Philosophy

the 9.35 this morning”, or any one of an indefinite number of other sentences expressive of the same occurrence. Are we to suppose that, while you were in the train, you were rehearsing all these different sentences to yourself, so that each of them became firmly associated with the words “journey to-day”? Clearly such a supposition would be absurd. Yet all the separate words of your sentence have many other associations; it is only the sentence as a whole that is associated with your journey. You have met other people besides Mr. Jones; you have had other contacts with Mr. Jones besides meeting him this morning; “train” and “to-day” equally are appropriate to other occurrences that you might relate. Thus it has to be the whole sentence that is the associative unit, and yet the sentence may never have been in your head before. It seems clear that it is possible to state in words something that you remember, although you never put it into words before. Suppose I say “What did you have for breakfast to-day?” Probably you will be able to tell me, though it is very likely that you have not given names to the things you ate until this moment. This whole matter is connected with the distinction between sentences and single words, which we found important when we were discussing language. But even when we confine ourselves to single words, there are difficulties in Dr. Watson’s view. Cases are alleged in which children, after learning to speak, can recall incidents which occurred before they could speak, and describe them in correct words. This would show that the memory had persisted in a non-verbal form throughout the period before they learned to speak, and had only subsequently found verbal expression. Such extreme incidents are rare and might be questioned, but in a less extreme form it ought not to be difficult to obtain examples of the same sort of thing. Suppose, for example, that a young child hurt his wrist badly before he knew the word “wrist”, and that some time afterwards he learnt it; I should not be surprised if he could relate that he had hurt his wrist. Such instances, however, would not refute the essence of Watson’s theory. He would allow “visceral” memory, for example, and the association with the word “wrist” might be grafted on to this. The real difficulty in Dr. Watson’s view, to my mind, is the fact that our sentence may vary verbally as much as it likes so long as it retains the same “meaning”, and that we clearly do not rehearse to ourselves beforehand all the possible sentences having the “meaning” in question. It should be realised that behaviourism loses much of its attractiveness if it is compelled to postulate movements that no one can observe and that there is no other reason to assume. Dr. Broad, in his book on The Mind and its Place in Nature, distinguishes between “molar” and “molecular” behaviourism: the former assumes only such bodily movements as can be observed, while the latter allows and utilises hypothetical minute movements, more especially in the brain. Now here we must make a distinction. Physics believes in a large number of phenomena which are too minute to be observed even with the strongest microscope, and if physics is at all correct, there must be minute movements in all parts of a human body, of a sort which we can never hope to see. We cannot reasonably demand of the behaviourist that he should abstain from an hypothesis which physics asserts for very good reasons. And in the process which leads from stimulus to reaction there are bound to be small occurrences in the brain, which, though they cannot be observed, are essential to the physiological explanation of what occurs. But when the behaviourist assumes small occurrences for which there is no ground in physics, and which are needed solely in order to safeguard his theory, he is in a less strong position. Dr. Watson asserts, for instance, that whenever we “think” there are small movements in the larynx which are beginnings of the movements we should make as if we spoke words out loud. It may be that this is true; certainly I am not prepared to deny it. But I am not prepared to say that it must be true merely because, if it were not, behaviourism would be false. We do not know in advance that behaviourism is true; we have to find out whether it will explain observed facts. Whenever it has to postulate something unobserved merely in order to avoid a refutation, it weakens its case. And if it maintains, as, from Dr. Watson’s language, it seems to do, that we only remember an occurrence by forming a verbal habit in connection with it, then it is obliged to postulate much implicit use of words of which we have no evidence. To sum up this discussion. While it is quite possible, by behaviourist methods, to ascertain whether a person remembers a past occurrence or not, unless he is deliberately obstructing the observer, and while much memory can be quite adequately explained as habit, there do seem to be great difficulties in the view that memory consists entirely of habit, at least in the case of the recollection of an event. These difficulties seem insuperable if we suppose memory to be essentially a verbal habit. They are not insuperable if we postulate sufficient minute unobservable bodily movements. We have not considered whether they can be overcome by introducing data derived from introspection, since we wish, for the present, to maintain a strictly objective attitude to human behaviour. The introspective discussion of memory will be taken up at a later stage.