A system of metaphysics Volume 4

by George Stuart Fullerton

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 ...the statement that my mind, which is supposed to be parallel to my brain and to no other, is not a whit nearer to my brain than it is to the brain of the Emperor of China or to that of the Pope of Rome. Of course, it is not further from my brain than from either of these, but it certainly is not nearer. Near and far have no meaning when we are not speaking of spatial relations; and when one thing is supposed to have a place in space and another is not, it is absurd to try to measure the distance between them. When, therefore, we speak of a mind and of a brain as being parallel, we must be most careful not to con any Qrdinary sense of the word, or as near to each other. This is 1 Professor Oliver J. Lodge, "Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research," Part V, p. 191. an important matter, for all sorts of strange results may follow from our allowing ourselves to fall into such confusions. It must be admitted that it is exceedingly difficult to use language that will not suggest such confusions. No man tries more earnestly than Clifford to relegate mind and matter to different and distinct worlds. Yet when he speaks of a message carried from the eye to the brain, he tells us, "the mental fact does not begin anywhere before the optic ga.nglion."1 A little farther on he "The mental fact is somewhere or other in the region ROUB of the diagram," which means that it is somewhere in the region of the optic thalami, the cerebral hemispheres, and the corpora striata. The body, he tells us, is not merely a machine, because consciousness " goes with it," and he reiterates that "mental facts go along with the bodily facts."2 He informs us that the action which goes on in a brain may be looked at ̶...

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1904

About the author

George Stuart Fullerton was an American philosopher and psychologist.

He graduated in 1879 from the University of Pennsylvania and in 1884 from Yale Divinity School. In 1904 he was appointed professor of philosophy at Columbia University, and served as head of the department.

He was the host of the first annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in 1892 at the University of Pennsylvania, and the APA's fifth president, in 1896.

In 1914, while he was exchange professor at the University of Vienna, World War I broke out. He was Lecturing at Munich, Germany, when he was imprisoned as a civilian enemy national. He remained imprisoned for four years, until the end of the war, and conditions were so harsh that he returned to the U.S. with his health permanently damaged. Nearly an invalid for the last decade of his life, Fullerton committed suicide at the age of 66.