On Intelligence

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L. Reeve, 1871 - Knowledge - 542 pages

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Page 188 - ... the passage from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem. But the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously ; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process...
Page 188 - Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings...
Page 319 - ... he could form no judgment of their shape, or guess what it was in any object that was pleasing to him. He knew not the shape of anything, nor any one thing from another, however different in shape or magnitude : but upon being told what things were, whose form he before knew from Feeling, he would carefully observe them that he might know them again...
Page 187 - That this relation of physics to consciousness is invariable, so that, given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought or feeling might be inferred ; or, given the thought, or feeling, the corresponding state of the brain might be inferred.
Page 187 - ... for every fact of consciousness, whether in the domain of sense, of thought, or of emotion, a certain definite molecular condition is set up in the brain...
Page 188 - You may reply that many of the inferences of science are of this character ; the inference, for example, that an electric current of a given direction will deflect a magnetic needle in a definite way ; but the cases differ in this, that the passage from...
Page 58 - A whole ship's company was thrown into the utmost consternation by the apparition of a cook who had died a few days before. He was distinctly seen walking a-head of the ship, with a peculiar gait by which he was distinguished when alive, through having one of his legs shorter than the- other. On steering the ship towards the object, it was found to be a piece of floating wreck.
Page 188 - The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the consciousness of love, for example, be associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know when we love that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate that the motion is in the other; but the " WHY ? " would remain as unanswerable as before.
Page 321 - ... acquired by the use of her sight but very little knowledge of any forms, and was unable to apply the information gained by this new sense, and to compare it with what she had been accustomed to acquire by her sense of touch. When, therefore, the experiment was made of giving her a silver pencil case and a large key to examine with her hands ; she discriminated and knew each distinctly ; but when they were placed on the table, side by side, though she distinguished each with her eye, yet she could...
Page 83 - Now, conceivable connection between these two ideas in themselves, there was none. A little reflection, however, explained the anomaly. On my last visit to the mountain, I had met upon its summit a German gentleman, and though I had no consciousness of the intermediate and unawakened links between Ben Lomond and the Prussian schools, they were undoubtedly these, —the German, — Germany, — Prussia, —' and, these media being admitted, the connection between the extremes was manifest.

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