Mind Volume 6

by Mind Association

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. 1897 ...of the positive; for you cannot think of maintaining the status quo without thinking that certain changes which would destroy it shall not take place. Thus we cannot resolve negative volition into positive, even where we can show that the one logically implies the other. The positive is only a complement of it, and is incapable of supplying its place. Negative thought is unique, and this fact accounts for that type of volition in which the uniqueness of negative thought is employed in the characterisation of the end. This uniqueness of negative thought penetrates also conations which are not will. What we call aversion seems to be a combination of desire and negative thought. If I have aversion for anything, I desire to escape from it; not to be near it, not to see it. If I have aversion for an end, I desire not to accomplish it. There are then negative desires as well as negative volitions. In the treatment of negative thought, which has been so closely associated with logic, we must guard against confusing the distinct characters of logical and psychological analysis. In logic, negative thought necessarily involves a positive and positive thought a negative. If we have asserted that a man is honest, we are logically bound to deny that he forges other people's signatures or cheats at cards. The validity of the positive assertions involves the validity of the negative assertions, and conversely every negative involves some positive assertion. Logical analysis endeavours to discover what a content of thought involves or presupposes. It does not regard this content as an existing psychical fact, nor the judgments it presupposes as existing co-presented psychical facts. Psychology, on the other hand, deals with thought only as a psychical fact occurring in an ...

260 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2012