ABSTRACT

Further, identifying 'impulse' with 'nervous impulse', which enables hirn to affirm that "in actual experience simple impulses of course never occur", makes it easier to deny that difference in value between individual impulses is of any importance in ca1culating value. There is little present evidence of any difference between nerve impulses. What matter for our sensations or perceptions are the number, kind, and position of the nerve fibres, along which the impulses come.This means that a purely quantitative utilitarian theory becomes plausible, as well as suggesting that it is the organisation of these nervous atoms that matters psychologically. The emphasis upon ordering, that is so important apart of Richards' theory, is strongly supported by neurological models. "No individual", he says, "can live one minute without a very intricate and, so far as it goes, very perfect coordination of impulses. It is only when we pass from the activities which from second to second maintain life to those which from hour to hour determine what kind of life it shall be, that we find wide differences" (51-52). He then describes these different systematisations we referred to in presenting his theory. Or again in trying to persuade the reader that "a growing order is the principle of the mind", he refers to the differences "between moments when we do with our bodies more delicate and dexterous things than see m possible, and moments of c1umsiness, when we are 'all thumbs', have no 'balance' or 'timing', and nothing 'comes off' " (50). Richards then adds

These differences are differences in momentary organisation, differences in precedence between riyal possible systematisations. The more permanent and more specifically 'moral' differences between individuals grow out of differences such as these and correspond to similar precedences between larger systems (50-51).