LECTURE XI. GENERAL IDEAS AND THOUGHT
It is said to be one of the merits of the human mind that it is capable of
framing abstract ideas, and of conducting nonsensational thought. In this it is
supposed to differ from the mind of animals. From Plato onward the "idea" has
played a great part in the systems of idealizing philosophers. The "idea" has
been, in their hands, always something noble and abstract, the apprehension and
use of which by man confers upon him a quite special dignity.
The thing we have to consider to-day is this: seeing that there certainly are
words of which the meaning is abstract, and seeing that we can use these words
intelligently, what must be assumed or inferred, or what can be discovered by
observation, in the way of mental content to account for the intelligent use of
abstract words?
Taken as a problem in logic, the answer is, of course, that absolutely nothing
in the way of abstract mental content is inferable from the mere fact that we
can use intelligently words of which the meaning is abstract. It is clear that a
sufficiently ingenious person could manufacture a machine moved by olfactory
stimuli which, whenever a dog appeared in its neighbourhood, would say, "There
is a dog,"
and when a cat appeared would throw stones at it. The
act of saying "There is a dog," and the act of throwing stones, would in such a
case be equally mechanical. Correct speech does not of itself afford any better
evidence of mental content than the performance of any other set of biologically
useful movements, such as those of flight or combat. All that is inferable from
language is that two instances of a universal, even when they differ very
greatly, may cause the utterance of two instances of the same word which only
differ very slightly. As we saw in the preceding lecture, the word "dog" is
useful, partly, because two instances of this word are much more similar than
(say) a pug and a great dane. The use of words is thus a method of substituting
for two particulars which differ widely, in spite of being instances of the same
universal, two other particulars which differ very little, and which are also
instances of a universal, namely the name of the previous universal. Thus, so
far as logic is concerned, we are entirely free to adopt any theory as to
general ideas which empirical observation may recommend.
Berkeley and Hume made a vigorous onslaught on "abstract ideas." They meant by
an idea approximately what we should call an image. Locke having maintained that
he could form an idea of triangle in general, without deciding what sort of
triangle it was to be, Berkeley contended that this was impossible. He says:
"Whether others,have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they
best can tell: for myself, I dare be confident I have it not. I find, indeed, I
have indeed a faculty of imagining, or representing to myself, the ideas of
those particular things I have perceived, and of variously compounding and
dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads, or the upper parts of a
man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, the
eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body.
But, then, whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape
and colour. Likewise the idea of a man that I frame to myself must be either of
a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or
a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea
above described. And it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea
of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow,
curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract
general ideas whatsoever. To be plain, I own myself able to abstract in one
sense, as when I consider some particular parts of qualities separated from
others, with which, though they are united in some object, yet it is possible
they may really exist without them. But I deny that I can abstract from one
another, or conceive separately, those qualities which it is impossible should
exist so separated; or that I can frame a general notion, by abstracting from
particulars in the manner aforesaid--which last are the two proper acceptations
of
abstraction. And there is ground to think most men
will acknowledge themselves to be in my case. The generality of men which are
simple and illiterate never pretend to
abstract notions.
It is said they are difficult and not to be attained without pains and study; we
may therefore reasonably conclude that, if such there be, they are confined only
to the learned.
"I proceed to examine what can be alleged in defence of the doctrine of
abstraction, and try if I can discover what it is that inclines the men of
speculation to embrace an opinion so remote from common sense as that seems
to be. There has been a late excellent and deservedly esteemed
philosopher who, no doubt, has given it very much countenance, by seeming to
think the having abstract general ideas is what puts the widest difference in
point of understanding betwixt man and beast. 'The having of general ideas,'
saith he, 'is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and
is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain unto. For,
it is evident we observe no footsteps in them of making use of general signs for
universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine that they have not the
faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas, since they have no use of words
or any other general signs.' And a little after: 'Therefore, I think, we may
suppose that it is in this that the species of brutes are discriminated from
men, and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly separated, and
which at last widens to so wide a distance. For, if they have any ideas at all,
and are not bare machines (as some would have them), we cannot deny them to have
some reason. It seems as evident to me that they do, some of them, in certain
instances reason as that they have sense; but it is only in particular ideas,
just as they receive them from their senses. They are the best of them tied up
within those narrow bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge
them by any kind of abstraction. ("
Essay on Human
Understanding," Bk. II, chap. xi, paragraphs 10 and 11.) I readily
agree with this learned author, that the faculties of brutes can by no means
attain to abstraction. But, then, if this be made the distinguishing property of
that sort of animals, I fear a great many of those that pass for men must be
reckoned into their number. The reason that is here assigned why we have no
grounds to think brutes have
abstract general ideas is, that we
observe in them no use of words or any other general signs; which is built on
this supposition-that the making use of words implies the having general ideas.
From which it follows that men who use language are able to abstract or
generalize their ideas. That this is the sense and arguing of the author will
further appear by his answering the question he in another place puts: 'Since
all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by general terms?' His
answer is: 'Words become general by being made the signs of general ideas.'
("
Essay on Human Understanding," Bk. III, chap. III,
paragraph 6.) But it seems that a word becomes general by being made the sign,
not of an abstract general idea, but of several particular ideas, any one of
which it indifferently suggests to the mind. For example, when it is said 'the
change of motion is proportional to the impressed force,' or that 'whatever has
extension is divisible,' these propositions are to be understood of motion and
extension in general; and nevertheless it will not follow that they suggest to
my thoughts an idea of motion without a body moved, or any determinate direction
and velocity, or that I must conceive an abstract general idea of extension,
which is neither line, surface, nor solid, neither great nor small, black,
white, nor red, nor of any other determinate colour. It is only implied that
whatever particular motion I consider, whether it be swift or slow,
perpendicular, horizontal, or oblique, or in whatever object, the axiom
concerning it holds equally true. As does the other of every particular
extension, it matters not whether line, surface, or solid, whether of this or
that magnitude or figure.
"By observing how ideas become general, we may the better judge how words are
made so. And here it is to be
noted that I do not deny absolutely
there are general ideas, but only that there are any
abstract general ideas; for, in the passages we have quoted wherein there
is mention of general ideas, it is always supposed that they are formed by
abstraction, after the manner set forth in sections 8 and 9. Now, if we will
annex a meaning to our words, and speak only of what we can conceive, I believe
we shall acknowledge that an idea which, considered in itself, is particular,
becomes general by being made to represent or stand for all other particular
ideas of the same sort. To make this plain by an example, suppose a geometrician
is demonstrating the method of cutting a line in two equal parts. He draws, for
instance, a black line of an inch in length: this, which in itself is a
particular line, is nevertheless with regard to its signification general,
since, as it is there used, it represents all particular lines whatsoever; so
that what is demonstrated of it is demonstrated of all lines, or, in other
words, of a line in general. And, as
that particular line
becomes general by being made a sign, so the
name 'line,'
which taken absolutely is particular, by being a sign is made general. And as
the former owes its generality not to its being the sign of an abstract or
general line, but of all particular right lines that may possibly exist, so the
latter must be thought to derive its generality from the same cause, namely, the
various particular lines which it indifferently denotes."
[n47]
Berkeley's view in the above passage, which is essentially the same as Hume's,
does not wholly agree with modern psychology, although it comes nearer to
agreement than does the view of those who believe that there are in the mind
single contents which can be called abstract
ideas. The way in
which Berkeley's view is inadequate is chiefly in the fact that images are as a
rule not of one definite prototype, but of a number of related similar
prototypes. On this subject Semon has written well. In "
Die
Mneme," pp. 217 ff., discussing the effect of repeated similar stimuli
in producing and modifying our images, he says: "We choose a case of mnemic
excitement whose existence we can perceive for ourselves by introspection, and
seek to ekphore the bodily picture of our nearest relation in his absence, and
have thus a pure mnemic excitement before us. At first it may seem to us that a
determinate quite concrete picture becomes manifest in us, but just when we are
concerned with a person with whom we are in constant contact, we shall find that
the ekphored picture has something so to speak generalized. It is something like
those American photographs which seek to display what is general about a type by
combining a great number of photographs of different heads over each other on
one plate. In our opinion, the generalizations happen by the homophonic working
of different pictures of the same face which we have come across in the most
different conditions and situations, once pale, once reddened, once cheerful,
once earnest, once in this light, and once in that. As soon as we do not let the
whole series of repetitions resound in us uniformly, but give our attention to
one particular moment out of the many... this particular mnemic stimulus at once
overbalances its simultaneously roused predecessors and successors, and we
perceive the face in question with concrete definiteness in that particular
situation." A little later he says: "The result is--at least in man, but
probably also in the higher animals--the development of a sort of
physiological abstraction. Mnemic
homophony
gives us, without the addition of other processes of thought, a picture of our
friend X which is in a certain sense abstract, not the concrete in any one
situation, but X cut loose from any particular point of time. If the circle of
ekphored engrams is drawn even more widely, abstract pictures of a higher order
appear: for instance, a white man or a negro. In my opinion, the first form of
abstract concepts in general is based upon such abstract pictures. The
physiological abstraction which takes place in the above described manner is a
predecessor of purely logical abstraction. It is by no means a monopoly of the
human race, but shows itself in various ways also among the more highly
organized animals." The same subject is treated in more detail in Chapter xvi of
"
Die mnemischen Empfindungen," but what is said there
adds nothing vital to what is contained in the above quotations.
It is necessary, however, to distinguish between the vague and the general. So
long as we are content with Semon's composite image, we MAY get no farther than
the vague. The question whether this image takes us to the general or not
depends, I think, upon the question whether, in addition to the
generalized image, we have also particular images of some of the instances out
of which it is compounded. Suppose, for example, that on a number of occasions
you had seen one negro, and that you did not know whether this one was the same
or different on the different occasions. Suppose that in the end you had an
abstract memory-image of the different appearances presented by the negro on
different occasions, but no memory-image of any one of the single appearances.
In that case your image would be vague. If, on the other hand, you have, in
addition to the generalized image, particular images of the several appearances,
sufficiently clear to be recognized as different, and as instances of the
generalized picture, you will then not feel the generalized picture to be
adequate to any one particular appearance, and you will be able to make it
function as a general idea rather than a vague idea. If this view is correct, no
new general content needs to be added to the generalized image. What needs to be
added is particular images compared and contrasted with the generalized image.
So far as I can judge by introspection, this does occur in practice. Take for
example Semon's instance of a friend's face. Unless we make some special effort
of recollection, the face is likely to come before us with an average
expression, very blurred and vague, but we can at will recall how our friend
looked on some special occasion when he was pleased or angry or unhappy, and
this enables us to realize the generalized character of the vague image.
There is, however, another way of distinguishing between the vague, the
particular and the general, and this is not by their content, but by the
reaction which they produce. A word, for example, may be said to be vague when
it is applicable to a number of different individuals, but to each as
individuals; the name Smith, for example, is vague: it is always meant to apply
to one man, but there are many men to each of whom it applies.[n48] The word "man," on the other hand, is general. We say, "This is
Smith," but we do not say "This is man," but "This is a man." Thus we may say
that a word embodies a vague idea when its effects are appropriate to an
individual, but are the same for various similar individuals,
while a word embodies a general idea when its effects are different from those
appropriate to individuals. In what this difference consists it is, however, not
easy to say. I am inclined to think that it consists merely in the knowledge
that no one individual is represented, so that what distinguishes a general idea
from a vague idea is merely the presence of a certain accompanying belief. If
this view is correct, a general idea differs from a vague one in a way analogous
to that in which a memory-image differs from an imagination-image. There also we
found that the difference consists merely of the fact that a memory-image is
accompanied by a belief, in this case as to the past.
It should also be said that our images even of quite particular occurrences have
always a greater or a less degree of vagueness. That is to say, the occurrence
might have varied within certain limits without causing our image to vary
recognizably. To arrive at the general it is necessary that we should be able to
contrast it with a number of relatively precise images or words for particular
occurrences; so long as all our images and words are vague, we cannot arrive at
the contrast by which the general is defined. This is the justification for the
view which I quoted on p. 184 from Ribot (op. cit., p.
32), viz. that intelligence progresses from the indefinite to the definite, and
that the vague appears earlier than either the particular or the general.
I think the view which I have been advocating, to the effect that a general idea
is distinguished from a vague one by the presence of a judgment, is also that
intended by Ribot when he says (op. cit., p. 92): "The
generic image is never, the concept is always, a judgment. We
know
that for logicians (formerly at any rate) the concept is the simple and
primitive element; next comes the judgment, uniting two or several concepts;
then ratiocination, combining two or several judgments. For the psychologists,
on the contrary, affirmation is the fundamental act; the concept is the
result of judgment (explicit or implicit), of
similarities with exclusion of differences."
A great deal of work professing to be experimental has been done in recent years
on the psychology of thought. A good summary of such work up to the year agog is
contained in Titchener's "Lectures on the Experimental
Psychology of the Thought Processes" (1909). Three articles in the "Archiv fur die gesammte Psychologie" by Watt,[n49] Messer[1] and Buhler[n51] contain a great deal of the material amassed by the
methods which Titchener calls experimental.
For my part I am unable to attach as much importance to this work as many
psychologists do. The method employed appears to me hardly to fulfil the
conditions of scientific experiment. Broadly speaking, what is done is, that a
set of questions are asked of various people, their answers are recorded, and
likewise their own accounts, based upon introspection, of the processes of
thought which led them to give those answers. Much too much reliance seems to me
to be placed upon the correctness of their introspection. On introspection as a
method I have spoken earlier (Lecture VI). I am not prepared, like Professor
Watson, to reject it wholly, but I do consider that it is exceedingly fallible
and quite peculiarly
liable to falsification in accordance with
preconceived theory. It is like depending upon the report of a shortsighted
person as to whom he sees coming along the road at a moment when he is firmly
convinced that Jones is sure to come. If everybody were shortsighted and
obsessed with beliefs as to what was going to be visible, we might have to make
the best of such testimony, but we should need to correct its errors by taking
care to collect the simultaneous evidence of people with the most divergent
expectations. There is no evidence that this was done in the experiments in
question, nor indeed that the influence of theory in falsifying the
introspection was at all adequately recognized. I feel convinced that if
Professor Watson had been one of the subjects of the
questionnaires, he would have given answers totally different from
those recorded in the articles in question. Titchener quotes an opinion of Wundt
on these investigations, which appears to me thoroughly justified. "These
experiments," he says, "are not experiments at all in the sense of a scientific
methodology; they are counterfeit experiments, that seem methodical simply
because they are ordinarily performed in a psychological laboratory, and involve
the co-operation of two persons, who purport to be experimenter and observer. In
reality, they are as unmethodical as possible; they possess none of the special
features by which we distinguish the introspections of experimental psychology
from the casual introspections of everyday life."
[2]
Titchener, of course, dissents from this opinion, but I cannot see that his
reasons for dissent are adequate. My doubts are only increased by the fact that
Buhler at any rate used trained psychologists as his subjects. A trained
psychologist is,
of course, supposed to have acquired the habit of
observation, but he is at least equally likely to have acquired a habit of
seeing what his theories require. We may take Buhler's "
Uber
Gedanken" to illustrate the kind of results arrived at by such methods.
Buhler says (p. 303): "We ask ourselves the general question: '
What do we experience when we think?' Then we do not at all attempt a
preliminary determination of the concept 'thought,' but choose for analysis only
such processes as everyone would describe as processes of thought." The most
important thing in thinking, he says, is "awareness that..." (
Bewusstheit dass), which he calls a thought. It is, he says, thoughts
in this sense that are essential to thinking. Thinking, he maintains, does not
need language or sensuous presentations. "I assert rather that in principle
every object can be thought (meant) distinctly, without any help from sensuous
presentation (
Anschauungshilfen). Every individual shade
of blue colour on the picture that hangs in my room I can think with complete
distinctness unsensuously (
unanschaulich), provided it is
possible that the object should be given to me in another manner than by the
help of sensations. How that is possible we shall see later." What he calls a
thought (
Gedanke) cannot be reduced, according to him, to
other psychic occurrences. He maintains that thoughts consist for the most part
of known rules (p. 342). It is clearly essential to the interest of this theory
that the thought or rule alluded to by Buhler should not need to be expressed in
words, for if it is expressed in words it is immediately capable of being dealt
with on the lines with which the behaviourists have familiarized us. It is clear
also that the supposed absence of words rests solely upon the introspective
testimony of the persons
experimented upon. I cannot think that
there is sufficient certainty of their reliability in this negative observation
to make us accept a difficult and revolutionary view of thought, merely because
they have failed to observe the presence of words or their equivalent in their
thinking. I think it far more likely, especially in view of the fact that the
persons concerned were highly educated, that we are concerned with telescoped
processes, in which habit has caused a great many intermediate terms to be
elided or to be passed over so quickly as to escape observation.
I am inclined to think that similar remarks apply to the general idea of
"imageless thinking," concerning which there has been much controversy. The
advocates of imageless thinking are not contending merely that there can be
thinking which is purely verbal; they are contending that there can be thinking
which proceeds neither in words nor in images. My own feeling is that they have
rashly assumed the presence of thinking in cases where habit has rendered
thinking unnecessary. When Thorndike experimented with animals in cages, he
found that the associations established were between a sensory stimulus and a
bodily movement (not the idea of it), without the need of supposing any
non-physiological intermediary (op. cit., p. 100 ff.).
The same thing, it seems to me, applies to ourselves. A certain sensory
situation produces in us a certain bodily movement. Sometimes this movement
consists in uttering words. Prejudice leads us to suppose that between the
sensory stimulus and the utterance of the words a process of thought must have
intervened, but there seems no good reason for such a supposition. Any habitual
action, such as eating or dressing, may be performed on the appropriate
occasion, without any need of thought,
and the same seems to be
true of a painfully large proportion of our talk. What applies to uttered speech
applies of course equally to the internal speech which is not uttered. I remain,
therefore, entirely unconvinced that there is any such phenomenon as thinking
which consists neither of images nor of words, or that "ideas" have to be added
to sensations and images as part of the material out of which mental phenomena
are built.
The question of the nature of our consciousness of the universal is much
affected by our view as to the general nature of the relation of consciousness
to its object. If we adopt the view of Brentano, according to which all mental
content has essential reference to an object, it is then natural to suppose that
there is some peculiar kind of mental content of which the object is a
universal, as oppose to a particular. According to this view, a particular cat
can be perceived or imagined, while the universal "cat"
is conceived. But this whole manner of viewing our
dealings with universals has to be abandoned when the relation of a mental
occurrence to its "object" is regarded as merely indirect and causal, which is
the view that we have adopted. The mental content is, of course, always
particular, and the question as to what it "means" (in case it means anything)
is one which cannot be settled by merely examining the intrinsic character of
the mental content, but only by knowing its causal connections in the case of
the person concerned. To say that a certain thought "means" a universal as
opposed to either a vague or a particular, is to say something exceedingly
complex. A horse will behave in a certain manner whenever he smells a bear, even
if the smell is derived from a bearskin. That is to say, any environment
containing an instance of the universal "smell of a bear" produces closely
similar
behaviour in the horse, but we do not say that the horse
is conscious of this universal. There is equally little reason to regard a man
as conscious of the same universal, because under the same circumstances he can
react by saying, "I smell a bear." This reaction, like that of the horse, is
merely closely similar on different occasions where the environment affords
instances of the same universal. Words of which the logical meaning is universal
can therefore be employed correctly, without anything that could be called
consciousness of universals. Such consciousness in the only sense in which it
can be said to exist is a matter of reflective judgment consisting in the
observation of similarities and differences. A universal never appears before
the mind as a single object in the sort of way in which something perceived
appears. I
think a logical argument could be produced to
show that universals are part of the structure of the world, but they are an
inferred part, not a part of our data. What exists in us consists of various
factors, some open to external observation, others only visible to
introspection. The factors open to external observation are primarily habits,
having the peculiarity that very similar reactions are produced by stimuli which
are in many respects very different from each other. Of this the reaction of the
horse to the smell of the bear is an instance, and so is the reaction of the man
who says "bear" under the same circumstances. The verbal reaction is, of course,
the most important from the point of view of what may be called knowledge of
universals. A man who can always use the word "dog" when he sees a dog may be
said, in a certain sense, to know the meaning of the word "dog," and
in that sense to have knowledge of the universal "dog."
But there is, of course, a further stage reached by the
logician
in which he not merely reacts with the word "dog," but sets to work to discover
what it is in the environment that causes in him this almost identical reaction
on different occasions. This further stage consists in knowledge of similarities
and differences: similarities which are necessary to the applicability of the
word "dog," and differences which are compatible with it. Our knowledge of these
similarities and differences is never exhaustive, and therefore our knowledge of
the meaning of a universal is never complete.
In addition to external observable habits (including the habit of words), there
is also the generic image produced by the superposition, or, in Semon's phrase,
homophony, of a number of similar perceptions. This image is vague so long as
the multiplicity of its prototypes is not recognized, but becomes universal when
it exists alongside of the more specific images of its instances, and is
knowingly contrasted with them. In this case we find again, as we found when we
were discussing words in general in the preceding lecture, that images are not
logically necessary in order to account for observable behaviour, i.e. in this
case intelligent speech. Intelligent speech could exist as a motor habit,
without any accompaniment of images, and this conclusion applies to words of
which the meaning is universal, just as much as to words of which the meaning is
relatively particular. If this conclusion is valid, it follows that behaviourist
psychology, which eschews introspective data, is capable of being an independent
science, and of accounting for all that part of the behaviour of other people
which is commonly regarded as evidence that they think. It must be admitted that
this conclusion considerably weakens the reliance which can be placed upon
introspective data. They must be accepted simply
on account of the
fact that we seem to perceive them, not on account of their supposed necessity
for explaining the data of external observation.
This, at any rate, is the conclusion to which. we are forced, so long as, with
the behaviourists, we accept common-sense views of the physical world. But if,
as I have urged, the physical world itself, as known, is infected through and
through with subjectivity, if, as the theory of relativity suggests, the
physical universe contains the diversity of points of view which we have been
accustomed to regard as distinctively psychological, then we are brought back by
this different road to the necessity for trusting observations which are in an
important sense private. And it is the privacy of introspective data which
causes much of the behaviourists' objection to them.
This is an example of the difficulty of constructing an adequate philosophy of
any one science without taking account of other sciences. The behaviourist
philosophy of psychology, though in many respects admirable from the point of
view of method, appears to me to fail in the last analysis because it is based
upon an inadequate philosophy of physics. In spite, therefore, of the fact that
the evidence for images, whether generic or particular, is merely introspective,
I cannot admit that images should be rejected, or that we should minimize their
function in our knowledge of what is remote in time or space.
[47.]
Introduction to "A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,"
paragraphs 10, 11, and 12.
[48.]
"Smith" would only be a quite satisfactory representation of vague words if
we failed to discriminate between different people called Smith.
[49.]
Henry J. Watt, "Experimentelle Beitrage zu einer Theorie des Denkens," vol.
iv (1905) pp. 289-436.
[1]
August Messer, "Experimentell-psychologische Untersuchu gen uber das
Denken," vol. iii (1906), pp. 1-224.
[51.]
Karl Buhler, "Uber Gedanken," vol. ix (1907), pp. 297-365.
[2]
Titchener, op. cit., p. 79.