system, changes at
every repetition of the experiment. It never enters the arena as the
same rat. In a certain sense, that is true for the observer as well. Seen
from his standpoint, those are events which he encountered for the
first, the second, the tenth time. The first view of New York harbor is
different from the second as well, as from all subsequent arrivals.
Each impression has its specific place in the totality of historical
experience. Counting and comparing experiments must take place
in historical time and are only later projected upon the neutral
time of the chronometer. When we repeat an experiment under the
same conditions, we believe, of course, that we encounter or realize
the same pattern, regardless of the fact that the physiological event
is always another one. Repetition is an historical phenomenon.
To be capable of repeating an experiment I must at the first at¬
tempt have already divorced the pattern of the proceedings from
the actual happening. I must be able to abstract the general, time¬
less structure from the unrepeatable actual event. We never arrive
at abstractions by way of repetitions and comparisons. The abstrac¬
tion of the pattern which occurred only once in the transcient past
enables us to repeat and to compare temporarily separated events.
Repetition, therefore, does not comprise events as they take place, it
regards these events in a particular way and demands that the ob¬
server also grasp his own behavior in a certain way. The “simple
description” based on repeated observations of events in nature is
thus not the expression of a direct reproduction of simple psychic
processes. It is the result of complicated operations.
i38 Man Thinks, Not the Brain
(i) Observer and Observation

The statement, “animals learn,” meagre and vague as a state¬
ment concerning the behavior of animals, is, however, with regard
to that of the observer, weighty and instructive. Observation, we
have seen, is not a copy of the observed; neither is observation iden¬
tical with the observed. An observation can be correct, exact, and
pertinent. The observed is nothing of the kind. An observation, as
is the case in psychiatry, can itself be clear and distinct, while the
observed, the patient, is confused and dazed. In such a case, the
observer judges the observed against certain standards and confirms
a deficiency. Neither is the observation identical with the observer.
He may be untrained or prejudiced, he can deceive himself, err, lie.
Nevertheless, regardless of whether an observer observes well or
badly, the observation is in each case his observation; he reports what
he has seen with his own eyes. He must be affected in a definite way
by the observed object. Oblivious of that, he does not report directly
about himself, but about the observed event. We understand obser¬
vations as statements of an observer about an event which is ob¬
servable and has been observed by him. And that is precisely the way
the observer understands himself. He distinguishes the observation
(for example, an eclipse of the sun) from the observed, the eclipsed
sun, and from the process of observing. While the observed and the
observing are events which happen but once, the observation as a
statement can be repeated and communicated. It is the transcrip¬
tion of a single event into a different medium—that of meanings.
The observer of an eclipse of the sun describes not his ephemeral
experience nor the space which he has seen in its perspective, but
how he constructs it in his mind. In his observation, the observer
presents conceptually that which is observed by him in the observed.
It is in this respect that he also knows and must know about himself.
In objective psychology, we frequently hear that, in principle,
psychology cannot make any statements about observing, and this is
because one observer would have to observe the other. That would
lead to an infinite regress. But if an observer could only see the
other’s movements, he would be in no position to determine whether
the other is observing or whatever else he is doing.
Thus, for example, in an essay by Skinner dealing with a critique
of language in which he compares the scientific with colloquial lan¬
guage we read, the expression “to try” is to be rejected because it
implies the relation of a given behavior to past or future events.
SIGNS ARE NOT STIMULI
Against the expression “to go,” on the other hand, he has no ob¬
jection. The expression “to look towards” is permissible, but the
words “to see” must not be used because seeing has a broader mean¬
ing than just turning one’s eyes to a source of light, or it means more
than the “simple reception of stimuli.”25
The objective psychologist overlooks the fact that what is good
for the observed animal must also be good for the observer, and vice
versa—what is not right for the observer can not be right for
the observed organism. However, in the practice of science, nobody
respects such limitations dictated by theory. The objective psychol¬
ogist communicates his observations like every other researcher, and
he himself collects information from the observations of others.
These observations, as statements about things, point to the living
experience of the observer. In speaking he communicates his obser¬
vations; he not only makes statements about the object, he also ap¬
praises his own behavior with regard to it. He knows himself as a
knowing being. Because observing represents a knowing experienced
relation, objective psychology must not admit that there is an ob¬
server, that is, someone who directs himself to things and who can
grasp them in their facticity with regard to their potentialities. If it
did that, it would then upset the table on which it has arranged its
principles.
GB. Signs
O
Arc Not Stimuli
A Behavioristic The
the Linguistic Facts
OBJECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY CANNOT IGNORE THE RELATIONSHIP OF
science and speech. Insofar as it wishes to give an account of its own

behavior, science finds itself confronted with an extremely difficult
task.
As the law of falling bodies is a statement about the motion of

bodies but does not move itself, as Boyle’s law is a statement about
chemical reactions but does not itself react chemically, just so, one
might think, psychological laws are statements about behavior-—
that is, in the language of objective psychology, statements about the
relations of stimuli and responses—but they themselves cannot be
simple responses to stimuli. This is an inference which objective
psychology can neither reject nor accept. It cannot reject it because,
interpreted as reactions to stimuli, the formulated laws would be
unrepeatable processes in some organism, at best “verbalizations” of
such processes. Reactions of this kind could point to nothing else,
could mean or signify nothing else. Yet objective psychology cannot
accept the statement either, for that would make it renounce juris¬
diction over a wide area of human behavior. Objective psychology
cannot admit that meaning could be separated from speaking, a
statement separated from the act of stating. Laws, it protests, are
spoken by one person and heard by another. Laws as sentences, sen¬
tences as words, words as articulated sounds, must be produced.
Without bothering much about the sense in which sentences are
articulated sounds, objective psychology discovers the possibility of
subordinating speech to its basic rules. Hearing is the reception of
a certain group of acoustic stimuli, speaking is a motor behavior
in which the muscles of breathing, larynx, palate, lips, and tongue
participate. Is not speech justly called lingua? Speaking and hear¬
ing together constitute speech. If we comprehend speech in its es¬
sential aspects as speaking and hearing, it should fit very well into
the pattern of stimulus and response.
The shift of the speech center from the brain to the larynx is
often a rough affair. As a result of their anti-intellectualism, some
intellectuals have been forced into extreme positions. Since speaking
and hearing as concrete processes occurring in individual organisms
are restricted to the spot they occupy in space and time, the articu¬
lation theory of speech can be most readily harmonized with its
expressive function, less well with its communicative, but not at all
with its representational function. It is clear that, at the moment
when speech is equated with the concrete acts of reacting to noises
and the producing of sounds, everything which is not fully absorbed
in the actual process, such as the general meaning of expressions
and sentences, must prove burdensome, even irritating. The single
word yields more willingly to being placed into a relationship with
a stimulus. Hence, interest has been centered on the single word.
The sentence, the verb, and the tenses, the modes, the negation—
SIGNS ARE NOT STIMULI 141
all these items of grammar are hardly mentioned. Speech seems to

consist of one-word sentences, exclamations, or commands such as
would be suitable for communication with horses, dogs, or parrots.
In a discussion of the problems of a theory of science (Science of
Science),1 S. S. Stevens concerns himself with the relationship of
science and speech. Stevens is of the opinion that the science of
science is identical with a study of the language of natural science.
“Science manufactures sentences,” he says, “and we as curious mor¬
tals ask: ‘What is a sentence and how is it made?’ The complete
answer to this question is the Science of Science.” It may not be in¬
appropriate to allow Stevens, as a prominent representative of be¬
havioristic speech psychology, to state his own case in a few short
but characteristic arguments:
It is proposed that in our study of the science-maker, we begin with the

products of his activity—his finished propositions—rather than with his
“experiences” or any other phase of his earlier behavior. This is a sensible
place to begin. If we were to study the manufacture of any product, such
as automobiles, we should probably find it useful first to ascertain what an
automobile is and then to discover the conditions under which it came into
being. Science manufactures sentences, and we, as curious mortals, ask:
What is a sentence and how is it made? The complete answer to this ques¬
tion is the Science of Science.
Does it not appear that the Science of Science must go directly to Psy¬
chology for an answer to many of its problems? Is it not also plain that a
behavioristic psychology is the only one that can be of much help in this
enterprise? A sign has semantical significance when an organism will react
to it as it would to the object which the sign supplants. The psychologist
works out the laws under which different stimuli evoke equivalent reac¬
tions. Signs, as stimuli, can be combined and utilized extensively in the
control and direction of behavior, both individual and social. The entire
activity of the scientist as a sign-using organism constitutes, therefore, a
type of behavior for which behavioristics seek the laws. If there is a sense
in which psychology is the propaedeutic science, it is undoubtedly in its
ability to study the behavior, qua behavior, of the science-makers.2
Speech, then, consists of words which supplant an object. They

are signs for things, for absent things, as is often said. The hearer
reacts to the word-stimulus just as he originally reacted to the object,
or as he would react to the object if it were present. (A sign has
semantic significance when an organism will react to it as it would
to the object which the sign supplants.) Words can therefore also
be considered as equivalent stimuli. They serve to control the be¬
havior of individuals and groups.
That words should be signs for absent things is a highly plausible

idea. Strange that men have taken so long to hit upon it. One would
almost think that a ninth grader could have put Herder and Hum¬
boldt, Head and Pierre Marie, on the right track. Upon repeated
reflection, however, it is just the excessive simplicity that perplexes
us. If the assertion were correct, then mute existence must be just
as rich as, indeed richer than, the verbal world. Words as substitute
stimuli could at best evoke the same reactions as the objects sup¬
planted by them. Accordingly, speech would open up no new rela¬
tionships which were not already given in direct contact with the
things themselves.
Perhaps it will occur to someone at this point that he recently
read something about “light years’’; he may ask with wonder what
object this sign supplants, and how he formerly reacted to the origi¬
nal object itself. If the answer is lacking, he may consider simpler
words. He will remind himself that he need not go so very far away
from the earth. The difficulties do not wait for the extreme case to
show themselves. How about the word “today”? What and where
are the objects to which the word “today” and the so closely associ¬
ated words “tomorrow” and “yesterday” refer? Does the logical af¬
finity of these words have an acoustic kinship of stimuli? Clearly,
all designations of time belong in a group of words which cannot be
fitted into the pattern. The stimulus theory of speech, by restricting
an organism to present circumstances, excludes the understanding
of all time words in the authentic sense. And yet one can tell little
children stories which begin, “Once upon a time.”
Temporal expressions cannot claim a unique position. Similar
difficulties arise for all other classes of words. Every figure, for ex¬
ample, three-hundred sixty-five, defines a number precisely, admit¬
tedly only by renouncing any visualization. Our ability to take in at
a glance the exact number of a certain quantity of objects does not
in general extend beyond the realm of digits. Beyond this limit,
nothing remains but the impression of an indefinite quantity. We
can grasp “much” and “very much,” but not “how much.” Only lan¬
guage makes it at all possible to assemble, to define, and so to ar¬
range multitudes that there can be no doubt of the position of a
figure in the sequence of figures. Far from functioning as substitute
for something which would be accessible to our contemplation in
any case, speech opens up to us regions which are closed to our
direct observation. The complete dissociation from visualization
gives to the Arabic numerals their superiority over the Roman fig¬
ures, still chained to visual appearances. Objective psychology, which
143
puts such great stress on measurement, should make it a point to

clear up the relationship of numerals and quantities in accordance
with its theory of speech.
Every word in a short sentence, like “The year has 365 days,”
confronts the sign theory of speech with further problems which, as
can be shown, are insoluble. They include the sign function of word
forms, word classes, word order, the parts and the unity of the sen¬
tence, the predication, the modes, and so on, down to such details
as word endings. In the word “days,” for example, the ending “s”
designates the plural. “S” is a sound, hence a single stimulus in the
stimuli pattern of days. The word ending has a wonderful power;
by modifying the body of the word, varying the word stem, it desig¬
nates instead of a single object a plurality comprised into a unity.
We may well wonder how the stimulus “s” could modify our reac¬
tions in a corresponding way. The behavioristic linguists should be
able to tell us how the stimuli “day” and “days” are related to the
original objects, and how our reaction to the stimulus “day” differs
from that of “days.” We should also consider whether the reaction
to the ending “s,” occurring so frequently, is always the same,
whether, for example, we react to the “s” in “shoes” as to the “s”
in “days,” and finally how this reaction differs from that to the final
“s” in “father’s,” “yours,” or “says.” With all this, we have not yet
reached the end of the chapter on plural endings. Besides the end¬
ing “s” as plural formation, there are other types of plural, as in
“mice,” “geese,” “men,” and there are words which are alike in sin¬
gular and plural, such as “sheep” and “deer,” not to mention the
plural endings taken over from Latin (“genera,” “stimuli,” “theses”)
and other languages. What an abundance of possibilities for using
the shifting speech forms to test the stimulus theory!
If one took the behavioristic theory literally, one would soon
come up against complete absurdities. Of the words “I love you,”
“I” and “you” and “love” would each be a sign for something ab¬
sent. That would, of course, apply to every conversation in which
“I” speak with “you.” But not only that; in a conversation, the
sense of pronouns changes constantly, depending on who is speak¬
ing. The confusion which must ensue, according to the theory, is
unimaginable. The sentence, “I will call for you this evening,” is
correctly understood by every normal person, although the recalled
“stimulus complex” and the activated “memory trace,” according to
the behavioristic theory, must produce the opposite reaction. In con¬
versation, we understand the other person to be our partner, who in
speaking to us expresses himself about something. We do not dream
Man Thinks, Not the Brain
144
of snatching his words as stimuli detached from the speaker and re¬
acting to them as the diaphragm of a microphone reacts to sound
waves.
Words no more substitute for stimuli than do our reactions to
these “stimuli” coincide with the reaction to their originals. The
word “sun” does not dazzle us, warm us, nor light us. Our reaction
to the report of an earthquake in Algiers or in any other 1 emote
spot on the globe is certainly not that of the unfortunates immedi¬
ately affected. However, the reaction to the word is not always the
weaker one; there are life situations in which the full weight of the
facts is revealed only by words.
In general, no definite single reaction is linked with a definite
single stimulus. We react to the same word, as also to the same object
or state of things in quite different ways depending on the particular
context. It is claimed that, in its simplest form, a sign designates that
which is pointed to at a given moment. Yet the gesture of the point¬
ing finger has an extreme range of meaning. It can mean brown,
smooth, old, impractical, square, fourlegged, uncomfortable, furni¬
ture, chair, etc. It takes speech to select the single aspect from the
complexity of the object and give it prominence. Whatever is meant
by the word, it does not designate this single object, as it appears
to me here in this fleeting moment. The sun, as spoken of in every¬
day life, by science, poetry, and religion, is the sun “which shines
on the just and the unjust.” The nominative names its name: “the
sun” as object, which persists in a thousand phenomena. It is the
hypokeimenon, the grammatical subject about which something is
stated. Speech describes it, defines it, presents it in its manifold re¬
lationships, and says not only that it is but what and how it is.
All this cannot really escape anyone who will take a little time
to scrutinize the elements and figures of language. No laboratory is
needed, no protracted experiments, no case studies. How does it
come about that a group of practiced observers, first-class experi¬
menters, excellent statisticians, lean to a speech theory in which not
only one or the other datum is overlooked, but the phenomena evi¬
dent to everyone are forcibly pushed out of sight? One can hardly
be content with the fact that every dogma demands sooner or later
a sacrificium intellectus. The error is so crass that one is less inclined
to ask about the reasons for the delusion than for its motives.
The scientists have not been the first to hold this view. In their
misological theories they work out a thesis taken over from philos¬
ophers and poets of the late nineteenth century. In one of his earliest
writings, Bergson3 attacks speech as a destructive power. “The word
145
with its firm, definite outlines, the brutal word . . . annihilates or

at least conceals the frail and fleeting impressions of the individual
consciousness.”
Bergson’s attack was a defense. He thought he must protect “the
depth-strata of the ego’s,” innermost life in its irrational immediacy,
against the ratio, against “conventional logic.” But it did not stop
there. To the archangel in Anatole France’s The Revolt of the An¬
gels, human speech sounds like the cries of wild beasts in primeval
forests distorted by presumptuous man-apes. The attack upon speech
is only a phase in the universal battle of modern man against him¬
self. Watson and the behaviorists have mustered the courage to say
in blunt words what many others before and beside them shrank
from saying. This is a merit, but not an uncontested one. Deluded
by passionate partisanship for a materialistic anthropology, they
have not considered it worth the trouble to reconcile their dogmas
with experience.
Language Learning
The questions of children show that the word is general and
designates an object in its generality. When they wish to know the
name of a thing, they do not ask what this single object is called,
nor how the individual adult calls it; they ask what it is. As is well
known, too, children do not ask for the names of absent things, but
are eager to learn the name of that which happens to be in their
sight.
The bad thing about this—from the standpoint of the behavior¬
ists—is that a child or a human being learns to speak at all. As a
theory of mute hearing, behavioristic speech psychology might get
along somehow. But men not only hear, but speak. In talking, they
themselves produce, remarkably enough, stimuli which resemble the
word stimuli they hear, that is, stimuli which function as equivalents
for absent things. Their own production of the stimuli takes place
with great frequency in the presence of those very objects. It is hard
to understand why man should indulge in this strange amusement.
Words, it appears, are the great comforters. I am hungry and have
nothing to eat, I say “bread” and react to the proxy stimulus as to
the thing itself. For words, of course, present to me absent things
as present. Hence, properly speaking, I cannot utter my wish
verbally. I only need to utter the word and—presto, I have
not the thing, to be sure, but my reaction to it. Well, this is evidently
nonsense, but a nonsense which is a necessary consequence of the
theory.
Objective psychology is at pains to explain how speaking is
learned. This explanation must fit into the general theory of learn¬
ing; it must be mindful of showing how the demonstrated word, the
acoustic stimulus, leaps across, as it were, and becomes a motor reac¬
tion, a flatus vocis.
Supposedly, the language learning of children takes place after
the fashion of a conditioned reflex. Watson was the first to narrate
the process. It has been repeated after him with all kinds of varia¬
tions, down to the present day. What happens is said to be approxi¬
mately the following: Here is a box of candy. Every time the box is
brought out and opened, the mother says, “candy.” At the right age,
the child, after some repetitions, takes over the expression and at
sight of the box says himself, “candy.” No doubt, this may often be
the way it happens, and to this extent the behaviorists are right. But
completely mistaken, indeed preposterous, is their claim that this
process corresponds to the pattern of the conditioned reflex. The un¬
conditioned reflex in this case is the box and its sweet contents. We
could speak of a conditioned reflex if upon the conditioned stimulus
—first the sight of the box, later the word “candy”—the child’s
mouth watered. But with the acquired words, something quite differ¬
ent has happened. At the sight of the unconditioned stimulus, the
child itself produces the conditioned stimulus. A corresponding case
would be that of a dog trained in ellipses by Pavlov, which, when its
food rattled down into its dish, would itself draw an ellipse. The
behavioristic misinterpretation of language learning belongs among
the “self-delusions necessary to life.” It releases the researcher from
taking notice of the failure of his theory. He may continue to believe
that he has successfully applied his reflex theory to verbal behavior,
whereas actually he has interpreted reflex behavior as equivalent to
experiences.
The child learns word formation by imitation. He produces ar¬
ticulated sounds which resemble the model. The prespoken and
the postspoken word, or the heard and the spoken word, are both
objective for the child. His own speech production is not a motor
reaction to a stimulus, but the formation of one product which re¬
sembles or is supposed to resemble another. The child is not occu¬
pied with stimuli but with objects. Only as an object can the articu¬
lated sound, the phoneme, be referred to another thing and function
as a sign for something else. The word is a sign of a special kind.
HI
It designates a thing with its name. The name is part of the object,
it names it as that which it is. The word does not supplant the point¬
ing finger; the finger must come to the aid of the word in order to
indicate that, among the many things which by their essence are
trees, that particular tree is meant. The word is the bearer of mean¬
ing, hence the description of a thing which we have before our eyes
can contribute to a better understanding. It emphasizes the mean¬
ings and presents them in their manifold relationships. Because the
child grasps words according to their sense and their significance,
something unknown can be described, something new narrated to
him, as to all beings endowed with speech, and he can break through
the horizon of the This, the Now and the Here—and learn.
(c) Are “Words” Equivalent Stimuli?

It is inevitable that the behavioristic speech psychologist, by
the very fact that he speaks, contradicts himself. There is an irrecon¬
cilable conflict between his saying something and what he says. The
theory maintains that the word is a substitute stimulus, or, as it is
also called, an equivalent stimulus. This expression is taken over
from animal psychology and designates phenomena similar to those
which Pavlov described under the heading of Generalization. What
is meant is that a definite mode of reaction is not affected by certain
alterations in the stimulus pattern (“Stimuli may be equivalent in
the sense that they call forth the same reaction’’).4 A bright square
on a dark ground and a dark square on a bright ground are a simple
example of a pair of equivalent stimuli. But the difference may be
much more striking. “Even very marked alterations of the stimuli
can leave the response unaltered.”4 Word and object would have to
be grouped into this special category of equivalent stimuli.
The organism which responds to equivalent stimuli with the
same reaction does not make a distinction. It reacts to the stimulus
A (bright square) precisely as to stimulus B (dark square), and to the
articulated sound precisely as it originally reacted to the object.
Equivalent stimuli can be interchanged without an alteration of the
reactions: a stimulus B can replace a stimulus A. The difference
of the stimuli remains concealed from the organism, one would
think, on the basis of an intermodal blindness. This, at least, seems
to be Stevens’ opinion. Kliiver himself is much more cautious in the
interpretation of his observations of equivalent stimuli, reported pro-
visionally as an experimental method. If Stevens were right, some¬

thing would become a sign by the very fact that it is not distin¬
guished from what it designates. The difference, however, cannot
escape the speech psychologist. He compares and distinguishes the
two “stimuli” (the word-sound and the object manifesting itself) and
the two reactions as well. The semanticist concerns himself, as Stevens
emphasizes, with the relation of signs and objects; hence, he must be
able to distinguish one from the other and to relate one to the other.
Whereas he himself sees objects, hears articulated sounds, and re¬
lates them to each other, he interprets the behavior of other persons
as sequence of two separate but similar reactions to disparate stimu¬
lations. If the psychologist should simply react to the word signs as
he reacted at some other time to the object stimuli, he could not
speak about them—he could not speak at all. The behavioristic
speech psychologist must claim for himself an exceptional position.
His own theory must not be applied with regard to himself. This
double interpretation rests upon the unpardonable confusion of
stimulus and object, motor reaction and action, surrounding field
and environment. It leads to a complete misconception of the es¬
sence of the sign.
(d) The Sign Is No Substitute

We have heard that the word functions as a sign insofar as
the reaction to the articulated sound, supposedly, resembles the re¬
action to the object. The word stimulus is supposed to supplant the
object stimulus, but substitute functions and sign functions are of
a wholly different nature. Margarine is a substitute for butter, not
a sign for it. A false bank note can supplant a genuine one, but the
falsification is not a sign of the original, a lie is not a sign of the
truth. As little as the substitute is a sign, just as little is the sign a
substitute. The letter A designates the sound A, it does not supplant
it. The death’s head sign on medicine bottles indicates the danger, it
does not supplant it. The street sign designates the street; the word
“peace” designates the much-desired state, it does not supplant it.
(With its emotional appeal, the slogan functions at times as if the
word could take the place of the thing.)
Original and substitute are interchangeable, sign and the desig¬
nate are not. Margarine, which in bad times drove butter from the
table, can itself be once more replaced by butter when money is
149
more abundant. A false bank note, which was to be smuggled in as

substitute for a genuine one, must itself be replaced by a genuine
one if the deception is discovered in time. Such reversibility does
not exist between sign and designate. The word “bread” designates
the food, but this does not designate the word. The sign points to
the designate, announces it, presents its meaning symbolically. The
sign is in the service of the designate; this relation is not reversible.
Equal reactions to sign and designate, far from establishing the sign
function, would bring about its disappearance. The relation of sign
and designate can only be grasped in a synopsis of two objects. I
must be able to direct myself to something, must grasp it objectively,
in order to understand it as a sign for another objective configura¬
tion: the small cloud yonder as sign of the approaching storm.
(e) The Essence of the Sign

The relation of sign and designate is, to be sure, an objective
one, but immersed in an egocentric evaluation. To me, the cloud is
a mere sign of an approaching storm because I care little or nothing
about a cloud as such, whereas the storm is the thing itself. In the
story of Thumbling, the birds eat the crumbs which were to serve
Thumbling as road signs. To him the road was important, to the
birds the crumbs. The relation of sign and designate is that of a
ranking order and a value hierarchy, an axiological sequence. The
cloud is a sign because it precedes the storm. That which is to func¬
tion as a sign must not only be lower in rank and value, it must be
closer and more accessible to me than the designate. The order is:
first the sign, then the designate. The vicious dog lying before the
sign, “Beware of the dog” renders impotent, so to speak, the sign
which was to give warning of him. The Babinski reflex is a sign of
a disturbance of the pyramidal tract, but the latter is not a sign of
the former. Sign and designate are members of such a relation as
exists only for experiencing beings who, in encountering the world,
find its unity broken up into a plurality and articulated, and who
can distinguish objects from each other and rejoin what has been
separated, relating the one to the other beyond dividing spaces and
times. The semeiotic relations owe their existence to the circum¬
stance that we, as individuals and in groups, experience the world
egocentrically, from our standpoint. The world does not unfold in a
mere juxtaposition and sequence; the whole is for us organized, ar-
15° Man Thinks, Not the Brain
ticulated, and accentuated by our preferences and aversions, our

needs and interests, our bodily subjection to place and time, our
historic limitation. These make one thing near to us, the other re¬
mote, and allow one to function as sign of the other.
The sign and the designated, therefore, cannot exchange their
roles within a single semantic relationship. The semeiotic role be¬
longs to a three-cornered relation, if one may put it so. The rank
order of the sign and the designated, their values, nearness, and
accessibility are established by grace of the experiencing subject, in
much the same way as what we call the “given” in a mathematical
demonstration is more evident to us than what follows from it, even
though mathematically one is not prior to the other. Only because
in this world one thing is to us less important, closer, and more
accessible than another can it function for us as a sign of the other.
Its only purpose is to point beyond itself toward something else, to
be in its own nullity a sign for the other. This opens up in detail a
wide range of subjective interpretation. The semeiotic reference is
inseparable from our egocentricity, from the bodily subjection of
our existence. The choice which makes a sign of any particular
thing is largely left to us, but not completely. In particular, we can¬
not arbitrarily alter the relations of spatial and temporal nearness.
Natural signs must be discovered, artificial ones are controlled by
convention. Such sequences as cloud and storm, ground surface and
ground depth, are unalterably fixed. The geologist looks at that part
of the earth’s epidermis which is accessible to him for signs of treas¬
ures concealed in the depths. To reverse such relations belongs in
the province of games or of silly nonsense, for example, the social
game “charades,” in which the point is to guess a sentence from
the pantomimic representation of words or syllables. But it can in¬
deed happen that a man entrenched or buried or hidden in the
depths will search for signs which will reveal to him what is happen¬
ing on the surface.
Things take place more freely and arbitrarily in the realm of
our preferences and aversions. Here, sign and designate can exchange
roles, not, to be sure, within a single semeiotic relationship. How¬
ever, what was a sign in one relationship can become the thing itself
in another, and what was a designate there can serve here as a sign.
We agree to meet at the Lincoln monument. In this agreement, first
the word designates the object. Later, however, the thing so desig¬
nated (the monument) becomes the sign for the place of the ren¬
dezvous. The word, the articulated sound, is a sign for meanings. But
in writing the word becomes the designate, the letters designate the
*5X
sound. We ask, how does one spell this or that word, that is, what
graphic signs shall we set down for the sound complex. For the hard
of hearing, the phonetic shape becomes an object. His first question
is not what the other meant, but what he said. In analogous fashion,
the student of acting is focused upon the correct pronunciation; to
him the phonema is the object whose production he therefore prac¬
tices, with profit, even by means of senseless sound material. Objects
such as a bouquet or a wrist watch become as gifts a sign of our
friendly disposition (wherefore that which exceeds necessity mostly
serves as a suitable gift). A book is a complicated system of graphic
signs. For the bibliophile, however, a rare first edition becomes the
thing itself. He will take care not to profane his treasures by their
use. The book serves no longer for communication, for reading; it
has ceased to function as a sign work. More rapid and common is the
conversion of the newspaper from printed page to wrapper and fuel.
But if a newspaper should fall into our hands in which the battle
of Jena or Waterloo, the birth of Mozart or the beheading of Louis
XVI are reported, we should probably treat that issue with proper
respect and elevate it to the nobility of “the thing itself.”
Artificial signs are given their place in historic happenings by
their reference to human interests. The “extra” which men snatched
out of each other’s hands yesterday lies thickly on the street today
as refuse. A theater ticket with yesterday’s date is a worthless piece
of paper. A bank note for a thousand dollars, offering to pay Con¬
federate currency, once having purchasing power, has lost all its
value. It is good for nothing now. The sign gets its significance from
the designate. Detached from this connection, it becomes nothing
but material. As such, however, it need not be worthless. In a tavern
brawl, the tin sign displaying a pleasant pipe tobacco can become
a welcome and dangerous weapon. Boards on which advertisements
of beer, cosmetics, etc., were painted, can serve in case of need as
barricades or fuel.
A sign can be formed only in some sort of material. Some sub¬
stances are excellently suited to the manufacture of signs because of
their plasticity, proximity, or accessibility. But no object whatever,
taken out of its triangular semantic relationship, is per se a sign,
whether natural or artificial. The little storm cloud is a meteorologi¬
cal formation which originates under certain physical conditions.
We interpret it as a sign of the coming storm. Animated, loud con¬
versations in an unfamiliar language sound like a din, an empty
chattering. The physical objects or processes employed as signs are
in themselves not different from any other single object or process;
they signify nothing else, they point to nothing else, they mean noth¬
ing else. The push button by which an electric circuit can be closed
signalizes nothing, as little as the bell set in motion by the current.
The noise thus produced is a signal only for an experiencing being,
who can hear the ring as an announcement of something else. The
wail of a siren, which in inland towns generally means trouble on
the highway, is not infrequently used to signalize the end of a factory
work shift. Among neurophysiologists, the exponents of cybernetics
revel in the designation of stimuli as signals, communications, or
messages. This seemingly gives them conversely the right to equate
messages, communications, or signals with certain electrophysiolog-
ical processes. It is understandable that a telephone engineer speaks
of how many messages his system can transmit. That is a convenient
way of speaking; the true engineer will not forget that his system only
transmits messages when, in a conversation at both ends of the line,
a human ear—or better, a hearing person—receives the sound and
understands it as a message. The engineer may draw in experimen¬
tal subjects to determine certain physical characteristics or working
coefficients, just as a technician will whistle or sing into a loud¬
speaker to find out “whether it is working.” The sensible engineer
will not confuse the means of transmission of his message with the
message. Quite certainly, the physiologist or the psychologist should
guard against such a confusion. If he wants to have experience ex¬
plained by the mechanics of the nervous system, such an ambiguity
of terms is not inexpedient. At one moment cyberneticists say that
the nervous system receives messages, in the next they are already
claiming the same for their calculating machines and other ap¬
paratus. At present, however, we still have reason to believe that the
letter carrier delivers letters, not love and kisses. To the crow that
perches on top of a road marker, the sign on the post does not say
“To Akron”; it gives him no information. The signal device is for
him something on which he can perch and rest, but it is not a signal
and not a sign.
The Sound
The articulated sound satisfies to an eminent degree the con¬

ditions imposed by the nature of the sign. By means of our breath,
it is at our disposal without effort and available at any moment. With
a few sounds we designate the heaviest burdens, the furthest dis-
153
tances, the greatest velocities, “the entire world,” and can therefore
in a certain manner deal with that which we cannot grasp directly.
The speech sound is an ideal material for artificial signs. In its tran¬
sitory and fleeting character, it is predestined, empty as it is, to
serve as a sign for something else. As an articulated sound, it shows
itself as a product, a planned product; different from the cry, which
is an immediate utterance and therefore, as actors know, not easy
to reproduce. The articulated sound, a formation shaped and yet
per se empty, is no goal in itself, no final product, but shows itself
to be the means and mediator of utterance. It is between thing and
not-thing, fleeting, perishable, and yet actual, like sound in general.
In its evanescence, it serves the actuality of the utterance, in its sound
form it serves a timeless meaning. The articulated sound allows many
shapes with many variations; each of these, thanks to the capacity of
the human voice and the human ear, capable of great precision and
definiteness. As something shaped, the articulated sound can be re¬
peated indefinitely. From the perishability of its material, the fu¬
gitiveness of sounding on and sounding off, the sound gestalt stands
out as what is authentic and essential. It transcends the temporally
fleeting sound. As a gestalt, the articulated sound becomes a sign of
shaped things, of that essence of things which is withdrawn from
all immediate appearance. The word, penetrating and ordering phe¬
nomena, calls this What by its name.
(g) The Psychology of Prediction

Physicalism has narrowed the frontiers of psychology, posi¬
tivism has blocked them still more rigorously. It considers prediction
the goal of scientific endeavor and a criterion of scientific knowledge.
If it is the ultimate motive of psychology to predict and to control
behavior, then psychology will not waste time with idle questions.
It will confine itself to repeatable and measurable events without
any misgivings of making a grave sacrifice. In principle all behavior
must become comprehensible by application of the same method. In
practice, the number and hence the lack of clarity of variables may
have a disturbing effect. If S,P,J,A,I would have been known, one
could have predicted that a certain actor from Stratford on Avon
would write a soliloquy starting with the words: “To be, or not to
be.” Because each action is a reaction, this phrase would, on princi¬
ple, have to be as predictable as the angle by which a rat traverses an
15i Man Thinks, Not the Brain
inclined plane if the angle of inclination is given according to the

lim 55 °
formula: © = Kxlog sin ——20°'5 Possibility of prediction
seems to be invested in the object. Psychology is interested in indi¬

vidual predictions. It accepts the possibility of predicting “simply”
as given.
Predictions do not come about by themselves. They are made
in both every day life and in science. They characterize a form of
human behavior. The faculty of predicting is a psychological prob¬
lem which precedes all particular predictions. The apparent facility
of prediction leads us to overlook its complex structure. Can pre¬
diction as a mode of human behavior be fitted into the system of
objective psychology? Can it be understood, and how could it be
understood as reaction to stimuli?
In a prediction, something is stated about future events. Time it¬
self becomes the very theme. Many temporal aspects are superim¬
posed in a very complicated way. Stimuli and reactions take place in
time. Bound to their particular time points, they are, however, not
capable of grasping time as such; they do not expect anything and
they do not remember anything. In predicting, the speaker refers to
the future and that from his own present. He makes historical time
his frame of reference. Present and future are personal time defini¬
tions. Seen from this, my, our present, an event to come is a future
one; tomorrow, in a week or in a year, it will belong to the past, re¬
lated again to our actual present.
Predictions are a specific mode of dictions. The linguistic expres¬
sions in which predictions are uttered belong to the present, insofar
as they are spoken and heard. But they indicate the future. The
futurum unfolds its grammatical meaning in the present; as a rule,
the present is not expressly alluded to. The action of speaking and
hearing marks with sufficient lucidity the present tense from which
the future is implied. Statements about the future thus appear in a
two-fold time aspect. The utterance itself is made in the present
tense, in relation to which another event is predicted as a future
event. The saying and the said do not belong to the same moment
in time.
Time as historical time is the necessary system of reference of
predictions, but it does not remain the only one. In many predic¬
tions, especially in those of natural science, temporal relations like
“sooner-later” or, “at the same time,” the lengths of time and veloci¬
ties, become objects of prediction. The astronomer predicts the day
of an eclipse of the sun which will last for such and such a time. He
155
speaks of a “length of time” which, it is assumed, can be measured as

the same length of time any time—today, tomorrow, and yesterday.
Predictions like these are by no means the sole privilege of astronom¬
ers and physicists. They may be found in any cookery recipe. The
direction, “heat moderately for half an hour” tells the housewife: if
you proceed in such a way, the result will be such-and-such. The pre¬
ceptor and the housewife are both convinced that half an hour can
always be told by the clock. The experienced housewife will not stick
slavishly to the direction. She will, according to circumstances, add
or subtract a little; but half an hour remains half an hour, exactly
the same length of time for all times. It has to be so. How else could
one mentally reverse the direction of time? The housewife knows
that the dinner has to be on the table at seven o’clock; she calculates
backward from this hour to find out when she will have to put the
food on the stove so that it is ready “in time.” In such daily routines,
the arrow of time is easily reversed, but the length of time remains
the same, although beginning and end are by no means interchange¬
able. In everyday life, predictions of this kind are as numerous as
bacteria on the skin. Each electric switch is actually an objectified
promise, turn me on and you will have light; or a prediction, the
turning of the switch will close the contact and make the bulb glow.
In all these predictions, time relations are comprehended in their
timeless validity. Because certain temporal relations exist at all, the
events which depend on them are expected to react always in such
a manner and not otherwise. Therefore they must also occur in the
future, generally or at a definite date.
In predicting, time relations are intellectually grasped; they are
comprehended in their timeless validity. The “at any time” must be
understood as being indifferent to any particularities of historical
or world time (which as the stream of time encloses everything and
is thus also historical time). Therefore, the expression “timeless”
is not unjustified, indeed, it is—considered more closely—unavoid¬
able. We speak of half an hour and mean by it a length of time as a
unit. In the course of half an hour we experience ourselves moving
from one moment to the next, in their successive order. We are
always tied to a single spot of the time space, in the same way as we
are either in the morning, noon, or the evening of the day. We are
always in a transition state, and we have never got, so to speak, the
whole unit of time all at once. With the words and concept “an
hour” or “a day” we mean a certain length of time, but the concept
“an hour,” “a day,” “a year,” does not last an hour, a day, a year.
It does not last at all. In the actuality of our existence we mean,
at this moment, a length of time in its extension and in the suc¬

cession of its moments; but we combine this from—and after—
each other into a conceptual unit which itself cannot be temporal.
For then it would only be a moment in the stream of time. We live in
the time limited to the particular moment "now," and yet, by ex¬
periencing it, we transcend the moment. We think in time, and yet,
while thinking, we can make time as duration, as past, and future,
the theme of our thoughts.
Positivism does not showr enough interest in the problem of the
possibility of predicting, and shows too much respect for the fact of
prediction. But not everywhere, where predictions are made, it is a
question of science; for that would make betting at the races, stock-
market speculations, or playing card games a scientific activity. All
normal human relationships justify predictions and depend on their
execution. Thus the positivist does not mean prediction generally,
although he often speaks of predictions without any qualification.
What he actually means are correct, cogently correct predictions of
the kind astronomers make and can make as long as the covenant
proclaimed in Genesis VIII, 22 remains in power.
Because prediction is a form of telling, it claims validity like
any other statement. Predictions predict that an event is going to
happen with more or less probability. The field of prediction is
wide and numerous are those active in it. Besides the astronomer,
there is the astrologer; and medical, political, and commercial
prognosticators are joined by prophets and seers. Their knowledge
is not always based on the evaluation of a great amount of statistics.
Cassandra could read in the “Book of Fate”; she foresaw the future
in the womb of the present. That type of prediction, in which objec¬
tive psychology is exclusively interested, requires verification.
Predictions await confirmation. They not only maintain that it is
possible to predict today how at any future time tilings will or must
behave, they also tacitly imply that at that time, the speaker him¬
self or a listener will be able to compare the predicted with the ac¬
tual situation. Prediction thus counts on the possibility of repetition
—viz—of the very memory of the prediction. It can only be fulfilled,
its assertion can only be examined, if the claim uttered today can
be repeated in its wording, in its meaning, in its relation to the given
circumstances. The words in which a prediction is made fade away
while they are spoken. It is not the physiological process which is
repeated, but its pattern. A later -witness must be able to confirm
retrospectively the correctness of the prediction. Joseph interpreted
Pharaoh’s dream. For the verification of his prediction after the
157
seven fat and the seven lean years, someone would have to remember
what Joseph had said and that he had once said it. Comparison of
the now present with the bygone is required. Presupposed is the in¬
variability of the divulged, of the significance of the statement made
before, which can only be checked if the space-time structure on
which the basis for all events are founded can be reconstructed with¬
out change; if the right angle of which Euclid spoke corresponds to
the angle we see and draw today.
Before Schliemann set out to excavate Troy, he checked Homer’s
narration. He read the Iliad like an historical document. He trusted
its wording. He literally followed the hints and directions given by
Homer. Success vindicated him. It was as if Homer had predicted:
“When someone discovers a hill in the vast plain extending from
the Ida mountains to the sea, a hill not very high above the plain
near where the waters rush down from the heights of the Ida, he
stands on the soil of Illium.” To test this prediction, it was necessary
to understand the letters, the words, and the verses, their meaning
and their relation to the facts, and so recognize the landscape which
Homer had depicted in the invariant geographical space. A man
who has just put Stratton glasses on his nose is not qualified to re-ex¬
amine predictions. The caterpillar cannot make predictions to the
butterfly because each of them lives in different surrounding worlds,
and the one world cannot be translated into the other. Predictions
must be written in readable handwriting. The system of co-ordinates
in which predictions are to be reconstructed in detail must be rec¬
ognized as being invariant itself, although the actual acts of measur¬
ing and computing are different, separated in time, occurring only
once.
Thought and language comprise an abundance of relations within
the one word “prediction,” and thus provide us with an extremely
practical tool indeed. In everyday life we grasp the meaning of the
word “prediction” in an approximation which suffices for our im¬
mediate purpose. The scientist, however, has the task of unfolding
anew the content which has been condensed in a single word into
its original meaning. If that is done, it will at once become apparent
that predicting cannot be fitted into the scheme of stimulus and
reaction, together with all the brain processes interacting between
them, regardless of whether one interprets the functioning of the
nervous system in accordance with Pavlov or with Lorente de No,
or whether one speaks of elements and associations, or of configura¬
tions and fields.
Q. Stimuli Arc Not Objects
(a) The Observing and the Observed Brain
TO STATE IT BRIEFLY AND PRECISELY: IT IS MAN WHO CAN MAKE

predictions, not the brain. It is man who thinks, not the brain. Men
and animals hear and see, but not the retina or the Corti’s organs. Ex¬
perience is not a basically superfluous addition to a nervous system
which would function just as well without consciousness. Experi¬
encing beings stand in a unique relationship to the world, and they
can fulfill their existence only in such a relationship.
Any physiologist asked whether the eye—the eye as an isolated
organ—as “receptor” sees, or whether seeing is located in the eye,
will answer in the negative, or reject this question as senseless. But,
when we ascend from the periphery to the cerebral cortex, the an¬
swer might become rather uncertain. The optic impression is sup¬
posed to correspond in some way to the stimulus-conditioned process
in the calcarina, run parallel to it, or be isomorphous. Nobody as¬
sumes that man can think without a brain, but many are inclined
to believe that the brain could think without man—the brain, of
course, in connection with the spinal cord, the peripheral nervous
system, and the sensory organs. The proposition, “The brain thinks
without the man,” certainly sounds absurd. But such a statement
merely overstates the hidden meaning of the sentence: “Mind can
only be regarded for scientific purposes as the activity of the brain.”1
Its meaning, no doubt, is that the performances of the brain can be
completely represented and measured by its effect on electrical ap¬
paratus and chemical reagents. Should anyone wish, he may add to
the otherwise complete physiological account the dispensable as¬
sumption of some data of consciousness coordinated with the actual
cerebral events.
Spinoza’s doctrine that the order and connection of ideas is iden-
STIMULI ARE NOT OBJECTS
!59
tical with the order and connection of things provided a way out.
But separated from Spinoza’s metaphysics, the dogma of parallelism
becomes completely unintelligible. It remains, however, practically
useful on the condition that the order and association of ideas is
totally subordinated and adapted to the objects. The ideas them¬
selves must be objectified, and at the same time one must avoid pre¬
senting experience in its full extent. Some good, or rather some evil,
spirit should warn objective psychology not to put its explanations
to a thorough test, viz., not to apply its principles to itself.
The very moment the observer is introduced as a nervous system
into the field of observation, the building tumbles down. Let us put
it to the test! Let us assume Lashley’s prediction has come true:
Neurophysiology has succeeded in “describing all phenomena of be¬
havior and mind in the concepts of mathematical and physical
sciences.” We may assume that at first the basic task could be solved
only in approximation. Many details are still to be worked out, the
experiments must be carried on, the laboratories are as busy as ever.
In one of them, we meet Dr. X—he is studying the brain of a test
animal under certain experimental conditions. Although Dr. X is all
by himself in the lab, two brains are involved in his experiments;
that of the test animal and that of the experimenter. According to
the theory of objective psychology, both these brains must be con¬
sidered from the same point of view. While Dr. X turns his undi¬
vided attention to the brain of the animal which he observes, we
must concern ourselves with both, the observed and the observing
brain. Dr. X observes, experiments, and takes notes. His behavior
should be explained in accordance with the basic presuppositions as
a process in the brain of the observer. But is that possible? How is it
possible? t
Just now, for instance, Dr. X is jotting down his observations.
All statements are statements about something—in our case, they
are statements about the brain of the test animal—however, these
notes must first of all be understood as motor reactions controlled
by the brain of the observer. Its relations to the object under ob¬
servation are of a strictly causal nature. Stimuli arising from the
object have caused some reactions in the nervous system of the ob¬
server. These processes which occur in the observer’s body do not, of
course, refer to anything else. Yet Dr. X., the observer, does not
speak of himself, he describes the behavior of the animal. Neverthe¬
less, he reports his observations. Observers may be exchangeable, but
one cannot do without an observer. Language expresses this fact in
the so simple and yet so mysterious relation, “I see something.” The
i6o Man Thinks, Not the Brain
objective psychologist, too, succumbs to the convention of speech.

He uses without hesitation expressions like: “I saw, I noticed, it is
evident, I assume, in my opinion.” Such a lack of precise expression
was permissible at a time when Lashley’s prediction was not yet ful¬
filled. But now the situation has changed. Dr. X, in order to be con¬
sistent, must use a more complicated, but also more pertinent term
of expression. He has to avoid phrases like, “I saw, I noticed, I ob¬
served.” He will say: “My brain was excited in such and such a
way”!2 But when about to write this down. Dr. X will stop like
Faustus at the translation of the word logos and will try to find a
better translation. “My brain,” he must not say; it should be rather,
“the brain X has been excited.” Dr. X knows perfectly well that
he himself is just a body among other bodies. Words like, mine,
yours, his, he, us,—in short, all possessive pronouns—have no legiti¬
mate place in the world of natural science. From now on all phe¬
nomena of behavior and mind have to be defined by mathematical
and physical concepts. “Each and every phenomenon” includes the
activity of the observer. That which until recently had been under¬
stood as observing, that is, a polynominal relationship, where one
had to distinguish between the observer, the observed object, and
the observation, this act of observing is now disclosed as a series of
processes in the brain of the observer.
Formerly, we would have not hesitated to say that Dr. X observed
the brain of a test animal. But now we ought only to say: a brain,
belonging to an organism X, has been excited by light waves which
were reflected from the surface of an animal brain and other nearby
objects. With the same right and the same result, we could have
chosen as our example any other observation. The choice of a neuro¬
physiological observer suggested itself as the most appropriate and,
because of the duplication of the two brains, as the most illustrative
example. How and where we introduced the observer, whether we
equipped him with a microscope or a telescope, or let him make his
observations with the naked eye, is in principle quite irrelevant, be¬
cause in the scheme of objective psychology not the source of the
light, not the starting point of the light stimulus is important, but
the point of impact on the retina. While distances separate the see¬
ing man from visible things, such relations do not exist for the brain,
as understood by physiology. As long as we were prejudiced by the
everyday thinking and usage of language, and we took words like
“I see this and that” literally; we were convinced that daylight il¬
luminates the environment for a seeing being, that an experiencing
being by seeing was in contact with things. As laymen, we even
thought thing', showed themselves just as they were, that we could
turn to visible things and gras;, them in their particularity in a cer¬
tain way. But sci on a; tells in to relinquish such ideas. Instead of an
observer v.ho turns towards things as a seeing faring, we have to deal
with a brain v/hieh receives stimuli I he brain is a physiol aggregate
like others in the continuum of electromagnetic arid gravitational
fields. J he spate in -which it funetions is to be thought of as an order
completely devoid of qualities; neither transparent, nor bright, nor
dark, but only -without quality. In sueh a space, there exist exclu¬
sively continuous relations of the next to each-other. I here is no
contact over a distance between the observing arid the observed
brain, as it appears in observation. The observer’s brain is eri¬
ca sed .n his skull; aJl cerebral processes take place in this room. In
their totality they can be characterized by the formula ftx,y,z,t),
where x,y,z, represent Cartesian coordinates arid t represents time.
Stimuli, wherever they come from, influence processes of the order
(x,y,z,t). The brain of the test animal, however, had the differing
coordinates q,r,s. The observer had been talking about the brain of
the test animal, that is, of processes f . V. hat made him talk
so, on the other hand, were processes f (x,y,z,t). 'I he mechanically
vrorkirig brain and the organism steered by it have no surrounding
world to -which they might react. Light does not shine for the or¬
ganism, sound does not sound for it.. It cannot even grasp or measure
spatial or temporal distances. The organism is restricted to the seg¬
ment of space which it occupies at this moment. The processes
f (x,y,z,t) do not represent the group f Lpr,s,t;; they do not, in fact,
represent anything at all. They do not signify anything else and
they point to nothing else.
but the observer is turned toward the brain of the test animal,
toward an object, to something besides himself. Observation relates
to the other. The astronomer talks of the sun arid the stars, the ge¬
ologist of rocks and minerals, the historian of Luther or Napoleon;
none of them talks of himself. But the astronomer could not speak
of stars unless he observed them, the geologist would have nothing
to say about minerals unless he had seen rocks and mountains, the
historian could not report anything about Luther arid Napoleon
had he riot studied the documents about them. 7 he basic condition
for any observation is, therefore, that the observer has been affected
bv the very thing which he observes, but affected in such a way that
the other .•: l to him as the other. \\ hile obser'.ing, I com¬
prehend an object as an object for me. In the living experience of
seeing, 1 comprehend the object both as the other and myself, al-
though not in the same way. To see, therefore, is more than to re¬
ceive optical impressions of an image in the mind. In grasping an
object as such, in the relation I-the other, I-the world, I experi¬
ence a spatial relation which itself cannot be spatially represented.
(b) Theories of Reproduction and Projection

Fascinated by the object we are, in everyday life, inclined to
forget the seeing because of the visible. The idea forces itself upon
our mind no less today than in the days of Democritus—that a man
who sees, perceives in his eye or in his brain, in his soul or in his
mind, an image of the object. The reproduction comes about, ap¬
parently, in three phases. The first is physical: the projection of the
object on the retina; the second is physiological: the conduction of
the excitation, of a signal, as one says, from the retina to the cerebral
cortex; the third is psychological: the appearance of an image in
consciousness, isomorphous with the cortical motion and the physical
form.
There are three objections to this opinion: (1) The theory of re¬
production should be understood merely metaphorically. Pictures,
like exposed films or a canvas covered with paint, are physical objects
just like the originals. A framed “picture” has a certain weight; it
can be carried about or sent to somebody, it is an article of commerce
like other goods. The original and its reproduction are both visible
things (Seh-Dinge). The colored canvas becomes a picture only in¬
sofar as the observer comprehends and understands one of the two
visible objects as a reproduction. If, in our consciousness, visible ob¬
jects were given at first as images which, after being shifted to the
“outside” by some mysterious process would be interpreted as real
objects, there would be images of a first, a second, and a third order.
Of the images, immanent in consciousness, one would be projected
“outward” as a “real” object, the other as a “real” picture, and the
third one would remain stored in the archives of the mind. But
things present themselves as bodily things to us in our corporeality.
The things and we are of the same order. They and we are partners
in the events of the world. I experience the visible object as the other
thing. I and it are both comprised in the one act of seeing.
(2) Hence, the second objection follows. The hypothesis reduces
the original content of experience to an appearance of images in the
consciousness which, only through experience, are comprehended as
STIMULI ARE NOT OBJECTS 163
an object. Or, it reduces that content to sensory material animated

by a forming act, or to intentional objects of consciousness. The in¬
terpreted phenomena are supposedly present to the consciousness, but
they do not appear as the other, together with which and facing
which I experience myself as an empirical being. The images are ob¬
jects for a consciousness, they are not the other for a corporeal expe¬
riencing being. In theory, the impressions are primarily given and
original; actually, however, they are hypothetically inferred and de¬
duced. The sensualistic postulate has no foundation in everyday ex¬
perience; it is mere construction. If it is to fulfill its explanatory
purpose, the impressions must be constructed in such a way that from
them the world of things can be reconstructed as it confronts us in
our experience. In theory, the impressions come first; in practice,
however, the things come first. Their structure gives the instruction
for the theoretical construction of the impressions. The problem
seems solved when impressions can be looked at, as if they copy the
things in their changing combinations and configurations. Subse¬
quently, these reproductions are interpreted as the original ideas, not
in the sense of Plato’s Eidos, but understood, as the only contents be¬
longing directly to the individual consciousness. In theory, things are
impressions projected outwards; in practice, impressions are things
projected inwards. The physiology of the sensations retains the pat¬
tern and consolidates it (by movement in two directions). It follows
the course of events from the object to the impression and from the
impression interpreted as sensation immanent to consciousness, back
to the object. In either case, the things remain the prototypes. Ac¬
cordingly, seeing is narrowed down to the presence of optical impres¬
sions, hearing to that of acoustic ones in solipsistic awareness and
isolation. Since things function as a model, the characteristic of
singularity is, as a matter of course, transferred from the things to
the conceptions. How things stand before us here and now as these
particular objects determines the interpretation of experience. Con¬
ception of an individual thing becomes a singular conception, ex¬
perience of the singular moment becomes a singular experience,
observation of simple events becomes a simple observation. The
objectified conceptions behave in the same fashion as individual
things affect each other, as they determine reciprocally their place;
they maintain their position as “substantive parts” in the stream
of consciousness—they collide, they hinder, and further each other,
they combine and absorb affective charges. Their relation to each
other is explained, from Herbart to Freud, in analogy to mechanics,
by physiological or psychic mechanisms.
(3) This interpretation of experiencing calls for an explanation:

How are the contents of consciousness transferred to the “outside?”
Physiology has recourse to the hypothesis of an outward projection,
although it uses it with an uneasy mind. It cannot deny that outward
projection can hardly be understood as a physiological process. No¬
body will seriously maintain that brain processes are transposed to
the outside. And yet, the articles of faith call for exactly this suppo¬
sition. Or else an activity would have to be attributed to conscious¬
ness which transcends the strict parallelism.
There is only one way out—to suspend the basic supposition and
to accept the outward projection as a “mental” process. But even that
does not help much. The metaphor of an outward projection may be
sufficient to distract our intellectual curiosity and to appease our
doubts, but its narcotic effects will not last long. After recovery, we
must ask: What is really meant by this simile; what is the nature of
the physical process underlying such a comparison?
The word “projection” appears in many different contexts. Math¬
ematics, optics, and ballistics use it. However, the projectile of a gun
is not translocated to the outside. After the discharge, it reaches an¬
other far-removed location. Light from a projection lamp hits the
screen and is reflected to the viewer. The projected slide, on the other
hand, does not change its place, but modifies only—being more or
less transparent—the traversing light. Neither would a mental image
which, as the saying goes, was projected outward due to acquired ex¬
periences or unconscious inference, actually change its position. It is
not on the outside—not even virtually—for the object remains, now
as ever, present, the image remains in spite of the projection “in our
mind.” Thus it would have to be “within” and “without” at the
same time.
The Experience of Distance3

Such contradictions are unavoidable whenever one tries to lo¬
calize consciousness and to deduce from the physical space spatial
relations like the vis-a-vis, remoteness, and distance—relations which
are intrinsic to experiencing. Therefore it is entirely incorrect and
very confusing to speak of distance receptors. Light which strikes the
retina affects the spot of impact in the same way as the light which
produces a photochemical effect on a photographic film. Distance
and receptor are concepts which exclude each other. As a receptor of
physical energy, the retina has no relation to distance. Where the

light which causes its excitation came from, whether from far away,
from Sirius, or from an object close by, has no bearing on the rela¬
tionship of the organ to the stimulus. Light excites the retina by im¬
mediate contact without telling it anything of its past.
Distance is not an attributive determination of single locations
in space. It is a universal, but at the same time personal relation. The
remote “there” is in relation to my “here.” I am in the center, and so
is everybody else; each is the center of his world, of the landscape
which opens before him. This experienced spatial relationship can¬
not be built from geometrical, physical, or physiological space ele¬
ments. This fact has been amply proved by the arguments between
the nativists and the empirics. Measured against the logical order of
the geometrical space, the phenomenon of distance is paradoxical.
The structure of the experienced space does not conform to that of
conceptual space. The discrepancy is more than a mere geometrically
determinable distortion which might be corrected eventually. The
particularity of the “there” arises from the fact that I can grasp it
“here”; to be more exact, that I can grasp it from here as a different
spot. Stepping outside to glance at the street crossing near by, I see it
“there” in some distance away, but it is “here” that I see it—I see it
from “here.” If I actually want to reach the crossing, I have to enter
the distance which opens before me while I am walking. I have to
move “there” in my corporeality, I have to traverse the distance bit
by bit, step by step, until through the continuous changing of places,
I reach the spot “there.” As a body I am limited to one location at
any given time; as a seeing being, however, I can reach out beyond
myself, and although I leave the distant spots in their spatial sep¬
arateness, I can comprehend them as the one distance.4
The physicist tells us that light reflected from the street crossing
over there has struck the eye here. Light has been carried from a
location A to a different location B; it wandered, just as we, our¬
selves, must wander through the visible distance. When it falls on us
here at B, it is no longer at A from where it came. A and B are
separated both spatially and temporally. “Here” and “there,” how¬
ever, in their visibility, are joined in time. “Here” and “there” are
grasped as an undivided relation and are not composed of one
“here” and many “there.” The physiologist who knows that the
optical excitation takes place in the eye tries to get from, the “here”
to the “there” again; he would like to shift the location B back to
that of A. That is physically impossible. It would mean that one and
the same event takes place at two different locations. No physiologi-
cal explanation can explain away the physical paradox that we here
see something at its place there.
Being separated is side by side with the logical fundamental
order of space. In experiencing, however, the being separated is
gathered together, united and yet left as being separated. The third
dimension, depth, creates no particular additional problem. The
side by side of points on a plane projected onto another plane like
letters of an original sheet onto a carbon could never be compre¬
hended as a side by side. Only in the centering, which gathers to¬
gether the side by side and yet leaves it as such, a plane become
visible in its expansion. The seeing of the spatial and the spatial
order of things seen cannot be brought to coincide with each other.
Therefore it will not do to add theoretically to the physiological
excitation an accompanying mental process in order to comprehend
the behavior toward the environment. If experiences ran parallel to
neural processes and were isomorphic with them, they would have
to share their space-time characteristics. The relationship of an ex¬
periencing being to the world transcends by far that of an organism
to stimuli.
(d) The Relationship Between an Experienc¬

ing Being and the World Is Entirely
Different from the Relationship Between
an Organism and a Stimulus
In the credo of objective psychology, the difference between
the two relations is acknowledged, but only with reservation: de
facto, not de jure. It is expected that, in the future, the relations of
an experiencing being to the world can be reduced to those of an
organism to stimuli. We will not, however, be content with a banker’s
draft payable in the indefinite future. The question whether that
expectation is justified or illusory can be decided already today. We
have only to analyze what becomes of an observation when the objec¬
tive psychologist is measured by his own standard. The basic rule
has to be applied to him as well; observing, like any other form of
behavior, must be understood as a reaction to stimuli. The observer
in the laboratory in accordance with his theory cannot claim any
prerogative; he must be regarded exactly like his test persons and his
test animals, an organism which reacts to stimuli in a surrounding
field. On the doorstep of the laboratory he must dismiss the old
Adam. The naive views of everyday life lose their significance in the
proceedings and the verdict of exact science. There in everyday life
we meet human beings who can turn toward objects in their sur¬
roundings. Here in the laboratory we encounter only organisms,
surrounding fields, stimuli, and reactions.
Let us once again assume that a researcher in his laboratory is
busily engaged in an experiment, no matter what kind of an experi¬
ment. To stay within the scope of our discipline, we will choose a
psycho-pharmacological experiment: The experimenter is investigat¬
ing a group of test persons’ reactions to color stimuli under the in¬
fluence of certain drugs. There is an experimenter E, a test person
(subject) S, and an object O; that is, a tinted paper with exact
physically-defined characteristics.
O -- s
Figure I. O Object, 5 Subject, E Experimenter
These tinted sheets, we assume, are presented in a tachistoscope.

But details do not matter. The experimenter is certainly convinced
that he can see both the apparatus and the test person S in the test
area before him, and that he can observe the effect of the changing
color stimuli on the test person. He is convinced that the colors
which he sees are also accessible to S in a certain way, just as a phy¬
sician administering a Rorschach test has no doubts that the patient
looks at the same card which he has handed to him. Figure I illus¬
trates the pattern of the situation. Strictly speaking, the comparison
is not quite perfect. For the relationship of the tinted paper to S is
interpreted by the psychological observer as that of stimuli to an
organism, while he tacitly makes the mental reservation that both S

and paper are visible objects for himself.
How will the pattern change now if we consider the experimenter
also as an organism, as a nervous system with receptors and effectors,
and, for the time being, see his relationship to the colored objects as
the relation between stimuli and his, the experimenter’s receptors?
The change is dramatic, indeed, as demonstrated in the pattern of
Figure II.
^ Stimulus B
Figure II. O Object, S Subject, E Experimenter, St, St' Stimuli
E is no longer turned towards an object. Instead, light stimuli

move from O to the nervous systems of E and S. The object which
seemed to present itself to the experimenter and test person in the
first situation as the same visible object, is now dissolved into two
separate groups of stimuli, St and St1, stimulus A and stimulus B,
respectively.
Stimuli are physical agents, light or sound, etc., insofar as they
have produced an excitation in a receptor. Optical stimulus is but
the quantity of light, the pencil of light which reached and excited
the retina of an organism. One ought not say, therefore, at least not
without qualification, that stimuli are physical agents. Light as such
is not a stimulus. It becomes a stimulus only after it has excited an
organism. But if one carelessly calls a light a stimulus, one is also apt
to say that light is a visible object; the stimulus has become object.
The arrows stimulus A and stimulus B directed from the light source
to the receptors E and S, indicate that each of the two organisms is
struck and excited by separate and therefore different and limited
quantities of light. S is excited by stimulus A and by stimulus A

alone; E is excited by stimulus B and by stimulus B alone. One
could interrupt the beam of light R-^ stimulus A^S without chang¬
ing the other process Rx—► stimulus BÊ. Although we together
with other people can see the same visible object, none of us can
participate in the stimuli of the other person. Stimuli are, like all
physical things, limited to their position in space. There is as little
participation in stimuli as when one tries to participate in the same
breath of air or the same bite of food.
The observer regarded the objects taken for stimuli as things
which existed separate from him in space and independent of him.
Because they were something other, not absorbed in his own or¬
ganism, those things were capable of affecting other objects. Every
observation of events refers to the relation between things which pre¬
sent themselves in front of us and separated from us. The relation¬
ship between stimulus and the nervous system is something quite
different. Not the tree, not the house over there, not the sky and the
stars above us are stimuli. Stimulus is the light which reflected from
the tree, from the house, and from the stars, all that which has opti¬
cally excited my retina. The pattern, therefore, needs a further
modification (cf. Figure III).
S
s. —->0-m
O
St1
Figure III. O Object, 5 Subject, E Experimenter, St, St1 Stimuli
In our second example, E and S seemed still connected by the

arrows stimulus A and stimulus B with St and St1. Such a connection
in fact does not exist. Two pencils of light become stimuli only at
the moment of their arrival when they affect the actual receptors,
that is, at the end and not at the start of their journey. Thus, the
two nervous systems S and E are in no way brought into any sort of
contact by the stimuli A and B. The stimulus A, after having been

absorbed by the organism S, and the stimulus B by the organism E,
both of them, but each separately, cause motor processes which be¬
long, each group, to a separated, relatively closed system. In the two
brains, E and S, processes take effect which are independent of each
other and directed towards the particular effectors; the two brains
have no contact with each other. The stimulus A produces a muscu¬
lar reaction M in S, the stimulus B produces a muscular reaction N
in E, independent of and different from M. M and N have nothing
to do with each other, neither do they refer, in reverse, to the stimu¬
lus sources R and The observer is turned towards visible objects.
Stimuli, on the other hand, enter into the organism and there they
set other excitations into motion which always lead further away
from the sources of the stimuli. It may happen that the muscular
reactions, produced by a stimulus, act again upon the source of the
stimulus. That merely means that additional kinesthetic or tacticle
stimuli may lead to further motor effects.
Physical energy becomes a stimulus only at the very moment
when it has affected an organism. The physical agent which has be¬
come a stimulus does no longer exist separated, nor separable from
the excited organism; it has been received into it. That is why we call
a sense organ a receptor. Hence, it follows that we cannot approach
stimuli. We cannot control or avert them, nor can we act toward
them. The observer can manipulate the tachistoscope, he can ex¬
change one color chart for another, for he acts as an experiencing
being. He can arrange his action in such a way that, by laying hold of
the visible objects, he can produce changes. For example, he can re¬
place a green slide with a red one. Such a possibility is not inherent
in the relationship: stimulus nervous system. If in the tachistoscope a
red slide is followed by a green one, that means in terms of stimula¬
tion that a stimulus B has been replaced by a different stimulus Bt.
While in the organism E the stimulus B produced the motor reaction
N, stimulus Bx is followed by reaction Nx. These two processes take
their course independently from each other. B-N does not appear in
the organism E as a variation of Bi-N^ comparable to the exchange
of variable factors contrived by the observer. The observer in his
relation to visible objects can experiment; the nervous system E in
its relation to stimuli can do no such thing.
The observer observes the behavior of S, dependent on the proc¬
esses in the subject’s environment. Both however, the test person to¬
gether with his environment are parts of the observer’s environment.
The tachistoscope with its colored slides are present, both in the
environment of E and S. Because S is a fellow creature, one should

expect the observer to apply the same standard to the test person and
himself. But that he does not do. He interprets the relationship E-»
object as a process of seeing. The synonymous relationship S—>
object he considers, on the other hand, as a relationship of stimulus
and organism, as St->S. The same area of the adjacent space, there¬
fore, is understood now as the surrounding world and now as the
surrounding held, the same thing is interpreted first as an object and
then as a stimulus.
If the objective psychologist were consistent in accordance with
his theory, he would have to re-interpret his own relation to his en¬
tire environment as a relationship of stimuli and organism. For this
purpose it will not suffice merely to translate the relationship E—>0
into that of the stimuli B—>E; the relationship of the observer to the
test person must be reduced as well in the same manner. The pattern
now presents itself as follows.
'T'
Figure IV. O Object, S Subject, E Experimenter, St, St1 Stimuli
The relation O—> stimulus A->S is not at all accessible to the ob¬
server. He does not “see” S as an object; light reflected from the sur¬
face of the body S, after having passed through a small interval,
reaches receptor E as stimulus C. The pattern has to be modified
again as shown in figure V.
The stimuli B and C reach the organism E and produce in it
(being a relatively closed system) centripetal changes and finally the
motor reactions NrNx. The actually observed relation O—>S has dis-
appeared. It cannot even analogically be replaced by the relation

stimulus B—> stimulus CÊ. The observer noticed how a variation
of the object, interpreted as a variation of St, caused variations in the
behavior of S. The relation St—^stimulus A—»S is thought of as a
causal relation. Between stimulus B and stimulus C however, no
causal connection exists, if we consider the processes in their physical
and physiological context. Stimulus B, directed towards E has never
reached the organism S and thus could not produce in it any varia¬
tion of behavior. S is not influenced by B, E is not affected by A.
The relation of E to S is reduced to the optical beam S—> stimulus
C—»E. The nervous system E is excited by the stimuli B and C one
after the other or in any simultaneous combination. These excita¬
tions are continued in the motor discharges NrNx in temporal se¬
quence. The organism E has no comprehension of what is happening
to it. Under the influence of stimulus B it is transformed into the
state X, under the influence of stimulus C into the state Y. No epi-
phenomenalistic theory can overcome this difficulty. But we see again
the inadequacy of a theory which tries to explain how data, origi¬
nally belonging to the brain and then to consciousness, are subse¬
quently transferred to the "outside world.”
St S
O
St1
Figure V. O Object, S Subject, E Experimenter, St, St1 Stimuli
Stimulus B and stimulus C meet in the organism E, but they are

quite unrelated to each other. If “data of consciousness” were to ac¬
company cortical excitations in such a way that their relation were
to correspond to that of the excitations, we should also be capable of
detecting again such relationship among the objects of the outside
world, for “what is within is without.” Conscious or unconscious in¬
ference supposedly makes us believe that certain impressions are
brought about by external causes. On the basis of causal deductions.
*73
we are said to coordinate the object O with the impression which

accompanied stimulus B, while object S is seen as accompanying
stimulus C. But then we establish a second causal relation, viz, that
between O and S. This relation, however, has no foundation in the
original impressions, indeed, the “projected” relation O-S contra¬
dicts the original relation of stimuli B and C and all those excita¬
tions and configurations attached to them. No isomorphism holds
brain event and experiences together.
(e) On Communication
Observers are interchangeable. This phrase is often used with

the mental reservation that the observers themselves are actually
mere instruments registering the other measuring apparatus. Ob¬
servers, so it seems, can be exchanged like any other parts of machin¬
ery. One observer can be put in as replacement for an other, he can
carry on with the notes and controls where his predecessor left off.
As in public conveyances, one driver relieves the other driver at a
certain time of day at predetermined stops, in the same way, one ob¬
server leaves the drivers seat to his successor. Though they might
pass each other without a word or greeting, they have to conform
to the same plan, to the same time table. They must know their
routes and how to operate the machine. Observers are not switched
on and off. They switch themselves on. The relief of guards, drivers,
and observers presupposes the possibility of communication and of
the common understanding of the matter in hand. That is why two
or more observers can share in one task; that is why there are co¬
workers, superiors and subalterns, teacher and pupils, lecturers and
audience.
Like any other human being, the psychologist meets with such
conditions in his daily experience. As an objective psychologist, he is
duty bound to explain them in accordance with his basic rules. He
has no choice but to explain social behavior within the framework
of the stimulus-response schema as interaction between two or more
bodies and their brains.
To our hypothetical experiment, a second observer is therefore
admitted,—and we present thus the simplest possible case of com¬
munication. We assume observer E has invited a friend F to his
laboratory. He wants to show him some of his cases. Both observe
together the progress of some experiments and they discuss their
»74 Man Thinks, Not the Brain
observations during the procedure and afterwards. Without much

stretching of our imagination, we can force such “social” behavior
into the pattern stimulus-reaction.
In our diagrams No. 2 and No. 3, we will have to enter our visit¬
ing friend as a third organism, F.
Figure VI. O Object, 5 Subject, E Experimenter, F Friend, St, St1, St* Stimuli
Figure VII. O Object, S Subject, E Experimenter, F Friend, St, St1, Ste Stimuli
Both E and F appear side by side as two separated bodies existing as

relatively closed biophysical systems. To each of them belongs a
nervous system, a brain which functions enclosed in the cranium of
E and F, respectively, mediating between stimulus and reaction.
m
Optic stimuli, symbolized by arrowpoints, act upon receptor E and
separately upon F. F is not reached by the stimuli exciting E; E is
not reached by those affecting F. The light rays S->E and S~*F do
not interfere with each other. They are as different as the beams of
light which from the stage of a theatre reach a spectator in the lower
stalls from those which reach to the spectator in the gallery. The
same is true of the stimuli StÊ and St2^>F and all the other
conditions we have discussed so far.
Seemingly new is the reciprocal interrelation of E and F. It is
only seemingly new, because basically it does not make any difference
after all whether the light exciting the receptor E emanates from O,
S, or F. The optic excitations run either parallel or they combine. In
each case, they merely cause in the affected organism an altered con¬
stellation in the calcarina and in the other cortical fields. They rep¬
resent to E the other observer just as little as they have represented
O or S.
The observers discuss the observed. The visitor tells E his opin¬
ion and E replies to it. Both communicate something to each other.
Transferred into the pattern stimulus-response, it means that optic
excitations—actual ones combined with the residues of former ones
—produce in F a motor reaction of the muscles of articulation.
Sound waves are produced which affect both E and F as additional
stimuli.
Figure VIII. E Experimenter, F Friend
As expressed in the stimulus-response scheme, the answer of E is also

a mere motor reaction of his muscles of articulation caused by a
combination of optic stimuli (O-f S+F) which arrive simultane¬
ously with the acoustic stimuli from F. Excitations of the acoustic
central fields associate with those of the optic fields. To associate
means here merely a succession or synchronization of the two com¬

plexes of excitation. Sound and optic impressions never blend.
Figure IX. E Experimenter, F Friend
We ourselves, of course, understand that this man, whom we see

there before us, expresses his opinion about something; that it is he
who talks to us. This bond, a belonging together in the side by side
of the impressions must not be comprehended as a mere temporal
association. How it is to be understood will become clear only in the
progress of our analysis of sensory experience.
Here we can take leave of this problem. It has become thoroughly
evident that observers are exchangeable because they can communi¬
cate, but that organisms and their nervous systems are not exchange¬
able. Stimuli are not communicable and we cannot participate in
them. Between brains there is neither communion nor communica¬
tion, but among human beings, between human beings and animals,
and between animals there is communication; there the relations of
the towards-each-other and with-one-another exist.
Some people may think that I have overstated my argument and
that I therefore worried about imaginary problems. No doubt, they
say, it is quite correct, the eyes of the two observers are not struck
by the same light rays; the ears of the man in the stalls and the ears
of the man in the balcony are not stimulated by the same air
particles. Still, the rhythm of the vibrations affecting each of them is
the same; the two observers are affected by equal stimuli. My objec¬
tion against that opinion is that equality characterizes a relation be¬
tween different thing;s. The equality of A and B becomes apparent
only through comparison, by placing A by the side of B; the compari¬
son does not eliminate the separateness and difference of A and B,
it presupposes them and leaves them in existence. Comparison pre-
supposes that the experiencing being has access to the two parts of
tire comparison. But the organism E does not come into contact at
all with the stimuli which affect F. Thus, any reference to the equal¬
ity of stimuli does not contribute to the solution of our problem at
all; on the contrary, it complicates out situation. How can we make
a statement at all about the presumable equality of stimuli? What
justifies such assumption? We cannot participate in the stimuli
which affect the other. They are not accessible to us. No doubt about
this! But even if we jump the fences erected by objective psychology
and push on to the realm of living experience, the solution of the
problem is not immediately at hand.
We said that we cannot participate in stimuli; but do we fare
better with what we see?
Let us assume that two friends are walking together. One of them
watches some event which escapes the other, who is absorbed in his
thoughts. One of them sees something which the other did not see.
The acts of seeing are also different; each person sees for himself. I
cannot participate in the seeing of my neighbor. Each person hears
for himself, yet the audible and the heard are something potentially
common to everyone. Each person sees for himself, but the visible is
a something experienced in common. Attending a play at the theatre
everyone sees for himself: nevertheless, all in the audience see the
same play together. Together we look at an X-ray film in the lecture
room. Each person sees it for himself, but each sees it from a differ¬
ent angle. Seeing it from opposite sides of the hall, the perspectives
are by no means identical. Yet, in spite of the particularity of our
seeing, all of us are directed towards the same object. Neither the
stimuli are the same nor the acts of seeing through which each on his
own directs himself toward something jointly visible to all. Seated at
a table facing each other, we certainly have two very different views,
and yet we both see together the same table, and each of us can from
a different place cooperate so that one can help the other in recipro¬
cal efforts. While operating, the surgeon and his assistant see the
body of the patient in different perspectives, but each of them from
his place is directed towards the same body. We cannot share in the
seeing, but we can participate in the visible which appears to us as a
part of an encompassing other in different space-time perspectives.
Through these perspectives (“adumbrations,” in the sense of
Husserl), we aim at the “what” which, as such, will never become
completely manifest. To this “what” (something), language fixes
names which can be identified and repeated—names which thus
designate something identical, the object, the “what” of which ex-
plains itself in the very multifariousness of the cases and the multi-
plicitly of the predicates. Language has no name for the perspectives
changing from moment to moment. It names the permanent order
revealed to us in the very change of the standpoints and the moments.
In seeing, the other becomes visible to us as the one world in
which we find ourselves facing the other, and yet belonging at the
same time in our corporeality as parts to the world; therefore we
can encounter the others. Everybody experiences the world in par¬
ticular aspects which are exclusively his own; the world, however
visible in fragmentary individual aspects, remains across all its
changes the same to me. In this world I can exchange my position
with others. Communication is not a direct, immediate relation be¬
tween two persons; but mediated through reference to the other
which remains the same for me and for you. We meet in the world
and not in empty space. Observers are interchangeable, because each
of them can direct himself to the other as the one world which en¬
compasses everything.
Community, mutual understanding, and communication are con¬
nections between living beings founded on the relations of the to-
gether-with and the towards-each-other, which do not eliminate the
monadic autonomy of the partners, their duality or plurality. True,
we know of fusions in physics, of combinations in chemistry, of
unions in biology. But in fertilization the sperm cell and ovum join
into the unit of a new organism. The duality which did not disap¬
pear even in the erotic experience vanishes in fertilization. Com¬
munion demands distance which continues even during the most
perfect forms of togetherness, of nearness, of the “we.”
There is no communion between bodies, neither is there any
communion between one consciousness and an other consciousness.
All doctrines of the immanence of consciousness miscarry because of
the problem of communion and mutual understanding. Its hidden
or expressed, its empiric or transcendental solipsism, separates me
who contrives the world in my consciousness from my creation. The
other one remains an object for me. No empathy can make him my
partner. 7
Communion exists for us as creatures. Because we as living,
corporeal beings find ourselves opposite to the world and yet en¬
compassed by the world as creatures and parts, we can meet other
beings which, in a meaningful synkinesis, prove themselves partners.
The encompassing other which becomes visible to us in seeing, makes
possible the communion between us; it mediates between Me and
You.
179
(f) The Brain as Mediator Between the

Physical and the Phenomenal World
In comparing the relations between organism and stimuli
with those between observer and objects, I have confined my reflec¬
tions to the plain, indeed, to the simplest performances which we
execute everyday without much ado. This limitation to the prelimi¬
naries of experimentation has the advantage of covering with the
simple and the everyday acts the indispensable ones as well. Their
familiarity often simulates a foregone conclusion, their noiselessness,
a lack of content. But if one takes the trouble to scrutinize more
carefully these apparently simple acts, one will soon discover that it
is impossible to reduce man’s behavior towards his environment to a
relationship between nervous system and stimulus. And yet, this
negative result does not relieve me of the task of expressing my point
of view as to the relationship between experiencing and stimulus.
Although the functions of the brain, understood as physical and
chemical, as anatomic and physiological processes, do not explain
experiencing nor mirror its content, the behavior of man and animal,
nevertheless, depends on the integrity of their bodily existence. Since
a relationship between experience and stimulus cannot be denied,
the question arises how it can be understood.
The answer is not difficult; actually, it is self-evident. We speak of
a stimulus in the singular or of stimuli in the plural as if stimuli
seem to correspond to a countable quantity of peripheral excitations,
eventually coordinated with a countable quantity of data of con¬
sciousness. However, such presentation makes use of an abbreviated
and roughly summarized figure of speech.5 For this very reason it is
misleading. To the single stimuli, it seems, correspond isolated im¬
pressions. Optical stimuli, for example, elicit a series of visual im¬
pressions, causing the seeing as well as the content of the seen. Again
and again we succumb to the suggestive influence of the concept of
thingness, although we know very well that stimuli rouse the organ¬
ism only to its own activity, although we know also that causal rela¬
tions are limited to particular events, and although we understand
the stimulus as a limited event, as physical energy affecting a sensory
organ by a certain quantity and configuration. To the optical stimu¬
lus in its limitation corresponds a merely limited sight, namely, of
that which I grasp now, here, while seeing. The stimulus does not
i8o Man Thinks, Not the Brain
produce the seeing, it actualizes and at the same time limits it to the
actual.
Seeing transcends the here, the now, the thus seen. We grasp the
single impression as a single one, thereby comprehending it in its
limitation. Each “here” is an “only here”; each “now” is an “only
now.” Borderlines become evident only when actually or virtually
crossed. The single views present themselves as segments of the
continuum of the world encounter. Furthermore, we do not experi¬
ence data of consciousness, nor simply intentional objects, but things
which are objects for us. While seeing, we experience ourselves to¬
gether with and facing things. Finally, we experience the seen as an
actualization of our potentialities, as a realization of our anticipa¬
tions. While seeing, we behave receptively but not passively. There¬
fore, we experience also the forms of emptiness like the darkness in
their sensory fullness as a positive giveness and not as a mere “non¬
existence” of stimuli. In darkness we cannot see anything, but we see
the darkness itself. In it, the other presents itself, veiled and hidden,
and yet present in its concealment. Seeing is more than the reflection
of stimuli sparks flashing in rapid sequence. In it, we are turned
toward the world in expectation. The relationship of stimulus to
experience, thus, would not be too hard to understand—provided
we do admit that the body, affected by the stimulus, is the body of
an experiencing being. Objective psychology contests the right of
such an assumption.
According to objective psychology, the world which appears in
experience is afflicted with a defect, the defect of the secondary qual¬
ity. It is unreal, deceptive, a phantasmagoria. It cannot claim sover¬
eignty, nor can it demand that its rights and its individuality are
respected. The phenomena are but epiphenomenological shadows of
the actual happening. Such phantoms present, at the most, the
shadow-casting object in its outline, and that very frequently in gross
and grotesque distortions. All the phantoms taken together do not
create an autonomous sphere of being which could be sensibly in¬
vestigated as a specific field of observation. All that can be done is to
gather from the shadow the outline of the shadow-casting object, and
to reconstruct its true form from its distortions. The task of psychol¬
ogy is, accordingly, to trace the shadows back to their origin, and,
expressed the other way around, to make use of the phenomena in
order to understand through them the actual happenings; namely,
the cerebral processes. The logical, as well as the ontological aim, is
the ascertainment of the neural functions. The order and the synop¬
sis of the phenomena is only a means to the end of describing the
brain in its activity by physical and chemical concepts. This kind of

research goes back towards the elements and expects to find the
decisive clarification in the knowledge of elementary occurrences. In
going upwards, this research considers the brain as a part of the
organism, and the nervous system as the organ which has to provide
the correlation of the other parts, the transmission of the excitations.
In this theory, the phenomenal world has been eliminated com¬
pletely. The observation moves entirely on the physical plane. One
must measure and compare the “input” and the “output,” in order
to understand how the brain works as a mediator between stimulus
and reaction. But what happens when the brain is seen as a mediator
between the physical and the experienced world, not as an organ of
transmission but of transformation?
On the way down to the elements, only a part of the total task
can be solved. The deeper we descend, the more difficult will be the
way back. We cannot reconstruct the structure of the organ from the
elementary processes. Muscle fibrils form the pectoralis, but they also
form the biceps and the triceps. It is the muscles in their anatomic
unity, as they are named individually, which in unison move the
organism in its environment. Microscopic structures may teach us
something about the possibilities of contraction generally, but they
do not teach anything about the actual occurrence in the united
organism. The brain controls the movement of the limbs and of the
body as a whole by transforming microscopic happenings into macro¬
scopic processes and actions. Its role is that of a “globalisator.” The
system of reference of microscopic analysis is the physical space and
the physical time. Of course, the organism must be capable of being
represented in the physical space-time system, but it cannot be de¬
duced from it. Buildings and bridges, too, must be physically pos¬
sible, else they would not exist; but physics as such cannot deduce
their existence solely from its principles. The design which gives
them reality belongs to the macroscopic world, like all human ex¬
perience, perception, thought, and action. If one acknowledges the
macroscopic world of qualities and of encompassing structures in
their particularity, one must, of necessity, also accept the bi ain as
mediator between microscopic and macroscopic world, between the
physical event and the mental phenomenon.
The brain is an organ in the original meaning of the word. The
Greeks called the limbs of the body organs, that is, tools. The meta¬
phoric use of the word has a profound meaning. The tools invented
by man are composita; they have two essentially different but at the
same time indispensable parts: the handle or haft and the actual
working part. The handle is adapted to the conditions of the bodily
existence of man, the working part of the tool to the conditions of
physical processes. Both together in their polarity constitute the tool.
The tool thus mediates between man and the natural occurrence.
The eye or the nervous system as a whole mediates in a similar sense
between physical happenings and the world which appears to the
experiencing being. By uniting the atomic happening it creates the
great stable orders in which animal and man can find their bearings
and act in it. The nervous system transforms the physical energies,
so that from the wild dances of the photons there emerges the order¬
liness of the visible world.
Only in such a world of phenomena does observation become
possible. Only in the transparency of space illuminated by light for a
seeing being can far-near things be perceived in their order of side-
by-side and togetherness. Only within the transparent horizon can
places be determined in the multiplicity of simultaneously visible
things. In other words, only in the realm of the phenomenal world
does measuring become possible. The visible world open to the see¬
ing being contains potentialities which the sighted things as such
lack in their interrelation. On a yardstick, the notches marked 0 and
100 are physically separated from each other by the immense num¬
ber of particles which actually constitute the stick. The reliability of
the ruler rests on the condition that these notches cannot change
their position in relation to each other, that they are separated by
the unbridgeable gulf of the materially occupied, intervening space.
But we, the seeing beings, grasp their distance and observe them as
borderlines of a continuous length which connects them. We see
them as two radically different points in the totality and unity of
space; we understand their duality and separateness, but at the same
time also their interrelation and linkage.
Distance, light, and the light space are not epiphenomena of
the neural substrate whose essential characteristics are reflected and
duplicated in them like in a mirror. If they are but secondary quali¬
ties, well, then the secondary qualities are those by which and by
which alone the primary qualities become accessible to us. The “ob¬
jective” theory demands that we deduce the world of experience
from nature as comprehended by mathematical physics. Physics is
proclaimed to be the basic science of psychology. The fact is that we
as human beings construct physics in our world of daily experience
(Husserl’s Lebenswelt). Even if it were true that the structure of the
universe as conceived by physics were the actual and primary world,

for us it is the secondary and mediated one.
(g) Science, a Human Creation

Any discussion of the “neurophysical foundations of human
behavior” rests like any natural science on the possibility of a com¬
parison between the natural world and a physiologically interpreted
nature. The discussion does not procede at once, as one might con¬
jecture, from a description of behavior to an analysis of the activity
of the brain. It is preceded by the everyday observation that the be¬
havior of man and animal depends on the wholesomeness of a cer¬
tain organ, namely, the brain. The brain is mentioned twice in this
relation, but in two different configurations: first, as a thing in the
everyday world, known to the anatomist, the pathologist, the sur¬
geon, but also to the hunter and the butcher—the “encephalon”—an
object of a definite form, consistency, and weight, enclosed in the
skull, visible, and touchable, although only under certain circum¬
stances. To this thing, to the brain as to a part of an organism, certain
biological and psychological functions are attributed, perform¬
ances like seeing or the integration of walking, which the living
organism accomplishes as a whole in the perceptual world, related to
experienced space and experienced time. The same thing is inter¬
preted, secondly, as part of the physical world, after having been
virtually dissected on the basis of microscopic examination—per¬
formed in everyday experience—into its elementary histological
parts. It is considered as a machine brought into relation to the
space-time system of physics. The physiologist tries to detect the un¬
known mode of functioning of this machine, of the physiological
brain, by comparing its performance with other machines and in¬
struments for measuring whose physical behavior is sufficiently
known. The activity of the physiologist himself remains bound to
the natural world of experience; there he sees the brain whose
microscopic structure the microscope rendered macroscopically per¬
spicuous; there he checks the measuring instruments visible to him,
having connected them in some way with the visible brain by, for
example, such convenient palpable things as electrodes. The two
brains bear the same relationship to each other as do the two desks
—the one we encounter in our daily life and the other we interpret
as a physical configuration—which Eddington6 has described so

vividly.
Everything would be in the best order, theoretically, if the physi¬
ologist limited his interpretations to the drawing of a parallel be¬
tween the physical brain in its relation to the physical surrounding
field and the visible brain in relation to its visible surrounding
world, the way the neurosurgeon acts when applying his visible and
palpable knife to the brain visible to him, but making his incision in
such a fashion that his action agrees with the directions dictated by
physiology. The researcher, on the other hand, trying to explain
human behavior from neurophysiological principles, oversteps the
bounds methodically drawn by the comparison. He is not content to
relate the events in the physiological brain to the “natural brain”
and then to the vegetative and muscular integration of the organism.
He undertakes to explain all human behavior. This claim must in¬
clude also the behavior of the observer himself. What has been
stated about the physiological brain must apply also in its space-time
particularity and limitation to the brain of the observer or anyone
else in his stead; and in reverse order, all human achievements in
the natural world of observing and understanding are expected to be
within the range of the physiological brain. Yet, the comparison of
the brain as part of the natural world with the brain as part of the
physical world is in need of a mediator. The visible and seen brain
does not compare itself with the physiological brain or vice-versa.
The comparison becomes possible only because the observer as one
and the same person can turn in perception toward the visible world
and in conceptual construction toward the physical world.
The physicist admits the mediation. He restricts himself to the
comparison between the natural-visible world which is grasped in
perceiving and observing and the mathematically constructed world.
The comparison exclusively extends to these two terms: The per¬
ceived and the thought (das Gedachte). The comparing observer,
himself, is not included in the comparison; he has no place in the
observed. The possibility of comparison is taken for granted. The
personal union between the person observing in the natural world
and the man who constructs in it the physical world is not called
into question. It remains outside the investigation. The objective
psychologist sees it quite differently. He has set out to express human
behavior in concepts of natural science. But he deserts his scientific
principles half way. He does not compare the observed with the
physically constructed, he rather compares the observer with the
observed, the constructor with the constructed, and maintains that
there is no essential difference between the seeing being and that

which is seen, between the machine and its builder. Thereby the
comparison has been tacitly extended to three brains. To the visible
and the physiologic-physically constructed brain is added an “ob¬
serving” brain. Now it is no longer asserted that the spatially visible
world can be reduced to the mathematically constructed world, but
that the observing can be reduced to the observed. From such a
postulate which has nothing to do with the physicists’ axiom, fol¬
lows a series of absurd consequences.
What has been said of the brain as the neurophysiological basis
of behavior of man and animal, is supposed to be true also of the
observer, as if his own brain and the brain which he observes and
interprets in a physiological way were in principle exchangeable. The
relation of an organ to the whole of a living organism, the relation
of an experiencing being to his environment, the relation of the ob¬
server to the observed; the possessive relation, mine, my body, my
brain—all these relations are passed over as unessential. If such pro¬
cedure were justifiable, the distinction between the observer and
the observed, between my brain and a brain could be disregarded.
Everything I or someone else may state about the visible macroscopic
and the microscopic-physical brain and about their mutual relations
could be performed by this brain machine alone. It would not need
a mediator between the visible and the physical world; it could make
this comparison by itself. The machine-brain—thus is the assump¬
tion—can compare itself with the “observable” brain, that is, with
something which is not accessible to it whatsoever.
The first link in the neurophysiologist’s train of thought was the
assumption that the phenomenal world is nothing but an epiphe-
nomenal shadow of the actual cerebral happening. In the substrate
of receptors, tracts, ganglion cells, fibrillae, there was nothing to be
found of the phenomenal world. It was, strictly speaking, an incom¬
prehensible addition to the neural happenings which both physiolo¬
gist and psychologist tried to lay bare. Incomprehensible as it may
be, the phenomenal world, nevertheless, does exist, were it only as
mere “subjective” data for an observer. Actually it is and remains
the originally “given,” the riverbank from which the physiologist
tried to throw a bridge to the other bank of physical realities which
were thought to be immune against the virus of the phenomenal.
There, everything was solid physical events. But then the brain
transposed in such a fashion to the physical sphere is expected to be
able to return to the shores it has left behind, and to have access to
the phenomena; else it could not compare and, in comparing, under-
take the psychophysical reduction. Now it is no longer an observer

who, thanks to the function of his brain, makes the comparison, but
it is the brain in the skull of an observer which accomplishes this
feat. Consequently, this brain, understood as a machine, must be
capable of perceiving another brain as a brain, and must be able to
distinguish the other brain from itself; it will have to know itself.
Although it is but an aggregate of stimulus conductors and excita¬
tion circuits, it would have to be capable of participating in the
visible world of colors and sounds. Furthermore, the surrounding
field and the surrounding world have to be accessible to this brain.
The observer reached his conclusions in a roundabout way;
within the world visible to him he related the behavior of an organ¬
ism to events in its environment, at the same time he established a
connection between its brain and a registering machinery in a realm
interpreted in forms of physics. In order to state anything about the
functions of the brain, he had to take into consideration the events
in the environment of the brain, he had to extend his attention far
beyond the boundaries of the brain and its mechanisms. He had to
be in the position to apprehend the “stimuli” which affected the
brain, independently of the brain and long before they ever affected
it. He had to grasp the registering machines in the change of their
positions in their potential and actual modifications. His statements
refer to a brain as part of his environment and simultaneously to the
happenings in the physical brain dependent upon the events in its
surrounding field. All this is expected to be accomplished by a brain
itself, namely, the observer’s brain. A brain, although limited in its
functions to the actual space-time differential, is nevertheless expec¬
ted to grasp the space and time systems in the totality of their
numerical order—a condition indispensable for all measurements.
Without doubt, the brain machine which is supposed to explain
animal and human behavior has secretly been equipped with gifts of
observation and knowledge; it has become anthropomorphisecl.
Part IV SENSING
AND MOVEMENT
CONSIDERED
HISTORIOLOGICALLY
A.. Preliminary
Characterization of Sensing
(a) Prefatory Remarks
DESCARTES THOUGHT THAT HE HAD SUCCEEDED IN FINDING AN

Archimedian point outside the world of man. He assumed that the
method of radical doubt made it possible for him to set himself
apart from that world to the extent that he could construe and com¬
prehend the material world through exclusively mathematical de¬
ductions. Into this realm of res extensa, he exiled the bodies of man
and animal, including that body he knew as most closely related to
himself: his own.
In this leap, Descartes, the man, transformed himself into a res
cogitans. In his flight from terra to Archimedia, he left his own body
here on earth. The compositum man was thus split irrevocably into
two parts, and only one of them arrived at that Archimedian isle.
Thither it brought with it an earthly remnant, the sensations, which
were supposed to owe their very being to the substantial uniting of
the res cogitans and the res extensa, and in which this union was
manifest. Descartes had no choice but to assign the sensations to
both substances—to the thinking ego as confused thoughts and
to the res extensa as motor processes. The sensations which had to
mediate between body and soul were themselves so radically split
that Descartes, in speaking of sensation, had said “perhaps that
which I have in sensation does not exist apart from me.”1 The
separation was inevitably driven to the point that sensations had to
189
190 Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
be shown to be mere appearances. Though the abrogation of qualities

and substantial forms and with it the dichotomy of the sensations
into worldless qualities and qualityless motions opened the door to
mathematical physics, the understanding of human existence just as
imperatively demanded their reunion.
“To divert the mind from the senses” is one of Descartes’ direc¬
tives to those who seek certainty. He demands a turning away from
the customary trust in sensory experience. Indeed, even more: By
arguing that an evil demon might conceivably have created both the
world and ourselves, he requires that we doubt sensory experience to
the radical extent of comporting ourselves as though it did not even
exist. “I will now shut my eyes, stop my ears, and turn myself away
from all my senses. I will even efface from my thoughts all the images
of corporeal things, or at least (for that is hardly possible) esteem
them as vain and false.”1
Descartes’ goal is to develop mathematical physics, that is, to
know the world. This he does not do by looking at the world, but
rather by turning away from it and looking within himself. “I shall
converse only with myself and, looking deeper within, I shall try to
gain a better and more trustworthy knowledge of myself.” Descartes
tries to ground an autonomous human science and science of man
in consciousness of self. Gilson2 has convincingly pointed out that
Descartes had already conceived and worked out his physics long
before his metaphysics. It was not only concern with external circum¬
stances which made him publish his principle works in reverse order
(the metaphysics appearing first). Cartesian physics demanded as its
foundation a nature stripped not only of God but also of man. Only
in his metaphysics, with its radical division of finite substances and
its elevation of the infinite substances, could Descartes obtain the
ontological basis which his physics demanded. At the same time,
with the allegedly absolute certainty of the cogito sum he insulated
himself against the claims of theology, traditional philosophy, and
scepticism. But at what price? Man and animal were separated by an
unbridgeable abyss; man was no longer a citizen of that world which
he strived to understand. He became one who looks upon this world
as though from without, and no longer with human eyes. That con¬
sciousness of self, one’s own within into which Descartes tries to see,
is the 7 of a worldless, bodyless being. Descartes’ incision thus runs
right through human existence itself.
Descartes’ difficulties in reconciling his anthropology and his
theory of sensations and passions with his metaphysics are merely an
PRELIMINARY CHARACTERIZATION OF SENSING
*9*
expression of failure actually to dissociate himself from the human

world. He did not reach his Archimedian point. He tried to construe
man through the rationality of the Cartesian ego, but all he proved
was that he, Rene Descartes, essayed his metaphysics and physics in
his, in our world.
In doubting, Descartes sought to purify himself of everything
doubtful, especially the deceptions of the senses, until the doubting
itself remained as the only indubitable. This dubito he interpreted at
once as pure cogitatio, in which the mediator believes he discovers
himself as res cogitans. But is it not just the human being which re¬
veals itself in doubting, in a doubting based on grounds of one par¬
ticular sort or another? The reason for doubting is the possibility of
deception together with those insights which spring from the bond¬
age and limitedness of human existence. Bound to the Now and
Here, we can conceptually transcend the narrowness of these limits,
and by bringing this Now and Here into an all-embracing frame of
reference, we can comprehend our own existence. Both of these, our
bondage and the possibility of overcoming it, are the necessary con¬
ditions of doubt. Doubt does not imply the being of a res cogitans,
but rather of a strictly human being, for, from beginning to end, it
never leaves its starting point. Knowledge in both its everyday and
scientific form remains grounded in human existence. It is man who,
in his world, builds science. The human world, as it reveals itself to
us in our sensory experience, must be such that in it knowledge
is possible.
In its statements and propositions, science breaks through the
horizon of everyday experience. Extraordinary forms of space, un¬
imaginable velocities, the infinitely large and the infinitely small,
light years and atomic nuclei are concepts which, though not always
understandable, are yet familiar to us. The scientist, however, who
uses such concepts, remains as speaker and observer, confined to our
everyday world. He measures radioactivity, counts cosmic rays, but
he does it with the help of instruments lighting up before his eyes,
ticking next to his ears in countable intervals. In complete contrast
to Descartes’ directive to distrust the senses, the scientist acts with
naive confidence in his sensory experience. We have called the con¬
tents of sensory experience, upon which rests the practical behavior
of men among each other, and among animals and things, the “axi¬
oms of everyday life.”3 A further examination of the presuppositions
of the everyday world which are taken as self-evident and are there¬
fore unspoken, will pave the way to an understanding of sensing.
(b) On Expansive and Constrictive Learning

. . . the storms have ceased;
The gently smiling Zephyros
Calms now the bluish mirror of the waves.
And even now the swallow, friend of children,
Bearing clay and blades of grass in his beak,
Sings and builds again its chambers on the roof.4
Thus fly the swallows still. They build their nests now just as
they did in the times of Marcus Agentarius, Homer, and in all times.
They mate and they nest, they hatch and train their young, they
leave and return, today as then. Millennia have not changed the
pattern of their existence; every generation repeats the same pro¬
cedures. Animals do not learn, although the individual animal does.
But how different is this learning from all genuine human learn¬
ing, be it that of an individual or generation. It is true that the
generations of man, one after another, complete the same circle as
well. We know of no change in man’s natural propensities since the
time of Homer. But notwithstanding the sameness of these propensi¬
ties, no generation begins in the same place as that generation which
preceded it. Each generation effects a change upon its world and
leaves behind a good or evil legacy of new, self-made possessions.
Animals create no new world, they follow the beaten path and stay
within their natural environment.
There are two kinds of learning: an expansive, gnostic learning
and a constrictive, pathic learning. The former rests on the power of
the mind to reflect, to negate creatively and thus make it possible for
man to transcend the limits of his simple existence. Man learns inso¬
far as he ceases to react directly. He can learn because he, as part of
the whole, as the encompassed, can think the encompassing.
However, the individual animal which learns never ceases to react
directly. The learning of the animal (by which is not meant the
gradual maturation and manifestation of individual functions such
as running, swimming, flying, etc.) concerns the acquiring of habits,
a process which corresponds to that of ageing. The forming of habits
is a passing from the possible to the actual, a loss of “prospective po¬
tencies” (Driesch). Habit makes faster and more precise reaction pos¬
sible. It is useful in normal cases; that is, in cases of exact repetition
of circumstances, and harmful in every unusual case, where precisely
the monotony, narrowness, and thus the inadequacy of the accus-
PRELIMINARY CHARACTERIZATION OF SENSING 193
tomed reaction becomes evident. Each habit is bought at the cost of

other potentialities.
If we are accustomed to certain traffic regulations, it is not hard
for us to imagine a diametrically opposed set of regulations in com¬
plete detail. But how great are the pains of actual re-orientation?
Changing habits is, as a rule, even more difficult than acquiring
them, the breaking of habits is usually done only at the cost of a most
painful confusion. Adults who learn a new language in a foreign
country have a hard time and they sometimes feel that, rather
than learning a new language, they are unlearning their own.
A habit excludes kindred habits because all habituation is based
on a process of constrictive, pathic learning. It is not we who control
our fully-developed habits; they control us. We do not develop them,
we find them ingrown in us. In the forming of habits, we are a kind
of plastic material which itself is modified in the process of habit
formation. When the process of habit formation is completed, the
earlier condition has ceased to exist: we cannot, at least not immedi¬
ately, restore it. We have exchanged one particular mode of being
for another.
One can accustom oneself only to a particular order. The acquisi¬
tion of a habit is a transition from less to more determinate be¬
havior. We have already indicated that such a process is based on a
process of constriction. Here, however, the determination of that
which is determinable is not effected by means of language or com¬
mon consent. Signals are not symbolic signs for an animal, nor are
they indications of something present at hand. They are, over a par¬
ticular stretch of time, experienced in immediate sensory intuition.
All moments that are part of the formation of a signal must be no¬
ticed by the animal. To notice means that the world here announces
itself, presses in upon us. All such individual announcements are
always, however, only determinations of something that is more
generally determinable, the nature of which it is the purpose of our
investigation to understand.
I am asking: What must be the nature of a being which, by the
pathic process of accustomization, can be brought to react to signals;
which, therefore, in its relation to the world, can experience “ap¬
proach” and the phenomenon of the “in between,” which can “direct
itself toward something”? This question arises out of our critique
of Pavlovian experimentation. Pavlov’s experiments with condi¬
tioned reflexes take place within that sphere of animal experience
characterized by sensation and motion.
Thus I have, in a rough way, already answered the question as to
i94 Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
what kind of being can experience approach, direction, and the “in
between:’’ a sensing and self-moving being.
(c) The World in Which the

Animal Understands Us.
Symbiotic Understanding
It is in the world of sensing that we encounter animals; this
is the world shared by man and animal. In it, we understand the
animal and, even more important, the animal understands us.
Let us take the following simple case: I whistle for my dog. He
hears me and then he listens to me and follows me, at least most of
the time. Instead of whistling, I might have called him with the
same result. I could have called him by name or commanded him to
“come here,’’ and if he were slow in coming, I could have emphasized
my command by the threatening exclamation “will you come here!”
until it finally suited him to come. In such a case, what does the
animal understand? How does he understand a human being? Cer¬
tainly he understands the call or the whistling as an utterance, the
man as an uttering being, and the utterances as directives. It is
equally certain that he does not understand the language as such,
that is, as words carrying a general meaning.5 Instead of the cus¬
tomary words, others could have been used; indeed, any meaningless
sounds belonging to no language at all might have sufficed as long
as the tone of voice were the right one, expressing a command, an
allurement, a threat. The individual lingual utterances which I
direct to my dog produce the desired effect only because he obeys
me in general. The way a dog understands his master is no more
than a mere articulated form of animal understanding in general.
Animal understanding is a symbiotic understanding. All individ¬
ual processes of this understanding are only determinate aspects of
symbiotic behavior. Animal understanding is a following and a flee¬
ing, an understanding of the alluring and the frightening.
The primary stage of sensory experiencing is that of separating
and uniting, whose cardinal form—the intake of nourishment and
procreation—is served through sensing. The sensing being lives in
the world and is, as a part of this world, bent on uniting itself with
or separating itself from other parts. All separating and uniting is im-
manently moved Being; better, a being-in-motion. Motion and sensa¬

tion exhibit, therefore, an intimate interrelationship which I shall
have to describe and make understood. The theory of sensation can¬
not be dealt with apart from the theory of motion. Whenever the
processes of motion and that of sensation are considered apart from
each odier, this interrelationship is disturbed and cannot be restored
simply by reuniting the separate parts. No subsequent combining or
re-assembling of motion and sensation can restore this inner relation¬
ship. What it means to say that processes distinct in their manifesta¬
tions as are sensation and motion are intimately interconnected will
be examined after the most important characteristics of sensing have
been uncovered.
Growth and maturation are processes in the organism which re¬
quire that certain substances be taken in and metabolized. For ani¬
mals, however, as distinguished from plants, ingestion and excretion
refer to a relationship to the world which can be described as uniting
and separating; or, more accurately, as uniting oneself with, and
separating oneself from. This relationship to the world which is ex¬
pressed as the uniting and separating of oneself, and its realization
in the opening and closing of oneself to the other, is the primary ex¬
perience of animal life. What we know of the higher forms of animal
life is gleaned from that world in which we and the animals have
a mutual understanding; as to the lower forms, we draw our con¬
clusions by way of analogies.
We have said that the understanding of the animal is a symbiotic
understanding. The animal understands utterances, but not as indi¬
vidual signs of other objects; rather, these utterances are understood
only in the immediate context of the animal’s own action and di-
rectedness. The animal, insofar as it is awake, is always at the point
of uniting and separating. Its understanding is an entering into or
turning away from a communal directedness. It does not compre¬
hend the other objectively as something in and for itself—that, in¬
deed, would be a kind of cognition. Insofar as it experiences the
world, it experiences it as a world which shows itself as either agree¬
able or recalcitrant. To the animal, everything—colors, smells,
sounds, the forms and kinds of motion—is a manifested utterance,
and only such utterances does it experience. The world reveals itself
to the animal only insofar as the world’s individual parts are (in
accordance with the dispositions of the animal’s species) taken as
utterance, action, allurement, or threat.
Man’s original understanding of communicated expressions is
also just such an immediate grasping that is completely bound to
ig6 Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
his own action and direction. In our intercourse with others, there
are innumerable instances of reacting without knowing what we are
reacting to; indeed, without even knowing that we are reacting. We
are not aware of such reaction because of the fact that it is and re¬
mains tied to the immediacy of our own particular acts in progress.
Our ability to provide, when and where we will, an articulated ac¬
count of our understanding of another’s behavior is grossly inade¬
quate when contrasted with the richness, surety, and scope of our
actual reactions.
The immediate grasping of expressions by and among human
beings which grows out of an alleged communion never becomes a
knowing. There can therefore be no objection to asserting that ani¬
mals understand man, other animals and “things” of the world in
general, as that which expresses itself.
(d) The Alingual World
The world animals live in and in which, in their way, they

understand man, is a world without speech. To be sure, one can
speak to animals, but what they react to is the tone, the type of
sound, rather than the word.
Man can substitute linguistic utterances with written communi¬
cation. An animal, however, has no proper use for written or printed
pages, and communication with it is necessarily bound to the sub¬
stance of the linguistic sound. An alingual community is limited
to the present. Among human beings, also, oral communication can¬
not be fully rendered or replaced by the written word. Conversation
contains more than mere content; it contains something which can¬
not accurately be expressed in writing.
A mother can threaten to punish her child with the words, “The
fun will begin when I get you home.” Or someone can say to an¬
other, “Oh, my, but I’ve heard some lovely things about you.” In
both cases, the speaker means just the opposite of what the words
actually signify, and the listener knows it too. He understands it
from the tone in which the words are spoken. The contrast between
the true meaning that is disclosed by the tone of voice and the lit¬
eral meaning of the words simply emphasizes the seriousness of the
threat. On the other hand, a look, a glance, a vibration of the voice
may suggest that things are not so bad after all, or that one does
not really mean what is said. In any case, the listener relies more
on the sound and the gesture than on the literal meaning of the
PRELIMINARY CHARACTERIZATION OF SENSING
words. In conversation, it is tonality which makes the music. In con¬

versation, and especially in everyday conversation, there are added
to the actual conceptual material some ingredients of prelinguistic
understanding. All the elementary esthetics of the senses stand under
its control. Nobody can avoid it as long as he remains within a part¬
nership. Such a partnership is, however, of the most general and
transitory kind; it changes from moment to moment. The tone in
a conversation obtains its effect only in the particular place and the
particular, momentary Now in which it is voiced. It cannot be trans¬
posed from its particular place, and is effective only in an actual,
extant community of conversants. The animal is confined during
his whole life to such an actuality. Man can abolish the partnership
insofar as he observes it, which is not to say that he first accomplishes
this detachment from community and then observes it. Both are part
of the metamorphosis of communication with the world which takes
place when sensing becomes cognitive knowing. The knower steps
out of that fleeting, transitory community; indeed, he must do so
if he is in fact to be able to know and speak. Overwhelming emotion
enforces silence, but he who soberly and cooly observes removes
himself from such powerful emotions as terror, anxiety, or ecstacy.
With his upright posture and gait, man has freed himself from
the immediate contact with the earth that is shared by all species
of animals. His unfettered mode of walking is not to be compared
to any sort of animal motion, whether it be that of the quadrupeds
of that of animals which swim, fly, or crawl. The snail is like a plant
—bound, as it were, to the soil; every inch it traverses must be cov¬
ered with its whole body. Man, however, often suffers in his free¬
dom. He longs for the joy of living from moment to moment and
craves the ability to absorb himself in the alingual world.
But man is barred from paradise; for him, only an artificial para¬
dise is possible. We never can completely attain to the alingual
world, and to do so would be to renounce that world which is au¬
thentically human. Even our moments of most vital and vivid en¬
joyment contain occasions for reflection and negation. Our descrip¬
tion of this alingual world must, therefore, necessarily follow the
via negativa; whenever we try to speak of the world-without-speech,
we are forced to use negations.
Sensing is not ruled by the “I think” which, according to Kant,
must accompany all apperception. In sensing, nothing is apperceived.
The sensing being, the animal, does not confront its world as a
thinking being, but is, rather, related to it simply in uniting and
separating. Sensing contains no moments of judging and is thus not
to be verified by propositions and judgments. It is possible, indeed,
to have judgments which compare two perceptions, but none which

so refer to two phases of sensing. Sensing changes from moment to
moment, depending on the instinctual drives and moods of the
sensing individual and depending, also, on the changes in what
appears out there.
The alingual world of sensing is a world without signs, proclama-
tory signs being only an apparent exception. By means of them,
sensing directs itself through to that which has already announced
itself as close by. What there entices, entices as itself, and what fright¬
ens, frightens as itself. Allure and fright do not arise in a world of
neutral givens under the influence of former experiences of pleas¬
ure and pain. The alluring and the frightening are not mnemonic
signs affixed to indifferent qualities. Light, color, sound, smell, mov¬
ing shapes entice or frighten directly in their immediate appearance.
When we are frightened by a loud crashing, our fright is not the
result of former experiences of danger and threat. The sudden alarm
is in itself frightening. That which terrifies or allures can do so even
over and against what experience has taught us. We cannot resist its
power; we are not presented with a choice. Reflection is reduced to
silence before the immediate force of the uncanny, the terrifying,
or the powerfully seductive. The alingual world is dominated by
sensing in its unbroken directness; but also by its narrowness. In¬
stincts, too, may lead into error, and the alingual world of sensing
is also an imperfect world.
The alingual resists the efforts of self-understanding. What has
been preformed and prethought by language cloaks that which is
experienced without language as soon as we attempt to understand
our experience or even try to express its content. Indeed, it takes a
most unusual experience, one far removed from our ordinary kind
even to draw our attention to that which we experience in this alin¬
gual world. Should someone, however, attempt to describe what he
has experienced, say, under the influence of hashish or mescaline,
he lacks the proper words, he begins to stammer or makes use of
such odd expressions or similes which seem borrowed from lyric
poetry that the sceptic can immediately challenge the genuineness of
the experience or the accuracy of the description. Because he does
not recognize the genuineness of such an experience, the sceptic mis¬
interprets the description as an artistic product and as ad hoc
stylizations that have arisen under strange influences. Yet it is just
here, as it is so often in pathological cases, that something is revealed
which is common to all experience, but which is concealed from
normal intellection.
The phobic patient, without the aid of such toxins, experiences

the power of the alingual. Neither reflection nor design will protect
him from these forces, and the more he resists, the more unavoidable
and terrible will be his defeat. The longer he resists, the more dis¬
jointed the fixed order of things becomes. Everything grows confused
and disintegrated. The reports of patients who experience such
things are, however, usually confined to an account of the circum¬
stances which provoked the anxiety. We learn that the patient could
not bear to sit in the middle of a row at the theater, or that he could
not tolerate the canopy over his box, or that he cannot sit in the
cabin of his sailboat, and that he could not stay under the protective
covering during a storm, but that he felt much better as soon as the
cover was lifted enough to let in a few rays of light. But he can say
nothing of the actual experiential content of such episodes; as their
victim, he can find no words to fit them. He thus has no defense
against the reproaches of the healthy ones who watch his abnormal
behavior. The healthy person judges, according to the order of our
perceptual world, whether or not an experience of fear is justified.
And in that perceptual order only that which has a name actually
exists. He finds it ridiculous that someone cannot sit in the middle
of a row, but is perfectly comfortable, like anyone else, on the aisle;
he finds it just as foolish that someone should be terrified by a drawn
cover only to find relief when it is lifted just a little. It would be for
the victim to speak and give a name to the unutterable so that the
healthy person could understand him.6 But just like the healthy
person, the victim is bound to a language which is related to the
common, perceptual world, and he can therefore find no words
which would both do justice to his feelings and be intelligible to
the other. The conflict ends unresolved. The unutterable remains
such even to him who suffers under it. That which makes itself
known through expression is, as such, present in a mode quite dif¬
ferent from a thing presenting itself in its attributes.7 In the state¬
ments, “this table is round’’ and “this man is angry,” the word “is”
does not have the same meaning.
(e) The Primary Grasping of Expression
It would perhaps be better to speak in this context not of

understanding, but rather of grasping an expression. Such grasping
of an expression is to understanding the expression what sensing is
to perception. Understanding is a kind of cognition. But at the level

of this grasping of expressions, nothing is cognitively known. What
the animal understands does not become for it an independent
object as does the object which is cognitively known to man. The ani¬
mal forms with the object, in unmediated communication, a com¬
munity of mutual directedness so firm that it guides and dominates
the animal. The knower, on the other hand, masters his knowing
and, through it, the object.
We can move in only one direction, and the direction taken ex¬
cludes all others. But, in knowing, a plurality of directions is simul¬
taneously surveyed. When we grasp an expression, a communion is
established which seizes and changes us, which holds and confines
us; while in knowing, it is we who seize the world, who appropriate
it and detach ourselves from the particular, attaining the full
scope of an horizon which, ultimately, we transcend.
At this stage of the discussion, I must therefore not formulate
the problem in a way that treats expression as if it were “the mani¬
festation of a psychic inwardness by a vital outwardness which
though ontologically foreign to it, yet somehow corresponds to it
and represents it.”8 With such a premise, one would have to assume
as given in the process of understanding an expression the subsis¬
tence of another being, an X, within whom certain experiences take
place which must necessarily remain hidden because they are essen¬
tially private. But there are also supposed to be movements, so-called
expressive movements, by which we are able, at least to a degree, to
gain knowledge of the psychic processes within the other.
The problem of expression would thus have to be split into two
main issues. The first would be the problem as to the relation be¬
tween the expressive movements and the inward processes; the sec¬
ond would be that of the possibility and reliability of understanding
these relationships—the problem, namely, of the observer appre¬
hending the significatory reference of expressive movements.
When put in this manner, the problem is obviously posed incor¬
rectly, for we do not apprehend the hidden interior of an alien or¬
ganism by means of expressive movements serving as signs of psychic
processes. In grasping an expression, we are already communicating.
As self-directing beings we “understand” the other, at this level, from
our own perspective and direction. We do not apprehend the other
as objectively standing over and against us and think of him as sim¬
ilarly confronting the world; but rather we “understand” each other
together in the world. We originally grasp the world, not as sep¬
arately existing, but in its activity. In sensory communication, we
direct ourselves to the world and the world directs itself toward us.
The states of mind which we immediately grasp are not isolated,
worldless states; they all have a communicative meaning. That is
why, in a person who is estranged from the world or in some way
inaccessible to the world, we can apprehend only that he is thinking,
but not, unless he speaks, what he is thinking. The states of mind
hidden within are not interior states; they are in communication
with the world, and not thoughts about the world. Therefore, in the
primary grasping of expressions, only that thing is apprehended
which is literally of direct concern to him who apprehends. Much
of the phenomena of expression which the observer can understand
remains, at this stage, completely hidden.
Sensing is, therefore, a sympathetic experiencing. It is directed
to the physiognomic characteristics of the alluring and the fright¬
ening. And its characteristics are those of the “with” in its unfold¬
ing, of the “towards” and the “away from.” By pointing to that
which is sympathetic in it, I am by no means interpreting sensing
in a sentimental way as an expression of some universal harmony.
The concept of the sympathetic is the more comprehensive, encom¬
passing both the separating and the uniting, fleeing and following,
fear and enticement—that is, encompassing the sym- and the anti¬
pathic alike. Symbiotic understanding can, in particular cases, de¬
velop only when the possibilities of both fleeing and following are
left open. A caged bird which cannot retreat from those who ap¬
proach it will require a long time to understand the friendly attitude
of the people in its environment. It becomes “touchy” or, like many
captive animals, irritable and ornery. Following is truly following
only if it is possible for the animal also to flee. A turning toward
arises only out of the reversal of a turning away. Any external cur¬
tailment of these polar relationships prevents or destroys symbiotic
understanding. Sensing gives us the world in a perspective; it be¬
comes, as it were, our own. Which is to say that, in sensing, we have
an environment, but not yet the world.9
Sensing is not knowing. The appearances are not mentally trans¬
formed into things with fixed properties which can be found at vari¬
ous times at various homogenous and thus interchangeable spatial
points. Sensing never ceases to be existence with a perspective.10 The
sensing being never gains a foothold outside the world of appear¬
ance. Every such being is what it is only at its particular place and
time. What threatens here need not, indeed cannot, threaten over
there. This particularity affects the individual’s entire situation. Sens¬
ing has its own particular spatio-temporal structure which I have
yet to spell out. But we can be sure that it cannot be that of objec¬
tive, metric space, nor that of objective, metric time, independent
of space.
The sensing being experiences himself as a part of the world in
which he is placed. He does not, however, experience himself in the
same way in which we see him as we encounter him in the world.
For each of us he is another being, one among many. But for him¬
self he is never simply a part among other parts. He can leave one
part alone and apprehend another. He is one, and the rest are the
multitude of others; each Here has many Theres. We are a part of
the world, but we are also related to the whole of the world; we are
in the world and at the same time we stand over and against the
world. It is for this reason alone that there is a path leading from
sensing to knowing; and that is why there exists the possibility of
relinquishing perspective. Perspective is a bridge which leads from
the many to the just-so-many, which leads to a plurality that can
be surveyed and organized as a totality.
6 B. Considered
Communication
Plurality
SENSING IS A SYMPATHETIC EXPERIENCE. IN SENSING, WE EXPERI-

ence ourselves in and with our world. This “with” is not a conjoin¬
ing of a piece of experience “world” and another piece of experience
“self.” The unitary phenomenon of sensing is always an unfolding
toward the poles of world and self. Sensing is bound to its world in
a way that must be sharply differentiated from the manner in which
knowing stands over against its world. We therefore must refrain
SENSING CONSIDERED AS A MODE OF COMMUNICATION 203
from making the subject of sensing into a consciousness, a conscious¬

ness which contains the individual sensations within it and which
unites them in a process of thought, or which fastens together the
separate sensations with the cement of custom and habit, a conscious¬
ness, finally, which by thinking sets itself apart from that which it
has brought together. How can that which is within appear outside?
How can things which are inherently separate and isolated be
united? And even if we could make such a uniting of individual
sense impressions sound plausible, how are we to conceive of the
bringing together of different regions of sensory impressions, or, fi¬
nally, the bringing together of sensing and moving? The completely
separated allows of no uniting just as the thoroughly united admits
of no separation. The differentiated must contain in it the poten¬
tiality of union; the principle of separation is fundamentally iden¬
tical with the principle of union.
If, on the other hand, we consider individual sense impressions
simply as modifications and specific limitations of the relation of
self to world, and if we think of the particular modalities of sense
as various modes of communication1 between self and world, then,
and only then, is the problem of uniting the separated freed from in¬
superable difficulty.
In separating the modalities of sense as it has, psychology has
followed physiology too closely. But if we want to examine the con¬
tent of our experience, then we must rid ourselves of all narrow
limitations and not allow ourselves to be uncritically guided by the
results of physics and physiology. These two sciences can teach us
nothing of the actual contents of our experiencing.
Separating the senses according to their “specific sense energies’’
and arranging them as modes of communication cannot be recon¬
ciled. Seeing is to be separated physiologically from hearing accord¬
ing to the disparity of the stimuli (electro-magnetic vibrations or
sound waves), according to the difference between the perceptual
organs (the eye and the ear), and also according to the diversity of
the modal data (color and sound). This differentiation is a radical
one in physiological and subsequent psychological considerations. It
is true that physiology studies the activity of the organs that belong
to a unitary organism, but it must, while still holding on to the idea
of unity of the organism, give its attention to the particular indi¬
vidual functions as such. It cannot concretely hold to the notion of
organismic unity which we are considering: the inner connection
between seeing and hearing.
The radical separation of functions is apparent in the way text-
books of physiology present the functions of seeing and hearing.

Such a separation makes possible the specialization we meet in prac¬
tical medicine. There we find eye doctors and ear doctors. The for¬
mer investigate the condition and function of the eye and examines
it as to its functional efficiency and its capability as a builder of the
perceptual world. The same is true of the ear doctor who examines
that organ and the function of hearing. Occasionally, such a special¬
ist may entertain doubt as to the completeness of his examination, in
which case he sends his patient to another kind of specialist to sup¬
plement his findings. Such a referral officially sanctions the extrinsic
relationship between functions. The eye and the ear have as little
inherent interconnection as do sound and light considered as physi¬
cal agents, and color and sound considered as distinct modalities;
and thus the amazement when faced with the synesthesias!
Disregarding such radical differences, psychology, however, rec¬
ognizes a uniting of the individual sense impressions. When the sen¬
sory organs are excited, the mind is said to have impressions of
sound, or color or extension or smells or pain—and to have them
in the same way. Seeing and hearing are differentiated only in respect
to the differences inherent in that which is sensed. That is, to see is
to have color and brightness, to hear is to have sound and noises. In
both cases, the having is the same.
But when we, on the other hand, differentiate seeing and hear¬
ing as modes of communication, we mean to say that this having
is also modified. We are saying that seeing and hearing differ not
only with respect to the physical stimuli, functional organs, and
kinds of objects sensed, but much more essentially in regard to the
specific manner in which the self is linked to its world. When de¬
scribing experiences, we are well advised to disregard a priori no¬
tions as to the nature of the participating organs. In the process of
experiencing, seeing and hearing, the seen and the heard differenti¬
ate themselves quite effectively without requiring any knowledge on
our part as to the construction or function of the sense organs—just
as our physical movement is independent of any knowledge we may
have of the muscles and their functions. We move by means of our
musculature and we sense by means of our sense-organs.2
When theory dissolves the community of self and world, the self
is removed to a place outside the world and remains there alone
and by itself; likewise, when sensing is theoretically deprived of its
inherent communicative content, and when sensations are thought
of as the pure, atomistically structured material of detached sense
data, then any true union of the separated becomes impossible. The
world of the senses loses its stability and crumbles into so many
separate particles like a tablet dissolving in a glass of water. And

only imagination and thought can, after the fact, bring about a re¬
union of the fragmented material. If that theory were correct which
claims that “only in thinking are the heterogeneous individual sense
data brought together into a whole,” and that the sensory world
“acquires its own being only by virtue of the judgment,”3 then we
would be left with only two alternatives: either to understand ani¬
mals as reflex automatons, or to confer upon them the power to
think and judge. Both assumptions are equally unsatisfactory.
If the sensory world, if animal experience is to have any mean¬
ing, we must choose an entirely different point of departure. We
must abandon the assumption of isolated individual sense-data as
well as the notion of sensing as a mere “having” and the view of the
self as an isolated ego. As individual data, color and sound and visual
and tactile sensations remain forever separated.
In his An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, Berkeley pro¬
ceeds from the supposition that distances as such are not visible, that
distances cannot be perceived by means of the optic sense. The actual
objects of visual perception are for him neither outside the mind nor
images of objects outside the mind. To create the illusion that dis¬
tances as such are visible, one needs the mediation of the sense of
touch. But “the objects of sight and those of touch are two distinct
things.”4 “How comes it to pass that a set of ideas, altogether differ¬
ent from tangible ideas, should nevertheless suggest them to us, there
being no necessary connection between them? To which the proper
answer is, that this is done in virtue of an arbitrary connection, in¬
stituted by the Author of nature.”5
These are classical formulations. Indeed, if sight and touch are,
as processes of sensing, the same, and different only in regard to the
sensed object, then there must exist a radical and literally unbridge¬
able gulf between them, the only connection possible being one that
is external and arbitrary. If, however, seeing and touching differ as
modalities of sensing, and if the object of seeing belongs to a differ¬
ent mode of communication between self and world than that of
touching, then the bringing together of such different objects in the
sphere of sensation (and thus in the ambit of animal experience) is
no longer an unsolvable riddle. As objects of perception, color and
sound are strictly differentiated from each other. But in the seeing
of colors and in the hearing of sounds, these being different modes of
sympathetic communication between self and world, color and sound
are united. “Light, sound, etc. are modifications, individual instances
of the species called ‘sense’ ”6 (Novalis).
Seeing and hearing, understood as modes of communication, are
not radically disparate. The principle of unity of this multiplicity

does not have to be imported from an external source, because in
this case that which is differentiated manifests itself as it appears, as a
differentiation of something unitary. The question is thus no longer
directed to the possibility of a uniting, but rather to the circum¬
stances which in a particular case occasion this, and not another,
bringing together.
I have elsewhere discussed the problem of the multiplicity of the
senses.7 There I tried to show that to each sense there corresponds a
definite, specific mode of communication between self and world, a
notion which I spelled out with respect to seeing and hearing and
with respect to the existential mode of color and sound, the pathic
element in seeing and hearing, and, finally, with regard to the inter¬
relationship of modes of communication and types of motion. The
conclusion reached was that space, as such, and distances, as such,
are not perceived via the senses as constant givens, but that, at any
given time, various forms of spatiality correspond to the individual
senses.
Of color, for example, it can be said that it always appears to us
as over and against us, out there, limited to a particular place, de¬
limiting and dividing space into sections, manifesting itself as next-
to or behind-one-another. Sound, on the other hand, seems to have
an existence all of its own; it comes to us, reaches and holds us,
floats past us, fills space and hurries through it, and divides itself
according to a temporal succession into parts that are after another.
“While sound moves toward us, color remains fixed to its place, it
demands that the experiencing subject turn to it, that he look at it
and actively master it.” All such elements belong not to the object as
such, nor, indeed, to the subject alone, but, rather, belong to the
perspectival aspect of sensory experience, to that communication be¬
tween self and world that is lived through in sensory experience.
The Doctrine of
Immanence Sensations
Three questions must carefully be distinguished: (1) the prob¬
lem as to the content of sensory impressions; (2) that of their value
for knowledge, and (3) that of their mode of being. At the moment,
it is the first problem which concerns me. I am now considering sens-
ing without regard to either physics or physiology. I am not asking

whether or not the senses transmit a true image of the world, nor am
I inquiring after the specific conditions of sensing; what interests me
is solely and exclusively the content of sensing itself.
Pain caused by a knife wound, for instance, will scarcely be able
to give us any knowledge of the spatial configuration of the knife.
Pain cannot help us in the construction of either space, as such, or
of things extended in space. This does not mean, however, that pain
lacks its own spatial characterization simply because it does not have
access to definite, reproducable and recognizable spatial data.
The tendency to understand sensing from the point of view of
knowing must lead to the grossest misinterpretation of sensing as it
is in itself. If pain is approached only as a cognitive function, that
is, in respect to the knowledge it gives us of the physical world, then
sensations of pain can easily be viewed as merely subjective data, un¬
trustworthy and locatable only “in” consciousness. The problem we
are treating here is important enough for us to locate it once more
at its source. I refer again, therefore, to a passage from Descartes, for
it was with Descartes that all these questions were traditionally for¬
mulated for modern science. In the fragment, “Traite de la lumi^re,”8
Descartes begins with the question as to the difference between our
sensations and the things which evoke them. He says, “With the aim
in mind of inquiring into the problems of light, I first refer to the
fact that there is a difference between the sensation we have of it.
That is, the idea which is formed in our imagination through the
mediation of our eyes,—and that in the object which calls forth this
sensation, that is, that in the flame or the sun which is given the
name light. Although it is generally assumed that the ideas formed
in our minds completely resemble the objects they are derived from,
I see no reason at all why we should believe that this is actually so.”
Descartes then provides some examples to substantiate what he
has said. He points out that there is not the slightest resemblance
between words and the things they represent, nor between the sound
of words and the sound-waves which evoke in us the impression of
sound.
A man opens his mouth, moves his tongue, expels some breath. In all these
actions I cannot find anything that is not totally at variance with the ideas
of sound, which they force us to imagine. [The strongest support for his
argument, Descartes believes, is provided by the “fact” that similar condi¬
tions prevail in the tactile area.] The sense of touch is among all our senses
the one usually considered as the least deceptive and most reliable. If,
therefore, I can now show that through the sense of touch we also receive
images which in no way resemble the objects which evoke them, then it
should not seem strange if I say the same of the sense of sight. At any event,
everyone knows that the ideas of tickling and pain which we form in our
minds when external objects touch us bear no resemblance whatever to these
objects. Move a feather lightly over the lips of a child who is falling asleep
and he will feel that he is being tickled. Do you believe that the idea of
tickling which he forms suggests to him anything about this feather? A
soldier returns from a skirmish. During the heat of battle he may have
been wounded without noticing it. But now, as he begins to grow calmer,
he feels the pain and believes he has been wounded. The field-doctor is
called, the soldier’s gear and clothing are removed, and it is discovered
that what he has been feeling was only a buckle or a strap which slipped
below his weapons and irritated his skin by its pressure. If, from the pres¬
sure of the strap, he had been able to form an image of the strap, there
would have been no need for the field-doctor to tell him what he had
actually felt.
Although sensations do not resemble the things which touch us,

although they are only signs of the existence of external objects, they
can, nevertheless, be directional signs—that is, signs by which the
other, the world, discloses itself. For it seems that it is just in sensa¬
tions of pain that we feel the world attacking and invading us. Al¬
though we do not, in pain, “clearly and distinctly know” the world
in its particulars, the world does appear to us as immediately dis¬
cernible, though, to be sure, not as objective, universal data. When
we suffer pain, the world presses upon us and overwhelms us. In
pain, too, we experience the world from a perspective, as related to
us. And pain, like all modes of sensing, is a sympathetic experienc¬
ing: In pain we experience ourselves with and in the world. We call
pain piercing, stabbing, cutting, splitting, cracking. By such verbal
characterizations, we try to articulate the sense of what is happening,
namely, its direction, its becoming, its being-with in uniting and
separating.
But for Descartes, sensations are not directional signs; in them
the other, the world itself, does not disclose itself. Thus he says in
Principles I, 46: “When, for instance, someone feels a severe pain,
then the knowledge that he has this pain may be very clear, but, for
all that, not at all distinct. For he usually confuses such knowledge
with the false judgment of the nature of the pain, assuming as he
does that something exists in the part affected which is similar to the
sensation of pain of which he is alone clearly conscious.”9
Neither Descartes nor Berkeley after him ever made it clear what
this being-in of sensations or thoughts was supposed to mean. For

obviously, the sensation is not the mind itself, but rather something
else instead, which the mind becomes aware of when thinking. Sen¬
sations must be something different from thoughts, for otherwise
they could not, even through the mediation of other thoughts, be
signs of external things. Indeed, even this otherness is not adequately
explained. Why are pure sensations usually confused with a false
judgment as to the similarity between the sensations and the struc¬
ture of external objects? Descartes, to be sure, does discuss the ques¬
tion as to whether sensations always deceive, and he comes to the
conclusion, by referring to the perfection of God, that the senses do
not deceive us in every respect. Our present problem, however, is not
that of the veracity of sensations, but rather the question as to imma¬
nent structure of sensing. We are asking whether or not in sensing
something other is experienced together with ourselves.
(c) New Insights Articulated Within

Traditional
What we have called communication has been well recognized
by modern psychology. Katz refers to it in his discussion of total in¬
sistence and Werner deals with it in his series of investigations con¬
cerning sensing. But in neither case is sensing treated explicitly as a
mode of communication. Both authors try to fit their findings into
a traditional theory of sensation, an attempt which can only come
to grief.
In his book The World of Color, Katz10 shows that the impres¬
sion of illumination intensity is relatively independent of the degree
of clearness of the surface structure of colored things. As to the
question of what conditions do, in fact, determine the impression of
illumination, he finds “that under ordinary circumstances a visual
field whose illumination is approximately uniform possesses for all
intensities of illumination a total insistence; that it is this total
insistence which determines the particular illumination intensity
which we perceive; and that upon this total insistence the quality
and pronouncedness of the colors in the visual field depend.” This
notion of insistence itself is characterized in the following way: “By
the insistence of a color we usually understand the strength with
which it bores its way into consciousness. I contend that the visual
field as a whole also has the capacity to besiege consciousness with

different degrees of forcefulness.”
Anyone having difficulty obtaining a clear experience of total
insistence is advised by Katz to make the observation easier by look¬
ing through a glass which disturbs accommodation in such a way as
to make everything appear in dispersion circles. Such a glass prevents
sharp contours or specific areas from standing out clearly. The
greater the uniformity with which we apprehend the individual
parts of the visual field, the more readily we achieve the impression
of total insistence. This experimental procedure effects a change in
the normal field of vision which can be compared to the diversity of
impressions in the sphere of protopathic and epicritic sensibility.
The elimination of cutaneous sensibility and its clearly pronounced
localization signs makes the quality of insistence more distinct; in
the same way, insistence in the field of vision becomes more easily
apprehended when the contours are blurred. But insistence does not
arise just at the moment when the contours dissolve. Just as with
pain, something is experienced even if it is not clearly ordered with
respect to its multiplicity and its boundaries, so insistence is experi¬
enced even when the epicritic sensibility is preserved. It is character¬
istic of Katz that, when he describes insistence, the verb is used in its
predicative sense. He speaks of the power with which a color bores
into consciousness, or the ability of the visual field as a whole to be¬
siege consciousness. In such cases, he seems to be touching upon the
notion of modes of communication. For what kind of consciousness is
it that can be besieged? and what kind of consciousness can have
certain contents bored into it? This experiencing consciousness can
only be one which is communicating and which does not have sensa¬
tions in the way it has knowledge, nor so judges these sensations.
Later on in his discussion, it becomes clear that Katz is too closely
tied to tradition and that he wants insistence to be understood as an
objective datum.
Experimental psychology which works with experimental subjects
who make statements and judgments about the structure of the
world as they comprehend it cognitively must be inclined to think
of communication in objectified concepts. But insistence is neither a
purely objective, nor a purely subjective datum. The experimental
method is misleading in that it tends to sunder the sympathetic com¬
munication of sensing; it interprets sensing as an objective datum,
as Katz does, or interprets it as subjective in the sense of somatic
condition, a view which was still shared by H. Werner in his first
publication.11 In his later writings,12 Werner, it is true, differenti-
ates between processes of sensing due to objective intention and

phenomena of feeling.
Werner separates sensation from perception. The phenomena of
sensing are taken to be purely subjective experiences which belong
to a well-defined, vital-somatic sphere. Indeed, Werner’s experi¬
mental subjects describe their experiences in these experiments as a
receding of what has been objectively precise. They speak of the
vanishing of that distance between the subject and the sensed object
which characterizes perception. Color and sound appear as condi¬
tions in the experiencing subject. “One is oneself color and sound.”
But is it permissible to call this process in which somatic conditions
become more insistent subjective? Is it not that in such a case the
body is becoming the experienced object? Or, rather, is it not that in
such a case objective precision retreats, but not objectivity itself? For
the experimental subject, when he says “one is oneself color and
sound,” can mean nothing else than that he has felt a change in the
communication between self and world in which the precision and
contours of objectivity grow hazy. It is inconceivable that the subject
means the communication between self and world has been cut off,
that it has fallen away and that it is only the self which remains. The
expansion and extension of oneself when hearing a low-pitched sound,
and the strained attention with which one hears a high-pitched
sound, are not only somatic-dynamic, are not merely corporally
conditioned sensing. For what would self-extension and self¬
expansion be without an experienced relation to the world? In such
circumstances, not only do the outlines of objects grow blurred but
also the boundaries separating the self and world; nevertheless, com¬
munication between self and world still remains, as Werner also
emphasizes. Sensing must not, therefore, be interpreted as a bundle
of singular sensory experiences which sometimes appear in the im¬
mediate sensory communication of self and world, although this
occurs only under the exceptional conditions of the experimental
laboratory, conditions quite alien to everyday life. The theoretical
limitation of sensing to particular and uncommon experiences is in
any case unacceptable as far as animal experience is concerned. For
then one would have to infer either that animals exist only in their
corporality, that they themselves “are always color and sound”; or
one would have to concede that they not only sense but also per¬
ceive; that is, know, recognize. Sensing, understood as a mode of
communication, knows of no such limitation to isolated, artificially
induced experiences. Whether the world withdraws from us in
sharply defined objectivity, or whether it moves toward us (or, one
could also say, we toward it) in a relaxing of its boundaries, both

the precise and the vaguer forms of objectivity are modifications of
communication, are modes of sensing. The experimental subject
who must describe and judge his experiences will find that under
certain experimental conditions objectivity will be more distinctly
evident, while under other conditions the same will be true of bodily
manifestations. Which does not mean that in one case the bodily
reaction is missing or that in the other the objective is missing.
The alteration between fixing and relaxing contours and the cor¬
responding alternation of bodily experience indicates that we not
only experience the world from our perspective but that we also ex¬
perience ourselves, from the standpoint of the world, in different
perspectives. If the contours in a visual field are rendered less pro¬
nounced by our looking through a suitable glass, then there is an
increase of total insistence. An increase of total insistence means that
it becomes more easily apprehended by an experimental subject who
is engaged in observing and judging his experiences. It does not
mean that at just this moment total insistence grows coarser and
stronger and is therefore more easily observable.
Foerster,13 working with patients suffering from injuries to the
peripheral nerves, has interpreted his findings in a manner anala-
gous to that of Katz: “A pressure of certain intensity which, under
normal conditions in the intact perceptive-epicritic system, causes
only a sensation of pressure without any appreciable feeling-tone ac¬
companying it, may, under certain conditions in a disconnected
epicritic system, cause fearful pain.” Something similar can be ob¬
served when a cutaneous nerve is injured. ‘‘Ordinarily a pressure on
a limb or passing a hand over the limb will produce not only depth
sensations but also purely cutaneous surface sensations.” “It is most
instructive to observe that, when a nerve in the skin, such as the
cutaneus antibrachi lateralis or the neruus digitalis volaris proprius
is inactivated, then by stroking the anaesthetic cutaneous area, one
produces a sensation which outlasts the irritating or even painful
sensation described above. And one can sometimes momentarily
silence these sensations by taking a cotton pad and stroking the nor¬
mal sensitive skin in the immediate neighborhood of the anaesthetic
area on the fore-arm or by stroking the normally sensing half of the
finger.” Foerster assumes that, next to the affective system of depth
sensibility, there exists an anatomically and physiologically distinct
perceptive-epicritic system of depth sensibility; and in addition, a
system of exclusively cutaneous surface sensations. An isolated
stimulation of the perceptive-epicritic system produces—according
to Foerster’s observations of himself—a “completely affectless sensa¬

tion.” In normal cases, the epicritic system and also the cutaneous
sensibility are supposed to inhibit the affective system. Whenever
the perceptive systems are interrupted and disconnected, “the cessa¬
tion of the inhibiting factor asserts itself in an increased activity of
the affective system.” The concept of inhibition is here meant in a
purely physiological sense. The one system affects the other. The
sudden change which can be caused by lightly touching a normally
sensitive area would not, therefore, depend on a transformation of
the total impression, nor on an alteration of communication. But
this interpretation demands an additional presupposition: that
something like purely affectless sensations occur. Such completely
affectless sensations are, however, nothing but the atomistic sensory
data which I have spoken of in my critique of Berkeley. If one substi¬
tutes the phrase “an indifferent sensation” for “completely affectless
sensations,” I would, from my standpoint, have nothing to say
against Foerster’s self-observations, for an indifferent sensation is not
one in which the intensity of affect is zero. Indifferent sensations of
gentle touching, of soft, passive, moving are still sensation, still com¬
munication. If sensing is a communication of self and world, then
the self is in some way affected by every sensation. Self-observation,
however, is preceded by an essential transformation of the original,
sympathetic experiencing. It transforms the genuine content of sens¬
ing by objectifying and sundering sympathetic communication. A
comparison of Foerster’s and Katz’ observations shows, on the other
hand, that we are concerned here with a general phenomenon which
cannot be thought of as directly corresponding to the structure and
function of sensory systems. I must reject the assumption that affec¬
tive experiences and experiences without affect, entirely lacking in
insistence, exist side by side. Both the advance and the retreat of
objectivity depend on a modification of the mode of communication,
a modification in the relation of self to world.
Total insistence, the transition from epicritic to protopathic im¬
pressions, can easily be demonstrated in other sensory areas, such as
the acoustic, even without the use of apparatus. The insistence of
sounds increases when we feel ill at ease in our surroundings and it
decreases when we begin to feel more at home in them. Entering a
crowded hall, we may be assailed by a loud, confused din of voices.
The less at home we feel in the crowd, the more distressing the noise
is to us. But we have only to meet someone we know, with whom we
like to talk, for the situation instantly to change. The noise of the
voices recedes and “gives way” to our own conversation. But as soon
as the conversation ends, the old confusion starts its work again;
the hubbub of voices becomes more insistent again. A hermit who
shuts himself off from the world becomes sensitive to every sound
that reaches him. The sensitivity to noise exhibited by many sick
persons is an expression of a disturbed communication with the
world and not a sign that the acoustic nerves are functioning
differently.
My rejection of Foerster’s physiological interpretation of the
phenomena is not, however, an objection to the proposition that
several anatomically and physiologically independent systems are
engaged in the manifestation of these phenomena. My position is
not an objection, provided that the theory of epiphenomenalism, a
doctrine tacitly accepted by Foerster, is false.14 If, on the other hand,
it is correct to assume the reciprocal influence of anatomically and
physiologically separated systems, that is, truly separated sense or¬
gans, then the phenomena described by Foerster are synesthesias
and, indeed, of such a kind that regularly manifest themselves after
certain types of injuries. The synesthesias are therefore, in this case,
not bound to some form of abnormal disposition or some kind of
mental illness. But even if they were, even if the synesthesias were
only observable under pathological conditions, which, indeed, is not
at all the case, they would nevertheless present an important prob¬
lem for the psychology of sensing. Under such circumstances, we
would still have to ask and answer the question as to the unity of
the senses.
The Synesthesias—Vital Freedom
H. Werner emphasized the great importance of the synes¬

thesias for the theory of sensation and instigated a series of experi¬
ments which has greatly increased our empirical knowledge of these
phenomena.15 Simply from the way it has been described, this
phenomenon of intersensory effects would seem interpretable only
as the articulation of a unity. Indeed, Kloos, for one, believes that
the synesthesias result from judgment and that they are only a
special kind of symbolic expression. And P. v. Schiller, who has con¬
tributed much valuable experimental data on this matter, gives an
interpretation in which the unity of the phenomena is actually
abandoned. He assumes that physiological excitations, brought about

by disturbing stimuli in the acoustic or tactual sector, affect—chem¬
ically or electrically—the optic sector, thereby causing a modifica¬
tion of the optical impressions. Synesthesias would thereby be based
on an “induced” electro-chemical modification in a heteromodal
sector. The inner connection is thus, by this theory, changed again
into an outward one: the process in one sensory center evokes a
similar process in another sensory center. But since two separate
sense organs and two separate processes are involved, one can
actually no longer speak of an intersensory effect, a synesthesia. In
any case, the cosensing is never experienced as such; it is deduced
by the observer’s analysis. The observer establishes that acoustic
stimuli are accompanied by modifications of optical impressions, al¬
though the optical stimulus constellation has not changed. If this
theory were true, it would be more appropriate to speak of com¬
panion sensations (Nebenempfindungeri) rather than of synesthesia
(Mitempfndungen). The synesthesias acquire the character of a
sensory illusion.
Schiller’s hypothesis resembles the explanation offered by
Szekely,16 who assumes that the intermodal perception of brightness
depends on a process common to all sensory functions. The intensi¬
ties of brightness are, Szekely assumes, correlated to the oscillation
frequencies of stimuli. Thus, Szekely goes even further than Schiller
in that he seeks to co-ordinate the component processes which are
supposed to correspond to the experienced impression of brightness,
to external stimuli. But how could frequencies of oscillation in the
optical, acoustic, tactile, and olfactory sphere correspond? The pos¬
sibility of drawing an intermodal equation of brightness does not
prove that the brightness of a smell, or the brightness of an optical
or acoustic impression are equal and could be isolated within the
total phenomenon the same way the hypostatized partial process is
isolated from the total process. A bright (clear, ringing, distinct)
sound, a bright (brilliant) color, and a bright (sharp or pleasant)
smell, do not have the same brightness. We deal, rather, with bright¬
ness peculiar to smell, sight, and hearing. But these brightnesses, al¬
though specific and distinct with regard to their sensory areas, can
be related to each other.
Brightness is akin to spaciousness. An illumination of a certain
intensity produces a harsh effect in a narrow room, whereas in a
spacious room it appears bright. Brightness is not a purely objective
datum. With the intermodal phenomena of brightness we experience
the world as related to us; in the phenomena which appear as inter-
modal a factor common to all modes of communication manifests

itself. Our vital freedom in our relation to the world can in the vari¬
ous modalities, in a similar manner, be bound or released. All that is
bright, all that is spacious, fresh, lively (in musical language, allegro),
all, in a word, that is winged, soaring, sets us free, releases us. Bright,
crisp fragrances are fleeting; brightness increases proportionally as
that which is bright becomes more fleeting, more rarified. But that
which is filthy, that which clings and sticks to us, cramps our vital
freedom. A spring zephyr opens the whole wide world for us; but a
violent storm catching us in its midst, pinning us to the ground, has
not the spaciousness or brightness of a gentle wind.
Clarity (Helle) is not the same as brightness (Helligkeit). Clarity
has an optimum; its growth does not parallel the increase of bright¬
ness. Morning is clearer than noon, even though the sun is at its
highest in the noontime. We could ask any number of experimental
subjects which seems more pleasingly clear to them: the cool hours
of a summer night, or the blazing heat of a summer afternoon. They
would all, I think, call the former clearer in spite of the fact that
night is also dark. A modification of communication in one of the
senses modifies communication as such. That is, it modifies the other
sense areas as well. Together with such modification of communica¬
tion goes a modification of objective content. From the experiments
of Schiller it is, indeed, understandable why synesthesia is not easily
noticed in everyday, “normal” situations. For synesthesia to be no¬
ticed, the normal mode of communication must be varied in a par¬
ticular sensory area. With such a modification, the aspect of things
is also changed; every change of style is a modification of communi¬
cation.
The reports of subjects under the influence of mescaline enable
us directly to read off the interrelation of modes of communication
and the configuration of the objective. The subjects report how the
change in communication is perceived in the modification of object
impressions, how the change in communication transcends the indi¬
vidual senses; they speak of the verbal character of sensations, of
the alteration in the manner in which the self relates to the intelli¬
gible objectivity of the world. Spatial forms change in ways difficult
to describe; but at the same time, the subject experiences a marked
change in his own body. Temporal forms seem radically different.
Within this altered time sense, the subject’s own becoming appears
as transformed. And with it is altered the nearness and distance of
things and their insistence and stability. Social communication is
also changed. Physiognomies alter their shapes, many things seem to
“lose their reality”; in other cases, the subject feels that he is some¬
how denuded and feels ashamed of it.17 Passing a certain point dur¬
ing the course of the intoxication, the subject can no longer stand
apart from the “reality of his impressions”; insight, criticism, judg¬
ment, knowledge can no longer hold their own against the immedi¬
ate insistence of the modified mode of communication.
Almost all subjects report a genuine experience of cosensing. We
find in the protocols testimonies of many kinds of synesthesias that
the subjects occasionally are not at all sure which one of their senses
it was that gave them certain impressions.
A physician describes the experience of such an intoxication:
“You think you’re hearing noises and seeing faces and everything is
one; I no longer know if I am seeing or hearing. The following two
passages illustrate the relation that exists between the experience of
one’s own freedom, bondage, and activity, and the experience of
objective impressions:
I asked Dr. B. to hand me the coffee machine and while I was grinding the
coffee, I observed the following: I held the tower-like coffee machine
somewhere in the middle with my left hand and with my right started
turning the handle against a strong resistance. Then I noticed how the
tower above my hand constantly bent in the direction in which I was pull¬
ing the handle. If I moved the handle toward me, the tower rose toward
me; if I moved my hand to the right, the tower inclined to the right, etc.
The tower seemed to be made of rubber and was therefore capable of
bending in any direction. So much so, indeed, that I could barely believe
that it was made of metal. This happened, however, only when I had to
overcome the resistence of grinding. The tower did not seem to change its
form as long as I turned the handle to the left and the machine ran empty
and without resistence.
Now a picture of Naples was shown to me. I saw its colors, saw crowds
thronging in the city streets, saw the sea surging, the water heaving, saw,
in a word, a living picture before me so plastic and true to nature that I
could not but think I was really on the beach at Naples. I was completely
taken by its beauty and for a moment I thought I saw Vesuvius rising in
the distance. How I possibly could have seen all that, I don’t know: I was
in the cellar of my own house, and yet there was Naples, real and present
to me. It must have been obvious from the way I spoke how glowingly
drunk I was to see it all. But the instant I—how shall I put it, it sounds so
stUpid_got hold of my will power, at that instant everything became nor¬
mal; but whenever I let go of myself, I saw things again.
As long as he remains passive, the world with all its rich content
presses in upon the subject. But when he himself turns actively
2i8 Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
toward the world, then the apparitions disappear. Drugs that act like
mescalin, such as hashish, cocaine, and also alcohol, are properly
called sympathy toxins: they modify the sympathetic relation be¬
tween self and world; they alter the nature of the self’s relation to
objects and men. Psychotic hallucinations are also shaped in ac¬
cordance with a fundamental change in communication. Here, too,
objective configurations in hallucinations depend on modifications
of the sympathetic functions.
Of the many manifestations of psychosis, the phenomenon of de¬
personalization might be chosen to illustrate our conception of the
mode of communication of sensing. Here the most familiar surround¬
ings exist merely as a world of pure perception; it is as though all
sympathetic communication has been suspended. The patient, for
example, knows that he has walked this particular street a thousand
times and that that particular building is his own house, but this
knowledge is of no help to him. He finds it difficult to express what
he experiences or to describe it to another, and the healthy person is
hardly able to follow what the patient tries to communicate.
The difficulties of both the former and the latter have the same
origin: the attempt is repeatedly made to describe as a transforma¬
tion of the object and with objective expressions, that which itself
arises from a modification of communication. The psychotic cannot
find the right words and the healthy listener knows nothing of the
things referred to, for he himself has no cause to seek clarification of
the phenomenon of communication. Because normal communica¬
tion was treated as “a matter of course,” it has not been dealt with as
a specific theme in psychology, and this was one of the reasons why
sensing was looked upon as a mode of cognition.
Depressive patients not infrequently report the impression of
floating while walking; they speak of the ground beneath them los¬
ing its firmness, that it rocks beneath their feet, or that they are
standing on a slant and have the uneasy feeling that they are sliding
off and falling down. But co-ordination, sensibility, and motility
show no evidence of impairment in such cases. Although these pa¬
tients, as seen by the objective observer, can stand straight, and walk
properly, they cannot free themselves of the impression of hovering,
sinking, and gliding. The ground is firm only for him who has a firm
stance upon it, who has a firm hold upon himself and who can, in
a well-defined manner, limit himself as over and against his world.
In sensing we do not grasp the properties of things. The situation is,
rather, that objectification shapes itself in a variety of ways along
with the alternating change of communication between self and

world.
The unity of the senses is a specific and unusual kind of unity.

In everyday life we take it for granted, but in our scientific delibera¬
tions the unity appears strange and puzzling. We put our feet on the
ground fully confident that the visible ground will support our foot¬
steps, and we do not really question the possibility of such a union.
We would, indeed, be most surprised if a visible object withdrew
phantom-like from our grasp. That which can be seen and touched,
that which can be touched and tasted, sound and sight, sight and
smell, belong together. Thus we listen to the words of a speaker,
breathe the fragrance of a flower, smell and taste, feel and chew the
morsel in our mouth. Children and animals are as unquestioning
toward things as are adults. Science breaks in upon the naive trust of
everyday life and—assuming, in its own naivete, that the singular is
the most basic—begins to question as to the ways and means by
which the several impressions of an individual sense and the mani¬
fold impressions of the separate senses are brought together, and in
what way they are one after the union has been effected. Science
observes that the stimuli are not united: light-waves and substances
that give off odors remain and act independently. Likewise for the
sensory nerves and their “specific energies,” and likewise for the
cortical fields. Even the heterogeneous impressions themselves do not
merge, do not coincide; they remain separate within their union.
Color remains color, hardness remains hardness. Their unity does
not efface their distinctiveness. By differentiating quality from mo¬
dality, Helmholtz pointed to the gap which separates one modality
from another, color from sound and sound from smell. Their dispar¬
ity is easily noticed, but their togetherness is hard to understand.
Experience is customarily praised as the great teacher, and repe¬
tition is supposed to be its wondrous instrument by which the basic¬
ally separate is united. Pavlov tells of the number of repetitions
required in his experiments before an unconditioned reaction became
coupled to a conditioned stimulus; Ebbinghaus counted the number
of repetitions necessary for impressing a series of nonsense syllables
on the memory. From the beginning, neither saw any reason to

doubt the unifying power of repetition, practice, and habit. Give me
enough time for repetition—this might have been the modern Archi¬
medean motto—and I will tie anything together with anything else.
But reality did not correspond to expectation. There were cases
where countless repetitions failed and other cases where very few
and sometimes not even one repetition were necessary. Sometimes
habits already present seemed to promote additional learning, some¬
times they hindered it. Inhibition was introduced as a factor which
would equalize the endangered balance. But even that wasn’t enough
to sustain the assumption that repetition and practice could unite
unlimited kinds and numbers of individual impressions or stimuli.
Mere temporal contiguity fared no better than contiguity of im¬
pressions. In such a parataxis of simultaneity, the members of the
relation are supposed to be interchangeable. But the impressions in
different modalities cannot be arbitrarily combined. We grip the
visible, but we do not touch sounds. We smell the fragrance of a
rose, but we do not see smells. We taste bread, but we do not touch
the taste. We feel the warmth of a bath, but we do not see the
warmth. No matter how frequent it may be, repetition will not allow
us to co-ordinate the tactile and kinesthetic impressions of sitting
before a desk with the optical impressions of the surface of the desk.
Simultaneity and seriality of events are, in any case, conditions for
separating as well as for bringing together. That which is or ought
to be differentiated must be first brought together in one field of
attention.
Things which are originally separate cannot be unified. They
offer no points of attack, no openings where the other can be at¬
tached. The individual, the physical, physiological, or psychological
atom is a closed entity, as inaccessible as the autistic psychotic who
neither lets others come to him, nor reaches out to them. The isola¬
tion of the originally separate cannot be sublated. Only that which
is originally plastic, that is, incomplete, capable of development, has
the power to articulate itself and take shape. Sperm and egg cells are
capable of uniting only after they have discharged half of their
chromosomes.
The vexing problem of uniting the separated was a familiar one
to the ancient atomists. They taught that the atom—eternal, un¬
created, indestructible—cannot undergo change nor produce changes
in other atoms. In their inalterability atoms are excluded from any
community. And yet it is the atoms in their groupings and co¬
herence with one another which are supposed to bring about the
formations of the larger and, for us, visible and tangible bodies. The
ancients sought the solution to these problems in the hypothesis of
diversified atoms. In addition to small atoms with fine, round,
smooth surfaces, there were supposed to be larger atoms with coarse,
angular surfaces. Differing in size, weight, and form, they were said
to whirl and interlock in the vortex of motion. Lucretius,18 follow¬
ing Epicurus, even pictured some groups of atoms as equipped with
hooks. They cling together thus as they move together, and with
perceptible strength resist any separation. And yet each atom, even
when grouped with others, remains a separate individual, solida
simplicitate. But the hooks of the atoms act like unsaturated valences.
Because of their form, atoms are not purely elementary substances;
they are, in a sense, not even completely closed and separated; they
are incomplete and thus capable of combining with other atoms.
But these assumptions contradict the basic thesis of atomism. This
atomic theory itself, has, so it seems, a “catch” of its own somewhere.
It does not allow itself a “smooth,” noncontradictory formulation.
It gratifies the desire of reason to descend to the eternal, uncreated,
and indestructible elements of the universe. But reason’s joy in this
proves fleeting. For no sooner does it attain to its goal than it in¬
stantly encounters the disturbing issue of the possibility of atomic
combination. The unification of the separated obviously requires a
mediation, a medium which is not given with the atoms themselves
but which encompasses them as a common denominator. Democritus
and Epicurus assigned this function of binding together to the
vacuum. The atoms, either as such or by their own power, are moved
(we might speak of this as an atomism of motion), but since they are
next to and together with each other in empty space, they can collide
with each other and affect each other. The notion of empty space, as
a non-being which also is, a non-being of which nothing definite can
be predicated except that as empty space it encompasses the atoms
without affecting them: this self-contradictory notion of the vacuum
makes it possible both to accept and at the same time reject media¬
tion between atoms.
Ancient atomism was an admirable attempt to master conceptu¬
ally the universe in the totality of its appearances, and to explain
the world by means of a single material principle. This attempt of
the atomists, their problem and their solutions, are for us of more
than merely historical interest; for, remote as the problem may seem,
it is actually quite close to us. We need only substitute the notion of
an empty consciousness, Locke’s “white paper,” for concept of the
vacuum; Hume’s “impressions” for the atoms; and the “synapses” of
the neurons for the hooks on the atoms, and we find ourselves right
in the present and facing the same problem: How to explain the
unity of that which is originally separate. In the theory of synaptic
pathways put forth by associational psychology, the hypothesis of
the togetherness of individual impressions is explained by means
of temporal contiguity. Simultaneity and sequence of excitations are
hypostatized in the synapses. All associational theories expend much
effort to explain how the end result of unification is accomplished.
Rarely is the possibility ever considered that a dissociation has pre¬
ceded the association. The point of departure seems to need no
further explication. The notion of the singular is taken as self-
evident.
But what, actually, is an individual impression? What is meant
when a single individual object is spoken of, and what is the relation
between a single object and a single impression? These questions
would seem to be easily and unequivocally answerable. There some¬
one, an individual man, sits in his study, surrounded by a number
of individual objects. As he looks about him, he obtains individual
impressions which correspond to the individual objects. But let us
think of him as having occupied the same room yesterday. The same
objects were also there yesterday. Yesterday’s impressions cannot have
been the same as today’s, for otherwise he could not be seeing the
room again. Accordingly, the same object can be represented by
many different individual impressions; that is, there is no coinci¬
dence between the singularity of the impression and the individu¬
ality of the object. But if the mental impression were, in a strict
sense, individual, how could it—or its image in memory—be attached
to today’s impression? In seeing again, I experience the present im¬
pression in its actuality, otherwise it would not be a seeing again;
but at the same time I bring today’s impression into agreement with
yesterday’s, otherwise it would not be a seeing again. Obviously yes¬
terday’s impression must be such that it can admit a point of attach¬
ment with today’s impression. It is singular, but not isolated. Two or
more impressions can be compared to a third, and in this respect
they are not isolated. An isolated, singular impression cannot com¬
pare itself with another one; in its singularity, it is excluded from
any other impression.
But, then, may we legitimately call something singular which can
be repeated? Is it permissible to speak at all of singular impressions,
in the plural? Only what is individual can be singular: an impression
and nothing further: a red spot, an interrupted sound, a stitch of a
needle. But now we are slipping back into an old habit and count-
ing off a series of impressions. So let us try very earnestly to limit

ourselves to one individual impression. Our example is a red spot.
This spot must not be taken as standing against a background, for
then something else along with it would be given. An impression
which fulfills all the conditions of being isolated must not appear
with borders of any kind. It must fill the horizon, unlimitedly. But
even that is not sufficient. The filled horizon is in fact a visual field,
and not a “field” of sound or smell. As an isolated individual, the
impression must not betray the possibility that other impressions or
other kinds of impressions are also present. I see a red spot, but on
no account can I be aware that it is an optical impression. The prop¬
erty of belonging to a class of objects cannot be given with the iso¬
lated individual without abrogating its singularity. The singular im¬
pression may be “red” and affect me as such, but that it is red and
not blue or green must be as concealed from me as if it were infra¬
red. A singular impression would no longer be such if I were to grasp
what and how it is. I may not even perceive that it is, at this
moment, for in such a case it belongs to one of many moments and
could disappear or come again. To preserve singularity, time also
must be surrendered. This, now, must be the last concession that can
be made, for what is there remaining? I have the experience of an
individual impression whose particular nature is hidden from me.
What else could be taken away? Two things: I must not perceive the
individual as an isolated individual, for then I have already trans¬
cended singularity; and I must not be aware that something is ap¬
pearing to me, for that would bring in time, continuum in general,
and with it the possibility of the other. The singular impression,
however, should be nothing but a singular impression, occupying
consciousness in a single atomistic particle of time.
Such singular impressions are like bats darting through empty
ruins. Watson was not sacrificing much when he chased Hume’s bats
from the halls of objective psychology. The singular impression is
either everything or nothing. There can be no consciousness of it;
from it, the singular, no generalized abstractions can be made, and
no repetition of it is possible. If it could be repeated, it would not
be singular. The impression of something singular cannot be a
singular impression, as little as the impression of something small is
a small impression, or the impression of two objects is a double im¬
pression. In a singular impression, that is, one limited and confined,
to itself, the singular cannot be perceived as the singular, for even
this presupposes a relation to something other. The singular as the
singular is part of a relation, whereas the proposed singular impres-
sion is supposed to be free of all relations to anything other than it.

The conviction—for it is much more a conviction than an as¬
sumption—that the singular is a primitive given, would not be so
widespread if it were not so plausible, if it were not encouraged by
everyday experience.
Let us turn once more to our point of departure. Is there some¬
thing wrong in my seeing that house over there as an individual
house? Should it be sold, this individual piece of real estate changes
hands. Yes, but such thinking confuses singularity writh particularity;
this house is, as a house, a member of a class. It is this house standing
there as a part, a sector of the whole world, which becomes accessible
to me in the continuum of my experience. We reach the singular by
descending from the whole to the part, phase, moment. The singular,
thus understood, is synonymous with the individual that is singled
out from its original association. But the atomistic theories try to
build the whole from its singular elements. The parts are viewed as
a plurality of autonomous components which precede the whole.
The singular, thus understood, is the isolated; and in this sense, it is
neither intuite nor comprehensible. For, as such, the isolated is set
apart from the universe. The singular as the isolated is a phantom
of thought, and not its object.
In Euclid’s textbook, the point is defined as something having
no extension. Spatial extension is thus already presupposed. The
mathematical definition of the concept of a point is reached by a
derivation from the totality of space. The determination of an indi¬
vidual point is fixed by the specification of its geometrical location,
that is, as an intersection, a participation in two spatial forms. Its
singularity is established by its uniqueness. The point so determined
is singular only in the logical relation of ideal mathematical forms.
The situation, however, is quite different when a single concrete
physical object is to be determined in its singularity. Objects are
singular as parts of a world. I discover them in the discursiveness of
my experience, in my acts of encountering the world.19
In order to ascertain how individuals can be united, and to deter¬
mine the role which repetition can and does play, we must first purge
the expression “singularity” of its ambiguity. We must decide
whether it will mean for us the single, the isolated, the only, the
individual, the particular, or all of them together. The role to be
assigned to repetition as a means of binding, indeed the very inter¬
pretation of repetition, will depend on the way we understand the
concept of singularity. And this, in turn, will determine the sense
in which the resulting unity is to be understood.
Repetition presupposes what it ought to explain. The repeated

processes which are counted are, like all physiological and physical
occurrences, individual events. The individual heartbeat is not a
repetition of the preceding one, just as the turn of a wheel is not a
repetition of the preceding turn, nor the stroke of a hammer that of
the previous stroke. Repetition implies, rather, that among a series
of occurrences one resembles the other and that they take place
according to an ascertainable schema. The schema does not actually
unite the processes. Each single process, regardless of any repetition,
remains how and what it was. Music, for example, makes consider¬
able use of repetition; and though individual rhythms, themes or
whole passages are repeated, in each case the notes written in the
score must be produced anew. A passage which is successfully played
the first time may be incorrectly performed the second time. Both
passages are played, but the hearing of the second is a second hear¬
ing only to the degree that the same sound formation is perceivable
to the historical sense of player and listener. An inexperienced
listener may altogether miss the fact of repetition. Repetition—not¬
withstanding the uniformity of natural process—is not a physical
phenomenon. At the end of a passage where the score indicates a rep¬
etition, the player turns again to the beginning. But at the same time,
his playing goes forward. The notes played in the repetition are not
second notes and the movements of the player are not second move¬
ments. What is repeated are the sounds as such, defined in their
relation to other sounds. The duplicated words of the child’s lan¬
guage, the ma-ma, pa-pa, wee-wee, express the fact that a certain
sound formation (ma, pa, wee) is intended and thus a product which
as such is repeatable and which only as such can be doubled. From
one impression which as a singular one would completely fill a single
moment, there is no path leading to another; habit cannot bind to¬
gether things which are primarily separated. Experience does not
teach the connection between sequence and simultaneity in general,
but rather helps us to perceive distinct orders in the pre-established
framework of such possibilities. Experience does not teach sequence,
but it does teach us that a particular A is followed by a particular B.
It teaches us to define A and B, to differentiate them from each other
and to recognize them as so defined.
What is tied together is the particularity of one process and that
of another. And therefore what is apprehended is that a process of
form A and a process of form B stand in the relation A-B. The forms
of A and B and the relation A-B are repeatable, but the processes
themselves are not. According to the theory that stresses practice
(and repetition), we can attain to singular connections only by way

of singular impressions. The temporal forms of simultaneity and
sequence could themselves emerge only in connection with singular
groups of impressions. Time would thus be perforated. Temporal
sequence is not, however, apprehended only by means of a regular
recurrence of processes; all processes evidence such a relation. Se¬
quence and simultaneity are universal and not modes of order de¬
rived from the singular.
We discover not only that A is followed by a B or C; we notice
that they not only manifest themselves one after the other but also
belong to each other. The first member of a series, A, is preceded by
other events. In experience, impressions never cease following each
other. Let A be the beginning of a new series, separated from that
which preceded it, Z, by a hiatus. Z is an end, A a beginning. A line,
a border, can be drawn between both Z and A. Such a border is a
boundary of meaning which is determined by a context of meaning
that decides what belongs together with what. There are such things
as upbeats and echoes: the former we combine with what is yet to
come and the latter we combine with what has preceded. Thunder
follows lightning and footsteps on the stairs announce that a visitor
will soon appear. In the former case, an acoustic impression follows
an optical impression, and in the latter case, the reverse is true.
Both are manifestations of a meaning structure differently articu¬
lated in each case. The seventeen syllables of a perfect dactyllic
hexameter follow each other in a steady sequence, one after the
other. But we order them into six groups, each containing one long
and two short syllables: the long syllable carries the accent. Accent is
the tool with which we divide a uniform sequence into unities which
are both related to and separated from each other. Uniting and sepa¬
rating are two aspects of the same function. Poetic metrics merely
formulate a possibility which has already been anticipated by every¬
day language with its words and accents, sequences of words and in¬
tonations. Language, however, is only one mode of bringing together
that which belongs together in pure sequence and simultaneity.
The formation of unities and configurations brings together
those components which are better, that is, more meaningfully con¬
joined. The ambiguity of an oracular pronouncement such as Ibis
redibis numquam in armis morieris stems from the fact that the parts
of the sentence may be grouped in different ways. That is, the pro¬
nouncement can be understood as Ibis redibis, numquam in armis
morieris, or as Ibis, redibis numquam, in armis morieris. Combining
the word numquam with redibis separates it from the rest of the sen-
tence, whereas separating it from redibis unites it with the rest of the
sentence. Separation and combination reciprocally condition each
other; the reasons for separation are just as important as those of
combination. The articulating inner order of a configuration holds
its parts together without radically isolating the whole. Words are
combined into the unity of a sentence and grammar defines the rules
of the completeness of a sentence. But the structural wholeness of a
sentence becomes itself a part again the moment the sentence is
joined with others in a paragraph. Paragraphs, in their turn, com¬
bine to make up a chapter and, finally, a “whole” book. The discur¬
siveness of conceptual thinking proceeding, as it does, from one
determination to another, from premise to conclusion, is only one
form of the general discursiveness of experience. They complement
each other as parts of a whole, just as individual footsteps and the
constantly appearing visual patterns are joined into the unity of a
walk and a way.
The physiological interpretation of repetition is, on the other
hand, a causal interpretation. Physiology seeks to explain how two
primally separate processes are gradually brought into a relation of
temporal dependence. We hear the talk of smoothing the pathways,
the formation of synapses, reinforcing conditioned reflexes. It is
claimed that an organism under the repeated influence of the same
constellation of stimuli is modified in a way that corresponds to that
constellation. The organism learns by repetition; it learns: That
means that stimulus processes which in the beginning were separated
are now brought into a functional connection. The repetition effects
a real unification of the separated—at least it seems so. The phrase,
“smoothing the pathways” (outmoded now more in respect to its
wording than its meaning) is a variation of the old saying, “The
water wears the stones.” The idea of water steadily dripping gives us
the image of a series of single drops of water each one of which
washes away one particle of the stone. One drop after another strikes
the stone, but no two meet the same conditions in the stone. Each
predecessor effects and leaves behind an altered situation. The
steady fall of drops does its work the same way that we do ours when
we hammer, saw, or sew—piece by piece, step by step. And so the
frequency and number of physiological operations improves, per¬
haps, the functioning of existing contacts by decreasing resistence.
“Repetition” does not create new combinatory relations.
It is true that the purely temporal order in sequence and simul¬
taneity connects physiological excitations to each other, but it pre¬
serves them, nevertheless, as separate entities. If impressions were
ordered in a manner strictly analogous to physiological excitations,

then either one would follow the other like a railroad car follows
the locomotive without ever catching up with it—it being coupled
to the locomotive, but also separated from it—or, the two excitations
would run next to each other on two neuron paths like two trains
on parallel tracks.
That certain events are actually next to each other or follow after
each other is only a condition for our apprehension of their simul¬
taneity or sequence. When we speak of the simultaneity of two
events, A and B, or of the sequence of C and D, we relate these proc¬
esses to each other, we bind them together. It is we who comprehend
the temporal relationships, whereas one process “knows nothing’’ of
the other. Even “bad” configurations, the fact that things which do
not belong together come after each other, are also experienced as a
sequence. In the nervous system, many processes take place simultane¬
ously and many follow each other. Even if repetition—understood
physiologically—had effected a regular combination, the connec¬
tion as such would in no way have been explained. Reflex process
and reflex concept have different temporal structures. In the course
taken by a reflex, afferent and efferent impulses are temporarily sepa¬
rate processes brought together in the interconnectedness of the or¬
ganism. The coming-after is a coming-from, as written or printed
word signs are arranged next to each other. The reader grasps this
static spatial order by running his eyes along the lines and combin¬
ing them into the unit of a sentence. In reading, words become parts
of a sentence, referring forward and backward and complementing
each other. We combine that which is temporally and spatially sep¬
arate by assigning to the individual its place in an encompassing
whole. In playing a melody, one note has already faded away when
the next note is sounded. A “not yet” and a “no longer” separate the
one from the other. The individual note, limited to itself, does not
reach over to the other; it is we who transcend the limiting boun¬
daries of the notes, something which lies in our power because the
notes, the individuals appear to us as not whole.
In describing a thing, we often enumerate its attributes one after
the other. The ball there is round and gray and smooth and cool and
light and elastic. The “and” conjunction seems to express a simple
and chance apposition of attributes. In such an attitude, moreover,
we do not clearly separate modalities from qualities. Round signifies
one particular spatial configuration among many, gray one color
among many possible colors. That the ball has this color and not
another is, in any case, accidental. It could have been green, red, or
yellow; it could have been heavy, rough, and inelastic and still be a
ball. But the “and” which connects gray, smooth, and elastic ex¬
presses something much more important. It points out that one and
the same thing has more than one attribute, that it has many aspects,
being colorful, smooth, and light. The “and” therewith indicates
a particular character of each aspect, the “what” which manifests
itself in a special way in each of the aspects, but in none of them
completely.
In the theatre, as every where else, there are good and bad places.
All of the audience, it is true, watch the same play, hear the same
dialogue, but up there in the second balcony even sharp youthful
eyes do not see as well as those in the front rows of the orchestra. We
say that this or that seat enables one to see well or poorly, but in so
saying we do not seriously mean to describe the faculty of seeing.
Even good eyes see poorly under certain conditions.
But what, actually, is it that, according to circumstances or situ¬
ation, can be seen well or poorly? The answer, in fact, is given with
the question. It is the what which, in the situationally conditioned
view, adequately or poorly displays itself, unveils or hides itself. This
what is always given via a perspective and is therefore to a certain
degree always distorted or dismembered. Even the best seats do not
offer a perfect view. The “what” appears always in a partial view;
the orthoscopic is only one among many possible visual orientations;
it, too, is not perfect and does not, therefore, give a perfect represen¬
tation of the “what.” We all, to be sure, see the same play, but no
two of us have the same view in either the objective or subjective
sense of the word. That which “comes into my view” has only a
limited, particular validity. It is valid only as considered from my
standpoint or point of view, in which the “what” of the thing pre¬
sents itself in a perspective, the likes of which are found on picture
postcards. We are and must remain bound to a perspective; still,
through it we are directed to a “what.” Through all changes of per¬
spective we see the rectangular form of the table, the circular shape
of the plate. In conversing we hear the same words, that is, the same
articulated sounds, though they be pronounced in a thousand differ¬
ent intonations, pitches, and dialects. And even so, we do not fail to
notice differences. We recognize and identify many people by their
voices, yet we still speak to them in the same language. We see the
snow as white despite variations in illumination. Which white,
which blue could claim, then, to be the white, the blue? The “what”
that manifests itself through all perspectives binds the changing
points of view together in the constancies of color, size, form, and
spatial order. In our everyday attitudes, we are so completely focused

on the “what” that we, as it were, fail to see the trees, the perspec¬
tives, for the wood, the “what.”
In the history of European painting, we learn of the discovery
of perspective. Many kinds of factors contributed to this discovery.
The main reason that it stayed concealed for so long was the natural
orientation toward the “what” of things. The old masters struggled
to obtain a point of view. Perspective had to be discovered; it could
be discovered and can be rediscovered at any time. It is, at the same
time, the veil by which the essential conceals itself. The veil func¬
tions as such only because of the “what” which it conceals, but the
veil nevertheless allows itself to be detected as such. Just as we at¬
tempt to see behind the veil, so we try to penetrate the perspectival
view of things, their adumbrations (Husserl’s Abschattung), in order
to apprehend the “what.” We discover the same person dressed in
many kinds of garments. In conversation, we perceive the varying
phonetic forms of words, but our interest is centered in the meaning
of the conversation, the meaning of the words; although not, to be
sure, at the expense of our failing to perceive nuances of articulation.
The slightest variation in inflection, a subtle shift of accent gives us
pause and turns our attention from the communicated meaning to
the communicated sound. Perspective is, in fact, never really hidden
from us, it is simply unimportant to us. We can recognize the same
rectangle from many positions without failing to notice that we are
seeing the same rectangle from varying perspectives. When I walk
around a desk, I see the same object without completely forgetting
that I am looking at it from different angles. The “what” that ties
the perspectives of a thing together, is not completely unveiled in
any of them. It does not enter the different perspectives as the same
constellation; as, as it were, an element.
The unity of the senses cannot be explained physiologically; it
can only be psychologically understood. Only the incomplete (Un-
Ganze) can be united, is capable and in need of being complemented.
Each modality gives us only a partial aspect of the world. Sensory
impressions can be combined into a unity which is more than that of
simple conjunction because the senses are modes of communication.
In each modality, I am, in the unity of my existence, in contact with
the world in varying modes. The I-world relation is one; the forms
of this relation are many. For that reason I can appropriate any one
of them in only a partial aspect. As incomplete (un-ganz), the modali¬
ties complement each other and become a genuine being-together
(Miteinander). It is the same object which I can see and touch; I hold
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SENSING AND MOVING 231
the pencil, not the yellow; I touch the visible thing, not the color.
The other is that which is common to all the senses, but each sense
perceives it in a particular way. This does not mean that the individ¬
ual sense does the perceiving, but rather that the experiencing sub¬
ject is, by way of each sense, directed to the same “what.” This
“what,” therefore, never completely and never immediately reveals
itself. It is only through a mediating process that we can grasp it.
We can never take hold of it in its completeness.
The Relationship
Between Sensing and Moving
(a) Prefatory Remarks
THE PLANTS ROOTED IN THE SOIL NEED NOT, CANNOT CARE FOR
themselves. Stationary as they are, they are helplessly at the mercy of
the elements. The soil, in which chance has scattered the seed, the
sun and the rain, the weather in its inconstancy—all are decisive for
their survival or destruction. They cannot escape drought, flee from
storms, nor run from fire. Because of this, the mighty oak never at¬
tains the power possessed by the tiniest bird nesting in its branches.
Its realm is limited to that piece of earth filled by its roots; it cannot
reach out to its neighbor. But to the animal, the whole wide world is
open. Animals are rootless, nourishment does not flow to them,
mother Earth has unbound them. Freed from the bondage of vege¬
tative existence, they must care for themselves. They must, they can,
help themselves.
The mobility of animals fully corresponds to their nonhomoge-
neous space, a space filled with a varied distribution of goods. If
everything necessary for sustenance were uniformly distributed, then
mobility in such a homogeneous space would be without purpose.

The respiration of terrestrial animals, corresponding to the ubiquity
of atmospheric oxygen, is no locomotion, and, indeed, despite the
striated muscular structure, is only in a limited sense active move¬
ment. Human and animal mobility is relative to terrestrial space,
that is, space in which there is found food and drink, kindred mem¬
bers of the species and sexual partners, dangers and protection in
varying distribution. The space of animal movement is not simply
and only a field of gravity, but a field of action with zoomorphic con¬
figuration. It is divided into value regions, into sections which pre¬
sent themselves as hospitable and friendly or inhospitable and
hostile. Good quarters and bad are to be found not only in the cities
of man. The surrounding world of the various species are divided
into regions of the alluring and frightening, of the desirable and the
repugnant. Animal movement is primarily goal directed. It is search
or flight, attack or defense, not a mere traversing from one point in a
field to the next. The environment (Umwelt) of the animal is
charged with appetitive vectors. It is not arranged in a system with
measurable co-ordinates intersecting at an arbitrary zero point, but,
rather, physiognomically determined by a center which is the specific
here of the animal’s present place and which is directed according to
value toward plurality of theres.
In all forms of animal motion, locomotion, in attack and defense,
uttering and listening, incorporation and expelling, in begetting, in
play, in productive movement, the total motorium is engaged, al¬
though in alternating distribution of components. It is not the quad¬
riceps which flees, but the animal as a whole which is in motion and
directed toward its environment. There exists for each animal, ac¬
cording to its species, an intimate connection between specific forms
of motion and specific modalities. But it is not the retina which di¬
rects the attack; it is the animal which moves itself in its visible sur¬
rounding world. It is not stimuli which make the muscles contract, it
is the objects within the sensory horizon which determine the direc¬
tions of movement.
By means of their musculature, man and animal move themselves
in a manner prescribed to them by the total organization of their
structural form. The forward direction of human movement is de¬
termined as much by the anatomy of the trunk and limbs as it is by
motor and sensory organization. Macroscopic configuration and nat¬
ural size are decisive. Microbiological investigations teach us of the
relation between histological elements and a physical or chemical
field. A thirsty deer seeks drinking water; a few molecules of H20 are
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SENSING AND MOVING
233
of no use to him. The animal moves in a macroscopically scaled en¬

vironment. The army of millions of muscle fibers acts like so many
tactical groupings set into motion according to the rapidly changing
total situation. In the functional circuit of muscle cells the dissimila-
tive, the actual phase of action, is promptly adjusted to external
processes. The assimilatory phase of restitution runs its course in its
own slow rhythm under hormonal, vegetative control. The restitu¬
tion takes place in an inner milieu which has been insulated against
the fluctuations and instabilities of the “external world.” Thus the
motions of the muscles take place within the organism as well, but
only insofar as they are in the body of a living creature which, as a
sensing being, is oriented to the total space of the environing world
and is relating itself to it.
Sensation and Movement

Just as sight, hearing, touch, and taste are interrelated, so is
sensing as such bound in an inner connection to vital, living move¬
ment. The music and the movements of a march, the music and the
movements of a dance are intermodally united. There are no particu¬
lar kinds of association which tie motion to sound and rhythm, mo¬
tion quite immediately follows music. Long before the youngster is
taught conventional dance steps, he dances in rings, hops to the hop¬
ping movement of a polka, is drawn by the music of a march into the
ranks of the marching columns. The dance as an art form is possible
only as a specific shaping of this general, antecedently existing unity
of sense impressions and movement. The motions of a dance may be
as artistic as you please, but that which is artistic, invented, and
teachable in it is always only a particular instance of that universal
which is the nonartistic, uninvented, and unlearned original unity
of music and movement.
It is important to understand properly the universality and gen¬
erality of this connection. The unity of sensing and moving becomes
obvious in the phenomenon of the dance, but it is a unity not lim¬
ited only to this particular case. It encompasses all sensing and all
animated movement, just as the unity of the senses is not limited to
the exceptional case of synesthesia.
Empirical psychology has, in the particular phenomenon of the
synesthesias, rediscovered the problem of the unity of the senses. But
it has allowed these phenomena to remain in their particularity with
the consequence that what is sought are particular explanations. A

theory, however, which reduces intermodal phenomena to particular
physiological partial processes is barred from grasping the unity of
the senses as it manifests itself in all other sensory processes and phe¬
nomena. If the senses stand in an inner connectedness only to the ex¬
tent that there are similar partial processes, then we must conclude
that the senses are as different and divergent as are the different
physiological processes which underlie various sensory impressions.
The general aspects of this problem have been brought to issue
by philosophy. Unfortunately philosophy has not considered the
unity of the senses as a unity of the modalities of sensation, but has
rather interpreted it as a bringing together of sensory impressions.1
Thus, philosophical inquiry has also stopped just at the borders of
the problem. How could the problem of movement and the inter¬
relationship of sensing and movement emerge in a line of thought
which treats the experiencing subject as a knowing, universal, and
extramundane subject? The recognition of a phenomenon like spon¬
taneous motion fundamental for both animal and human existence
is almost entirely eliminated from philosophical reflections.2
However, the moment we do away with the gap between the self
and its world and no longer consider sensing merely as a preliminary
to knowing, the moment we cease viewing the subject from the per¬
spective of the completed and perfected, then sensing reveals itself
as belonging necessarily with movement. If the sensing subject is
viewed as a being who experiences the world by uniting and separat¬
ing, then sensing cannot be taken as standing by itself and as
separated from motion. For, as uniting and separating, sensing and
movement belong in the same context. The alluring and frightening
is alluring and frightening only for a being which can direct itself,
which can approach or retreat, for a being, in short, which can
move.
In everyday speech, we use expressions like “charming” or
“frightening,” “tempting,” or “threatening” to denote properties in
the same way that we speak of color or weight or size in describing a
thing. But if we assert that a thing has this or that color, weighs so
many pounds, or is of a particular size, we are designating properties
which refer to the thing itself (the ding-an-sich in the sense of our
everyday orientation, that is, as it is independent of the observer’s
standpoint). Color, size, and weight are understood as nonperspec¬
tive, objective properties; thus they are the ones used by the law to
describe a criminal so that everyone may recognize him as the man
being hunted.
235
But a thing can be alluring only to a being which can draw near
to it, or whom the alluring thing may approach, a being who can
either open or close itself to the object. The alluring constitutes it¬
self only within the possibility of approach and withdrawal, of self¬
opening and self-closing. It is not the physiological functions of the
sense organs which make a being into a sensing being, but rather this
possibility of a drawing near, which belongs neither to sensation
alone nor to motion alone. For me here, at this spot, the alluring is
there, but it is alluring only insofar as I have the possibility of get¬
ting there and in some way uniting with it. And it is alluring only as
long as I have not yet brought about this union. I sense the alluring
now, but in the mode of not-yet-being-one-with-it, that is, within the
possibility of changing, drawing near, and uniting.
All objects of sensing have a characteristic temporal horizon.
They refer beyond the present to the future. The alluring and the
frightening, and thus the act of drawing near, can only be experi¬
enced by a being which experiences itself as a being which becomes,
which changes. Those attributes of objects which constitute the orig¬
inal theme of sensing exist only for a being which can change itself.
In cases where all movement is hindered, in shackling, it is true that
the execution of movements is prohibited, but the power to move
nevertheless remains. This is why a man chained to a wall and in an
angry rage seems comical. The effect of the comical stems from the
contrast of the threat of violence and the actual physical restraint
which makes realization of the threat impossible. The widespread
tendency to tease caged animals arises from the pleasure of witness¬
ing this contrast between impotence and wildly threatening power.
All such cases are examples of uniting and separating, of drawing
near, and the process of change and becoming. In this respect, the
possibility of motion precedes the act of moving. To repeat: Only a
being whose structure affords it the possibility of movement can be a
sensing being.3
No one seriously doubts that some such interrelationship exists.
Indeed, this fact is taken so much for granted that the nature of this
interrelationship rarely is investigated. Psychology cannot really be
reproached for not having recognized the problem of the relation be¬
tween sensing and locomotion. But it has stopped short at an expla¬
nation which allows only an external relationship, a control of
“movement” by “sensation,” a regulation of the motorium by the
sensorium. From the point of view of physiology, the processes of
sensing and moving, remain, of course, separated. The measurable
duration of reflexes indicates that two temporally distinct processes
must be involved. And in any case, physiological investigations can

only proceed analytically. The postulate of organismic unity does not
arise from physiological observations as such; it is presupposed and
stems basically from the knowledge that the object of physiology is
an “animated” organism. The organism is a unity only in its com¬
portment toward its world, that is, as an animal’s body or a man’s
body, but not as an isolated organism acted on and reacting to cer¬
tain processes. Insofar, now, as psychology aligns itself with physiol¬
ogy and interprets sensations merely as contents of consciousness
accompanying afferent processes and treats all motion as muscle per¬
formance, then the inner connection between sensing and movement
will never be understood.
The interrelatedness of sensorium and motorium can never be
more than a merely external connection, and even if the closest kind
of mutual dependence be demonstrable, it is still taken as an external
relationship. The question as to the unity of sensing and moving is a
purely psychological question. Just as the unity of the senses does not
depend on the similarity of the sensations themselves, but rather re¬
fers to the community of seeing and hearing as variations in the
communication between self and world, so the unity of sensation and
motion is not to be sought in a partial equation of the processes of
sensation and motion, but rather in the unity of sensing and moving.
It is not the processes in the organism which constitute a unity, but
rather the modes of being-in-the-world which we distinguish as sens¬
ing and moving in a living being. In order to understand sensing, we
have to understand animated movement first.
(c) The Reification of Motion

Physiological psychology attempted to derive all forms of mo¬
tion from reflex motion. The formation of connections between
reflexes, the “participation of consciousness” are supposed to lead to
a heightening and integration of reflex activity to the extent that in-
stinctive, automatic motion and, finally, voluntary movement,
emerge out of them. According to this view, the subject of reflex and
voluntary movement are the same. A fundamental error! The subject
of reflex motion is the muscle or the sensomotorium; the subject of
spontaneous motion is the animal or the man. A muscle is set in mo¬
tion, but a man moves. Because the subjects of mechanical and spon¬
taneous motion are not the same, it makes no sense to construct a
237
progressively complex continuum of motions leading from reflex ac¬

tion to voluntary movement.
The conception of motion of mathematical physics must not be
uncritically adopted by biology and psychology. The Cartesian the¬
ory of motion which, until today has in many respects remained au¬
thoritative for cinematics, is not as clear and distinct as Descartes
thought it to be; and it certainly provides no solution fitting for the
psychological problems of motion.4
From the concepts of space, matter, corporeality and motion, Des¬
cartes deduced the “laws of nature”: the law of the conservation of
the quantity of motion, the law of inertia, and the law of motion in a
straight line. The psychologist who intends to build his theory of mo¬
tion on the propositions which physics makes about motion must not
forget that structure of space, matter and motion for which these
propositions are valid. The impressive accomplishments of theoreti¬
cal physics, the cumulative verification which practice gives to its
tenets, only too easily mask the problematic nature of its fundamen¬
tals. To be sure, developments of the last decades have forced
physics to re-examine these fundamental premises. The physicist
himself warns against uncritically applying the tenets of his science
to other sciences. The hope of subjecting all other intellectual disci¬
plines to the principles of classical physics has not been realized:
“The reason is that the basic concepts underlying any particular sys¬
tem of laws allow that only very strictly defined questions make
sense, questions which thereby exclude application to equally defined
issues in other systems. In the exact natural sciences, the transition
from an established area of investigation to a new sphere of experi¬
ence can never be smooth to the degree that already ascertained laws
can simply and immediately be applied anew. Rather, a really new
sphere of experience always leads to a new system of scientific con¬
cepts and laws no less capable of rational analysis, but basically dif¬
ferent from previous concepts and laws. For this reason modern
physics differs from classical physics in its relation to those provinces
of science which are not part of its own field of investigation.”5
Had nineteenth-century psychology not so extensively subordi¬
nated itself to mathematical natural science, it would never have
tried to explain voluntary motion as an aggregate of reflex move¬
ment and other heterogeneous pieces. The question as to the subject
of motion would have sufficed to establish the preliminary frame¬
work.6 The reality of reflex motion need not be doubted in order to
save the phenomenon of spontaneous motion. With the former, we
speak of processes in the organism whose subject of movement is the
senso-motorium, in the latter, we mean a relation to the world whose

subject is the living being, animal or man.
The Prescientific View

Viewpoint
Prescientific experience underscores the difference between
living motion and the movement of dead things. A football in a
game does not move in the same way as the player does; this everyone
sees and knows. The difference between the being of a living creature
and a dead thing is manifested in the dissimilarity of their move¬
ment. In our everyday life, the absence or presence of spontaneous
movement is the most important criterion for differentiating in par¬
ticular cases between the living and the nonliving. But how is spon¬
taneous motion itself to be distinguished from mechanical motion?
What are the universal trademarks of living movement? Prescientific
experience cannot give a very precise answer to this question. Of
course, most people confronted with a specific case would decide cor¬
rectly, but they would hardly know how to articulate the grounds for
this, rather than the other choice. Perhaps they would refer to the
contraries of activity and passivity; the ball is thrown, but the player
throws the ball, sets it in motion. Further, the goal directedness of
spontaneous motion, its spontaneity and appropriateness to the situ¬
ation would be quite easily noted. But the contrast, in particular
cases, between the certainty of the decision and the inadequate
knowledge of the grounds of the decision still exist. An explanation
of this contrast should no longer embarrass us. In everyday life,
the individual does not decide such issues as an objective observer.
His decision is biased, not objective. From his communication with
things, he establishes whether something moves with him, who
moves himself, or not. He judges the kind of partnership without re¬
flecting on the manner of his own motion.
Prescientific experience thus presents a problem to science, and it
might be hoped that science will close the gaps detected therein. But
such expectations soon come to grief. It appears as though the prob¬
lem of motion is essentially the same for mechanics, physiology, and
psychology. And psychology especially seems to think its problem
solved when, accepting the physiological analyses of motor perform-
ances, it considers them as accompanied by kinesthetic sensations and

images. Psychology thereby sets itself again in strict opposition to
prescientific experience which thinks of locomotion, living motion,
not in terms of muscle function, but as “moving with,” co-operat¬
ing with us who ourselves do move. We certainly experience our own
movement not as muscular action, but as conduct in relation to the
world. A psychology which makes its theory of motion dependent on
physiology necessarily loses sight of the genuine psychological prob¬
lem of motion as such.
Cartesian philosophy has already anticipated this position: “It is,
however, quite clear that these (the abilities to change place and
shape), as far as they exist, must dwell within a corporal, i.e., ex¬
tended substance and not in a thinking substance. For, the clear and
distinct idea of this contains some sort of extension, but no intellec¬
tion whatsoever.”7 All motion including animated motion is, accord¬
ing to Descartes, to be understood as purely corporal, as obeying the
laws of general mechanics. Descartes himself has, in more than one
place, tried to give a mechanistic physiology of bodily movement. His
explanation, which reduces muscular action itself to the motions of
“animal spirits,” does not, to be sure, correspond in detail with the
views of modern physiology. But the principle of explaining all liv¬
ing movement as motor processes remains the same.
The question arises whether it is in fact at all permissible to ex¬
plain spontaneous movement as the execution of isolated movements
or whether, when physiology has completed its task, there still re¬
mains a particularly psychological problem of motion. Physiology of
motion assumes all movements to be processes within the organism.
May phenomena of motion such as dancing be therewith under¬
stood? Would a knowledge of all individual muscular actions occur¬
ring during a dance provide an explanation of the phenomenon of
dancing? And, indeed, is a dance a peculiar combination of processes
in an organism, or is it not to be understood first of all as the relation
of a living being to the world? But we can marshal forth even simpler
examples in support of our position; suppose, for example, I lift my
arm in a vertical position and point at the ceiling. Physiology teaches
that in such a case the delta muscle and the musculus serratus anticus
are the main agonists. But what has the contraction of both these
muscles to do with the raising of the arm considered as a relation to
the world? If spontaneous animal movement were really identical
with physiological process, then such apparently spontaneous acting
would be nothing but the awareness of having moved. For all I could
do in this particular case is to establish the fact that an arm, which I

call mine, moved, that its position in space has been changed.
Human and animal motion is, according to traditional psychol¬
ogy, an extremely complex configuration. Its most important compo¬
nent is the motor process. This takes place, indeed, in the organism,
but has the effect that the body’s situation in space is changed. Such
change of spatial position is registered by the sensations of the senses
of sight and touch. But these two alone, together with the motor
process, do not suffice to create the experience of active motion. It is,
in fact, quite clear that if no relation to the world is involved, but
rather, only the organization of impressions of varying origin, im¬
pressions, moreover, which are always mere accompaniments of phys¬
iological processes—then, if this is so, perception of the body’s
changed spatial position in no way indicates whether this movement
is the result of external forces or processes in the organism. Motor
processes are, of course, indisputably accompanied by kinesthetic sen¬
sations. But this ensemble, motor process-kinesthetic sensations, vis¬
ual sensations, can it alone call forth the impression of voluntary
self-movement? Certainly not. For if in kinesthetic sensations the
inner motor processes are somehow noticed, it is only these inner
happenings of which we are aware, not external events. The sensa¬
tions of tension which, in walking, are called forth by the function of
the pelvic muscles can never convey the impression of forward move¬
ment. The optical and tactile sensations which, indeed, also arise
from within the organism and from within regulate the motor proc¬
ess, could, when “projected outward’’ never form a meaningful or¬
ganization with the kinesthetic sensations. The “without” and
“within” remain separated; physiological psychology is not in a posi¬
tion to explain how we get the illusory impression that we are
moving spontaneously. If, now, we added to all this the idea of a
goal which is supposed to precede and call forth these motor proc¬
esses, then the situation grows even more confused. For the notion of
a goal implies a goal as something anticipated in the future; but
a goal intended in the future can have no causal efficacy; only the
present image of the goal understood as physiological process, could
cause the physiological process of motor discharge. Nevertheless we
must not forget that it is not imagination as such which is effective,
but the imagining of a goal. This whole confusion of inner sensa¬
tions which represent something external, external sensations regu¬
lating inner processes, images which intend something in the future
but which are effective in the present, can no longer be remedied by
merely patchwork additions. The whole theoretical conception is
unsound. It appears plausible only as long as the meaning of its

propositions are not rigorously examined, so that unnoticed so many
of the forbidden pre-scientific notions as are needed can be silently
included to fill the gaps and veil the paradoxes.
(e) “Within” and “Without”

Are Phenomena of the Field of Action
To reach a better understanding we must rid ourselves of a
series of prejudices. First, we must attack the problem of “within”
and “without.” In a previous chapter I have already alluded to
Lotze’s formulation of the problem. Lotze, assiduously keeping the
issues separate, maintains “that originally all sensations are present
in consciousness only with their qualitative content and intend
neither external nor, in contrast, internal phenomena.”8 But before
and after him, the immanence of sensations in consciousness has all
too easily been understood as a spatial property of sensations, as a
being-in “within” consciousness, or even in the nervous system. Espe¬
cially physiological psychology, compelled by its basic epiphenome-
nalism, has understood the issue in such a way, as though the
connectedness of sensations to organs lying within the body makes
the sensations themselves internal phenomena. The content of the
sensations are supposed to reflect the “being-within.”9
The polar antithesis of within and without is such that the
within and the without are treated as independent, separable ele¬
ments. The within can exist even if there be no without. All sensa¬
tions are supposed to be derived from processes within the organism
and capable of being completely reduced to such inner processes. As
light rays touch and excite the retina, sensations would have to
spread like a thin veil over the retina. The conditions for the forma¬
tion of sensations would have to be locatable in their content, the
relation between sensation and its object would have to correspond
to the relation between stimulus and reaction, and the sensations
would at least have to resemble the processes in the sensory nerves.
Thus we come to the optical sensations which possess only two-di¬
mensional extension, space without depth, “within” without “with¬
out.”
In such a separation the within and without are thought of as ob¬
jective, general, spatial relations. But is such an assumption correct?
Two chairs stand next to each other; would anyone claim that
either stands to the other as outside of it? Or are two sheep in a flock
reciprocally in the relation of within and without? Or two balls of
fire? If they are two of a kind, then they are interchangeable and the
relation must be reciprocal. If one ball is outside, then the other
must be also. The relationship is thus not completely objectifiable.
But perhaps I have been clumsy in my choice of examples. Perhaps
they are not legitimate cases for representing the within-without re¬
lationship. Be that as it may, one would have to admit that one chair
cannot be in the other, nor one sheep in another, nor one ball of fire
in another. But must it not therefore be true of what is not “within”
that it is “without”? How do we distinguish the relationship of being
next-to from that of within-without?
We might imagine the following: We have two experimental sub¬
jects; each of them has served as an object in the other’s psychologi¬
cal experiment. And now A says of B that he has seen B as being
without and B says the same thing of A. Whom shall the experi¬
menter say is right? This example, too, shows that without and
within are not purely objectifiable relations. But again we have made
the same kind of mistake as in the preceding examples. We have ex¬
amined the relation of within-without with respect to two persons,
but within and without is obviously not a relation that exists be¬
tween two persons, two living creatures, two things, or two partial
spaces. Is it perhaps the relation of an encompassing to and encom¬
passed space? Let us try that.
There is a car. We seat ourself in it and shut the door behind us.
Now we are inside it. The space which the walls of the car encompass
is “within” and the space which encompasses the car is “without.”
Let us pursue our experiment further, let us allow the car to move
forward a few yards. We are then still in our “within,” but the neigh¬
boring space is now our “without.” Yet we never think of calling the
newly reached place “outside” as long as we remain in the car.
Within and without are thus not purely spatial relations.
No matter how far we drive, be it to the ends of the earth, or,
were it possible to traverse the whole of finite or infinite outer space,
we would always be within and the specific surroundings would be
without. The relation of within and without is thus not a mere
neighborhood relation, it is a relation to the totality of the world.
But then, within and without are not purely physical relations.
In our flying automobile we might surmise that the relation of
within and without, though not purely spatial, is the relation of a
thing to the totality of the spatial universe. Let us check this opinion
further. We allow our automobile to land again on earth; since it is a

pleasant summer day, we put our convertible top down. Now even in
this open car we are still “within,” otherwise a sudden collision could
not have the power of hurling us out. And the map next to us on the
seat, is it within? And what of the air which rushes past us when we
drive, the air which is pulled briefly into the car and then is just as
quickly forced out?
But we must be careful and avoid discussing two issues at the
same time. For, with the last question, we were trying to determine
whether the shape of the container is decisive for the “within,” while
at the same time questioning whether with a given container being
“within” has the same sense as applied to all things and living crea¬
tures. We stop the car, and while we are stopped a winged insect flits
quickly past us. Was it within? We start moving again, this time at
top speed; a wasp is drawn in because it cannot resist the strength of
the air currents; is it within now? Does, then, within and without
have something to do with action, with self-movement and the ability
of self-movement?
If that were so, then, strictly speaking, one could not say of dead
things that they are in a space, say, or in a room.
The space enclosed by the walls of a room becomes an inner space
only for a being which in its totality relates itself to the totality of
the world and who encounters the limits of the possibilities of its ac¬
tion; the boundaries of the room are that which cuts a man off from
the totality of his world. Because he has the possibility of stepping
beyond these boundaries, the walls and the door become limits. Be¬
cause he has the power of relating himself, as an individual, to the
totality of the world, then the limits themselves must be pervasive
and many sided.
The boundaries are relative to the action system of the bound
person. Man, whose forms of movement do not include floating up¬
ward, is “within” in an open car as well; he is also “within” when
trapped in a deep ditch whose slippery walls he cannot climb.
The container need not be shut on every side; it need only be
such that, with respect to the action system of the confined person, all
directions of possible action are limited.
The relation of within and without hold not only for him who is
locked in but also for him who is shut out. I can be locked in a
prison; but in my study I can shut out the noises, inquisitiveness,
and obtrusiveness of the world. A summer porch renders good service
if, while open to one side, it keeps away rain and wind, glaring sun,
and dust. I am “within,” while these must remain “without.”
But I myself can also be “without,” outside, as, for instance, when
I notice, on returning home, that I have forgotten my key and can¬
not get into my house. The same kind of thing can happen with a
closet or a trunk; whatever the closet or the trunk contains is, for me,
“inside,” within, because I cannot get to it. Within and without are
separated by a limit of possible action. Such relations are always rela¬
tive to a being which, as a becoming entity, relates itself to the to¬
tality of the world. It behaves as a becoming entity only insofar as it
relates itself to that which is possible for it.
Because we are used to thinking of houses and rooms as places to
live, closets and trunks as useful objects, because, in our daily life, we
thus immediately see such things in their relation to human inhabit¬
ants and their needs, we are apt to understand the within and with¬
out as a spatial-corporal property.
But the relation of within and without is not a spatial phenome¬
non, it is a phenomenon of the scope of action. It is articulated as
being-locked-in, being-shut-out, and secluding oneself.
My point is jokingly made in the following problem: A young
man living on the ground floor of an apartment is exchanging some
words with his girl friend who is standing outside. As she is about to
leave, he leans out the window to kiss her goodbye. He bends so far
forward that the whole upper part of his body is leaning across the
window ledge. Question: Is the young man at this moment inside or
outside? Some will say that he is inside because his feet are inside,
that the issue depends, literally, on the standpoint. Others would
think the head more important and hesitantly conclude that the
young man is outside.
Both parties are wrong; the problem, or, rather, the pseudo-prob¬
lem, arises because within and without are regarded not as phenom¬
ena of the field of action, but as elements peculiar to a location as
such.
If, however, within-without is a relation which exists only for a
being which as a becoming entity relates itself to the totality of the
world, then within and without cannot be attached to sensations
after the event. For only as sensing and moving beings do man and
animal so relate themselves to the world; only as sensing and moving
are they able to extend themselves in a plurality of directions, a plu¬
rality of directions with its horizons and also its limits. Within-with¬
out is essentially a limiting and apportioning of the relation of the
self to the world. Just as there is no such thing as a “within” or
“without” in and for itself, so there can be no self as such or world as
such with fixed borderlines between them delimiting the within and
245
the without. The borderline does not hue precisely to the surface of
the organism’s body as that which separates that body from its en¬
vironment. (Neither does it separate the givens of the inner from
those of the outer senses.) Thus sensation is not at all within the or¬
ganism. True, eminently true, that seeing has something to do with
processes in the optic nerves; this does not justify saying of either the
seeing or the processes that they are “within.” The processes in the
optic nerves are processes in the optic nerve, and nothing else. To
understand them as purely physiological or even mechanical is to say
that they take place in the optic nerve and to give their location.
But, in themselves, these processes are not within, except for the ob¬
server who is “outside” and has no entry into the skull of the ob¬
served.
Sensations are not inside him who senses. The bodily interior is
experienced as within only under certain circumstances, particularly
in illness, fatigue, or collapse.10 If, suddenly, I am no longer indiffer¬
ent to my body, if I suddenly give my attention to its functions and
processes, then my body as a whole is objectified, becomes to me an
Other, a part of the outside world. And though I may also be able to
feel the inner processes, I am myself excluded, indeed I may even go
to another person for his opinion and advice about what is happen¬
ing in my body. Thus, visceral sensations are not inside and visual
sensations outside. At just that point when in sickness and in pain I
experience my objectified body, it becomes to me something external,
something from which I myself am excluded. So much so, indeed,
that I can decide to sacrifice a finger, an arm, or an appendix in order
to save myself. At the same time, my body becomes for me a prison
where I am locked in as I might be in a room or a cell. Because the
body has become an object for me, the border between the within
and the without can be so drawn that it separates the organism from
its surroundings; I am, in my body, tied to the sickbed.
The body is the mediator between the self and the world. It be¬
longs fully neither to the “inner” nor to the “outer.” Though to be
sure I feel pain in my body, I do so with a peculiar ambiguity. I suffer
it in my body, and yet I myself am excluded from the hurting organ,
I feel the break-down and with it I am cut off from the world. Here,
too, the mediating character of the body reveals itself. It is clear to
see that within and without represent an articulation of the relation
of self to world. The separation of within from without refers to my
world, it does not separate the world from the self, nor things from
things, nor space from space.
Therefore, to speak of within and without in reference to the
self’s relation to its world is not to speak of spatial relations. The re¬
lation of inner and outer, self and world, is not the relation of two
spaces known as the bodily interior and exterior. Man’s first utter¬
ance, the infant’s cry, is not a bringing into the outside of something
that had been inside; crying is expression; by means of a bodily hap¬
pening, the tiny being expresses himself as an entity. In crying, too,
all sorts of processes go on in the organism. And yet crying is not a
process in the organism. The cry renders a momentary relation of a
self to the world explicit; it does not shift something from the inside
to the outside. Nor is sensing to be understood as such a shifting.
Like crying, sensing renders explicit the particular and momentarily
defined relation of self and world. But sensing brings neither some¬
thing from inside to the outside, nor something that is outside to the
inside. Sensory nerves are in a place, neural processes occur in a
place; but sensing is not subject to such topography.
He who sees sensing as a process in the organism and who thinks
he must be able to rediscover the details of the process in the content
of sensing, forgets that he investigates sensations in another organism
before he has investigated sensing itself. He forgets that it is only by
virtue of his own sensing that the separation of within and without
has become possible for him.
The nineteenth-century theory of sensation took that which is an
individual being’s orientation to the world and gave it a universal,
spatial reinterpretation. The within was made into a separable
spatial property attributable to the investigated object (the sensory
nerve). A determination which had meaning only for the sensing
subject in his relation to the world was looked on as part and parcel
of the individual sensation itself, and sensation was seen as a func¬
tion of the sensory nerves. Because of an insufficiently analyzed con¬
cept of sensing, the nerve was assigned a false regional determination
which then by the principle of the translation is transferred to the
sensation. The original, that which is translated, is never seen by the
translator. He comes to know it only via a retranslation in a foreign
language, the language of physiology. And the translations themselves
are not carried out with philological rigor or fidelity. The original
seems, rather, to be so well known that no one thinks it necessary to
check once more against the original text. And yet for a long time
now we have known the original only via corrupt and distorted trans¬
lations.
Let us try once again to formulate it with all possible precision:
The observer is himself a sensing and perceiving subject. As a sensing
subject, he has a world and is aware of himself in his world. It is or-
ganized into a within and a without which serve as the particular

boundary lines of his relation to the world. The within and without
are relative to the sensing individual and his total relation to the
world. This relation is divided into a being-within (being enclosed),
a being-without (being excluded) and a being secluded.
In his world, the observer encounters other things and other or¬
ganisms; as someone endowed with sensing, he is aware that they
are alive; this he knows from the community of speaking and the
community of sensing and moving. He does not learn it by studying
anatomy and physiology.
The knowledge that belongs to sensing must occur where sensing
itself takes place. But the theory of sensation never attempted to
know sensing as it is in itself. It skipped its own proper subject mat¬
ter and immediately proceeded by a detour toward a physiology of
sensation (though, of course, it never recognized it as a detour).
Directed by the principle of deficiency, it recognized that sensing
was a function of the sensory nerves. Excluded from the “within” of
the alien organism and its experience, it took the relation of within,
which has meaning only relative to an observer, and interpreted it as
something objective and universal. It interpreted the field of action
as a purely geometrical phenomenon. It finally convinced itself that
the individual originally experiences himself within the boundaries
of the surface of his body.
(f) Totality and Limit

A thing as such has no boundaries; in it, the thing, is only a
sum of neighborhood relations. The surface of a metal ball is not its
boundary; it could have boundaries, limits, only as a unity which re¬
lated itself, as a totality, to the world. Men and animals can experi¬
ence limits for, as beings which sense and move, they relate to the
world in its totality. Such a relation cannot be localized in a particu¬
lar region of space, for it is not the kind of a relation which can be
represented by spatial proximities. As long as we take sensing to be
merely a function of the body and thus make it participate in the
body’s particularity and spatial structure, we will never grasp the
problem of totality orientation, and the phenomenal content of sens¬
ing will be barred from us. Psychology is not simply an adjunct of
physiology. The animal is not simply a physiological apparatus out¬
fitted with the luxurious accessory of experience. Animation implies
a radical transformation, it implies an orientation, a relating to the

world. The animal, man, is in such a relation; in sensing I have more
than a merely sensory quality; in sensing I have myself, myself and
the other, the world. Individual sensations are limits of the totality
relation; as these particular limits, they are implicitly related to the
totality. The content of sensing can not be exhausted by merely enu¬
merating all the individual object data which are apprehended by
sensing.
The totality relation as such cannot be graphically represented by
one picture, just as little as can becoming in general, which, as a be¬
coming different, has a “not” as its correlate. It is the individual sen¬
sations which can be graphically represented, as indeed, can the
content of sensations with respect to their quality, intensity, and ob¬
jective spatio-temporal order and also—at least hypothetically—the
structure and function of the corresponding organs. The same holds
true of motions. Individual motions, both simple and complex, can
be represented graphically as can the organism’s change of posture
and location and, again, at least hypothetically, the cells, nerves,
muscles, sinews and joints with regard to their structure and function
in the motor apparatus. But the sum of sensations can never add up
to sensing, nor can the sum of particular motions add up to locomo¬
tion. Both sensing and locomotion are understandable only as a
totality relation, only, that is, as experience.
A logical interpretation of sensations leads us to physics and
physiology. To proceed the opposite way is not feasible. For from in¬
dividual sensations and individual motions we cannot reach an
understanding of sensing and locomotion. A totality relation is not
derivable from specific processes and cannot be represented as the
sum of such processes.
As long as psychology does not recognize the totality relation, it
will remain a physiological psychology which seeks to comprehend
experience with alien and inadequate categories. Such a psychology
cannot let anything in experience stand which cannot first be under¬
stood by an inverted psychophysics as a neural process.
A nerve and a muscle does not stand in a totality relation. The
nervus opticus and the musculus trapezius are pieces, parts, members
of an object-organic structure in which all processes are individual
processes. But sensing is not made up of sensations, nor is locomotion
made up of individual motions. The sensing individual always finds
his totality relation to the world delimited in different ways in par¬
ticular sensations. The individual’s totality relation to the world is
always realized in individual movements; he hits on one direction
249
among many possible directions and comes upon a new delimitation

always within the totality relation. This relation can be one, and can
remain one amid changing experiences only if in experience it is one
world which presents its several aspects and varying boundaries to
the individual. The unity of the self is intimately bound to the unity
of its world. The self which persists amid the fluctuations of experi¬
ence is a self in a state of becoming. For a becoming self, each of its
moments is for it only a particular delimitation of its totality.
The totality relation is one of the potentialities. It is actualized
and specifically articulated in individual and specific sensations. In
moving himself, the individual presses beyond his present limita¬
tions to find himself enclosed by new boundaries; he passes from one
Now to another Now, from Here to another Here. Here and Now
belong to every sensation and every movement. The Here and the
Now are the expression of the actualization, delimitation, and
specificity of the totality relation.
(g) Concerning the Now and the Here

The question as to the genesis of our conceptions of space and
time is academically (that is, from the standpoint of physiological
psychology) a reasonable one. Even the empiricist thesis which claims
that sensations are in themselves primarily spaceless and timeless
givens of pure quality and intensity can be a matter for thoughtful
discussion. But he who denies that to every act of sensing and mov¬
ing there corresponds a Here and a Now is implicitly denying that
there is such a thing as sensing and locomotion at all. How could
we speak of an animal moving itself if we did not understand his
motion as tending in a direction, as a motion which leads from a
Here to a There, from a Now to a Then? And how else could the
Here and Now be given if not in sensing? And so, the question could
be put thus: If the Here and the Now do not belong to sensing, to
what sphere of experience do they belong?
In the question as to the genesis of conceptions of space and time,
space and time are meant as the contents of a consciousness directed
toward objects. The question is whether spatial and temporal data
are received, that is, apprehended in sensations in the same way as
are purely sensory qualities. Space and time stand over against the
subject just as do red and blue. The thinking or sensing subject ap¬
prehends spatial and temporal data as something other than himself.
The subject establishes facts about objective, spatial relations, places,

locations, and extensions, and similarly establishes facts about objec¬
tive temporal relations, moments, duration, and change. In the dis¬
pute between the nativists and empiricists, the issue was, of course,
the nature of Space and Time, that is, objective, universal space,
and objective, universal time.
But the Here and Now are neither universal nor objective. Every
Here is my Here and every Now my Now. Only within the self-world
relation can they reveal themselves as this relation’s articulated de¬
limitations. Here and Now are neither determinable from within
the world alone nor the self alone. A Here or a Now can exist only
for me in my world, but both are particular delimitations of the to¬
tality of my self-world relation.
It is in the Here and Now that the totality of the self-world rela¬
tion is revealed in its particular and detailed delimitation. Every
Now is followed by another Now, and this by a third. Of no single
one of these can it be said that this is the Now, but, rather, for all mo¬
ments it can be said, regardless of their content, that they are
“now.”11 Thus the term “now” paradoxically points to no general,
objective moment as such, but to each moment as mine. In a marvel¬
ous epitomization, language brings together in this one expression,
“now,” the fact that the immediate sensory experience of a self-world
relation which is mine is a total relation, but one which is essentially
specific and particular. It is only all these elements put together
which defines the Now.
The Now is not separable from its content; indeed, it clings to its
content. It points to the specific delimitation of the totality which is
of its essence. The Now belongs to no specified content, yet it also be¬
longs to every content. It belongs to none, in that the contents as
such may—statistically—be taken with respect to their timeless
“What”; but it belongs to each content insofar as each is a transi¬
tion, a becoming different. The Now is separated from the Not-yet-
now and from the No-longer-now; the Now is actually a point in
time. The fleetingness of the temporal, the transition from the Not-
yet through the Now to the No-longer, belongs to the essence of the
Now. The Now refers to the Not-now of the past and the future. In
the Now, I experience my self-world relation and my self as that
which becomes. By clinging to its content in every transition, by al¬
lowing all contents to exist in the full arbitrariness of a Now, the
Now indicates each moment as only a moment of one totality rela¬
tion, as its particular delimitation. What does it mean when I call
out “now!” and again “now!” to someone in order to bring some-
thing which is only momentarily visible to his attention? To what do

I address myself?—to the community of our experience. As a “we,”
we have a common Now. By abruptly and vehemently crying “Now!”
I am saying “only now.” Every Now is an Only-now, for now it is no
longer Now. But the Only is a restricting determination. If the Now
is defined as an Only-now, it is done with regard to the specific, at
hand delimitation of the totality.
I reach a limit as a limit only if I can reach beyond it, penetrate
beyond it. Thus, one of the essential properties of sensations is that
they are limits which I can overreach in all directions. The con¬
tinuum of my becoming and the spatio-temporal structure of my
world are grounded in the totality-relation. In all that offers itself to
my senses, I am up against a particular limit, not a termination, of
the world. As specific and therefore as setting up limits beyond which
I direct myself (both are inseparably founded in the totality rela¬
tion), phenomena reveal themselves as resistant. Resistance, friction,
does not exist merely as a quality of something physically tangible
and touched; resistance exists only for a prior directedness toward
totality; but such a directedness toward totality means that what re¬
sists is already overcome. That which resists stands between me and
that larger something toward which I am antecedently directed. Re¬
sistant limitations enclose, surround, or exclude me. A resistant limi¬
tation has something behind it which it keeps from me, or something
inside it which I cannot get at. Every limit has two sides to it. The
reverse side of things is also an original given, but only as based on
the totality relation, by virtue of which that which is seen and
touched appears as something which limits and to which there there¬
fore corresponds an “in front of” and “in back of.”
These observations will almost certainly be thought of as pica¬
yune. Of course, it will be said, if you really want to stretch a point
or two you might see such things as having something to do with sens¬
ing, but to say that they are primal, essential aspects of sensing—no,
out of the question! Are you trying to tell us that all this about total¬
ity and particularity, that all this about the Now and many-sided di¬
rectedness, limitation, and resistance, within and without, that all
this is supposed to be true of sensing and movement in animals as
well? I answer that it is just the way animals behave which offers us
the most useful examples.
How are we to understand a hen scratching at the ground, a bird
picking up a seed, or any other animal trying in its way to get to
the inner part, the kernel of a fruit? How are we to understand the
fact that a wild rabbit digs a hole in the ground, or that a dog reacts
to an obstacle by jumping over it or, perhaps, running around it to

get to the other side? Must it not be so that resistance, limitation,
and that which lies behind or within are here antecedently given?
It is not hard to entice a dog to dig any place we wish. There
at the place that we show him and make “tasty” for him, he imme¬
diately turns up the soil, buries his snout as deeply as possible in it,
ferrets and digs, digs and ferrets. Now let us assume that physiology
has analysed the process of the digging movements in all their de¬
tails, that it has taken stance and position into account, as well as
equilibrium and center of gravity and knows all there is for physi¬
ology to know of these things—that it has complete knowledge of
the activity of the agonists, antagonists, and synergists, the braking
and alteration of individual movements, the movements guided by
the kinesthetic sensations and external tactile stimuli, and, further,
that it has exact information about the exchange of metabolic mate¬
rials, the expenditure of energy and the performance of work, about
fatigue, about the co-ordination of motions by the CNS, its vegeta¬
tive steering, tonus, current of action and chronaxy; assume, in short,
that it has answered every possible question which lies within its
scope to ask. From this entire well of knowledge, we could still draw
not one single answer to the question of self-movement and of dig¬
ging as one of its particular forms.
It is possible for us to entice the animal to dig, although we do
not, thereby, at the outset call forth olfactory stimuli by virtue of
which the motorial mechanism is set in motion. Nor do we apply
tactile stimuli to the paws or induce any sensations of smell or sound
as such, that is, sensations as sense-physiology traditionally defines
them. When the dog is enticed to dig, it is not that he is made aware
of goals, but that he is shown a direction appropriate to him. He
turns in a definite direction against the resistance of the soil toward
the inner part of the earth. This directedness toward the interior of
the earth, against a resistance and beyond a manifested limit which
conceals that interior, cannot be explained by particular sensations
and phases of motor activity. The unity of sensation and movement
is grounded in the totality relation. The animal confronts resistance
only insofar as it directs itself, and confronts a limit only insofar as
it penetrates beyond the limit. No mere series of motions yields direc¬
tion and no series of received sensory contents yields resistance and
limit. Without the animal-world totality relation, the turning to one
present direction among many possible could not take place, nor
could the momentary, ever-changing limit manifest it as such. The
physiology of motion and the psychology of moving have different
objects of study.
(h) Movement and Motor Process
The task of the physiology of motion is the analysis of motor

processes. It investigates the processes which bring an organism of
a particular species from a given starting point to a given end posi¬
tion. This basic orientation remains unchanged whether that which
is investigated be simple or complex, unique or repeated motions
or whether the starting and end positions are separated by many or
few interphases. Neither does it matter if the individual processes,
which the analysis must ascertain, are viewed as individual or as
partial processes of a constellated movement. It will always be the
case that the beginning and end positions will be understood as loci
and situs in a field of gravity, and the processes as processes in an
organism. The stimuli which activate the movements, just as the sen¬
sations which are necessary to control their execution, will be looked
on as centripetal processes in the organism. Mutually conditioning
centripetal and centrifugal processes are the two groups of events
whose interaction physiology views as effecting co-ordinated move¬
ment.
Just as the contents of sensations are not a replica of the processes
in the sensory organs, so the meaning and content of movement are
not coincident with motor processes. The principle of psychophysi¬
cal conversion holds as little for movement as it does for sensing.
Self-movement is not consciousness’ after-image of events in the
motoring process; in other words, movement is not a psychic epiphe-
nomenon of physical processes. Not even the subtlest analysis of
muscle performance, therefore, can reveal the nature of movement.
Science could not simply bypass the problem of spontaneous mo¬
tion posed by prescientific experience. It had to take a position and
one, indeed, already prescribed by its presuppositions. Were there
actually a difference between mechanical and animal motion, then,
in accordance with these presuppositions, forms of motor processes
would have to be designated as corresponding to self-movement.
Bain’s “psychomotor” theory was a characteristic example of this
kind of attitude. He put forth the question as to whether there was
such a thing as spontaneous or autochtonous motion. His opinion
was that, in certain cases, organs of motion could be activated by
themselves without antecedent sensory or sense excitations. Bain thus
obviously assumed that spontaneous motion was a specific kind of
motor process, a particular way in which the organ of movement
functioned.
He thereby radically misconceived spontaneous motion as the

uncaused movement of parts. He tried to give spontaneous motion
its due, but his method doomed him to failure. Individual muscles or
limbs can never move by themselves. But since the physiology of
motion must always concern itself with centers, pathways, and
muscles, the question of spontaneous motion does not even belong
in its province. The reason we deny that a muscle can move by itself
is not based on physiological exploration of the actual processes of
innervation which have shown this notion to be false. Even if we
knew nothing of the functional interconnection of the action of
striated skeletal muscles and innervation, even if the movement of
muscles always followed “automatically,” our contention would still
be valid. Neither a muscle nor a limb, nor any single part, nor the
whole organism itself can, from the point of view of physiology,
move “itself.” For then muscles, limbs, or the organism would have
to be viewed by physiology as a self. No matter how motor processes
are classified or ordered, the question as to spontaneous motion and
the meaning of this question cannot be handled by physiology. It
lies beyond its sphere.
Autochthonous motion is not, as Bain thought, the action of a
motor organ taking place in the absence of previous sensory stimuli;
it is not uncaused motion. On the contrary, we speak of self-motion
just because the surrounding world is opened to the experiencing
being, because the other lies before him as a possible goal. As an
experiencing being, he is not merely in relation to the surrounding
field, his changes of place occur not merely because of antecedent
conditions—causae efficientes. As an experiencing being, he stands
in a relation to an environment in which possible goals are marked
off as parts of a whole. His freedom of motion is not an uncaused
or groundless process; it is the expression of a relationship to a
totality which transcends the partial connections of physical proc¬
esses.
Atomistic Motion
James, following Bain’s suggestion, distinguishes voluntary
movement from automatic and reflex movement. With such a group¬
ing of types of movement, that is, of motor processes, essentially all
that follows is already determined. It remains only to ascertain
whether voluntary motion contains something of this spontaneity

which is presumed by prescientific experience. James begins his pres¬
entation of “voluntary action” with the statement: “Desire, wish,
will, are states of mind which everyone knows, and which no defini¬
tion can make plainer.”12 This, after a few asides, comes to: “. . . so
that we may start with the proposition that the only direct outward
effects of our will are bodily movements. The mechanism of produc¬
tion of these voluntary movements is what befalls us to study now.”
An analysis of the mechanism of the production of voluntary move¬
ments is to be the task of the psychology of the will. The plural form
“movements” tells us already what is involved; namely, individual
movements in their execution. From this, it immediately follows that
voluntary movements are secondary functions. “The movements, to
the study of which we now address ourselves, being desired and in¬
tended beforehand, are of course done with full prevision of what
they are to be. It follows from this that voluntary movements must
be secondary, not primary functions of our organism.”13
It thus appears to be a simple matter to show that voluntary mo¬
tion is actually founded in past experience and thereby based on
repetition and ultimately in a causal process, the knowledge of which
reveals the alleged self-movement as illusory. In this regard, it must
be remembered that James is replacing a phenomenological study of
self-movement, will, and power with an analysis of the execution
of individual movements. The problem of the practice and learning
of movements is confused with that of self-movement. For it already
seems to be established that voluntary movement can be nothing else
but an intended repetition of movements that were originally of the
reflex type.
For James and all who followed him, voluntary movement and
therefore locomotion is only a repetition, under certain modified
circumstances, of motions which are originally reflex motions. Re¬
flex motion as such comes from a discharge of motor nerve cells.
The phrase “motoric discharge” indicates that the motion is under¬
stood as causally effected; the agents are some kind of centripetal
excitations resulting from external stimuli or arising in the organ¬
ism itself. Reflex motions are supposed to become voluntary, in that
images take the place of the original excitations. These are the images
of sensations which originally accompanied the reflex motion and
which have been freely associated with it. When such images are
again awakened into consciousness, they thus effect a motor discharge
in place of the original centripetal excitations.
It is no doubt true that a prerequisite for the carrying out of a

particular motion is a certain foreknowledge usually gained from
experience, but it is important to remember that this is so only for
a motion, that is, a particular motion. If I wish to leave a room, I
must first go to the door, open it, and cross the threshold. All of this,
I must, however, know about beforehand. I must know that the room
has an outside, that the door is a passage way. I must know how the
door is to be opened, how to move it on its hinges, turn the knob,
and so on. But does this explain the phenomenon of willed self¬
movement?
To execute a particular voluntary action, one must be generally
able to execute voluntary action; to will something, one must be gen¬
erally able to will. To move in a particular way, one must be
generally capable of motion. Particular determinations of these capac¬
ities are based, as a rule, on experience. But such a determinate form
of self-movement is possible only because motion as such is deter¬
minable; and this, in turn, is possible because to every experience
there belongs a particular experience of limit and direction. In its
particular limitedness and directedness toward totality, experience
can be determined and delimited. It is this relation of the particular
situation to the totality which affords the possibility of ordering and
organization, of determined measure and defined limit.
(j) Learning Movements

Voluntary motion is not simply the repetition of a chance
movement. If it were, such a thing as expertise would not be pos¬
sible: dexterity, sports, musical instruments could not be learned.
The learning of movements follows an inner systematics. It involves
a gradual differentiation of movements and sensory data, a dividing
up of the sensory field, the formation of constants, the focused or¬
ganization of individual movements within this region, something
which in its turn furthers a differentiation of movements and an
assimilative grasp of their extent. The unmusical do not learn to
sing or to play the piano no matter how much they practice. The
realm of tonality is closed to them and that is why they cannot attain
a sense for the unfolding, direction, and countereffect (stopping) of
their movements, directed to a musical production.
He who would learn the violin must have an ear. The sound as
acoustic form and as esthetic quality directs the action of both hands.
257
It determines the measure, direction, speed, variation, and strength

of the movements. Only that student will make progress to whom
the possibilities of musical configurations are constantly revealed in
all their richness, and who simultaneously gets the feel of graded
levels of movement. The filigree of movement is learned; it is not
at all correct to say that the individual movements are learned. What
is learned is a new mode of movement; the student learns to move
within a field whose dimensions are smaller than those of everyday
movement. His movements never are made as individual movements,
but in sequence, change, and transition. They are correctly executed
if and insofar as they are oriented to particular changes and counter¬
effect. Gradations, stopping, variations of direction, and transitions
must all be learned; that is, they are all determined by the acoustical.
To speak of individual movements (in the plural) conceals the fact
that no single movement starts by itself. We are never at the starting
point; the starting point of a movement is always the end point of a
preceding movement. All movements occur in transition and change
—the caesura is the problem. It is not individual movements which
are learned via the principle of “trial and error,” but rather the
articulation of self-movement and the movement of the limbs in re¬
lation to the visible, audible, and tangible objects in their spatial
arrangement.
The discernment of directions, change, transition, measure, and
limitation is the theme of the learning of movement. When we ac¬
quire some kind of dexterity in our employment or sport, we pro¬
duce a kind of frame of reference as we advance from one level of
equilibrium to the next, a framework in which self-movement takes
the form of quasi-individual movement. We obtain a starting posi¬
tion and an end position. Both positions are made fully discernible,
set off as such against the total process, transposed from the pathic
to the gnostic sphere, and therewith become, in fact, perceivable and
repeatable. This is followed by the learning of both positions in all
their nuances. Then follows a similar learning in all nuances of the
transition from the beginning to the end position. And finally the
framework itself is disposed of. In the beginning, we had to take a
position before executing the movement. The complete mastery of
a movement demands, however, that it be capable of execution from
any point of departure and with regard to any final stage. In learn¬
ing movement, almost all technical requirements are, as a rule, “un¬
natural motions.” They are not oriented directly to the goal but,
rather, their execution (for example, the backhand stroke in tennis)
requires preparation (learning how to raise the arm) which, by means
25« Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
of counterdirection and indirection, leads to the movement itself.

It can be said that the acquisition of dexterity rests upon the denial
of the actual situation, the interruption of primary communication,
and the objectification of one’s own body. We learn to handle our
body in the way we learn to play an instrument. The learning is
completed whenever the framework is disposed of and the new mode
of motion with all its preparatory motions, counterdirections, and
detours have been incorporated into the primary communication.
If James had been right when he said that a particular motion
which once occurs involuntarily by chance or reflex can later be pro¬
duced voluntarily, then one learning the violin could as well be
started with a Beethoven concerto as with the mere stroking of the
empty strings. But each such skill must be learned systematically.
There is thus such a thing as progress from that which is easy to that
which is more difficult. Why do we call the mere bowing of a string
easier than the playing of a musical piece? What is the criterion ac¬
cording to which we differentiate easy and difficult movements? This
differentiation does not refer to individual movements as such, but
to ordered sequences of movements with their gradations and meas¬
urings, seriality and variations. The learning of movement is not
based on the repetition of chance motoric discharges associated with
kinesthetic images, which in turn can activate these very discharges.
What is learned is a new order of self-motion, something which is
possible only because self-motion contains within it direction and
limit and contains, therefore, the possibility of determinable meas¬
ure. If the elements of direction and progress were not contained in
individual experience as such, then such a thing as improvement
through practise would not be possible. Individual sensations of
position could never yield knowledge about position, for a position
is only as related to neighbor positions; as related, therefore, to space,
body space, limb space, etc. Just as the perception of space cannot
be made up of nonspatial data, so the sensation of position cannot
be made up of individual sensations which are not already specifi¬
cally positional, that is, those which contain relations of proximity
and limit and which are not transitional positions of directed move¬
ment.14
A motion is learned as one variation of moving. If I have learned
how to comport myself when leaving a room, this particular mode
of motion does not tell me anything about the phenomenon of self-
motion in its actuality, that is, that now I stand up, now go to the
door, now open it and now cross the threshold. It is just this aspect
of self-motion, that I direct myself, now direct myself from here to
259
there, that remains outside understanding at this moment. That I

have gone through this door 2000 times neither makes it under¬
standable that I now am really about to do it nor that I can do it
at all, that I have the ability to move at all. James derives the ability
to move oneself from the fact of having been in motion. Self-motion
is replaced by a (indeterminate and general) motor process in an
(indeterminate and general) organism; the Now is replaced by the
temporal point t in its indeterminate generality, and the Here and
There by arbitrary spatial location. In other words: the actuality
of self-motion is completely bypassed; it is not shown to be related
to lived space and time, but only to (objective) Space and (objec¬
tive) Time.
We come back now to our simple example: I am in a room, sit¬
ting at a table and now set about to leave the room. I go to the door.
For me, the door is manifestly there, not here. I go to it, leaving my
place, in order to be there. We have composed these preceding state¬
ments out of the simplest and commonest of words. One almost
blushes to write a sentence like, “Now I am here and then I will be
there.” And yet with these words “now,” “here,” “then,” “there,”
what is phenomenally most essential about self-motion is already
expressed. The understanding of animal and human motion depends
on a proper phenomenological analysis of just these concepts: here,
there, now, then.
For physics, the location of a stationary or mobile body is acci¬
dental, and arbitrary, and is denoted in full generality and inter¬
changeability as point A or point B, similarly, the moment of motion,
is noted as the temporal point t0 or tx. But for man and animal mov¬
ing now from here to there, time and place are essential in their
specificity. The attempt to understand voluntary motion as repro¬
duced individual motions necessitates the dissociation of the Here
and Now from self-motion and requires that a bridge be found that
leads from lived time and space to the objective spatio-temporal
structure of physics.
While I believe I am walking and seem to be moving myself, I
am really simply being pushed by kinesthetic images. I am a mobile
power machine simultaneously steered and propelled by kinesthetic
images. The union of two such different functions in one machine
part is a very strange, but nonetheless necessary, consequence of the
premise of this theory. It is only by means of this union that motion
becomes general with regard to space and time and is completely
dissociated from life history.
(k) Motion and Actual Situation

In man-made machines, steering and propulsion are separate
and independent. Someone, the engineer of a locomotive, the driver
of a car, is needed to do the steering. As soon as the steam enters the
cylinder, the machinery begins to move; the rails, the signals, above
all, the engineer, see to it that it moves the right way. To keep it
going in the right direction, the machine must constantly be at¬
tended to as regards position, direction, and speed. To ascertain the
cause of a traffic accident, an historical reconstruction of the mo¬
ment must be attempted. How the driver at the moment of collision
and in the preceding moments drove the vehicle becomes the per¬
tinent question. The steering mechanism as part of the machine pro¬
vides the possibility for on-the-spot action, but the vehicle does not
steer itself. The physiological psychology of motion, however, seeks
to unite steering and propulsion.
Ebbinhaus once said of kinesthetic sensations: “Kinesthetic im¬
ages tend to call forth those very movements from which they origi¬
nated; the very thought of how one feels during a particular
movement, if that thought is sufficiently vivid, evokes the movement
itself.”15 If kinesthetic images generally tended to call forth move¬
ments, then these movements would no longer be bound to the Here
and Now, but would rather occur simply at that time or place where
the images, for one reason or another, obtained sufficient vividness.
The tendency to call forth movements is but a doubtful characteristic
of questionable images; in the same way one could claim that a coin
has the tendency, when dropped in the slot, to set the juke-box ma¬
chinery in motion. The expression, “tendency” cannot actually be
meant in a strict sense. Images, and particularly images of sensations,
do not have tendencies; if they did they would not be images, but
acting persons. Tendencies are spoken of only insofar as the power
of the images is sometimes not really sufficient to call forth a move¬
ment, and because, therefore, other images or other movements work
against it. Thus the coin dropped into the jukebox may fail to do
its work, if, for example, a slug or wooden nickel had previously
been inserted and was now jamming the slot. As long as the passages
are free, the movements in the organism are supposed to proceed
just as in the automatic machine. The motor processes are supposed
to be set in motion at that precise, objective point of time when the
kinesthetic images have been awakened and have obtained the neces-
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SENSING AND MOVING 26l
sary vividness. After that happens, regardless when or where it hap¬

pens, the movements runs on with the same mechanical meaning¬
lessness.16 If, while sitting at the table with guests, I should have the
misfortune to experience a vivid kinesthetic image of walking, then,
to the surprise of one and all, I would rise and silently but irre¬
sistibly walk to the door and vanish from sight. That I don’t do such
a thing, I owe, as a rule, to the happy circumstance that the conver¬
sation and presence of the guests, the sparkling wine and glasses, the
atmosphere and sight of the food, awake in me the vivid image of
sitting—and thus my body remains seated.
Kinesthetic images are supposed to explain not only our move¬
ment but also the fact that we seem to move voluntarily, that is, in
ways appropriate to the situation. But still, this meaningful adapta¬
tion to the situation is explained as a causal process, as a mechanical
repetition: that is, it is, as such, explained away. Suitable kinesthetic
images are re-awakened by external stimuli and then cause the ap¬
propriate motion to be run off.17
According to the doctrine of “trial and error,” things are ac-
ounted for thusly: While pacing around in my room, I chance to
come to the door and find myself looking outside. The optical sen¬
sations thus provided call forth in me a feeling of pleasure. These
pleasure-laden optical sensations each time awaken in me kinesthetic
images of walking. And so I go to the door; five times I bump my
left leg (which hurts); five times I bump my right leg (which also
hurts); in the meantime, I managed to reach the door five times
without banging my leg against the furniture. The pleasure-laden
optical sensations are linked there not with the pain-laden kin¬
esthetic images of bumping my left and right leg, but with the kin¬
esthetic image of the middle way, the proper way. Whenever I see
the door now, this group of kinesthetic images are awakened, and
the motion-producing tendency causes my walking. A series of past
linkages builds up a player-piano roll that is set now in motion by
some means or other and spins off mechanically and senselessly re¬
gardless of the actual present situation. “One can will only what one
has essentially already done, i.e. done reflexively and which is thus
learned and tied to other associations,” says Ebbinghaus. What ap¬
pears as goal is supposed to have originally been the cause of a move¬
ment or the motor sensation. Through the mediation of images it
remains a cause; the willed motion is repetition, the running forth
of a mechanism winded up in the past.
Such a theory runs aground at the first serious attempt to follow
it through. It actually makes no more sense, now, that I walk to the
right of the table instead of to the left, as is my custom, or that to

avoid an obstacle which has “never been there,” I change my direc¬
tion, shorten or lengthen my stride, or jump over the obstacle.
A road in the city or in the country that is walked a thousand
times will always require a step by step adaptation. If this adapta¬
tion would always have to be learned from experience, then we could
walk correctly only when we were repeating movements, and on the
simplest path we would fall to the ground, never to rise again. The
actual, particular adaptation of individual steps is possible only
because in motion we are directed toward a limit against a resist¬
ance, and because self-motion contains in it the possibility of self¬
limitation and of articulated organization.
It is only individual movements joined together with a sensation
or group of sensations that can be explained by a basically atomistic
conception. Such a conception can acknowledge only a very rigid
schema of motion. Such a theory contradicts the simplest facts of
experience, facts which show that we do not learn movements, but
that we learn how to move in our surrounding world. This, however,
presupposes a prior interrelation of sensing and locomotion.18 The
rigid schema meets neither the demands of learning movements, nor,
as Bethe has shown, of learning substitute movements, nor the adap¬
tation of all movements, to the actual situation.
Thus we learn not movements, but, rather, particular modes of
moving.19 We learn transition, and certain changes of direction; and,
indeed, not particular ones, but an entire sequence of them. We call
a movement clumsy which is not tuned to actual or possible transi¬
tion, but which unexpectedly encounters resistance and which thus
comes to an end, rather than simply meeting a boundary or limit;.
graceful, however, are those movements which carry their measure
and delimitation within them and which allow beginnings and ends
to appear as transitions.
Falling is the reverse side of living movement. In falling, the con¬
trast between living and mechanical motion is immediately appar¬
ent. A crippled man still knows how to move; his motor system alone
is disturbed. A mountain climber missing his footing and falling
into an abyss has, in his fall, not lost the potentiality of motor proc¬
ess, but in the falling itself this motor pxocess has been altered. The
fall lasts until the falling body hits the ground, until the movement
of falling is ended from without. But living movement comes to its
end. It attains to a boundary. The law of inertia presupposes a
homogeneity of spatial locations. Spontaneous movement proceeds
from a Here to a There and it presupposes the heterogeneity of

spatial locations.
The swimmer who dives from the board into the water is, in a
sense, comparable to the mountain climber who falls. The motion,
however, of the diver does not come to an end, but reaches its limit
at which point it undergoes a transition into another movement.
Falling, as such, fills the spectator with terror, and not simply be¬
cause of a foreknowledge of probable consequences. The “mechan¬
ized” movements of a group of practicing acrobats or dancers may
still be quite charming. But listening to a huckster constantly re¬
peating the same words with the same intonation may become quite
unnerving. It is with fear and horror that we perceive the falling
away from human to mechanical existence.
In vertigo, the perception of space is changed even before the
fall. The spatial continuum seems rent asunder. Nothing links the
Here to the There. Indeed, there exists no real Here and There any
more. Depth, and also height and breadth, become the absolute
Other. And even thus is that place transformed where the vertiginous
man stands. It is no longer a fixed Here. In vertigo, a man loses his
stance, he cannot go forward or backward, he cannot proceed fur¬
ther, and he cannot stop. Phobic patients tell us that they are not
affected by well-grounded fears of any terrible consequences. For
them, even on the most rigidly secured platform of a steel observa¬
tion tower, even in a canyon casting their glance upward, or in a
street when they are confronted by open spaces, are they subject to
attacks of anxiety. The limitless or boundless is that which, without
any reflection on his part, appears to the phobic when he confronts
spaciousness. In this limitlessness, there are no more fixed and de¬
fined locations; no Here, from which a path leads to There. There
is no longer a path, and at the same time the possibility of self¬
movement is suspended.20
I have said that graceful motion carries within itself its measure
and its limitation, but that is not entirely correct. For the move¬
ments are not isolated, they are referred to the surrounding world.
Learning to move means learning distributions, caesuras, and this
means selecting one direction from all possible directions; that is,
proceeding from provisional indeterminateness to a determined di¬
rection, switching from the former to the latter. Learning to move
thus means entering into the ordered structure of sensations, into
that which reveals itself in sensing, into the ordering of movement
and the possible co-ordination of moving and sensing.21 Such a co¬
ordination is in no way an after-the-fact integration of separate ele-
merits. Individual co-ordination is factually accomplished because

the movements can be determined from the very beginning.
Direction, limit, and measure belong neither to sensing nor to
movement alone. They are moments of neither the centripetal nor
centrifugal side of the reflex-arc. The psychology of movement is
therefore not derivable from the physiology of motion. This does not
mean that the psychology of movement can divorce itself entirely
from a material substrate; on the contrary, psychology grasps the
organism only in its fully concrete and monadic structure, while
physiology attains to its proper object only by disregarding this
monadic structure. The psychology of movement must make itself in¬
dependent of physiological conceptualizations.
(1) Automatic Motion

The entanglement of the problem of self-movement with that
of voluntary action would make it appear that this issue can right¬
fully be discussed only within the context of the voluntary. If scien¬
tific thought has shown voluntary action to be nothing but motor
processes caused by images, then the prescientific view that animal
and human movement is a sui generis phenomenon has been irre¬
vocably reduced ad absurdum. If voluntary motion were causally
explanable, how much more so would be automatic motion in all of
its forms. The schema of the reflex arc would suffice to explain every
motion.
But now if voluntary motion is characterized by the setting of
goals, decision, planning, execution, knowledge of starting point,
path, and goal, all of which are missing in automatic motion, is the
latter, then, no longer to be considered as an aspect of locomotion?
If it is not directed to a specific goal, does that mean it has no goal
at all; if it is not directed toward a specific goal, does that mean it
is not directed at all? Example: A puppy is frolicking in the street.
Suddenly an automobile comes speeding toward it and the dog
jumps away. He jumps away so clumsily and “heedlessly” that he
runs right into a tree which, unlike the driver, does not dodge him.
A movement is to be understood as automatic insofar as it is
adapted to a situation, but not determined by previous experience.
Thus, to satisfy these conditions we have allowed our dog to be a
puppy, who has no experience, and especially no unpleasant ex¬
perience, with speeding cars. In this case, “automatic” means that
the threat of the approaching car was not clearly grasped as a danger
—a danger, that is, in regard to the possible consequences of being
run over; it means further that the jump to the side of the street
was not a plan that grew out of survey of the spatial order of the
approaching car, the dog’s position, and the objects in his immedi¬
ate environment. Granted all this, is, then, the movement of the dog
nothing other than a process occurring in various groups of muscles,
one caused by an optical stimulation? Is it the dog which jumps or
is it the muscles which move—with the wondrous result that the dog
is suddenly removed from the path of the approaching car? Such a
tack would be hard to defend. For the movements of an animal,
the paths it takes, are completely different depending on its position
at the particular instant it becomes aware of danger. In physiological
terms, it moves when it has been affected by optical or acoustical
stimuli. We would further have to assume that the various combina¬
tions of optical stimuli and the processes they effect in the optical
sector bring about equally varied individual motor discharge pat¬
terns, and that they bring into function particular groups of muscles
which, though utterly unrelated to the animal’s bodily situation at
the moment in question, nevertheless have the remarkable effect of
removing the animal from the zone of danger. And these difficulties
are compounded when we consider that the animal is supposed to
behave quite differently when it initiates its own swift movements
directed to a goal, or when it is in the automobile cheerfully eyeing
the passing scene, even though similar processes are taking place in
the optic sector. Thus, automatic reactions in the animal are not
called forth simply by certain kinds of optical stimuli but are also
conditioned by the structure of its particular bodily spatial situa¬
tion. The notion of the relativity of motion does not apply here.
Automatic motion, though not determined by experience, nor the
mental grasping of facts and purposeful planning, is, nevertheless,
still meaningful, directed movement. In this particular case, the ani¬
mal moves to avoid an approaching danger. The direction of its mo¬
tion is determined by the direction of the approaching object. The
motion has the meaning of avoiding; that is, of moving away from
a Here to some unspecified There. It is an undetermined movement
only insofar as the animal is not directed to any particular, specific
goal or place where it wishes to be, but is, rather, directed to the
general goal of safety.
The animal shuns danger by moving from the sphere of danger
to that of safety. The place at which he sees the car coming is not
simply some neutral place. Up until the last minute it was a peace-
ful area, but now it becomes dangerous; it has changed its character
as a place to stay. The animal flees the area which has grown dan¬
gerous. The approaching car changes the character of the area. But
it is not the car which makes the place an area, a location. The very
fact of being somewhere implies changeability. We are here always
in transit and transition. Even in a peaceful location, the animal is
always directed toward potential danger. It is, as it were, always in
flight. For many animals, this is literally true in an ontic sense. The
ceaselessly active eyes and nostrils, the constant readiness to leap and
run, is the most striking manifestation of this being-in-transition,
this endless transcience of place. Being somewhere is changeable in
a twofold sense. The place can change and the animal can change,
or leave the place. Being somewhere is always directed to a There, a
somewhere else, even at the times we are most tempted to linger.
Automatic movement is thus not a single movement with an
absolute beginning and an absolute end. It is a change of direction
related to a prior directedness. It is not a change of place within
a homogeneous space, but a change of being somewhere in a qualita¬
tively diversified action space. It is not a movement from A to B,
but from Here to There. It thus bears all the characteristics of self-
motion.
Every spontaneous motion is the movement of a living crea¬

ture, which finds itself located at some particular place, which is
somewhere. The form the movement takes depends not on the type
of stimulus, but rather on this prior location. To understand move¬
ment, it is therefore necessary to attend to both starting-point and
goal. Remarkably enough, psychological analysis of movement, par¬
ticularly when it limits itself to what it takes to be voluntary action,
concerns itself almost exclusively with the goal of the movement.
The starting point appears to be irrelevant. We hear much of goal
perceptions, but rarely, if ever, of starting-point perceptions.
Let us assume we are vacationing in the mountains. One fine day,
we decide to climb a mountain. We want to climb a mountain. This
we can do only because we are now here in the valley. But what
would happen if, for some reason, the idea of climbing rises up in
me after I reached the top of the mountain? Would I start again and
begin climbing further? Ideas and images which are “deep within
us” or which are “far removed in kind” can have the effect ascribed
to them only from a determined location, a particular starting-point.
We can desire, wish, or long for only that which we are not already,
or which we do not already have. That is why there are no such
things as autonomous goal images. I can certainly imagine some¬
thing as my goal, but the imagined goal does not enter into the
imagination itself there to be fused together with it as a goal image.
A goal image, as such, would then, paradoxically, have to have its
own imagined content as something foreign to it. A sophistical train
of argument could then conclude—as has actually been done—that
we cannot long for or strive for anything. “Because you can only
desire that which you do not have or that which you are not, that
which in no way belongs to you, you cannot at all desire, strive, wish
or will to move yourself toward a goal.” In this argument, the “not”
of the “not having” is understood as a categorical negation. The
mountain peak which allures me, the goal which I strive for are,
however, already with me; they already, in a sense, belong to me, in
the form, namely, of the not yet. The “not” in the “not yet having”
of the desired object negates the actuality, but affirms precisely the
potentiality, of union.
The problem of self-motion thus lies within the context of the
basic phenomenon of change, of becoming. Only he who as a be¬
coming being experiences the possibility of becoming other can move
himself or will to move himself. I can only will to climb the moun¬
tain when I am in the valley. Seen from my present location, the
mountain top is a possible goal, because this present location can be
changed. The top of the mountain is the location, the being some¬
where, which I have not yet attained. Insofar as I move myself there,
I leave the present location. I can only get there if I am no longer
here. Thus is expressed the fact that the location where I now find
myself is only contingent, that is, that I am, at every moment and in
every place, incomplete. (Just as distance in general is, so is the rela¬
tion of Here-There not a purely spatial relation.) The Here, from
which all locomotion proceeds, is an articulated determination of
the field of action. A Here can exist only for a mobile being. In every
motion, and particularly in locomotion, gravity must be overcome,
though never completely. In going against gravity, we are always in
a relation to the There and remain always held here. The Here is
movement held back (verhaltene); it is where I stay (am stayed, Au-
fent-halt), my station (Haltepunkt or Haltestelle).
Spontaneous motion is change, a passage from Here to There,
from starting-point to goal. Only a being which in a state of becom-
ing lives in transition from Here to There can move itself. Because
moments of time are limitations of his totality, the individual (man
and animal) always experiences himself in transition. And because
in the individual moment we are incomplete, we are in need of ex¬
pansion, we can change, we can proceed in the continuum of becom¬
ing from one moment to the next, from one place to the next. This
incompleteness is, however, understood from the perspective of the
notion of completeness and totality. Each moment manifests only
an instance, a particularization of this totality.
(n) Descartes and the Ontology of Ability

I may briefly formulate the preceding as follows: I can move
because I can move. This is not meant to be an empty tautology.
The first part of the proposition refers mainly to the real process of
movement, but the second part expresses that this real process is pos¬
sible only because I am a being which has the ability to move himself.
Thus, the analysis of spontaneous motion refers us to the ontology
of ability. The rejection or acknowledgment of spontaneous motion
hinges on ontological considerations and brings us, thereby, back to
our argument with Descartes.
Descartes scoffs at Aristotle’s theory of motion. Who, he asks, can
really understand the Aristotelean definition of motion (motus est
actus entis in potentia prout in potentia est), over which the schools
have argued so?22 As against this, Descartes cites the clarity, distinct¬
ness, and consistency of his own theory. “Motion is the transfer of
one part of matter or one body from the vicinity of those bodies, in
immediate contact with it and which are regarded as stationary, into
the vicinity of others.’’23 Motion is thus a relative change of location.
The location of a body (locus externus) is determined by its situation
in reference to other bodies. Whether in motion or at rest, a body
remains what it is, a piece of extended matter, measureably long,
wide, and deep. An event, in the true sense of the word, a change, is
barred by the Cartesian theory of movement. Such events are foreign
not only to individual bodies; in the total system itself, nothing
really happens. For, since matter and extension, extension and space,
are all identical, and since an empty space cannot exist, each move¬
ment must turn in a circle and return to itself.24 God, whose almighty
power created matter along with the motion and rest of its parts,
helps now to maintain just as much motion and rest as he invested
in the world at the creation.25 A change in the quantity of motion

would be contrary to the essence of God.
To the theological orientation which keeps motion from mean¬
ing change, is added the orientation of metaphysical rationalism. It
is extension and only extension which is the substantial attribute of
material things; it is their spatial being which is real. Time, on the
other hand, is merely a numerus motus, a mode of contemplation.
Extended things are created, finished, timeless; nonhistorical things.
The assumption that the quantity of motion remains constant, ex¬
cludes all history, all becoming and change from the world.
Descartes’ theory of nature, although it is a pure theory of motion
—density, mass, weight are taken to be not properties of things, but
only products of the reciprocal relation of their motions—26 becomes
a mathematics of motion. The problem of motion as Aristotle saw
it remains foreign to Descartes.
If every human body is a thing like other things, though it stands
in a particularly close relation with a soul, then any biology which
would deal with individuals, and especially any psychology which
studies a self in relation to the world, is impossible.
Descartes was able to substantiate the theory of reflexes by ex¬
plaining how all limbs are moved by objects of the senses (objects des
sens) and how all animated spirits are moved without the aid of the
soul.27 The movements of muscles and limbs were completely pas¬
sive; what is really movable and moving are the animal spirits. It
must be remembered that the animal spirits are to be thought of as
the finest of material bodies; they partake of the material principle
and have no direct connection with the soul. Descartes minutely de¬
scribes the formation of the animal spirits and their motion in the
nerves, which he interprets as a system of ducts. The effect of the ob¬
jects is to stimulate a certain motion of the animal spirits toward the
brain, a stimulus which leads ultimately to the centers of the pineal
gland. There, additional groups of animal spirits are set in motion
by this first motion, and these motions are directed to the muscles.
They penetrate the muscles, fill them, make them more dense, and
effect a change in them; the muscles are shortened,28 the limbs are
moved. The movements of animals spirits obey the natural laws of
motion. The organism never moves as a whole, there are only move¬
ments of parts. The bodily machine is so constructed that the
muscles always work together in groups of agonists and antagonists,
thus bringing about the appropriate motions and countermotions.
Descartes tries to explain the formation of individual bodies, their
procreation and embryonic development, in accordance with the
same principles of mechanics.29 The formation of the organs of

motion and their functions are similarly described. The circle has
come full sweep. Mental and corporal events are separated, and at
the same time the sensations are set off as cogitationes from the
motions as processes in the body aggregate.
For every moving being, the proposition holds true that in its
movement it is directed from here to there. Only a being which in
its temporal existence is incomplete can will, strive, or move itself.
The being incomplete in the particularity of the actual moment is
the ontological ground of the possibility of a transition from a Here
to a There, from one particularity to another. This being incom¬
plete indeed makes spontaneous motion possible, that is, it makes
possible the searching of an animal and the questioning of man.
Cartesian metaphysics, however, excludes this incompleteness, for the
mode of being of the res cogitans does not admit this incompleteness,
while that of the res extensa does not admit completeness.
Further: Here and There are qualitatively different locations.
But Descartes assumes that God has so made the world that in the
beginning it consisted of absolutely equal parts and that these parts
were moved in the same way and with the same speed.30 In a world
so structured, there can be no such thing as qualitatively different
locations. Such a world is “one” only as a summation of adjacent
parts, that is, additively; there exists no interrelation, no inner rela¬
tion of the parts. Consequently, there can exist no direction and no
goal; all that is conceivable is a causal relation between moments.
There are indeed mathematically ascertainable laws of nature, but
no true order of the world.31
Cartesian metaphysics denies as unreal a perspectival determina¬
tion of the Here and There existing side by side with a mathematics
of location. For not only is motion a happening in space and there¬
fore part of the res extensa but also the extramundane mind is look¬
ing in “from the outside” at space, and cannot really differentiate
between a Here and a There. Spontaneous motion is mere appear¬
ance, because perspective is unreal.
Descartes grants only one exception: Voluntary motion. It de¬
pends exclusively on the soul’s freedom of will. “Simply from the fact
that we have the will to walk it follows that our legs move and that
we walk (Passions I, 18).” “All actions of the soul consist in this that
solely because it desires something, it causes the little gland to which
it is closely united to move in the way necessary to produce the
effect which relates to this desire (Passions I, 43).” “When we desire
to walk or move our body in some special way, this desire causes the
gland to thrust the spirit towards the muscles which serve to bring
about this result (Passions I, 43).”
Only voluntary motion, then, is taken as a special kind of motion
and separated from purely bodily motor processes, a distinction
which is still made even today.
Three characteristics of Descartes’ theory of the will may now
be cited: (1) Volition remains phenomenologically completely un¬
clarified. The subtitle of Principles I reads: Libertatem arbitrii esse
per se notam. (2) The freedom of the human will (according to the
fourth Meditation) is supposed to be uncurtailed by any limits. Only
God’s power of execution is infinitely greater. (3) Individual voli¬
tions arise from the power of the will (nos volontes, writes Descartes
in Passions I, 18). These are to be thought of as unique and isolated,
that is, as strictly time atomistic; they have no connection to the life
history, and in each case work as a Deus ex machina with respect to
bodily events.
Voluntary and reflex motion are different only with respect to
their causes. In both, the actual motor processes are the same—a
movement of animal spirits directed from the pineal gland to the
muscles. Both kinds of motion are caused by a motion of the pineal
gland itself. In reflex motion, the cause of the pineal gland’s motion
is an antecedent motion of the animal spirits which is brought about
by an external influence on the sensory organs. In voluntary motion,
the pineal gland is moved by the will; how this happens remains a
mystery.
That spontaneous motion which we notice in others and in
ourselves is a secondary quality like color and sound and, like these,
subject to reduction. The phantasma of spontaneous motion must be
reduced to the real processes, the motions of the animals spirits. Our
directedness towards our surrounding world, our self-directing and
self-motion are mere semblance. What is also mere semblance is that
phenomenal order to which we believe our movements are related.
Every spontaneous movement is, indeed, directed towards the
depth of space. But depth is only to be understood from the point
of view of time. In mathematical physics, time no longer has the
meaning of temporality. Physics does not approach nature as a be¬
coming, and therefore time co-ordinates can be included as a fourth
dimension in Minkowski’s space-time union and treated as an addi¬
tion to the spatial co-ordinates. But spontaneous motion is the mo¬
tion of a becoming being. Thus, in order to understand sensation
and spontaneous motion, it will be necessary to rediscover the tem¬
porality of time.32
CD. On Being Awake
IT IS IN THE STATE OF BEING AWAKE THAT MAN AND ANIMAL

perform the labors necessary for their existence. In this phenomenon
of being awake, if anywhere, the unity of sensations and movements
is demonstrable. And yet my intention in this chapter puts me in an
embarrassing situation. There is, to be sure, no lack of theories of the
dream and interpretations of dreams, but what do we know about
being awake? in practice, everything; in theory, nothing. Augustine’s
well-known remark about the problem of time holds also for being
awake.1
A court procedure, for example, is an affair involving men who
are awake. When a wide-awake witness reports what he saw in broad
daylight with open eyes, it is completely taken for granted, of course,
that he is not reporting something he has dreamt, so much so that
it is not even worth mentioning in the court. And just as obviously,
the judge and everyone else attending the legal proceedings are pre¬
sumed to be awake. No one deems it necessary there to inquire as to
what is meant by this being awake. Legal texts, which attempt to
define derangements and clouding of consciousness contain no defi¬
nition of being awake. We all know that sleep breaks in upon the
hours of our waking life and that sleep brings dreams. We are all
also convinced that we not only know of this difference in a gen¬
eral way, but that we can easily and with absolute certainty differen¬
tiate between dreaming and the state of being awake.
That, in any case, is our belief as far as daily practice is con¬
cerned. Of course, many theorists do not agree in this with the man
in the street. Descartes, in the opening pages of his Meditations,
claims that it is not possible for him to say, with absolute certainty,
whether, at that moment he is awake or dreaming. Hobbes main¬
tains that the phenomena (appearances, fancies) which he assumes
accompany physiological processes, are the same, dreaming or wak¬
ing. Freud calls the dream a “completely valid psychic experience.”
Such claims arise under the pressure of methodological or systematic
considerations. In demonstrating the primacy of self-consciousness.
ON BEING AWAKE
273
Descartes’ aim is to degrade all sensory experience that is dependent

on the body. It is exactly the opposite aim, namely, the demonstra¬
tion of the exclusive reality of bodily processes, that leads Hobbes
to deny the difference between waking impressions and dream im¬
ages and to embrace both in the concept of appearance. As for Freud,
the dream’s connection to the unconscious gives it at least equal
rank with waking thought. In their efforts to dissolve, in one sense
or another, the boundaries between dreaming and waking, all three
writers take as their theme those very differences between dreaming
and waking which they are contesting. They presuppose as a given
that which they later, on reflection, deny, like Sigmund, the hero of
Calderon’s drama. Descartes, who claims he is not sure if he is awake
or dreaming, manifestly contradicts himself in that as an awake
meditator, he addresses his claims to an awake reader as well. In the
same way, Hobbes and Freud speak about dreams only when they
are awake. The via regia of dream interpretation is a road travers¬
able only by those who are awake—indeed, doubly awake, in that
they must attend to both the manifest content and the latent mean¬
ing of the dream. The science of dreams, like every other science,
is an accomplishment of men who are awake.
He who describes and explains sleeping and dreaming has and
must have already understood the waking state itself in a certain
way. At the same time, we all find it so difficult to put this practical
understanding of ours into precise words. As beings who are awake,
we have much more to say about sleep and dreaming than about be¬
ing awake itself. We know that in sleep the sensory contacts with
the environment are loosened and restricted, that the motor ap¬
paratus is disconnected, and that the dreamer cannot communicate
with others and is locked in his own private world. These insights
are concealed from the dreamer. He does not see what goes on about
him, but still he has dream visions; he remains in his bed, but still
his dreams are full of actions which take him to distant places; he
holds no intercourse with us in a common world, but still he talks
to the persons in his dream. The dreamer does not know that he
dreams, that he is the creator of his dream and that it is he who puts
the words in the mouths of the actors in the dream.2 Himself power¬
less, he is a prisoner of his own creation. Only on waking does the
dream, which held me, the dreamer, become a dream which I, who
am awake, have dreamt. While I slept, it was not my dream, but
rather I was a part of the dream world which I could not recognize
as mine. Night after night we are possessed again by dream reality,
we learn nothing from our waking experience; the dream does not
use it, at least not consistently, and not without radical distortion.
Only when we are awake can we save ourselves from the phantasma¬
goria which inundate us in the dream. Only in awakeness is the
possibility of existence as my existence constituted or realized.
Any discussion of dreams is therefore subject to certain methodo¬
logical doubts. We speak of a dream when we are awake, but always
have difficulties recalling the dreams with exactness. We are never
completely sure that we have reproduced the dream just as we
dreamt it. In fact, we are sure that we can never actually reproduce
the dream with complete fidelity, for insofar as we have apprehended
it as a dream, we have already effected a fundamental distortion.
Just as the form and content of our waking life is distorted in dreams,
so dreams which are brought to the waking light of day change and
disintegrate like so many other things that are excavated. And now
it is set into type and stored at the printing house of waking life;
that is, the dream is retyped and translated. But this is hardly an
obstacle to our present investigation, concerning as it does not the
dream, but awakeness.
Thus, when we are awake we differentiate between dreaming
and waking and we know that we are awake; in sleep, we dream that
we are awake, but we do not know that we dream. The manifest
dream, which here is our only concern insofar as it is contrapunctal
to waking experience, is therefore characterized by a lack—the in¬
ability of the dreamer to differentiate. The significance which Freud
ascribes to the dream when he speaks of it as a “completely valid
psychic phenomenon” is possible only because of his evaluation of
the unconscious as the ontological basis of human existence, and
because of his interpretation of the dream as a distorted, but never¬
theless intelligible expression of the unconscious. The language of
the dream, unintelligible in itself, can be understood a posteriori
with the aid of dream interpretation. All these theories of Freud
are insights gained by reflecting on the dream in the state of awake¬
ness. The dreamer himself does not understand the dream while he
sleeps; he must interpret it or have it interpreted after he awakes.
The latent dream thoughts remain concealed from him. Though
the sleeper indeed produces his dream, he does not experience their
production. He does not dream of the factors which contribute to
the formation of the dream.
In the dream, shapes and forms blend together which in waking
life we would clearly differentiate. The dreamer not only fails to
differentiate particulars such as red as against green, Miller as against
Smith, Boston as against Bombay, he lacks also the fundamental sense
of differentiating waking life from dreaming, that is, the basic form
ON BEING AWAKE
275
in which all further differentiations take place. Insofar as in the

dream red blends with green, Miller with Smith and Boston with
Bombay, their differences have no meaning. A plurality of persons
and things or places appear as “condensed” into one form, one ob¬
ject, or one place. In his discussion of the dream work, Freud pro¬
ceeds from the assumption that the mechanism of condensation
brings “separated elements” into new unities. “Such a composite
figure resembles A. in appearance, but is dressed like B., pursues
some occupation which recalls C., and yet all the time you know
that it is really D.” Because of condensation, the manifest dream is
always poorer in content than the latent dream. “Now and again
condensation may be lacking, but it is present as a rule and is often
carried to a very high degree. It never works in the opposite manner.
. . .”3 For Freud, the dream is endowed with additional functions,
additional to those which we can perform in waking life. Freud as¬
sumes that the “elements,” understood as individual persons, things,
or places, are the original givens. If this is so, then, indeed, their
amalgamation stands in need of an explanation. But every act of
establishing differences and every complete determination of an ob¬
ject in its particularity demands a certain effort. The “elements”
are not simply given, they are rather determined and established by
means of an act of differentiation. In that manifestation of dreams
described by the term “condensation,” what is revealed is the uni¬
versal failure of differentiation. All those examples by which Freud
illustrates the mechanism of condensation can be just as easily, and
just as well (if not better), understood as a failure of differentiation,
as dedifferentiation.
To these “failings” in the dream, one could add a long list of
other shortcomings. There are, for example, all those “deficiencies”
connected with sleep itself, such as the loosening of sensory contacts,
the inactivation of the motorium, the interruption of communica¬
tion, the suspension of historical continuity, the disintegration of
spatial and temporal ordering, the vagueness of identity. For sleep as
such, of course, such things as the interruption of sensory contacts
and the inactivation of the motorium are appropriate and do not
represent deficiencies or shortcomings. But here it is dreaming as it
is opposed to awakeness which we are trying to understand and this
justifies our speaking of deficiencies and failings. For, while someone
who is awake can either look at something or shut his eyes, can either
move or rest, communicate or keep silent, he who sleeps and dreams
is limited to one of each of these alternatives. He is poorer in poten¬
tialities.
In this framework, we have judged the dreamer by standards
alien to him. The dreamer does not experience himself in the way
we have pictured him, for we have approached the dreamer and his
dream from without. But for ourselves as awake, we cannot see from
without; our understanding of awakeness must be immanent. It may
appear to be completely unreflective and naive; and yet in order to
have surveyed the dream world from this watchtower and to have
appraised its particular differentiation from our own standpoint, it
must be so that as awake, we have understood ourselves in a certain
manner. All the deficiencies which we, as awake, discover in the man¬
ifest dream, refer back to the immanent structure of the world and
our experience in it which we have when awake.
Awake, we distinguish between dreaming and awakeness; dream¬
ing, we do not. One could now content oneself with having ascer¬
tained this fact and then seek a physiological explanation of it. One
could be satisfied with the thought that along with the transition
from sleep to waking, with the re-adjustment of the sensorium, of
the threshold, and of the tonus, that along with these the ability to
differentiate is also given. But this gives us nothing in the way of an
inner understanding. It is, furthermore, not true that in waking life
we can and do merely differentiate among particulars; when awake,
we differentiate not only within awakeness, but also between awake¬
ness and dreaming. Awakeness is the physiological condition of dis¬
cernment, but it is also the theme and object of discernment. The
physiological conditions of awakeness are never directly and imme¬
diately experienced. They do their work, we know not how. What
the sophisticated thinker tells us of these things is a hypothesis for¬
mulated within the naive acceptance of his being awake. Because
of physiological conditions, we find ourselves awake in the daylight
world; in this day world we can direct our attention to such problems
as the physiology of awakeness and sleep. Awake, we observe other
living creatures, men and animals; awake, we establish a waking and
sleeping mode orientation in consonance with our personal experi¬
ence with these creatures, an experience based on phasic vacillations
in communication with them. Insofar as we interpret the ways in
which sleeping and waking are expressed as symptoms of physical
processes, to that degree we make sleeping and waking dependent
upon cerebral and metabolic processes in the organism. No matter
how exact and complete our knowledge of neurophysicological proc¬
esses may become, it will never be able to explain awakeness nor
comprehend its content. The awakening of consciousness with the
steady alternation of night and day is a physiological problem; the
consciousness of being awake, however, is a theme for psychology to
ON BEING AWAKE 277
which physiology can contribute nothing. The structure of awake-

ness is and remains the first given. It alone is for us immediately
accessible, familiar and certain. If, in a moment of scepticism, we
question it, our doubt itself takes place within this waking life and
within the horizon of its possibilities.
For the awake man, the order of waking experience is obviously
so patently distinct that he has no trouble contrasting it with other
modes of existing. When we differentiate waking from dreaming, it is
ourselves we are knowing. We know that we are awake and we there¬
with know the possibility of another way of being. When I wake up,
I discover that I have dreamed during the night just past. The pri¬
mary differentiation is thus not made between dreaming and waking
as such; I differentiate between my awakeness and my dreaming, or,
to be exact, between my waking and my having dreamt. The dreams
of others are accessible to me only indirectly in their and my com¬
mon awakeness. The differentiation between dream and awakeness
is thus life-historical. It implies that I grasp the uniqueness of my
present and with it the limits of this present. I experience my present
as my being so in this moment, and at the same time as a not being
this-or-that.
In discerning awakeness and dreaming, I grasp the ordered tem¬
porality of my existence. I notice that at every moment I am going
from one phase to the next; I apprehend myself as becoming. Awak¬
ening and awake, a man knows of himself and of his yesterday and
today, that is, he apprehends the continuity of his vital existence
which persists through sleeping and dreaming into the present. And
yet we differentiate between awakeness and dreaming not in the way
we differentiate between red and green. We apprehend the experi¬
ences of dreaming and waking as belonging to different regions.
While awake, I recall my dream in order to separate it at the same
time from all other recollections of my waking experience. I recall
what I did yesterday. Such data and encounters are ordered by me
into the framework of my waking life. They all belong in the con¬
tinuous text of my life history; not so my dreams. Though they are
remembered in a state of awakeness, they are differentiated from all
that actually happened and also from all that could have happened.
Remembering, too, takes place from the standpoint of the present.
Only as conscious also of the actual present moment and of its actu¬
ality, can I apprehend the past as such from the standpoint of the
present.
But doesn’t the dreamer also have memories? Are not all the con¬
tents of the manifest dream memories—transformed and distorted,
perhaps, but still memories? Of course! But with one difference: In

the dream, memories are not experienced as memories, but as pres¬
ences. The dreamer floats in a sea of memories, but for him they are
not memories. Whenever they do emerge, and whatever the forces
may be which bring them to dream consciousness, they appear as
presences, immediately to be replaced by other presences. But that
does not mean they are timeless; many things happen in a dream
and one event is followed by another, but the temporal order disin¬
tegrates. Time dissolves not into atoms, but into more and more
discontinuous moments—into time without duration. Moments no
longer stand in a manifestly meaningful context; their sequence
lacks an inner necessity of continuity or consistency. That is prob¬
ably why dream impressions are predominantly optical. Some frag¬
ments of the stabile, persistent visible world may still remain in the
disintegration. But acoustic impressions which require the sequence
of time to form a whole cannot, as fragmentary presences, be used by
the dream to make up an encompassing, meaningful unity.
That which is experienced in the dream, dream scenes and dream
actions, still have a certain kind of definition—otherwise no experi¬
ence of them at all would be possible—but these determinations are
vague, unfirm. They are not delimited and defined with respect to a
possible contrary. Thus, dream images do not resist the most extrava¬
gant transfiguration. There is no unity of place, time, and action.
The scenes and the actors undergo the most astonishing metamor¬
phoses without at all shocking the dreamer. Dream images are with¬
out substance, without subjectum. The dreamer experiences only the
particular “being thus’’ of the particular dream landscape without
being able to actualize the possibility of its being different. He ap¬
prehends only adumbrations (Abschattungen) without the ability to
penetrate into the “what” which systematically holds these adumbra¬
tions together.
All these deficiencies of the dream point to that which properly
belongs to awakeness. In our waking life, one day is linked to the
previous day and prepares for the coming day. Days come and go
within the context of our life history. But the dreams of one night
are not the continuation of previous nights. At night we do not pick
up the thread of the dream which ended that morning upon awaken¬
ing, while at the beginning of a new day we do pick up the thread of
our life history. “Sleep is a hollow shell, throw it away,” the fairies
whisper to Faust. Whatever life-historical meaning the interpretation
of a dream may ascribe to it, the manifest dream is still anacolouthic.
The so-called repetition dream is distinguished by the fact that the
ON BEING AWAKE
279
dreamer, regardless of how often it occurs, always experiences it as

present or actual and as a new occurrence, that is, as in fact unprece¬
dented, not as a repetition. Only in the continuity of waking life can
we return to the same spot as the same person.
When the life history of a seventy-year-old man is narrated, we do
not think of it as composed of 25,000 individual day fragments
which fragments are separated from each other by the same number
of nights. We understand this waking life as an integrated, organic
process of change which proceeds via a chain of nights and days.
Though the biological alternation of waking and sleeping proceeds in
some kind of sine curve, the way in which the days which make up life
history are linked to each other is like the semi-arches of a Roman
aqueduct carrying a river bed above them. Nights and sleep are sub¬
ordinated to the continuity of the days. Thus it is that a single call or
light or touch can suffice to bring sleeping and dreaming to a halt.
Only in fairy tales can the reverse take place with similar means and
can people be sent into sleep with a magic word, breath, or glance.
In the sober world of day, it is not so easy to induce sleep in those
who are awake as it is to awaken those who sleep. Such things as
alarm clocks which serve as stimuli to awaken us differ from sopo¬
rifics like sleeping pills which serve as a means to induce sleep. The
continuity which binds together the days “above” the nights also
binds, in each day, one hour to another and sets the particular mo¬
ment within the horizon of the day, week, or year. In waking life, we
are bound to the continuity of our Now and Here. From the Here
we can attain to the next There, from the Now to the next Then; we
cannot omit or leap over anything. Having fun (Kurzweil) combats
boredom (Langweile), but it, too, is incorporated into the continuity
of time. How well we know that we cannot shorten a time of wait¬
ing; the pendulum must swing out all the seconds and minutes.
Continuity and repetition require a firm, abiding constant to
which we can return in the flux of the momentary. It is only such a
firm, ordered structure which allows differentiations to be established
and secured. A location can be determined and rediscovered only in
an invariant system. The null point in a co-ordinate system may be
selected arbitrarily, but thereafter it must be able to be adhered to.
It is fixed within a space invariant with respect to the observer and
an area therefore in which individual places may be securely identi¬
fied and located. Here arbitrariness comes to an end. Arbitrary is the
choice of the A note on a piano as the basic tone for the tuning of the
orchestra’s instruments. But an orchestra can play symphonically
only if all the instruments are tuned to the same tone and if it can
stay so tuned. Differentiation and determination demand an invari¬

ant as a basis upon which such discernments can be carried out. The
infernal noise which early gramophones produced when the needle
failed in the middle of a record is a crude example of a vacillating,
constantly changing pitch in which no intervals could be maintained
because of the shifting of the initial tone. Technical conditions, how¬
ever, are not the only ones which must be fulfilled if clear differentia¬
tion is to be possible; the listener himself must be in a position to
ascertain an invariance in the temporal process of his perceiving,
i.e., in the constant variation of impressions.
This fixed order is not disclosed merely by after-the-fact reflection
(Nach-denken). In that very moment when we awake from sleep and
open our eyes, we are “there again” in a world with a firmly struc¬
tured order of space and time, confronted by unambiguously deter¬
mined or determinable things which we can relate to ourselves in our
actions. Our actions and reactions stand in a clearly-defined relation¬
ship. Even the unforeseen appears within the field of the anticipated.
One quick look reveals the things around me, firm and steady, stable
and ordered. And thus they remain there before me and for me. Espe¬
cially if we cannot immediately find our bearings upon awakening,
the question of “where” instantly arises. The location of our exist¬
ence, although it might be undetermined, is grasped as determinable.
The permanent, durable order cannot be composed of individual
sensations, for neither change nor duration can be found in the par¬
ticular, it cannot be learned from experience, since it is that which
makes experience possible; it cannot arise in a judgment, for it is the
presupposition of judgment. We must distinguish between the awak¬
ening of consciousness and the consciousness of being awake. This
rather pointed formulation is incomplete and therefore perhaps mis¬
leading. What wakes up is a man, and not a consciousness which in
some way or other has knowledge of the world and the body which
belongs to it. In awakening, I experience myself in my bodily exist¬
ence. Awake, I say “Last night I slept well.” This statement is, for all
practical purposes, neither devious nor ambiguous. Yet it still must
be understood more carefully and precisely. I, the speaker, I, who am
now awake, have slept. But I have not slept as someone who is awake.
I notice, rather, that my life extends through the zone of sleep and
that it passes through the phase of sleep as mere bodily existence. I
discover the possibility of my worldless and motionless existence. But
this is a discovery which I make from the perspective of my waking
present in all its relatedness to world and power of movement.
Awake, I apprehend myself in my bodily existence as a being which
ON BEING AWAKE 28l
senses and is capable of acting, as opposed to a mere nonconscious

existence. The corporeality of my existence is an integral part of the
total experience of being awake. The particular role it plays is now
to be made clear.
At the beginning of his Meditations,4 Descartes, still seeking a
basis for his method of radical doubt, maintains “. . . that awake-
ness and sleep possess no sure signs by which we may distinguish be¬
tween them.” But by the end of the Meditations, he has reached the
point of “.. . setting aside as ridiculous all the exaggerated doubts of
these past days.” ‘‘That is especially so,” Descartes says, “in regard to
that very general uncertainty about sleep, which I could not distin¬
guish from waking life. For now I find in them a very notable differ¬
ence, in that our memory can never bind and join our dreams
together with the course of our lives, as it habitually joins together
what happens to us when we are awake. And so, in effect, if someone
suddenly appeared to me when I was awake and disappeared in the
same way, as (do the images that I see) in my sleep, so that I could
not determine where he came from or where he went, it would not be
without reason that I would consider it a ghost or a phantom pro¬
duced in my brain, rather than truly a man. But when I perceive ob¬
jects in such a way that I distinctly recognize both the place from
which they come and the place where they are, as well as the time
when they appear to me; and when, without any hiatus, I can relate
my perception with all the rest of my life, I am entirely certain that I
perceive them wakefully and not in sleep.”
The decisive criterion is the unity, the connectedness, and the
orderly linking together of the phenomena. The important thing
here, however, is not the actual establishment of this connectedness,
but, rather, the possibility and the need for it. In the dream, things
are disconnected without the dreamer feeling a lack of orderly struc¬
ture or event. In waking life, however, even if a person is perplexed
and confused, he is oriented toward discovering this order. He is
perplexed because the anticipated answer has not yet been found. We
do not owe the experience of being awake to a judgment, we are,
rather, able to judge because we are awake. The possibility of order¬
ing precedes the fact of order.
Descartes’ line of argument is unconvincing. Since the irregu¬
larity of appearances and disappearances does not, in the first in¬
stance, lead him to conclude that he is sleeping, but only that
something must be wrong with the observational situation, then the
regularity of visible events in the other instance can not lead him to
the certainty that he is awake. An experience such as the one Des-
cartes describes is no longer odd to television audiences. For in this

country it happens often enough that in the middle of the most
exciting part of a drama the actors suddenly disappear and just as sud¬
denly reappear again, while in the meantime a nattilly dressed gentle¬
man glibly advises us of the virtues of the sponsor’s splendid product.
The observer is not in the slightest bit confused. When awake we can
watch a play and without any trouble delimit within “real space” the
space of a stage in which often enough things “have something fishy
about them.” In waking life we differentiate between the natural
order of events and the artistic order of the theater which yields its
own rules of play. Descartes had referred to viewing and to visible ob¬
jects. Had he, however, selected for his example hearing and noises
which come and go discontinuously without ascertainable related¬
ness, then he might have reasoned that being awake makes logical
operations possible—not that being awake can be deduced by means
of logical chains of thought. In the hushed silence of a dark night we
are quite capable of experiencing our awakeness. The stability of our
waking world is not based upon judgment; it is prelogical. The radi¬
cal swing over from the benumbedness of the dream to the clarity of
awakeness takes place in the transition from sleeping to awakening,
namely, in the readiness for sensory experience and movement. We
therefore have every reason to believe that already in this sphere
awakeness manifests itself and understands itself.
In Descartes’ dichotomy, thinking was ascribed to the res cogitans
and motion to the res extensa. Motion and corporeality were sep¬
arated from experiencing. Despite all the criticism which has been
levelled against them, these Cartesian ideas have exercised a decisive
influence up to the present day. The problem of movement has been
almost entirely surrendered over to physics and physiology. Yet, cor¬
poreality and mobility are the conditions not only of the primary
sensory apprehension of the world but also of its secondary, scientific
interpretation.
The permanence of the earth, of a house, or of a forest is manifest
only within change of time, and can only appear as such to a being
which in the sequence of its movements is directed to the abidingly
visible. Rest and motion, duration and temporal flux are experi¬
enced in reciprocal relation. Just as motion can be determined only
with respect to rest, so that which is at rest reveals itself only in con¬
trast to that which moves. The abiding and persistent is revealed to
us who persist within change; that which confronts me as permanent
can be apprehended only in a changing alternation of impressions.
Only in contraposition to my becoming and moving self can I ap¬
prehend the other, which confronts me as persistent.
ON BEING AWAKE 283
The permanent, durable order can manifest itself to me only as

the other which I can approach or from which I can withdraw. It is
in my becoming and mobility that the world in its continuity be¬
comes visible. I can change my standpoint with respect to that which
remains at rest; the other remains unchanged as I change my location
from Here to There. A rigid coupling, on the other hand, would
mean the disappearance of free mobility, the otherness of confronted
things and of sensory experience in general. Only as a mobile being
free to comport myself over and against the other am I able to see
the being-at-rest of visible things and their articulated substantiality
(Selbigkeit); I am able to move only insofar as I am over against
the sensed other. The morsel of food which we bring from the plate
to the mouth ceases to be an object when we swallow it. Anatomy
and physiology teach us, as we know, that this morsel is pushed
further along by peristaltic action in the intestine. But this knowl¬
edge never becomes immediate experience; it remains hidden from
us just as—both before and after Harvey—the circulation of the
blood in our veins remained unavailable to direct experiencing.
What we experience of the food we have swallowed is a state of well¬
being or its opposite; we feel either satisfied or sated, comfortable or
gorged. Peristalsis is not a movement we ourselves perform. Moving
ourselves: This we can do only if we stand in a relation to the other
which we experience by our senses and which we can know only as
mobile beings.
After waking we are ready to get up. This getting up is a rising
against gravity. In rising to an erect position, and in the free move¬
ment upon the ground that supports us, the objects appear. Erect
and capable of movement, we can confront the other. Within the
framework of the other, confronting it, I come to experience myself
and that which is genuinely mine—my body. In my bodilyness, I find
myself in the center of the world which unfolds itself in the dimen¬
sions of near and distant. Distances and distance as such, the so-called
depth dimensions of physiological optics, are relative to a potentially
mobile being which, proceeding outward from its own center in an
alternation of standpoints traversing space, first attains to the tan¬
gibly close and then, proceeding further, to the more remote. We see
—as against the physical motion of light—the visible spatial field ar¬
ranged in regions which are closer or more remote in relation to us
as mobile beings.
Every man experiences the world from his own standpoint to
which he is tied by his own corporeality and its corresponding gravi¬
tational pull. Thus, circumstance demands a certain order and con¬
sequence in our experience and action. In thought I can set myself
beyond all time and space; in phantasy I can mount the legendary
Pegasus and be carried far away. But in the sensory experience of the
waking present we remain pedestrians who, restrained by the gravity
of our bodily existence, are able to move only step by step—“pedan¬
tically.” Whether we be light hearted and high of spirit or tired and
oppressed, our vital moods are linked to gravity, to the burden that
we carry lightly or groaningly drag along. Things, too, confront us in
their weight and weightiness.
Not without reason has dreaming been compared to phantasy.
But with all their similarities, there remains the fundamental differ¬
ence that the dreamer is submerged in his dream world, while in
phantasy we are the master of our creation, no matter how enraptur¬
ing our daydreams may be. Though far removed from the present in
our phantasy, we nevertheless remain near to reality. At any moment
a Wagner can knock at Faust’s door and call him back to this earth
from the heavens or hells of his phantasies. In phantasy, sunk in
memory, lost in thought, I am still always I in the persistence of my
bodily existence. The “there” in which, according to Heidegger’s
phrase, our being is thrown is our corporeality and its correspond¬
ingly structured world. This is the reality from which I remove my¬
self in phantasy and reverie; this is the reality against whose
background phantasy and memory, even when they include myself,
stand out. Bodily, sensory experience is the continuum from which
all experiencing proceeds and to which it all returns. In this sense
and to this degree, sensualism is correct. And thus, too, everyday life
is correct when it understands as “real” that which confronts us_be
it merely an apparition—in the continuity of our bodily sensory ex¬
istence and experience between life and death.
Why does the dreamer lose power over his dreams?5 Why is it that
he does not appropriate to himself his dream phantasies, but is,
rather, possessed by them? Why does the dream world become reality
for him? The answer to these questions is no longer very difficult.
Dreams come in sleep; the sleeper has lain down to rest. He has, in
fact, not withdrawn his interest from the world; rather, in lying
down and sleeping he gives himself completely to the world. He
gives up his stance which “opposes” and confronts the world. Thus,
he can no longer freely relate to the world and therefore no longer
delimit and claim that which is his own. By the bondage of him who
dreams, we measure the freedom of him who is awake. The illusions
in dreams are not failures of judgment; the dreamer does not con¬
fuse mine and thine. The deceptions of the dream arise from and
correspond to the mode of the dreamer’s condition; sleeping. Only in
ON BEING AWAKE 285
waking life can the original, nonconceptual, and nonobjective ex¬

perience of “mine” be constituted. The Mine differentiates itself
from the not mine in its relation to that which opposes;—opposes
within the continuity of the relation I-other realized in my mobility.
Insofar as the dreamer switches off the unity of sensomotorium, sen¬
sory awareness, and mobility; insofar as he interrupts the continuity
of bodily being-in-the-world and its being-opposed, to this degree he
thereby suspends as experienceable that reality in contrast to which
dreams might possibly appear to the dreamer as “mere” dreams.
Only in contrast to primal sensory reality can thoughts be experi¬
enced as thoughts, images as images, and dreams as dreams. The
dream world overpowers the dreamer; it appears as real to him, not
in contrast to the unreal, but because of the lack of the possibility of
such contrast, a lack of possibility of such being-other. Even under
such conditions experience still in a certain way preserves the polar¬
ity of I-other. This polarity is, to be sure, singularly modified. In
dreams we find ourselves active in a certain way; but we are not the
doer of these deeds; our actions have no source in an historical con¬
tinuity and no predetermined goal. They are not actions genuinely
projected by us. Correspondingly, our dream antagonists, strictly
speaking, are not strange persons; their good and evil intentions are
familiar to us without their having expressed them or communicated
them to us.
Only when sight and that which is seen are separable from each
other, when the thing seen maintains itself through various acts of
seeing—only then can a relation between the act of seeing and ob¬
ject of sight be grasped. The changing of standpoints while con¬
fronting something which persists reveals for me the possibility of
differentiating my act of seeing from what I see, of separating real
from unreal, insight from illusion, truth from semblance. Awake, we
can dwell on a matter, repeat something, or return to the point of
departure. But in dreams we canot effect such a division. The other,
over and against which I first win my stance and which thereby can
manifest itself as a persistent object, does not here come into its own.
The dream lacks thus the possibility of a differentiation between
reality and semblance. This possibility is realized only in awakeness.
In the prelingual and prelogical sphere of waking, sensory experi¬
ence, the first step toward linguistic explication and logical modi has
been taken. Here is the source of all later separations of appearances
from their modes of appearing.
Awakeness is a primitive fact. It is the foundation upon which is
erected the human world, in the praxis of life as in theoretical in-
sight, in its interhuman intercourse as in its individual and com¬

mon history. Sensory experience opens the world to us and sets us in
its order. In this situation and out of it, we begin to think and move
in our thinking beyond the primal situation, without, however, ever
abandoning it completely. The second step could never take place at
all were it not already anticipated in the first. The world as it is re¬
vealed in prescientific and scientific interpretation is not wholly alien
to purely sensory awareness, for in it all potentialities of interpreta¬
tion are already intimated.
In the fixed order of space which becomes visible when we awake,
we can determine places and locations and relate them to one
another. We can draw borders in these spatial configurations and
discover the equality of distance by the reversibility of sight direc¬
tion. It remains constant when we approach and when we withdraw
from an object. As position changes, the objects’ size, proportions,
and structure are preserved. We can distinguish parts of the object,
separate these parts, delimit them, and determine their relation to
each other. It is in the world experienced in awakeness that geome¬
try, the identifiable determination of lengths and angles, is pos¬
sible. It is not that simply being awake makes us mathematicians,
but in the world we experience when awake and in our relation to it
geometry can be constituted. Awakeness, physiologically understood,
is a condition of mathematics, because mathematics is an interpreta¬
tion of the world which is accessible to us in waking life, a world
intimately bound up with the emancipation of the act of seeing
from that which is seen. This emancipation can be realized only by a
being which moves.
Awakeness is the beginning of all experience, but not in the sense
of a tabula rasa. The “white paper’’ upon which, in Locke’s simile,
sensations are entered one after the other, supposedly has no struc¬
ture of its own and no fiber. Locke used the metaphor of the “white
paper” to indicate the complete emptiness of mind, an emptiness
gradually filled with ideas. If awakeness as the ground of all experi¬
ence is to be compared to a blank sheet of paper, it would surely
have to be a ruled paper which, by the arrangement of its lines, regu¬
lates and prescribes the entries made on it. The basic relation of
awakeness allows of the experience of the singular, but the experi¬
ence of the singular is, as we have shown, not a single experience.
Awakeness is without plural; it is at both the beginning and the end
of every experience. But, as in daylight we perceive the illuminated
objects and not the light itself, so in the waking state our interest is
stimulated and bound by the many individual things. Awakeness
ON BEING AWAKE 287
itself remains the unnoticed and hidden foundation. The remarkable

obscurity of the structure of awakeness—concealed in its obviousness
and evidence—in conjunction with the marked interest in the singu¬
lar has led, especially in doctrines of the school of sensualism, to a
misconstruction of sensory experience.
Let me once more quote Locke. After having rejected the assump¬
tion of innate ideas, he starts his investigation with the somewhat
awkward, but truly characteristic remark: “Every man being con¬
scious to himself that he thinks and that which his mind is applied
about whilst thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt
that men have in their mind several ideas; such as those expressed
by the words: whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man,
elephant, army, drunkenness, and others.”6 The men Locke speaks of
are, of course, awake. They are his awake fellow men with whom he
can converse about their own and his experiences. But this stand¬
point is not firmly maintained. The people we meet in everyday life
are interpreted by Locke as souls. Both ways of looking at people
run parallel in Locke and lead to an inextricable entanglement.
Sometimes he speaks of human beings, and sometimes of the mind
and the soul without ever making clear to himself or to the reader
how he reaches these abstractions and how those noncorporeal minds
and disembodied souls can traffic with other incorporeal souls or have
knowledge of them. Like Locke, many others obstinately hold to the
assumption that individual “external” processes call forth individual
impressions in consciousness. Indeed, such a presupposition makes it
appear that “neither the property of being spontaneous, nor that of
being passively encountered sets a bona fide sense impression apart
from a sudden pain, dreams, hallucinations, and optical illusions.”6
Locke spoke of whiteness, hardness, elephants, and drunkenness.
Margenau speaks of sensory impression, dreams, hallucinations,
pains. The difference is not significant. Both speak of sleep and
awakeness without questioning after their own awakeness, the evi¬
dence of which is presupposed by all other evidence. Locke puts the
question as to “whether the soul thinks all the time.” He discourses
on sleeping, dreaming, awakeness. But it never occurs to him to treat
awakeness itself and the possibility of differentiating one’s own
awakeness from dreaming as a theme for investigation. The psycho¬
logical problem, the immanent structure of awakeness, completely
escapes his attention. Had it been otherwise, his proposition as to
the beginning of all experience would have had to read, “Every
awake man being conscious to himself of his awakeness ...” Then,
at least, he would not have been able to pursue the path he took, for
in awakeness we do not find ideas in our mind; we find, rather, our¬

selves in our bodily existence in the world.
Sensory experience cannot be made up of primally singular
worldless data; it cannot be mere matter upon which thinking subse¬
quently performs its functions in the way, for instance, that the
stomach acts upon the food which flows to it through the esophagus.
Awakening is a basic fact of awakeness and should be considered as
a part of a whole as should the factistic differentiation between
awakening and having dreamt. It is a fortunate fact, for the alterna¬
tion of awakeness and sleeping makes it possible better to grasp the
brightness of awakeness by contrasting it to the darkness of night.
The characteristics of awakeness which have been ascertained
are: the ability to differentiate, the ordered sequentiality of impres¬
sions, the relation to bodiliness, mobility, and gravity, the experience
of my-ness, the separation of appearance and that which appears.
To these now, is added a word about the “sociology” of awake¬
ness. The dreamer is alone in his dream world; in sleep he cannot
communicate to others nor can they communicate to him. Communi¬
cation is possible only in the state of awakeness. So much goes with¬
out saying, and yet we still have a right and a good reason to wonder.
If there were degrees of “self-evident” truth, then the incapacity of
the dreamer to communicate might be called “more self-evident”
than the fact of a community between awake human beings. This is
rather remarkable; for, the evidence of a deficiency presupposes a
complete understanding of the positive condition. Although the fact
that those who sleep do not communicate with one another is taken
for granted, the possibility of communication in general seems to
stand in need of explanation. “The knowledge of the alien ego” is
felt to be a mystery as is indicated by the various attempts theoreti¬
cally to account for it by notions of sympathy, analogical deduction,
telesthesia. Insofar as the possibility of mutual understanding is not
itself contested, investigations have always been limited to communi¬
cation in awakeness. But why is communication bound up with
awakeness? What is the relation of being-with-another to awakeness?
We know it is the dreamer who dreams his dreams. No other can
enter his dream world, nor he enter another’s. The relation of
sleepers to one another is reciprocally negative, that of those who are
awake reciprocally positive. However, the relation of those who sleep
to those who are awake is unilaterally negative or unilaterally posi¬
tive. The sleeper cannot relate to one who is awake, but the converse
is possible. He who is awake can watch over the sleeper and protect
him or he can assault him and destroy him. Thieves come in the
night. As long as the sleeper does not rouse he is powerless at the
CRITIQUE OF EPIPHENOMINALISM 289
mercy of the awake criminal. Only when he awakes from sleep,

“comes back” and has power again over himself, can he recompense
the other with good or evil, take measure of him, approach him, or
withdraw from him. All communication, lingual included, is based
in the being-with-another of mobility, of meeting and fleeing in a
common surrounding world.
The theories of the apprehension of an alter ego take no note of
the power relationship of communication. They visualize the knower
and the known opposing each other like two bodies stamped out of
an environing totality. The knower discovers certain properties in
the cogitatum which supposedly lead him to assume the presence of
an other ego. Thus, one erroneously speaks of knowing an alien ego,
another mind. But communication is not the product of a knowing
process. We can, to be sure, relate to the other in the manner of an
observer, but in primal and basic communication I am not a knower
and the other is not the object of my knowledge. He is not a thing
singled out from a neutral background as an object of special inter¬
est. I discover the other, my fellow man or fellow creature, as a
partner in my waking motor intentions, as a being which can come
near me or withdraw from me.
£>. Critique of
Epiphenomcnalism
(a) The Physiology and Psychology

of the Senses
THE DIVORCE OF LIVING MOVEMENT FROM MOTOR PROCESS AND
sensing from the process of sensation demands a rejection of epiphe-

nomenalism. For this separation can stand up only if epiphenome-
nalism be false. Physiological psychology is based on comparison; but

the principle of this comparison is of an unusual sort. Physiological
psychology compares psychic experience with physiological process.
What renders such a comparison possible? What, indeed, is the gen¬
eral connecting link between psychic experience and physiological
process? Do we have here a tertium comparationis as we do in trans¬
lating one language into another?
In translation, the same thought is expressed in different lan¬
guages.1 Yet does the claim that experience is not only dependent
upon organic events but precisely analagous to the processes in the
sense organs have any verifiable meaning? Is it at all possible that
the proponents of the doctrine of epiphenomenalism and their oppo¬
nents could ever meet in a meaningful discussion in which one side
might be convinced by the strength of the other’s argument? What
will the epiphenomenalists bring forth in defense of their position?
How will their opponents answer them? Before I argue about the
analogy between experience and physiological process, I ought first
to attempt to clarify the preliminary issues.
1. Return to the Integrity of the Experience. The sensory organs
are demonstrated to every medical student in his preclinical courses.
He learns that this particular configuration here is the optical nerve
and that tissue there the acoustic nerve. And he unquestioningly ac¬
cepts what he is taught. But how has science itself arrived at this
knowledge? What experience justifies it in designating an organ as a
sensory organ? For, indeed, on these experiences and their roots de¬
pends our understanding of the manner in which psychic events are
linked to bodily processes. In this case, the very nomenclature con¬
tains within it a complex theory.
We can facilitate the answer to all these general questions by
turning first to a different, but relevant problem. We ask: How does
the “pathological” anatomist recognize a histological specimen as a
section of diseased tissue?
Pathological anatomy per se cannot recognize an organ as in itself
healthy or sick. That there is such a thing as sickness and that there
exist many diseases is something pathological anatomy knew quite
before it ever prepared its first slide. In order to give its findings a
meaningful interpretation, it had also to know, prior to its proper
work, that the corpse it examined belonged to a living creature
which lived under such and such conditions and died in this or that
way.
Without hesitation, we speak of diseases in the plural. Our origi¬
nal experience does not, however, contain the catalogue of x diseases
CRITIQUE OF EPIPHENOMENALISM 291
which modern medicine presents. Our original experience is not of

diseases in the plural, but of sickness, suffering, dying, and death.
Hense, the unquenchable hope for a panacea which would be
“equal” to all modes of disease, that is, all diseases. Suffering, the
experience of bodily suffering in oneself and in other men and ani¬
mals, is the primary experience from which medicine is derived.
Dis-ease, the experience of being not at ease, leads to the discovery
of the “diseases.”
The objectification of suffering comes about in two quite differ¬
ent ways: as an expression of suffering and as a symptom of disease.
Of the two, the understanding of the expression is primary, a pre-
scientific understanding of being sick. The knowledge of diseases
and their symptoms, however, has been slowly developed over the
course of centuries by medical research. Whenever such research
comes to certain conclusions, then the symptom becomes more im¬
portant for diagnosis than the expression. Originally, however, and
even today in correct medical practice, the expression is also essen¬
tial. Objectification by the ascertainment of symptoms and by means
of the microscope and histological staining becomes meaningful only
when seen in the context of the living being. The individual func¬
tions of the organism and their abberations are understandable only
in relation to the integrity of the organism as a full, vital totality.
In a like manner, we grasp the individual functions and powers
of the psyche only in relation to unimpaired experiencing. Without
eyes we cannot see; that is a truism. But in its negative form, it quite
rigorously demonstrates the manner in which we arrive at the knowl¬
edge of individual functions and it shows us the limitations of such
knowledge. Expressed positively, the proposition says: Only with eyes
can we see. But it would be a complete misunderstanding of what
we thereby know were we to derive from this negative statement
the positive proposition that we see with the eyes, or, even worse, that
visual sensations are in the eyes.2
An insignificant, spatially limited injury of the medulla oblon¬
gata or a dislocation of the pulmonary artery suffices to bring the life
of an organism to an end. We may therefore quite rightly say that
without the medulla oblongata or without an open pulmonary artery
we canot live. But no one would therefore be inclined to localize life
in the medulla oblongata or in the lumen of the pulmonary artery.
Yet it seems to be less objectionable to localize sensations in particu¬
lar parts of the nervous system or to localize consciousness in the
brain stem. The unity of the living being differentiates itself into
many partial functions. Thus, we can only reconstruct the organism
and its unity; we can dissect the organism, but we cannot manufac¬
ture it.
2. Sensory Data Mediate Between Physics and Physiology.3 Physi¬
ology of the senses makes use of the differentiations, limitations and
disturbances of sensing in order to reveal the physiological processes
in the sensory organs. Sensory data serve as indicators for the detec¬
tion of the relation that exists between stimulus and reaction. Sen¬
sory data are the “middle men”; they serve our efforts to know by
mediating between physical and physiological processes. On the one
hand they are taken as signs which refer to physical events, and on
the other hand, as indicators of the functioning of particular organs.
Certain failures of sensing first reveal themselves in connection with
more or less severe disturbances of particular organs. From such ex¬
perience, we deduce that—in a positive sense—the sequentiality of
certain sensations indicates the intact functioning of certain organs.
Physiological research in this area remains dependent on an analysis
of sensing;4 and such analysis must, for the most part, be carried out
independently of the sense physiology, and, indeed, logically precedes
it (even though, practically, such analysis has been enormously
strengthened by the physiology of the senses). Sensations, neverthe¬
less, remain a mediator between physical and physiological events.
The physiology of the senses investigates the functions of sensory
organs as processes which take place in bodily structures and which
are caused by physical processes according to the threshold of the
stimuli. Sensory data—color, brightness, spatial order, and the rest,
serve as signs for physical occurrences. These same data are also
noticed by the experimental subject; by announcing that he now
sees something and by reporting what he sees, he also informs us of
the functioning of the organ. Since the observations of the experi¬
menter and the subject seem to be directed to the same data, it may
be said that these data function merely as indicators, that they make
possible a direct disclosure of the causal relation between physical
and physiological events.
A closer examination, however, gives us cause to doubt whether
the sensory impressions of the two persons are strictly comparable,
rather than essentially differing as to their content and in their
methodological significance. For whereas the experimental subject is
instructed to relate his impressions of what appears to him with as
little bias as possible, the experimenter will not limit himself to
momentary givens. The subject says: “Now I see a red, circular spot
on a yellow background,” and the experimenter translates this state¬
ment to fit in with the purpose of his experiment. In place of the “I,”
CRITIQUE OF EPIPHENOMENALISM
293
he puts an “it,” namely, the organ (in this case, the eye) in place of
see he puts “is stimulated”; in place of the “now,” the point in¬
stant t. What remains of the experience of seeing is thus only that
which is seen, the objective result of the seeing. It is this result alone
which is made use of by physiology in order circumspectly to ascer¬
tain the functioning of the organ considered as independent of ex¬
ternal events. A criterion for the performance of an organ appears to
be merely its ability to provide contact with the known objective
world. Experimental subjects and experimenters speak two different
languages at one and the same time. A translation here is possible,
however, not a philologically exact one, but a translation in which
the original meaning of the statement made undergoes an essential
modification. For the experimenter, the other is both the subject of
an experiment with whom he speaks and who understands and can
answer his questions; but at the same time, he is also considered
merely as an organism affected by physically defined stimuli. This
observational ambiguity, which exists whether what is observed is a
sick or healthy other or, indeed, one’s own self, has decisively influ¬
enced the growth of theory. Objective psychology has, by its methods,
tried to escape this ambiguity. But, as we have seen, it does not
succeed.
The experimenter thus goes beyond the reports of the experimen¬
tal subject and, by drawing on the totality of scientific knowledge, he
constructs a general, objective order, which he directly relates to the
physical events and also to the functions of the sensory organs. The
functioning of the sensory organs thus becomes ascertainable by
means of measurable physical and chemical processes. There exists a
causal connection between processes like action currents, chemical
transformations, and the physical event. Now, however, we are no
longer speaking of seeing and hearing, nor, indeed, may we do so.
3. Harmonious Function and Proper Function. But such a limita¬
tion applied to sense-physiological research will satisfy no one. One
glance into the rich literature of the physiology of the senses shows
that the issue always involves seeing and hearing in the most authen¬
tic sense.
This brings us to a group of investigations which must be strictly
and carefully separated from the preceding ones. We meet with such
articulation of functions everywhere in the science of physiology.
Take, for example, muscle function as the object of observation: We
may first of all think of all those processes which come into play
with the contraction and performance of work by the muscles. But
by muscle function, we may also mean the pulling effect of a muscle.
for example, the delta muscle upon the humerous. Ungerer,5 follow¬
ing Driesch, has distinguished between the former group of functions
as proper and the latter as harmonious functions. The harmonious
functions are effects of the excited organ upon other parts of the
organism or upon the organism as a whole. The contraction of
the muscle, its excitation and proper function depend upon certain
chemical transformations. Analytical studies of proper functions of
an isolated muscle do not pertain to the locomotion of limbs of body.
It becomes manifest only when harmonious functions are studied.
And to that end, the muscles must be viewed as functioning in the
organism. Only from the perspective of the concept of organism is it
possible to understand harmonious function. The most precise
knowledge of the chemical-colloidal processes in the functioning
muscle cannot compensate for the radical change of standpoint re¬
quired in relating muscle function to the organism.
Muscles, activated in their proper function, move the limbs with
respect to other parts of the skeleton; they adduce, abduce, or rotate
(e.g., the humerous in the shoulder joints). By means of these move¬
ments of the limbs, we move in our environment. Harmonious func¬
tions must therefore be subdivided into a first and second order. The
frame of reference of proper function is the surrounding biochemical
field; that of harmonious function of the first order is the skeleton,
and the frame of reference of harmonious function of the second
order is the environment of the organism. In the first instance
(proper function) we speak of the motion of the muscular elements
(e.g., contraction), in the second, we speak of the motion of individ¬
ual muscles in their anatomical connection. Only in the third case
do we refer to locomotion, self-movement. Disturbances of the
proper function—depending on their extent—result in disturbances
in harmonious function of the first order which latter, however,
can often be vastly compensated by concatenated performance of
harmonious functions of the second order. The so-called proprio¬
ceptive sensations are co-ordinated with the first order harmonious
function; the exteroceptive serve the second order harmonious func¬
tion. The term “motion” has different meanings when applied
to proper function and to harmonious functions. To avoid con¬
fusion, it would be more expedient to use three different words, say
“motion,” “action,” and “movement.” Such a terminological clarifi¬
cation would make it easier to distinguish the three observational
standpoints. But even after such a distinction, it would still be neces¬
sary to explicate their logical-conceptual and contentual relation¬
ship. It is fallacious to assume that a complete analysis of the proper
295
function of the elements brings us at the same time to a solution of

the problems of harmonious functions.6
Sense impressions, too, are to be understood only as harmonious
functions. Just as the muscle reveals its significance as an organ of
movement only in the organism, so the sense organ is as such under¬
standable only in the context of a living person. Conversation and
the ability to understand communicated expressions are the real
source of our knowledge of sense physiology.
Experiments with animals are indispensable for the physiologist,
but without conversing with the experimental subject who is able to
tell us of his experiences and report his impressions; without the
soliloquy of the researcher living in his sensory world, without all
this, sense physiology could never have begun.
In his text on experimental psychology, Froebes7 wrote,
It is true that in the course of time the child also learns new movements
of an artificial kind like speaking and writing which are not given instinc-
tually and which vary according to environment. How is the acquisition of
such new movements possible? . . . The following schema may illustrate
the process: A certain movement is often initiated by the cerebrum (reflec-
torial). This produces an excitation ME in the motor region from which
flows the movement into the muscles. This movement is then noticed (visu¬
ally, kinaesthetically, etc.) i.e. it kindles a perception of the movement, an
image of it. This perception contains, as always, a neural parallel-process,
the sensory excitation SE. There is consequently formed an association be¬
tween ME and SE (which follow each other). Although with lesser inten¬
sity, this association works also in a retrograde manner; that is, if later on
the movement image emerges again (as a perception of someone else
performing the movement, or as an idea), the probability exists that the
motor excitation will be awakened and the movement itself thereby
evoked.
It would surely be wrong to call the author of such a comprehen¬

sive text to task for a stylistic error. Nevertheless, the whole context
indicates, as it must always, that the direction of the error is ordained
by certain motives. Movement is treated by Froebes as an inde¬
pendent, reified given.
The movement appears as a kind of fluid material which flows
from the brain to the muscle. What Froebes probably had in mind
was the proper function of the muscle, and movement is understood
as an excitation of histological elements. But we are also told that
the cerebrum initiates a certain movement. Presumably what is
meant by this formulation is the movement of a muscle in the
anatomical sense, that is, its first order harmonious function. Froebes,
however, actually describes a group of new “movements of an artifi¬
cial kind like speaking and writing,” i.e., movements in the sense of
manual skills and actions.
The movement which flows into the muscle Froebes says elicits a
perception of movement. This is said to be an image of the kin¬
esthetic, proprioceptive excitation, and at the same time a visual
movement image of the act of writing, be it one’s own or that of
another person performing this action. The perception of the move¬
ment is finally localized as a sensory excitation in a neural parallel
process.8 According to Froebes, presentation of the learning of man¬
ual skills must lead to a progressive rigidity of the motor act. In fact,
however, motor processes always become more free with the “know
how” of a manual skill. He who has learned how to write finds little
difficulty substituting a blackboard for the usual sheet of paper.
Without any hesitation, a transition is made from the horizontal to
the vertical position, from black on white to white on black, from
the accustomed size of the written letters to a ten- or twenty-fold
magnification. And whereas writing on paper called movements in
the carpometacarpal joint into play, writing on a blackboard re¬
quires the movement of the shoulder joint and its muscles. There is
no simple correspondence between the patterns determining a motor
action in the visible environment and the kinesthetic and motor
processes which guide the actions in the organism.
How could the process of a muscle contraction be taken as the
image of the resulting movement of a limb? To turn one’s head to
the right, the left sterno cleido mastoideus must be innervated. Is
there any analogy between this muscular contraction and the turn¬
ing of the head? To get from the desk to the door of my study, I
need walk only a few steps. But how manifold are the movements of
the muscles which must be set in action during this short walk? How,
then, could an analogy between motor process and spontaneous
movement be established?
The same holds true for sensing. There are sensing beings, how¬
ever sensations by themselves do not exist. Seeing is located neither
in the eye nor in the retina, nor in the optic nerve, the geniculate
body, the optical radiation, nor in the calcarina; the brain does not
see.
4. The Discrepancies. Physiological processes do not exactly corre¬
spond to physical events. “Exact subjectivism” in sense-physiology9
was able to draw from these discrepancies far-reaching conclu¬
sions as to the proper function of the sense organs. The “discrep-
297
ancies” apparently are limited to lesser deviations of the phenomenal

order with respect to the “objective” order. Actually, the discrepancy
between physiological process and sensory experience is much more
radical. All processes in the sense organs are conceived of in universal
objective time and universal objective space. In experience, they ap¬
pear here and now, in the subjective, individually lived time. Such a
monadic ordering can not be derived from the universality of the
physical order. The organ cannot see; the organ cannot say “I”; the
organ, considered in isolation, has nothing to do with the Here and
Now.
The investigation of “simple” processes of seeing suggests that the
discrepancies nevertheless admit of a relationship between function
and experience whereby the process of “forming images” would need
but minor correction. A simple discrepancy of this sort is the devi¬
ation of the apparent from the actual vertical when the glance is
directed into the distance, but under conditions of monocular fixa¬
tion. “We infer from this,” says Tschermak10—“assuming the forma¬
tion of a meridionally correct, that is, undistorted, image—we infer
to a corresponding deviation of the vertically sensed elements from
the plumb line.” This inference is very characteristic. The rod, hav¬
ing been placed in the apparent vertical, is for the purpose of the
interpretation of the function in question taken not as it appears,
i.e., vertical, rather the phenomenal order is replaced by an objective
and universal order, and then from this order it is referred back to
the “function.”
But such attempts to explain discrepancies must fail as soon as
the observation turns from the artificial conditions of the laboratory
to those closer to everyday life. Then one discovers, for instance in
the visual field, that the subjective angle of vision is determined “by
the particular subjective standard in the visual field which varies ac¬
cording to time and region.” “Decisive for the overall criterion is not
objective distance, but the idea of the distance, or ‘seen distance’
(Sehferne), the object we have focused on awakens in us as the main
theme of attention.”11
But what does the appeal to attention mean in such a context?
Apparently, nothing else but the confession that a purely physiologi¬
cal explanation does not suffice.
The use, therefore, of the expression “subjective” is not entirely
innocuous. Because the “specific energy” of the senses takes part in
determining the content of sensations, one speaks of a subjectivity of
sensations. “Subjective” means, then, something bodily conditioned.
The subject of exact subjectivism is thus not the experiencing /, but
the organ which receives the stimuli. The subject is seen from with¬
out; it is another part of the objective world.
Physiological psychology fails to see that the way we understand
both physical and physiological processes is of a qualitatively differ¬
ent order from the way we understand, and must understand,
experiencing.
The essential elements of this difference between these two orders
can be seen in the following set of antitheses:
Sequence of events Becoming

Process Experiencing
Sequence of locationally and
temporally limited processes Totality-relation of self to world
Sequence of moments Continuum of change
Objective time Experienced time
Objective space Experienced space
Separateness of space and time Distance; spatio-temporal unity
The point instant of the
present and its extension Temporal horizon
Objective situs Perspective
Vector Direction
Differences between the
excited organs Differences between modes of
communication
Motor process Self-movement
Isolated organism Original being-with of self
and world
Stimulus-receptor Living subject
? Nothingness
Objective psychology, too, realizes that experience and physio¬

logical processes are not entirely the same. But it is so dominated by
the idea of coupling experience to process that it is forced to replace
the order of becoming by the order of events. That, however, is not
possible. The dissimilarity of these two orders must be recognized
and acknowledged—which means asserting the right to investigate
sensing and self-movement in terms of their own content independ¬
ently of the results yielded by physiology. Between the physiology
and the psychology of the senses there exists merely a correlation12;
there exists no word-for-word translation from the one sphere to the
other.
5. Physics Refutes Physicalism. The physicist’s observations begin
299
and end within the field of human action. In it and from it he de¬
velops the mathematical and physical conception of space. The per¬
sonal relation of the observer to his environment differs in principle
from the spatio-temporal relations of things observed. If the ob¬
server’s original relations to space and time corresponded to those
in which the observed objects and their ultimate hypostatizations,
such as atoms and electrons, are conceived, defined, and measured,
he could never devise a science of physics. Is it not, then, self-evident
that physics as a science of physical events must go beyond that
which it defines and determines? The definer encompasses the de¬
fined. Every statement about the position, velocity, and directional
motion of a body presupposes that the observer himself commands
the spatial totality within which a determined or determinable loca¬
tion (a particular position) is at issue. From the multiplicity of all
possible locations, the physicist seeks to establish the actual position.
Whether he succeeds in this, whether the physical and technical con¬
ditions allow it or not, whether an unambiguous determination is
possible or merely a probability statement—all that does not change
the actual state of affairs here.
The observational space, thought of as invariant, is, for the ob¬
server, peculiarly transparent. No surfaces obstruct his view into its
depths. Physically unburdened, he is able to move in any direction
he pleases within the spatial totality determined by his co-ordinates.
To be able to determine the actual position, motion, direction, and
velocity of a body, he must first of all master the order of all the pos¬
sible positions. No body—either a single particle or a complex struc¬
ture—can determine its position by itself. For it does not command
a spatial totality, but is bound to one position: That sought by the
observer. It does not command a plurality of possibilities, for to do
that it would have to be able to reach beyond itself to a place where
it is not. A physical body cannot determine the distance of its posi¬
tion with respect to other locations. The observer, on the other hand,
separated by a distance from other bodies, measures the distance
by bringing the separated locations into a relationship that spans
the intervening space.
Every school boy knows that the earth turns on its axis every 24
hours, and that it takes a year to complete its orbit around the sun.
Should the young astronomer be slightly more advanced in his edu¬
cation, he will be inclined to look disdainfully upon the ideas of
Ptolemy. And yet, the odds are that he himself would propose a
geocentric system if he attempted to bring forth a new astronomy.
According to all appearances, it is the earth which is at rest and the
3°°
Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
sun which rises and sets. We do not perceive the movement of the
earth because we cannot contrast it with a fixed system of co-ordi¬
nates. We do not, to be sure, notice the movement of the earth, but
that it is at rest is nevertheless transparently clear to us. How is this
possible? How is it that the earth appears to us as being at rest? We
know: Motion is relative to a (relatively) moving or (relatively)
stationary point in space. Movement is understood as the change of
position with reference to another body. All uniform systems moving
toward each other in a straight line are therefore equivalent from a
physical point of view; the natural laws take the same form in these
systems. No observer can claim that it is his system which is station¬
ary and the other’s which is moving. This aspect of the special theory
of relativity, which represents an amplification of the Galilean or
Newtonian principle of relativity, has been extended in the general
theory of relativity to cover any and all systems. The relativity and
interchangeability among systems does not, however, pertain to the
acts of measuring within a system itself; it does not apply to the
psychological basis of the observation of movements.
All measurements are made within one system. Depending on the
state of motion of the individual observer’s system, measurements
will yield different, although “translatable,” results. But all observ¬
ers, regardless of their different systems of motion, are nevertheless
equal with respect to their mode of observing. For all their percep¬
tions take place within their systems’ states of rest and motion and
all observers in distinguishing motion from rest confer a natural
precedence upon rest, quite in the way that Aristotle did with respect
to all things, not just animals and men. This basic experience of rest
and motion corresponds to the psychophysical organization of man,
to his own mobility and the exertion necessary for the transition
from rest to motion. The precedence of the state of rest in original
experience is the expression of a power relation. We experience our
own movement not as change of position relative to spatial order
taken as stationary; we rather experience our own movement as
action in the face of the gravitational force of the earth upon which
we move. This earth appears to us in itself unvaryingly immobile.
Terrestrial space manifests itself as an absolute space within which
things take, maintain, or exchange absolute positions, which is to say
that these things may all be found either at rest or in motion. Subse¬
quent reflection may reveal weakness in this original experience of
“container space,” but it cannot brush this experience aside, as little
as the analysis of light can brush aside impressions of color. Criti¬
cism tries to correct the egocentric and anthropomorphic character
3° I
of the original experience, but the critic himself remains a human

being, a human critic with human experience. And human experi¬
ence is the presupposition of his subsequent corrections.
In his job of measuring, the observer distinguishes movement
from rest and invariance. By reading off pointer positions, he ob¬
serves the scale as being invariant and the oscillating needle as in
motion. For good reasons, it does not occur to him to reverse this
relation. The movement of the pointer is relative to the invariant
scale, but the scale’s state of rest is not relative to the pointer. The
scale can be seen as being at rest without the pointer; the pointer
itself may be in a state of rest. The scale is not at rest with respect
to the pointer, but relative to the observer. Physics may understand
rest as a special case of motion, but the physicist cannot see rest as
motion of zero quantity. A stationary frame of reference is necessary
for discerning a mobile pointer, but a stationary scale may be mani¬
fest to us without the movement of a pointer. Changes of position
are relative and reciprocal. For the observer, rest and movement are
at the same time relative and not reciprocal. The observer estab¬
lishes a pointer reading; that is, he sees the scale at rest and with it a
pointer’s change of position. The invariant scale represents for him a
systematic order of possibilities; the movement of the pointer indi¬
cates the actual event and the pointer’s position before the scale indi¬
cates that event’s degree and measure. While the pointer is limited
to -its own motion, the observer succeeds in simultaneously appre¬
hending the invariant body, the immobile dial, and the motion of
the pointer. Thus he can comprehend them in their contrasts and
thus determine motion in the extent of these contrasts. The physical
body in motion, on the other hand, cannot transcend itself by appre¬
hending that which is at rest as such. Establishing the fact that some¬
thing is moving transcends the movement itself.
Movement takes place in time. A body in motion changes its
position from moment to moment. We are accustomed to speak of a
motion comprising its beginning, middle, and end, but at the same
time understanding it in its temporal direction. But a body in mo¬
tion always finds itself somewhere in the transition from A to X, via
B, C, D. It has left the point of departure and finds itself now at B,
now at C, etc. We preserve in a certain sense the positions the body
traverses and describe them as the path of motion— for example,
the parabola described by a projectile. We record the history of a
motion, and understand it not as static, but as a temporal sequence.
When determining position, we reach beyond, we transcend the indi¬
vidual point. A cinematic strip of photographs splits movement into
3°2 Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
a series of phases. Each individual picture reproduces only one mo¬

ment of the whole movement. If observation of movement were to
be strictly parallel and synchronous with it, so that at each moment
the preceding position vanished, we could never recognize motion
as such.
As a physical being, the observer moves in his observation with
the observed object. Galileo is said to have observed uniformity in
the oscillations of the Florentine cathedral’s chandeliers by the throb¬
bing of his own pulse. Physics since then has reached ever increasing
precision in measuring time points and in refining its temporal scale
of measurement. It descended from the scale of the seasons, the
months and days, to minutes and seconds. It counts radar impulses
and light-wave rhythms instead of the rhythms of breathing and the
beating of the heart. But, with the respect to the situation of the
observer, nothing in principle has changed. Living, sensing, thinking
within time, we establish temporal points, extensions and measure¬
ments. The observer who moves along with the event would never be
in a position to establish temporal points or to measure extentions
of time. For all measurements of velocity, the postulate holds true
that a body uninfluenced by other forces will traverse equal distances
in equal time intervals. The observed body has moved, it has reached
a different location. But the observer holds beginning and end to¬
gether. He measures a day either in the morning, afternoon, or night;
he calculates the duration of a year any day of the year; he himself,
limited to a part, measures the whole.
By the position of the hands on a clock, we read the time. The
position of the hands as such means nothing, even if the clock is
“running” and the hand moving steadily and uniformly. The posi¬
tion of the hands becomes significant only in its relation to the dial.
But the dial does not move. Stationary, the dial represents the whole
course of a day. In one comprehensive glance, we ascertain from the
dial the temporal extension of a day: twelve hours marked in con¬
secutive order on the dial as possible stadia of the course of a day.
The actual position of the hands indicates which of the many possi¬
bilities is at the moment actualized. It answers the question, put
especially clearly in French, quelle heure est-il? Only as within the
total order of the day does the answer, “two o’clock” or “six o’clock”
makes sense. The motion of the hands has no relation to the dial
before which they move. The hands of a good clock move with the
same tempo with or without the dial. A clock shows the time, but
only to us human beings who are capable of simultaneously grasping
both possibility and actuality, change and invariance, part and
whole.
3°3
The physicist tries to purify his science of all anthropomorphic

additives. He works to rid his conceptual world of all those “occult”
qualities which we, because of our own bodily experience, are in¬
clined to attribute to the objects of nature. This effort leads ulti¬
mately to the question of how far conceptual understanding is itself
anthropomorphic. The equations, through which physics expresses
the laws of nature, represent general form of particular occurrences.
Natural laws are not active agencies; they postulate the dimensions
by which natural processes take their particular course. They encom¬
pass and reach beyond the particular processes and render them
comprehensible. We hear of stars whose distances are expressed in
light years. Such distance is described in terms of the time it takes
light to travel and is expressed in such a way as though the begin¬
ning and end of traversed space could be compressed together. The
light year is treated as a unit. The same applies to the speed of light
when we say it travels 186,000 miles per second, and applies, in gen¬
eral, whenever we understand any spatial or temporal determination
as a unity. By the expressions “one hour,” “one day,” “one year,” we
transcend the actuality of the moment and comprehend in one
glance the sequence of the moments that we live through “in the
course” of such stretches of time (or, expressed less anthropomor-
phically, which follow each other in the course of such stretches of
time.) We combine these moments into these unities of year, day,
and hour, and yet we understand them, at the same time, as exten¬
sions. Physically, we cannot force together the beginning and the end
of a year, as little as we cannot force together the boundary marks of
a yard stick which are separated from each other by all that lies be¬
tween them. In measured space, distance is at the same time elim¬
inated and preserved. And thus it becomes possible to prepare time
tables and to predict how long a process will take. It is, in other
words, possible to operate with spatial and temporal units and to
examine how the measurement unit of an hour unfolds into physi¬
cal duration.
All measurements and explanation of physics begin in the natural
world of sensory experience. Whether we lose ourselves in astronomi¬
cal or submicroscopic dimensions, the starting point for both is given
in the everyday relation of the observer to his environment. Niels
Bohr computed that an electron rotates around the nucleus 1016
times per second. Because the birth of a proton lasts 10-10 seconds,
the exact position of an electron can be determined only with the
probability of 1:106. No matter how far such notions are from our
powers of imagination, they are still an extension of the basic experi¬
ences of everyday life. In going beyond such things as “natural” pro-
portions and sizes, we still retain the basic conditions of observation.

Even the observations of microphysics take place in our macroscopic
world and are bound to its conditions and possibilities. In his discus¬
sion of the uncertainty principle, Heisenberg matter-of-factly refers
to an instrument of measuring, the microscope, which, phenomenally
at rest, is visible and accessible to the observer.
In complete and thorough physicalistic explanation, all visible
phenomena are interpreted as and relativized into motor processes.
Statements about positions of absolute rest lose their meaning, as do
all determinations of absolute location. Both pointer and scale turn
into complex arrangements of moved molecules. The same thing
happens to the observer, and to this the physiologist gives assent. In
such a re-ordering, neither rest nor motion can be grasped: Rest can¬
not because all particles are in motion, and motion cannot because it
manifests itself only in relation to something at rest. The moving
particles are constantly changing their positions in space. They are
limited to one particular location and one particular place in the
time differential, a place whose position can be determined only
within a spatio-temporal system encompassing the multiplicity of all
locations. The visible and measurable relation of motionless and
moving things is embedded in the psychological relationship existing
between an invariant world space and a mobile and constantly be¬
coming observer. The position of a point can be determined only as
the intersection of two lines, those lines being only in a plane, and
the plane only in the volume of space. Does it not, therefore, follow
that man, moving in space and comprehending space points and
spatial extensions, commands one more dimension than that which
he is to determine?
Epiphenomenalism
Gestalt
1. Unity and Unification. Despite its opposition to Pavlov,
gestalt psychology adheres to the doctrines of epiphenomenalism. We
must therefore see whether this attempt has been more successful than
previous ones. Koehler puts forth the proposition that the concrete
order of given experiences is a true reproduction of a dynamic-
functional order of the appropriate cerebral processes.13 This work¬
ing hypothesis is developed by means of specific examples. It is thus
305
maintained that the visible-spatial “in between” corresponds to a

functional interjacence in the concrete dynamic context of the appro¬
priate physiological processes, and that the same holds true even for
the temporal “in between.”14 Indeed, Koehler goes so far as to say,
“As we saw, the statements of a subject may be taken as indicative
either of his experience or of the processes which underlie these ex¬
periences. If the subject says ‘This book is bigger than that other
one,’ his words may be interpreted as referring to a ‘comparison-
experience’ of his, but also as representative of a corresponding func¬
tional relationship between appropriate physiological processes.”
What is not taken into consideration is the radical change in the
mode of attitude that takes place when I first speak with the subject
as a person who understands me in his answers and then consider
him as an organism.
What, for example, of so simple a sentence as “I shall come to¬
morrow”? What corresponds physiologically to the future tense, in
the sense of an exact reproduction? For this is the issue here. And
what of the sentence, “Tomorrow I shall not come”? What is the state
of affairs with negations in general? And then what of conditional
and subjective forms, “I would have come had I not had so high a
fever”? And what, further, are we to think of errors, lies, and hypoc¬
risy? Certainly, physiological process is neither hypocritical, menda¬
cious, nor sentimental. The modi of thought are obviously more
multifarious than the categories into which physiological processes
are thought to fall, and the same holds true with respect to temporal
forms. Physiological processes take place in time points t0, tx, t2; they
are thought of in the objective time of (physical) event to which be¬
longs neither past nor future, nor, as well, negation and questioning.
Is it possible for a physiological process to ask a question? Is the
“propositional primacy,” according to which we understand a se¬
quence of words as a completed speech, comprehensible in a physio¬
logical analogy?
Gestalt psychology, as presented by Koehler, would have to an¬
swer affirmatively to these questions. It is, in fact, this very epiphe-
nomenalistic hypothesis together with the hypothesis of temporal
“atoms”—both of these hypotheses are inseparable from the other—
which compels the development of gestalt psychophysiology. Koehler,
too, does not hesitate to speak of experiences as a plurality of psychic
processes. Precisely because consciousness is taken as a mere accom¬
paniment of physiological processes (which alone are thought of as
independent), Koehler must assume that the unity of experience
“corresponds to a dynamically connected unity or totality in the basic
underlying physiological processes.”15 But the very attempts to illus¬

trate these theses by individual concrete examples reveals that their
presuppositions are incorrect.
As to the process of retinal excitation, there is said to be neither
organization, limit, grouping, nor selection involved.16 An objective
constellation in which many thousands of local stimuli can be dis¬
tinguished is answered by the organism as it sees by the development
of an organized field.17
Among the numerous examples illustrating this sensory dynamics,
Koehler introduces the patterns used in examining color sense: “A
rectangular field is filled with dots which lie at approximately equal
distances from one another. For normal vision several of these dots
form a group, and are as such a group, segregated from the rest.
Since the group has the shape of a written number, it can be read
without any difficulty. The dots in question have the same color, and
differ in this respect from the others. This is the reason why they
unite in a group, the characteristic shape of which is immediately
recognized.”18 The organizing principle according to which, in this
case, a group is formed, is supposed to be the tendency to form uni¬
ties of equal and similar parts.
Here we must ask two questions: Is this hypothesis of the forma¬
tion of sensory groups sufficiently based on experience? And if so,
has the psychological problem of seeing unities found its solution—
its physiological solution?
In answering the first question, we need merely think of a con¬
verse arrangement of the color table. In Koehler’s case, let us say that
the number “12” has been formed by spots of a certain color, say
light red. The forming of a unit is supposed to rest on uniformity of
coloring. But what happens if we allow the background spots to make
up entirely of this same light red, while the “12” is now composed of
spots which are all of different colors and none of which are of this
light red? Will we not also be capable of seeing and reading the
number 12? If the forming of groups results from sameness of parts,
then it cannot be accomplished in the same fashion by multi-colored
spots. On a uniform background, we would be able to see only a gap
and the contour of the “12”; but, in fact, what we do see is the figure
12 formed by differently colored spots.
But let us assume that the hypothesis of the formation of ordered
wholes from similar parts holds true. In that case, spots of the same
color would be more firmly connected than spots of varying color,
that is, the relation of one part to a neighboring part would be
sometimes firmer and sometimes looser. This would mean relations
CRITIQUE OF EPIPHENOMENALISM 3°7
of apposition; the result would not be a unity in which one part

stands in relation to the whole. It seems to me that Koehler’s presen¬
tation confuses unity with union. In union, the relative autonomy
of parts is limited; unity, on the other hand, is a uniting of parts
which, in this unity, preserve their relative autonomy.
If unity, and not union, is the issue at hand, then the parts would
have to enter into a real relation to the whole and the whole would
have to exist in a physical or physiological sense. And this is actually
the view of the gestalt psychologist, a position which rests on a re¬
markably teleogocial interpretation of physical processes. Thus
Koehler says,19 “If the inner dynamics of a system are not impinged
upon by accidental outside factors, it will lead to a distribution of
‘maximum order,’ even though no specific arrangements are given,
ad hoc, from the beginning.” “If a number of straight wires are sus¬
pended in an irregular distribution, in which they point in different
directions, an electric current which enters the wires will immedi¬
ately give them parallel directions. This is certainly an orderly re¬
sult of electro-dynamic interaction.” And a further example: “Or
assume that oil is poured into a liquid with which it does not mix.
In spite of the violent interaction of molecules at the common sur¬
face of the fluids, the boundary remains sharply defined. Obviously,
this orderly distribution is not enforced by any rigid constraints;
rather, it results precisely from the dynamic factors which operate in
the boundary region between the oil and the other fluid. If the
specific density of both liquids is the same, the surface forces will
change the shape of the oil until a perfect sphere is formed which
swims in the other liquid.” Elsewhere he says that conservatism in
neurology and psychology silently presupposes “that in the dynamic
‘self-distribution’ of processes anything can happen and that there¬
fore what we call the dynamic case must be considered as the most
extreme case of disorder. Many examples taken from inorganic
nature seem at first to support this view, insofar as a blind col¬
lision of forces and processes usually leads indeed to chaos and
destruction.”20
Are, however, disorder and chaos physical concepts? Is not a vol-
canic eruption a physical process just as much as is the gentle fire in
the hearth? Are the unarranged wires of physics less desirable than
those which are parallel? Is the distribution of molecules in steam
physically poorer than in water, or ice? The oil droplet separates
itself in sharp contours from water, but the same water dissolves the
beautiful form of a crystal. Are not both physical processes? Is one
really to believe that physics prefers certain orderings in a field
which is more favorable to the emergence of simpler, more regular

wholes and well-defined regions?21 Would that not mean misunder¬
standing a principle of reason as an effective physical factor? The
sounds of a foreign language may be a phonetic chaos for us. But as
we learn this language, this chaos begins to exhibit more and more
order. That, indeed, we can assimilate purely phonetic signs is unde¬
niable. We learn the principles of articulating this language and are
then also in a position to distinguish between words as phonetic con¬
figurations which are unfamiliar to us and whose meanings we do
not yet know. Upon what is such learning based? Upon a transforma¬
tion of sensory dynamics? Has the particular, the one unity, changed,
or has our faculty for particularization, our ability to distinguish
details? To agree with Koehler is to understand the seeing of order
(in a psychological sense) as based upon an ordered seeing (in a
physiological sense), and the seeing of disorder as based upon a dis¬
ordered seeing.
Disorder is the poorer and order the better form of what we call
order. Disorder and order will have different worth for an observer
who prefers order. But physics knows nothing of such evaluation. In
physics, both order and disorder are simply phenomena—as Koehler
himself shows in his experiment with electrically charged wires. He
who loves order differentiates order from disorder according to cer¬
tain self-acknowledged principles. It is one thing to observe some¬
thing unorganized. It is another to see it as disorderly, as disorder.
The latter presupposes that the observer measures and judges that
which is unorganized with an (unseen) criterion of order. Similarly,
there is a great difference between someone’s (man or animal) react¬
ing in varying ways to varying configurations, and “seeing” these con¬
figurations as themselves varying.
Confusing union with unity, seeing order with ordered seeing,
the individual processes of physics with individualization in the
process of mental becoming—these confusions are the results, or, if
you will, the presuppositions of epiphenomenalism in gestalt psy¬
chology. It is an epiphenomenalism which corresponds to that of
Descartes, but is even more radical. If gestalt psychology and its doc¬
trine of closed wholes is right, then the structure of consciousness
must also be atomistic. For such whole structures are strictly separate
entities. If they are thus locked in, then the accompanying conscious
impressions must also be locked in. The movement which was out to
overcome atomism ends by being even more radically atomistic. The
moderate and limited epiphenomenalism of Descartes has lost much
and gained nothing in this process of expansion. Here, too, sensing
is subordinated to thinking; here, too, we are confronted with a
CRITIQUE OF EPIPHENOMENALISM 3°9
time-atomistic isolation of experiences; here, too, is only the mere

having of impressions. Nowhere is mention made of a finite subject
in communication with his world.
2. The Singular in Itself and for Us.22 It appears as if gestalt psy¬
chology were overlooking the problem of the unique something, of
the singular. The one something is considered as “given” as a datum.
But a “something” is not simply present to us as such; we must al¬
ways first appropriate it for ourselves as one thing. All that is re¬
ceived with the senses as something must already have been separated
and delimited and given shape one way or another in order for it at
all to be a something for us. To experience something is to separate
and divide—the figure from the background, this moment with all
its content from the one just past.
Wertheimer’s23 investigations of stroboscopic movement illusions
have played a decisive role in the history of gestalt psychology; they
are still meaningful today and have been verified, varied, and sup¬
plemented from many sides.
The structure of the experiment is well known. By means of an
appropriate apparatus, an experimental subject is presented with
two discrete individual stimuli (lines, points) one following the
other at different positions “of rest.” How the experimenter knows
they are individual stimuli and what he understands by “at rest” is
not at the outset made clear. In any case, under “optimal conditions”
(i.e., during a certain stretch of time and with a certain relationship
between interval and exposure times), it comes about that the subject
no longer sees individual lines or points, but rather the motion of a
line or a point. The impression of this apparent motion corresponds
throughout with the impression caused by the actual movement of
corresponding objects.
The description of this experiment does not seem to prejudice
anything. And yet, the problem of the singular is already interpreted
here in a predetermined way. If a line is flashed suddenly flashed
in front of an experimental subject, he sees not only a line; his
experience rather is an experience of seeing the beginning of a
process; he sees a point flashed, and it now depends again on certain
temporal conditions as to when this process is experienced as ended.
To see the point as one point appearing in this part of space de¬
mands the ability to take in at a glance the beginning and end of
this process, and it demands that the caesuras of the processes be ap¬
prehended. Seeing the point as a point depends on whether this
process is grasped as a concluded process. But even if the experiment
ended with the exposure of one point, this point would not have
been perceived as a motionless solitary point, but as a point which
3i° Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
lights up and then disappears. The tests in fact have actually shown
that a very briefly exposed figure comes on, for the subject, with an
“extending motion” and disappears with a “contracting motion.”24
“Singular” and “at rest” are the objects in the Wertheimer experi¬
ment when placed in an objective world which the experimenter
conceptually understands and interprets. The subject himself experi¬
ences every change as a happening. For us in our becoming and
experiencing, those moments are very strictly defined which evidence
a point as one point.
Von Ehrenfels (1890) singled out transposability as an essential
moment in musical configurations. Transposed into a different key, a
simple melody will be recognized, even when none of the notes in the
second playing is the same as in the first. We thus grasp a whole, the
Gestalt of the melody better than the individual parts of the whole.
But we must ask again: What is the meaning of the singular in such
a context? what does it mean to hear a tone as a singular note and,
further, as this particular note? It is doubtless quite difficult to appre¬
hend a particular note as this particular c, e, or g. The rarity of per¬
fect pitch testifies to this. To hear a tone as this particular note
requires definition via a progressive process of separating. When we
hear a tone all by itself—not yet as being of a certain pitch in a
musical scale—it means we have already separated the acoustic from
the optic, etc., and, within the realm of the acoustic, have separated
the musical sound from noise; in addition, we single the tone out
as emerging from and disappearing into silence. But to hear an indi¬
vidual note as “the” c, or “the” e, or “the” g of the C-major chord,
we have to distinguish it from all other notes. Whenever it is offered
as a single tone, we will therefore have to separate it from all the
other tones which are not actually heard with it; we will have to
hear it as the note c of a mute scale. To hear a single note as such
necessitates a much greater effort in the process of differentiating
and separating. For the very reason that it appears to us as singular,
the single note presents—purely quantitatively—to our discrimina¬
tion much less in the way of possibilities than a triad or a melody.
The process of discriminating by apprehending Gestalten leads
from the general to the particular. The good Gestalten are the gen¬
eral ones. The circle, for example, is more general than other geo¬
metrical forms—not because it occurs more frequently in nature, but
because it has less variables than the other figures and can conse¬
quently be more easily apprehended. It thus makes the smallest de¬
mands on the power of discernment. Attempts at transposition do
not meet with equal success for any and all Gestalten, for these sim¬
plest melodies are better than the most intricate themes. The so-
CRITIQUE OF EPIPHENOMENALISM 311
called tendency toward simplicity of form is no indication of a

physiological Gestalt process; this tendency rather points to our own
tendency to grasp forms and to discriminate in the direction of the
general to the particular. The world for us is not composed of singu¬
lar impressions and singular moments; the self-world relation perme¬
ates the entire duration of our individual existence. We therefore
arrive descending to individual moments as instantiations of this
relation. It is always the case that, whenever we apprehend some¬
thing, we already have that something as delimited, as well or poorly
formed. Faced with that which is undefined, we arrive at determin-
ables by instantiations of the general. General Gestalten are what
we meet first on this downward path; the singular is the last—the
fully-determined particular.
One more word now concerning the physiological-gestalt hypothe¬
sis. In biology, the formation of Gestalten is understood as meta¬
morphosis. Maturation is the emergence of a more differentiated
configuration from one less differentiated, healing is the act of
making-whole-again a dis-figured configuration (Gestalt). We remain
always in the sphere of the morphic (Gestalthaften), the already
shaped; nowhere do we meet with the purely amorphous (Ungestal-
tetes). The biological theme is the alteration of form, not the bring¬
ing forth of forms, transformation as opposed to formation.
Now let us assume that in the area striata or in some other sen¬
sory field there exists a tendency to bring forth Gestalten, a forma¬
tive tendency. We then must ask: WTat kind of forms? We cannot
say of a sensory field, as we can of a seed, that within it is the ten¬
dency to bring forth forms. If I see a black cross on a white back¬
ground, then there exists a sensory dynamic for this formation. If I
see a red circle on a yellow background, then another sensory
dynamic for this formation must be assumed—and so on, ad infini¬
tum in the endless alternation of forms and configurations which we
apprehend in the course of a day. Sensory fields seem to have a kind
of passionate sympathy for everything morphic; they are always
ready to take shape. But this would mean that they themselves are
totally without form, utterly amorphous. The richer and more mani¬
fold a creature’s seeing of configurations is assumed to be, the more
uncertain, the poorer would the particular form of the sensory field
have to be A fullness in the formation of configuration demands a
sensory field which is in itself amorphous. Formation would thus be
a bringing forth of the formed out of the unformed; it would not be
metamorphosis. But are we justified in speaking of an amorphous
sensory field? A formative tendency could then exist only it the
sensory field were a formed unity which transforms itself.
The physiological-gestalt hypothesis leads to a dilemma: Either

sensory fields possess their own form, in which case the potentiality
of transformation would be limited and the richness of forms actually
seen and heard becomes incomprehensible, or the sensory fields are
in themselves amorphous, in which case the physiological-gestalt
hypothesis eventually contradicts everything which Gestalt psychol¬
ogy itself claims and presupposes concerning the relation of wholes
and parts.
These contradictions, like all the a priori aspects of epiphenome-
nalism arise from the misguided desire to understand the moments
of psychic becoming as processes in objective time and to derive the
former from the latter.
The world picture of the child and of primitive man is con¬
structed from an all too unquestioning interpretation of sympathetic
forms as objective forms. But how do we know that the stars we see
together in Cassiopeia do not “in reality” belong together? How do
the gestalt psychologists and the physicists know this? How can such
a first impression possibly be corrected if thought and memory are
rooted in gestalt processes which, as such, are separated from each
other? Which gestalt process is the right one? The first which is
subsequently corrected, or the one which does the correcting? And
why the latter? What, speaking epiphenomenologically, is the mean¬
ing of truth, basis, and proof? How is discursive thought possible?
And what of error and decision?
Between
SENSING IS TO KNOWING AS A CRY IS TO WORDS. A CRY REACHES

only him who hears it, here and now; but words abide, they can
reach everyone when and where ever they may be. In sensing, every-
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENSING AND KNOWING 3*3
thing is for me; it is, at all, only as it is for me. But knowing seeks
the “in itself” of things. Neither epistemological warnings nor meta¬
physical doubts can check him who seeks knowledge; whether or not
he attains his goal is not the issue here. Our interest is in the knower
and not in his knowledge and its limitations. When I speak straight¬
forwardly and wish to be understood, my words should convey the
same meaning, the one I seek to express, to all who hear me. After
2000 years, we still hear the words of Plato and wish to understand
them as he spoke and meant them. Interpretations of the texts have
varied over the course of centuries, but every generation strives to
ascertain their true and exact meaning, of which there can be only
one. As interpretations change, so do praise and criticism. The doc¬
trines of Plato have been examined and re-examined, and the
question has always been directed to their truth: does he reveal to us
the being of the world and things in the way that they really are?
That there could be only one truth because there was only one
world, was a notion to which most gave their assent. The career of
human knowledge is not the history of a changing, shifting multi¬
plicity of truths, but the history of the disguises and misapprehen¬
sions of the one truth. Each people and each period is, in its own
way, limited in its knowledge; it is not the truth which belongs only
to the individual, it is misconception which is historically deter¬
mined. But despite failures, doubts, and total scepticism, each epoch
has tried anew to answer the question of truth.
Because knowledge seeks things as they are, or, what comes to the
same thing, because the truth is only one, it must be the same for all.
Knowledge is universally valid because it is only one. The word
which names things and describes facts is itself merely something
graspable by the senses: a sound formation. It becomes a word only as
a bearer of one meaning which abides for all times. We unhesitat¬
ingly begin the reading of a Platonic dialogue fully expecting to
understand the text. We thus expect that the meaning of the words
and sentences will have remained the same from the time of their
origin until today, notwithstanding the march of events since the
fourth century b.c. The meaning of words is also assumed to be con¬
stant regardless whether they are shouted, whispered, spoken, or writ¬
ten. All variations in sensory appearance of words ought not to
change their meaning. Because the truth is one, there can be a plural¬
ity of language which in spite of their difference does not exclude
the possibility of mutual understanding. Translation from one lan¬
guage to another is possible because there exists but one truth, one
body of knowledge and one meaning of the various words. Learning
3*4 Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
a foreign language means learning to understand words and sen¬

tences as meaningful signs. Words can be repeated today, yesterday,
or tomorrow, by me, you, or others, and their meaning remains the
same. The fact that there is such a thing as translation from one
language to another is not any more remarkable than the fact of
verbal understanding between any two human beings.
The word, spoken and heard, written and read, vanishes with the
moment that brought it. But its meaning remains, detached from
that moment, indifferent as to when, where, and by whom the word
was spoken. That which is spoken of need not be timeless and ever¬
lasting. For we are speaking of the word itself which as spoken is
temporal and fleeting although its meaning is timeless and abiding.
Knowledge of the transitory is itself abiding. Knowledge is timelessly
valid even though the knower and the known themselves be transi¬
tory. That we read Plato proves that knowledge outlasts the ephem¬
eral knower. All of history is such a proof. In knowing, man reaches
beyond his own self.
Knowledge seeks to grasp things as they are in themselves. As¬
sume that for a moment things were as such unveiled and visible as
they really are in themselves. Even then we would not have a total,
a perfect view of them, for everything seen is subject to the moment
of seeing. And therefore the assumption that things could reveal
themselves to our view as they really are makes no sense. The dis¬
solution of perspectival distortion, temporal as well as spatial, re¬
quires that I as knower detach myself from my self. The universal
truth of knowledge implies not only that knowledge be the same for
one, two, or three persons, it must also be the same for me today, to¬
morrow, and yesterday. As the word is indifferent to its moment of
birth, so knowledge—my knowledge as well—is indifferent to the
moment of my knowing. Only if knowledge remains the same regard¬
less of when I know, is it really knowledge at all.
Knowledge and language (all thought is bound to language, but
words become words and sentences only as expressing thought) en¬
dure in something with which they identify themselves, something
repeatable, general. Words must be separable from the act of speak¬
ing, thought from the process of thinking—though not, of course,
practically. Words must be spoken, ideas must be thought. But they
become pure words and pure words only when they become indiffer¬
ent to the moment of speaking and thinking. Only then are things
no longer there for me, as they ever are in sensing. For sensing gives
me the world for me, now, at a particular unique time, unrepeatable,
bound to my actions and my circumstances. To know, to attain to
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENSING AND KNOWING 3!5
things as they are in themselves, I must break through this perspecti-

val net. I must gain distance, dissolve the Now, become identifiable
with a universal order; that is, I must step forth, as it were, from the
center into which I am placed and become a stranger to myself. All
thinking and knowing, and, indeed, all speaking, is reflexive from
the start. That man can do this; that, as a being gifted with language
he must do this; that, in short, he so relates himself to himself, is the
marvel and the essence of human existence.
In order to turn back to myself, I must first have turned away
from myself. All knowledge begins with a negation, an existential
negation which we term the awakening of mind. It lasts from the
child’s first questions as to the names of things up to the last question.
Only by questioning do we obtain answers. The question puts into
words that something has become questionable to ourselves. Ques¬
tions are a sign of awakening and a means of waking. Questions dis¬
turb and questioners are a nuisance. They disturb the well-being of
immediate sensory existence, the comfort of moving along old tracks.
All knowledge, from the least to the greatest, begins with a negation,
with a dissolution and disruption of traditional forms. There are no
great men who have not been revolutionaries, who have not broken
with tradition, have not questioned what was handed down to them,
and have not had the strength and the courage to live in aloneness.
Otherwise, everything would be but repetition and imitation, other¬
wise there would be only the talented and the virtuoso. The great
man is a disturber of the peace, he upsets the world’s sleep, and the
world resists this awakening. And thus he is certain to be misunder¬
stood and misjudged, maligned, and persecuted.
Any knowledge, once acquired, can be repeated at will, thanks to
its universality. The thinking of Copernicus has penetrated to school¬
boys and no longer disturbs anyone. Knowledge, which seeks to know
things as they are in themselves, becomes a tool of everyday life,
present to us from moment to moment. Knowledge, which once
sought to reveal what is hidden now, also veils and hides what is.
The word can serve understanding, but it may also be merely the
means to make oneself understood. Language can become chatter,
stammering, and can express confused sentiments. The word can lead
to reflection (Besinnung), but it can also drive us to insensibility
(Besinnungslosigkeit); it can be the vehicle of revelation, but also
the whip of the demagogue. The mind can fall prey to the drive of
instinct and be sacrificed to it. Language and knowledge are a legacy
ever to be newly acquired by the denial and negation of mere co¬
operation and conformity, by turning away from existence in the
perspective of the moment.
Q. The Difference
Between Sensing and Perceiving
(a) Perception Requires a Universally

Objective Medium
what Augustine said of time: si nemo a me quaerat, scio, si

quarenti explicare velim, nescio, is true of all knowledge. It signifies
the transition from mere performance to reflection, and also the
transition from sensing to perceiving. Si nemo a me quaerat—this is
the mode of immediate sensory existence; scio is an ironical expres¬
sion for knowledge which does not yet know itself and is thus not
true knowledge. Si quaerenti explicare velim is the question someone
asks of me, or which I ask of myself, a question which breaks into
naively lived experience and turns it back upon itself. The obvious
becomes problematic. Only now, after turning from naivete to reflec¬
tion do we encounter the problematic and experience our own
ignorance: nescio. The first step of knowledge is the awareness of not
knowing.
A certain neighborhood may be quite familiar to us, we walk
around in it with great assurance, we think we know the place. Any¬
thing that changes is noticed by us, felt as a disturbance, even before
we are aware what it is that changed. The unpleasant feeling of a
disturbed order brings us to inquire as to what it is that has actually
changed. Perhaps we succeed in finding out what the change con¬
sists of, and for the first time we really notice what kind of thing it
was that now has changed. In our minds we reconstruct the way it
looked before and compare it with its present state. We ascertain
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENSING AND PERCEIVING 3*7
the irregularity in its context; we notice a thing as changeable and

adjust our behavior to its changed conditions.
“He looks like a cow standing before a new barn door” is a Ger¬
man saying depicting the dumbfounding bewilderment that occurs
in new situations. We can set at ease a frightened animal by talking
to it, by the sympathetic means of expression; we can help a fright¬
ened person by explaining the new situation so that he can orient
himself again. In the latter case, however, the word is more than a
means of expression, it is a vehicle of meaning. The order to which
man adjusts himself with the help of lingual explanations can thus
no longer be compared to the way an animal grasps expressions.
In this case, language fosters order. But in other instances, the
word—i.e., questions—disturbs familiar structures. We see a thing a
thousand times and yet have not really seen it. A question forces us
to look at it properly for the first time. The first seeing was a sensing,
a participation in expression; the second seeing, however, is a percep¬
tion. Questions force us into a new order of understanding. We are
asked about “something” and wish to answer what and how that
something is. We speak now of things or of a thing, we speak of its
properties, its possible modifications. We speak of one thing which
we see at this moment in front of us, or which we visualize in its par¬
ticular place. We speak of one single thing, but we distinguish it
with general words. This thing has these and those particular attri¬
butes. But a thing is something general. It is only by the use of uni¬
versal that I can meaningfully answer the questioner and describe a
thing as it is for me, for him, and for everyone. In sensory seeing the
thing is for me, for me here and now in a passing moment. But after
the step to the world of perception, this being-there-for-me is appre¬
hended as a moment in a universal, general chain of events.
Like all knowledge, perception requires a universal medium.
The world of perception is a world of things with fixed and inalter¬
able properties in universal objective space and universal objective
time.
This space is not originally given: rather, the space of the sensory
world stands to that of perception as the landscape to geography. But
to be illuminating such a comparison needs to be spelled out, be¬
cause influenced by the art of painting we are inclined to think of a
landscape as something already delineated.1 Indeed, our whole in¬
vestigation is somewhat burdened by the possibility of objectifying
expressive characters, a possibility which, in part, causes us to inter¬
pret sensing as a kind of knowing. The difficulties involved in ob¬
taining knowledge of sensing are the same, in principle, as those
3l8 Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
involved in grasping that which becomes in its becoming. In this case

knowledge reaches beyond itself and must burst its own forms. Fixed
and static concepts must be abandoned. Formulating knowledge of
becoming leads to the edge of paradox, as is classically evidenced in
the Aristotelean definition of change (kinesis). Its necessarily para¬
doxical formulation calls forth violent opposition from the mathe¬
matically inclined natural philosopher who (therewith) renounces
the knowledge of becoming.2
Expression is thus objectifiable. And afterwards, the moments of
an expression appear as properties of men, animals, scenes, and ob¬
jects. The lovely, gloomy, threatening, are, in descriptions, placed
immediately beside the large, blue, and straight. But once objectified,
the expression becomes capable of representation. The good carica¬
turist very well knows how, by changing a few lines, he can trans¬
figure the expression of a face. That is, he has general knowledge and
commands the means to depict expression. But it is not only in artis¬
tic representation that we have at our disposal the means to repre¬
sent expression, we have it also with respect to ourselves, in that we
can affect our own expression. If we do this, we live in repetition.
Everything inauthentic belongs to the intellectual sphere and is
linked to the possibility of objectification, the general, that which
can be repeated. That is why the inauthentic is joined by the mirror
and the echo, the spectator and the listener. Animals cannot lie, can¬
not be inauthentic. But neither can they be truthful in the sense of
a man who returns to himself from out of repetition and the general.
(b) The Space of Landscape and

the Space of Geography
Bearing in mind the danger of misunderstanding expression

as something already objectified, our comparison holds rather pre¬
cisely: sensory space stands to perceptual space as landscape to
geography. Perceptual space is geographical space. The structure of
geographical space is in no way identical with that of physical space.
We need merely cite the concept of non-intuitable space of modem
physics. But geographical space has, nevertheless, an affinity to physi¬
cal space, which indicates that geographical space is the space of the
human perceptual world. For in our everyday life we live between
pure physics and pure landscape.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENSING AND PERCEIVING 3!9
1. The Horizon. In a landscape we are enclosed by a horizon; no

matter how far we go, the horizon constantly goes with us. Geographi¬
cal space has no horizon. When we seek to orient ourselves some¬
where, or ask directions of someone, or even use a map, then we
establish our here in a place of horizonless space.
In a landscape we always get to one place from another place;
each location is determined only by its relation to the neighboring
place within the circle of visibility. But geographical space is closed
and is therefore in its entire structure transparent. Every place in
such a space is determined by its position with respect to the whole
and ultimately by its relation to the null-point of the co-ordinate
system by which this space obtains its order. Geographical space is
systematized. This is true of all geographical systems in the same
way, be it even the geographical space of primitive man or of the
farmer whose home is in a remote valley.3
The null-point of a co-ordinate system is arbitrarily established,
but thenceforth it is absolute. It is universal, and my position is al¬
ways determined as a position in this system. I no longer stand in the
midpoint of a spatial system, as I do in a landscape encircled by a
horizon. In twilight, darkness, or fog I am still in the landscape. My
present location is still determined by the next adjacent location; I
can still move. But I no longer know where I am, I can no longer
determine my position in a panoramic whole. Geography can no
longer be developed from the landscape; we are off the path; as
human beings, we feel “lost” (forlorn-verloren). “A man is lost” has
therefore also the metaphoric sense: he has fallen from the syste¬
matically co-ordinated context of social space, he has, in a sociologi¬
cal sense, no longer a place.
2. The Journey. Geographical space is systematized and closed.
In such space locations can be found and defined by construction,
and gaps, and intervening spaces bridged. What this means practi¬
cally is that I can travel, I can take a trip from Frankfurt to Rome. I
can choose Rome as my goal even though it does not lie within the
visible horizon. When I go from Frankfurt to Rome I travel from
one geographically determined point to another geographically de¬
termined point. An elephant never journeys from Bombay to Rome
and if he does, he does so unintentionally and without knowing it.
There is no reason to marvel at the migration of birds unless we be¬
lieve that the world of animals and that of men are basically differ¬
ent, unless we believe that animals live in the landscape and men in
geographical space. We marvel at the migrating stork which flies
south to the Nile only to find his way back to the rooftop from
whence he came, because in this flight he reaches a goal which was

not visible within his horizon, and because he behaves as though he
understood geography. We thus speak, half jokingly and half in
earnest, of the journey of migratory birds; for the source of our
wonder is that they make a journey although they do not know how
to. A journey is a human affair. The modern forms of traveling in
which intervening spaces are, as it were, skipped over or even slept
through, strikingly illustrate the systematically closed and con¬
structed character of the geographical space in which we live as
human beings. Before the advent of the railroad, geographical con¬
nections evolved, for the traveler, from the change in landscape.
True, today the traveler also goes from place to place. But now we
can get on a French train in the morning, and then, after twelve
hours on the train (which is, really being nowhere), we can get out
in Rome. The old form of traveling provided for a more and better
balanced relationship between landscape and geography. It was thus
much easier to write artful travel books.4 We, on the other hand, get
on our train or airplane at a certain geographical location and leave
it at a different, far removed one. After which, having been to this
degree estranged from the landscape, we try with all our might to
submerge ourselves in it and vitally experience it, something which,
however, takes place not without a good deal of affectation and
chatter.
3. The Plan. As a rule, our journeys are planned and an itiner¬
ary mapped out. But what, actually, has such a program to do with
landscape, even a program which assures us the most possible “sce¬
nic” views in the shortest possible time? There are no plans or pro¬
grams for experiencing landscape. On a trip where one is forced to
use one’s time to the best advantage the landscape can be a nuisance;
for instance, a cloudburst may delay the trip and cause one to miss a
connection. And should a member of a guided tour, enthralled by
the landscape, wish to linger, the guide will tell him that he is dis¬
rupting and threatening the whole program.
When starting a journey we expect the train to leave on time and
arrive on the minute. What minute? That objective, precisely meas¬
ured minute on the timetable. Our perceptual world with its stable
and moveable things, its geographical, closed, systematic space, its
objective time, is ruled by the plan, the measurement, the clock. We
live by the clock and the more it masters us, the farther from us is
the landscape. The hour does not strike for those who are either
happy or unhappy. Their time is that of the landscape, just as the
space within the meanest little hut is the space of the landscape.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENSING AND PERCEIVING 321
The frequency-figures of trains and planes illustrate the degree to

which modern man is removed from the landscape. He has not en¬
tirely lost it, but he is estranged from it. The human perceptual
world lies between landscape and physics. And this has always been
so of necessity—in the past as in the present, in earlier periods as in
later ones. It would be a misinterpretation of the human world to
understand it as pure landscape. Because it borders on both, because
it lies between them, it remains ambiguous in itself and not only for
the observer. Suspended between these contraries, it is in a state of
extremely labile equilibrium, ever threatened by excessive vacilla¬
tion toward one side or the other. Rarely does man in this world
of his keep to the middle path and the true mean. The more modern
life is dominated by technology, the greater grows the yearning for
the landscape, the more forced is the effort to regain it, to regain it—
oddly enough—by means of this very technology.
The map belongs to geography; but it is not only the geographer
who uses it. In everyday life we use maps of cities, street plans. When
moving to a new house or apartment we map out a plan of the avail¬
able space and with the various rooms sketched out, we draw the
possible positions of our furniture. The furniture has its place in the
rooms, the rooms their place in the house, the house in the city’s
street, the city in our country, and the country in the whole of
geography.5
Why these observations?
We are trying to understand perceiving via an analysis of the per¬
ceptual world. Our task is to show that even in everyday life man’s
world differs fundamentally from that of the animal. We have tried
to sketch out the lower limits of human existence, and have thus not
considered man as thinking his most sublime thoughts, but rather in
his traffic with everyday things. Thus we speak of clothing, railroads,
timetables, maps.
4. Landscape Painting. In the landscape I am somewhere. Land¬
scape painting does not, however, depict particular places or regions,
but rather gives us a “Landscape with Windmill,” a “Landscape
with Cows,” etc. Of course, there are also paintings of particular
places, individual mountains; but such paintings of certain towns
and places are pictorial views, portraits, as it were, but not land¬
scapes. Only rarely has an artist succeeded in painting as a landscape
a particular town which could easily be recognized from the paint¬
ing. Some Venetian paintings of the eighteenth century (Guardi) be¬
long to this rare class, as does, above all, the view of the city of Delft
by Vermeer (which hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague).
The landscape is a “good” theme for European painting. It is the

discovery of what is “with us” and comes after the paintings of the
divine and human. Just as with words—which, according to their
character, are vehicles of certain conceptual meanings—we can ex¬
press the indefinite, the timeless, negation, and dissolution, graphic
art is similarly capable of apprehending the “being lost” of the land¬
scape. Landscape painting does not depict what we see, i.e., what we
notice when looking at a place, but—the paradox is unavoidable—
it makes visible the invisible, although it be as something far re¬
moved. Great landscapes all have a visionary character. Such vision is
of the invisible becoming visible. This becoming-visible can be de¬
picted in our human perceptual world—which means, presented as
universal, communicated. But that which can be presented to vision
belongs, at the same time, not to this perceptual world; it transcends
its borders both downwards and upwards.
Landscape is invisible, because the more we absorb it, the more
we lose ourselves in it. To be fully in the landscape we must sacrifice,
as far as possible, all temporal, spatial and objective precision. Such
a sacrifice, however, affects not only the objective but ourselves as
well. In the landscape we cease to be historical beings, i.e., beings
objectifiable to themselves. We are dreaming in broad daylight with
our eyes wide open. We are beyond the reach of both the objective
world and ourselves. Just the opposite way lies waking, self-reflection,
perception.
At night the landscape comes alive again, with a thousand chang¬
ing faces:
The moon shines bright:—In such a night as this.

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise,—
Such is that countenance of night of which Lorenzo6 says further:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Still another face of night is articulated in Goethe’s poem “Will-

kommen und Abschied”:
Evening slowly came upon the earth

And night hung upon the mountains;
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SENSING AND PERCEIVING
323
There the oak towered in the mist

Like a shrouded giant; and there
The black and hundred eyes of darkness
Gleamed amid the foliage.
The moon from its cloudy hill

Looked wanly down through the mist.
I could hear the muted sound of wings
Around my head. To terrify me
The night brought out a thousand monsters.
The night is mild and gentle for him who is taken by it; terrible,
fearful, and ghostly for him who resists it and seeks to see it and
comprehend it. Ghosts are the messengers of the landscape in geo¬
graphical space.
(c) The Sounds of Nature and Music
The contrast between geography and landscape, which is here

indicated, has been described elsewhere7 by me as the difference be¬
tween optical and acoustical space as opposed to the space of the
dance and of directed movement. Binswanger has enlarged upon this
contrast with the notions of tuned (gestimmt) and oriented space.8
All these are variations on the same theme.
In music a theme is presented and pursued by variations. We
cannot express the theme itself directly, we can only represent it by
means of its variations: it is from the variations that one identifies
the theme. We proceed in the same way when investigating the style
of an historical epoch. All the forms of life of a time, the Renais¬
sance, Baroque, etc., are known as variations of a theme. That they
are variations of one theme, expressions of a basic relation of man to
the world, gives them, in spite of all their material differences, a
unity of style. We can but inadequately express the theme in itself;
we have the multifariousness of the phenomena before our eyes
which, however, we grasp as the manifold aspect of a unity and not
as the repetition of one and the same thing.
The efforts of psychiatry to ascertain a few basic disorders from
among the fullness of symptoms meet with the same difficulties. Here
again is the problem of style, with respect to the individual and the
pathological. But efforts to single out and represent these basic dis¬
orders as such are probably doomed to failure. We will have to re-
sign ourselves to ascertaining the theme by means of its ever chang¬

ing variations.
I should like to carry out briefly another variation of what is for
the moment our theme, a variation with respect to music itself.
Music, as a creation of great masters, is human music, i.e., it, too, lies
between the extremes of mathematical physics and landscape. The
relations to these two extremes are so apparent as hardly to need de¬
tailed elaboration. A musical work of art is as far removed from
mere sounds of nature (such as the songs of birds or the music¬
making of gypsies) as it is from physics and mathematics; or, we
might also say, as close to. For music lies in the middle between both
extremes; to all the arts it is in this respect most exactly central. The
singing of birds glides from one tone to the next; their songs have no
beginning or end; they are melodic, but without melody. To appre¬
hend a melody, the horizon of the acoustic moment must be burst
asunder. The gypsy, like the bird, knows only surrender to the indi¬
vidual tone; a sometimes stormy, sometimes tarrying progression
from one resting point to the next, a rhapsodic outpouring and an
intoxicated dilatoriness. The gypsy makes, but does not create, his
music. The gypsy violin “sobs” because his music is still natural
sound and not language. His music-making is dionysiac; his slow
relishing of individual sounds and moods is drunkenness. It is surely
no accident that these makers of music are nomads, without a home,
at home everywhere, that they live in the landscape, not in geogra¬
phy—at least as far as human beings are capable at all to reach out
totally toward the landscape from the middle position, which, as
human beings, is essentially theirs.
The score of a Bach fugue cannot be understood in the complete
absence of mathematics; nor can it be understood with mathematics
alone. Classical music is strict, strictly exact in measurement and
laws. Because it lies in the middle between both extremes, it is pos¬
sible for it to degenerate into either the rigidity of exact schematism
or the dissolution of rhapsodic arbitrariness. The listener, too, may
be carried away into dreams of landscape; or he can become an at¬
tentive listener who understands the language of music and who
perceives its manifest expression.
Let us once more recall the intoxicated addict. They all long for
the space of landscape; they find their fulfillment in the dionysiac
lingering by their dreams, intoxications, ecstasies, by turning from
the bright waking world of the day to the night, to sleep, and to that
music of which the gypsy is the master. The tavern is the sympa¬
thetic landscape space of the drinker and his center of life.
325
(d) The Family of Nature and

the Family of Man
The map is an essential part of geography. In the constant

and invariant space represented by the map we transitory and mo¬
bile human beings determine our locations. And thusly our origin
gives structure to us transitory beings in a manner quite analogous
to our family. The human family is a persistent, unitary structure.
There exist, in the human family, relationships to the dead, to the
ancestors. In animal families, there is only a direct relation of one
animal to another, just as in landscape only a wandering from place
to place is possible. These direct sympathetic links are themselves
bound to biological processes. When the hen’s mother-impulse van¬
ishes, she will, in searching for food, attack those very chicks which
yesterday she so lovingly attended. The animal has a descent deter¬
mined by the breeder; but it only has such a lineage, it thereby is not
in a family in the way a man, because of his descent, is a member of
a family.
In the phenomenon of the “mother-tie” we encounter a tendency
which works against the transition from the natural to the human
family. This tendency may be furthered by the mother, the child, or
both of them together. Not a few women experience the growing up
of their children, the development of the suckling into the infant, as
a painful separation, a first loss.
Such rituals as the confirmation signify the final detachment from
the natural family and the entering into human family. In most cases
it is also the occasion for the child to cast off his children’s garments
and to dress, for the first time, like an adult. This is particularly true
for all ceremonies where the adolescent is admitted into the circle of
the adults.
Actually, it is only of an adult that a portrait can be painted. The
way he looks out of the picture at the viewer, and the way he has
presented himself to the artist, point to his awareness of having be¬
come a man and having integrated into a human family. Mythologi¬
cal figures can be presented as nudes. But portraits are of historical
figures, and clothing essentially belongs to historical man as that
which separates him from the state of nature. It is this separation
from nature that makes possible such aesthetic creations as portraits
or busts which we do not perceive as a mutilation, even though trunk

and limbs may be missing. Children can be painted at play, and the
painter depicts them as natural, innocent creatures. There exists a
wonderful drawing of a young girl by Leonardo; she is presented in
half-profile, the head bowed, eyes lowered and turned away from the
viewer. Only a knowing or divine human being can be rendered in a
portrait; so too can a child sundered from nature by sickness or early
sorrow. The Christ child of the Sistine Madonna looks into the
world with more than child-like gravity. Velasquez Infantas are
given serious, child-like expressions, and yet these little princesses in
their gala dresses are no longer happy children. The ceremonious
garments of adults separate these children, sooner than others, from
the family of nature. As individuals or in groups they stand alone;
they are not shown at the hand of their mother. They carry their
splendor with pride, and yet it is a burden. They, too, are marked
by destiny. The paintings of the Infantas are portraits, but they are
more than that: they are representations of humanity destined to
sunder its ties with landscape and the family of nature, to enter as
an individual and alone into the family of man, into historical ex¬
istence and sapience.
The animal family is based on immediate, instinctual sympathies.
It lasts only as long as these sympathies remain effective and it deteri¬
orates with their disintegration. The human family, on the other
hand, endures. By means of the family the individual stands in rela¬
tion to history. Thus the expression, “the history of a family.” The
history of a family is, properly understood, not reports of forefathers
who lived and died in times past and who are buried in oblivion;
the family is a becoming, enduring history. It is, as in all history, of
the past, insofar as it—as the actualized—defies all passing away.
The family of man is the creation of man, arising out of objectifica¬
tion and the power to stipulate (Setzung), and it is to such a degree
subject to law (Satzung) that “natural sons” and “natural daugh¬
ters” can be excluded from the family as illegitimate, children of
other parents can be taken in and adopted, and blood relatives can
be cast aside and disinherited. Because that which has become is
closer to imperishable being than that which is still becoming, we
encounter the aged with respect and many of us venerate their an¬
cestors and are proud of their origins. What has become takes prece¬
dence over what is becoming. Acknowledgment of legitimacy as well
as rebellion against the heir who bases all his claims on his legitimate
origins will never cease. As an enduring, total, and complete crea¬
tion, the family claims the individual just as in music the individual
note is bound by the laws of harmony. The family has its laws, and
327
as long as it lasts it demands of the individual that he subordinate

and sacrifice his momentary inclinations and moods. The family is
the primary home of the conflict between duty and inclination. In
landscape space, all struggle and quarrel, all persecution and flight
grew out of immediate, momentary impulses. As such, they emerge
as particular contrasts of sympathetic relations.9 Only in the world
of man do we find conflict, renunciation, spiritual sacrifice, defiant
rebellion, and heroic self-assertion. Animals may take pleasure in
attacking, may enjoy the chase, may be reckless, but only man can be
heroic in his resolution of the conflicts with universal law which he,
as an individual, experiences. In so doing, he becomes a tragic figure,
whether he, like Coriolanus, sacrifices his passions for the sake of the
law, or, like Romeo and Juliet, he sacrifices himself for his passions,
or whether, like Macbeth or Wallenstein, he tries to make his will
and his law the universal, general law. It matters little if the law is
carried out with admirable dispassion or if it is slyly evaded.
Asceticism is not a late invention of tired souls detached from
the world. The ascetic attitude grows with man as a human being.
Is not the fate of the drinker clear enough in this respect? All efforts
to step forever within the boundaries of the landscape ultimately
fail; there is always the awakening—an awakening, however, which
is not a return to the bright, fresh day; but, rather, a painful process
of sobering in a grey, colorless, empty world. Boys who proudly set
great store on their ability to endure pain, cold, and exertions of all
sorts discover the ascetic attitude each for themselves without direc¬
tions and instructions.10 They are still living in the world of the
child, close to the landscape, but because they are human beings, be¬
cause they are to become men, because they are “children of the
spirit,” they already turn in play away from existence in the land¬
scape. This turning away itself is still playful; it is a rehearsal of
things to come. It serves the spirit without knowing that it does so.
Whether we compare landscape space with geographical space, or
natural sounds with those of music, or the family of nature with the
family of man, we make the same discovery. The degree of corre¬
spondence among three forms so apparently disparate as geography,
music, and family, is cogent evidence that the human perceptual
world radically differs from the world of animal sensation. Man gets
into and to his world by sundering the horizon of sensing; by means,
that is, of a negation. Not a faint, theoretical negation, but an exis¬
tential negation, a leap to a higher plane. Man breaks through the
horizon only to find himself enclosed again by another. He cannot
stay completely in the landscape, but neither can he ever completely
leave it. The negation is not an annihilation; the landscape does not
perish when the horizon is broken through; what has been negated
remains as something continually to be negated. The breakthrough
does not take place once and then never again. It is a task to be ful¬
filled from moment to moment. In times of happiness, we may some¬
times find a chance to gain again a footing in the landscape. These
are happy hours as long as we do not notice that they too are transi¬
tory and will be consumed by time; happy hours they are and, like
everything fortunate, a rare gift. They cannot be forced. The return
to the landscape is not to be effected by conscious efforts to suspend
the negation, the horizonal breakthrough. For I must have per¬
formed the negation before I can decide to suspend it. A double
negation is equivalent with affirmation only in thought, but here
it does not allow us to slide back into the naive, untrammelled exist¬
ence in the landscape. No path leads back to it, one can only lose
oneself in the precipitous reaches of free-floating ideals.
The melancholic knows what it means to lose contact with the
landscape. We have the landscape by developing in and with it. The
depressive, frozen in unmoving time, is alienated from the land¬
scape, he looks at the world, as if it were, in a bird’s eye view; he
sees it from above like a map; he hovers over the ground. There a
man pursues his work, there a woman cooks a meal at her stove: all
that seems to him a puppet show, the only difference being that the
pathologically depressive looks upon these doings without the
smiles and superiority of an adult looking at a doll’s kitchen. On
the contrary, the depressive is filled with an agonizing yearning for
the small and the common, a yearning even after bodily pain which
might restore to him the feeling of this world.
Loss of home, loss of the landscape: This is what we clinically
term depersonalization. The depressive teaches us that the landscape
is not totally lacking in the perceptual world and that we can also
measure the gap that separates perception from sensation.
The Theme Factual

It is of my perceptions that I can and wish to communicate.
Thus, perceptions must be objectifiable and their representation re-
producable. Perception is directed toward the determinable; it is the
determination of that which is determinable. In addition, percep¬
tion demands a general, objective, systematically arranged and struc¬
tured medium amenable to the rule of mathematics. This perceptual
medium is universal, objective space (mistakenly called simply
329
space), and universal, objective time (mistakenly called simply time).

It is in this objective spatio-temporal system that the world of things
is constituted. In it, I also determine my own place, my own histori¬
cal time.
I can report what I perceived, e.g., when testifying as a witness.
Thus, perceptions must be capable of being remembered. I must be
able to relocate a spot in geographical space once I have really taken
note of it. Or I must be able to represent an object to myself again
and again in memory; I must be capable of finding my place again, of
rediscovering myself at the same locus. Perception is truly perception
only as a clear and distinct self-aware apprehension. Only as such is
it objectifiable, representable, communicable, and reproductable.
When I speak to another of my perceptions, I reproduce them also
for myself. Perceptions are bound essentially to this possibility of
being reproduced, repeated; they come into being only via the tran-
scendance of perspectival links with the particularity of a standpoint,
via a bursting of horizons. Perception is a reflexive process; if I want
to unbind myself from perspective, I must be aware of it as such, and
aware of myself from the point of view of geographical space.
We arrive at perception by what we may call a process of estab¬
lishing (durch Festellungen). A witness who testifies under oath to
the truth of his statements is expected to report the events as they
happened as truly and exactly as possible. The factual is the theme
of perceiving. The factum is that which is made in an objective, sub¬
jective, and temporal sense. Facta subsist in the perfect tense; they
are that which has happened and are so understood. Perception thus
is a facera facta; to see (in the sense of perceiving) is to have already
seen.
Perceiving, and not sensing, is a knowing; it is the first step
toward cognition; insofar as perception is sensory perception, it is a
determination of sensory impressions. During the process of deter¬
mining, and before it is completed, the immediacy of sensory recep¬
tion is surrendered. A simple perception, expressed in the sentence,
“This is an oak tree,” establishes something and emphasizes it. It
makes the bare Here of sensing into a particular here. Of course,
such reference is possible only in the immediate present, but insofar
as I refer, I am already standing opposite to something, the some¬
thing becomes a determinable object and I myself become the
speaker of a universal language. By referring to something, we inter¬
rupt the horizon of sensory experience.11 The perceptual “here” is
an indefinite, general expression; for is there anything in the per¬
ceived world that could not be spoken of as “that which is ‘here’ ”?
But this indefinite, general expression can be defined. Singled out as
33<>
a particular “here,” it becomes a location in geographical space.

Such a determination is a fleeting bit of knowledge which under¬
stands itself as capable of being repeated.
But we need not rest satisfied at this point. A more precise investi¬
gation would enable us to determine our oak tree as a tree standing
at this particular spot, distinguished from other oak trees by these
or those particular attributes. We might count the trees and select
the eleventh or twenty-fourth tree of the row. By co-ordinating indi¬
vidual trees with individually distinguishable numbers of the series
of numbers, we thereby determine a tree as this tree. Individual rail¬
road cars are rendered identifiable in the same way. Whatever par¬
ticular method we choose in determining an oak tree as this oak
tree, we attain our goal only by making clear what it is that distin¬
guishes this oak tree from others. Although when perceiving an oak
tree our eyes do not leave it for an instant, yet by determining it as
this particular oak tree we are at the same time transcending the per¬
ceptual impression. Perception is not a mere summary and reproduc¬
tion of the impressions of the sensory world. Neither is it the result
of processes of comparison and discrimination. Such comparison and
determination is possible only because of an essentially prior breach
in the horizon of sensory experience.
The contrast between perceiving and sensing is not to be under¬
stood as a change of functions. In the attempt to indicate this con¬
trast by reference to particular phenomena, we distinguish between
seeing and viewing, between a complicit and an observational
glance, between the lover’s caress and diagnostic palpating. Physi¬
cian and patient confront each other in the perceptual world, not in
the existential sphere of the landscape, the sphere of sympathetic
interrelations. For the physician, the body of a patient is an object,
and touching this object with his hand assists him in establishing a
diagnosis, an established observation which can be repeated and
communicated. This modification of communication is necessary for
medical practice; it also makes it possible for the patient to offer
and surrender his naked body to the physician. The radical nature
of this change in communication is most clearly evident in surgery.
Unlike an enraged victim who blindly stabs the hated other, the
surgeon works with the intention to help the other, and with his
exact knowledge of anatomic conditions he performs the painful in¬
cision into the living tissue.12 In this shifting of the mode of com¬
munication, what changes is not only the structure of the object and
manner in which the experiencing subject relates to it—the person
himself, the experiencer, undergoes a change when passing from
TRADITIONAL PSYCHOLOGY OF SPACE AND TIME
331
sensing to perceiving. The question, therefore, as to the constitution

of the perceptual world cannot be settled along with the problem of
the origin of perceptual Gestalten. Both the supporters of the
atomistic-synthetic theory and those of the antisynthetic-holistic
approach13 disagree only in their account of the different kinds of
psychological functions which supposedly co-operate in the forming
of Gestalten. The experiencing subject and his modes of being-in-
the-world are not even made a topic for discussion. The subject re¬
mains unchanged in his relation to the object; he remains a thinking
subject.
If, however, we do not interpret man from the standpoint of
completed cognition, but, rather, see him as gaining insight, that is,
as a becoming being who is never complete, only then will we be at
all able to understand sensing and moving, remembering and erring;
only then will it be possible clearly to differentiate perceiving and
sensing. To do this, we must recognize that a change in communica¬
tion implies a change in the subject. The subject does not remain
a substance immutable amid the changes of its accidents, sensa¬
tions, perceptions, pure thought, volitions.
Ji. Traditional Psychology
of Space and Time
(a) The Separation of Spatial and Temporal

Data from Quality and Intensity
PERCEIVING AND SENSING ARE TWO DIFFERENT MODES OF COM-
munication with the world. If sensing is treated as a lesser kind of
knowing, then certain far-reaching misunderstandings will inevita-
332
bly follow. The subject of sensing is, depending on particular cir¬

cumstances, taken to be either a theoretical or even transcendental
subject, or a recipient of stimuli, or a mere phantom, a bundle of
representations. In any case, it ceases to be a living subject. Placed
outside its world, it is looking from some undeterminable place
down upon this world.
And what of the object} If sensing is but a step on the way to
knowing, then its object can be but a foreshadowing of the subject
of cognition. And so, in the course of history, sensations have first
been interpreted as dark and confused forms of knowledge needing
the light of reason and, indeed, being capable of receiving that light.
In later times, sensations were taken to be impressions ordered by
means of associations; or sensory material was supposed to be organ¬
ized by forms of intuition or categories; or, further, sensations were
taken to be stimuli ordered by physiological processes according to
natural laws. The sensations, always appearing in the plural, were
supposed to be, altogether, an unorganized material which, without
resistance and without essential change, was to yield to an ordering
principle external to it.
Empirical psychology habitually tends to define sensations in
some such manner as this: “In general it can be stated that sensation
is not a psychic reality, but something which has been achieved by
abstraction, whereby certain aspects of the immediate given data
have been neglected. Although psychology cannot manage without
this marginal concept of sensations, the true facts should never be
overlooked when this concept is employed.”1 Through the power of
attention, memory, and training, the original sensory data are sup¬
posed to be transformed into perceptions. After the reception a selec¬
tion, reformation, and organization of these data takes place, the
final result differing decidedly from effects of mere sensory stimuli.
Whatever sensation contributes to perception is, as a rule, so thor¬
oughly absorbed that it can only be reconstructed by means of ab¬
stractions and is, in any case, only on rare occasions observable
purely and directly. Although sensation must submit to certain
transformations, the fact that it can be recovered by abstraction
proves that, though hidden, it is still contained in perception. And
thus the terms “sensation” and “perception” are often used promis¬
cuously, sensation becoming a limiting instance of perception.
The interpretation of sensing as a form of knowing has destroyed
interest in sensing as a mode of experience in its own right. Scientific
inquiry is never directed to sensing itself. The theory of sensations
contains two parts, the first dealing with what is sensed, and the sec-
333
ond with the conditions which produce sensation. A great many

psychological investigations of sensing are really—as the setup of
t eir experiments proves—concerned with the way perceptual ob-
jects appear under especially complex and specially constructed
circumstances.
Such a path, once taken, leads psychology to ascribe what is ele¬
mentary in the phenomenon to sensing, either as that which is tem¬
porally prior and thus original and as yet undistorted, or as that
which is simple, uncompounded. “It is impossible,” wrote James,
rigorously to define a sensation; and in the actual life of conscious¬
ness sensations, properly so called, and perceptions merge into each
other by insensible degrees. All we can say is that what we mean by
sensations are First things in the way of consciousness. They are the
immediate results upon consciousness of nerve-currents as they enter
the brain, and before they have awakened any suggestions or associ¬
ations with past experience. But it is obvious that any such immedi¬
ate sensations can only be realized in the earliest days of life. They
are all but impossible to adults with memories and stores of associa¬
tions acquired.” And in a later passage he says: “Sensation, thus
considered, differs from perception only in the extreme simplicity of
its object or content. Its object, being a simple quality, is sensibly
homogeneous; and its function is that of mere acquaintance with
this homogeneous seeming fact.”2 The elementary presents itself
here in two forms: As that which is at the beginning and as a homo¬
geneous quality. We arrive at the object of sensations by a progres¬
sive, spatial division of the perceived object. This process of division
is carried on until only qualities remain—colors, sounds, smells—
and nothing else. (To be exact, we should rather say qualities of a
certain intensity. But this does not significantly change anything.)
The method of dealing with the perception corresponds with the
possibilities offered by the category of the thing, without prior con¬
sideration as to whether this method is suited to the phenomenon of
sensing. Since the elementary sensory qualities had been blended by
means of attention, training, and memory, into a finished percep¬
tual object, the original parts cannot be rediscovered without spe¬
cial effort. To withstand the montage process, the sensations must be
inflexible, rigid, and in themselves unchangeable. They are endowed
with the temporal properties of that which is finished, completed,
and already evolved. As such, they are lifted out of the process of
living and becoming. They are assimilated into the timeless charac¬
ter of mathematical knowledge.
If synthesizing functions—regardless of what sort—are to make
334
use of sensations as their raw material, it becomes necessary that the

sensations be pure qualities apart from any spatial and temporal
configuration. This assumption, which is supposed to help us to an
empirically founded knowledge (Mach) of the constitution of experi¬
ence, is itself far removed from the empirical. It is but the conse¬
quence of the unexamined presupposition that sensation is a lower
form of knowledge.
The separation of sense qualities from space and time does not
significantly hinder investigations into the physiology of the senses.
Because the qualities function in these investigations merely as a
mediator, as signs for spatio-temporal processes “without” and at
the same time as signs for spatio-temporal processes within the sense
organs, their own spatio-temporal structure is of no significance. If,
however, the issue at hand is not sensations assigned to an extra-
mundane subject, but rather a sensing subject living in the world,
then the spatio-temporal forms of sensing must be considered.
(b) The Problem of Space

The historical development of the problem has given rise to
two complementary sets of questions. First, do all sensory impressions
have a primary spatial character, or is this character limited to par¬
ticular sensations, and if so, which ones? Next, how is space per¬
ceived, what characteristics do spatial sensations possess, and how are
they connected with particularly sensory qualities? How to explain
“that different sense organs mediate a homogeneous impression”?3
And, finally, how does the perception of surface and depth come
about; how does it develop?
Observation that seeks to isolate does not stop at the separation
of the qualities from space and time; it also completely separates
“the perception of space” from “the perception of time.” This latter,
however, is really an orphan among problems. Experimental psychol¬
ogy has neglected the problems of time in spite of the role that used
to be played by the “personal equation.” Time has become a minor
theme, scarcely attracting the interest of investigators. Following the
course of history, we will for now all have to bear with this
separation.
The general opinion is that impressions of space are found pri¬
marily in three sensory spheres; the optical, the cutaneous, and the
kinesthetic.4
335
But not all researchers go that far. Some would limit spatiality, as
an original datum, to one particular sensory sphere. The argument
here is whether we arrive to a consciousness of space on the basis of
what is given by the sense of touch or only by means of what is
given in the sense of sight.5
In his analysis of perception, Berkeley tried to demonstrate “that
the ideas of space, outness, and things placed at a distance are not,
strictly speaking, the object of sight; they are not otherwise perceived
by the eye than by the ear.”6 In order resoundingly to impress his
view upon the reader, Berkeley presents a thought experiment. He
asks his reader to take into our thought the case of one born blind,
and afterwards, when grown up, made to see.”7 In the last chapter
of his rebuttal “Theory of Vision or Visual language etc.,” published
in 1732, he refers to a publication about the results of an operation
by which a person born blind later gains his sight.8 Berkeley finds
in this report a belated verification of his views; “Thus by fact and
experiment, these points of the theory which seem the most remote
from common apprehension were not a little confirmed, many years
after I had been led into the discovery of them by reasoning.”
V. Senden bases his findings on the same material, namely, on
observations of operations performed on persons born blind. A thor¬
ough investigation of the experience collected in literature during
the two hundred years since the publication of Berkeley’s paper leads
this same author, however, to results completely opposed to those
of Berkeley.
According to Senden, these reports contain nothing that would
justify the assumption of “tactual space.” “They have, rather, un¬
equivocally indicated that the congenitally blind lack all that which
would have to be shown as given in order to speak of a tactile ap¬
prehension of space.”9 In his concluding remarks, he says again:
“Our view, then, is that those born blind do not come to an aware¬
ness of space by means of tactile perceptions alone, but that such an
awareness is much more closely linked with optical perception.”10
“To be born blind is actually to have stood outside spatial reality.”
Senden cites the reflections of Wittmann,11 the observations of Gold¬
stein and Gelb,12 on cases of brain damage, and the self-observations
of Ahlmann.13 We will have to bypass Senden’s interesting account
of the post-operative recovery of visual space. Here, too, he finds
corroboration of his views about the environmental structure of those
born blind. What concerns us here is the assumption that a sensory
sphere like that of the tactile sense may be denied any original spa¬
tial quality. The congenitally blind person has no awareness of space,
33g Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
and before the operation does not acquire any conception of space
‘‘either from local signals from the skin, nor by kinesthetic sensations
accompanying usage of the limbs, nor by the corresponding muscle
sensations.”14 The congenitally blind builds his world in time, he
senses himself as a dynamic center of action. In linguistic exchanges
with those who can see, he creates schemata of things and verbal con¬
cepts. His time schemata are the product of temporally successive
acts of attention and contain nothing spatial. His concepts of space
are obtained solely by means of the intellect and have no sensory
basis. “The logical apperceptive order of things acquired from tac¬
tile impressions with the help of the intellect thus cannot be com¬
pared to the spatial order of visual space. A tactile space is, there¬
fore, psychologically inadmissable.”
A detailed examination of the analysis upon which Senden bases
his conclusions reveals that his arguments rest on presuppositions
which I have tried to reject as prejudices. We find, for example, the
prejudice of time atomism, of psychophysical correspondence, of the
extramundaneity of the observer—all these linked with the prejudice
that sensory data are experienced as processes in us, or even within
our organism.
The prejudice involving pluralism and temporal atomism is ex¬
pressed in the supposition that individual impressions (in the plural)
are brought together by the consciousness of time. “Only time gives
to the blind the possibility of a qualitative, total judgment of objects
or extensions, and this because it allows him to experience the way
in which individual impressions of the past, present, and future be¬
long together. Things which are not given to his perception as spa¬
tially simultaneous must be apperceptively brought together within
a temporal context which replaces the missing spatial context. A
spatial line must therefore be replaced by a succession in time and
the blind person must therefore have an outspoken awareness of
time in order properly to grasp the togetherness of contiguous im¬
pressions.”15 “When the preliminary terminal point of such a suc¬
cession is reached, either the process is reversed or the succession is,
if possible, prolonged for a few passages, which are analysed in the
usual manner and recollectively added on to the existing schema.
He (the blind person) has no spatial conception as to the length of
the path, but in addition to time he notices the number of manifold
impressions as well as the extent of his own fatigue.—The schema
thus arises from this knowledge of the relatedness of impressions in
time based on a plurality of imprint-processes; what is involved is
consciousness of the reciprocal relations between the individually
337
received contents of perceptions in time.”16 But how can individual

impressions be combined if they are not experienced as parts of a
series, i.e., precisely not as individual entities? If they are experienced
as members of a series, then the individual impression is but the
limit of becoming in the encounter with the world. How can the
touched object, how can the person (whose vision is intact) with
whom the blind man speaks, be there, indeed, how can the blind man
himself be there, if the individual impressions are only temporally
ordered? Obviously, the pluralistic presupposition must be com¬
plemented and supported by the notion of extramundaneity if one
is to hold the view that the congenitally blind have no conception
of space. A self which experiences something by touching it and
which does not at the same time experience itself—such a non¬
corporal, extramundane self can, indeed, experience “only” and
“merely” qualities. Despite all contrasts, we find, therefore, that
this view agrees in the main with Berkeley’s position. Berkeley ex¬
plains how someone born blind can tactually acquire the idea of
“above” and “below” before eyesight is restored. “But if we suppose
him on a sudden to receive his sight, and that he behold a man
standing before him, it is evident in that case he would neither judge
the man he sees to be erect nor inverted; for he never having known
those terms applied to any other save tangible things, or which ex¬
isted in the space without him, and what he sees neither being tan¬
gible nor perceived as existing without, he could not know that in
propriety of language they were applicable to it.”17
The stabile, extramundane self looks out upon sensory data and
yet, at the same time, has them within itself. The “ostensible space
consciousness of the blind (is) nothing but a knowledge of the pos¬
sibility of being able to seize an object with the hand by moving
the arm in a certain way, characterized by a particular muscular
sensation.”18 But how can an object be seized nonspatially? Is not
the graspable object something other than the person who seizes it?
How else could we differentiate between the acts of seizing and
things being seized? Time alone cannot enable us to do so. Time
gives us the nonseparated, the simultaneous. Obviously, Senden as¬
sumes that muscle sensations are perceived as objects; the sensing
person is confronted in an intentional experience by the muscle
sensation, and at the same time he experiences them as processes in
his own body.
Following Wardrop, Senden tells us of a boy who “busied himself
for hours picking from the bed of a nearby river round pebbles of
about the same weight and with a smooth surface. He arranged these
pebbles in a circle at the water’s edge and set himself in the middle
of the circle.”19
v. Senden explains this behavior by assuming that, as a small
child, the boy probably learned the “tactile sequence of ‘circle from
within’ while looking around on the floor for a lost toy. He may
have brought his hands together before and behind and experienced
this double-sided motion of his arms as a strange movement, and
thereafter retained it in memory.”20 “This structurally very charac¬
teristic sequence, repeatedly perceived and imitated with his own
arms in free dynamic movements, was able to be employed on differ¬
ent material—such as the pebbles on the river bank; what he himself
had performed as a conscious action in this circular form is noth¬
ing more than the slow, successive arrangement of the pebbles in a
sequence which provided for his steadily controlling arms the same
muscle sensations as the familiar tactile sequence ‘circle from with¬
out.’ ”21 Even if we assume the searching about on the floor to be a
non-spatial action, how can the same series of muscle sensations be
comprehended now as “circle from within” and then as “circle from
without” without any reference to space?
Albertotti reported of a congenitally blind subject: “When I took
his hand and let his fingers follow the contours of a small cardboard
disk that was familiar to him, he suddenly noted that ‘one of the
disks had spots on it, but the other one did not.’—From that mo¬
ment on he was no longer satisfied with just secretly touching the
objects and immediately withdrawing his hands. Instead he handled
them thoroughly and the notion of a spot became, for him, syn¬
onymous with rectangularity, while a lack of spots represented some¬
thing round. Thus a spoon was round and a fork angular.”22 To
this report Senden adds the explanation: “What he calls ‘spots’ is
the tactile impression of an edge which arises when the pressure upon
his finger is no longer divided among a greater number of Meissner
tactile bodies as the finger moves along the edge, but rather, when
the pressure is increased with a sort of a sting at one point on the
fingertip. In addition the edge becomes distinguishable for him by
the sudden interruption of a regular, monotonous sequence so that
his finger meets, as it were, a void; now the finger must seek its pres¬
sure in a new dynamic direction of attack given by a different edge.
All of this is a purely qualitative tactile experience and the edge is,
within the tactile sequence, a very marked turning point. Such
interruption is also quite desirable to the blind person; he is pleased
that there is more to the touched object that might even be of prac¬
tical value for him. But if now he makes use of spatial expressions
339
of our visible space, these impressions have for him a quite different
meaning than what is intended in our everyday language. What for
us are indications of form are for him utterly non-spatial differences
of purely tactile sensations (such as differences in dynamic move¬
ments); these are differences in sequential continuity and in the ar¬
rangement of impressions.”23 The edges have a pricking effect upon
the finger. But the blind person takes them as a structural aspect of
the object. The palpable turning point belongs—no matter in what
fashion it is perceived—to the object, just as the regular monotonous
tactile sequence gives rise to the impression of a smooth edge. But
the monotonous sequence can only be experienced when the indi¬
vidual impressions present themselves as links in a chain—that is,
when they no longer present themselves as singular impressions.
The principle of this sequence, however, is the uniform progression
in one direction. It is therefore, a spatio-temporal principle. Alber-
totti’s patient pricks himself on the edge. The angular is thus for
him not merely a purely qualitative tactile experience. The spots are
for him a property of the disk. What kind of a property, we must ask,
if not a spatial property? What, finally, are, in fact, differences in dy¬
namic movement and what, in general, are motions without refer¬
ence to space?
Even Senden’s earlier examples of the more or less planned way
in which the blind move, how, for example, they search for some¬
thing about themselves or how they stretch out their arms to grasp
hold of something even though they are supposed to lack a space
consciousness,—even these examples are problematic. Movement
without space! And now a fifth prejudice is added to the four noted
above: The separation of locomotion from sensing. The blind do not
move themselves, even when walking. Their movement is mere motor
process. The motions they carry out are ‘‘merely changes in the ten¬
sion relationships of the body’s musculature.” For the blind, walking
is “the customary purely forward motion, a kind of dynamic equi¬
librium in which both sides of the body find themselves equally
tensed, but in which the whole bodily tonus is directed ‘forward.’ ”
The blind person knows “that he will reach the sought object after
a certain number of steps if he moves with this characteristic bodily
attitude.”24 This knowledge is supposed to be a substitute for the
“predetermined forward direction of a man who sees.”
In the museum of Naples, there hangs a painting by Breughel
called “The Blind Ones.” One after another in a long file, their
hands on a rod, they approach from a narrow strip of land. Their
coming is a stumbling, tripping, falling. It is the horror of human
34» Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
beings in their blindness which Breughel has captured in this paint¬

ing, “Man in his blindness.” Breughel depicts the blind man who,
lost in space, stumbles from one unknown to another. He is lost in
space, but he is still in space.
Have a blind man walk an unfamiliar, uneven road leading now
up and now downhill. Will he then experience merely “his legs in
rhythmic motion?” Is his walking nothing but such rhythmic motion
and the tension of the upper part of his body? Doesn’t the blind
man, like any one else, move the position of his foot from one place
to another? And again we will have to inquire into the possibility
of a person differentiating between one place and another. For isn’t
the blind person moving from here to there? Indeed, isn’t each sep¬
arate step, each act of putting the foot down on the ground an ex¬
perience in and of space? Everyone has probably had the experience
of coming down a dark staircase and, thinking he has already reached
the last step when in fact there is still one more left, has stepped
into the void. This stepping into emptiness gives us a clearer picture
of what we experience with every step in regular walking. We put
our foot down and, supporting ourselves, direct ourselves toward
the firm ground which offers resistance to our step and which carries
us. When our steps are firm and secure we experience direction and
counter-direction. The step into the void and the accompanying
sense of something missing indicates that we expect resistance at a
certain place, and that our step is aimed and gauged accordingly.
The place where we intend to step has a particular relation to the
place where we now find ourselves on the stairs. It lies deeper, deeper
in a particular relation to us. All this—direction and counterdirec¬
tion, goal and measure, the otherness of and the relation between
the places we walk—cannot be non-spatial.
If the tactile sensations of the blind are without spatial charac¬
ter, then they are such through and through and in general, for
those who can see, as well. As capable of seeing we would, it is true,
be in space, but our moving and our touching could only be thought
of as in space in some way or other. And how this could be accom¬
plished in spite of an original lack of spatial characteristics of the
tactile is difficult to understand. We would be in space, but the tac¬
tile impression would be within us and articulated only with regard
to time. Suppose we are holding something, we enclose (umgreifen)
the handle of a knife with our fist, we take a piece of paper between
thumb and forefinger: Is this “between” simply a sum of tactile sen¬
sations in the tips of the thumb and forefinger and sensations of
muscle contraction in the palmar muscle and the muscle of the fore-
TRADITIONAL PSYCHOLOGY OF SPACE AND TIME 341
arm? Are thumb and forefinger not directed against each other in
the opposition of the thumb? The pressure and intensity with which
we enclose something is determined by the possibility of its slipping
from our hand. But this is something quite different from a sum
of tactile and kinesthetic sensations and innervations. If sensing is
subordinated to knowing, consciousness of space, of which Berkeley
and Senden speak will ultimately be considered as consciousness of
space as such, that is, Euclidean—or nearly Euclidean—space. “The
logical-apperceptive order of things obtained, with the help of the
intellect, from the sense of touch, cannot, therefore, be compared to
the spatial order of visible space. Psychology thus cannot recognize
such a thing as a ‘tactile space.’ ”25 The spatial order of things in
visual space—that is the (only) space whose character is the theme
of inquiry. But is this hypostasization of spatial forms by (Euclidean)
space justified? True, visual space has a clarity, a relation between
adjacency and simultaneity which sets it apart from tactile space
and which allows a transition from this visual space to Euclidean or
geographical space. If space is understood as being rationally survey-
able and systematically closed as it is understood in mathematics,
then, and only then, might it perhaps be justified to deny the blind
consciousness of space.
In the act of touching, only one limited piece is seized; the hori¬
zon is empty, the undetermined-determinable. Just as with each of
our senses we communicate with the world in a different way, so to
each sense there belongs a different mode of emptiness. Darkness
fills space, it is visible as darkness and conceals both the near and
the distant, just as both are revealed by brightness. The emptiness
of the world of touch is the undetermined-determinable of the There.
In touching, I grasp only one piece, but as such, as a piece. In touch¬
ing the edge of the back of a chair, I successively feel it piece by
piece, moment by moment, by moving along the back. The momen¬
tary is part of every tactile impression, “moment” in the sense of
both time and motion. Each moment is but one moment; it is ex¬
perienced in the transition of what is not yet to that which is no
longer. In the world of touch, there is no closed, realized horizon;
there are only moments—and thus the urge to move from one mo¬
ment to the next. Tactile motion thus becomes the expression of a
restless and endless, never entirely realized approach.
If we no longer insist on speaking of a subject which has sensa¬
tions, but, rather, consider the human being who senses and by
sensing experiences himself with and in the world, then we can no
longer maintain that there may be sensory impressions which lack
spatial characteristics. With the spoken word we address, we call

the other. Do we not try to be audible to the other, and don’t we
ourselves hear the other and ourselves? Must not such mutual aware¬
ness be spatial? An unbiased examination of conversation, of the
ways and means of understanding among men and animals, does not
lead to the notion of the primary nonspatiality of sounds. No one
would want seriously to claim that a child who in the first years of
his life experiences the acoustic utterances of others and himself
arrives at his primitive and still prelinguistic mode of communica¬
tion on the basis of a long chain of reasoning. Such a notion would
then be equally true of animals, such as the rooster who with his
loud crowing greets the morning and replies to other roosters, or the
hen who calls her chicks, or the chicks who follow this call. We can
not, to be sure, demonstrate the Pythagorean theorem in this world
of sound, in these spatial forms. But this lack of mathematical preci¬
sion is no argument against the original spatial character of sound,
nor against that of the other sensory impressions. It would only pro¬
vide for such an argument if the spatial was synonymous with geo¬
graphical, or mathematical space.
From these “self-evident” premises, the other problem—how we
arrive at the experience of space—has been approached. No matter
how fiercely the nativists and empiricists opposed each other on the
problem of the conception of space, they agreed completely about
the basic issues. The question was always how the subject arrives at
the perception of (true) Space; they never asked how the individual
experiences himself in space.26 From the physiological point of view,
the hypothesis of the extramundaneity of the subject seems at first
to be a foreign notion. But the formation of concepts in physiologi¬
cal psychology is so dominated by the subordination of sensing to
knowing that even there this notion of the extramundane subject has
been kept alive.
In addition to these two groups, the radical empiricists and the
out-and-out nativists, who, as regards the optical and tactile sense,
at least assume a certain, though primitive and incomplete concep¬
tion of space which takes it as thoroughly original and unmediated
by other kinds of conscious experience,”27 there exists a group “in
between” which considers plane vision original and primaryfand
depth vision as mediated by experience.28
This distinction of the primacy of the plane and the later acqui¬
sition of depth was doubtless determined by geometrical abstrac¬
tion. To be sure, we can think of the plane as a pure two-dimensional
form. But can we actually see a plane as such—without any depth?
343
The hypothesis of an original vision limited to the perception of the

plane could be established only with the presupposition that in spa¬
tial perception objective data are received in an extramundane
consciousness.
But extramundaneity itself is not sufficient to explain the hy¬
pothesis of an original apprehension of space limited to plane vision.
It requires the additional assumption of psychophysical correspond¬
ence. Because external objects are projected on the surface of the
retina, and because the content of experience is supposed to corre¬
spond to anatomic-physiological processes, the inference is made that
spatial vision must originally be two-dimensional. In one of the
graphs in the Discourse on Man, Descartes describes how the exci¬
tations of the two retinas are transmitted through the optic nerves
and finally united in the epiphysis where they are observed by the
soul. Now, whether one places the soul—regardless of its extramun¬
daneity—in the epiphysis, or relegates it to the retina or the genicu¬
late bodies or the optical cortex, or, somewhat more cautiously,
renounces all attempts to localize the soul, there still at bottom per¬
sists the idea that the soul in sensing and perceiving only senses and
perceives something, but not that we experience ourselves in and
with the world. Insofar as we perceive, imagine, and know “true”
space, we go beyond the relation in which we have the world for
ourselves. Only in knowledge do I determine my “Here” in a gen¬
eral fashion as a location in true space; only in knowledge do I tran¬
scend perspective.
Even the nativists who, like Hering, assume an original conscious¬
ness of spatial depth have stopped at this point. The seeing person
recognizes the relative position in which the things seen stand to
one another, their location before or behind the focal plane (Kern-
fiaeche). He sees into a three-dimensional space. Depth is exclusively
understood as the distance things have from him. Actually depth is
not experienced as a unidirectional distance, as merely the distance
of the things from the seeing person, but also as the distance of the
person from the things he sees. Direction in depth has a two-fold
significance. If A is the person seeing and B is the seen object, then
an arrow points not only from A to B, but also from B to A. I can
move toward an object, but the object can move toward me as well.
In both cases, the distance is shortened.
In personal experience, however, my approaching the object is
not at all the same as its approaching me. The difference is not
merely based on a difference in optical impressions or a combination
of optical impressions and motor sensations. For I can approach an
344
object while resting in a vehicle, or I can experience the movement

of a vehicle towards me as an approach even while I am, at the same
time, walking toward it. Nor can the directional significance be
explained by establishing the object’s change of position, the differ¬
ence between its relation to its surroundings and to myself. Two peo¬
ple can run toward each other or toward an object, such as a pole or
a ball flying in the air; in such a case, both movements are distinctly
opposed to each other as regards their directional significance: the
one person toward the other and the other toward him. When speed¬
ily running toward an object, we seek to avoid a collision by stop¬
ping short in front of it. But if something rushes toward us we try
to avoid it by moving sidewards or backwards. Let us assume a pedes¬
trian has stepped from the sidewalk into the street at the very mo¬
ment that a car is turning the corner and coming toward him. What
will our threatened pedestrian do? Presumably, he will jump back
to the sidewalk without thinking twice. And what takes place when
someone spontaneously ducks away from a blow? What happens is
just this movement of the head and the upper torso sidewards or
backwards. The simplest and most common kind of process to be
sure—but one fraught with mystery for “objective” psychology.
He who jumps out of the way of a sudden threat: Where does
he jump to? Where—by this I mean, into what space? Is it perhaps
an imagined, or even a remembered space? In that case, the imagined,
remembered, and perceived space would have to be continuous in
their connection with one another; but imagined space is, as ima¬
gined, not present, nor is remembered space present. I can, to be
sure, wherever I may be in the city, reflect on how I may get from
where I am standing to this or that street; in so doing, I mentally
order my present position into geographical space, and from this
context I determine the direction I will have to take within the
visible horizon. The leap backwards, on the other hand, is not pre¬
ceded by any geographical orientation; we can observe such move¬
ments of flight even with animals and very young animals at that.
The direction of their flight movement is determined by the direc¬
tion from which the threat comes.
This is remarkable in that the leap to safety continues the visible
direction into the unseen. If approaching could be understood
merely as decrease of depth values, then the continuation beyond
the seen would not be possible in primary experience. But since step¬
ping aside or backwards is a daily occurrence in the life of men and
animals, there can be no doubt that, in sensing, space reaches to the
side and to the rear. It reaches, in a word, beyond what is seen, nor
345
can we doubt that the direction of movement transcends the visible

and points beyond into the unseen. This is where we jump when
we jump backwards. There must thus also be possible a forward di¬
rection beyond the visible object; what is seen, in other words, cir¬
cumscribes space, but space has depth which reaches beyond the
seen into the unseen. The primary content of sensing cannot, there¬
fore, be correlated with individual stimuli as though it were a kind
of copy. What is sensed is “more" than that which can be represented
by a summation or structured order of sensations. The sensations are
only particular or transitory limits of sensing; they are accomplish¬
ments which the sensing subject, as a becoming being, has left be¬
hind.
Depth impressions, arranged serially in such a way that the depth
values constantly decrease cannot produce the experience of ap¬
proach—neither my approach to something nor its approach to me
—unless I experience myself in space with the very first impression,
unless in the depth of space I see the object in that first impression
as being before me and myself as being before it. Because depth im¬
pressions have a dual directional significance, the objects hold a cer¬
tain distance (sind abstaendig), and even before I move I am near
them. Because I experience myself as a sensing being in space, I can
move in space; because I am near the object, I can approach it. The
experience of depth is relative to a movable being. The space of
sensing corresponds to the basic form of primary experience as ex¬
perience of becoming. Depth is not a purely spatial moment at all.
Looking straight ahead at the wall of a house over there, I can
compare the width of the windows relative to each other. Such deter¬
minations may be highly inaccurate, but they are still objective; the
measuring standard is obtained from the spatial plane itself and
remains completely within the sphere of spatial extension. I com¬
pare spatial extensions among themselves in their appearance as
such. But I can also establish the place where I now stand and meas¬
ure the distance from this spot to the wall of the house, a distance
which turns out to be, say, 25 yards. In such a measurement, I appre¬
hend nothing concerning the phenomenon of spatial depth. The dis¬
tance between two positions in space is expressed by the scale of
linear measurement. In depth, I have things as they are for myself,
from my point of view only. The “for myself" is part of the content
of the experience of depth; it does not arise in reflection as does, for
example, the notion that the wallpaper there may be blue only “as
far as I can see,” but not “in itself.” Visual space does not become
subjective space because of discrepancies; it is not a distorted picture
346
of the order of objective space. It is subjective, because in this space

I experience myself here and things there. Direction is inseparable
from depth. To be sure, if I measure the width of the plane of the
house across the street, then direction is irrelevant, but in that case
what interests me is only something which is and can be seen. In
such measuring, I become a perceiver and as such I am no longer
involved in perspective. I express the results of my measuring with
sentences in which no mention is made of the act of seeing. Such
abstraction occurs every day and requires no strict scientific atten¬
tion. As perceivers, we constantly perform such abstractions; we
speak among ourselves of our perceptions, but not of perceiving and
sensing. Psychology simply seems all too rigidly bound up in these
abstractions. It becomes very difficult for it to free itself from them,
something which it must do if it wishes to make sensing the object
of its study. For then the theme becomes the seeing of the seen and
the hearing of that which is heard. And what is spoken of must also
be the subject who sees and hears and not alone that which is seen
and heard.
In seeing, I am directed toward visible things. In physiology and
psychology the main directions in visual space are mentioned with¬
out hesitation. But wouldn’t this be just the place to do a little hesi¬
tating—and reflecting on the matter? For what is a direction? Are
these main directions something like Cartesian co-ordinates in a sub¬
jective space? Directions and straight lines are obviously not the
same, but in what lies their difference? Is not direction a spatio-
temporal phenomenon?29 In that case, original visual space that is
arranged according to main directions would no longer be a purely
spatial structure! And it would therefore be incorrect not only to
isolate spatial and temporal data from the qualities and intensities
of sensing, but equally incorrect to isolate space from time at all in
the way it is usually done.
Since it is not that a sensing being has sensations, but rather

that in sensing experiences himself and the world in the process of
becoming, temporality is an immanent part of the content of sensing.
The temporal moment of becoming and becoming-with (Mitwerden)
is inseparable from it. This is not to say that sensations of time (com¬
municable in judgments) are components of all sensations. Unfortu-
347
nately, traditional theories of sensation have, for the most part, dealt
in this fashion with the problem of time. What are sensations of
time? One answer has it: We are “able, by means of direct intuition,
to compare the positional and longitudinal differences in a temporal
sequence. In other words, we perceive that an event A takes place
at an earlier moment than event B; that a walk took longer than
the reading of a page in a book” (Froebes). Or: “The impressions of
our senses are always given in the form of a temporal event and not
only when we are observing actual processes (i.e., when noticing that
sensations begin, end, or change), but also when we notice that a
state persists uniformly without change” (Kries). Both answers thus
agree in enumerating objective data—succession, the relation of
early to late, the location in temporal sequence, beginning and end,
persistence and change—as the content of time sensations. But when
a tone is sounded, its beginning is present; when it ceases, its ceasing
is present; when it persists, its persisting is present. All these objective
temporal moments are present in sensing. This being-present, this
“now” of the beginning and ending, of duration and change, of rest
and motion, is a temporal moment into which all others can enter.
The present is the temporal moment which properly belongs to
sensing.
True, experimental psychology also deals with the present, the
"now.” But its understanding of this notion is so different from ours
that we must, in this regard, carefully distinguish between two op¬
posing conceptions.
“A consciousness of temporal extension, a consciousness of earlier
and later, could not arise,” says Lipps, “if we experienced in each
mathematical moment only that which actually enters our life dur¬
ing this moment, without including what has been experienced in
the preceding moments and still persists in us in the present. It could
not, that is, arise if the later were not attached to and combined
with the earlier in a simultaneous whole.” Three points in this
theory of time are important for us. It limits temporal experience
to the experience of earlier-later; the best way it can explain past¬
ness is with the theory of temporal signs; the future is closed to it.
And, finally, it takes its departure—as though this went without
saying—from the experience of the moment. The “now” is the mo¬
ment, the dimensionless temporal point to which one attains by pro¬
gressive division of the temporal sequence found in thought.
James thus quite consistently says, “To realize an hour we must
count: Now! Now! Now!—indefinitely. Each ‘now’ is the feeling of a
separate bit of time. . . We have to count that which is countable.

If we examine this “now” more carefully, we find that though the
word “now” is used, it is not seriously meant. For this “now” refers
not to the immediate temporal experience of becoming, the tran¬
sition from the future to the past via the present; it is, rather, a “bit
of time,” it is correlated with “the experiences of the moment” which
in themselves are timeless and singular. This point-like Now has no
relation to the Not-now, to temporal becoming. It is understood as
static; it refers to a content or object which, within the most nar¬
row limits of objective time, corresponds with the individual physi¬
ological process. The image of time is supposed to come from a
construction placed upon the temporal signs attached to the single
momentary experiences. The genetic theory of time, developed by
Lipps, was not, it is true, shared by all the psychologists of his day,
even though it was a necessary consequence of the premises of the
psychology of that period. Still, the supporters of the genetic theory
as well as those from the nativistic school came to the same result.
Both groups approached time not as a central problem of psychology,
but as a peripheral subject to be perfunctorily treated somewhere in
their textbooks in, perhaps, an appendix or a footnote.
Benussi defines the task of the psychology of time in the follow¬
ing manner: “The psychology of time must inquire into the condi¬
tions by which the means of apprehending time, i.e., time-images, are
of such a kind that the objects thereby made accessible are or are not
adequate to the objects actually at hand; it must discover which inner
events make possible the different relations between subjective, ap¬
prehended, and objective, actual time.”30 Despite such thematic lim¬
itation, the atomistic approach to time was bound to encounter
difficulties as soon as an attempt was made to understand the notion of
temporal extensions and sequences, movements, melodies, sentences,
and polysyllabic words. In 1897, W. Stern introduced the concept of
“presence time.” In the discussions following the introduction of this
concept, it soon became apparent that, although the problem had
been stated, it had not been solved. That this concept did not funda¬
mentally further the psychology of time is evident from the efforts
to determine objectively the duration of “presence time” and to re¬
duce the comprehension of the passage of time to particular kinds
of cerebral processes.31
The objective-temporal point was replaced by the objective-tem¬
poral extension which is viewed, in retrospect, toward the past. The
lived experience of the future is still left out of account—a charac-
349
teristic and unavoidable shortcoming of this psychology of time.

For, the awareness of time is taken as a kind of knowledge. That,
however, which is truly known has the character of the timelessly
valid or has the temporal form of the completed past (the perfection)
when what is known are objective processes. The verification of facts
situates them in objective time, in which they acquire a definite lo¬
cation and extension. Objective time is, as realized time, always past;
it appears with that frozen rigidity by which Bergson characterized
measured time. All knowing is a having recognized; in comparison
with original experience and temporality, it has the character of
the finished, of that which has already been and which has left origi¬
nal temporality behind it. As such, a concept comprises identical
temporal elements. What Benussi calls the object of a psychology
of time actually belongs, so to say, to the realm of temporal rela¬
tions—duration, change, pause, rhythm, etc. But because these re¬
lations are for him already verified, i.e., objective and completed
temporal relations, he is barred from understanding the actual ex¬
perience of time and thus also the experience of the present and the
Now. This psychology of time begins at a point where the original
experience of lived time turns into a having-experienced. Original
temporality, the experience of being present, is not accessible to ex¬
periments which involve verifiable behavior of experimental sub¬
jects. Nothing of original temporality is contained in the judgments
offered by these experimental subjects; the reconstruction of original
temporality cannot succeed because no way leads back from such
knowledge to the living experience.
The works of Mach, James, and Lipps have become part of his¬
tory. Many years have passed since their deaths. They represent the
psychology of the turn of the century. But the rigidity of their psy¬
chology seems only very slowly to be loosening its hold. In its experi¬
ments, in its close connection with physiology, psychology is again
and again thrust back to objective time. And thus it stubbornly and
often angrily resists the introduction of new ideas about the experi¬
ence of time, unless they are at once re-interpreted and therefore mis¬
understood along more customary objectifying lines.32
Such persistence within tradition is not surprising. Objective
space and objective time (or, simply. Space and Time), geographical
space and time measured by the clock, are great creations of human
thought. He who condemns objective space and objective time con¬
demns himself. With these objectifying concepts we come, perhaps,
closer to truth than we do in the full intensity of sensory certainty.
35°
In hallucinations, or under the influence of mescaline, a man indeed

experiences his spatial impressions with the full power of sensory
certainty. Yet who would want to claim that what is thus experi¬
enced is space and time in their true form? But psychology’s theme
is sensory certainty. For that reason, it cannot content itself with
accepting objective space and objective time as data and, proceed¬
ing from such presuppositions, inquire into the sensations of space
and time. If all temporal experience limited itself to substantiating
a temporal order, then that which is given in the moment would
not have the character of the present, the Now.
The Now is not an objective datum, not part of the given. That
which is present is always an other. Now it is a duration, now a
change, now rest and now motion, now a beginning, and now an
ending. The “Now” always signifies something definite, and yet it¬
self cannot be genuinely defined regarding its own temporal nature
by means of this content. The Now sets off a point in the objective
seriality of time, but can not itself be identified by this point. For
the point in time which just now was, is no longer. I can, it is true,
establish the duration of a process by clock measurement and I can
likewise establish that the beginning of a process was at a certain
moment, dating it by the day, hour, minute, and second. But I will
obtain an objective, general, and communicable datum only by co¬
ordinating myself and my lived experience with world time, with
that time which can be symbolically represented by a line and quan¬
tified. The Now of the present is thus related to objective time, but
does not itself belong to it. The Now is always my Now.
In sensory experience, everyone lives from the perspective of his
Now and Here. At my Now and only at my Now does the living
present become past and a new living present grows out of the future.
It is just for this reason, that in sensing we live in our own Now,
that sensing is not a form of knowing. For the objectivity of knowl¬
edge implies that what is known can be apprehended conceptually,
separated off and communicated. What is known holds true: It
claims to be the same today, tomorrow, in the future, and in the past.
Cognition can be repeated because it is indifferent to temporal
events. But the Now cannot be repeated. The universality of knowl¬
edge requires that it be repeatable for me as well. Therefore, to have
knowledge, I must be able to dissociate myself from the co-existence
(Mitsein) of my sensory experience. A being which lives exclusively
within the sphere of sensory experience can neither know nor re¬
member.
SENSE-CERTAINTY
351
<?£l
I. SensC'Ccrtainty
(a) The Primacy of Self-consciousness
THE BEING PRESENT OF SENSORY EXPERIENCE—AND THUS SENSORY
experience in general—is the experiencing of a being-with (Mit-Sein)

which unfolds into a subject and an object. The sensing subject does
not have sensations, but, rather, in his sensing he has first himself. In
sensory experience, there unfolds both the becoming of the subject
and the happenings of the world. I become only insofar as something
happens, and something happens (for me) only insofar as I become.
The Now of sensing belongs neither to objectivity nor to subjec¬
tivity alone, but necessarily to both together. In sensing, both self
and world unfold simultaneously for the sensing subject; the sensing
being experiences himself and the world, himself in the world, him¬
self with the world.
The expressions “himself with the world,” “himself in the world,”
“himself and the world,” are not tautologies. The “and” expresses,
though negatively, a very important moment of the subject-object
relation of sensing. In the “and,” the priority of either self-conscious¬
ness or world-consciousness over the other is rejected. The subject of
sensing, the sensing being, is not a single, isolated subject drafting a
world out of his self-consciousness and transcending it toward the
world. Neither is he so lost into the world that he can return and find
himself only because of some highly disturbing event. The “and”
expresses the subject-object relation of sensing correctly, but not yet
decisively enough. For it might possibly mean that self and world
are objects of sensing which unavoidably emerge together, but only
as a mere aggregate like houses and the trees which stand in front of
them. Nor does the “and” exclude the possibility that I can be aware
of my sensing self only in reflection.
We thus have to upgrade the “and” to a “with.” The unity of
352
“with” is more than a mere aggregate. The “with” implies that I do

not experience myself in addition to the world, but that sensory ex¬
perience unfolds in two directions: toward world and toward self.
Sensing is sympathetic experiencing; i.e., in sensing I experience
changes of my permanent relation to the world which outlast and
unite all individual, particular moments. I, as a sensing being, am a
finite, becoming subject, a part of the world toward whose manifold
there-points (Dortpunkte) I am directed from the standpoint of my
Here in separating and uniting, in taking-in and ejecting.
As a sensing being I am in the world: As a part of it and yet op¬
posite it, directed toward it and meeting it in its counterdirection.
The “in” renders even clearer the nature of the subject-object rela¬
tion that concerns us here. Just as in our language we employ “in”
in relation to both space and time, so the expression “being-in-the-
world”1 or even “being-in-space” does not indicate a purely spatial
relationship. The “in” we speak of here is a moment in the field of
action (Spielraum). Thus the spatial experience of sensing always
already includes “in-being,” and with it direction, becoming, and
time.
The notion that sensing is a sympathetic experiencing stands
opposed to the Cartesian doctrine of the primacy of self-conscious¬
ness. According to Descartes, sensations evoke the appearance of an
external world; this appearance is, however, corrected and destroyed
by reason. But to a certain degree it is also justified by reason.2
If, entangled in the misconceptions of my youth, I believe that
my sensations give me a world outside of myself, if, indeed, I assume
that the things of the external world correspond to my sensations,
then I have fallen prey to the most deceptive of delusions. But if I
do not succumb to such errors, if I do not trust my sensations which
seem to indicate a world about me with colors in it, and sounds,
odors, heavy and light things; if, that is, I view the color, the warmth,
etc., only as sensational contents in me, then I can attain to the cer¬
tainty of my own thought and with it my own being. We are told
that the reality of the external world can be arrived at only by means
of judgments founded on long chains of proofs. I can attain to cer¬
tainty of my own being by intuitive recourse to my doubting, but
the reality of the world remains inaccessible and problematic. The
external world is mediated, secondary; the inner world is evident,
immediate, primary. The pensive mind asks for the reasons for our
belief in the reality of the external world.3 But whatever these rea¬
sons may be, and however much they justify this belief, it does not
affect the relation of the inner world to the outer world. There al-
SENSE-CERTAINTY
353
ways remains the tension between what is apparently evident and

what is problematic, there remains the gradient of degrees of reality.
From self-certainty we fall, so it seems, into a reality of lesser rank:
The external world. It is, however, somewhat odd that it is just this
reality of the external world that is ordinarily meant by the term
"“reality.”
The reasons which lead us to believe in the external world should
be derived from the “objectively given” data. Something in matter,
form, or context must there be found whereby we differentiate the
real from the unreal, the perceived from the imagined, that which
is in memory from that which is merely in fancy. We who thus dif¬
ferentiate remain fixed in the same orientation toward that which
we differentiate by means of certain distinguishing marks.
In his Zur Analyse der Wahrnehmungen,4 Jaspers discusses

the old argument about the difference between perception and imagi¬
nation. The two are said to be separated by an impassable gulf. Six
characteristics are offered by which perception and imagination must
be distinguished. Two of these are particularly salient (the corporeal¬
ity of perceptions vs. the pictoriality of images, and external, objec¬
tive space vs. inner, subjective space) in that they demonstrate the
absolute disparity between perception and imagination.
Jaspers, in fact, strictly distinguishes between the extralogical
objectivity characteristic of perception and its reality character, be¬
tween the objects intended as “corporeal” and the objects intended
as “really existing.” He seeks in perception a moment anterior to
judgment, and which is, indeed, extralogical. But this moment is
sought exclusively in the objectively given. Corporeality is thought
of as a purely objective moment. Regardless of whether this objec¬
tivity character is sought in various acts or whether it is correlated
with various functions of the psychophysical individual, the subject
himself remains unchanged in his relation to a world which he con¬
fronts as a perceiving and imagining subject. He beholds perception
and finds in it characteristics of corporeality; he beholds imagination
and finds in it characteristics of pictoriality. The extramundaneity
of the subject has not been overcome.
If, for purposes of comparison, we again call in Descartes, we find
a rather pronounced basic agreement with Jaspers. “It may be con¬

cluded also,” Descartes says, “that a certain body is more closely
united to our mind than any other from the fact that pain and other
of our sensations occur without foreseeing them; and that mind is
conscious that these do not arise from itself alone; nor pertain to it
insofar as it is a thinking thing, but only insofar as it is united to
another thing, extended and mobile, which is called the human
body.”5 Here, too, the theme is the reality of the external world
(with the qualification that the issue is the reality of one’s own body
as prior to the reality of that of another person). This reality is
weighed and judged, but on the basis of extralogical data. Now it is
the corporeality of pain which suddenly and directly grips us, and
now it is some natural knowledge of the mind which is supposed to
lead to the judgment. That the soul judges on the basis of its natural
knowledge—in these words the problem is expressed, but is left quite
undeveloped. For the real question is what kind of knowledge this
is which is so natural to the soul.
Space is not and cannot be the issue with Descartes. But it almost
seems that in pain, which grips us directly and without mediation,
the element of communication is more correctly seen than it is with
Jaspers’ characteristics of corporeality and externality of space. For
objective space is merely known space; Jaspers, however, thinks that
in the case of optical images whose object is behind me, the objective
space could coincide with the subjective space of imagination.6 Ob¬
jective space apparently has no depth dimension leading backwards.
It is not the space in which I am, in which I am a becoming being,
in which I am directed, and in which I move. The things stand bod¬
ily before me, but I do not stand before them. Perceiving thus lacks
communicative being-with (Mit-Sein); the prius of self-consciousness
remains. Perceiving is knowing. Now, after all we have heretofore
said about perceiving we certainly do not wish to dispute this. But
precisely because perception is a form of knowledge, it must be pre¬
ceded by a prelogical mode of communication, in which reality is
immediately experienced.
It is significant that Jaspers does not include motion and time
among his list of characteristics which distinguish perception and
imagination. And yet time—being present—cannot be divorced from
sensory space and corporeality. If I imagine the eruption of Kra-
katoa, I am surely able to notice in this image its pictoriality and
its appearance in subjective space. But this space is subjective in a
rather particular sense: I cannot stand in any pathic communion
SENSE-CERTAINTY
355
with the imagined object, I can in no way be affected by it, and it

does not stand before me as being in the present. The act of ima¬
gining and that which I imagine are not “simultaneous”; I can im¬
agine any event as being long since past—from the point of view of
the present, I can look back upon an event which took place thou¬
sands of years ago. The deeper I sink into this image, the farther I
am from myself. Yet all which we receive by the senses comes to us in
the present, now. That is, in the original, sympathetic relation of
the living experience of one’s own becoming, in which there is not
to be found a primacy of self-consciousness or world-consciousness.
This whole sphere of experience is prelogical and—this is its
essential character—remains prelogical. When an average person
claims to have seen something with his own eyes, when a patient,
despite all objections, insists on the reality of his hallucinations, then
it is not that they think these experiences are part of Nature in all
its lawfulness; they feel, rather, that they are moments of their own
particular being-in-the-world. When, in such cases, the predicate
“real” is used, it does not refer to the lawful order of Nature, but
expresses and refers to a moment of our becoming. Here “real” does
not mean that it has happened in the world, but that something has
happened to me in the world. Perception, however, is always in con¬
tact with objective experience. Its reality is objective, universal,
whereas the reality of sensing is the “subjective” reality of sense cer¬
tainty, in which the other, the world, is given with the same certainty
that I am given to myself. In sensory certainty, the world appears
unmediated, direct, not hypothetical—before doubt. Great confu¬
sion arises when something which can be found only in sensing is
sought in perception. Error and irrelevance are unavoidable unless
sensing as a particular mode of communication is clearly set apart
from perception and cognition of all sorts. The objectivity charac¬
ter which was sought but not found in perception is nothing other
than the certainty of sensing.
Sensory certainty, as judged by knowledge, can, to be sure, claim
nothing more than “personal validity,” such as the pleasantness of
“sensations.”7 If we think of this personal validity as merely subjec¬
tive, we must at the same time be careful not to understand this sub¬
jectivity as though sensing were confined to the subject, or as though
it were a deceptive cognition. Sensations are not in the subject, and
although sensing is subjective, it nevertheless is related to the other,
to the world, albeit in the moment and individually. This is why it
is not knowledge.
The subject attains to himself only in sensing. As a sensing sub¬

ject, he has a Here and a Now; a Here which is of equal dignity to
the There. For that reason, it can move itself toward a There, it is
in communication with the other. Individual sensations of touch and
vision do not, of course, produce this communication. Because I am
in communication, a particular given here and now can determine
me. The sensory certainty of the external world cannot be derived
from individual sensations; we would never have this certainty if
these individual sensations were not what they are: A differentiation
and delimitation of the original I-world relation of sensing.
The notion of subjective reality is hardly a simply reversal of
the notion of objective reality. One can say of the latter that it is
uniquely intended by the psychic acts of conceiving, judging, think¬
ing. This characterization is in no way abandoned with the notion
of subjective reality, but the notion of subjective reality refers to the
reciprocal dependence of subject and object in the experiencing of
withness (Mitsein). Subjectivity belongs to the content of sensing;
it does not require complicated analysis to uncover it. Locke
separated the secondary sensory qualities, as subjective, from the pri¬
mary qualities of number, size, form, position, and motion. The for¬
mer were, for him, falsifications of objective reality. They are called
subjective because they are ex post facto proven to be a deceptive
element of objective reality.
The interdependence of subject and object in subjective reality
is an immanent and not a subsequently ascertained relation.
The brightly shining blue of an object is experienced in sensa¬
tion not as a subjective state, but as an objective property. What is
subjective—in the Cartesian sense—is not the blue as it appears, but
the blue which has appeared and which can be reflected upon.
In sensory experience, reality is given without reflection. The
object is there for me, but I, I am not the unmoving, majestically
enthroned subject of knowledge. I am only insofar as the object is.
Precisely because I do not attain to the object in itself, I do not fall
prey to solipsistic isolation.
Reality judgments can be made only where nonbeing is think¬
able. But in sensing this is not, as yet, known. The sensing being is
not aware of that possibility of negation which is presupposed by the
judgment and the concept of reality.
Sensing is a direct, nonconceptual living-with (Mit-leben). All
belief begins with or after doubting; even apodictic judgments which
exclude doubt are still oriented with respect to doubt. Sensory ex-
SENSE-CERTAINTY
357
perience, on the other hand, knows no doubting. It is before doubt.

And it thus cannot be touched by reasons.
(c) Toward a Theory of Hallucinations

The hallucinating person—I speak here only of actual hallu¬
cinations, in the narrow sense—is convinced of the reality of what
he experiences. His “belief in its reality” is direct and not based on
any reasons derived from objective experience; it cannot, therefore,
be shaken by such reasons, but will, on the contrary, be defended
and adhered to in the face of the most trivial (for us, most weighty)
objections. Since reality for the hallucinating person does not mean
objective reality, i.e., agreement with general experiential laws, but
means, rather, the subjective reality of sympathetic encounter, even
the thoughtful patient will not feel challenged by the fact that his
experience does not agree with general experience. Because the in¬
sistence of the hallucination outweighs unadulterated perception,
the patient is more inclined to dispute the latter than he is to ques¬
tion the former. The voices which torment the schizophrenic differ
so strikingly from all other acoustic impressions (including linguistic
sounds)—-and this precisely because of their altered—and height¬
ened sympathetic relation—that the doctor’s question as to whether
the patient hears voices is usually understood immediately.
Hallucinatory certainty is sense certainty. Hallucinations are pri¬
mary modifications of sensing, not disturbances of perception. Only
some of the pseudo-hallucinations, like pareidolias, or illusions, can
be understood as perceptual disturbances. Maintaining the distinc¬
tion between sensing and perceiving will, I think, enable us better
to understand hallucinations; it might help to bring many psychi¬
atric disputes closer to solution. And clinical observations may on
the other hand contribute important arguments in favor of this dis¬
tinction.
Hallucinations, then, are not caused by disturbances of the sen-
sorium (this function understood in a physiological sense), nor do
they arise from a disturbance of the functions of perception, thought,
judgment. They stem, rather, from a disturbance and modification
of the sympathetic modi of sensing. The patient lives in a different
communication with the world; but since the modes of being-in-the-
world are basic to all experiencing, the hallucinations are not isolated
disturbances—a fact which was long ago stressed by P. Schroeder.8
Hallucinations are sometimes the only definite symptom by which

the disturbance of communication is apparent to the observer.
But in many cases these symptoms appear in concert with others;
hearing voices may be accompanied by the feeling of being bodily
influenced, the strange experience of alienation, thought depriva¬
tion, blocking, or by changes in motor or facial expression. It is prob¬
ably not too much to say of the schizophrenic syndrome that its
various manifestations are a manifold expression of a fundamental
disturbance of communication. Above all, the notion of sensing as a
sympathetic link paves the way for an understanding of the entire
feelings of alienation, induced thoughts, thought deprivation, etc.
Under the influence of mescaline not only are the objects changed
but also their manner of appearing and with it the forms of space
and time in general. The modification of space and time relates not
only to the sphere of the objective or some of its objects. Reports
by those who have undergone mescaline intoxication indisputably
indicate that these modifications are experienced as changes in the
subject’s own state of being with regard to his communication with
the world—that is, a surprising, joyous, or tormenting mode of being-
in-the-world in general.
But when the effect of the mescaline wears off and the experimen¬
tal subject tries to describe the experiences he has had, he is com¬
pelled to speak of these psychotic experiences as modifications and
suspensions of normal space and the normal course of events. The
often quite impressive descriptions, the countless attempts to under¬
stand the unusual as a distortion, and deformation of customary and
normal spatial and temporal forms indicate that linguistic expres¬
sion is not geared to the contents of psychotic experiences. The same
difficulties are encountered when rational patients or convalescents
try to report their hallucinations. When the attempt is made to use
a language which has arisen from the conditions of normal life to
describe the strangely different forms and phenomena of psychotic
experience, these latter are either forced into the forms of everyday
life or are described as distortions of these forms. But the more pro¬
found this disturbance of communication is, the more difficult it is
to reconcile the illusory with the real space. In many cases, contact
is completely broken; after the hallucination fades, the patient is
unable to give an account of what he has experienced. The gulf is
too deep, the change so radical that there are no linguistic means to
handle them.
Just as the healthy person lives by constantly breaking through
the horizon, relating and ordering his impressions of landscape-
SENSE-CERTAINTY
359
space with geographical space, so, too, does the rational sick person
seek to interpret his experiences as events in geographical space.
From the inconsistency and failure of such attempts, the change in
communication which manifests itself as a modification of spatial
forms can be inferred. When, for example, a psychotic girl reports
that while shopping she noticed the glance of someone who she
thinks is persecuting her, but that she cannot say where this person
was standing—or, when crossing a wide street, she feels the glance
of her pursuer like a slap in the face without being able to point out
his actual presence—or, when another patient constantly feels good
or evil “transmissions” which are not weakened or checked by ob¬
stacles or distances—then such experiences have nothing at all to
do with discursive, intelligible, geographical space. Any objections
referring to the normal structure of geographical space are therefore
utterly unreceived by patients. Their being-in-the-world is so modi¬
fied that a bridge between the psychotic experience of space and
geographical space can no longer be built, nor can a return be
effected that would lead from geographical space to the spatial rela¬
tions in which psychotic experience runs its course. Distances, in¬
tervals, directions completely lose their original significance. It is
characteristic that in such pathological cases the hallucination takes
place in sensory spheres for which, as a rule, the pathic moment of
being seized is predominant. The delirious experience of the alco¬
holic occurs mainly in the optical sphere; schizophrenic experiences
have mainly an acoustical and haptic character.
“Penetrating deeper, we seem to discover among the subtler
senses that hearing is a gate and symbol of the soul’s power of feel¬
ing, as the eye is of the soul’s power of knowledge. The eye sees the
outside world, the ear and sensing hear deep within. The former
remains on the surface of things and observes images or, actually,
only one bright point; the latter rolls waves of feeling toward and
into the heart. A brightly and coldly conceived thought becomes an
image; a sound, a voice, a tone which hovers in the ear, becomes
sensation. The voice awakens within, the image scatters outside of
us. The warmly profound prophets heard voices; the brilliantly cold
saw visions.”9 Hallucinations are not alien bodies within the normal
sensory sphere. The voices are heard, but these voices differ from
normal voices. The visual impressions of the delirious differ from
normal optical impressions; the sensory spheres themselves are al¬
tered. The schizophrenic hears voices because the state of being
caught, of surrender, the homogenization and ubiquity of sound
belong, as a rule, to the acoustical sphere. The delusional activity
36° Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
of the alcoholic tends to the optical sphere, which, as a rule, is the

sphere of activity, of standing over and against something.10 In
psychosis, the normal modes of communicating are distorted and
deformed.
Here, too, the norm is more easily grasped and demonstrated by
contrast to the distortion and coarsening effected by the patho¬
logical. Thus, extracampine hallucinations refer to the multisided
depth extension of space. From the uncertainty of the statements
about the sensory sphere in which some psychotics hallucinate, we
can still deduce the common denominator of the modes of commu¬
nication, despite their differences. We can, further, observe that hal¬
lucinations are not pathological configurations within the normal
sensory spheres, but, rather, pathological configurations in abnor¬
mally modified sensory spheres. The “clinically common knowledge”
that the experience of delirious patients lies predominantly in the
optical sphere, and that the verbally hallucinating patient who hears
voices is hallucinating acoustically11 tells us something about the
differences of the modes of sensing, which otherwise have so much
in common. Each sensory sphere has, finally, its own form of the
spatial and the temporal and certain definite forms of living move¬
ment. This, too, we find realized, in characteristic fashion, in
psychoses.
When a mental patient refuses food because he feels it contains
poison, he does not mean that he has established the presence of a
poison with this or that property that affects the human organism
in this or that particular way and which is known by this or that
particular name. Even assuming that he specifies the poison and even
names it, his primary experience was still only that the food looked
poisonous, tasted poisonous, and smelled poisonous to him. In court,
a chemist may summarize the results of his examinations with the
words: “This soup contained poison,” or “this soup was poisonous.”
In both cases, he expressed the same fact with different, but synony¬
mous words. In the linguistic representation of psychotic experiences,
however, the substantive “poison” and the adjective “poisonous”
have a quite different significance. If we determine a material as
this particular material and, further, determine this material to
be poison, then we are living as knowers in the general world of
things, our access to which is discursive; we are in geographical space.
But if, on the other hand, a bowl of soup looks poisonous to us (or,
more appropriately, looks poisonously at us), or tastes poisonous to
us, then we are living in landscape space. In our everyday determi¬
nations of objects, we break through the horizon of the landscape;
SENSE-CERTAINTY 361
we determine the objects and also ourselves, and, in the end, our
relation to the objects from the point of view of the geographical
as the general, systematic, closed order of the world of things. The
individual thing here stands within a context which is (objectively)
established. In landscape space, it is quite a different matter. Sym¬
pathetic experiencing is prior to doubt and therefore insensitive
to contradiction.
In our normal human life, we penetrate the horizon of the land¬
scape and attain to geography, we order our private world (our idios
cosmos) with the common world (the koinos cosmos).12 This normal
direction of experience and its accompanying normal interpretation
of our own personal experience is reversed by schizophrenics—at
least in the group which the above examples characterize. They do
not penetrate the horizon, they remain in the landscape. They draw
into the landscape the geographical world which is mirrored in
everyday language. The disturbance, however, is not limited only
to this reversal of the normal experiential direction. For their land¬
scape itself undergoes a change of character and becomes foreign to
the norms of sympathetic experience. There, utterly within the hori¬
zon of his landscape, within his idios cosmos, the psychotic remains
inaccessible and unintelligible to me. There he lives out his life in
autistic isolation. The difficulty in understanding the psychopathol¬
ogy of illness in general (we are not now talking of understanding
the individual patient) is aggravated by the fact that the patients
have not completely forgotten or lost that common world. They still
speak and use language. Yet the change in their language and its
degeneration give evidence of what has become of the patients. They
live within the horizon of their landscape, slaves of the unmotivated
and unfounded certitude of impressions which no longer can be
adapted to the general order of the world of things and the general
meaning context of language. Even the things to which the psychotic
still gives familiar names are no longer the same things that they are
within their previous order and their previous context. They are but
fragments which the psychotic has salvaged from that world and
brought with him into his landscape world. Also, these fragments
lose their plasticity, their rich store of possible relations; they suc¬
cumb to a process of hardening which responds to and expedites the
delusional. When the illness progresses, the increasing looseness of
thought, the total deterioration of language, point to the progressive
loss of geographical space; the deadening of affect indicates the deso¬
lation of the landscape.13
Development of the Theme
Through the Phenomenon
MODERN PSYCHOLOGY CONSIDERS THE BEGINNING OF THE NINE-

teenth century as its date of birth. The introduction of the experi¬
ment is seen as the decisive innovation. What underlies the experiment
is that which can be repeated at will, that is, processes which
are indifferent to psychic becoming. The universality of experiment
is grounded in this indifference. Insofar as we live by repetition, our
experience can be subjected to experiment. But there is still another
factor. Statements and judgments (judgments of comparison) by ex¬
perimental subjects play an essential role for psychology. But sensing
cannot be explored or tested by means of judgments. With the help
of experiments and the statements and judgments of experimental
subjects, we can determine the functions of the sensory organs with
regard to our objective world, as well as with regard to the subjec¬
tive and objective conditions of their functioning. The subject matter
of such investigations is perception, not sensation; indeed, fin¬
ished, completed, perception—the results of perceiving and not the
act of perceiving itself. Subject of the statement is a test person who
judges his sensations,” a person who knows, or more exactly, a per¬
son who has known. The theory of sensations deals with beings
who can or cannot sense, not with those who know or err. Much is
prejudiced by linking experiments in the psychology of sensing to
the judgments of experimental subjects. The nature of sensing as a
particular mode of communication, its sympathetic character, its
elements of particularity and contingency, the aspect of direction,
limit, sense certainty, the relation to separating and uniting, to the
alluring and the frightening, to the powers and shortcomings of
the becoming individual—all this remains undisclosed. And in addi-
THE PHENOMENON OF GLIDING 363
tion, the connection between sensing and moving also remains con¬
cealed.
Years ago, Katz pointed out “that actually almost all specific
tactile impressions originate in movement.” The phenomena of the
smooth and the rough, the hard and the soft, the elastic and the brit¬
tle, are only arrived at by tactile movement. Katz talks of the
“transformation of the process of stimulation into a phenomenon
which no longer contains movement.”1
But is it true that movement merely allows for the generation of
phenomena which thereafter no longer contain the movement that
brought them into being? Obviously, this can be the case only if we
assume that smooth and rough, hard and soft, brittle and elastic, are
to be viewed as properties of things—that is, after the effected objec¬
tification in perception. Katz’s stipulated separation of tactile im¬
pressions from the movement which brings them about holds true
for sensations (or, more precisely, for perceptions), but not for
sensing.
Smoothness (die Glaette) is originally derived from gliding (Glei-
ten).* Here it is neither a property of the surface of the ground, nor
a complex of sensory impressions and motor impulses. In gliding we
do not yet have that which is smooth as substantive, as smoothness.
Sensing is not an establishing of objective givens and structures, but
a process of coming to terms with the world. In attempting to charac¬
terize gliding as movement, we stress that in it which is continuous
and effortless. We call the ground smooth if it offers almost no resist¬
ance to movement. We have smoothness only as long as we are under¬
going the movement of gliding; gliding is a continuous procession
from moment to moment; this relation of moments to each other de¬
termines both the mode of movement and the mode of sensing. Glid¬
ing gives us spaciousness, and gliding motions are therefore usually
pleasant. They heighten the experience of power and provide an
awareness of vital freedom. But inasmuch as it is continuous move¬
ment, gliding requires continuance, affirmation of the earlier
moments by the later. Gliding knows no halt and no rest. This charac¬
teristic of being without a halt is the source of what is pleasurable as
well as what is frightening in gliding and smoothness, which, in
sensing, we are not yet able to separate from each other. The affirma¬
tion spoken of may fail and gliding may threaten to become falling.
Gliding is thus for some a pleasure and for others occasion of
* (The author’s use of the German word Gleiten, which has been translated as
sliding, is best understood as embracing the connotations of both gliding and
sliding—trans.)
anxiety. Gliding is therefore experientially ambivalent, as the meta¬

phoric use of the word indicates; sometimes gliding is understood as
an expression of easy, gentle motion and the overcoming of space,
and sometimes it is used to express the beginning of a fall.
When I slip and fall I experience smoothness differently from
when I struggle vainly to get up from a glazed surface, and still dif¬
ferently when on an icy street I cautiously explore the condition of
the surface before putting my foot forward. Only now do I arrive at
perception. Most of what Katz deals with when he speaks of the
world of touch, particularly his observations concerning the emer¬
gence of tactile qualities from movement, refers to the hand that
touches. The hand of a human being in his upright posture is, how¬
ever, much more an organ of knowing than is the foot or the other
surfaces of the body. This distinction must not be overlooked. When
the hand touches something and examines it, sensory communica¬
tion has, as a rule, already been transcended. A gliding motion en¬
gages my whole body, but in tactile examination I remain at rest—
only the hand and, supporting it, the arm, are in motion. I send my
hand out for information, use it as a tool, that is, as an organ. The
extent to which the hands and the fingers with their multitude of
possible constellations are organs of knowing is shown in cases of
finger agnosia and the many gnostic disturbances which accompany
them. Sensations are direction indicators across which we glide when
we are in motion; that which is sensed we leave behind us. Not
simply touching, but handling yields us tactile qualities. In sensing
we glide on, in perceiving we affix and establish. Touching (Tasten)
is to be distinguished from handling (Betasten) in the way in which
hearing is distinguished from listening and seeing is distinguished
from viewing. An experimental subject sitting and observing before
a tachistoscope or some other piece of apparatus is not qualified to
report about the experience of sensing.
Gliding is for us a relatively rare form of movement. It might
thus seem that the nature of sensing is demonstrable only by using
exceptional cases. But this assumption would not be correct.
Firm is the ground which carries me, upon which my foot finds
secure support. Firmness, too, is not originally an objective quality.
A branch on a tree can be firm for a bird, but not for a boy climbing
the tree. Marshy ground is firm for a butterfly alighting on a flower,
but not for the step of a man. Like smoothness, firmness is an origi¬
nal relation of the objective to us. Only secondarily is it objectified
into a property of the object: the object emerges out of that which
we encounter (aus dem Begegnenden wird der Gegenstand).
7yny ‘ r,'jy <>v ocno.'o ?/>*>
In glic'.ng, b moment must be affirmed by the following one;

in walking on him ground, each step vouchsafes the possibility of
preceding on or lingering, firmness, as security, opens the future
to me l .an is the ground upon which I can gain ground. I hus,
firmness erne be apprehended not only in a momentary, time-atomis¬
tic relation of self and world; firmness relates also to my becoming
and to rns potenriabties. Should the future be dosed to someone, as
for example, m depression, then it might seem as though he hovers
over toe ground or as though the ground sinks beneath his feet, ft is
similar in the case of anxiety neuroses when the patient is seized by
an attack of phobia, beca use he fans in his encounter with the world,
because he s unable to stand by himself, he loses his stance. Then
there is no longer firmness in him nor anything firm around him.
'J he relation of firmness to sureness and to the openness toward
the future can also be seen r\ certain metaphoric expressions. Some¬
one who is smooth and is glib is hard to pin down; the rough tone,
the firm hand - 3. t sre signs of a reliable ebaraoter. Vv e speak of the
firmness of a glance, a .oice, the firmness of language and handwrit¬
ing, and find therein an expression of decisiveness and sureness: The
final decision which render* the past past and opens the way to the
future.
beca jse aJJ sensing is a constantly changing process of self con¬
fronting world, each "individual sensation"’ shapes itself according
to the abilities or disabilities of the moment.2 In pain, the impact of
the world is heightened. Pain is an experience of being overcome, of
heiny mvaried, fettered. Pam has a. verbal character — it stings, tears,
g.cav.s. Jn pain, we experience the powerlessness of our bodily ex¬
istence. f bus our sense of triumph when we succeed in supressirig or
enduring a pain. According to the direction of the pain, we avoid the
painful stimulus. Pain arising in the organism brings, as it were, our
body into focus. In health we fa/e the world in the spontaneous per¬
formance of our bodily functions, but in pain we are thrown back
upon ourselves and, focused upon the aching part, we confront our
body like an object and at the same time find ourselves separated
from the world. Not infrequently, a wounded soldier in the excite¬
ment of a battle will not even notice that he has been wounded
while his attention is directed exclusively to his adversary. For the
despondent and fainthearted, however, every noise even in a peace¬
ful surrounding can be tormenting/ ft is not that the combatant,
whose attention is diverted by combat, overlooks the painful sensa¬
tions in the organism, ft is, rather, that the pain takes shape in
awareness according to our potency or debility of the moment. We
must, therefore, differentiate between the causal excitation of a proc¬

ess in the sensory organ and the sympathetic experiencing of sensa¬
tions of pain, pressure, and touch in which direction and limit are
constantly sustained. If this is overlooked, then touching becomes a
touching which does not touch, pain a pain which does not hurt,
pressure a pressure which does not press.
Since all sensing has a sympathetic content and is experienced as
a modification of the continuous relation of self and world, it must
of necessity belong to both “bodily space” and "external space.” The
“local signs” are not signs of location, but of direction.4 They have
the overtone of “from where,” not “where”; the latter is only a mis¬
leading aspect brought about by experimental arrangements with
observing and judging subjects. The body schema, accordingly, is not
a receptive schema of a body-space image, but the productive schema
of a directional manifold with invariant main direction, with ranges
of extent,5 and variables. Each “stimulus” is a change in the sym¬
metrically constructed body schema and calls forth a balancing turn-
ing-toward in the direction of the stimulus. “Sensations” are
modifications of the continuous relation of the self to its world,
phenomena of the live process of becoming. There cannot, therefore,
be such things as individual and static sensations; these are mere
products of thought.
In the experiments upon which the Weber-Fechner law is based,
the investigators proceeded from the assumption of single, static sen¬
sations. These individual sensations were to be compared with each
other and gauged according to their similarity or difference. The so-
called individual sensation, however, stands in a temporal relation to
the sensation just past, with which it is to be compared. The individ¬
ual sensation is a modification, a disturbance of the still subsisting
relation. The effort needed to produce a disturbance is determined
by the structure of the present order. The Weber-Fechner law
is a law of psychic becoming. The grades of intensity are grades of
binding and actual directional determination. This fact is masked in
the examination of barely noticeable differences because, from the
very outset, a predetermined direction is pursued and artificially
maintained. The determination of threshold becomes possible only
when the rested and resting experimental subject is, within the walls
of the laboratory, protected against all other happenings in the
world. Under such conditions, one almost succeeds in transforming
the landscape space into a geographical space and in putting the
experimental subject into this space. Differences are “just notice¬
able” only under the condition that, from the outset, nothing else
! THE SPECTRUM OF THE SENSES 367
but these differences is to be noted. In the formulations of the experi¬

mental results, which are based upon the attitude of subjects isolated
from the world, this condition is seldom recorded. Only what is no¬
ticed in such an attitude finds its way into the protocols and is sub¬
jected to mathematical scrutiny. But that which is investigated in
such a manner, namely, the dependence of sensational intensity upon
stimulus strength, is actually a distortion of the actual theme: The
conditions of noticing, as such, the changes of direction within the
directional manifold of sensing.
The Spectrum
of the Senses
IT IS SAID OF THE WISE MEN OF GOTHAM THAT THEY ONCE

marched outside the gates of their city to till the fields. On arriving,
they found the day too beautiful to profane by anything smacking
of labor. They therefore lay down, stretched out, and lolled upon
the ground. When evening came, they discovered to their horror
that their legs were all jumbled up among themselves. Seeing this
hodge-podge of limbs, they were unable to make out to whom this or
that leg belonged. Fortunately, a traveling journeyman came by, and
they asked him for advice. The young man was not at a loss and was
quite prepared to help them. He took his walking stick and rapped
them all on their shins. At once everyone knew which was which, got
hold of his own legs, and was ready to go home.
The journeyman’s method was a variation of the old pedagogical
maxim, “He who will not listen must take the consequences,”
namely: “He who cannot see must take the consequences”—a
method admirably well suited to this particular situation. With one
stroke, so to speak, the citizens of Gotham learned a precious lesson.
After the happy encounter with the journeyman, they would most
decisively have opposed the notion that sensation is “the transmis-
sion of a quality, a state, of a sensory nerve to consciousness.” They

would not have agreed that the sensory nerves “in their modification
by external causes (signify) to the sensorium not only their own state,
but also properties and modifications in the external world.” The
citizens of Gotham had received an ad corpora demonstration that
there arises in the sensorium not only sensations differing in their
modality but also alike in their manner of appearance; they learned
that in sensing we experience the world and ourselves in relation to
the world, and that in every modality we “become aware” of our
own body in a particular way.
Most of the stories told about the citizens of Gotham are silly
rather than comical. The folly of their fancies does not conceal any
secret wisdom, any debunking, by means of extreme exaggeration, of
generally respected notions. True, in the English version of these
ubiquitous folk tales the citizens have the role of sly peasants. Their
behavior is stupid, but their stupidity is a guise. According to the
story, the people of Gotham resolved to act foolishly so that they
might give the king second thoughts about hunting in their com¬
mons. They preferred the odium of being considered stupid to the
burden of villeinage. The drastic-naive exhibition of folly has, since
ancient times, used the method of grossly transgressing basic, natural
human experience, as was the case with the citizens of Gotham be¬
fore the journeyman passed their way. Their behavior was foolish,
not so much because they were unable to distinguish their own limbs
by looking at them, but because they tried to discern by looking that
which is directly accessible only through feeling.
Our own body is and remains somewhat foreign to us when we
look at it.1 I can see my hand the way another sees it, but no one
can feel my hand as I do. In my various actions I am aware of my
hand—unseen—as my hand. But I can nevertheless treat it like any
other object. I can embellish and dress it according to esthetic re¬
quirements. When choosing a ring, one looks at both ring and hand,
weighing in one’s mind how they might please someone else. That is,
one views both hand and ring not simply as though they were ex¬
clusively one’s own, but as a possession. Such objectification dis¬
solves the elementary aspects of mine-ness. The axioms of everyday
life leave no doubt that I directly, that is, not objectively, experience
the mine-ness of my body when I am touched. There is no such thing
as a touch mirror, nor can there be. In a mirror, I can, indeed, see
myself, but what appears to me in a mirror is an image of that
which I know represents me. That it belongs to me is not directly
and immediately apparent. The physical reflection of light is under-
THE SPECTRUM OF THE SENSES 369
stood only on the basis of a mental reflection. Eyes never see them¬
selves. Both face and back are withdrawn from our vision. By habit,
we are familiar with the image of our face, and through lack of
habit, the image of our back remains foreign to us. A three-part
mirror sometimes helps us—to our pleasure or to our dismay—to get
an idea of how we look from behind. In such a case, our attitude is
one of detached examination. The mirrors could be arranged in such
a way that there may be doubt which of the many views is that of the
back belonging to me. A poke in the back or a slap in the face, how¬
ever, leaves no room for doubt. But it is not merely pain which is the
decisive element here; even with the gentlest contact I feel myself
touched.
From the point of view of sensory physiology, the relation of
stimulus to receptor remains the same in the transition from one
modality to another, whether it be light which affects the eye, sound
the ear, or heat or pressure the skin. A physically defined event be¬
comes, in the organism, a physiologically defined process. The con¬
viction that sensory experience must be understood in analogy with
excitation, that a sensation must accompany an excitation and cor¬
respond to a cortical process, leads to an aborted understanding of
the contents of living experiences. For sensing is then no longer
understood as the acts and sufferings of an experiencing being who
is directed toward the world and, being variously affected by the
world, who experiences both the world and himself in his bodily
existence. The self-world relation is done away with; what remains of
it is but the one relatum, re-interpreted as impressions in a con¬
sciousness. Only color and sound seem capable of being brought into
a direct relation to the processes in the sensory organs. And thus is
implied the notion that experience can contain nothing more than
data for a consciousness. This enormous misinterpretation of sens¬
ing leaves no room for an experiencing being. Hume would have
been quite right to equate the self with a bundle of ideas, had not
his fruitless search for the self proceeded from a prior mutilation of
sensing. Hume and his positivistic successors act like an executioner
amazed that the prisoner he has guillotined has no head.
Together, all of Hume’s impressions stand in a like relation to
consciousness. Tactile qualities are as little to be understood as my
sensations as are optical qualities. For, as “pure sensations” they all
equally lack the character of mine-ness. But, in fact, in touching I
immediately, and without any doubt, experience this hand as mine.
The mine-ness of the body is no datum, no sign detected only after
observing and knowing the object. I can experience my body as mine
37<> Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
and myself in my bodily existence only in an I-world relation, in

delimiting myself as against the other. Because the skin is not merely
the surface of a human or animal body, but is the border of the
living body in its separation from and contact with the other, because
of this, it is the sense of touch that the experience of “mine” is most
compellingly effected.2 But none of the senses entirely lacks the
I-world relation.
In seeing, too, we experience not only the visible but also our¬
selves as beings who see. In a blinding light, I experience my sight
as disturbed. I experience an effect upon the organs of my sight. Of
all senses, sight most effectively serves cognitive insight, and in nor¬
mal light seeing is, first and foremost, directed toward the object:
It has therefore been possible to disregard sight and the seer in favor
of the seen. It seemed possible to understand the visible things in
their spatial separation from the observer and subsequently to think
of oneself as a body next to other bodies as they are arranged in this
space. Standing over-against was thus replaced by being side by side
of objects. But this latter, this side by side as such, can be known
only in the original spatial relation of the seeing person to the seen
object—as defined by the relation of here to there. From a particu¬
lar here, from my here, I direct myself toward the positions and lo¬
cations that are there. Man can progress from his sensory experience
to a knowledge of the world, from an aspect of the momentary ap¬
pearance of individual things to insight into their order, that is, to
the way they are for everyone regardless of the position he happens
to be in. But the possibility of the scientific attitude must not make
us forget that sensing serves the preservation and orientation of the
individual in his uniqueness. “Sense sure you have, else you could
not have motion.”3
It is, of course, true that we can taste the way something tastes
in itself and not only how it tastes to me, and similarly for smell;
the lower senses are not entirely lacking a gnostic element. Neither
do the higher senses lack a pathic element. Always I am affected in
a certain way. In passing from one modality to another, the accent
within the self-world relation is shifted from the perception of the
object to the experience of one’s own body. Even within the limits
of one modality, there are transitions from the directedness-toward
to the being-affected-by. “The hand which busily wields the broom
on Saturday will best caress you on Sunday.” The genus called sense,
of which Novalis speaks, unfolds like a spectrum in the individual
senses.
“The burnt child” knows all this only too well. He fears the fire
because he has discovered that it is one thing to look at something

and quite another to touch it. He has learned once and for all that
it hurts to touch the “bad” stove. We are all “burnt children,” and
we all know that in the transition from seeing to touching we not
only exchange optical for tactile excitations but also that the modes
of contact are changed, that we experience the things and ourselves
in varying aspects. The child learns by experience that the oven,
this particular object, can be painfully hot and had better not be
touched. He does not have to learn the particular nature of the
modality; this knowledge comes to him as a natural legacy—it is
what makes possible that experience of the bad stove in its par¬
ticularity.
The same holds true for objects of abhorrence. That which we
ought to abhor and which ought to repel us, we learn partly from
experience and training; how we are to react to the detestable, we
do not have to learn. Efforts to repulse such an object grow as the
distance from the object decreases. Often we pass by detestable things
in the street and look at them without feeling any special emotion.
But a chance or forced contact with these same things would horrify
us, our resistance to them growing in proportion to the intensity of
contact. And as contact passes from foot to hand, from hand to
mouth, so does our revulsion increase. In such a progression, the
relation between stimulus and receptor remains the same; what
changes is the contact of things in relation to our body and in the
closeness of these things to ourselves. In contact with them, they
“touch” us in a manner much more intimate than is the case in see¬
ing and hearing.4
The modes of contact which vary among the senses determine the
rules of conduct in social behavior. The differences of communica¬
tion that exist between sight, touch, smell set limits to the provinces
in which an approach is permitted or prohibited. We are well aware
of these limits without having been so instructed. We “keep at a
distance” the person who obtrusively comes too near to us. Only in
rare periods of great affliction or uninhibited festiveness can these
limits be breached within the feeling of common tribulation or ec¬
static brotherhood which go hand in hand with these periods. Nor¬
mally, however, distances are to be kept. Tact, according to Eisler,
“the fine sense for the correct, the decorous, the proper, and the
decent in behavior,” is, like the infinitive to touch derived from the
Latin tangere. In tact, what is manifested is, as it were, the correct
choice of contacts. Clumsiness and tactlessness are punished; delib¬
erate social clumsiness may even prove quite dangerous.
Mohammedan women were required to veil themselves in the

presence of strangers. In the West, a man is free to look at a strange
woman and take pleasure in her. But he is not allowed to follow
up his glance and approach her; he may feast his eyes, but he may
not embrace her. The Mohammedan requirement and the occidental
prohibition are, of course, like many other customs, a matter of con¬
vention. But they are not arbitrary. Their artificial delimitations
are, rather, specific ways of buttressing the natural limitations which
are given by the particularity of sensory experience. One can, with
good reason, speak of a sociology of the senses.5 Its rules, known to
everyone, brook no exceptions. A student of psychology who, blindly
trusting the teachings of his textbooks, does not content himself with
merely looking at a pretty girl and, without encouragement, forth¬
with approaches her, would soon find himself in an unpleasant sit¬
uation. No judge would listen to his arguments that “as it is well
known” muscle contractions can be released by all kinds of stimuli
and that in principle it makes no difference whether the optical re¬
ceptor had been excited by light, or the tactile receptor by pressure
or warmth, in both cases, a peripheral stimulation being transmitted
to the cerebral centers, the excitation of which is accompanied by
sensations in consciousness. What is decisive is the fact that the ef¬
ferent excitations, the muscle contractions, are completely causally
determined by the preceding afferent excitations, by the direct ex¬
citation, or traces thereof, of the sensory organs. The prosecution thus
errs first in accusing him of an action which is in reality merely a
sensory reflex chain, and second in claiming that there exists an es¬
sential difference between the sensory modalities. In fact, however,
there exists no such difference between formation of optical-motor
and tactile-motor synapses. But should the court wish—somewhat
superfluously to refer to the accompanying data of consciousness,
the verdict would surely have to be in his, the defendant’s favor, for
the relation of consciousness to sensory data is always the same. Now,
on the basis of such an argument the court would perhaps refer the
young scientist for psychiatric observation, but it most certainly
would not discharge the case. For no theory can talk us out of the
knowledge that in seeing, hearing, and touching, we experience the
things and ourselves in various modes of communication.
As variations of the self-world relation, the senses stand in a cer¬
tain relation to both their own supplementary extension and oppo¬
sition. Looking can kindle the desire to go further, to touch. A
glance of secret understanding is a promise fulfilled only in a kiss
and in an embrace. For nowhere but in touching does contact have
THE SPECTRUM OF THE SENSES
373
such directness, reciprocity, and exclusiveness. Goethe’s Faust de¬

sires from Mephistopheles a maiden “who even while in his arms
eyes the neighbor.” Such partners are, as a rule, not much in de¬
mand, and Gretchen herself was not like this. If the glance promises
fulfillment in the touch, the fulfilling embrace demands that the
eyes be closed. A woman who, while being kissed, opens her eyes to
look in a mirror deceives her lover with her own image, without “a
neighbor” being present. Immediate reciprocity sets limits to the
possibility of participation. In the encompassing horizon of the vis¬
ible, we can share a directedness toward something; the musical tone,
severed from its source of sound and filling the space around us, en¬
compasses us all. But the immediate reciprocity of touch limits such
communion to two partners. The sense of touch is an exclusive sense.
What you would grasp I must first let go. Language, in a drastic way,
uses this exclusivity of the sense of touch to indicate the claim to
property. It speaks of pos-sessing, of pos-sedere. The sense of touch
is the sense of the excluded third.
If one thinks of the modalities as arranged about the tactile sense

as their natural center, then toward the one end of the spectrum
the objective predominates, while in the opposite direction the pas¬
sive predominates. In seeing, absorbed in the sight of the things seen,
we may forget ourselves and be lost to the other. In pain we are
thrown back into the aloneness of our bodily existence up to the
point where excess of pain excludes us from seeing or hearing. The
symmetry of this schema might well avail itself of quantification,
but the difference between modalities must not be understood as a
mere difference in intensity. The objective itself manifests itself in
varying modi; space and time appear in the changing forms of the
spatial and the temporal.
In the course of a legal dispute, the statements of a witness them¬
selves are sometimes controversial issue. The court orders an exam¬
ination of the locale, the aim being to set the factual apart from the
possible. In surveying the terrain in all directions, the hope is to
obtain a comprehensive insight into the spatial conditions involved.
Wandering through the terrain is to reveal the unchangeable spatial
conditions. In such an investigation, the court examines the scene
of the crime unencumbered by any doubts as to the possibility of
such an investigation. We all, of course, share this conviction; it is
obvious to us that we can see a place twice, that we can return to a
place where we were before. Seized with emotion, we go through the
pages of an old manuscript, certain that the pages we see before us
are the same as those upon which, centuries before, some master has
committed his thoughts. We encounter our own past every day with
somewhat less respect. We walk in our own footsteps, return in the
evening to the same house we left in the morning. The place is the
same, the house is the same and—how could it be otherwise?—we
ourselves are the same. From morning till evening, we are in constant
intercourse with people and things which we are seeing and recogniz¬
ing again. In such encounters, seeing and that which is seen are sep¬
arated. Our glance glides over the thing as such and takes account
of it, apprehends its state. Seeing is renewed from moment to mo¬
ment, otherwise there could be no such thing as seeing again. That
which is seen, however, reveals itself as persisting. The visible things
are, to be sure, transitory and changeable; but the stars and the
“firmament” of the heavens are there every night without fail. In the
continuum of this one world bounded by sky and earth, we en¬
counter ourselves as well when we see something again, we encounter
ourselves as ever changing and as always the same. We would be un¬
able to see something again if we, as seeing subjects, did not remain
the same despite the fleetingness of our glances. In the flux of time,
we apprehend permanence. And only because of permanence do we
apprehend time.
The possibility of seeing again is ordinarily taken to be self-
evident. Just as self-evident to us is the impossibility of hearing again.
The judge, visiting the scene of the crime, is convinced that he can
look for and find the scene of previous events; he is just as certain
that the words which were spoken there are forever gone. He does
not expect, if he is “in his right senses,” that he can make that which
was heard in the past audible to him. Because the audible is evanes¬
cent, whereas the visible endures, we write up contracts and affix our
signatures after everything has been discussed and agreed upon. We
do, indeed, say of a man that he is “as good as his word,” but because
not all men are sincere, that is, because they do not always say what
they mean or mean what they say, nor keep their promises, we de¬
mand confirmation in a more enduring medium. Even the devil,
being a pedant, occasionally asks for a few written lines. He knows,
“a parchment written upon and sealed is a ghost whom everyone
fears.”
The scientist, too, demands a signature from his apparatus, his
kymographs and oscillographs. He compels them to record their fleet¬
ing movements as curves inscribed upon lasting material. These he
can store away, consult again, show to other scientists, and evaluate
at his leisure. This he does by interpreting the unmoving picture of
the curves as traces of a motor process. He succeeds, without any
particular difficulty, in seeing the unmoving, rigid lines as though

they were in motion. He, like all of us, is also bound by the axioms
of everyday life; he trusts his senses and assumes as a matter of course
the particular sort of reference-toward given him by each particular
sense in the course of sensory experience.
The sense of sight is thus the sense of identification and stabiliza¬
tion. We can, to be sure, repeat a melody, but that which we repeat
is the melodic form, the schema, reproduced in the medium of tones
which, as such, do not last and do not return. Color is an attribute
of things; sound is their expression. In our everyday use of language,
color is therefore usually indicated by an adjective (the sea is green),
and sound usually is indicated by a verb (the sea roars). And even
when sounds persist uniformly and are audible in the dark, they
do not lose their character of being an expression and a temporal
event (the brook murmurs, the motor hums). In seeing, we grasp
the skeleton of things; in hearing, the pulse.
Color is attached to the object, but sound can be separated from
its source. As expression, as Ver-laut-barung (becoming sound and
being experienced as sound), sounds still refer back to their source,
just as the spoken word refers back to the speaker. But sounds can
also enter into a purely acoustical relation with each other, for they
can be united in chords. We see the players, we hear the symphony;
one glance at the orchestra discloses all the musicians, each one be¬
fore his stand making the movements dictated by the score and the
nature of his instrument, spatially separated, all producing the
sounds which, as unified tones, make up a symphonic unity. Noises
produced by nature are not necessarily related to each other. They
follow each other, merge arbitrarily; they break out of the stillness
as lights break out of darkness. Only music discovers in the relation
of melody and accompanying voices a relationship comparable to
that of figure and ground.6
With respect to the visible, there exists such a thing as the rep¬
resentation of nature. But the first task of music, preparatory to all
others, is to bring forth a material which is in general accessible to
artistic formation. Music begins by making noises into sounds. In its
pure tones, music produces a medium, a material, which, although
not opposed to nature, is still foreign to it. And the interrelation
of these tones can be grasped by the senses; their simultaneous or
sequential soundings can be brought into a sensory order. The
musical imitation of nature, when it is not simply humorous or an¬
alogical, transgresses the essential nature of the tonal material. Mu¬
sical pictures are portraits without models.
Pure sounds, detached from the instruments which produce them,
are not, like those instruments, bound to a location. Colored objects

reveal themselves there in the distance in a definite direction with
respect to the observer. Extended and at the same time delimited, the
individual object stands out among the others in the totality of the
visible space. They exclude each other, or appear next to or behind
each other. Sounds, on the other hand, completely fill and pen¬
etrate space; sound does away with locational differentials, homog¬
enizes space, and, in a march or dance, forces everyone to participate
in its own movement. The border of visible things is spatial, that
of audible things is temporal. Contour separates things from things;
accord binds sound to sound. Sounds manifest their togetherness
and sequentiality in the unity of the interval and the chord. Sound
arises, persists, and fades—it is a creature of time; as such it dispenses
the flow of time in its own becoming. Hearing (we are speaking here,
of course, of the phenomena and not of the physical conditions of
the phenomena) is simultaneous with that which is heard. Visible
things, however, manifest themselves in their state and being. The
monumental sculpture is a form which is indifferent to time. Time
flows across great monuments as it flows across great mountains.
In the sphere of the optical, motion stands apart from rest as
does figure from ground. Motion is visible insofar as a thing, in
the continuous progression of time, changes its position in space
without changing its identity. In visible motion, an identifiable
or apparently identifiable thing passes through locations which are
not affected by its motion and which have their place in an unmov¬
ing space. Even a concentrically expanding wave passes over the un¬
moving surface of the water. In musical motion, on the other hand,
tone follows tone in constant change. The velocity of a visible mo¬
tion is expressed by the relation of time and distance. But acoustic
tempo is a relation between time and duration. Seen movement is
rapid when a body traverses large distances in a short period of time.
In the presto, however, a tone sounds in order instantly to fade out
and yield the present to the next equally shortlived tone. The tones
are drawn in rapid succession through the “eye” of the present.
In the open horizon of the unmoving optical continuum, I can
direct myself toward the other, I can move toward it. The other lies
before me as a goal; I see it in the present moment as a point which
I have not yet reached, but which I can and shall reach. The There
stands before as the future; optical space is open to the future. But
sound always takes hold of me in this moment. It is present and
determines the actual singularity of my Now. While hearing, I have
already heard. The Aristotelean concept of kinesis which encom-
passes not only change of place but also birth and death, growth
and atrophy and change, implies a substance which persists through
the modification of its accidents. Tone, however, manifests as itself
and not as accident.
Visible objects appear in the breadth of the illuminated horizon
and manifest themselves as parts of an encompassing whole. Seeing
is an analytical sense. In hearing, on the other hand, only fragments
are present from moment to moment, fragments which, in the tem¬
poral horizon, point forward and backward to be linked into a whole
with other such parts, just like the spoken words in a heard sentence.
Hearing is a synthesizing sense. A printed page is entirely visible
when spread out before us. We read it by wandering over the un¬
moving field of vision; by reducing it to individual lines and by fol¬
lowing the lines word for word, we reconstitute in the simultaneity
the original sequence.
In the sphere of vision, the beginning and the end of an exten¬
sion can be given simultaneously; we measure and count finite quan¬
tities. But in the sphere of the audible, beginning and end are never
given simultaneously; we measure beat and rhythm. In the former,
we count “how many,” in the latter, “how often.” With regard to
the visible, we can compare one unmoving stretch of space with an¬
other; with regard to the audible, we can—without the help of in¬
struments—-grasp the temporal relations of sounds only by means of
our own accompanying movement. Because the audible is limited
to the present, we can, it is true, perceive the flow of time in the tick¬
ing of a clock. But from the ticking alone we cannot learn“what time
it is.” For that we must be able to see the dial and the hands of the
clock. Even when we know with certainty what hour the turret clock
has struck, the object of this knowledge—the numerically designated
hour—gains full significance only within the totality of one day’s
circular course in our visible, constant world.
Saying of the clock that it has struck just so many times is but a
means of expressing the fact that an irrevocably decisive point has
been passed. In the singleness of striking, the clock pronounces the
constant and irreversible progress of time. The clock calls, it warns
and threatens. The “striking of a clock” was originally most prob¬
ably understood quite literally—as a reading of the mechanics of the
clock’s machinery. Today, however, we rarely think of the visible
processes in the clock, but, rather, understand the “striking of the
clock” acoustically as its sounding—an understanding accompanied
by an impression of the power of sound. For hearing the striking of a
clock differs from looking at it, in that in seeing the clock we turn
378
actively toward it, whereas sound seizes and compels us. We “cast a
glance” at something, “fix” something in our vision, let our eyes
“rest on” something; but we “follow a call,” “have to be told and
verbally cross examine and break down a story. We say of someone
who obeys us that he “listens to us.” The unusual power of sound
stems from the fact that sound can be divorced from its source, and
that, following this separation, sounding and hearing occur for us
simultaneously. We can flee from something which is visible in the
distance. But that which is heard—be it sound or word—has already
taken hold of us; in hearing we have already heard.7 We have
no power over sound, word, voice, or “voices.” Sound is objective,
yet not an object, not a pragma that can be held on to. The intan¬
gibility and inescapability of sound are also imparted to the word.
The compelling power of the word is expressed in many forms, in
its capacity of creative power, in magic words, in the fatum (i.e., the
irrevocability of what has been said), in the voice and call of con¬
science, in conjuring, etc.
That sound can be separated from the instrument which pro¬
duces it also has its sociological effect in the possibility of accord and
concord, of harmony and discord. The community of consonance
is boundless. The sound that penetrates and unites space “embraces
millions” (Schiller’s Ode to Joy and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony).
In a look or in a handshake, we two meet each other individually,
you and I; but jubilation can be shared by everyone. Consonance
unites the listener with the actor or the singer. The polyphonic pas¬
sage assigns to everyone his distinct part in the production of the
whole. Pure sound, in its phenomenal appearance, draws everyone
into the actuality of its movement, uniting them in community sing¬
ing, in the hymn, and gives national anthems their great force.
None of the modalities plays only in a single key. But in each of
them the basic theme of self-and-ot/zer varies in specific ways: in the
visible the constant predominates; in the audible, the actual; in the
tactile sphere, the reciprocal; in the field of smell and taste, the physi¬
ognomic; in pain, the power-relationship. The modalities must, in
their totality, be ordered into a broad scale which extends from the
visible down to pain. In this spectrum of the senses, aspects vary with
regard to temporality, spatiality, direction, limit, distance, move¬
ment, physiognomy, community, freedom and bondage, contact,
objectivity, numerability, divisibility, measurability, forms of empti¬
ness, possibility of abstraction, memory, and communicability. At
one end of the scale is found the collectively communicable, and com¬
munication in articulated verbal sounds and writing; at the other
THE SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL FORM OF SENSING 379
end there is the aloneness of pain which ultimately finds its expres¬
sion in the unformed sounds of wailing and in the scream. Each sense
in its own way serves or obstructs the spirit and mind of man in
his existence.
L. The Spatial and
Temporal Form of Sensing
(a) Distance (Feme) as a Spaticr
Temporal Form of Sensing
THUS FAR, I HAVE ATTEMPTED TO CHARACTERIZE SENSING BY SOME
of the elements essential to it, such as direction and directing, limit,

movement, approach, betweenness, and encounter. All these expres¬
sions are familiar to us from their use in everyday life. We assume
that everyone will understand them whenever we use them. But have
I myself had a clear understanding of their exact meaning as I em¬
ployed them? I have at one point put the question as to whether the
phenomenon of approaching is essentially a spatial or temporal phe¬
nomenon. And what of direction? Does it belong exclusively to the
spatial? Is it permissible to speak of a category of “direction in space”
in the way J. Lange does?1 In my opinion, it is not.
To understand the above expressions correctly, I will have to
make a final effort to define the basic temporal and spatial forms of
sensing, which I can do only if I am once and for all ready to rid my¬
self of the traditional prejudices. He who is born late and who hopes
that he can push aside all that preceded him so that he may see things
as freshly and clearly as they were on the first day of creation, runs
the risk of making a fool of himself. The best thing that can happen
38o Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
to him is that, after having, with much exertion, reached the top of
the mountain, he be welcomed in a friendly way by those who have
already long been there. New insights prove only too often to be old
truths which have been for a while forgotten. I, therefore, will be
content if I but succeed in ridding myself of some traditional preju¬
dices. Such an attempt frequently comes to naught because it is ex¬
tremely difficult so clearly to ascertain these prejudices that I find
myself enabled to abandon them. And even if one does so recognize
them, one usually in the process falls prey to new prejudices. What
remains for me, therefore, is simply the possibility of assessing tradi¬
tional doctrines as best I can while keeping a careful and suspicious
eye open for anything that looks self-evident.
In the sciences which study the physiology and psychology of the
senses, there has, until quite recently, prevailed a view of the spatial
and temporal forms of sensing which subjected them completely to
the physical concepts of space and time.
Thus, Kries in his General Physiology of the Senses (1923) de¬
fined visual space “as the totality of physiological facts which mani¬
fest themselves in our judgment about the position, arrangement,
and proportion of magnitude of seen objects, as well as in the other
subsequent functional process: namely, motions.” Four main points
characterize the traditional presentation:
(1) Strict reification of a space which the observer sees without
himself being included in it, i.e., a retention of the principle of the
extramundaneity of the observer. (2) The subordination of space and
time to judgment, thought, and imagination. (Lotze’s genetic theory
of local signs also refers—and this is too rarely noticed—to spatial
imagination and not to spatial intuition.) (3) The complete separa¬
tion of space and time and especially the separation of space and
time as they are presented in imagination. (4) The appropriation of
the physical and, indeed, elementary geometrical conception of space.
Sensations are taken in relation to an objective, homogeneous, iso¬
tropic, metrical space and an objective, homogeneous, futureless,
atomistic, quantifiable time which grows by apposition.
But sense psychology which is based on the notion of objective
time leads necessarily to sensualism. It can only acknowledge a point
schema of cause and effect. The sensing subject becomes a stimulus
receptor.
In objective time, there are only temporal points (t0, tl5 t2, t3. . . .)
which are ordered in a sequential series. The t points do not have
the relation of reciprocal combination in reciprocal denial, such as
“now,” “not yet,” “no longer.” Therefore, the phenomenon of in-
completeness and becoming cannot be acknowledged. The t points

are different, but the nature of their difference remains obscure. In
physics, changes are expressed by means of equations. Physics com¬
pares the event at moment tx with the event at moment t2; both these
moments stand in a relation to each other insofar as one temporally
succeeds the other. But their temporal difference is ascertainable
within quantitative changes which, in fact, can be defined and cal¬
culated by means of equations.
In objective time, there first occurs a stimulation which is then
followed by a sensation and which finally results in a movement. The
objectifying attitude knows only of the present; only, in fact, of pres¬
ences (and temporal extensions as repetitions); it knows nothing of
the past and most certainly nothing of the future. Such a point of
view, therefore, sees activity as receptivity, and cannot possibly com¬
prehend directing, searching, being-ahead-of-oneself. In one word, it
cannot do justice to sensing. In order to understand sensing, we must
thus free ourselves from the objectification of space and time, from
its co-ordination with knowing, from its geometrisation, and its
homogenization. We must, finally, not take the separation of space
and time for granted, as something given; rather, we must seek to
present the spatio-temporal forms which are peculiar to sensing.2
I will put forward what I have to say about the spatio-temporal
form of sensing first as the statement of a thesis. Thereafter I will
enlarge upon this statement, substantiate it, and finally examine
whether the indicated spatio-temporal form makes such a phenome¬
non as “direction” possible.
The thesis is: distance (Feme) is the spatio-temporal form of
sensing.
In this proposition, the expression “distance” is to be understood
as comprising the polarity of “near” and “far” in the way in which
the expression “one day” comprises both day and night. The expres¬
sion “distance” is chosen a potiori. For one cannot speak of distance
and the future unless one at the same time refers to nearness and
the present. The converse seems not to hold in the same way. There
seems to exist narrowing of the glance such that it focuses only on
“the nearest of all” this in such a manner that distance is forgotten
in favor of nearness, There is forgotten in favor of Here, and the
Future is forgotten in favor of the Present. Without such contraction
of the field of vision, the time-atomistic doctrine, which knows only
a momentary, point-like present, could hardly have arisen. Never¬
theless, there can be no doubt that nearness depends on remoteness
and that they mutually define each other as does the Here and the
There and the Now and the Then. Locations in space also mutually
define their position, but in a way that differs from nearness and re¬
moteness, or Here and There. The relation between nearness and
remoteness is not that of spatial places which are next-to or with
each other.
The senses are customarily grouped as either distal receptors, i.e.,
sight, hearing, smell, or proximal receptors, i.e., taste and touch.
Such a classification can hardly be understood to mean anything
other than that the distal senses react only to what is remote and to
nothing which is near, and that the proximal senses provide just
the converse. An “objective” observer could, for example, acknowl¬
edge that some senses, “to be effective require a medium between
the perceiver and the perceived object,” whereas other senses “effect
a direct contact between the subject and the object of perception.”3
The former group he will then term the distal senses and the latter
group, the proximal. The observer will, however, arrive at such a
distinction only by divesting the phenomenon of distance of its sub¬
jectivity, by objectifying and generalizing it until finally, having also
separated space from time, he has re-interpreted distance as a purely
spatial locational relation (situs). Such an objectification will also
break apart the polarity of nearness and remoteness; we will be left
with a nearness without a remoteness and vice versa. Remoteness will
be turned from a self-world relation into a measure of the spatial
interval separating certain locations in space from a fixed point. The
group of locations (localities) immediately adjacent to the fixed
point will, in such a case, be defined as being near, whereas those
farther off will be called distant or remote.
Such misunderstandings do not arise without a reason. It is cer¬
tainly correct to say that when we see something, we see the object
and not ourselves. If we wish to see even the place where we stand
we must take a step backward—like chickens when they scratch the
ground. Physiological optics determines the most proximal point at
which distinct vision is possible. But no matter how close it is, the
seen object always stands as over and against us. The sense of touch
could not bring about the impression of closeness if the person who
touches were limited to single impressions. Tactile movement begins
with the approach out of emptiness and ends with reaching over into
emptiness. Whether I carefully touch the object or whether I stumble
into it unintentionally, in both cases I approach it from emptiness.
Resistance interrupts tactile motion that reaches into emptiness.
Whether the object is so small that I can hold it in my hand, or
whether I have to glide along its surface and edges, I can obtain an
impression of it only insofar as I separate it from the adjacent empti¬

ness. However, while my hand is in the process of contacting the
object by gliding over the surface, I move in a constant transition
from an approach out of emptiness to the returning into emptiness;
without such a phasic vacillation of tactile movements, I would stay
fixed in one location. One is almost tempted to compare this oscil¬
lation with that of normal muscle contraction. In every tactile im¬
pression, the other is given concommitantly; that is to say, distance
as emptiness against which the object stands out.
A psychology of the sense of touch cannot be pursued without
the concept of boundary. But one can only think of boundaries by
thinking beyond them and only he can experience a boundary who
(Svvdfxei) is directed beyond it. By considering the forms of empti¬
ness which belong to each sensory sphere, it soon becomes evident
that distance is the over-arching, spatio-temporal form of sensing,
that is, that all our senses have to do with nearness and remoteness,
the Here and There. The optical horizon converges on the Here just
as tactile movement diverges from the realized Here to the undeter¬
mined, determinable remoteness.
The individual tactile impression is merely a particular realiza¬
tion of the mode of communication peculiar to the sense of touch.
A gentle touch, a slight pressure of the hand can bring me “closer”
to another person than can a glance or a word. Thus, the longing for
that which can be held, and the lust involved in touching: thus, also,
the horror of being touched. Here we have an alingual world with¬
out signs whose thousandfold nuances are self-evident and under¬
stood by everyone without having to be learned. Out of this world,
by a process of objectification, there arises the rich ceremonial of the
forms of greeting which all express both approach and withdrawal
in varying accentuation. Nor is the contrast between nearness and
remoteness done away with in actual physical contact. Touching is
approach; but it could not be approach unless it came from a dis¬
tance, and unless at the same time the possibility of withdrawal was
also present, this possibility being realized in the phenomena of
letting-go, slipping away, and losing. In cognitive touching, we can
arrive at a result, a goal, and an end of the touching. But in all cases
where touching, in the original communication of sensing, expresses
the longing for nearness and communion, there will be no end of
touching and holding until the appetite has been satisfied. The dis¬
tance is not overcome, and therefore the caress is a limitless move¬
ment of approach.
Distance is neither length nor objective interval. Length I can
measure, but there is no objective measuring standard for distance

(in the sense in which I am using this term). Objective intervals can
be transposed in space, but distance is not transposable. Distances
can be traveled, but wherever we arrive there are always new dis¬
tances ahead. The phenomenal world of distance cannot be derived
from the objective world. Distance is a primal phenomenon. Distance
is not sensed; sensing unfolds into distance. There is no distance
without a sensing and mobile subject; there is no sentience without
distance.
A colored thing can change its place in space in many ways. In
all these transformations the color remains the same, at least for
the abstracting intellect. But distance (including both what is re¬
mote and what is near) is not transformable. It does not permit to
be abstracted from the standpoint of the observer. Distance exists
only for a being which in sensing is directed toward the world. Near¬
ness and remoteness disappear for me when I am sunk in reflection.
Distance opens up to me and articulates itself to me in remoteness
and nearness only as long as I am directed toward my world, only as
long as I, as a sensing being, move in it and, as a mobile being,
sense in it in uniting and separating.
But both the near and the far are the other, which I do not yet
have, where I have not yet arrived—or which I no longer have, where
I no longer am. The temporal moment of the not-yet or the no-
longer belongs essentially to both nearness and remoteness. This is
easier to see with regard to remoteness than nearness; we speak freely
of both the Far East and the remote past or future. The remote is
that which is removed from my longing or that which is put beyond
the reach of my desire.
Distance is thus the spatio-temporal form of sensing. In sensory
experience, space and time are not yet separated into two fixed forms
of intuition. Thus, distance is also not merely the spatio-temporal
form of sensing, but is, as well, the spatio-temporal form of living
movement. Only insofar as I am directed toward the world, striving
for and desiring that which I do not have, and in so desiring the
other am myself changed, only then can there exist for me the near
and the far. Because I can approach something, I can experience
nearness and remoteness. The third dimension of spatial depth is not
a purely optical phenomenon. The subject who sees is a being who
moves. Only to such a being will space appear as articulated into
regions of removedness (Abstaendigkeit).
Distance is therefore relative to a becoming, desiring being. It is
his reach which determines the articulation of distance into the far
THE SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL FORM OF SENSING
385
and the near. As to objective (spatial) intervals, I can enlarge or re¬

duce them; I can take a piece away from them or add one. But there
exists a qualitative difference between nearness and remoteness which
excludes addition, subtraction, or multiplication. Three nearnesses
do not add up to one remoteness. Neither does one remote stretch
contain another in the way a spatial extension contains smaller
extensions.
For the European of the twentieth century, America lies much
closer than it did for the seafarer of the sixteenth century. The man
who has his automobile parked right outside is nearer to the post
office than is he who must walk. A poor swimmer finds the sandbank
upon which he can touch bottom and rest much farther away than
the skilled swimmer. What is decisive is not the objectively measured
distance, but the relation of such distance to potentiality. The ob¬
jective distance from me of the blotter and the ink bottle on my desk
may be quite different, but they are both equally near if I can grasp
either with a movement of my hand. The “constancy of size” also
stands in relation to the extent of reach (Reichweite) and to the space
therewith articulated. Space must always be conquered anew. The
border of near space and remote space is a variable one. In sickness
or fatigue, what would otherwise be near recedes into remoteness.
The door and the window of my bedroom which were near to me
even when I was getting ready for bed are suddenly far away the
moment I am stretched out beneath the blankets. Far and near vary
with health and illness, with walking and standing, with hurrying
and resting. When dozing at the beach, in the woods, in a meadow
in the heat of the sun, distances dissolve, spatial and temporal pres¬
ence fades away, and I lose both my world and myself.4
The articulation of distances depends on my state of being, on
my Here and my Now. Here and There are not purely spatial deter¬
minations; they are spatio-temporal phenomena. The There of re¬
moteness is the place I have not yet arrived to, which lies there
before me, a becoming, self-directing, self-moving being. Insofar as I
direct myself there, I abandon the Here, the place where I, the
changeable being, find myself at this particular transitional state—
the place at which I both am and am no longer. In perfect repose,
both spatial and temporal presence disappear. That which I see in
the distance, what I see as far or near, lies before me as a goal. As
a goal it is in the future. In sensory experience, a non-reflectional
subject-object relation is given. In sensory experience, the relation
of individual and world unfolds itself as a co-becoming (Mit-
Werden ).
386 Sensing and Movement Considered Hist or iologic ally
(b) The Leap and the Goal

In support of my views, I propose now to analyse a factually
rather well-established everyday phenomenon. I am thinking of the
leap of a horse over a hurdle or the leap of a dog catching a thrown
ball. Even the most radical behaviorist would have to concede that
the motion of the leap conforms extraordinarily well to the obstacle
and the particular situational fluctuations—at least in many cases.
The behaviorist may try to explain the articulated jump movement
as a complex reflex. I do not intend to follow him in this; neither, I
feel, is it necessary for me to repeat once again the reasons why I
consider such an attempt misguided. But about one thing I must be
quite clear, that it is not enough simply to reject the reflex theory.
For new difficulties arise which do not cause the behaviorist any
concern.
The behaviorist can completely structure his explanation within
a causal schema: The first effective cause is a centripetal stimulus,
that is, the light reflected from the obstacle to the retina; the conse¬
quent excitation in the optical sector causes, in its turn, the setting
motion of a centrifugal process. Because of the particularity of the
optical excitation, just those muscles which participate in the syn¬
ergism of the jump motion are innervated in the proper degree and
in the proper systematic order and sequence. Neither the obstacle
nor the landing place behind the obstacle are, according to this view,
actually the goals of movement. The leap is a motion of muscles, a
completely determined causal process, it is not a motion towards a
goal.
In rejecting as insufficient the behavioristic explanation, we are
confronted by a new set of facts within an entirely different prob¬
lematic framework. An animal leaps from A to B. A, then, is the
start and B the goal of the movement. The animal sets itself to leap
from A to B. Before and during the leap, it is directed from A toward
B. It jumps across the intervening space AB. Essential to the leap is
thus the start and the goal, the change, the direction, and the “in
between.”
The goal B is the other to which the leaping animal is directed.
Before jumping it is at A; to get from A to B it leaps so as finally
to land at B. The goal B thus lies before the animal as something
there before its eyes which lies in the future. The goal which deter¬
mines the direction is not given by means of conceptual anticipation.
387
The position after the leap is not anticipated or imagined such that
the later state of time point ts is transposed to the present time point
t0, and such that tx is mentally posited in the place of A; indeed,
nothing is posited.
The leap can be physiologically analyzed by breaking it down
into its parts and investigating the sequence of the motor processes
according to innervations and synergies, mechanics of the limbs, re¬
flexes of location and position, weight distribution and energy con¬
sumption. But adding together all the partial motor processes does
not yield the leap. And neither can its unity be restored by suitable
regard for sensible and sensory excitations.
The animal sees its goal lying before it; there, toward the goal,
is where it is directed. But the stimuli—physically and physiolog¬
ically interpreted—have already excited the nerve center of the ani¬
mal when it leaps. There thus exists an incongruence of time systems
which can neither be rendered congruous nor reduced to one or the
other. The beginning of the leap and the reaching of the goal are
“simultaneous” only by means of their being projected upon an ob¬
jective, unidimensional time sequence—and thus only after the sep¬
aration of space and time.5
We will simply have to acknowledge and resign ourselves to the
fact that, in the leap, as in every living movement, the goal lies
before us as something in the future. The simultaneity in which now,
at this present moment, start, goal, and intervening space unfold
before me on my way does not preclude that the goal lies before me
in the future. The “There” of distance is not merely a spatially, but
also a temporally distant point. For sensory experience, there opens
up a new dimension of temporality, insofar as this distance has the
character of futurity. There thus arises for sensory experience and
living movement (that is, for the sensing and moving being), a tem¬
poral form which is not to be subsumed within the usual modus of
one-after-the-other. It is, rather, an essential aspect of sensory ex¬
perience that the future lies intuitively before it. Thus we say that
distance is the spatio-temporal form of sensing.
The behaviorist seems untroubled by such difficulties; and one
would thus feel bound by the laws of propositional economy to pre¬
fer his theory. But we are spared these difficulties only to the degree
that we do not concern ourselves with the fact of experiencing itself.
The moment, however, that the behaviorist acknowledges the fac-
tuality of the psychic, he is right in the middle of the difficulties we
have here discussed. Nor is the assumption that all mental phenom¬
ena are mere accompaniments of physical processes of any help. The
problem indicated above is unavoidable, namely: when I put my

foot down now upon this spot on the ground which I now see before
me, then the light rays which are reflected from this spot into my
eyes, have already reached me, have already affected my brain. If the
visual impression corresponded to the optical process, it would have
to have the stamp of being past upon it. I would be putting my foot
down in the past. Since in the nervous system the speed with which
excitations are transmitted is relatively low, this paradox can not be
overcome by objecting that, for practical purposes, the time-lag is
irrelevant and can be neglected. The paradox exists, both theoret¬
ically and practically, as long as the living, experiencing I is treated
solely as a stimulus-receptor. The incommensurability of time-sys¬
tems is demonstrative of just this, that such an equating of the stim¬
ulus-receptor concept with the living subject is not permissible; that,
in other words, an epiphenomenalistic, physiological psychology is
an impossible undertaking.6
(c) Indifferent (schicksalsloscr) Space

In the transition from sensing to perceiving, distance is de¬
composed. Space and time are separated from each other. We no
longer have either this space or this time for ourselves. This space
is indifferent to our coming and going; this time is indifferent to our
being born and our dying. We apprehend Space and Time only as
observers detached from the particularity of our standpoint. This
Time and this Space which are indifferent to our own existence are
viewed by us as universal. We master this form of Space and of Time
only insofar as we apprehend them in their indifference to our own
fate and as detached from any reference to us. In this Space which
is indifferent to our fate and which, separated from time, remains
without a fate of its own, in this Space our seeing becomes look-
ing(-at), our hearing becomes listening(-to). In looking at something
the sympathetic function of seeing is eliminated. This is necessary
for we can comprehend indifferent Space and the genuine being of
those forms contained in it only if that which is seen can be detached
from the Now and the Here of seeing.
Groping about in the dark, I may run into an obstacle and hurt
myself. This pain of mine cannot be detached from the Now and
Here of my walking, my path and the collision with the obstacle.
If I wish to apprehend the obstacle as such, I will have to look at it
389
in such a way as to obtain an image of it which is indifferent to the

day and hour of my seeing it. I will also have to look at it in such a
way as also to detach myself, as a sensing being, from it. Such detach¬
ment is never attained by animals or young children, they are lim¬
ited to the act of seeing. The mien of an infant tells that the infant
sees, but does not look at. All abstraction begins with an act of step¬
ping out of the presentational immediacy of sensing.
Monumental sculpture forms its figures in Space which is at rest
and uninvolved by fate. Its creations approach perfection only to the
degree that the means of representation itself succeeds in lifting them
completely out of the spatio-temporal order of original communica¬
tion and articulates them within indifferent Space. Stone and bronze
—imperishable materials—the greater than life-size dimensions, the
simple, clearly manifested proportions, the sublime repose, the geo¬
metrically formal structure—none of these are accidental attributes
of monumental sculpture. They are necessitated by the space in
which such sculpture is produced. The base, upon which such sculp¬
ture rests, also serves the purpose of removing it from the space of
original communication and lifting it into indifferent Space. One
has only to think of the Bamberger Rider or the Colleone as de¬
prived of their bases to realize that and why the pedestal is indispen¬
sable for (monumental) sculpture.
The grandeur of nature lies in its being above human destiny.7
The unconquerable stillness of mountains, their immense size and
forbidding ruggedness impresses us with an existence which is in¬
different to us and uninvolved by fate. If pious reverence hallows the
mountains as the seat of the gods and forbids ascent to the sacred
realm, then without whim or will it is following the directions it
receives from the sublime. The mountain in its sublimity ever re¬
mains over against us. It is unapproachable. No path leads from us
to it. Mountain climbing is preceded by the dethronement of the
gods, by the profanation of the mountains. They become secular.
We can maintain the impression of the sublime only as long as,
resting in aesthetic reflection, we are aware of timeless, inaccessible
Space. Aesthetic perception is a borderline instance of sensory per¬
ception. For this very reason it indicates to us the direction in which
the perception tends. In aesthetic perception the status of being
“over-against” is also a borderline case of direction, in which direc¬
tion loses its communicative significance. We would never be able to
see a painting as a representation involving its own particular per¬
spective as long as we remained in original, everyday communica¬
tion.8 Sending a poodle to a museum makes as little sense as bringing
39° Sensing and Movement Considered Historiologically
an elephant into a china shop. A dog is our trusted companion only

in the space of sympathetic communication. His understanding ends
at the borders of sympathetic space. He no longer understands his
master who stops by a picture and so loses himself in the sight of it.
The everyday world is neither that of pure aesthetic contempla¬
tion, nor that of mathematical intuition, nor that of perception in
the strictest sense. In the everyday world, space and time are, as yet,
not rigorously separated, otherwise we would be unable to direct
ourselves from here to there, or, for that matter, even be capable of
moving. The everyday world is a twilight region between the world
of purely sensory experience (which we share with the animals) and
the world of the mind in which sympathetic communication is elim¬
inated. The formation of our everyday world involves sensations and
thoughts; we might say: in the everyday world of human beings the
sensory unity of space and time is loosened, but not yet sundered.
(d) The Problem of Orientation

There are a number of expressions like “over there” and “to¬
wards here,” and like the word-pair “from-to” which can only be un¬
derstood in a spatio-temporal sense. The interrogatives “where to”
and “where from” may also be mentioned in this context. But what
are strictly termed demonstrative words have undergone a rather
singular transformation. The indicativeness of these words has been
completely absorbed into the gesture. Thus it is that such words as
“there” and “this” can function only within the context of an un¬
mediated communication between speaker and hearer. The demon¬
stratives have been totally deprived of their temporal significance.
In immediate spatio-temporal communication I point to a location
in space: I refer to it with the term “there” which signifies some
location situated in objective, universal space. But what I am actu¬
ally saying is understandable to another only if he also understands
my indicatory gesture such as pointing. In indicating something by
pointing to it we make the transition from a spatio-temporal order
to one in which space has been separated off from time. Thus an
animal, a dog, though it understands the direction of a throwing mo¬
tion, does not grasp the significance of a pointing motion.9 Patients
with certain disturbances of gnostic functions may occasionally move
to the left or right in response to certain stimuli, but cannot differen¬
tiate between right and left. To know right from left, to make them
into locational demarkations in space, we must be able to lift our¬

selves out of the subjectivity and momentary particularity of sensing
and effect a separation of space and time. It is not enough that we
direct ourselves toward something; we must reify these acts of di¬
recting so that they become directions.
Directing toward the left or right is always a momentary, par¬
ticular act. But I can only differentiate right and left as orientation
marks in an object or with respect to my own body to the degree
that I can simultaneously oversee directions in their manifoldness
and mutual opposition. When determining the right-hand side I
must at the same time know of the left side—-I must, that is, also im¬
plicitly execute the movement to the left <— which is the opposite
of the movement to the right —To determine right or left I must
recognize the contrast of the right and left —» <—, and must be able
to execute the contrary positional act.
Right and left are always relative to the principal direction of an
individual; the distinction between them depends upon the observ¬
er’s standpoint and upon the direction of the person moving. To
describe the location of a building, I can say to someone: “The uni¬
versity is on the left side of Main Street as you walk from the railroad
station.” Such a method of articulating geographical space is anthro¬
pological, not geometrical.
The spatio-temporal order of distance (Feme), however, is not
separable from the particularity of my living experience. Only for
me, and not for another who just passed this way, is that tree there
before me. Distance as the spatio-temporal form of sensing shares
with it the subjectivity of sensory certainty. This may account for the
fact that it is so much more difficult to gain conceptual knowledge of
distance than of objective, general Space and objective, general
Time, i.e., the forms of the spatial and the temporal which are ours
in perception.
In thinking, observing, or establishing something, we abandon
the primary original form of communication. Even the “outward”
behavior of the thinker, perceiver, and observer, points to the change
in communication. As long as we move in our everyday world, we
remain in original communication, we live within the horizon of
distance. Every animate movement demands direction and goal.
Whether the goal be a well-defined place lying before us, or a vaguely
indeterminate “somewhere,” it still is a goal and thus an Other,
a There toward which we are directed. Direction is a spatio-temporal
phenomenon. Every direction is unequivocal and as such it can only
be temporally determined. If I try to represent a direction graph-
ically with the letters A and B, I cannot arbitrarily exchange A and

B as I can when I deal with a straight line. To reverse A and B is
to reverse the directional significance. The directional signification,
however, refers unequivocally from A to B; A must come first and
then B. Directions are thus not purely spatial, but are, rather, spa¬
tio-temporal phenomena.
Direction would not be possible without distance, and spatio-
temporal unity would not be possible without open-ness into the
future. But since direction is equally essential and indispensable
both to sensing and moving, the analysis of the phenomenon of
orientation discloses that distance must be the spatio-temporal form
of sensing.
The psychology of sensing and of animate movement requires
acknowledgment of a spatio-temporal order which corresponds to
the object of its study. Only the concept of distance makes it at all
possible actually to relinquish the schema of reflex motion. In the
spatial order given by physics every movement must of necessity be
thought of as a reflex motion.
(e) The Contrast Between Physical (Perfect

tive) and Psychological (Presentational)
Knowledge
It is our everyday world in which we are most at home and
one would thereby incline to think that it is this world which we
best understand. Actually, however, a great many circumstances serve
to make such understanding exceptionally difficult. First of all, this
everyday world is an intermediate realm which falls between a sen¬
sory certainty that instantly consumes itself on the one hand, and
the timelessly valid on the other. Attempts have been made to in¬
terpret the everyday world of human beings completely within the
sphere of cognition. Such attempts utterly fail to recognize the sig¬
nificance of sensing and result in an almost total obscuring of its
essential characteristic. All this might not have happened were it
not for a peculiar kind of difficulty impeding the recognition of
sensing.
This obstacle can easily enough be pointed out, but that, of
course, does not suffice to remove it. Put tersely, the issue is this:
393
the object of physical knowledge is the moved body; the object of

psychological knowledge is the body which moves. Here we confront
the contrast between the present and perfect tense. The misunder¬
standings of objective psychology are not least of all the result of
treating a self-moving organism as a moved body and of immediately
rendering the encountered being into an object by erroneously trans¬
forming into perfect tense that which exists in the present tense. We
live in the present tense and know in the perfect. As beings who
sense and move ourselves, we are of the “present,” we are “ongoing.”
Cognition, however, makes out of this sensations and motions which
are of the perfect tense, sensations and motions which are “com¬
pleted.” The contrast between present and perfect is qualitative. The
difference between them is not representable in the schema of ob¬
jective time. It is evident that the transition from present to perfect
means something other than the displacement of an event on the
temporal scale from t0 to tx. The aggregate of points in an objective
time scale is already conceived of in the perfect tense. Time functions
only as a co-ordinate; it is deprived of its temporality. The null-point
can be posited anywhere. There exists only the relation of “earlier-
later.” The temporal qualities of present, past, and future are ob¬
literated. In general, all concepts in physics are perfective; physics
deals only with the perfective, i.e., with that which has become, with
the completed, the finite and the surveyable. That is why its con¬
cepts are exact and why it can use mathematics which also includes
the infinite in the computation and construction of the finite. Meas¬
ure, the enumerated quantity of unities of magnitude relates, like
number itself, to the definite. That which is determinable in math¬
ematical natural science must itself be thought of as something def¬
inite, i.e., completed, perfective. Everything which we propose to
measure must have both a beginning and an end. “The manifest
continuum and the world of mathematical concepts are so alien to
each other that the demand for their congruity must be rejected as
absurd.”10 Physics, however, is only too ready to honor as real only
that which is adequate to the nature of mathematical concepts—that
which, as Descartes had it, can be known clearly and distinctly. The
logical structure of mathematical concepts is thereby distorted into
an ontological principle of nature.
Language makes both wise men and children of us all. The child
of three can already talk tolerably well. In the spontaneous act of
speaking he has at his disposal the wisdom of language. He under¬
stands language, though he does not understand about language. He
is “infans” and yet he can already speak. In fact, we never quite out-
394
grow this state. Content with our ability to make ourselves under¬
stood to others, we pay little attention to understanding ourselves.
In the easy and nimble course of speaking we hurry over the deepest
abysses of language without even noticing them.
Logic, it is true, has since ancient times let itself be guided by
grammatical forms. But neither elementary logical theory, nor the
doctrine of concept and judgment, nor the notion of premiss and
conclusion contains express relation to temporal expression; tradi¬
tional logic was never inspired by the grammatical forms of conjuga¬
tion. Would logic, this strict discipline which, more than any other
science, has rendered clear account of its own activity, have over¬
looked something so obvious if it were immanently essential to it?
Hardly. A little reflection reveals that scientific knowledge, being
universal and objective, does not use the predicative verb in its truly
temporal character, that is, in the sense of a real distinction between
present and perfect tense. Also with regard to relations of cause and
effect, both members belong to the sequentiality of objective time
and as such are conceived as perfective. Thus when scientific presen¬
tation makes use of the various linguistic tenses, it nevertheless con¬
siders the temporal relationships themselves as objectified and
complete. Scientific judgments are timeless even when the temporal
aspect of an object is singled out for emphasis. To the timelessness of
the judgment corresponds the perfective nature of the object.
Things are quite different with narration. Regardless whether I
relate something about myself or whether someone tells me a story,
the narrative past always signifies the genuine past as it is related to
the narrator’s and the listener’s present. There the grammatical
forms of conjugation have a genuine meaning. For that which is
expressed in the present tense and meant as present or in relation
to it cannot be detached from my self as the one who is narrating,
experiencing, and thinking, contrary to that which is meant per-
fectively and expressed in the perfect tense.
All things for which the present tense is linguistically appropri¬
ate are grasped by me in the present as things which are with me in
the process of becoming. This is true when statements are made
about sensing and moving human beings. In order to have knowl¬
edge of sensing and of animate movement, I must think of them as
being in this primary, original relation of co-existing. Reflective
knowledge can detach them from this relation to the individual ob¬
server only with the provision that it recognizes the spatio-temporal
form of sympathetic experience, i.e., distance as such. Though such
a determination is quite general, it yet differs markedly from the
395
spatio-temporal conceptualization of the natural sciences. For the

generality and universality of distance is thought of in such a way
as to be co-ordinated with each individual subject, that is, as the
form of a process of becoming which is open to the future and which
itself is not yet fully determined. Thus this generality is ever again
annulled in the process of action. But this simply means that the
particular can no longer be numerically defined and predicted as
an instance of repetition.
Such investigations have, therefore, probably much less practical
application than natural scientific research. But perhaps they may
claim another kind of usefulness. The knowledge they seek is not
meant for mastering the world, but, rather, for unlocking it and mak¬
ing a world that is mute into one which speaks to us in a thousand
places. The fullness and depth of our world is to be heard wherever,
till now, it has been silent.
Notes
A. Introduction
1. Meditations III 2. (Translator’s note: Most quotations from Descartes are

cited from the English rendition of the Philosophical Works of Descartes by
Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, Dover Publications, 1955.)
2. Ibid., Ill 24.
3. Ibid., VI 4.
4. Addenda to “Responsio ad secundas objectiones” Definition 1. (tr. n.: re¬
translated from the German.)
5. Meditations II 14.
6. Cf. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, 1929, in particular part
II, chapter 5, and his posthumous work, Cartesianische Meditationen, Martinus
Nijhoff, Den Haag, 1959.
7. Meditations VI 8 and quite similar in Principles, part I 68.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., VI 26.
10. Passions de I’ame I, Art. 23. The Passions was written after the Medi¬
tations and the Principles and published in 1647. It is therefore based on Des¬
cartes’ thoughts about metaphysics.
11. This was to be a chapter of a comprehensive work “Le Monde,” Descartes
had planned.
12. From the Synopsis of the Meditations.
13. Passions I, Art. 6.
14. The spirits originate in the blood. They are especially small and quickly
propelled bodies. Descartes retains the traditional expression, interpreting it how¬
ever in a thoroughly mechanical fashion.
15. Passions II, Art. 107. In the first part of this work Descartes already dis¬
cusses the theory of the conditioned reflexes in all its essential respects. See also
note 24 below.
16. In his book dealing with "Ideenflucht” (the flight of ideas), Zurich 1933,
Binswanger clearly and emphatically distinguishes between phenomenal, psycho¬
logical and transcendental-phenomenological subjectivity.
17. Meditations II 9.
397
Notes
398
18. In medical measurements of weight the measurment in kg. is a means to

an end. It serves a biological comparison, i.e., of an individual compared with an
ideal-type. The weight can also serve as indicator of fullness or scarcity, both
understood as phenomena of life. And finally we can compare the individual
with himself by the weight curve in different stages of life.
19. Author’s italics.
20. Hoenigswald presented in his “Denkpsychologie” a thorough answer to
the question: Can the psychic be counted? However, I cannot share his opinion
“that every experience involves knowing and consequently is incorporated in a
systematic order of judgements.”
21. Meditations: III 36. Cf. also Principles I 21 where the same thought finds
an even more pointed elaboration.
22. The indefinite character of the res extensa does not gainsay its finiteness;
its opposite is the infinite (cf. Principles II 21). The finiteness of all creation is
thus ultimately founded in time.
23. Cf. Principles I 45.
24. As proof for the cultural-historical connections, I quote here the most im¬
portant passage from the Passions de V&me in its original wording: “et il est utile
ici de savoir que, comme il a d£j& ete dit ci-dessus, encore que chaque mouve-
ment de la glande semble avoir £te joint par la nature k chacune de nos pensês
d£s le commencement de notre vie, on les peut toutefois joindre a d’autres par
habitude. . . . Il est utile aussi de savoir qu’encore que les mouvements, tant de
la glande que des esprits du cerveau qui representent il Time certains objets,
soient naturellement joints avec ceux qui excitent en elles certaines passions, ils
peuvent toutefois par habitude en 6tre separ^s et joints k d’autres fort diffbrents,
et m£me que cette habitude peut etre acquise par une seule action, et ne requiert
point un long usage. Ainsi lorsqu’on rencontre inopinement quelque chose de
fort sale en une viande qu’on mange avec appetit, la surprise de cette rencontre
peut tellement changer la disposition du cerveau qu’on ne pourra plus voir pas
aprfes de telle viande qu’avec horreur, au lieu qu’on la mangeoit auparavant
avec plaisir. Et on peut remarquer la m£me chose dans les betes, car encore
qu’elles n’aient point de raison, ni peut-etre aussi aucune pensee, tous les mouve¬
ments des esprits et de la glande, qui excitent en nous les passions, ne laissent
pas d’etre en elles et d’y servir 4 entretenir et fortifier, et non pas comme en nous
les passions, mais les mouvements de nerfs et des muscles, qui ont coutume de
les accompagner. Ainsi lorsqu’un chien voit une perdrix, il est naturellement
port£ a courir vers elle, et lorsqu’il oit tirer un fusil, ce bruit l’incite naturelle¬
ment a s’enfuir; mais neanmoins on dresse ordinairement les chiens couchants en
telle sorte, que la vue d’une perdrix fait qu’ils s’arr£tent, et que le bruit qu’ils
oient apr£s, lorsqu’on tire sur elle, fait qu’ils y accourent. Or ces choses sont
utiles k savoir pour donner le courage a un chacun d’etudier k regarder ses pas¬
sions; car puisqu’on peut avec un peu d’industrie, changer les mouvements du
cerveau dans les animaus depourvus de raison, il est Evident qu’on le peut en¬
core mieux dans les hommes; et que ceux m6me qui ont les plus foibles 5mes
pourroient acquirir un empire tres absolu sur toutes leurs passions si on em-
ployoit assez d’industrie a les dresser et 4 les conduire.” Passions I Art. 50. The
reference at the beginning of this article “comme il a dejk £te dit ci-dessus” ap¬
plies to article 44, bearing the characteristic title: “Que chacque volonte est
naturellement jointe & quelque mouvement de la glande; mais que, par industrie
ou par habitude, on la peut joindre it d’autres.”
NOTES
399
PART I. CRITIQUE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CONDITIONED REFLEXES
A. The Relation Between Theory and Observation in Pavlov’s Work
1. Nouveau Traite de Psychologie. G. Dumas, ed. vol. II. Paris, 1932.
B. General Presuppositions
1. Pavlov: Die hoechste Nerventaetigkeit (das Verhalten) von Tieren. p. 6,

Munich, 1926. In the following we will cite this work as Pavlov’s Nerventaetigkeit.
2. Pavlov: Nerventaetigkeit, p. 22. (The highest nervous activity—the be¬
havior of animals.)
3. Ibid. p. 21.
4. Ibid. p. 22.
5. Ibid. p. 4.
6. Cf. under Part IV, chapter H.
7. Translation from one language into another is possible because one can
express the same thought by different words. Physiological psychology lacks the
middle link, the tertium comparationis, which is the prerequisite of any transla¬
tion. This fundamental difficulty which actually renders any epiphenomenalistic
theory illusory will be discussed later.
8. Cf. Introduction and Part IV, chapter E.
9. Mueller, G. E.: "Zur Psychologie der Gesichtsempfindungen.” Zeitschrift
Psychol., 10 (1896).
10. Mueller, Joh.: Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen. vol. 2. Koblenz,
1837.
11. Pavlov: Nerventaetigkeit, p. 202 f.
12. Cf. Pollnow, Hans: “Das Leib-Seele Problem,” in Biologie der Person. Ber¬
lin & Wien, 1931.
13. Cf. Descartes’ remarks as to the (external) connection of bodily pain and
sadness, Meditations VI, No. 12.
14. In our example we have also avoided reference to the causal relation. The
sounding of the note in the first bar is not the cause of the sounding of the notes
in the second bar, etc.
15. Cf. Descartes: Meditations VI, Nos. 38 ff.
16. Cf. Pavlov: Nerventaetigkeit, p. 123.
C. Some Difficulties Confronting the Application of Pavlov’s Theory
1. We disregard here adaptation to temperature, etc.

2. The collection of Pavlov’s lectures bears also the title: “Die hoechste
Nerventaetigkeit (das Verhalten) von Tieren.” (The highest nervous activity—
the behavior—of animals.)
3. Ischlondsky: Neuropsyche und Hirnrinde. Berlin & Wien, 1930.
4. Krasnogorski: “Bedingte und unbedingte Reflexe im Kindesalter.” Erg.
inn. Med., Bd. 39, 1931.
400 Notes
PART II. STIMULI, SIGNS, AND SIGNALS
A. The Nature of the Signal
1. Pavlov, Legons sur Vactivite du cortex cerebral, Paris, 1929, p. 17.

2. Everyday language does not draw a sharp distinction between signs and
signals. Thus, for instance, signaling in navigation has nothing in common with
the signals being studied here. Like the Morse code, such signals form a sign-
language. Everyday language often employs words not in their proper, strict
sense. Common to both flag signals and to our signals is their function as signs.
But such a broad usage hides what is distinctive and characteristic of the signal
proper. We are not concerned with everything that may be called signal, but
rather with bringing into focus the thing itself. Nor is it to be overlooked that
within the total realm of signs, signals properly so-called form a characteristic
group which is distinctly different from all the others.
B. Resolution of the Difficulties
1. In mathematics, the relationship of the "inbetween” can be completely

objectified; in physics it must be reduced to a sum of the relationships of the
“next to’’ variety.
2. Aristotle: Physics, A 1, 184 b 12. For reference to this passage, as well as
for many others, I am particularly indebted to Dr. J. Klein, Annapolis, Md.
3. Aristotle op. cit., A 1, 184 a 19.
4. Cf. below, Part IV, Chapter C, section f.
5. Let us merely mention here the pathology of memory, in particular the
Korsakov syndrome and the senile disturbances of memory. These pathological
phenomena corroborate the conception of psychological development here de¬
scribed and can themselves only be explained satisfactorily from this viewpoint.
),
6. Straus, Erwin; Geschehnis und Erlebnis (Event and Experience Berlin,
J. Springer, 1930.
7. Cf. in this connection the following passage from Goethe’s Introduction
to his Farbenlehre: “At present let us merely indicate that for the formation of
color both light and darkness are needed, or, to use a more general formula,
light and non-light.” Cf. further Aristotle, De Anima, B 10, 422a/20ff. Cf. also
the concept of “consciousness of emptiness” in James, Principles of Psychology,
London and New York, 1901.
PART III. MAN THINKS, NOT THE BRAIN
A. Surrounding Field and Surrounding World
1. “Cerebral Mechanisms in Behaviour,” The Hixon Symposium, New York

and London, John Wiley, 1951.
2. Sherrington, Sir Charles: Man on his Nature, 2nd ed. New York, 1951.
3. Eccles, John C.: The Neurophysiological Basis of Mind. Oxford, 1953.
4. “And like a clock composed of wheels and counter-weights . . . the body
of a man behaves, being a sort of machine so built up and composed of nerves,
NOTES
401
muscles, veins, blood and skin, that though there were no mind in it at all, it
would not cease to have the same motions. . . Descartes, Meditations VI, §33.
5. Boring, E. G.: The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness. New York,
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1933.
6. Spence, K. W.: The Methods and Postulates of “Behaviorism.” Psychol.
Rev., Vol. 55, 1948.
7. Tolmann, E. C.: “Operational Behaviorism and Current Trends in Psy¬
chology.** Ptoc. 25th Anniv. Celebr. Inaug. Grad. Studies, Los Angeles. University
of Southern California Press, 1936.
8. Spence, K. W.: Ibid.
9. Bergmann, G., and K. W. Spence: “The Logic of Psychophysical Measure¬
ment.” Psychol. Rev., Vol. 51, 1944.
10. Ibid.
11. In objective psychology many different tributaries, rising in the Old and
the New World have flown into one large river. Behaviorism, strongly influenced
by Pavlov, evolved on American soil. Logical positivism originated in the Vien¬
nese school of Moritz Schlick. Many adherents of the Viennese “circle,” e.g., Car¬
nap, Neurath, Feigl, and Brunswig emigrated during the European crisis to the
United States. The majority of the here quoted writings are therefore written in
English. But these opinions are not limited to one language or one nation.
12. Bergmann, G., and K. W. Spence: Loc. cit. The differentiation between a
metalanguage and an object-language is Tarski’s: “The Semantic Conception of
Truth.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 4, 1943-1944; cf. Reen-
paa, Yrjo: “Die Dualitaet des Verstandes.” Protoc. Heidelberg Akad. Wiss., 1950,
7 th essay.
13. The often used word “simple” is an epitaph for problems. Wherever it
turns up, it might be worthwhile to search for hidden treasuies.
14. Tolman, E. C.: Purposive Behavior in Animals and Man. New York,
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1932.
15. I.e., variables, interfering with or intervening between stimulus and
reaction. _ r
16. Hull, Clark L.: Principles of Behavior. New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts,
1943.
17. Hebb, D. O.: The Organization of Behavior. New York and London, John
Wiley, 1949.
18. Ibid.: Introduction. , . „ ...
19. Lewin, Kurt: “Defining the "Field” at a Given Time. Psychol. Rev., Vol.
50, 1943.
20. Spence, K. W.: Loc. cit. . , .
21 Although Spence maintains that behavior in any form is determined at
a given moment exclusively by actual situations and neither by the past nor by
the future, in principle he must share our own opinion. How could he, who
speaks as an organism, otherwise, in a given situation, talk about the past and
the future? He intends to determine variables: but does the concept of a vanab e
not also imply change and constancy, time and continuance, past and future?
How can anyone comprehend the present moment, if the present is not also
viewed from a different spot or a transcendent whole? Spence certainly does no
maintain that things vanish at every moment into nothingness and then are
recreated. Things do last and therefore reach in his own reflections from the
past through the present into the future. They are in a transitory state.
402 Notes
22. Light, as defined in physics, does not illuminate space. Physical space is
neither bright nor dark.
23. Gratification and pain are often mentioned side by side as reinforce¬
ments, although in the one case an increase, in the other a decrease of tension
would have to have a retroactive effect. The hypothesis of tension-reduction ac¬
tually presents a tendency hostile to life. Vital abundance, growth, expansion are
ignored. Biological circulation is deprived of one of its semi-circles. The goal of
being awake then is sleep, the goal of life is death. But it is the healthy man who
feels hunger; it is the healthy man whose tensions have increased; it is the healthy
man who enjoys his meal. And it is he who in action and creative delight is
turned towards the world. A patient having no appetite needs no tension-reduc¬
tion, for he has been deprived of the vital tensions of the appetite. Freud—who
in his interpretation of pleasure anticipates the concept of tension-reduction—
did not hesitate to draw the consequences. In his doctrine of the death-impulse
life is interpreted as a disturbance in the existence of inanimate matter which
in accordance with an alleged general law of regression tries to return to the
previous inorganic state. Internal and external stimuli are mere disturbances of
the biological equilibrium. The senses and the entire nervous system constitute
an apparatus serving as protection against stimuli. Its purpose is, Freud says,
to keep stimuli in check. The doctrine of affects of objective psychology, deter¬
mined by the concept of tension-reduction, follows similar trends of thought. In
an erroneous interpretation of the concept of homeostasis the organism is said to
have a tendency to reduce all tensions to a minimum. The regulation of the
temperature of warm-blooded animals—the paradigma of homeostasis—makes the
organism within certain limits independent of the temperature, but it does not
isolate the organism from its surroundings. On the contrary, by guaranteeing
optimal conditions of the internal milieu it makes possible the continuation of
delicate functions under changing external conditions and thus enables the or¬
ganism to concern itself with the environment. The regulation of temperature
makes the organism independent of the environment while turning toward it. It
widens its scope and gives it freedom of action. It is true, the light-reflex protects
the retina against the impact of light. But the pupil-constrictor is supplemented
by the dilator. In their combined action both serve the actual function of the
eye: to see. The lids are not the most important parts of the eye.
24. In the earliest here pertinent experiments, i.e., in Thorndike’s studies as
to “Trial and Error,’’ the author describes how a cat, trying to escape from a
cage, accidentally touches a lever which opens a door leading into freedom. As a
living being, it is true, the cat is in a cage. But the nervous system of an animal,
affected by stimuli, has no relation to a such-like space-form and much less to an
adjacent area as a potential future location.
25. Skinner, B. F.: Behavior of Organisms. New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts,
B. Sicns Are Not Stimuli
19391 StCVenS’ S‘ S" ‘'Psychol°gy and the Science of Science.” Psychol. Bull., 36,
2. An obvious objection is that the science-makers are not the only ones who
manufacture sentences. The automobile manufacturers and dealers are active in
the same field We can hear them every day on the radio. In rebuttal Stevens
would probably adduce criteria for distinguishing scientific from nonscientific
NOTES 4«3
sentences. Thus: scientific speech is determined by syntactic, semantic, and prag¬

matic rules. The syntactic rules refer to the relation of sign to sign (logic, mathe¬
matics, syntax), the semantic rules to the relation of signs to objects, the prag¬
matic ones to the relation of signs to the scientist.
3. Bergson, Henri: Les Donnees immediates de la conscience. Paris, 1888.
4. Kliiver, H.: “The Study of Personality and the Method of Equivalent and
Non-equivalent Stimuli.” Character and Personality, Vol. 5, 1936.
5. Crozier, W. J.: “The Study of Living Organisms,” in C. Murchison, The
Foundations of Experimental Psychology. Worcester, 1929.
C. Stimuli Are Not Objects
1. Hebb, D. O.: The Organization of Behavior. New York, John Wiley, 1949.
2. In this whole discourse we take the poetic licence to assume that we are
still able to refer to ourselves as “we.” Actually we, as objective psychologists,
have entered a world which is mute, where statements are no longer possible.
3. Cf. Part IV, chapter L, section a.
4. This relationship between width and weight determines the vital experi¬
encing of alertness and fatigue, of capacity and failure.
5. Cf. Part I, chapter B, section d and Part IV, chapter B.
6. Eddington, S. A.: The Nature of the Physical World. Cambridge and New
York, 1929.
PART IV. SENSING AND MOVEMENT

CONSIDERED HI ST O RIO LOGICALLY
A. Preliminary Characterization of Sensing
1. Meditations III, 2.
2. Gilson, E.: Etudes sur le role de la pensee medievale dans la formation du
systeme Cartesien. Paris, 1930.
3. Cf. E. Straus: “Aesthesiology and Hallucinations,” in Existence, ed. by
Rollo May et al., New York, 1958, pp. 139-169.
4. From an epigram of Marcus Argentarius (around the first century, a.d.) in
the Anthologia Palatina X, 4.
5. Whenever a dog reacts to a word, for example, "sit,” it is only the sound
configuration which produces the effect, which is that of a signal. The dog does
not hear this word as, strictly speaking, part of the language. This is shown by
the fact that the dog reacts to the sound articulations regardless of the context in
which the word is used.
6. Cf. Goethe: Color Theory, “Concluding Observations on Language and
Terminology,” par. 751-757.
7 Cf Hegel: Wissenschaft der Logik, Lasson edition, 1923, II, p. 110 (The
Thing and Its Properties), and p. 151 (The Relation of Inward and Outward).
Hegel has incidentally, described the phenomena we are dealing with here,
although with a different goal in mind and with a different evaluation (in The
Phenomenology of Mind) . “In this connection we may answer those who thus
insist on the truth and certainty of the reality of the objects of sense, by saying
that they had better be sent back to the most elementary school of wisdom, the
ancient Eleusinian mysteries of Ceres and Bacchus; they have not yet learned the
4o4 Notes
inner secret of the eating of bread and the drinking of wine. For one who is
initiated into these mysteries not only comes to doubt the being of things of sense,
but gets into a state of despair about it altogether; and in dealing with them he
partly himself brings about their own nothingness. Even animals are not shut
off from this wisdom, but show they are deeply initiated into it. For they do
not stand stock still before things of sense as if these were things per se, with
being in themselves: they despair of this reality altogether, and in complete
assurance of the nothingness of things they fall-to without more ado and eat
them up. And all nature proclaims, as animals do, these open secrets, these
mysteries revealed to all, which teach what the truth of things of sense is.” (p.
159, Baillie trans.) New York, Macmillan, 1910.
8. Pollnow: “Historisch-kritische Beitraege zur Physiognomik,” Jahrbuch der
Charakterologie, V, 1928.
9. Cf. Scheler: Die Stellung des Menschcn im Kosmos. Darmstadt, 1928; also
Pollnow: “Leib and Seele,” in Die Biologie der Person, II, Berlin-Wien, 1931.
10. Cf. Litt: Einleitung in die Philosophic, 1933.
B. Sensing Considered as a Mode of Communication
1. The expression “modes of communication” (Kommunikationsweisen) which

I first used in my Formen des Raeumlichen” (1930) has been retained here as
the only adequate and, therefore, indispensable term. Its meaning is not to be
confused with the concept of existential communication” which plays so great
a role in Jaspers’ philosophy. “. . . true communication, in which I first know
my own being only in that I bring it forth with the other, is not an empirical
existent (Jaspers, Philosophic II, p. 51) . Sensory communication, since it has to
do with animal existence as well, lies beneath even those forms of primitive hu¬
man communality which Jaspers terms “Existential communications” (Daseins-
kommunikation).
2. Cf. Plato, Theaetetus, 184 ff.
3. Cassirer: Das Erkenntnisproblem II, p. 203, Berlin, 1907. Compare Kant’s
classic formulation in the Transcendental Deduction of the concepts of pure
understanding (1st and 2nd editions of The Critique of Pure Reason).
4. Berkeley, An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, Vol. 1, London-
New York, 1948.
5. Ibid., §43.
6. Cf. Goethe: Farbenlehre §748. “Color and sound do not admit of being
directly compared in any way, but both are referable to a higher law, both are
derivable, although each for itself, from this higher law. They are like two
rivers which have their source in one and the same mountain, but subsequently
pursue their way under totally different conditions in two totally different re¬
gions, so that throughout the whole course of both no two points can be com¬
pared. Both are general, elementary effects acting according to the general law
of separation and tendency to union, of undulation and oscillation, yet acting
thus in wholly different provinces, in modes, on different elementary mediums
for different senses.” And ibid., in the Preface: “The completeness of nature dis¬
plays itself to another sense in a similar way. Let the eye be closed, let the sense
of hearing be excited, and from the lightest breath to the wildest din, from the
simplest sound to the highest harmony, from the most vehement and impas¬
sioned cry to the gentlest word of reason, still it is Nature that speaks and mani¬
fests her presence, her power, her pervading life and the vastness of her relations;
NOTES 4«5
so that a blind man to whom the infinite visible is denied, can still comprehend
an infinite vitality by means of another organ” (Translation of Eastlake).
7. Straus: “Die Formen des Raeumlichen,” Der Nervenarzt, 1930, p. 633.
8. Descartes’ works edited by Cousin: Vol. IV, p. 215 ff. This fragment is a
chapter of the essay “Le Monde.”
9. To be sure, we find in Descartes statements which seem to give the word a
different meaning: “In sensations the soul learns from the togetherness of mind
and body what is useful or harmful. The sensations are signs of the useful or
harmful. The mind learns from pain that all is not well with the body” (VI.
Meditation, 30) . But this contradiction is not a serious one, especially since this
interpretation of sensations is only presented after the reality of the external
world and the self’s corporal existence has been established by the entire chain
of argument. More serious, however, is the statement in Principles (II, 2) that
the soul judges by a knowledge which is natural to it, that these sensations arise
from the soul not only in so far as the soul is a thinking thing, but in so far as it
is connected with extended things. This stands in open contradiction to Des¬
cartes’ fundamental conception and arises because of Descartes’ considerable
efforts to explain how body and soul can be united in spite of the radical separa¬
tion of substances. Descartes never succeeded in solving this problem, indeed,
he could not have succeeded. As far, therefore, as further historical development
is concerned, the conception quoted in the text above, remained decisive.
10. Katz: Der Aufbau der Farbwelt, p. 456 ff., 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1930.
11. Werner, H.: “Ueber das Empfinden und seine experimentelle Pruefung,”
Kongress fuer exper. Psychol., Wien, 1929.
12. Werner, H.: “Untersuchungen ueber Empfindung und Empfinden,”
Z. Psychol., 114, 117, 1930.
13. Cf. Foerster: Handbuch der Neurologie, Ergaenzungsband. II, 2, Berlin,
1929.
14. Cf. the more detailed discussion in Part IV, Chapter E.
15. Cf. works by H. Werner cited above; also Zietz: Z. Psychol., 121, 1931; von
Schiller, ibid., 125, 127, 1932, and, on the same theme, G. Kloos: Arch f. Psychia-
trie, 94, 1931.
16. Szekely: “Ueber den Aufbau der Sinnesfunktionen,” Z. Psychol., 127, 1932.
Szekely follows the ideas developed by Hornbostel in his important essay on
“Geruchshelligkeit” (brightness of smell) in Pfluegers Archiv, Til, 1931, but
Szekely radically extends these ideas. Bright and dark sounds are parts of a one¬
dimensional continuum just as are light and dark shades of gray. Only loudness
is dependent upon absolute stimulus intensity, but brightness is not. The same
three attributes—intensity, brightness and color—are also manifested by phe¬
nomena of smell. And with taste, too, we can distinguish a gradation of bright¬
ness when judging the quality of food. But are we actually dealing here with the
same aspect of the phenomenon or are we merely making use of an analogy? An
investigation of the equations of brightness will assist toward an answer.
17. Cf. the reports of Beringer, v. Baeyer, and Marx on hashish intoxication.
Nervenarzt, 1932.
18. Lucretius: De rerum natura II, 444 ff.
19. Cf. above p. 99 f.
C. The Relationship Between Sensing and Moving
1. Herder is an exception. Cf. his Vom Erkennen und Empfinden in der men-
schlichen Seele.
406 Notes
2. Among the few exceptions are Palagyi and Klages, but especially Buy-
tendijk and v. Weizsaecker.
3. In catatonia sensation and movement are similarly modified. For the
catatonic everything is already there as given. Spatial distance has no meaning
for him. The influence of his persecutors reaches beyond all obstacles. True,
the persecutor remains the Other, but in catatonic experience he has already
taken possession of the one persecuted. A patient in a catatonic trance can no
longer move, not in the sense of being paralysed, but rather in the much more
fundamental sense of a disturbance of the ability to move himself. Primary
sensory space is altered radically for the catatonic, even while his conceptual
space remains intact and unchanged.
4. Principles II, §§4, 10-14, 23, 54, 55.
5. Heisenberg, W.: Wa?idlungen in den Grundlagen der N aturwissenschaft,
p. 24.
6. Cf. Sherrington: Man on His Nature. New York, Cambridge University
Press, 1951.
7. Descartes: Meditations VI, §19.
8. Lotze: Med. Psychologie, 1854, p. 418.
9. Cf. Helmholtz: Physiol. Optik. More recently William James declared him¬
self opposed to the doctrine of “outward projection.” But his partiality toward
physiological explanations of mental processes hindered the consistent develop¬
ment of his ideas.
10. Cf. Binswanger: “Ueber Psychotherapie.” Ausgewdhllte Vortrage und Auf-
satze, Bern, 1947.
11. Cf. Hegel: The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. Baillie., p. 149f.
12. Cf. the surprising parallel in Descartes’ Principles I, 10, 17 a 39.
13. James: The Principles of Psychology, New York, Holt, 1902. p. 486f.
14. Cf. Head’s concept of sensory schemata.
15. Grundriss der Psychologie. 9th ed. Leipzig, 1932.
16. Cf. Descartes: Passions I, 16, 47.
17. The actual situation is incomplete. I am in it as a becoming being.
Motor processes detached from kinaesthetic images are, conceptually, completed
processes.
18. This connection becomes quite marked in pathological phenomena such
as compulsory grasping. It would be a mistake to interpret such a disturbance as
a novum; it merely points in a cruder way to that which always exists. Cf. L.
Boumann and A. A. Gruenbaum: Monatschrift f. Psychiatrie, 77, 1930.
19. Cf. “Die Eroberung des Raurnes,” in W. Stern: Psychologie der fruehen
Kindheit, 5th ed., p. 85ff. Leipzig, 1928; cf. also the writings of Arnold Gesell.
20. As a characteristic example I insert here the following self-analysis of a
phobic patient: “An insurmountable street-phobia, particularly when walking
along closed fronts of houses (where no shop or house entrance may have a
quieting effect). When turning corners where there stand shops set back from
their vaulting show-windows (anxiety feelings about falling into them) ; wide
thoroughfares where no front yards with railings may provide some feeling of
security. Impossibility of looking back when crossing a wide street, even at the
risk of being run over; makes it necessary to be accompanied when taking a
walk. Then, though the giddiness still persists, the anxiety decreases. Energetic
attempts to overcome all these obstacles causes a loose, trembling feeling in the
entire body, followed by profuse perspiration and complete exhaustion. If it is
possible to go right to a closed room somewhere, all these symptoms quiet down
NOTES 407
in a few minutes. Can walk on the sunny side of the street almost without any
problem. In general it is better during the day than at night. Especially frighten¬
ing in the late afternoon hours is the fear of one’s own shadow whose constant
movements causes feeling of complete insecurity. Then there is the feeling of
floating, high as a tower, over all other things; the earth rocks and one has to
step very carefully to feel firm ground under one’s feet. Although quite aware of
moving forward, one is often under the impression of going backwards and get¬
ting nowhere. Nor does a great expenditure of energy help; the phobias are
there, or they are, quite consciously, not there. Travelling in any kind of vehicle
is bearable and there is no fear of staying in closed, vaulted rooms—but of
course they must not be filled with people.”
21. In experiments with animals Buytendijk has examined the dependence
of perception (I would call it sensing) on activity. These experiments show
that the life-space of the animals “can be enlarged by experience, and even, it
seems, in snatches. Concentric boundaries are thus formed around the animal.
The boundaries encompass the action zones because the perceptions in these
zones determine behavior. . . . After having adjusted itself to a more remote
zone, the animal will now correctly attend to characteristics which previously
seemed to be limited to a nearer zone.” Buytendijk and Fischel: Nederland. Arch.
Physiologie, 16, 1931. With additional bibliographical references.
22. Le Monde, Cousin IV, p. 254 ff.
23. Principles II, 25.
24. Ibid., II, 33.
25. Ibid., II, 36.
26. Ibid., II, 54, 55.
27. Passions I, 16.
28. Cf. Passions I, 11; also Traite de I’homme, Cousin IV, p. 357ff.
29. De la formation du foetus. Cousin IV, p. 466f.
30. Principles III, 46, 47.
31. Descartes is well aware that his order does not in principle differ from
chaos. He reveals this in a left-handed way by saying: “For, although these na¬
tural laws are such that even if we assume the chaos of the poets—i.e., a complete
disorder of all the parts of the universe—it could still be proved that by these
very laws of nature, the disorder would gradually be transformed into the order
now prevailing in our world ... as for myself I thought it advisable to prefer
proportion and order above the confusion of chaos” (Principles III, 47). Order is
preferred to chaos because it better suits the concept of God’s perfection to
think of Him as the creator of order rather than the creator of chaos.
32. Cf. Bergson: Les donnees immediates de la conscience, and Heidegger:
Sein und Zeit. Also: E. Minkowski: Le Temps vecu. Paris, 1933.
D. On Being Awake
1. “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it

to the one that asketh, I know not . . .” Augustine: Confessions, Book 11, Chap¬
ter 13.
2. Freud’s contrary claim is a postulate without proper foundation in the
experience of the dreamer; it is less an hypothesis conceived to explain facts
than it is a fact invented to prove a hypothesis. It does, of course, sometimes
happen that in the passage from dreaming to waking—while we are still half
dreaming—we breathe a sigh of relief as we realize it is only a dream. But such
408 Notes
experiences are the exception rather than rule and are made possible by
proximity of the dream to awakening; deep sleep is presumably dreamless. The
dreamer who wakes up out of an anxiety dream in a cold sweat certainly lacks
any insight into the unreality of the dream. The transition from an imprisoning
dream-reality to a dream which I have had could never take place if the sleeper
knew that he sleeps and dreams.
3. Freud, S.: Vorlesungen zur Einfuehrung in die Psychoanalyse, 4th ed., pp.
184, 188. Leipzig, 1922.
4. Descartes: Meditations VI.
5. Locke; Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Book II, Chapter 1.
6. Margenau, Henry: The Nature of Physical Reality. New York, VI McGraw-
Hill, 1950.
E. Critique of Epiphenomenalism
1. Cf. Part 1, Chap. 2, 2c.

2. Cf. Plato’s Phaedo 98c (Jowett Translation): “I might compare him to a
person who began by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions
of Socrates, but who, when he endeavoured to explain the causes of my several
actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is made up of
bones and muscles; and the bones, as he would say, are hard and have joints
which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and they cover the bones, which
have also a covering or environment of flesh and skin which contains them; and
as the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or relaxation of the
muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and this is why I am sitting here in a
curved posture that is what he would say; and he would have a similar explana¬
tion of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, the air, and hear¬
ing, and he would assign ten thousand other causes of the same sort, forgetting
to mention the true cause, which is, that the Athenians have thought fit to con¬
demn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to remain
here and undergo my sentence; for I am inclined to think that these muscles
and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the
dog, they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was
best, and I had not chosen the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant
and running away, of enduring any punishment which the state inflicts. There is
surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said,
indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of my body I cannot
execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do because of them, and that this
is the way in which mind acts, and not from the choice of the best, is a very
careless and idle mode of speaking. I wonder that they cannot distinguish the
cause from the condition, which the many, feeling about in the dark, are always
mistaking and misnaming. Cf. also Theaetet, 184C ff.
3. Cf. above Part III, chapter C, section f.
4. Cf. Hoenigswald: Denkpsychologie, p. 332ff.; also: O. Liebmann: “Die Psy¬
chologic liefert den Kommentar zum Gehirn.” Gedanken u. Tatsachen. I, 1899.
5. Cf. Ungerer: Die Regulationen der Pflanzen, Berlin, 1926, for further
examples.
6' Cf- A- Szent-Gyoergyi; The Nature of Life, New York, Academic Press,
1948, pp. 90-91. “In our discussion we have passed several levels of organization
fi om electrons to bands, from bands to molecules and micells, from micells to
filaments and fibrils, up to the muscle fibre. There are many more levels above
NOTES
4«9
this. At the next level, we have nerves and blood circulation coming in, then the
reflex arc, the brain cortex, and in the end the whole rabbit, but I doubt
whether the list is herewith complete. Everyone knows this much of biology—
that one rabbit could never reproduce itself. . . . We may walk the same way in
the opposite direction going down on the scale of organization until we are left
in the end with atoms and electrons, which may still have some properties of
life. . . . Biochemists as a rule have a destructive mind. They are happier and
think to understand the living machine better when they have succeeded in
dismantling it into the smallest pieces. . . . Do not limit your attention to bits
only; go both ways. ... It does not matter which level we work at, they are all
equally wonderful; but we must know where we are, which level we are talking
about, and not draw unwarranted conclusions either upwards or downwards.”
7. Lehrbuch der experimentellen Psychologie, II, 3rd ed., p. 375. Freiburg,
1929.
8. Hebb’s claim that “all one can know of another’s feelings and conscious¬
ness is an inference from what he does with his muscular contractions” (cf. above
Part III, chapter A, section f) shows clearly that during the twenty-five years since
the publication of Froebes’ textbook things have not changed much. “What a man
does,” that is, his actions, are immediately put on a par with muscular contractions
which themselves—Hebb is careful to tell us—are to be explained as biochemical
and electrical processes.
9. Tschermak, A. V.: Der exakte Subjectivismus in der neuren Sinnesphysi-
ologie, 2nd ed. Wien and Leipzig, 1932.
10. Tschermak, A. V.: Optischer Raumsinn. Handbuch der normalen und
pathologischen Physiologie, XII, 2, p. 855. Berlin, 1931.
11. Ibid., p. 883.
12. Cf. Pollnow: “Das Leib-Seele-Problem” in Die Biologie der Person, Bd. 2.
Berlin, 1931.
13. Koehler: Psychologische Probleme, p. 42. Berlin, 1933.
' 14. Ibid., p. 40.
15. Ibid., p. 41.
16. Ibid., p. 111.
17. Ibid., p. 113.
18. Ibid., pp. 98, 99.
19. Ibid., p. 88.
20. Ibid., p. 86.
21. Ibid., p. 100.
22. Cf. above. Part IV, chapter B, section e.
23. Wertheimer: “Experimentelle Studien ueber das Sehen von Bewegung.”
Z. Psychol., 61, 1912. The historical argument as to the significance of the works
of Koehler and Wertheimer in the development of the problem of the gestalt
need not be treated here.
24. Cf. Koffka: “Die Wahrnehmung von Bewegungen,” in Handbuch der
normalen und pathologischen Physiologie, Bd. XII, 2. Berlin, 1931.
G. The Difference Between Sensing and Perceiving
1. It is no accident that the modem science of expression (Klages) began

with graphology. It sought and investigated expression where its objectification
seemed most complete. But a science so oriented runs the risk of understanding
the whole of expression from the point of view of its already executed objectifi¬
cation.
410 Notes
2. Cf. Descartes: . . les philosophes en ont excepte le mouvement qui est

pourtant la chose que je desire le plus expressement y comprendre . . . le mouve¬
ment dont ils parlent est si fort different de celui que j’y concois, qu’il se peut
ais^ment faire que ce qui est vrai de l’un ne soit pas de l’autre. Ils avouent eux-
m£mes que la nature du leur est fort peu connue; et, pour la rendre en quelque
fa$on intelligible, ils ne l’ont encore su expliquer plus clairement qu’en ces
termes: motus est actus entis in potentia prout in potentia est, lesquels sont pour
moi si obscurs, que je suis contraint de les laisser ici en leur langue, parceque je
ne les saurois interpreter” Cousin IV, p. 254/255. Descartes refers to the passage
Physics I, 201 a 10 and b 4 which he characteristically quotes in Latin because he
himself knew it only by way of the “school.”
3. The valley is a remote, out-of-the-way place only for us. The farmer, of
course, lives in the midst of his world. For him the zero median does not run
through the observatory at Greenwich, but through the steeple of his village
church. Around the closed, familiar center there stretch concentric circles of the
unknown and foreign. On all sides, the world disappears into the unknown.
Because such a man lives in the center of his world and remains within the
limits of the known, he is not troubled by the unknown. Torn away from his
center and transplanted into some large city, he gets homesick. The unknown
fills him with apprehension and oppresses him, but he is made even more un¬
easy by the reversal of the old order. Now he no longer lives in the center of his
world. He cannot marshal an order upon the city from the standpoint of his
native village. As long as the center of the familiar was everywhere uniformly
bordered by the unknown, everything was in order. But if a location has to be
defined and determined in the realm of the unknown, then equilibrium is upset.
Everything gets out of joint. The world is no longer closed. If he no longer can
see the world from his valley, then must the valley become merely one place
among a thousand others in the somewhere-centered space about him. The valley
moves from the center to the periphery. There are not many out-of-the-way
valleys left in our country these days. The automobile has “opened them up.”
Modern means of transportation and, even more so, modem means of communi¬
cation (newspapers and radio) have carried the noises of the great world into
the most peaceful valleys. Even the indigenous farmer no longer lives in the
center of his world. For him, too, his place is now one among many—a long
distance from the highway. The romantics dream of the farmer in the landscape.
But the facts of modern life—technology, scientific management, accounting sys¬
tems, as well as traffic and news media—have forced the farmer into a geographi¬
cal space which can no longer claim to be the original central space of home.
In former times geographical space had a natural, absolute center: the center
of the earth. But in the transition from the geocentric to the heliocentric system
the earth has been dislodged from its position in the center. Today even the
boundaries of the heliocentric system have been burst; our perceptual world has
lost its natural center. In this respect we no longer have, as it were, a terrestrial
home; what is left are merely stop-over stations in the swirl of modern life.
4. Compare, for example, Goethe’s Italian Journey with a modern travelogue.
When Joseph Conrad writes of his journeys he does not give us a travel guide.
He is a painter of seascapes; therefore his geography is usually rather vague. He
uses geographical characterizations only for the purpose of setting the tone in
familiar words. Lesser writers, on the other hand, are often geographically too
precise.
5. The closed geographical space in which we live has a systematically con-
NOTES
411
structed null-point in the system. The zero meridian runs through the observa¬
tory at Greenwich and around it geographical space is oriented. The zero point
itself, however, is in the landscape, i.e., it is ultimately determinable only within
immediate oral tradition. I must be situated in the proper horizon and there
must be somebody with immediate, orally transmitted knowledge, who must say
to me: here is the Greenwich observatory. As a matter of fact, what he would
have to say is: the Greenwich observatory is here. For what is inquired after is
the Greenwich observatory in this case. Thus the geographical concept is linked
to a landscape impression. At the same time, however, the location in the land¬
scape is defined by its geography. To anyone entering a landscape which he
knows only geographically, the landscape will be determined from the point of
view of geography. The general referential meaning of any particular within the
horizon becomes manifest only by breaking through the horizon.
6. The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1.
7. Cf. Straus: “Ueber die Formen des Raeumlichen,” Neruenarzt, 3, 1930.
8. Binswanger: “Das Raumproblem in der Psychopathologie,” Z. Neur., 145,
1933; also: Grundformen und Erkenntnis Menschlichen Daseins. Zurich, 1942.
9. Compare schizophrenic murders.
10. Asceticism originally meant exercise, particularly gymnastic exercise; it
stands between physis and learning.
11. Cf. Goldstein: “Ueber Zeigen und Greifen,” Nervenarzt, 1931.
12. In anatomy, as in geography, there are cartographic charts and atlases.
13. Cf. Petermann: Das Gestaltproblem in der Psychologie. Leipzig, 1931.
H. Traditional Psychology of Space and Time
1. Handwoerterbuch d. medizinischen Psychologie, p. 559, Leipzig, 1930.

2. James: Psychology, New York, Holt, 1902. pp. 12, 14.
3. Kuelpe: Vorlesungen ueber Psychologie, 162. Leipzig, 1920.
4. Ibid.
5. Cf. Senden: Raum- und Gestaltauffassung bei operierten Blindgeborenen.
Leipzig, 1932.
6. Berkeley: Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, §46.
7. Ibid., §92. Berkeley knew of Molineux’ Treatise of Dioptrics, 1690, where
this possibility was first discussed.
8. The reference is to Chesseldon’s remarks in the Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society of London, 1728.
9. Senden, p. 267.
10. Ibid., p. 299.
11. Wittmann: Arch. Psychol., 47.
12. Goldstein and Gelb: Z. Psychol., 83.
13. Ahlmann: Arch. Psychol., 46.
14. Senden, p. 278.
15. Ibid., 274.
16. Ibid., 276.
17. Berkeley, §96.
18. Senden, p. 19.
19. Ibid., p. 11.
20. Ibid., p. 12.
21. Ibid., p. 13.
22. Ibid., p. 31.
412 Notes
23. Ibid., p. 31.

24. Ibid., p. 20f.
25. Ibid., p. 278.
26. Neither does Hering’s concept of "visual space” entirely free sensing from
the subordination to cognition.
27. Ebbinghaus, p. 65.
28. So also does Ebbinghaus himself.
29. Cf. below, Part IV, chapter L, section a.
30. Benussi: Psychologie der Zeitauffassung, p. 4. Heidelberg, 1913.
31. In his last publications W. Stern has himself critically evaluated his earlier
writings. The concept of presence time in Hoenigswald’s Denkpsychologie has
not been affected by his criticism. Hoenigswald’s theory has indeed decisively ad¬
vanced the understanding of time.
32. Psychology has not seriously taken into consideration the modifications in
the notion of time and space as put forth both in physics and philosophy. Inso¬
far as psychology pretends to be a natural science it should at least have at¬
tempted to familiarize itself with the new steps physics has taken in this regard;
this would also have brought it into contact with the concepts of space and time
in modern philosophy and would have forced it at least to consider them. If we
follow Gent’s presentation, we find “the decisive impulse toward a new con¬
ceptual revolution with regard to space-time in mathematical physics” already in
Lobatschevsky’s investigations of 1829. The next hundred years flowed tracelessly
over the psychology of time. And the modern philosophy of space and time
(Bergson, Volkert, Scheler, Husserl, Heidegger, Spengler) has until now influ¬
enced only a few researchers, but has had hardly any effect upon psychological
theory as a whole. W. Gent presents a historical, critical and analytic survey of
the philosophy of space and time in his two volume work (Bonn, 1926 and 1930),
wherein he also thoroughly appraises twentieth-century philosophy. In his book
Das Problem der Zeit he devotes a separate chapter to Klages’ philosophy of time,
which he had hitherto overlooked. But he has still not taken psychopathology
into account. E. Minkowski, strongly influenced by Bergson, discusses the phe¬
nomenology of time and then treats in detail of psychopathological problems of
time (Le Temps Vecu, Paris, 1933).
I. Sense-Certainty
1. We might perhaps mention the expression as used here does not entirely
correspond to the meaning Heidegger gives it in Sein und Zeit.
2. Descartes, Principles I 66, 68ff.; II, 2.
3. Cf. Dilthey’s paper “Beitraege zur Loesung der Frage nach dem Ursprung
unseres Glaubens an die Realitaet der Aussenwelt und seinem Recht.” Ges.
Werke V, Leipzig-Berlin, 1924.
4. Z. Neur., 6, 1912, and Allgemeine Psychopathologie, 2nd ed. Berlin. This
work of Jaspers has called forth a great number of papers concerning normal and
pathological perception. Cf. also Joh. Stein and Mayer-Gross: "Die Pathologie der
Wahrnehmung,” Handbuch des Geisteskrankheiten, Bd. I, Berlin, 1928, and the
extensive study by C. Schneider: “Ueber Sinnentrug” Z. Neur., 131, 137, 1931.
5. Principles II, 2.
6. Jaspers: Allgemeine Psychopathologie, Berlin, p. 59f.
7. Kant: Critique of Judgment, §9.
8. Cf. P. Schroeder: "Ueber Halluzinationen,” Nervenarzt, 133. Cf. also G.
Schorch’s report from the clinic in Leipzig: “Zur Theorie der Halluzination,”
NOTES
413
Leipzig, 1934; as opposed to these, cf. the contribution of Mayer-Gross and J.

Stein; “Pathologie der Wahrnehmung,” in Handbuch der Geisteskrankeiten, Bd.
I. Berlin, 1928, and Mayer-Gross: “Ueber Halluzinationen,” in Nervenarzt, 1931.
9. Herder: Vom Erkennen und Empfinden in der Menschlichen Seele, 1778.
10. Cf. my paper on “Die Formen des Raeumlichen,” Nervenarzt, 1930. Also:
“Aesthesiology and Hallucinations” in Existence, Rollo May, et al., eds., New
York, Basic Books, 1958.
11. Schroeder, P.: Nervenarzt, 1933.
12. Cf. Binswanger, L.: “Heraklits Auffassung der Menschen,” Antike, 11, 1935.
It should be pointed out that the sense of the term “private world” implies a
world in which something is lacking.
13. Minkowski, in the last chapter of his book (Le Temps Vecu, Paris, 1933)
deals with the relation between hallucinations and experienced space. Minkow¬
ski speaks of a “bright” and a “dark” space. Cf., also F. Fischer: “Zur Klinik und
Psychologie des Raumerlebens,” Schweiz. Arch. Neur., 31, 1933, and “Ueber die
Wandlungen des Raums im Aufbau der schizophrenen Erlebniswelt,” Nervenarzt,
1934.
J. Development of the Theme Through the Phenomenon of Gliding
1. Katz, D.: Der Aufbau der Tastwelt, Leipzig, 1925, p. 67.

2. Cf. chapter IV, B, 4 for a discussion of the relation between sensing and
vital freedom.
3. Cf. the medical history of Julie Weber in v. Gebsattel’s paper "Zur Psy-
chopathologie der Phobien,” Nervenarzt, 1935.
4. Cf. Feuchtwanger, E.: “Koerpertonus und Aussenraum,” Arch f. Psychiatrie,
100, 1933; also H. M. Fischer: “Die Orientierung im Raume,” Handbuch der
normalen und pathologischen Physiologie, Bd. 15, 2. Berlin, 1931.
5. The shortening of the phantom arm is an expression of the constricted
range of extent; thus leg phantoms are not so frequently felt as being shortened
(as in cases where both legs have been amputated) because where the amputa¬
tion takes place on only one side the person’s range of extent in relation to the
ground remains unchanged.
K. The Spectrum of the Senses
1. The rare cases of anosognosia illustrate the degree this alienation may
attain under pathological conditions.
2. In the neurological investigation of sensibility and in all sense-physiologi¬
cal determinations of threshold it is not sensing which is investigated. Rather,
the reactions and statements of patients and experimental subjects assist the in¬
vestigator in judging the proper functioning of the organs. Though containing
incomplete or inadequate information as to the contents of their experience, the
statements of those examined can assist in this way as long as a definite methodi¬
cal order is maintained. Actually, in the usual tests on patients who are resting
and expectantly observing themselves the content of sensing is altered and at the
same time reduced to the pattern of the scratch-reflex. The surface of the body
becomes a bodily surface, the “where from” of touch is changed into the “where”
of contact. Now the surface of the body can be unrolled into one plane like the
surface of a globe when it is projected into a map. On such a map the individual
places stimulated by small objects are marked out in a planimetric way. The
contact loses its directional significance, which cannot subsequently be recovered
414 Notes
by a concept like that of “postural schema” (Head). But the forehead points
forward and the back points backward in a stereometric directional whole.
3. Hamlet, III, 4.
4. Herder interpreted the German word for sensing, Empfmden as In-fmden
(in-finding) , i.e., in-sich-finden (finding within oneself), like the word innewer-
den (to realize something, become aware of). That the words Empfindlichkeit
(sensibility) and Empfndsamkeit (sensitiveness) may mean the ability to be
hurt seem to argue for Herder’s interpretation. Even more clear, and not limited
to the contact of touching, is the linguistic connection between Fuehlen and
Gefuehl, between “to feel” and “feelings” and between “to touch” and “touching.”
In thus referring to sensory experience, language fits in with common experience
and arrives at the same interpretation of the phenomena, transcending linguistic
and national borders.
5. Cf. the “Excursus” in G. Simmel’s Soziologie, Leipzig, 1908.
6. The event-character of the acoustic is based on the contrast of noise and
silence, on the emerging from and return into silence. Because silence, understood
phenomenologically, can be heard, there is no difficulty relating the phenomenon
of sound to the nature of sound. But things are quite different from the stand¬
point of physiology. If the heard sound is considered to be entirely dependent on
the stimulus, silence must be understood as the absence of stimuli. Silence, like
all other phenomenal modi of emptiness, such as darkness, must be thought of
as a sensory vacuum, as nothingness. The attempt to relate the hearing of silence
to ent-otic stimuli is more of an evasion than a solution of the problem. It
would be simpler to ascribe to the brain an activity peculiar to it which is inter¬
rupted and modified by stimuli. Such a notion seems to be substantiated by the
findings of electroencephalography. The assumption that the brain registers only
stimuli and stores their traces simply follows from a projection of the psychologi¬
cal-genetic hypothesis of the “white paper” upon the cerebrum.
7. In regard to the linguistic relation between hearing and obeying, cf.
Straus, E.: “Aesthesiology.”
L. The Spatial and Temporal Form of Sensing
1. Lange, J.: "Fingeragnosie und Agraphie,” Mschr. Psychiatr., 76, 1930.

2. The rejection of objective spatio-temporal forms has already been begun
in the writings of Goldstein and Gelb, v. Weizaecker, Minkowski, Uexkuell, Buy-
tendijk, Binswanger, F. Fischer, Gebsattel, Straus, and others. Together with and
prior to these works in biology and psychopathology mention must be made of
the philosophers Bergson, Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, O. Becker, Cassirer,
Spengler, and Klages.
3. Lisser, H.: “Ueber unseren Glauben an die Realitaet einer Ausenwelt ”
Z. f. Psychol., 128, 1933.
4. Cf. my reference to the modification of distance under hypnosis; in the
report of my lecture published in Zbl. Neur., 64, 1932, 72Iff. In this address I first
presented the problem of distance in a manner corresponding to the above.
5. Stem, W.: “Raum und Zeit als personale Dimensionen,” Address to the
10th International Congress of Psychologists, Copenhagen, 1932.
6. Whether and in what manner a combination of both temporal systems is
possible will not be discussed here. Important contributions to the problem of the
relations between objective time and presence time can be found in Hoenigs-
wald’s Denkpsychologie, particularly the last chapter.
NOTES
415
7. Cf. Schiller: “Zerstreute Bemerkungen ueber verschiedene aesthetische

Gegenstaende,” first published in 1793 in Thalia.
8. The frame separates the space of the picture from the space of the sur¬
rounding wall surface. In the same way, the frame of the stage or the podium as
the base of the stage separates the stage from the space of the audience. The
space of the stage is a purely perceptual space. The cothurnus raised the actor of
the Greek drama above the communicative space and put him, as it were, upon
a pedestal. Cothurnus and mask efface the individual personality.
9. Cf. also Goldstein, K.: “Ueber Zeigen und Greifen,” Nervenarzt, 1931.
10. Weyl, H.: Das Kontinuum. Berlin, Springer, 1918.
■
GvQ-
Name Index
Ahlmann, 335 Epicurus, 221

Albertotti, 338
Aristotle, 94, 268-9, 300, 318 Foerster, O., 212-13, 214
Augustine, St., 272, 316 France, A., 145
Freud, S., 16, 163, 272-4
Bain, A., 253-4 Froebes, J., 13, 295-6, 347
Beethoven, 378
Benussi, V., 348, 349 Galileo, 300, 302
Bergmann, G. v., 110 Gassendi, P., 11
Bergson, H., 144-5, 349 Gelb, A., 335
Berkeley, G., 92, 205, 208-9, 213, Gilson, E., 190
335. 337’ 34i Goethe, 110, 372
Bethe, A., 262 Goldstein, K., 335
Binswanger, L., 323 Guardi, F., 321
Bohr, N„ 303
Boring, E. G., 108 Harvey, W., 283
Boyle, R., 140 Head, Sir Henry, 142
Breughel, P., 339 Hebb, D. O., 118-21
Heidegger, M., 284
Calderon, 273 Heisenberg, W., 304
Columbus, 29 Helmholtz, H., 219
Copernicus, 315 Herbart, J. F., 163
Herder, J. G., 142
Democritus, 162, 221 Hering, E., 343
Descartes, R., 3-25 passim, 53-4, 58, Hobbes, T., 11, 272-3
106, 107, 189-91, 207-9, 239, Hull, C. L., 113, 117
268-71, 281-2, 308, 343, 353-4, Humboldt, W., 142
393 Hume, D., 17, 19-21, 92, 95, 221-2,
Driesch, H., 192, 294 223, 369
Husserl, E., 177, 182, 230
Ebbinghaus, H., 219-20, 260
Eccles, J. C., 106 Ischlondsky, N. E., 67
Eddington, S. A., 184
Ehrenfels, C. v., 310 James, W., 12-13, 19, 254-5, 258-9,
Eisler, R., 371 333> 347-8, 349
417
418 Name Index
Jaspers, K., 353-4 Pfander, A., 12

Pi^ron, H., 35
Kant, I., 197 Plato, 163, 313
Katz, D., 209-10, 212, 363-4 Ptolemy, 299
Kloos, G., 214
Kliiver, H., 147-8 Schiller, F., 378
Koehler, W., 61, 304-7 Schiller, P. V., 214-15
Kries, J. v., 347, 380 Schliemann, H., 157
Schroeder, P., 357-8
Lange, J„ 379 Schubert, F., 134
Lashley, K. S., 106, 159 Senden, M. v., 335-9
Leonardo da Vinci, 326 Sherrington, Sir Charles, 106
Lewin, K., 124 Skinner, B. F., 113, 118
Lipps, T., 347-9 Spence, K. W., 108, 110, 113, 124
Locke, J., 13-17, 92, 109, 221, 286-7, Spinoza, B., 46, 158-9
356 Stern, W., 348
Lotze, R. H., 59, 241, 380 Stevens, S. S., 141, 147-8
Lucretius, 221 Szekely, 215
Mach, E„ 17, 334, 349 Tolman, E. C., 113, 116-17

Marie, P., 142 Tschermak, A. v., 297
Minkowski, E., 271
Mowrer, O. H., 113, 117 Ungerer, E., 294
Muller, G. E., 3, 46-7
Muller, J., 49 Velasquez, R., 326
Vermeer, J., 321
N6, Lorente de, 157
Novalis, 205, 370-1 Watson, J., 64, 113, 145, 223
Werner, H., 209-11, 214
Pavlov, I. P., 24-73 passim, 77, 79, Wertheimer, M., 309, 310
105, 106, 113, 126, 134, 146-7, Wittmann, J., 335
157> *93> 219, 3°4 Wundt, W., 108
*Qz~>
Subject Index
abstraction, 87, 92, 378, 389 Babinski reflex, 149

geometrical, 342 becoming, 19, 25, 53, 57, 59, 92, 93,
adaptation, 114 95, 96, 102, 208, 249, 250, 269,
adumbrations, 177, 230, 278 277, 298, 308, 310, 318, 333,
afferent process, 113, 114, 115, 126, 346, 35b 355- 366> 38<>b 384,
228, 372 385. 395
alcoholics, 359-60 elimination of, 95
alienation, 358 and permanence, 282-3
amorphousness, 311 and self-motion, 267
anatomy, 35, 38, 50, 54, 181, 212, and sound, 375
214, 283, 290, 294, 296 behaviorism, 64, 110, 386-7
anger, 84 and language theory, 141-7
animal spirits, 9, 55, 239, 26g, 271 being, 22, 375
animism, 121 and non-being, 22 (see also ex¬
istence; ontology)
anthropology, 23, 107, 191
billiard ball analogy, 123-6
materialistic, 145
biology, 35, 38, 50, 237, 269, 311
anthropomorphism, 57-8, 78, 186,
blindness, 335-40
300-!, 303
blood circulation, 283
anti-intellectualism, 140
boredom, 279
anxiety neurosis, 365
Boyle’s law, 140
appearance, 22, 36, 39, 189-90, 201,
brain, 8, 12, 36, 38, 69, 291, 295, 388
272 as “encephelon,” 183
Archemedian point, 189-91 as "globalisator,” 181
asceticism, 327 as machine, 106-7, 183-6
associationism, 45-6 as mediator, 179-86 passim
astronomy, 154, 156, 303 as observed and observing, 158-
atomism, 19-25 passim, 35, 38, 46, 162, 185-6
54, 59, 65, 86, 95, 182, 204-5, and thinking, 105-86 passim (see
213, 220-2, 224, 262, 336, 381 also central nervous system;
and motion, 254-6 cerebral cortex; cerebrum)
autism, 111, 220 brightness, 215-16, 292
automatons, 107, 205
Averroism, psychological, 111 calcarina, 158, 175, 296
awakeness, 272-89 calculating machines, 152
4i9
420 Subject Index
Cartesian theory, 107, 161, 281-2, 219, 229, 231, 277, 292, 306-7,
346, 356 333> 352. 376> 384
and awakeness, 272-3 communicability, 378
and modern psychology, 3-25 communication, 108, 110, 152, 173-
passim, 189-91, 207-9, 239 178, 196, 200-1, 295, 330, 341,
of movement, 239, 268-71 355‘6> 371
and ontology of ability 268-71 alingual, 196-9
and Pavlov, 24, 55, 102 and awakeness, 288-9
of sensation, 5-12, 189-91, 207-9 disturbances of, 358-61
causality, 49-54 passim, 121, 172-3, prelinguistic, 342
227, 240, 255, 261, 292, 386 and sensing, 202-31, 331, 350, 362,
vs. contiguity, 114 372
central nervous system, 24, 35, sympathetic, 213, 390 (see also
38, 41-53 passim, 58-69 passim, language; semantics; words)
97, 125, 126, 131, 152, 158, conditioned reflex, 24-5, 70, 77, 114,
168-9, 172, i74» 228, 241, 246, 227
252, 291, 296 and emptiness, 98-102
paths in, 47, 60, 68-9, 92, 221-2, formation of, 65-7, 89-91, 102
227, 228, 254 generalization and differentiation
Pavlovian theory of, 60-2, 64 of, 67-70
and stimuli, 179-83 as signal, 61, 68, 77-102
structure of, 91-2 theory of, 29-73
centrifugal processes, 54-5, 58, 60, and time, 64-5, 85-9 passim
253. 264, 386 transition in, 79-83, 90, 95, g6
centripetal processes, 24, 54-5, 59, configuration, 114, 163, 183-4, 226-7,
60, 171, 253, 264, 386 286, 311 (see also gestalt)
cerebral cortex, 31, 61, 118, 158, 162 consciousness, 6-7, 12-13, 14, 36, 46,
cerebral processes, 161, 185, 348 49. 5°> 52. 106-7, 162-3, 203,
cerebrum, 31, 51, 60, 69, 71 207, 209-10, 291
change (kinesis), 318, 376-7 data of, 172, 179, 180, 372
charades, analogy of, 150 as res cogitans, 5
chemistry, 35, 38, 41, 50, 54, 178, self-, 272, 287, 351-3
293. 294 sensations “within” and “with¬
chiliasm, 39-40 out,” 240-7
Christianity, 23 unity of, 52-3
clarity, 216 conversation, 101
co-becoming, 385 and tonality, 196-7
cogito sum (Descartes), 17, 190 corporeality, 6, 281-4, 288, 353, 354
cognition, 5, 6, 11-12, 19, 49 Cord’s organ, 41, 43, 158
in animals, 194-6 cranium, 51
and sensing, 4, 23, 197, 218, 329, cybernetics, 152
35°> 393
as understanding, 200 (see also dance, 233, 239, 323
epistemology; knowing; knowl¬ death, 291
edge) depersonalization, 218, 328
color, 7, 40, 92, 167, 170, 193, 195, dichotomy (mind-body), 22, 107,
198, 203-6, 209, 210, 211, 215, 190, 282
SUBJECT INDEX 421
differentiation, 68-9, 85, 96, 203-6, epistemology, 22, 37, 39, 41-2, 107,
292. 356 313
and awakeness, 275-80, 285, 287- esthetics, 197, 389
288 evil, 23
of movements, 256-8 existence, 14-15, 22, 274, 280-1, 379
and signals, 78-98 passim, 135-6 experience, 15, 22, 45, 46, 64, 92,
ding-an-sich, 234 108-10, 126, 298, 355
direction, 298, 299, 378, 391 in awakeness and sleep, 276-8,
diseases, 290-1 213, 361
distance, 124, 164-6, 182, 205-6, 283, and distance, 164-6
297> 298, 303, 345, 378, 381, of everyday life, 183, 191, 219,
383-5. 39i-2, 394 224, 234, 303, 318, 368, 374-5,
and sensing, 379-86 379
divisibility, 378 familiarity of, 86-7
dreams, 272-89 mechanist, 45-6, 91-2, 166-73
condensation in, 275 plurality of, 20-2, 54, 224
and stimuli, 179-85
sympathetic, 201-2, 208, 394
eating (feeding), 41, 57, 59, 66, 67, unity of, 46-9, 91, 202-6, 305-6
70, 77, 78, 89, 90, 96, 102, 126, experiencing (process), 50-1, 158,
283 164, 166-73, i79-85> 203, 298,
efferent processes, 113, 114, 115, 228 3°9> 310> 394
ego (Ich), 6, 8, 13, 14, 16-17, 95- and sensing, 201-2
205, 288-9, 292-3, 297-8, 388 experimentation, 24-5, 29-37 passim,
and relations to world, 53, 161-2, 39-45 passim, 48, 50, 54-6, 63,
165, 230, 285, 356, 370 (see 66, 70, 72, 78-9, 83-4, 89-91, 96,
also self) 98, 108, 110, 126-7, 130-1, 134,
electric shock, 90 137, x59> 166-78 passim, 193,
empiricism, 19-21, 37, 49, 61, 109, 210-11, 292-3, 295, 309-10, 334,
110, 165, 233-4, 334, 342 (see 362, 366-7
also experimentation; observa¬ exactness in, 44-5
tion) limitations of, 179
emptiness, 98-102, 180, 221, 341, Pavlovian, 29-73 passim, 96-7
378, 382-3 expression, 200-1, 375, 379
engram, 126 facial, 318, 358
environment, 43, 44-5, 52, 80, 82-3, motor, 358
96-7, 115-16, 201, 232, 262, 265, extramundaneity, 336, 337, 342, 343,
294, 296, 299, 303 353. 380
as “encircling field,” 122-39, 183-
185, 231-3
in laboratory, 96-7 familiarity, 86-7, g2-6
as sensory field, 256-7, 311-12 family of man, 325-8
(see also experimentation) feedback, 126
epiphenomenalism, 8, 51-2, 54, 99, feeding, see eating
101, 172, 180, 182, 214, 241, feeding center, 55, 67, 69
253, 388 “feeding reflex,” 71
critique of, 289-312 field of action, 241-7
422 Subject Index
form, 229, 318, 359, 360 (see also images

configuration; gestalt) in dreams, 278, 285
fun, 279 related to goals, 266-7
kinesthetic, 259, 260-1, 295, 296
generalization, 67-70, 91-8, 126, 147 pictoriality of, 353
geometry, 165, 224, 286, 341, 380, reproduction vs. projection of,
39i 162-4
gestalt, 153, 310-11, 330 imagination, 5-6, 207, 240, 380
and amorphousness, 311-12 (see and perceiving, 353-7
also configuration; form; order) and subjective space, 354
gestalt psychology, 21, 35 impressions, 9, 18-19, 20-1, 59, 95-6,
and epiphenomenalism, 304-12 162-3, *76, 219> 357
gliding, 362-7 content of, 206-9
goals, 240, 261, 264, 265, 266-8, 285, continuity of, 180, 222, 226
33°’ 376- 383> 385> 386-8, 391 epicritic, 213
God, 7, 13, 14, 21, 22, 205, 209, 268- protopathic, 213
269, 271 “in between,” problem of, 88-91,
gravity, field of 252, 253, 283, 284, 102, 193, 194, 305
3°° indifferentiation, 85, 214
and signals, 78-84, 98-9
habit, 192-3, 203, 220, 223, 225 individualism, 17-18
hallucinations, 198, 218, 350, 355, in Pavlov’s dogs, 40-1
357-61 inhibition, 64, 67, 213, 220
hashish 198, 218 intentionality, 49-54 passim
hearing, 140, 203-6, 233, 293, 372, irradiation, 69, 91-8
373. 374. 377-8. 382 (see also isomorphism, 158, 166, 173
sound)
heuristic hypothesis, 32 knowing, 6, 11, 23, 24-5, 49, 194-6,
hiatuses, 89-91 200-2, 289, 316, 380
histology, 290-1 and sensing, 197, 201-2, 207, 234,
Hixon Symposium (1948), 106 3i2-i5, 317, 329, 331-3, 340,
horizon, 319 350 (see also cognition; epis¬
temology)
hunger, 67, 90
knowledge
nature of, 314-15, 316
id, 16
universality of, 350
ideas, 6-7, 10, 15, 20, 205, 335
“clear and distinct” (Descartes),
language, 36-7, 45-6, 81, 88, 95, 111,
22-3, 208, 239
138-57. !59> i77-8. 225-6. 250,
as innate (Locke), 14, 287
290, 308, 313-14, 337, 365, 373,
Platonic, 163
393. 394
as “simple,” 16 and alingual communication,
illusion, 22, 23, 91-2, 205, 240, 357
i96-9
in dreams, 284-5 of dreams, 274
optical, 287 of everyday, 160, 361, 375
stroboscopic, 19, 309 and order, 317
SUBJECT INDEX
423
language—Continued mediator—Continued
in learning, 93-4, 145-7, *93- *94' sensory data as, 292-3
195. 314'15 medulla oblongata, 291
and science, 139-45 memory, 87, 143, 281, 378 {see also
as tone of voice, 196-7 remembering)
larynx, 140 mentalism, 120-1, 132
learning, 93-4, 106, 119, 125-6, 130- mescaline, 198, 218, 350, 358
131, 296 metaphysics, 10-11, 22-3, 32, 121,
and adaptation, 114 159> 190-h 269
in animals, 134-8, 192-3, 194 Cartesian, 268-71
expansive and constrictive, 192-4 Pavlovian, 37-44 (see also pre-
and habit, 192-3 scientific opinion)
and language, 145-7, *93 micro-macroscopic world, 181, 185,
of movements, 256-g, 262-4 232-3
and repetition, 227 mind, 9, 36, 106, 107, 205
of signals, 82, 193 as brain activity, 158
light, 7, 8, 40, 52, 160-1, 165, 168, morals, 11
175, 182, 198, 205, 207, 209, 303, “mosaic theory,” 60-2
370 (see also seeing) motion (movement), 10, 24, 53, 58,
limitation, 243, 251, 256, 378 84, 114, 115, 123, 134
locomotion (self-movement), 232, Aristotelian theory of, 268, 300
235, 239, 243, 248-71 passim, and awakeness, 272-89 passim
294, 296, 298, 339 Cartesian theory of, 268-71
logic, 22, 107, 285, 394 “living” vs. mechanical, 238-41,
243> 253-4, 257-8, 262-3, 264-6,
machine, 115, 260 289
brain as, 106-7, 183-6 physiology of, 253-4, 260
body as, 269 relativity of, 299-304
mastication, 55 and sensing, 54-6, 189-395 passim
mathematics, 39, 48, 106, 113, 150, starting point and goal of, 266-
159, 164, 182, 184, 224, 237, 268
269, 271, 286, 299-300, 324, 333, terminology of, 294-5
34i. 390. 393 motor processes, 253-4, 260-1, 262,
measurement, 110, 182, 183, 293, 264, 289, 296, 298, 304
300-3, 346, 378 “motoric discharge,” 255, 258
mechanics, 11, 23, 24-5, 38, 45, 54-5, motorium, 24-5, 54, 58, 115, 130,
163, 238 i33. 235. 275
mechanism, theories of, 9, 24-5, 36, muscular function, 55, 58, 59, 114,
53, 58, 118-19, 121 115, 119, 126, 132, 140, 175,
and memory, 87, 143 184, 204, 232, 239, 253-4, 264-5,
Pavlovian, 37-45, 48-9, 61, 63 (see 293-5- 340. 372
also behaviorism; objective psy¬ music, 56-7, 79, 98-100, 225, 233,
chology; physiology) 256-8, 279-80, 310, 323-5, 373,
mediator 375-6, 378
body as, 245
brain as, 179-86 passim nativists, 342, 348
424 Subject Index
nature order, 316-17

Cartesian theory of, 269 and disorder, 307-8
family of, 325-8 and language, 317 (see also form;
and human destiny, 389 gestalt)
laws of, 140, 237, 303, 355 orientation, 390-2
ontological principle of, 393 “orientation reflexes,” 63-4, 85-8
as physiologically interpreted, 183 other/otherness, 180, 230-1, 282-3,
sounds of, 323-5, 375 285, 355-6, 391
neurophysiology, 38-44 passim, 70,
152, 159, 183-6, 238-9, 248, 276 pain, 9, 18, 40-1, 66-7, 72, 90-1, 99,
(see also central nervous sys¬ 126, 198, 204, 208, 210, 212,
tem; physiology) 287, 327-8, 354, 365-6, 373
neutral situation, 80-2, 85-6, 89, 90 as cognitive function, 207
noise, 213-14, 280, 310, 375 painting, 317, 321-3, 326
nominalism, 92 palate, 140
non-being, 22, 221-2, 298 particularization, 93-5, 97, 308, 388,
numerability, 378 390
numbers, 142-3 vs. singularity, 224, 225
pathology, 183, 198-9, 214, 218, 263,
objective psychology, 31, 36, 38, 41, 29°. 357-61
43, 44, 46, 54, 57-9, 86, 97-8, pedagogy, 32
105‘7> 293, 298, 344 perceiving, 4-5, 13, 22, 50, 106,
basic rules of, 112-16 186
critique of, 105-86 passim, 223 and sensing, 316-31
objectivity, 125, 210-12, 213, 238, perception, 8, 19-20, 24-5, 94, 108,
35b 378. 384-5 199-200
objects, 20, 22, 125, 160, 161, 211, and the factual, 328-31
222, 224, 249, 285, 332, 394 and objective medium, 316-18,
and function of brain, 179-83 355
and words, 141-53, 154, 207-9, and sensation, 328, 362
375 (see also things) and starting point, 266-8
observation, 31-2, 38, 39, 109, 183 peristalsis, 283
and brain, 158-62, 183 permanence, 280, 282-3, 374
and observer, 138-9, 184-5, 213, perspective, 202, 230, 298, 343
246-7, 299-304 passim phantasy, 284
observers phenomenal world, 53, 185
and dreams, 272-83 passim as eliminated by objective psychol¬
extramundaneity of, 336-7, 380 ogy, 40-5, 180-1 (see also ap¬
interchangeability of, 173-8, 220 pearance)
and objects, 179, 299-300 phenomenology, 255, 259
olfactory nerves, 58, 72 (see also phoneme, 146
smell) photons, 182
ontology, 22, 200, 268-71, 274 physicalism, 153
operationalism, 110 and physics, 298-304
optics, physiological, 245, 283, 290 physics, 35-6, 39, 41, 43, 45, 50, 53,
(see also retina; seeing) 54, 59, 60, 106-13 passim, 165,
SUBJECT INDEX
425
182-3, 203, 237, 248, 259, 292-3, psychology—Continued

298-3°4> 3o8> 3i8> 38i> 393 of space and time, 52, 331-50 (see
and movement, 259, 271, 282 also objective psychology)
physiognomy, 201, 216-17, 378 psychophysical correspondences, 45-
physiology, 31, 32, 45, 46, 51, 52, 54, 49, 107, 164, 185-6, 227-8, 300,
59, 60, 67, 78, 91, 95, 97-8, 116,
336> 343> 353
117, 158, 164-5, 204, 213, 247, psychosis, 218, 358-61
252, 272, 286, 2go, 296-8, 369
and brain, 183-6 rat in maze, 126-8, 132-5
and epiphenomenalism, 304-12 rationalism (metaphysical), 37-40,
passim 269
and motion, 252-4, 282, 293-6, 304 reality, 353, 356, 357-61
and repetition, 227-8 reflex, see conditioned reflex; orien¬
of senses, 69, 292-3, 295 tation reflex; stimuli; trace
and trace reflexes, 70-3 (see also reflex
central nervous system; objec¬ relativity, 299-304 passim
tive psychology; neurophysiol¬ remembering, 23, 106, 156, 277-8
ogy) (see also memory)
pineal gland, 271 repetition, 125-6, 222-3, 225, 227,
pleasure, 99, 198 255* 256, 258, 261, 318 (see
plurality, 19-20, 22, 149, 202-6, 222, also habit; stimuli)
224, 286, 336-7 res cogitans, 5, 10, 14, 16-17, 189,
poetry, 226 191, 270, 282
positivism, 110, 117, 123, 156, 369 res extensa, 5, 10, 14, 189, 191, 282
possessive relations, 52-4, 185, 284- rest (vs. motion), 299-302, 309-10
285, 288, 368-9 retina, 41, 43, 44, 48, 51, 58-9, 128-
prediction, 153-7, J58 129, 132, 158, 160, 162, 164-5,
prelinguistic process, 197, 285 169, 232, 241, 296, 306, 386
prescientific opinion, 3-5, 92, 94, reveries, 284
102, 238-4, 253, 255, 264, 286 rhythm, 226, 377
and metaphysical basis of science, Rorschach test, 167
10-11
and mind-body relation, 6-12, saliva, 30, 33, 41, 48, 54, 56, 72, 98
15-16 schizophrenia, 358-9, 361
primary qualities, 42-4, 92, 182-3, science, 22, 35, 39, 48, 58, 92, 107-12,
234 160, 191, 253, 264, 286, 293,
psychiatry, 138, 323, 372 (see also 394-5
pathology) and everyday life, 219, 303, 374-
psychology, 35, 49, 60-1, 92, 94, 116, 375
!53-7< i85. 209, 222, 235-9 and language, 37, 139-45
and Cartesian philosophy, 3-25 laws of, 140-1, 237, 303
passim, 189-91, 207-9, 239 and objective psychology, 50,
Pavlovian, 24-73 passim 107-12, 183-6
and physiology, 13, 21, 31, 34, 36, and Pavlov, 32-7 passim, 62
38-45, 203, 236, 246-7, 248, 276, and prediction, 153-7
290, 298, 349, 388 and scientists, 109, 374-5
426 Subject Index
secondary qualities, 6-7, 15, 249, 356 sensing—Continued

and objective psychology, 40-2, land perceiving, 316-31, 355
43-4, 180, 182-3 as physiological process, 45-9
seeing/sight, 162, 178-82, 185, 203-6, passim
229, 233, 285, 291-7 passim, vs. sensation, 5-19 passim, 289, 296
308, 359> 37x"4> 382 (see also and spatial-temporal relations,
retina) 249'52> 344-5> 347- 352* 379;95
self, 52-3, 248-9, 378 unity of, 202-6, 219-31 passim,
and relation to world, 83, 86-7, 233-6
94-5, 110, 161-2, 200-13, 216-19, sensorium, 24-5, 54, 235, 276, 357,
230, 232, 234, 244-7, 25°> 269> 368
298, 341, 352, 365-6, 369-70, 372, sensory certainty, 349-50, 351-62
382
sensory data/experience, 12, 15, 23,
self-movement, see locomotion 45, 190-1, 203-5, 234, 250, 256,
semantics, 14, 18, 36, 139-57 (see 292-3> 3°3> 3X7- 33°> 332, 372,
also language; words) 375- 385
sensations, 5-19, passim, 24-5, 38, 46-7, and awakeness, 283-8
50, 53-6, 84, 191, 207-8, 246, 294 content of, 206-9
immanence of, 206-9, 240-7, 352, co-existence of, 350-1
393 as signal, 78-9
kinesthetic, 240, 252-3, 260, 334-6 sensory organs, 8, 34, 41, 50, 51, 53,
localization of, 51-2, 102, 207, 210, 99. x58, i79- 204, 214, 253, 271,
291, 296 290, 292-3, 295-7, 362, 37°> 372
and perceptions, 332-3, 362 (see also hearing; seeing; smell;
and stimuli, 50, 207-8 taste; touch)
senses, 367-79 sensualism, 11, 14, 109, 163, 284,
physiology and psychology of, 287, 380
289-304, 380 sentence, 140-1
sensibility, 218 as example of unity, 45-6, 57, 143,
cutaneous, 210 227, 228
epicritic, 210, 212-13 sequentiality, 226, 376, 394
protopathic, 210 signals, 61, 68, 77-103, 152
sensing (Empfnden), 3-4, 11, 12-19, and differentiated situation, 78-
22, 23, 37, 49-50, 54, 89, 339 84, 86-91 passim
as “being alive,” 17-18, 25, 194-5, and indifferent (neutral) situa¬
236 tion, 78-84
and communication, 202-31, 331 material constitution of, 81-3
35°. 383 as “middle link,” 77-80, 88-9
content of, 207-9, 345-6, 356 and orientation reflex, 85-7
as gerundive, 4, 18, 58 signs, 79, 115, 129, 133, 152-3, 195,
and hallucinations, 357-61 347
and knowing, 4, 197, 201 -2, 207, essence of, 149-52
234 > 3!2-i5> 3X7> 329- 331-3» vs. stimuli, 139-57, 207-9
340 - 35° silence, 98-102, 133, 310
and motion. 54-6, 59, x89-395 singularity, 219-31, 285-6, 309-12,
passim 376
SUBJECT INDEX
427
skepticism, 189-91 as signals, 77-102

sleep, 34, 272-85 passim stimuli—Continued
smell, 7, 40, 58, 72, 193, 204, 215, vs. signs, 139-57
219, 220, 252, 333, 371, 378, 382 and S-R formula, 122-39 passim,
social behavior, 173-4 292, 366 (see also conditioned
sociology, 288, 378 reflex)
of senses, 372 subjectivism, 210-11, 296-8
solipsism, 15-16, 53, 110, 163, 178 “substantive parts,” (James), 12,
soul, 8, 13, 23, 59, 107, 287, 354 163
sound, 7, 8, 40-1, 56-7, 58, 66, 68, symbiotic understanding, 194-6, 201
70, 72, 90-9 passim, 115, 175, synapse formation, 126, 133, 221-2,
J93> 195> 203-6, 210, 215, 227
219, 229, 252, 256-7, 310, 333, synaptic link, 55, 58, 69
342, 352, 357* 359’ 375-6’ 378*9 synchronization, 176
of nature and music, 323-5, 373, synesthesia, 204, 214-19, 233
376-7 synkinesis, 178
as sign, 152-3, 207-9
space, 40, 42-4, 51, 52, 54, 59, 60, tabula rasa, 221, 286-7
88, 110, 123, 162, 164-6, 182, tachistoscope, 167, 170-1
215, 223-4, 228, 241, 243, 250-1, taste, 7, 219, 220, 233, 378, 382
258, 265, 292, 331-46, 376, 378 technology, 321
geographic, 317-30 passim, 342, things, 19, 50, 162, 196, 361
344’ 349’ 359’ 36i> 366, 391 as atomized, 46, 182
as “here,” 249-52, 259, 266-8, 270, as finite, 21-2, 46, 317
279, 280, 283, 297, 329, 346, individuals as, 52-3 (see also ob¬
35°’ 356’ 376’ 381-2, 385, 388 jects)
-indifferent, 388-90 time, 19-24 passim, 33, 54, 70, 81,
landscape, 317-28 passim, 358-61, 85-8, 99-100, 110, 114, 128,
366
154-7, 181, 249-50, 269, 302, 349,
objective, 89, 202, 207, 241-2, 250,
376 378
’
259> 297-8, 317, 329, 346, 349-
atomism of, 19-24, 59, 65, 86,
350. 354’ 358 95, 102, 181, 202, 250, 259, 297-
subjective, 345-6, 354-5
298, 317, 349-50, 380-2, 394
sympathetic, 390
in awakeness and dreaming,
and time, 60, 115, 125, 166, 183,
186, 201-2, 248, 251, 259, 271, 277-9
contiguity vs. continuity of, 20-2,
299’ 339’ 346’ 348. 373’ 377 95
220, 222-3
totality of, 224, 243, 251-2, 268,
as “now,” 249-52, 259, 279, 297,
299
unity of, 182, 298-303, 390 347-8, 350, 356, 376, 382
stimuli, 31, 33-7, 42-3, 46-7, 50-1, objective and physical, 56, 86, 89,
54'5’ 58’ 59> 63-70 passim, 112- 95, 102, 181, 202, 250, 259, 297,
116, i2i, 176-7, 179, 214-19, 265, 298’ 317’ 349-5°’ 380-2, 394
279’ 298, 306 traditional psychology of, 346-50
vs. objects, 158-86, 207-9 unity of, 56-60, 95, 302-3, 390 (see
reinforcement of, 67, 69, 90, 227 also space)
428 Subject Index
togetherness, 178, 182, 222, 288-9, understanding, 194-6, 199-200

unity, 46-9, 202-6, 214, 219-31,
376
tone of voice, 196-7 233-6, 3°5-8, 376, 390
totality, 247-9, 249-52, 256 in dreams vs. awakeness, 277-8
touch, 205, 207-8, 212-13, 215, 219, vs. union, 304-9
229, 233, 334-46 passim, 363-4,

value, 149-50
369> 371‘3> 382
vector, 298
trace reflexes, 70-3, 98-102, 133
vertigo, 263
“transitive parts,” (James), 12
volition, 23, 331
translation, principle of, 45-9, 246,
and motion, 237, 254-6, 258, 261,
290, 292-3, 298, 300, 313
264-6, 270-1
trial and error, 257, 261
in Pavlov’s dogs, 43
tropism, 39
Weber-Fechner law, 366

uncertainty principle, 304 words, 139-57, 207-8, 216, 227, 313-
unconditioned reflex, 33, 35, 55, 314> 375- 377
61, 65, 67, 70, 78, 84, 88, 219 as equivalent stimuli, 147-8 (see
as “orientation” reflex, 63-4, 84 also language)
unconscious, 16 writing, 296, 365
DATE DUE
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The Primary World of Senses A Vindication of Sensory Experience by Erwin Straus, Jacob Needleman (Transl.)

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The Primary World of Senses A Vindication of Sensory Experience by Erwin Straus, Jacob Needleman (Transl.)

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NUNC COGNOSCO EX PARTE

A VINDICATION OF SENSORY EXPERIENCE

Erwin Straus, m.d.

Translated from the German by Jacob Needleman

THE FREE PRESS OF GLENCOE

COLLIER-MACMILLAN LIMITED, LONDON

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edge and the tolerant acceptance of psychological naivetes has

Parts of this translation were completed with the assistance of

Preface to the Second Edition (1956) vii

A. Introduction: The Dependence of Modern Psychology

Part I Critique of the Doctrine of Conditioned

(c) The Problem of Translation 45

C. Some Difficulties Confronting the Application of Pavlov’s

Part II Stimuli, Signs, and Signals

B. Resolution of the Difficulties 84

Part III Man Thinks, Not the Brain

B. Signs Are Not Stimuli 139

C. Stimuli Are Not Objects 158

Part IV Sensing and Movement Considered

B. Sensing Considered as a Mode of Communication 202

C. The Relationship Between Sensing and Moving 231

D. On Being Awake 272

E. Critique of Epiphenomenalism 289

2. SENSORY DATA MEDIATE BETWEEN PHYSICS AND

PHYSIOLOGY 3. HARMONIOUS FUNCTION AND PROPER

FUNCTION 4. THE DISCREPANCIES 5. PHYSICS REFUTES

(b) The Epiphenomenalism of Gestalt Psychology 304

F. The Difference Between Sensing and Knowing 312

G. The Difference Between Sensing and Perceiving 316

H. Traditional Psychology of Space and Time 331

J. Development of the Theme Through the Phenomenon of

K. The Spectrum of the Senses 367

L. The Spatial and Temporal Form of Sensing 379

A. Introduction: The Dependence

(a) Prescientific Opinion

the fateful gift—of rising above the sphere of sensory experience.

strive to arrange themselves into a system of the objectively authen¬

(b) Descartes’ Doctrine of Sensation

of consciousness—are therefore abysmally remote from the being of

formulation of pure thoughts, therefore, is not related to the func¬

Sensations, then, are “occasioned” by a stimulation of the sensory

to stimulation at different levels. Sensation and motion are two dif¬

and so we find there the models for a hypothesis of cerebral localiza¬

considers the mode of communication in sensing as wholly corre¬

sitive parts in the stream of consciousness and place sensing in con¬

Locke published his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The

—with certain limitations—that which is either useful or harmful,

iectT!>lethea“r^ienCei-0f ??CharjaCteristicS of the transcendental sub-

“I am certain that I am a thinking thing” (Sum certus me esse

ception. Impressions leave only physiological traces behind while

(d) The Atomistic Concept of Time

cannot have the characteristics of a continuum; for the discrete per¬

consider the impressions as states of other human or animal organ¬

are finite.22 If single moments exist independently from each other,

when we learn to grasp it in the manner in which it presents itself.

(e) Pavlov’s Theory of Conditioned