Philosophy of Mind Author:George Trumbull Ladd Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE CONCEPT OF MIND T)HILOSOPHICAL discussion of the nature and reality -- of Mind, and of its real relations to the bodily organism, has often... more » been rendered unnecessarily obscure by certain defects and fallacies which have their rise in psychological science. For this reason, chiefly, a metaphysical essay of this sort should first make the attempt to set forth its own grounds so far as they are discoverable in the actual experience of men. We begin, therefore, by considering the origin, nature, and development of the concept of mind. Or, since there is danger that even this introductory discussion may be undertaken in a manner too abstract, too far removed from the daily psychic life of the multitude of mankind, the same inquiry may be expressed , in yet more familiar terms. What do people generally mean when they talk about "the mind," or when they speak and think of themselves and of others as "having minds," or as "being minds." [The term mind, in preference to the term soul, need not be insisted upon. It has indeed its obvious disadvantages; among which perhaps the greatest is this, that it emphasizes almost unavoidably the side of intellection and of ratiocination, to the relative or complete exclusion of those affective and conative aspects of consciousness which equally belong to the real nature of the mental life. But the word " soul " — the equivalent of which in German, Seele, is employed safely by writers ofevery shade of philosophical tenets — can scarcely be used in English without implying undesirable theological assumptions or evoking obstinate theological prejudices]. Any satisfactory inquiry into the Concept of Mind must plainly take its start from the standpoint of empirical psychology. Its very nature as an inquiry is denned by the effort t...« less