Mind and Adaptation: The Presence of Choice and Uncertainty
- In cases where the inherited machinery of the nervous system does not provide data for adaptive action, the element of mind is recognized.
- The distinct element of mind is consciousness, which is tested by the presence of choice.
- While not all adjustive actions involving the mind are antecedently uncertain, many are seen beforehand as inevitable under certain circumstances.
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It is, then, adaptive action by a living organism in cases where the inherited machinery of the nervous system does not furnish data for our prevision of what the adaptive action must necessarily be — it is only in such cases that we recognize the element of mind. In other words, ejectively con sidered, the distinctive element of mind is consciousness, the test of consciousness is the presence of choice, and the evidence of choice is the antecedent uncertainty of adjustive action between two or more alternatives. To this analysis it is, however, needful to add that, although our only criterion of mind is antecedent uncertainty of adjustive action, it does not follow that all adjustive action in which mind is con cerned should be of an antecedently uncertain character; or, which is the same thing, [it does'nt follow] that because some such action may be of an antecedently certain character, we should on this account regard it as non-mental. Many adjustive actions which we recognize as mental are, nevertheless, seen before hand to be, under the given circumstances, inevitable ; but analysis would show that such is only the case when we have in view agents whom we already, and from independent videuce, regard as mental.
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以下のとおりお答えします。 さてそこで、私たちが心の要素を認識するのは相続した神経機構が、適応行為なら必然的に見せるに違いないような、予見的資料を供給しない場面における生体の適応行為です。― つまり、心の要素として認識されるのはそのような場合のみです。言い換えれば、表出（体）的に考えて、心の弁別要素は意識であり、意識性の（検出）テストは選択の存在（有無）であり、その選択の証拠は、2つ以上の選択肢間の適応行為が示す先見的な不確実性であります。 しかしながら、この分析法につけ加えるべきことがあります。すなわち、私たちの心の唯一の基準は、適応行為に関する先行的な不確実性ですが、それは必ずしも心に関わるすべての適応行為が先行的不確実性の特徴を持つはずだ、ということにはなりません。あるいは、同じこと〔そういうことにはならない〕ですが、そのようなある行為が先行的不確実性の特徴を持つかもしれないからといって、（それだけで）説明上それを非精神的なものと見なすべきだ、ということにはなりません。 しかしながら、私たちが精神的と認識する多くの適応行為は、所与の状況下では事前に然るべきものであると分かります。しかしそれは、分析によってすでに私たちの視界内に、独立した証拠から、それを精神的なものとみなせるような作用因を有することが示された場合のみに限られます。 以上、ご回答まで。 ※（追伸）前々便で、evidentを「表出」と訳しましたが、場合によってはこれを「表出体」と解釈すれば、内容がより鮮明に理解できると思いますので、この段補足いたします。
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- Nakay702
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※（追伸２）もう１つ補足させていただきます。と同時に、気まぐれをお詫びいたします。 つまり、adjustive actionなどの adjustiveを、その場の気分で「調整」と訳したり、「適応」と訳したりしています。しっくりしない場合は、訳語を置き換えてお読みいただければ幸いです。
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Without, therefore, entertaining the question as to the connexion between Body and Mind, it is enough to say that under any view concerning the nature of this connexion, we are justified in drawing a distinction between activities which are accompanied by feelings, and activities which, so far as we can see, are not so accompanied. If this is allowed, there seems, to be no term better fitted to convey the distinction than the term Choice ; agents that are able to choose their actions are agents that are able to feel the stimuli which determine the choice. Such being our Criterion of Mind, it admits of being otherwise stated, and in a more practically applicable manner, in the following words which I quote from " Animal Intelli gence :" — " It is, then, adaptive action by a living organism in cases where the inherited machinery of the nervous system does not furnish data for our prevision of what the adaptive action must necessarily be — it is only here that we recognize the objective evidence of mind. The criterion of mind, therefore, which I propose, and to which I shall adhere throughout the present volume, is as follows : — Does the organism learn to make new adjustments, or to modify old ones, in accordance with the results of its own individual experience ? If it does so, the fact cannot be merely due to reflex action in the sense above described ; for it is impossible that heredity can have provided in advance for innovations upon or alterations of its machinery during the lifetime of a particular individual".
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Now in this necessarily ejective method of enquiry, what is the kind of activities that we are entitled to regard as indicative of mind ? I certainly do not so regard the flowing of a river or the blowing of a wind. Why ? First, because the subjects 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 invariably of the same kind under the same circumstances : they therefore offer no evidence of that which I deem the distinctive character of my own mind as such — Consciousness. In other words, two conditions require to he satisfied before we even begin to imagine that observable activities are indicative of mind ; the activities must be dis played by a living organism, and they must be of a kind to suggest the presence of consciousness. What then is to be taken as the criterion of consciousness ? Subjectively, no criterion is either needful or possible ; for to me, individually, nothing can be more ultimate than my own consciousness, and, therefore, my consciousness cannot admit of any criterion having a claim to a higher certainty. But, ejectively, some such criterion is required, and as my consciousness cannot come within the territory of a foreign consciousness, I can only appreciate the latter through the agency of ambassadors — these ambassadors being, as I have now so frequently said, the observable activities of an organism. The next question, therefore, is, What activities of an organism are to be taken as indicative of consciousness ? The answer that comes most readily is, — All activities that are indicative of Choice; wherever wo see a living organism apparently exerting inten tional choice, we may infer that it is conscious choice, and, therefore, that the organism has a mind. But physiology shows that this answer will not do ; for, while not disputing whether there is any mind without the power of conscious choice, physiology, as we shall see in the next chapter, is very firm in denying that all apparent choice is due to mind.
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Two points have to be observed with regard to this criterion, in whichever verbal form we may choose to express it. The first is that it is not rigidly exclusive either, on the one hand, of a possibly mental character in apparently non- mental adjustments, or, conversely, of a possibly non-mental character in apparently mental adjustments. For it is certain that failure to learn by individual experience is not always conclusive evidence against the existence of mind; such failure may arise merely from an imperfection of memroy, or from there not being enough of the mind-element present to make the adjustments needful to meet the novel circum stances. Conversely, it is no less certain that some parts of our own nervous system, which are not concerned in the phenomena of consciousness, are nevertheless able in some measure to learn by individual experience. The nervous apparatus of the stomach, for instance, is able in so con siderable a degree to adapt the movements of that organ to the requirements of its individual experience, that were the organ an organism we might be in danger of regarding it as dimly intelligent. Still there is no evidence to show that non-mental agents are ever able in any considerable measure thus to simulate the adjustments performed by mental ones ; and therefore our criterion, in its practical application, has rather to be guarded against the opposite danger of defying the presence of mind to agents that are really mental For, as I observed in " Animal Intelligence," " it is clear that long before mind has advanced sufficiently far in the scale of development to become amenable to the test in question, it has probably begun to dawn as nascent subjectivity. In other words, because a lowly organized animal does not learn by its own individual experience, we may not therefore con clude that in performing its natural or ancestral adaptations to appropiate stimuli, consciousness, or the mind-element, is wholly absent ; we can only say that this element, if present, reveals no evidence of the fact. But, on the other hand, if a lowly organized animal does learn by its own individual experience, we are in possession of the best available evi dence of conscious memory leading to intentional adaptation. Therefore, our criterion applies to the upper limit of non- mental action, not to the lower limit of mental[action]''.
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It is obvious, then, to start with, that by Mind we may mean two very different things, according as we contemplate it in our own individual selves, or as manifested by other beings. For if I contemplate my own mind, I have an imme diate cognizance of a certain flow of thoughts and feelings, which are the most ultimate things — and, indeed, the only things— of which I am cognizant. But if I contemplate Mind in other persons or organisms, I can have no such immediate cognizance of their thoughts and feelings ; I can only infer the existence of such thoughts and feelings from the activities of the persons or organisms which appear to manifest them. Thus it is that by Mind we may mean either that which is subjective or that which is objective. Now throughout the present work we shall have to consider Mind as an object ; and therefore it is well to remember that our only instrument of analysis is the observation of activities which we infer to be prompted by, or associated with, mental antecedents or accompaniments analogous to those of which we are directly conscious in our own subjective experience. That is to say, starting from what I know subjectively of the operations of my own individual mind, and of the activi ties which in my own organism these operations seem to prompt, I proceed by analogy to infer from the observable activities displayed by other organisms, the fact that certain mental operations underlie or accompany these activities.
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The point is that, notwithstanding special difficulties in assigning this or that being to one or the other class, the psychological classification which I advocate resembles the zoological classification which I have cited ; it is a valid classification, inasmuch as it recognizes a distinction where there is certainly something to distinguish. For even if we take the most mechanical view of mental processes that is possible, and suppose that conscious intelligence plays no part whatever in determining action, there still remains the fact that such conscious intelligence exists, and that prior to certain actions it is always affected in certain ways. Therefore, even if we suppose that the state of things is, so to speak, accidental, and that the actions in question would always he performed in precisely the same way whether or not they were thus connected with consciousness, it would still remain desirable, for scientific purposes, that a marked distinction should be drawn between cases of activity that proceed without, and those that proceed with this remarkable association with consciousness. As the phenomena of subjectivity are facts at any rate no less real than those of objectivity, if it is found that some of the latter are invariably and faithfully mirrored in those of the former, such pheno mena, for this reason alone, deserve to be placed in a distinct scientific category, even though it were proved that the mirror of subjectivity might be removed without affecting any of the phenomena of objectivity.
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Or, again adopting the convenient terminology of Clifford, we must always remember that we can never know the mental . states of any mental beings other than ourselves as objects ; we can only know them as ejects^ or as ideal projections of our own mental states. And it is from this broad fact of psycho logy that the difficulty arises in applying our criterion of mind to particular cases — especially among the lower animals. For if the evidence of mind, or of being capable of choice, must thus always be ejective as distinguished from objective, it is clear that the cogency of the evidence must diminish as we recede from minds inferred to be like our own, towards minds inferred to be not so like our own, passing in a gradual series into not-minds. Or, otherwise stated, although the evidence derived from ejects is practically regarded as good in the case of mental organizations inferred to be closely analogous to our own, this evidence clearly ceases to be trust worthy in the ratio in which the analogy fails ; so that when we come to the case of very low animals — where the analogy is least — we feel uncertain whether or not to ascribe to them any ejective existence. But I must again insist that this fact — which springs immediately but of the fundamental isolation of the individual mind — is no argument against my criterion of mind as the best criterion available; it [it=the fact] tends, indeed, to show that no better criterion can be found, for it shows the hopelessness of seeking such.
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The host of reflex actions is arrayed against the proposition, and, in view of such non-mental, though apparently intentional adjustments, we find the necessity for some test of the choice- element as real or fictitious. The only test we have is to ask whether the adjustments displayed are invariably the same under the same circumstances of stimulation. The only distinction between adjustive movements due to reflex action, and adjustive movements accompanied by mental perception, consists in the former depending on inherited mechanisms within the nervous system being so constructed as to effect particular adjustive movements in responso to particular stimulations, while the latter are independent of any such inherited adjustment of special mechanisms to the exigencies of special circumstances. Reflex actions, under the influence of their appropriate stimuli, may be compared to the actions of a machine under the manipulations of an operator : when certain springs of action are touched by certain stimuli, the whole machine is thrown into appropriate action ; there is no room for choice, there is no room for uncertainty ; but, as surely as any of these inherited mechanisms is affected by the stimulus with reference to which it has been constructed to act, so surely will it act in precisely the same, way as it always has acted. But the case with conscious mental adjust ment is quite different. For, without going into the question concerning the relation of Body and Mind, or waiting to ask whether cases of mental adjustment are not really quite as mechanical in the sense of being the necessary result or correlative of a chain of psychical sequences due to a physical stimulation, it is enough to point to the variable and incalcu lable character of mental adjustments as distinguished from the constant and foreseeable character of reflex adjustments.All in fact, that in an objective sense we can mean by a mental adjustment, is an adjustment of a kind that has not been definitely fixed by heredity as the only adjustment possible in the given circumstances of stimulation. For, were there no alternative of adjustment, the case, in an animal at least, would be indistinguishable from one of reflex action.
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Now, in answer to this objection, I have only to say that no one can have a more lively appreciation than myself of the supreme importance of experimental or historical veri fication, in all cases where the possibility of such verification is attainable. But in cases where such verification is not attainable, what are we to do ? We may clearly do either of two things. We may either neglect to investigate the sub ject at all, or we may Jo our best to investigate it by employ ing the only means of .investigation which are at our disposal. Of these two courses there can be no doubt which is the one that the scientific spirit prompts. The true scientific spirit desires to examine everything, and if in any case it is refused the best class of instruments wherewith to conduct the examination, it will adopt the next best that are available. In such cases science clearly cannot be forwarded by neglect ing to use these instruments, while her cause may be greatly advanced by using them with care. This is proved by the fict that, in the science of psychology, nearly all the con siderable advances which have been made, have been made, not by experiment, but by observing mental phenomena and reasoning from these phenomena deductively. In such cases, therefore, the true scientific spirit prompts us, not to throw away deductive reasoning where it is so frequently the onlyinstrument available, but rather to cany it with us, and to use it as not abusing it.
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From this statement of the case it will be apparent that our knowledge of mental activities in any organism other than our own is neither subjective nor objective. That it is not subjective I need not wait to show. That it is not objective* may be rendered obvious by a few moments' reflec tion. .For it is evident that mental activities in other organisms can never be to us objects of direct knowledge ; as I have just said, we can only infer their existence from the objective sources supplied by observable activities of such organisms.. Therefore all our knowledge of mental activities other than our own really consists of an inferential inter pretation of bodily activities — this interpretation being founded on our subjective knowledge of our own mental activities. By inference we project, as it were, the known patterns of our own mental chromograph [chromograph=chromolithograph] on what is to us the otherwise blank screen of another mind ; and our only knowledge of the processes there taking place is really due to such a projection of our own subjectively. This matter has been well and clearly presented by the late Professor Clifford, who has coined the exceedingly appropriate term eject (in contradistinction to subject and object), whereby to designate the distinctive character of a mind (or mental process) other than our own in its relation to our own. I shall therefore adopt this convenient term, and speak of all our possible knowledge of other minds as ejective.
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It will be observed that in this statement of the case I have expressly excluded the psychology of man, as being a department of comparative psychology with reference to which I am not entitled to assume the principles of Evolu tion. It seems needless to give my reasons for this exclusion For it is notorious that from the hour when Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simultaneously propounded the theory which has exerted so enormous an influence on the thought of thepresent century, the difference between the views of these two joint originators of the theory has since been shared by the ever-increasing host of their disciples. We all know what that difference is. We all know that while Mr. Darwin believed the facts of human psychology to admit of being explained by the general laws of Evolution, Mr. Wallace does not believe these facts to admit of being thus explained. Therefore, while the followers of Mr. Darwin maintain that all organisms whatsover are alike products of a natural genesis, the followers of Mr. Wallace maintain that a distinct exception must be made to this general atement in the case of the human organism ; or at all events in the caso of the human mind. Thus it is that the great school of evolutionists is divided into two sects ; according to one the mind of man has been slowly evolved from lower types of psychical exist ence, and according to the other the mind of man, not having been thus evolved, stands apart, sui generis, from all other types of such existence.
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