The Evidence of Choice as the Criterion of Mind

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  • This article discusses the concept of choice as a criterion of mind and the distinction between mental and non-mental agents.
  • The author argues that while it may be difficult to determine whether a particular being belongs to the category of choosing or non-choosing agents, the distinction between the two is valid.
  • The article also highlights the gradual manner in which choice arises and emphasizes that it is not possible to draw a clear line of demarcation between choosing and non-choosing agents.
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和訳お願い致します。

In positing the evidence' of Choice as my objective (or ejective) criterion of Mind, I do not think it necessary to enter into any elaborate analysis of what constitutes this evidence. In a subsequent chapter I shall treat fully of what I call the physiology or objective aspect of choice ; and then it will be seen that from the gradual manner in which choice, or the mind element, arises, it is not practically possible to draw a definite line of demarcation between choosing and non-choosing agents. Therefore, at this stage of the enquiry I prefer to rest in the ordinary acceptation of the term, as implying a distinction which common sense has always drawn, and probably always will draw, between mental and non-mental agents. It cannot be correctly said that a river chooses the course of its flow, or that the earth chooses an ellipse wherein to revolve round the sun. And similarly, however complex the operations may be of an agent recog nized as non-mental — such, for instance, as those of a calcu lating machine — or however impossible it may be to predict the result of its actions, we never say that such operations or actions are due to choice ; we reserve this term for operations or actions, however simple and however easily the result may be foreseen, which are performed, either by agents who in virtue of the non-mechanical nature of these actions prove themselves to be mental, or by agents already recognized as mental — i.e., by agents who have already proved themselves to be mental by performing other actions of such a non- mechanical or unforeseeable nature as we feel assured can only be attributed to choice. And there can be no reasonable doubt that this common-sense distinction between choosing aud non-choosing agents is a valid one. Although it may be difficult or impossible, in particular cases, to decide to which of the two categories this or that being should be assigned, this difficulty does not affect the validity of the classification — any more, for instance, than the difficulty of deciding whether Limulus should be classified with the crabs or with the scorpions affects the validity of the classification which marks off the group Crustacea from the group Arachnida.

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  • Nakay702
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回答No.1

以下のとおりお答えします。 「心」に関する客体(あるいは表出体)の基準として「選択」の証拠（物件）を立てる際に、私は、この証拠の構成素の精巧な分析に取りかかる必要があるとは思いません。後続の章では、選択の生理機能もしくは客体的実相と私が呼ぶものを、完全に扱うこととします。その章で、選択(または精神的要素)が段階的な仕方で生起することを理解されることでしょう。選ぶか選ばないかの作用因の間に限定的な境界線を引くことは、実際には、まず不可能です。 したがってこの段階の探求では、常に、常識というものが精神的作用因と非精神的作用因とのどちらかを引き出してきたり、また引き出すであろうような区別を示唆するものとしておいて、私自身は通常の術語の語義の中に安んじて留まっていたいと思います。川の流れがどのコースを選ぶかとか、地球が太陽のまわりを回るのにどの点で楕円を選ぶかなどは正確に言うことができません。 それと同様に、例えば計算機の操作のように―非精神的と認識される作用因については、操作がいかに複雑であっても、―あるいはその行為の結果を予言することがいかに不可能であっても、私たちはそのような操作または行為が、選択性に基づくとは言いません。私たちは操作や行為のためにこの用語を保存しておきましょう。いかに単純であろうと、またいかに容易であろうと、これらの行為の非機械的な性質によって精神的であると証明される作用因によって実行されても、すでに精神的なものとして認識されている作用因―例えば非機械的な、または選択の性質しかないと感じられるような予知不能の性質をもった他の行為を行なうことですでに精神的であると証明されている作用因―によって実行されたのならば、結果は予知され得るのです。 また、選択と非選択からいずれかを選ぶこの常識的な区別が有効なものであることに合理的な疑いはあり得ません。たとえ、特殊な場合で、２つの範疇のうちのどちらが割り当てられるべきかを決定することが困難または不可能であっても、この難しさは分類の有効性には影響しません。―それは例えば、カブトガニが、カニに分類されるべきか、あるいはサソリに分類されるかどうか決定する難しさが、クモ綱類から甲殻類を区別する分類の有効性に影響しないのと大同小異です。 以上、ご回答まで。（Arachnidaは、Arachnidと見て訳しました。）

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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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    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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    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 Hebrew race, their works, and their books, are great facts in the history of man; the influence of the mind of this people upon the rest of mankind has been immense and peculiar, and there can be no difficulty in recognising therein the hand of a directing Providence. But we may not make ourselves wiser than God, nor attribute to Him methods of procedure which are not His. If, then, it is plain that He has not thought it needful to communicate to the writer of the Cosmogony that knowledge which modern researches have revealed, why do we not acknowledge this, except that it conflicts with a human theory which presumes to point out how God ought to have instructed man? The treatment to which the Mosaic narrative is subjected by the theological geologists is anything but respectful. The writers of this school, as we have seen, agree in representing it as a series of elaborate equivocations -- a story which palters with us in a double sense.' But if we regard it as the speculation of some Hebrew Descartes or Newton, promulgated in all good faith as the best and most probable account that could be then given of God's universe, it resumes the dignity and value of which the writers in question have done their utmost to deprive it. It has been sometimes felt as a difficulty to taking this view of the case, that the writer asserts so solemnly and unhesitatingly that for which he must have known that he had no authority. But this arises only from our modern habits of thought, and from the modesty of assertion which the spirit of true science has taught us. Mankind has learnt caution through repeated slips in the process of tracing out the truth.

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    We venture to think that the world at large will continue to consider the account in the first chapter of Genesis to be a cosmogony. But as it is here admitted that it does not describe physical realities, but only outward appearances, that is, gives a description false in fact, and one which can teach us no scientific truth whatever, it seems to matter little what we call it. If its description of the events of the six days which it comprises be merely one of appearances and not of realities, it can teach us nothing regarding them. Dissatisfied with the scheme of conciliation which has been discussed, other geologists have proposed to give an entirely mythical or enigmatical sense to the Mosaic narrative, and to consider the creative days described as vast periods of time. This plan was long ago suggested, but it has of late enjoyed a high degree of popularity, through the advocacy of the Scotch geologist Hugh Miller, an extract from whose work has been already quoted. Dr. Buckland gives the following account of the first form in which this theory was propounded, and of the grounds upon which he rejected it in favour of that of Chalmers:

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    It is evident that, in entering upon this wider field, I shall frequently have to quit the narrower limits of direct obser vation within which my former work was confined ; and it is chiefly because I think it desirable clearly to distinguish between the objects of Comparative Psychology as a science, and any inferences or doctrines which may be connected with its study, that I have made so complete a-partition of the facts of animal intelligence from the theories which I believe these facts to justify. So much, then, for the reasons which have led to the form of these essays, and the relations which I intend the one to bear to the other. I may now say a few words to indicate the structure and scope of the present essay. Every discussion must rest on some basis of assumption ; every thesis must have some hypothesis. The hypothesis v which I shall take is that of the truth of the general theory of Evolution : I shall assume the truth of this theory so far as I feel that all competent persona of the present day will be prepared to allow me. I must therefore first define what degree of latitude I suppose to be thus conceded.

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