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قراءة كتاب Animal Intelligence The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.

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Animal Intelligence
The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.

Animal Intelligence The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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CHAPTER V.

Termites 198
CHAPTER VI. Spiders and Scorpions 204
CHAPTER VII. Remaining Articulata 226
CHAPTER VIII. Fish 241
CHAPTER IX. Batrachians and Reptiles 254
CHAPTER X. Birds 266
CHAPTER XI. Mammals 326
CHAPTER XII. Rodents 353
CHAPTER XIII. Elephant 386
CHAPTER XIV. The Cat 411
CHAPTER XV. Foxes, Wolves, Jackals, &c. 426
CHAPTER XVI. The Dog 437
CHAPTER XVII. Monkeys, Apes, and Baboons 471 Index 499

INTRODUCTION.

Before we begin to consider the phenomena of mind throughout the animal kingdom it is desirable that we should understand, as far as possible, what it is that we exactly mean by mind. Now, by mind we may mean two very different things, according as we contemplate it in our own individual selves, or in other organisms. For if we contemplate our own mind, we have an immediate cognizance of a certain flow of thoughts or feelings, which are the most ultimate things, and indeed the only things, of which we are cognisant. But if we contemplate mind in other persons or organisms, we have no such immediate cognizance of thoughts or feelings. In such cases we can only infer the existence and the nature of thoughts and feelings from the activities of the organisms which appear to exhibit them. Thus it is that we may have a subjective analysis of mind and an objective analysis of mind—the difference between the two consisting in this, that in our subjective analysis we are restricted to the limits of a single isolated mind which we call our own, and within the territory of which we have immediate cognizance of all the processes that are going on, or at any rate of all the processes that fall within the scope of our introspection. But in our objective analysis of other or foreign minds we have no such immediate cognizance; all our knowledge of their operations is derived, as it were, through the medium of ambassadors—these ambassadors being the activities of the organism. Hence it is evident that in our study of animal intelligence we are wholly restricted to the objective method. Starting from what I know subjectively of the operations of my own individual mind, and the activities which in my own organism they prompt, I proceed by analogy to infer from the observable activities of other organisms what are the mental operations that underlie them.

Now, in this mode of procedure what is the kind of activities which may be regarded as indicative of mind? I certainly do not so regard the flowing of a river or the blowing of the wind. Why? First, because the objects are too remote in kind from my own organism to admit of my drawing any reasonable analogy between them and it; and, secondly, because the activities which they present are of invariably the same kind under the same circumstances; they afford no evidence of feeling or purpose. In other words, two conditions require to be satisfied before we even begin to imagine that observable activities are indicative of mind: first, the activities must be displayed by a living organism; and secondly, they must be of a kind to suggest the presence of two elements which we recognise as the distinctive characteristics of mind as such—consciousness and choice.

So far, then, the case seems simple enough. Wherever we see a living organism apparently exerting intentional choice, we might infer that it is conscious choice, and therefore that the organism has a mind. But further reflection shows us that this is just what we cannot do; for although it is true that there is no mind without the power of conscious choice, it is not true that all apparent choice is due to mind. In our own organisms, for instance, we find a great many adaptive movements performed without choice or even consciousness coming into play at all—such, for instance, as in the beating of our hearts. And not only so, but physiological experiments and pathological lesions prove that in our own and in other organisms the

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