http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\01\10\story_10-1-2010_pg3_6
Sunday, January 10, 2010 PURPLE PATCH: The consciousness -Alfred Binet It has often been said that the role of intelligence consists in uniting or grasping the relations of things. An important question, therefore, to put, is, if we know whereof these relations consist, and what is the role of the mind in the establishment of a relation? It now and then happens to us to perceive an isolated object, without comparing it with any other, or endeavouring to find out whether it differs from or resembles another, or presents with any other a relation of cause to effect, or of sign to thing signified, or of co-existence in time and space. Thus, I may see a red colour, and occupy all the intellect at my disposal in the perception of this colour, seeing nothing but it, and thinking of nothing but it. Theoretically, this is not impossible to conceive, and, practically, I ask myself if these isolated and solitary acts of consciousness do not sometimes occur. It certainly seems to me that I have noticed in myself moments of intellectual tonelessness, when in the country, during the vacation, I look at the ground, or the grass, without thinking of anything - or at least, of anything but what I am looking at, and without comparing my sensation with anything. I do not think we should admit in principle, as do many philosophers, that "we take no cognisance save of relations". This is the principle of relativity, to which so much attention has been given. Taken in this narrow sense, it seems to me in no way imperative for our thoughts. We admit that it is very often applied, but without feeling obliged to admit that it is of perpetual and necessary application. These reserves once made, it remains to remark, that the objects we perceive very rarely present themselves in a state of perfect isolation. On the contrary, they are brought near to other objects by manifold relations of resemblance, of difference, or of connection in time or space; and, further, they are compared with the ideas which define them best. We do not have consciousness of an object, but of the relations existing between several objects. Relation is the new state produced by the fact that one perceives a plurality of objects, and perceives them in a group. Show me two colours in juxtaposition, and I do not see two colours only, but, in addition, their resemblance in colour or value. Show me two lines, and I do not see only their respective lengths but their difference in length. Show me two points marked on a white sheet of paper, and I do not see only the colour, form, and dimension of the points, but their distance from each other. In our perceptions, as in our conceptions, we have perpetually to do with the relations between things. The more we reflect, the more we understand things, the more clearly we see their relations; the multiplication of relations is the measure of the depth of cognition. The nature of these relations is more difficult to ascertain than that of objects. It seems to be more subtle. When two sounds make themselves heard in succession, there is less difficulty in making the nature of these two sounds understood than the nature of the fact that one occurs before the other. It would appear that, in the perception of objects, our mind is passive and reduced to the state of reception, working like a registering machine or a sensitive surface, while in the perception of relations it assumes a more important part. Two principal theories have been advanced, of which one puts the relations in the things perceived, and the other makes them a work of the mind. Let us begin with this last opinion. It consists in supposing that the relations are given to things by the mind itself. These relations have been termed categories. The question of categories plays an important part in the history of philosophy. Three great philosophers, Aristotle, Kant, and Renouvier have drawn up a list, or, as it is called, a table of them, and this table is very long. To give a slight idea of it, I will quote a few examples, such as time, space, being, resemblance, difference, causality, becoming, finality, etc. By making the categories the peculiar possession of the mind, we attribute to these cognitions the essential characteristic of being anterior to sensation, or, as it is also termed, of existing a priori: we are taught that not only are they not derived from experience, nor taught us by observation, but further that they are presupposed by all observation, for they set up, in scholastic jargon, the conditions which make experience possible. They represent the personal contribution of the mind to the knowledge of nature, and, consequently, to admit them is to admit that the mind is not, in the presence of the world, reduced to the passive state of a tabula rasa, and that the faculties of the mind are not a transformation of sensation. Only these categories do not supplement sensation, they do not obviate it, nor allow it to be conjectured beforehand. They remain empty forms so long as they are not applied to experience; they are the rules of cognition and not the objects of cognition, the means of knowing and not the things known; they render knowledge possible, but do not of themselves constitute it, Experience through the senses still remains a necessary condition to the knowledge of the external world. It may be said that the senses give the matter of knowledge, and that the categories of the understanding give the form of it. Matter cannot exist without form, nor form without matter; it is the union of the two which produces cognition. (This extract is taken from The Mind and the Brain by Alfred Binet) Alfred Binet was a French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test, known at that time as Binet test, which is today called the IQ test
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