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
Now, in order to analyze this distinction, it became needful further
to distinguish between the highest level of receptual ideation that
is attained by any existing brute, and those further developments of
receptual ideation which are presented by the growing child, after it
parts company with all existing brutes, but before it assumes even
the lowest stage of conceptual ideation—_i.e._ prior to the dawn of
self-consciousness. This subordinate distinction I characterized by the
terms “lower recepts” and “higher recepts.” Already I had instituted
a distinction between “lower concepts” and “higher concepts,” meaning
by the former the conceptual naming of recepts, and by the latter a
similar naming of other concepts. So that altogether four large and
consecutive territories were thus marked out: (1) Lower Recepts, which
are co-extensive with the psychology of existing animals, including
a very young child; (2) Higher Recepts, which occupy a psychological
area between the recepts of animals and the first appearance of
self-consciousness in man; (3) Lower Concepts, which are concerned only
with the self-conscious naming of recepts; (4) Higher Concepts, which
have to do with the self-conscious classification of other concepts
known as such, and the self-conscious naming of such ideal integrations
as may result therefrom.
Now, if all this is true of naming, clearly it must also be true of
judging. If there is a stage of pre-conceptual naming (denotation),
there must also be a stage of pre-conceptual judgment, of which such
naming is the expression. No doubt, in strictness, the term judgment
should be reserved for conceptual thought (denomination); but, in order
to avoid an undue multiplication of terms, I prefer thus to qualify the
existing word “judgment.” Such, indeed, has already been the practice
among psychologists, who speak of “intuitive judgments” as occurring
even in acts of perception. All, therefore, that I propose to do is to
institute two additional classes of non-conceptual judgment—namely,
lower receptual and higher receptual, or, more briefly, receptual and
pre-conceptual. If one may speak of an “intuitive,” “unconscious,” or
“perceptual” judgment (as when we mistake a hollow bowl for a sphere),
much more may we speak of a receptual judgment (as when a sea-bird
dives from a height into water, but will not do so upon land), or a
pre-conceptual judgment (as when a young child will extend the use of
a denotative name without any denominative conception). In all, then,
we have four phases of ideation to which the term judgment may be thus
either literally or metaphorically applied—namely, the perceptual,
receptual, pre-conceptual, and conceptual. Of these the last only
is judgment, properly so called. Therefore I do not say that a brute
really judges when, without any self-conscious thought, it brings
together certain reminiscences of its past experience in the form
of recepts, and translates for us the result of its ideation by the
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