9309 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS EDITED BY FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE AND WENDELL T. BUSH VOLUME IV JANUARY-DECEMBER, 1907 NEW YORK 1907 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS PROBLEMS IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE MEMORY I. General relation of perception and memory.-Memory investigation has reached a stage in which a significant turn in its course has become necessary and has already begun. As a result of a vigorous pursuit of quantitative studies, with objective methods, the psychology of memory is now confronted by a variety of questions that relate to the nature of the memory content and the mechanism of its functioning. We have ceased to be satisfied with the conception of memory as reproduced past experience, of images as faint copies of original perceptions. We may regard this condition as a good index of the state of our progress. With the object in mind of outlining the present status of the psychology of memory analysis, let me bring together in brief form the problems that at present seem to me central in the studies and discussions before us. I shall approach them from a biological point of view, which is dominant, or at least prominent, in a number of studies on memory analysis. Biological interpretation both of perceptive experience and of memory is giving us a new view of their interrelation, and is adding interest to studies in memory analysis. With reference to the former, we have been accustomed to regard the sensory elements evoked through the special senses and perhaps the immediately aroused special sense images as the sole factors in determining conduct, and as constituting the total perceptive content. But we are just beginning to learn the fact, the exact nature and details of which are all yet to be made out, that every sensory stimulus evokes not only these special sensory elements, but also a more or less extended organic reaction throughout the organism. A complex of organic sensations furnishes a background to the sensory elements from the special sense organs. The human mind is objectively directed, and we are usually unaware of the existence of such a backRead in abstract at the joint meeting of the Western Philosophical Association and the North Central Section of the American Psychological Association, Madison, Wisconsin, April 13, 1906. 5 174574 |