Creatures, Technology, and Scientific Psychology
2.5 The Physiological Basis of Technological Development
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On the other hand, in order to explain each distinct phenomenon, a mechanism was put forward, “materialized” by a device capable not just of reproducing the phenomenon itself through its functioning but also of enabling the manipulation, rearrangement, and comparing of the data thus obtained. As Lenoir insightfully emphasizes: “the new technologies were a resource for representing the scientific object, and ... in their material form they were not just ‘representatives’ of an object described by theory; rather they created the space within which the scientific objects,
‘eye and ear’, existed in a material form” (p. 205, 1994). From this perspective it is possible to understand why Helmholtz conceived of the nervous system as a tele- graph and of its appendages—sensory organs—as a media apparatus: the eye as a photometer and the ear as a tuning-fork interrupter with attached resonators (Lenoir 1994).
Helmholtz makes Fichte’s notion of the founding character of practical action his own. He draws upon the concept of purpose (Zweckbegriff), understood as the accom- plishment of an action for the sake of a goal—starting from a “determinable” world—
and extends it to the scientific domain by making experimentation the centerpiece of the process of formation of scientific knowledge. This lies at the origin of the peculiar juxtaposition between gnoseology and epistemology which, as we will see, was des- tined to characterize the cognitivist and constructivist psychology of the twentieth century and which is best exemplified by Kelly’s notion of “man-the-scientist”.23
Like the scientific experience of the external world, human experience springs from active intervention in this world: “Each of our voluntary motions by which we modify the manner of appearance of objects, is to be considered as an experiment by which we test whether we have correctly conceived the lawful behavior of the phenomenon in question, that is, its presumed existence in a definite spatial order” (p. 358, The Facts of Perception).
In other words, the voluntary motions of our body constantly alter our spatial relation with objects and, at the same time, change the impressions which these objects make on us. Helmholtz writes: “From the first step on, where we perceive the abiding objects distributed before us in space, this perception is the recognition of a law-like connection between our movements and the sensations appearing therefrom” (p. 360, The Facts of Perception). When we perceive an object, the sen- sations which emerge tell us nothing about the nature of the object itself, as what is directly perceived is a sensory-motor coordination which, once stabilized, automati- cally occurs each time we encounter the object in question. Helmholtz called this process “unconscious inferences”.24 On the other hand, this sensory-motor coordi- nation may newly be generated by reiterating those motions required to produce the form of the objects, in such a way as to confirm the notion of the shape we have formed into reality: depending on its degree of correspondence with the original, we will become convinced of the accuracy of our conception.
Moreover, active experience, which is generated by a subject with a given aim in view,25 also lies at the basis of the differential awareness of sensations from the world and sensations resulting from our action upon the world—and which we can produce or
23 “Relatively few but well performed experiments are enough to allow me to see the original causal conditions of an event with greater certainty than a millionfold observations by which I could not arbitrarily vary the conditions. . . . We learn how to make reliable judgments of the causes of our sense perceptions only when we place, through our own will, our sense organs into different per- spectives to the objects. Such experimenting happens from early youth onwards” (Optics, p. 451, quoted in Cahan 1993 p. 483).
24 “The psychic activities that lead us to infer that there in front of us at a certain place there is a certain object of a certain character are generally not conscious activities, but unconscious ones ...
it may be permissible to speak of the psychic acts of ordinary perception as unconscious conclu- sions, thereby making a distinction of some sort between them and the common so-called con- scious conclusions” (p. 4, Vol. 3).
25 “The chief reason, however, why the power of any experiment to convince is so much greater than that of observing a process going on without our assistance is that with the experiment the chain of causes runs through our own self-consciousness. We know one member of these causes—
our will’s impulse—from inner intuition and know the motive by which it has occurred” (p. 358).
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revoke.26 According to Helmholtz, this prereflective awareness of limits and possibilities emerges from the physiological mechanism associated with muscular feeling, understood as that condition which enables us to perceive changes of position of the parts of the body through muscular action and hence to grasp what the I can or cannot change. Helmholtz therefore anchors the body, which Fichte had envisaged as a system of affectability and spontaneity, in muscular feeling. According to Helmholtz this term includes:
1. The intensity of the effort of will, whereby we endeavor to bring the muscles into action
2. The tension of the muscles, that is, the force by which they try to act
3. The result of the effort, which, regardless of its being perceived by other organs of sense, such as sight and touch, makes itself felt in the muscle by a contraction which actually takes place and in which it may be possible to perceive after a fashion the change of tension of the skin over the parts affected (p. 243, Vol. 3 Treatise on Physiological Optics)
Helmholtz, who explores this theme within the context of a study of vision, notes that muscular feeling is not just the foundation of perceptual awareness but also its perceptual outcome. In the same section, he continues as follows: “Thus in the case of muscles that are much fatigued, I may be able to perceive that I have to make the utmost exertion of the will to produce tension in the muscles, but that their tension is no longer sufficient to obtain the result. On the other hand, in the case of powerful muscles, with a moderate effort of will, I can produce a distinctly perceptible ten- sion in them, yet, owing to some external opposition, without obtaining the desired result.” What emerges here is the key Fichtian idea—expressed in the Foundations of Natural Right—that the body, understood as a sensory-motor apparatus, consti- tutes the basis for grasping the distinction between the sensation of external objects and inner sensations in actual experience.
This way of conceiving corporeality, which is the cornerstone of von Helmholtz’s view, was destined to exert considerable influence on Husserl’s phenomenology—
enabling us to interpret his cycle of lectures “Ding und Raum” from a new perspec- tive (Feist and Sweet 2003; Sheets-Johnstone 2011)—and even more so on the attempt to develop a synthesis between the cognitive sciences and phenomenology which Varela has termed neurophenomenology.27
26 If the experience in question does not lead to the desired results, or if our sensations change independently of our will, then we will posit the existence of external objects as the cause of the observed changes. “Those alterations which we can produce and revoke by conscious impulses of the will are distinct from those which are not consequences of such impulses and cannot be elimi- nated by them.”
27 It is interesting to note that although these authors, with different emphases, have all grasped the relation between Helmholtz and Husserl, they have completely overlooked—as indeed Husserl himself did in his 1903 seminars on Fichte (Hart 1995, Husserl Studies)—the importance of the sense of agency for Fichte and hence for Helmholtz’s thought. For a critical overview of the rela- tion between Husserl’s philosophy as expressed in Ding und Raum and the naturalistic approach, 2.5 The Physiological Basis of Technological Development
Between the folds of the awareness of agency in perception—which was first grasped by Fichte, then served as a basis for Helmholtz’s physiological psychology, and ultimately reached neurophenomenology—a completely new conception of the a priori emerged in the second half of the ninetenth century. As we shall see, it was to provide the starting point for Rudolf Magnus’ research program.