The same tendency shows itself in our calling the ability of solving a
mathematical problem, the ability to enjoy a piece of music,
etc., certain states of the mind; we don't mean
by this expression “conscious mental
phenomena”.
Rather, a state of the mind in this sense is the state of a
hypothetical mechanism, a mind model meant to explain the conscious
mental phenomena.
(Such things as unconscious or subconscious mental states are
features of the mind
model.) In this way also we
65.
can hardly help conceiving of memory as of a kind of storehouse.
Note also how sure people are that to the ability of
adding or multiplying or to that of saying a poem by heart,
etc., there
must correspond a peculiar state of
the person's brain, although on the other hand they know next to
nothing about such psycho-physiological correspondences.
We have an overwhelmingly strong tendency to conceive of the
phenomena which in
such || these cases we actually observe
by the symbol of a mechanism whose manifestations these phenomena
are; We regard these phenomena as manifestations
of this mechanism. and their possibility is the particular
construction of the mechanism itself.