40. Dr. Richard Wahle Brain and Consciousness

Physiological-psychological study. Vienna 1884

This work is one of those philosophical publications that are becoming increasingly rare in our time, which attempt to solve a specific scientific problem not from the point of view of any school of thought, but independently and without presuppositions. The author sets himself the task of explaining the significance of physiological research into the brain mechanism for the understanding of the phenomena of consciousness. First of all, he refutes the view generally held in scientific circles today that the world given to us directly through the senses, this complex of colors, sounds, shapes, differences in warmth and so on, is nothing more than the effect of objective material processes on our subjective organization. The world of appearances is therefore basically a subjective appearance that only lasts as long as we keep our senses open to the impressions of material processes, whereas these processes themselves are saturated with a reality of their own that is completely independent of us and are thus the true cause of all natural phenomena. Wahle now shows that the processes in matter have no higher degree of reality than the subjective world supposedly caused by them. We must regard both as occurrences present to us, which confront us as belonging together (coordinated), without our being entitled to assume that one is the true cause of the other. It is just as we must regard day and night, for instance, as coordinated without one of them being regarded as the effect of the other. Just as here the necessary succession is due to the structure and processes of our solar system, so also the coordination of a material process and a quality of sensation, for example, sound, color, and so on, will be conditioned by some true fact; but at any rate not by the fact that the former causes the latter. Now, the interrelation of brain mechanism and consciousness is only a special case of such coordination. According to Wahle, we are only in a position to perceive that both are parallel occurrences; but we are not entitled to regard consciousness as a real consequence of the brain mechanism. Physiology is right when it seeks the material correlates of mental phenomena; but the materialistic fantasy that wants to make the mind the true product of the brain is given the farewell letter. Indeed, Wahle even works against it by showing that the phenomena hitherto regarded in psychology as independent acts of consciousness, such as recognizing, rejecting, loving, desiring, willing and so on, are nothing other than occurrences coordinated with each other or with others, which do not at all necessitate the assumption of a special subjective activity, which would be unfavourable to physiology. The author traces the phenomena of consciousness back to a general law, whereby a conception can be recalled into consciousness by one that is not wholly but partially identical with it. Thus it would only be the task of physiology to find the corresponding mechanical fact in the brain for this psychological finding, which is certainly easier than if this had to be done for each of the above-mentioned alleged acts of consciousness.

The main significance of this little work lies in having shown in clear contours what experience actually gives us and what is often only added to it. All that the individual sciences can find consists only in the statement of related occurrences, whereby we must presuppose that the affiliation itself is founded in some true fact. We consider the author's argument to be quite convincing, but we believe that he has not drawn the final conclusion of his views. Otherwise he would probably have found that those true facts themselves are given to us as experiential occurrences - namely the ideal ones - and that the negation of materialism leads logically to scientific idealism. If, therefore, we actually see the right thing in the progression from the absolutely solid foundation laid by Wahle to a higher level of knowledge, then we unreservedly admit that we see in this work an outstanding achievement that will have a decisive effect on the branch of science to which it belongs and that will certainly occupy a place in the history of philosophy.