Читать книгу Animal Behaviour - C. Lloyd Morgan - Страница 14

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It is possible that all organic behaviour is accompanied by consciousness. But there is no direct means of ascertaining whether it is so or not. This is, and must remain, a matter of more or less plausible conjecture. We have, indeed, no direct knowledge of any consciousness save our own. Undue stress should not, however, be laid on this fundamental isolation of the individual mind. We confidently infer that our fellow-men are conscious, because they are in all essential respects like us, and because they behave just as we do when we act under its guiding influence. And on similar grounds we believe not less confidently that many animals are also conscious. But how far we are justified in extending this inference it is difficult to say. Probably our safest criterion is afforded by circumstantial evidence that the animal in question profits by experience. If, as we watch any given creature during its life-history, we see at first a number of congenital or acquired modes of behaviour, we may not be able to say whether they are accompanied by consciousness or not; but if we find that some of these are subsequently carried out more vigorously while others are checked, we seem justified in the inference that pleasurable consciousness was associated with the results of the former, and disagreeable consciousness with those of the latter. When we see that a chick, for example, pecks at first at any small object, it is difficult to say, on these grounds, whether it is a sentient animal or only an unconscious automaton; and if it continued to behave in a similar fashion throughout life, our difficulty would still remain. But when we see that some objects are rejected while others are selected, we infer that consciousness in some way guides its behaviour. The chick has profited by experience. But even this is clearly only a criterion of what we may term effective consciousness. There may be sentience which is merely an accompaniment of organic action without any guiding influence on subsequent modes of behaviour. In that case it is not effective; and whether it is present or not we have no means of ascertaining.

We seem also to be led to the conclusion, both from a priori considerations and from the results of observation, that effective consciousness is associated with a nervous system. Its fundamental characteristic is control over the actions, so that some kinds of behaviour may be carried out with increased vigour, and others checked. And it is difficult to see how this can take place unless the centres of control are different from those over which they exercise this influence. If we are to understand anything definite by the guidance of consciousness, we must conceive it as standing apart from and exercising an overruling influence over that which it guides. This is unquestionably an essential characteristic of consciousness, as generally understood by those who take the trouble to consider its relation to behaviour; and though some would seek to persuade us that a mere accompaniment of consciousness can somehow determine the continuance or discontinuance of organic behaviour, it is difficult to see how this can be the case. The accompaniment of air-tremors can no more influence the vibrations of a sounding string than an accompaniment of consciousness can affect the nature of the organic changes in the tentacles of the Sun-dew leaf.

And if, instead of trusting to such general a priori considerations, we study with attention the conditions under which an animal so behaves as to lead us to infer that it profits by experience, we find that it is not the consciousness that accompanies the behaviour which leads to future guidance, but the consciousness that arises from the results of the behaviour. Let us willingly grant that the newly hatched, and as yet inexperienced chick, when it pecks at a small object is conscious of a visual impression, and is conscious also of movements of its neck and beak. These do not constitute the experience by which it profits. This is provided by the results of the pecking, according as the morsel seized is nice or nasty. We may say, in popular language, that the little bird remembers when it sees a similar object that the former results were pleasant or distasteful, as the case may be; and that it is through this remembrance that future guidance is rendered possible. But all the evidence that we possess goes to show that the sensory centres, stimulated by what we will assume to be the taste of the morsel, are different from those which are affected by sight, and the movements concerned in pecking. So that the consciousness which is effective in guiding future action is an accompaniment of the stimulation of centres that are different from those concerned in the behaviour over which guidance is exercised. And if this interpretation of the observed facts be correct, it supports the conclusions reached from a priori considerations. It seems further to show that, not only is a nervous system necessary for the occurrence of controlled behaviour, but that no little complexity in its intercommunications is essential.

It may be urged that the chick’s behaviour which has been selected for purposes of illustration, and the interpretation we have put upon it, throws too much stress on remembrance, so called, and further gives the false impression that all experience must be for future guidance. There are surely numberless cases, it will be said, in which nothing of the nature of distinct memory is involved, and in which the guidance of consciousness is exercised at once over present behaviour, without any postponement to the future. Even omitting for the present the former point, the formula implied—that present experience is for future guidance—cannot be accepted in view of the familiar fact that present experience is constantly influencing present behaviour. Practically speaking, this is perfectly true: because, practically, under the term present we include quite an appreciable period of time—say, a few seconds, or even minutes. If we narrow our conception of the present, as is commonly done in philosophical discussions, to the boundary line between past and future, then it will be seen that even the guidance of what in popular speech is called present behaviour is really exercised on the subsequent phases of that behaviour. At the risk of some technicality our position must be explained a little more fully. It is assumed that the data of consciousness are afforded by afferent impulses coursing inwards from the organs of special sense, or those concerned in responsive movements. This conclusion rests on such a wide body of psychological inference that it may be accepted without discussion, at any rate for our immediate purpose. The efferent impulses, those which effect the orderly contraction of the muscles, are unconscious; but when the movement is produced afferent impulses course inwards from the parts concerned in the behaviour, and these may then contribute data to consciousness.

Now let us suppose that a chick, which has been hatched in an incubator, be removed some twelve hours after birth, held in the hands for a few minutes until its eyes have grown accustomed to the light, and placed on a table near some small pieces of hard-boiled egg. Let us watch its behaviour and endeavour to interpret it. We shall have occasion to consider hereafter whether the conscious experience of parents and ancestors is inherited as such; for the present we will assume that it is not. The chick has to acquire for itself its own experience. A piece of egg catches the eye of the little bird, which then pecks at it, and just fails to seize it. Here is a piece of congenital organic behaviour. Taken by itself one might find it difficult to say whether it is accompanied by consciousness or not, just as one finds it difficult to say whether the closure of the Venus’s Fly-trap is conscious. But the subsequent behaviour of the chick leads us to infer that it is a sentient animal; and we may, therefore, fairly assume that it is sentient from the first. Dividing the course of the observed behaviour into stages, we may say that the first stage is that in which the chick receives a visual stimulus accompanied by a sensation of sight. Upon this there rapidly follows the second stage, when the bird pecks, and its experience is widened by new data of consciousness derived from a group of motor sensations; and upon this, again, there follows the third stage, when sensations come in from the morsel of egg which the chick touched but just failed to seize. After a pause the chick strikes again. But we have not a mere repetition of the former sequence of stages. The visual stimulus at first fell upon the eye of a wholly inexperienced bird; now it falls upon the eye of one that has gained experience of pecking and tasting. What we may call the conscious situation has completely changed, at all events if we assume that the items of consciousness, including as essential the consciousness of behaviour, do not remain separate and isolated, but have coalesced into a group through association. And in this group the consciousness of behaving is perhaps the most important element in the situation, making it of practical value. What psychologists term the presentative visual stimulus, now calls up re-presentative elements, motor and gustatory; and these place the situation in a wholly new aspect. They give it what Dr. Stout terms “meaning.” On the second or third attempt the chick seizes and swallows the morsel of egg. Its experience is yet further widened; and thereafter the situation has other new elements. Later it pecks at some nasty grub; shakes its head, and wipes its bill on the ground. The conscious situation has for the future become more complex, and the behaviour is henceforth differentiated into that of acceptance and that of rejection, in each case determined by the acquired meaning in the coalescent conscious situation: the sight of a nice piece of egg being one situation, that of a nasty caterpillar another, each associated with its specific behaviour-consciousness. We need not carry the illustration further on these lines: the essential feature is that experience grows by the coalescence of successive increments, and that each increment modifies the situation which takes effect on the succeeding phases of behaviour, even if they succeed within the fraction of a second. That is what is meant by saying that present experience is for future guidance. The future need not be remote, but may be so immediate that in popular speech we may say that it is not future but present guidance which is rendered possible.

We may now turn for a moment to the criticism that there are numberless cases in which nothing of the nature of distinct memory is involved. We may now substitute for the word remembrance, which was used above, the more technical term re-presentation. Profiting by experience, regarded as a criterion of the presence of effective consciousness, involves re-presentative elements in the conscious situation which carry with them meaning. Let us for the moment assume an ultra-sceptical attitude with regard to any conscious accompaniment. The chick when it pecks, let us say, is an unconscious automaton. It seizes a piece of egg; this affords an unconscious stimulus, which sets agoing unconscious acts of swallowing; or it seizes a piece of meal soaked in quinine, which sets agoing unconscious acts of rejection and touches the hidden springs which make the automaton wipe its bill. So far we find no great difficulty. It is when we have to consider subsequent behaviour that a severe strain is felt on this method of interpretation. One can understand an automatic action repeated again and again as often as the stimulus is repeated. But the chick may shake its head and wipe its bill on the mere sight of the quinine-soaked meal, which, on the hypothesis of conscious experience, has already proved distasteful. So that if we accept the unconscious automaton theory we must assume an organic association which closely simulates the conscious association to which our own experience testifies. But the associations which take part in the guidance of behaviour in the chick are so varied and delicate, so closely resemble those which in ourselves imply conscious guidance, that a sceptical attitude throws more strain upon our credulity than the acceptance of the current belief in conscious control. We shall therefore assume that evidence for such coalescent association is also evidence of the presence of effective consciousness.

It may still be said, however, that in selecting an example from so highly organized an animal as a bird, we are taking for granted that a complex case of controlled behaviour may fairly be accepted as a type of more simple cases. Unfortunately the only being with whose power of conscious control we have any first-hand acquaintance is possessed of a nervous system even more complex than that of the chick. Our psychological interpretations are inevitably anthropomorphic. All we can hope to do is to reduce our anthropomorphic conclusions to their simplest expression. The irreducible residuum seems to be that wherever an animal, no matter how lowly its station in the scale of life, profits by experience, and gives evidence of association, it must have some dim remembrance, or, let us now say, some re-presentation, of the results of previous behaviour which enters into and remodels the conscious situation; that through the re-presentative elements behaviour is somehow guided; and, further, that the centre of conscious control is different from the centre of response over which the control is exercised.