 Second, Herder also tries to explain the mind in terms of the phenomenon of irritation [Reiz], a phenomenon that had recently been identified by the physiologist Albrecht von Haller, and which is paradigmatically exemplified by muscle fibers contracting in response to direct physical stimuli and relaxing upon their removal—in other words, a phenomenon which, while basically physiological, also seems to exhibit a transition to mental characteristics. There is an ambiguity in Herder’s position here: Usually, he wants to resist physicalist reductionism, and so would be reluctant to say that irritation is purely physiological and fully constitutes mental states. However, in the 1775 draft of On the Cognition and Sensation, and even in parts of the published version, that is his position. And from a modern standpoint, this is arguably a further virtue of his account (albeit that we would of course today want to recast it in terms of different, and much more complex, physiological processes than irritation).