Note * — Chapter XI · A Sketch for a Psychology

The correspondence is not by any means simple. Many things are included under knowing, for example, which on this reconstruction of psychology would have to be counted as willing.* Expectation, usually described as a cognitive attitude, becomes a peculiar form of action, getting ready, namely, to receive certain kinds of stimuli rather than others. The opposite case is equally common. Hunger, a typical desire on the usual account, would become knowledge, giving us, when genuine hunger, obscure awareness of a lack of nourishment, when habit-hunger, awareness of a certain phase in a cyclic visceral process. These illustrations bring out clearly what is everywhere recognised, that the customary cognition-feeling-conation classification of mental goings on is not a pigeon-holing of exclusive processes. Every mental event has, in varying degrees, all three characteristics. Thus expectation as a preparation for certain stimuli may lower the threshold for them, and sometimes makes their reception more and sometimes less discriminating; hunger also is characteristically accompanied by a search for food.