Again, it has been maintained that pleasure-pain is not a definite state of consciousness, but a quality like intensity, a _modus_ which must belong to all states. But if we assign pleasure-pain to such a category as intensity we must define just what we mean by this category. Is intensity a mere objective quality which we as observers assign to all psychosis, just as we do to electrical or luminous phenomena? or is it inherent element, an actual constituent, of every psychosis? If a man is angry and becomes more angry, intensity is increased; but we may conceive that he simply is more angry without being aware of this change of intensity, that is without every change of intensity being noted by consciousness. As introspection avers, it often happens that a man is both unconscious of his anger and unconscious of its increase. As I have frequently had occasion to note, simple natures are wholly unconscious of their emotions and of their intensity variations. That is, as matter of fact, intensity of feeling is not feeling of intensity. If you feel warm you feel differently than when you feel warmer, but this is no more than saying that when the iron is hot it is in a different state than when it is hotter. Intensity means the same in both cases. Consciousness, primitively, at least, is not self-awareness of its own changes in intensity. The feeling warm and the feeling warmer occur simply as facts which are subjectively unrelated and unmeasured by the consciousness which has the varying intensities. I strike a cow hard—result, intense pain; harder, more intense pain; this is correlative with, I strike iron, intense tremor; harder, more intense tremor. The cow experiences more intense pain, but does not consciously measure it off as such. I can say, “I feel hotter than I did,” but the cow does not appreciate and express its own sense of its experience. The language fallacy leads us astray. By our very use of terms, warm and warmer, and by our discussion of the matter, we imply a consciousness of intensity which is far from being primitive or general. It would probably be an overestimate to say that the intensity of one in a thousand psychoses makes itself felt as such in consciousness.
Sports Brief
Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling — Part 24
Tags