CONATION, a psychological term, originally chosen by Sir William Hamilton (Lectures on Metaphysics, pp. 127 foil.), used generally of an attitude of mind involving a tendency to take action (Lat. conari, attempt), e.g., when one decides to remove an object which is causing a painful sensation, or to try to inter rupt an unpleasant train of thought. This use of the word tends to lay emphasis on the mind as self-determined in relation to ex ternal objects. Another less common use of the word is to de scribe the pleasant or painful sensations which accompany muscu lar activity ; the conative phenomena, thus regarded, are psychic changes brought about by external causes. More usually the term conation is employed now as synonymous with willing, and de notes one of the ultimate kinds of mental process. It includes all that is known as impulse, desire and act of volition.
The chief difficulty in connection with conation is that of dis tinguishing it from "feeling," a term of very vague significance both in technical and in common usage. Thus the German psy chologist F. Brentano holds that no real distinction can be made. He argues that the mental process from sorrow or dissatisfaction, through hope for a change and courage to act, up to the voluntary determination which issues in action, is a single homogeneous whole (Psychologie, pp. 308-309). The mere fact, however, that the series is continuous is no ground for not distinguishing its parts; if it were so, it would be impossible to distinguish by separate names the various colours in the solar spectrum, or indeed perception from conception. A more material objection, moreover, is that, in point of fact, the feeling of pleasure or pain roused by a given stimulus is specifically different from, and indeed may not be followed by, the determination to modify or remove it. Pleasure and pain, i.e., hedonic experiences per se, are essentially distinct from appetition and aversion; the pleasures of hearing music or enjoying sunshine are not in general accom panied by any volitional activity. It is true that painful sensa tions are generally accompanied by definite aversion or a tend ency to take action, but the cases of positive pleasure are amply sufficient to support a distinction. Therefore, though in ordinary language such phrases as "feeling aversion" are quite legitimate, accurate psychology compels us to confine "feeling" to states of consciousness in which no conative activity is present, i.e., to psychic phenomena of pleasure or pain considered by themselves.