Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human FacultyRomanes, George John
Science
Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty
Romanes, George John
Evolution; Psychology, Comparative
From what I have already said it must, I should suppose, be now
conceded that, at the place where the receptual life of a child
first begins to surpass the receptual life of any other mammal, no
psychological difference of kind can be affirmed. Let us, therefore,
consent to tap this pre-conceptual life at a considerably higher
level, and analyze the quality of ideation which flows therefrom: let
us consider the case of a child about two years old, who is able to
frame such a rudimentary, communicative, or pre-conceptual proposition
as _Dit ki_ (Sister is crying). At this age, as already shown, there
is no consciousness of self as a thinking agent, and, therefore, no
power of stating a truth as true. _Dit_ is the denotative name of
one recept, _ki_ the denotative name of another: the object and the
action which these two recepts severally represent happen to occur
together before the child’s observation: the child therefore denotes
them both simultaneously—i.e. _brings than into apposition_. This
it does by merely following the associations previously established
between the recept of a familiar object with its denotative name
_dit_, and the recept of a frequent action with its denotative name
_ki_. The apposition in consciousness of these two recepts, with their
corresponding denotations, is thus effected _for_ the child by what
may be termed _the logic of events_: it is not effected _by_ the child
in the way of any intentional or self-conscious grouping of its ideas,
such as we have seen to constitute the distinguishing feature of the
logic of concepts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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