The Stream of Consciousness: VII. Further Relevancies from Imagination, Cognition and Personality

Abstract

Quite naturally, Imagination, Cognition and Personality is the literal context of the present series of articles, which aims to examine what is known and knowledgeably held about the nature and character of the referents of William James's concept of the stream of consciousness. The sixth and seventh installments focus on selected relevant interpretations and facts from Imagination, Cognition and Personality. These relevancies include 1) Lee Tilford Davis and Peder J. Johnson's result of no mental activity at all reported ten per cent of the time by the subjects in an experiment using a thought-sampling technique, 2) Richard A. Block, John L. Saggau, and Leo H. Nickol's finding of similarity between the stream of consciousness and college students' conception of physical time, and 3) L. Stafford Betty's analysis of certain basic durational components of the stream of consciousness (which he calls “non-symbolic”) that are frequently reported as characteristic of mystical experience.