Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/499

* FAMA. 1 1:1 FAMILIARITY. flcation of Humor, duo apparently in great meas- ure to the Roman poets. Vergil gives a vivid description of Fama, and Ovid describes her palace of bronze. The Roman Fama may be in part derived from a similar personification in Greek, but no such elaborate description of *^i) lias lx-i'ii preserved. FAMAGUSTA, fa'ma-gSS'sta, or FAMA- GOSTA. A seaport on the eastern coast of Cyprus (Map: Turkey in Asia, P 5). It has a fine mosque, formerly a Christian church, while to the north are the ruins of Salamis. lis har- bor has been improved under English rule. Popu- lation, estimated at 3370 in 1 8!)i». Famagusta was built by the Romans of the Empire, proba- bly on the site of the aneient Arsinoe, and was called Kama Augusta. Under Byzantine rule it was an episcopal see, and from the twelfth cen- tury was the richest city on the island. The Genoese and Venetians held it in turn, the latter building its strong fortifications. In 1517 it fell into the hands of Turkey. FAMILIARITY (Lat. familiaritas, from familiaris, familiar, from familia, family, from famulus, OLat. famul, servant). The traditional view of the process of recognition (q.v. ) is rather an expression of a logical postulate than of a psychological analysis of the data furnished by consciousness. It has been assumed that recognition is possible only when the given ex- perience is compared with the memory image of its former occurrence (called forth according to the laws of the association of ideas), and the judgment, "this is like to that," has been passed. Now in most of our recognitions this lengthy process of comparison is not performed. On the contrary, recognition is usually 'immediate,' i.e. the object is at once 'felt' to be familiar or known, without there being present any asso- ciative links to 'mediate' the judgment. Ad- mitting this immediacy of recognition, the an- alytical psychologist seeks to discover whether the 'feeling or recognition,' the sudden glow of familiarity, can be subjected to further analysis, and whether its physiological substrate can be ascertained. The modern problem of familiarity may be said to have arisen in the course of a controversy be- tween Lehmann and Hoffding. Lehmann admits that immediate recognition shows no conscious traces of the progress of association and com- parison, but, influenced apparently by the de- mands of logic, assumes that memory images are always present, and that immediate recognition is complex, based upon a 'subliminal' associa- tion, i.e. an association in which the reproduced member is unconscious. HiilTding, like Lehmann, approaches the problem of recognition from the facts of association, but goes a step further in saying that in certain eases (eases in which there is no conscious reference to the past; e.g. our recognition of a scent as familiar, al- though we can neither name it nor recall when or where we have previously smelled it), there is no explicit process of association. The memory image of the previous presentation of the object does not come into consciousness as a free and independent factor; it is merely called up as an 'implicate representation.' The presented object is simply and immediately characterized by a 'quality of knownness.' This 'familiarity' or 'thing-known' consciousness cannot be subjected to furl her analysis. It is difficult to tell whetl er Hoffding means to explain it in terms of nascent ideas, or in terms oi a 'feeling ol ease,' 'an in- creased facility of disposition among nervous elements' which comes with repetition. The for nier explanation is, of course, much like Leh mann's. The latter calls from Lehmann the objection that it is very doubtful whether ease of molecular movement in the cortex could furnish the substrate for a new conscious quality like that of familiarity. Lehmann furthermore urges that familiarity cannot be based upon a feeling- tone, since simple siinmli, like odors, maj be accompanied by quite varied feeling-tones, and yet be equally recognized. This criticism is. however, invalidated if one assumes that the feeling of familiarity is unique. Those psychologists who, like KUlpe and Titchener, recognize two sorts of conscious ele- ments, sensations and affections, and who fur- ther subdivide affection into but two qualities, pleasantness and unpleasantness, have before them the task of analyzing the reeognitory 'feel' of familiarity into its constituent elements. Kiilpe says that it is not 'a peculiar attribute' (i.e. an unanalyzable quality of knownness) that stamps ideas as familiar. The real basis of the judgment of familiarity is found: "(1) in the especial effectiveness for central excitation of familiar impressions or memorial images; and (2) in the characteristic mood which they or- dinarily induce, and which embraces both pleas- urable (or at least comfortable) affective states and the corresponding organic sensations." Titchener says, similarly, that in the reeognitory consciousness we have ( 1 ) the presented idea ; (2) its centrally aroused supplements; and (3) the mood of 'feeling at home.' Immediate recog- nition may exhibit all degrees of definiteness ; e.g. "We pass some one on the street, and I say to my companion: 'I'm sure I know that face.' Here the familiarity mark consists of the word 'known' and the recognitive mood." This posi- tion has been criticised by Washburn, who, like Lehmann, doubts the possibility of basing fa- miliarity upon the affective reaction. The mood consists of a pleasantness, plus "a complex of organic sensations, set up by an easy bodily at- titude" (Titchener). Now, since there is but one pleasantness, it cannot serve as the specific basis of familiarity; and the organic sensations are not sufficiently definite or uniform to supply the requisite substrate. A recognition may he made with a start of alarm quite in contrast to the easy bodily attitude demanded. This objection seems to have been foreseen ; for Titchener says expressly: "Every recognitive consciousness is intrinsically pleasant. Its pleasantness may, however, be outweighed by the unpleasantness of the recognized idea;" i.e. the total experience may be unplcasurable and the pleasantness of the organic sensations of the recognitive mood may be 'forced into the background of consciousness.' But Washburn further urges that the first of Kiilpe's items, 'effectiveness for central excita- tion,' implies that a recognized experience tends to call up other processes formerly associated with it. For direct recognition, this means simply calling up the word 'known.' But by what law of association does a repeated experience call up a word that was absent from it at the first oc- currence? Direct recognition cannot be explained