Structure and Functions of Soul in Jainism

Author(s): S C Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 91

which identifies consciousness with behaviour. But it is doubtful that behaviourism has been able to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. At most it can give us a clue to other's consciousness. The feeling of pain accompanied by a certain behaviour is not only a behaviour. Though this fact is difficult to verify in case of others, yet it can be definitely experienced in one's own case. One can easily distinguish between a feeling of pain and the attendant behaviour in one's own case. The correct behaviouristic response is not all of the conscious life but this response is accompanied by a feeling of being conscious. In face of the fact that the correspondence between the psychical phenomenon and the bodily behaviour is not perfect and invariable we cannot reduce consciousness to behaviour. On the ground of Helm Holtz's discovery J.C. Flugal affirms: "....the speed of transmission along the motor nerve of the frog was about ninety feet per second and for the sensory nerves of a man something between 50 and 100 feet per second. It shows that man's body does not instantly obey his mind. Thought and movement follow one another at an appreciable interval, instead of being practically simultaneous as has previously been thought" This leads to the conclusion that behaviour and consciousness are not one. Jung also thinks: "A psychology that treats the psyche as an epiphenomenon would do better call itself brain physiology and remain satisfied with the meagre results that such a psycho-physiology can yield. The psyche deserves to be taken as a phenomenon in its own right."2 Mc Dougall has well remarked: "I believe that the mind has a nature and a structure and functions of its own which cannot be fully adequately described in terms of structure of the brain and its physical processes." These psychologists not only oppose the identification of consciousness with the brain or the behaviour but also do not like to hold the stuff
3
The Soul: 87
1. J.C. Flugal: A Hundred Years of Psychology, p. 90
2. Jung: Contributions to Analytic Psychology (translated by M.G. and Carry F. Baynes), p. 6
3. Mc Dougall: An Outline of Abnormal Psychology, p. 480.