Elements of Psychophysics, Vol. I

XI

...attempts original: "Versuche"; continuing from the previous page's sentence regarding his efforts or investigations under fundamental points of view so essentially different from his own that there is as little need for a special emphasis on the difference between the two as it would be idle and inappropriate to attempt a reconciliation between the two here; especially since such a task could not take place without a dispute over fundamental philosophical questions, which is to be avoided here at any price. The decision between the two, which will at the same time be a decision regarding these fundamental questions, I must leave to the future.

Perhaps one also expects here a preliminary explanation of the position that this writing will take regarding materialism and idealism and the fundamental religious questions, with which every investigation into the relationship between body and soul must necessarily come into contact. Now, as far as the first point is concerned, this writing does not enter into the dispute over the basic relationship between body and soul that divides materialists and idealists at all; its explanations and consequences will lie neither one-sidedly in one sense nor the other, in that it represents the experiential relationships between both sides of existence through a functional relationship Fechner’s "functional relationship" (Functionsverhältniss) is the core of psychophysics: the idea that mental and physical events change in a mathematically predictable correspondence without one necessarily "causing" the other in a traditional sense., which of its own accord excludes this one-sidedness.

As far as the second point is concerned, all conclusions that we would hereby be forced to accept the consequences of materialism regarding fundamental religious questions would be premature. It is obvious that the basic view—briefly expressed on page 4, which forms the background rather than the starting point for the developments of this writing—can experience a one-sided materialistic interpretation and application, and regarding the question of immortality seems initially to lead to the same conclusion. However, I wish to offer no further objection against this here than that this entire writing has grown upon the foundation and in the context of a completely opposite conception and interpretation of that view,