Philosophy

experimentally is that the glands and muscles (both striped and unstriped) of the higher animals exhibit the law of transfer of response, i.e. when two stimuli have often been applied together, one will ultimately call out the response which formerly the other called out. This law is one of the chief bases of habit. It is also obviously essential to our understanding of language: the sight of a dog calls up the word “dog”, and the word “dog” calls up some of the responses appropriate to a real dog. There is, however, another element in learning, besides mere habit. This is the element dealt with by Thorndike’s “Law of Effect.” Animals tend to repeat acts which have pleasant consequences, and to avoid such as have unpleasant consequences. But, as we saw a moment ago, “pleasant” and “unpleasant” are words which we cannot verify by objective observation. What we can verify by observation is that an animal seeks situations which in fact have had certain results, and avoids situations which in fact have had certain other results. Moreover, broadly speaking, the animal seeks results which tend to survival of itself or its offspring, and avoids results which tend in the opposite direction. This, however, is not invariable. Moths seek flames and men seek drink, though neither is biologically useful. It is only approximately, in situations long common, that animals are so adjusted to their environment as to act in a way which is advantageous from a biological standpoint. In fact, biological utility must never be employed as an explanation, but only noticed as a frequent characteristic, of the ways in which animals behave. Dr. Watson is of the opinion that Thorndike’s “Law of Effect” is unnecessary. He first suggests that only two factors are called for in the explanation of habit, namely, frequency and recency. Frequency is covered by Thorndike’s “Law of Exercise”, but recency, which is almost certainly a genuine factor, is not covered by Thorndike’s two laws. That is to say, when a number of random movements have finally resulted in success, the more recent of these movements are likely to be repeated earlier, on a second trial, than the earlier ones. But Dr. Watson finally abandons this method of dealing with habit-formation in favour of the one law of “conditioned reflexes” or “learned reactions”. He says (Behaviorism, p. 166): “Only a few psychologists have been interested in the problem. Most of the psychologists, it is to be regretted, have even failed to see that there is a problem. They believe habit formation is implanted by kind fairies. For example, Thorndike speaks of pleasure stamping in the successful movement and displeasure stamping out the unsuccessful movements. Most of the psychologists talk, too, quite volubly about the formation of new pathways in the brain, as though there were a group of tiny servants of Vulcan there who run through the nervous system with hammer and chisel digging new trenches and deepening old ones. I am not sure that the problem when phrased in this way is a soluble one. I feel that there must come some simpler way of envisaging the whole process of habit formation or else it may remain insoluble. Since the advent of the conditioned reflex hypothesis in psychology with all of the simplifications (and I am often fearful that it may be an oversimplification!) I have had my own laryngeal processes [i.e. what others call “thoughts”] stimulated to work upon this problem from another angle.” I agree with Dr. Watson that the explanations of habit-formation which are usually given are very inadequate, and that few psychologists have realised either the importance or the difficulty of the problem. I agree also that a great many cases are covered by his formula of the conditioned reflex. He relates a case of a child who once touched a hot radiator, and afterward avoided it for two years. He adds: “If we should keep our old habit terminology, we should have in this example a habit formed by a single trial. There can be then in this case no ‘stamping in of the successful movement’ and ‘no stamping out of the unsuccessful movement.’” On the basis of such examples, he believes that the whole of habit-formation can be derived from the principle of the conditioned reflex, which he formulates as follows (p. 168): Stimulus X will not now call out reaction R; stimulus Y will call out reaction R (unconditioned reflex); but when stimulus X is presented first and then Y (which does call out R) shortly thereafter, X will thereafter call out R. In other words, stimulus X becomes ever thereafter substituted for Y. This law is so simple, so important, and so widely true that there is a danger lest its scope should be exaggerated, just as, in the eighteenth century, physicists tried to explain everything by means of gravitation. But when considered as covering all the ground, it seems to me to suffer from two opposite defects. In the first place, there are cases where no habit is set up, although by the law it should be. In the second place, there are habits which, so far as we can see at present, have a different genesis. To take the first point first: the word “pepper” does not make people sneeze, though according to the law it should.4 Words which describe succulent foods will make the mouth water; voluptuous words will have some of the effect that would be produced by the situations they suggest; but no words will produce sneezes or the reactions appropriate to tickling. In the diagram given by Dr. Watson (p. 106), there are four reflexes which appear to be not sources of conditioned reflexes, namely sneezing, hiccoughing, blinking, and the Babinski reflex; of these, however, blinking, it is suggested (p. 99) may be really itself a conditioned reflex. There may be some quite straightforward explanation of the fact that some reactions can be produced by substitute stimuli while others cannot, but none is offered. Therefore the law of the conditioned reflex, as formulated, is too wide, and it is not clear what is the principle according to which its scope should be restricted. 4 Dr. Watson apparently entertains hopes of teaching babies to sneeze when they see the pepper box, but he has not yet done so. See Behaviorism, p. 90. The second objection to Dr. Watson’s law of habit, if valid, is more important than the first; but its validity is more open to question. It is contended that the acts by which solutions of problems are obtained are, in cases of a certain kind, not random acts leading to success by mere chance, but acts proceeding from “insight”, involving a “mental” solution of the problem as a preliminary to the physical solution. This is especially the view of those who advocate Gestaltpsychologie or the psychology of configuration. We may take, as typical of their attitude on the subject of learning, Köhler’s Mentality of Apes. Köhler went to Tenerife with certain chimpanzees in the year 1913; owing to the war he was compelled to remain with them until 1917, so that his opportunities for study were extensive. He complains of the maze and cage problems set by American investigators that they are such as cannot be solved by intelligence. Sir Isaac Newton himself could not have got out of the Hampton Court maze by any method except trial and error. Köhler, on the other hand, set his apes problems which could be solved by what he calls “insight”. He would hang up a banana5 out of reach, and leave boxes in the neighbourhood so that by standing on the boxes the chimpanzees could reach the fruit. Sometimes they had to pile three or even four boxes on top of each other before they could achieve success. Then he would put the banana outside the bars of the cage, leaving a stick inside, and the ape would get the banana by reaching for it with the stick. On one occasion, one of them, named Sultan, had two bamboo sticks, each too short to reach the banana; after vain efforts followed by a period of silent thought, he fitted the smaller into the hollow of the other, and so manufactured one stick which was long enough. It seems, however, from the account, that he first fitted the two together more or less accidentally, and only then realised that he had found a solution. Nevertheless, his behaviour when he had once realised that one stick could be made by joining the two was scarcely Watsonian: there was no longer anything tentative, but a definite triumph, first in anticipation and then in action. He was so pleased with his new trick that he drew a number of bananas into his cage before eating any of them. He behaved, in fact, as capitalists have behaved with machinery. 5 Called by Köhler “the objective,” because the word “banana” is too humble for a learned work. The pictures disclose the fact that “the objective” was a mere banana. Köhler says: “We can, from our own experience, distinguish sharply between the kind of conduct which, from the very beginning, arises out of a consideration of the characteristics of a situation, and one that does not. Only in the former case do we speak of insight, and only that behaviour of animals definitely appears to us intelligent which takes account from the beginning of the lie of the land, and proceeds to deal with it in a smooth continuous course. Hence follows this characteristic: to set up as the criterion of insight, the appearance of a complete solution with reference to the whole lay-out of the field.” Genuine solutions of problems, Köhler says, do not improve by repetition; they are perfect on the first occasion, and, if anything, grow worse by repetition, when the excitement of discovery has worn off. The whole account that Köhler gives of the efforts of his chimpanzees makes a totally different impression from that of the rats in mazes, and one is forced to conclude that the American work is somewhat vitiated by confining itself to one type of problem, and drawing from that one type conclusions which it believes to be applicable to all problems of animal learning. It seems that there are two ways of learning, one by experience, and the other by what Köhler calls “insight”. Learning by experience is possible to most vertebrates, though rarely, so far as is known, to invertebrates. Learning by “insight”, on the contrary, is not known to exist in any animals lower than the anthropoid apes, though it would be extremely rash to assert that it will not be revealed by further observations on dogs or rats. Unfortunately, some animals—for instance, elephants—may be extremely intelligent, but the practical difficulty and expense of experimentation with them is so great that we are not likely to know much about them for some time to come. However, the real problem is already sufficiently definite in Köhler’s book: it is the analysis of “insight” as opposed to the method of the conditioned reflex. Let us first be clear as to the nature of the problem, when described solely in terms of behaviour. A hungry monkey, if sufficiently near to a banana, will perform acts such as, in circumstances to which it has been accustomed, have previously enabled it to obtain bananas. This fits well with either Watson or Thorndike, so far. But if these familiar acts fail, the animal will, if it has been long without food, is in good health, and is not too tired, proceed to other acts which have never hitherto produced bananas. One may suppose, if one wishes to follow Watson, that these new acts are composed of a number of parts, each of which, on some former occasion, has occurred in a series which ended with the obtaining of the banana. Or one may suppose—as I think Thorndike does—that the acts of the baffled animal are random acts, so