Brain and thought, by A. Binet, 1906

Reading report published in the Journal of Normal and Pathological Psychology, Volume II, 1906, p. 538.   See the original in Gallica

in: Studies on the nervous system (195) — Brain and thought, by A. Binet (Paris). Archives of psychology, n° 21-22, July-August 1906.

How does thought “make contact” with the brain? The habit is common to consider thought and the brain as two entirely heterogeneous things, and several metaphysical systems have started from this distinction; when we imagine the qualities or the spirit of one of our friends, we do not in fact think of his grayish brain and nippled.

But there is a simple contrast between thought and the brain, rather than heterogeneity. If our friend's head were transparent, we would we will remember his brain as well as his eyes, with pleasure. That the wall of the skull is opaque, this greatly strengthens our feeling of the heterogeneity of the brain and thought.

This heterogeneity, the parallelist system admits: for it, thought and brain are two absolutely distinct things, which function separately, without interfering or uniting; like between two racing horses who leave together at the starter's gesture, there is only a relationship between them simultaneity in time.

But the parallelism undoubtedly exaggerates the difference that there is between the brain and thought, the mental series and the physical series; when I looks at an object, my brain, which serves me for this perception, is a body as material as the object I am looking at: it is a different body, it is true, but no more different than those which can succeed one another in one of my perceptions. After looking at my table, I look at my dog; the difference between my table and my dog is not smaller, nor more large, it is made of the same order as the difference between one of these objects and my brain: therefore, if my thinking, in this example, consists to perceive an object, and if this object perception contains just as many matter that there is in my brain, we do not have the right to oppose brain to thought, and to say: “these are two phenomena which have nothing to do with each other. common”.

The brain and the thought of an object are therefore part of the same world physical. It is necessary to explain their mutual relationships, such as those which must exist between two elements which belong to this physical world and are therefore capable of interacting; we will study here successively the relation of the external object as stimulus with the nerve and the nervous system, and the relationship of the nervous system to the phenomenon of consciousness,

I. An object is external to our sense organs; he acts on them, he excites and in such a way that all its knowable properties are introduced taken, in one way or another, in the nervous current that it provokes. Everything happens more or less like a telephone wire which, with a metal core having a few millimeters in diameter, transmits voice of a large orchestra, at the cost of a temporary transformation in the nature of the phenomenon to be conveyed. Likewise the nerve excited by red does not does not blush, but vibrates in a certain way that corresponds to red.

II. How are the relationships between the system now established? nervous and consciousness?

B. studies the following points separately:

A. the nervous system, considered as a physical object, constitutes a closed system which is sufficient in itself, and has no need for consciousness.

B. Besides, how would we connect it to consciousness? If this consciousness does not present material characteristics, we obviously cannot find points of contact with the body: look for these points of contact, it poses an artificial problem, since for this we must make consciousness an object and consider it as a sensation.

C. But the objects that we perceive are of a material nature; therefore the relationship of these objects with our brain which is also material riel can be observed and described.

D. On the other hand, any set of thoughts is constantly projected onto outside; when I look at an object, I mainly see this object; barely if I I notice that the border of my visual field is formed at the top by my eyebrows and down by my mustache; even more so I see neither my eye, nor my visual nerve, nor my optical center. So what our consciousness grasps, it is always what is foreign to the brain. And the case is the same for auditory perceptions and even for emotions.

So psychic phenomena are not contained in the system nervous. They are outside, in contact with the sensitive nerves. And the psychology studies all the external excitations which can strike this system; even in the case of the memory, the excitement remains, by its origin first, external to the brain. All knowledge works like an excitement of this brain.

E. But at the same time, this brain is the condition of knowledge. (Objects perceived need the nervous system, not to be, but to be perceived). It is also the measure of knowledge (among all its knowable properties of the object, consciousness only grasps those which have crossed the nerve).

F. In this way, the reality of objects escapes us. The appearance that is sensation differs, depending on the nature of the intermediate nerve, from reality, from the of which we only know the existence. It follows that any object can be considered in a double form, as sensation, or as X, unknown cause of our sensations. These are like two planes in which we can locate the same object. And we can very well move in the same plane, compare one sensation to another, the coordinate with each other; this is what experimental science does; but this what we cannot do is place ourselves in both planes at the same time, mix X with sensation: because in this case, in reality, it is not from totally unknown that we use, but of a sensation that we let's put him in his place;

Let us now return to the relationship of the nervous system with thought: if we consider the brain in the form of sensation, if we take the brain-sensation, we have the right, as we have done, to relate to the sensation object; if, on the other hand, we consider the brain as it is in itself, not in the sensation we have by seeing it, but in its reality, it is then brain can put it in relation to the external object as it is in itself. same, the object legitimate. But when we say: the brain is the producer of thought, what do we do? We move from one plan to another. For the representation of conscious life, we take the sensation-object, and as generating cause of this conscious life, we take the brain-sensation with all the properties of form and color that we know, then that the true generating cause of conscious life, it is brain X, the unknown and inaccessible brain, of which we cannot grasp the relationship with our thought since we do not know how it is done.

Jean PAULHAN.