We know a great many things concerning ourselves which we cannot know
nearly so directly concerning animals or even other people. We know when
we have a toothache, what we are thinking of, what dreams we have when
we are asleep, and a host of other occurrences which we only know about
others when they tell us of them, or otherwise make them inferable
by their behaviour. Thus, so far as knowledge of detached facts is
concerned, the advantage is on the side of self-knowledge as against
external observation.
But when we come to the analysis and scientific understanding of the
facts, the advantages on the side of self-knowledge become far less
clear. We know, for example, that we have desires and beliefs, but we
do not know what constitutes a desire or a belief. The phenomena are so
familiar that it is difficult to realize how little we really know about
them. We see in animals, and to a lesser extent in plants, behaviour
more or less similar to that which, in us, is prompted by desires and
beliefs, and we find that, as we descend in the scale of evolution,
behaviour becomes simpler, more easily reducible to rule, more
scientifically analysable and predictable. And just because we are not
misled by familiarity we find it easier to be cautious in interpreting
behaviour when we are dealing with phenomena remote from those of our
own minds: Moreover, introspection, as psychoanalysis has demonstrated,
is extraordinarily fallible even in cases where we feel a high degree of
certainty. The net result seems to be that, though self-knowledge has
a definite and important contribution to make to psychology, it is
exceedingly misleading unless it is constantly checked and controlled
by the test of external observation, and by the theories which such
observation suggests when applied to animal behaviour. On the whole,
therefore, there is probably more to be learnt about human psychology
from animals than about animal psychology from human beings; but this
conclusion is one of degree, and must not be pressed beyond a point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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