Compound Mind

Definition

Basiswissen

Als compound mind, im Deutschen so viel wie zusammengesetzer Geist, bezeichnete der Psychologe William James (1842 bis 1910) eine hypothetische Bewusstseinsform, die sich aus vorher eigenständen Bewusstseinen zusammensetzt^[1]. James selbst lehnte die Idee ab^[2]. Die Probleme, die sich aus dieser Vorstellung einer compound mind ergeben, bezeichnete man später als Kombinationsproblem^[3]. Das Thema ist im Zusammenhang mit der Idee von Metasystem-Transitionen näher betrachtet im Artikel zu einem hypothetischen Metasystem-Bewusstsein ↗

Fußnoten

[1] William James über die Unmöglichkeit eine Compound Mind: „Where the elemental units are supposed to be feelings, the case is in no wisealtered. Take a hundred of them, shuffle them and pack them as close together asyou can (whatever that might mean); still each remains the same feeling it alwayswas, shut in its own skin, windowless, ignorant of what the other feelings are andmean. There would be a hundred-and-first feeling there, if, when a group or series of such feeling were set up, a consciousness belonging to the group as such shouldemerge. And this 101st feeling would be a totally new fact; the 100 originalfeelings might, by a curious physical law, be a signal for its creation, when theycame together; but they would have no substantial identity with it, nor it with them,and one could never deduce the one from the others, or (in any intelligible sense)say that they evolved it […] Take a sentence of a dozen words, and take twelve men and tell to each one word.Then stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let each think of his wordas intently as he will; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence. […] The private minds do not agglomerate into a higher compound mind.“ In: The Principles of Psychology. 1890. Dort der Abschnitt "SELF-COMPOUNDING OF MENTAL FACTS IS INADMISSIBLE." Seite 160.

[2] William James' Wasseranalogie zur compound mind: "Let it not be objected that H2 and O combine of themselves into 'water,' and thenceforward exhibit new properties. They do not. The 'water' is just the old atoms in the new position, H-O-H; the 'new properties' are just their combined effects, when in this position, upon external media, such as our sense-organs and the various reagents on which water may exert its properties and be known." In: William James: The Principles of Psychology. Henry Holt. New York 1918. Dort das Kapitel CHAPTER VI. THE MIND-STUFF THEORY. Dort die Seite 159. Online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/57628/pg57628-images.html

[3] Mark Werden: Ist Geist elementar? Das Kombinationsproblem in der Panpsychismusdebatte. Diplomarbeit. Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Katholisch-Theologische Fakultät. 2014. Siehe auch Kombinationsproblem ↗

[4] Wie verschiedene Wortbedeutungen in einem Wort zusammenkommen wird betrachtet in: Gottlob Frege: Compound Thoughts. In: Mind, vol. 72, no. 285, 1963, pp. 1–17. Im deutschen Original: Logische Untersuchungen. Dritter Teil: Gedankengefüge. In: Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus. Band III, 1923, S. 36–51.