rst lecture, I do not believe that
there is any "stuff" of consciousness, so that there is no intrinsic
character by which a "conscious" experience could be distinguished from
any other.

After these preliminaries, we can return to Knight Dunlap's article.
His criticism of Stout turns on the difficulty of giving any empirical
meaning to such notions as the "mind" or the "subject"; he quotes from
Stout the sentence: "The most important drawback is that the mind, in
watching its own workings, must necessarily have its attention divided
between two objects," and he concludes: "Without question, Stout is
bringing in here illicitly the concept of a single observer, and his
introspection does not provide for the observation of this observer;
for the process observed and the observer are distinct" (p. 407).
The objections to any theory which brings in the single observer were
considered in Lecture I, and were acknowledged to be cogent. In so
far, therefore, as Stout's theory of introspection rests upon this
assumption, we are compelled to reject it. But it is perfectly possible
to believe in introspection without supposing that there is a single
observer.

William James's theory of introspection, which Dunlap next examines,
does not assume a single observer. It changed after the publication
of his "Psychology," in consequence of his abandoning the dualism of
thought and things. Dunlap summarizes his theory as follows:

"The essential points in James's scheme of consciousness are SUBJECT,
OBJECT, and a KNOWING of the object by the subject. The difference
between James's scheme and other schemes involving the same terms is
that James considers subject and object to be the same thing, but at
different times In order to satisfy this requirement James supposes a
realm of existence which he at first called 'states of consciousness' or
'thoughts,' and later, 'pure experience,' the latter term including both
the 'thoughts' and the 'knowing.' This scheme, with all its magnificent
artificiality, James held on to until the end, simply dropping the
term consciousness and the dualism between the thought and an external
reality"(p. 409).

He adds: "All that James's system really amounts to is the
acknowledgment that a succession of things are known, and that they are
known by something. This is all any one can claim, except for the
fact that the things are known together, and that the knower for the
different items is one and the same"