Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
Our examination of the way science treats these six facts shows no
impassable cleft between knowledge of a man’s body and knowledge of his
mind. Scientific statements about the toothache, anxiety and numerical
judgment are in general more variable than statements about length,
hair-color and body-temperature, but there is here no difference save of
degree. Some physical facts, such as hair-color, eye-color or health,
are, in fact, judged more variably than some mental facts, such as rate
of adding, accuracy of perception of a certain sort and the like. So
far as the lack of agreement amongst impartial observers goes, there is
continuity from the identification of a length to that of an ideal.
Scientific judgments about the facts of John’s mind also depend, in
general, more upon his verbal reports than do judgments about his body.
But here also the difference is only of degree. The physician studying
wounds, ulcers, tumors, infections and other facts of a man’s body
may depend more upon his verbal reports than does the moralist who is
studying the man’s character. Verbal reports too are themselves a gradual
and continuous extension of coarser forms of behavior. They signify
consciousness no more truly than do signs, gestures, facial expression
and the general bodily motions of pursuit, retreat, avoidance or seizure.
Nor is it true that physical facts are known to many observers and mental
facts to but one, who _is_ or _has_ or _directly experiences_ them. If it
were true, sociology, economics, history, anthropology and the like would
either be physical sciences or represent no knowledge at all. The kind of
knowledge of which these sciences and the common judgments of our fellow
men are made up is knowledge possessed by many observers in common, the
individual of whom the facts is known, knowing the fact in part in just
the same way that the others know it.
The real difference between a man’s scientific judgments about himself
and the judgment of others about him is that he has _added sources of
knowledge_. Much of what goes on in him influences him in ways other
than those in which it influences other men. But this difference is not
coterminous with that between judgments about his ‘mind’ and about his
‘body.’ As was pointed out in the case of body-temperature, a man knows
certain facts about his own body in such additional ways.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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