It may be added, to prevent misunderstanding, that when I speak of contemplated objects in this last phrase as objects of contemplation, the act of contemplation itself is of course an enjoyment.
Category Archive: Samuel Alexander
The thing of which the act of perception is the perception is experienced as something not mental.
We cannot therefore say that mental acts contain a cognitive as well as a conative element.
Both expectations and memories are more than mere images founded on previous experience.
Mental life is indeed practical through and through. It begins in practice and it ends in practice.
The mental act of sensation which issues in reflex movement is so simple as to defy analysis.
It is convenient to distinguish the two kinds of experience which have thus been described, the experienc-ing and the experienc-ed, by technical words.
In the perception of a tree we can distinguish the act of experiencing, or perceiving, from the thing experienced, or perceived.
Hence, in desiring, the more the enjoyment is delayed, the more fancy begins to weave about the object images of future fruition, and to clothe the desired object with properties calculated to inflame the impulse.
For psychological purposes the most important differences in conation are those in virtue of which the object is revealed as sensed or perceived or imaged or remembered or thought.