Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
The changes in behavior classified under intellect and morality seem
then to be all explainable by the two laws of exercise and effect. The
facts of imitation really refer to certain specific original connections
or to the efficiency of a model in determining what shall satisfy or
to the provision of certain instructive situations in the form of the
behavior of other animals. The facts variously referred to as suggestion,
ideo-motor action or the motor power of ideas, really refer to the fact,
common in the human animal only, that to those ideas that represent acts
in thought the acts are often bound as responses. The bonds are due to
the primary laws of effect and exercise. The facts of reasoning really
refer to the fact of prepotency of one or another element in a situation
in determining the response.
The reduction of all learning to making and rewarding or avoiding and
punishing connections between situation and response allows changes in
intellect and character to be explained by changes in the neurones that
are known either to be or to be possible. I have elsewhere sketched one
such possible neural mechanism for the law of effect.[43]
On the contrary, imitation, suggestion and reasoning, as commonly
described, put an intolerable burden upon the neurones. To any one who
has tried to imagine a possible action in the neurones to parallel the
traditional power of the mere perception of an act in another or of the
mere representation of an act as done by oneself to produce that act,
this is a great merit. For the only adequate psychological parallel of
traditional imitation and suggestion would be the original existence or
the gratuitous formation of a connection between (1) each neurone-action
corresponding to a percept of an act done by another or to the idea of
an act done by oneself and (2) the neurone-action arousing that act. It
is incredible that the neurone-action corresponding to the perception of
a response in another, or to the idea of a response in oneself, or to
the first term in an association by similarity, should have, in and of
itself, a special power to determine that the next neurone-action should
be that paralleling the response in question. And there is no possible
physiological parallel of a power to jump from premise to conclusion for
no other reason than the ideal fitness of the sequence.
SIMPLIFICATIONS OF THE LAWS OF EXERCISE AND EFFECT
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