Is thinking merely the action of language mechanisms?

Abstract

Before attempting to define further in this Symposium the behaviourist's position on thinking, it would seem best to discuss for a moment some of the statements the behaviourist has already made. In advance of any argument I think we can say that he has never really held the view that thinking is merely the action of language mechanisms. Possibly my own loose way of writing may have lent colour to such a view. I frankly admit that in a number of paragraphs in a recent book I may justly be accused of having given an affirmative answer to the question before the Symposium. I can make only the well-worn excuse that my over-emphasis was indulged in for the sake of sharpness of presentation before elementary students. In psychology we can rarely make a complete observation of everything that a human being does at any one moment; and in giving an account of what happens we emphasize those points which the experiment was designed best to bring out. This is what I meant to do in my previous discussion of thinking. I gladly emend any statement I may hitherto have made as follows. A whole man thinks with his whole body in each and in every part. If he is mutilated or if his organs are defective or lacking, he thinks with the remaining parts left in his care: but surely he does everything else in exactly the same way. If one studies a game of tennis, one's observation is taken up with the type of strokes the player makes, his serve, his returns, the way he covers the court, etc. In other words, arm and leg activities are principally emphasized. However, everyone admits that the player is using every cell in his body during the game. Nevertheless if we sever a small group of muscles in his right arm his playing is reduced practically to that of a novice.1, This illustration serves us very well in explaining why one emphasizes laryngeal processes in thinking. Surely we know that the deaf and dumb use no such laryngeal processes, nor does the individual whose larynx has been removed. Other bodily processes have to take on the function of the larynx. Such functions are usually usurped by the fingers, hands, arms, facial muscles, muscles of the head, etc. I have in another place emphasized the extent to which finger and hand movements are used by the deaf and dumb when they are engaged in silent thinking. Mr Thomson in his paper before the Symposium seems more or less to subscribe to the same view. It would be an easy experiment, but so far as I know not hitherto tried, to bind the fingers and arms of such an individual and then give him a problem in arithmetic, memorizing simple stanzas, and the like, which have to be worked out without exteroceptive aid. It would be necessary probably to tie down eye movements, were such a thing possible, and to restrain even the head and intercostal muscles. While there is no sacrosanct reason why thinking should go on in normal individuals in the muscular fields of the larynx and throat, there are two very practical ones. There is first the genetic fact that, from childhood onwards, organization has been forced in the direction of language activity. From the third or fourth year onwards probably a thousand language adjustments are made to one manual adjustment. There is, too, a biological reason. This arises from the fact that the human being in his early struggles for existence had to have the undivided use of arm, finger and hand musculature when hunting and fighting. If he had had to employ the large muscles in thinking as, I am convinced, deaf mutes do, manual activity would have been interfered with at critical times. I have never had the opportunity of observing deaf mutes in a fight or in a critical situation where both thinking and delicate action of the manual type were demanded. The question is often asked what marks off thinking from the mere subvocal unwinding of well-organized language habits. Mr Bartlett and Miss Smith have brought out this question explicitly and have formulated an answer which is not satisfactory to me. I think we ought to make the term ‘thinking’ cover generally all implicit language activity and other activity substitutable for language activity. [It should be admitted furthermore that under proper stimulation (usually a request is sufficient) the subject can be made to think aloud.] Thinking would comprise then the subvocal use of any language or related material whatever, such as the implicit repetition of poetry, day-dreaming, rephrasing word processes in logical terms, running over the day's events verbally, as well as implicit planning for the morrow and the verbal working out of difficult life situations. The term ‘verbal’ here must be made broad enough to cover processes substitutable for verbal activity, such as the shrug of the shoulder and the lifting of the brows. It must embrace the implicit movements involved in written words or the implicit movements demanded in the use of the deaf-and-dumb sign manual, which are, in essence, word activity. Thinking then might become our general term to cover all subvocal behaviour. It is obvious that this definition can take care of the most mechanical and deeply grounded of our language habits such as those used in the subvocal repetition of childhood verse, the repetition of stanzas of poetry, limericks, etc.; those depending more particularly upon emotional stimuli as day-dreaming, as well as those verbal processes not completely habitual such as the working out of a lecture, the planning of a book; and finally those in which new results are brought out. It is clear that if in the interests of systematic psychology we need to sub-divide the whole process of thinking, three lines of cleavage will at once appear. Mere unwinding of vocal habits where the word sequences are invariable: illustrated by rhymes, quotations; by many of the responses in mathematics, as 2 and 2 equal 4, square root of 9 equals 3, and the like. Here there is no new work, no trial movements like those we see in overt manual activity when a new situation capable of solution is presented the first few times. Such thinking corresponds to an extremely simple stimulus and response type of behaviour. Similarly day-dreaming would fall under this division. We assume that such dreaming takes place in response particularly to deficiency stimuli of one kind or another; such as the absence of sex activity, lack of food and water, lack of habitual surroundings and companions, lack of drugs, or even under the sway of drugs. The solving of problems which are not new, but which are so infrequently met with that trial verbal behaviour is demanded; illustrated probably by thinking out of stanzas, partially forgotten; in trying to apply one mathematical formula after another in a particular problem at hand. All of the part processes have been met with by the individual and are part of his organization, but he cannot use these part processes with machine-like facility. Finally we have the extreme extension of 2 above. Here the problem is new and the organism when confronting such a problem is in a grave situation. We will suppose, for example, that a man loses his position and wealth suddenly and must be ready in a few hours to act explicitly in a new undertaking. The problem, it is assumed, is of such a character that it must be worked out verbally before any overt action can take place. Hundreds of examples of this type immediately suggest themselves. Most of the real social and moral problems appearing in one's life are exactly of this type.2, These subdivisions are really guesses as to what may go on. No scientific division is as yet possible. It should be expressly stated, furthermore, that thinking in any of the above forms is not an isolated process. A human animal never gets away from his biography; and the varying organic and emotional states the organism is in must exert a tremendous influence upon the course of his thinking. So that once more we would emphasize the fact that thinking, whatever its type, is an integrated bodily process. Probably not many of my colleagues would include 1 and 2 under the term ‘thinking’. Thinking has come to be identified with 3 of our division, but for no valid reason. We use the term manual activity when our subject ties his shoe strings in exactly the way we use it when he is learning to manipulate (for the first time) the most complicated of machine-gun mechanisms. In our opinion 3 represents a bit of behaviour on the part of the human animal which, when stripped of its unessentials, is exactly like that bit of behaviour which the rat exhibits when put into a complicated maze for the first time. When it gets to the food the autonomic strivings die down and it goes to sleep. The deficiency stimuli, lack of food, lack of usual surroundings, etc., cease to operate – the adjustment is complete. Surely a similar thing takes place in man. He works verbally (that is particularly verbally; many other processes go on of course, such as wrinkling the brow, tearing the hair, etc.) until certain verbal acts (‘conclusions’) are executed. If, when this conclusion is reached, the driving stimuli (verbal, autonomic, emotional, etc.) cease to operate, the adjustment has been completed. The present writer has often felt that a good deal more can be learned about the psychology of thinking by making subjects think aloud about definite problems, than by trusting to the unscientific method of introspection. Usually a scientific man is quite willing to enter into the experiment with zest. If I ask my subject in 1 (see page 90) to think aloud he overtly responds with his limerick, his day-dreaming or his mathematical answer. Similarly if I ask him to think aloud in 2, I notice hesitations here and there, false starts and occasional returns, but in general a fairly ready response occurs with relatively few errors. It is only when we ask him to think aloud in 3 above that we begin to grasp how relatively crude is the process of thinking. Here we see typified all of the errors made by the rat in the maze: false starts appear; emotional factors show themselves, such as the hanging of the head and possibly even blushing when a false scent is followed up. The subject returns again and again to his starting point as shown by his asking, ‘You say the given facts are so and so?’ The experimenter says ‘Yes’ and again the subject starts off. In conducting an experiment of this kind, one has to be careful to impose problems upon his subject which are as far as possible removed from repressed emotional factors. It is never possible of course completely to do this as the analysts have more than once pointed out. The following illustration will make clear some of the points which appear in overt thinking. A colleague of mine came on a visit to stay in an apartment in which I had rooms. In a passage leading from the shower bath was a peculiar piece of apparatus standing near a sink. The essential features were a curved shallow nickel pan about 12 inches wide by 20 inches long; at one end the pan had been bent in the form of a half circle, while at the other end the side pieces did not extend for the full width. The pan was mounted on a stand adjustable in height. Furthermore the pan itself was attached to the stand by a ball and socket joint. My friend had never seen anything like it and asked me what in the world it was. I told him I was writing a paper on thinking and pleaded with him to think his problem out aloud. He entered into the experiment in the proper spirit. I shall not record all of his false starts and returns but I will sketch a few of them. ‘The thing looks a little like an invalid's table, but it is not heavy, the pan is curved, it has side pieces and is attached with a ball and socket joint. It would never hold a tray full of dishes (cul de sac). The thing (return to starting point) looks like some of the failures of an inventor. I wonder if the landlord is an inventor. No, you told me he was a porter in one of the big banks down town. The fellow is as big as a house and looks more like a prize-fighter than a mechanician; those paws of his would never do the work demanded of an inventor’ (blank wall again). This was as far as we got on the first day. On the second morning we got no nearer the solution. On the second night we talked over the way the porter and his wife lived, and the subject wondered how a man earning not more than ?150 per month could live as our landlord did. I told him that the wife was a hair-dresser and earned about ?8 per day herself. Then I asked him if he did not see the sign ‘Hair-Dresser’ on the door as we entered. The next morning after coming from his bath he said, ‘I saw that infernal thing again’ (original starting point). ‘ It must be something to use in washing or weighing the baby – but they have no baby (cul de sac again). The thing is curved at one end so that it would just fit a person's neck. Ah! I have it! The curve does fit the neck. The woman you say is a hair-dresser and the pan goes against the neck and the hair is spread out over it.’ This was the correct conclusion. Upon reaching it there was a smile, a sigh and an immediate turn to something else (the equivalent of obtaining food after search). Notwithstanding the fact that we can make our subjects think aloud and thereby can observe a large part of the process of thinking, Titchener some years ago raised against an early paper of mine the objection: ‘How does the behaviourist know there is any such process as thinking since he cannot directly observe it?’ Titchener kindly answered this question, to the effect that the behaviourist – quâ behaviourist – doesn't know that there is any such thing as thinking. The introspectionist claims that the behaviourist first uses the good old-fashioned method of introspection to find thinking and having once found it shuts his eyes and turns his back upon his original method and begins to externalize the process and to put it in the universal language of science. In other words, he describes it merely as the functioning of laryngeal or other motor processes. Before coming to closer terms with this question, the behaviourist would like to posit the assumption, without discussing its many metaphysical implications, that in no physical or biological science is the fact called into question that the investigator can make an observation; for example, that he can note that his galvanometer needle has swung two degrees to the right, that when sodium is burned on the end of a glass rod the bright visual stimulus in the spectroscope will be located on the scale at 5800μμ: that the can observe that when such and such a thing is to an animal whose is being the has or He can make the same on the in his own to the use of of drugs. He can do this by his own or by to some form of In each of these the goes on in his a of systematic He does not do this in any way. A definite stimulus starts him upon his work – the words of the over or the written or word of an or finally some organization its He for example, with the of upon human or animal he has had some stimulus to him to that the results he as a stimulus for further Finally he his facts and a bit of science is the a upon the of upon If you ask or the has worked up a in a similar way upon the of certain you that there was an during all he would probably not know what you meant and he would be if you to during his working with such a In other words he gets without discussing or even being in the fact that there is an at every moment in science and that a thousand metaphysical points an to make The behaviourist shuts his eyes to the same metaphysical question and only to be to make upon what his subjects are under given On the metaphysical side he merely to be put into the same with other The introspectionist has never made this to the He has that the question of the is a one and that he has the answer to The behaviourist is not so He is engaged in other the process of observing as it in where the activity is not complicated by the of introspection. He as must the introspectionist assume that his own process of observing is the same as that of the subject he is He to give an account of the process in this an account which will show how even those which the introspectionist describes as his from the of behaviour. The introspectionist for a solution of the metaphysical problem some The behaviourist in no such human He is only a of and must be to out his with the same which he his subject I with Mr Thomson that there is a problem in It is a of the position to as Mr Thomson does – of course a behaviourist does not that states He merely to He in the same that and psychology and The behaviourist does not with as the of his science and such are never to then that the behaviourist is a and his upon his fellow man than upon the of possible or like any other – how does he at the of implicit The answer is that he can at present at it only by making use of a logical In those where the response to the stimulus is not immediate but where it finally occurs in some form of verbal or manual it is to say that something does go and that something is surely not in from that which goes on when his behaviour is us for a moment at a manual I hand a friend a which can be only by a I him that he can the if he can it without I him for 2 his trial He to it in this of time. I then place him in a and him to come out when he has the end of he and with the there are no marks of on the the has a right to assume that the subject to work at the problem as he had been to work at such problems and that his behaviour in the was the same as that by him when he was under observation of his behaviour could not take place so as he was from the no one the right to assume that any or process on. I should not to this behaviour on the part of our subject manual thinking or thinking. There is no for since our of functioning of etc. are I suggest manual thinking here to show its complete with that type of behaviour which is more called thinking. of giving him a problem which can be learned by manual I would be the on social and life if some you suddenly had both arms as would be in most that such a problem had not hitherto been and he would be to give any we upon a the end of an he would probably be to a fairly Surely I have the right to even as a that implicit language activity, in has been place during the on as a scale as overt bodily movements would have been place had I left him in a from which there was no obvious and suddenly from the I that language activity from has been just to such that during the of his he was using implicit language processes. Such processes are the only of organization which we have any right to assume can be used in such a results of by my begin to a scientific that the same type of response goes on in implicit thinking as goes on in more of verbal a delicate apparatus which the movements in two he was to show that the overt but repetition of a a on the which was similar for to that when he told the subject to think the same thing without making overt He was to this again and On the other hand if he a to a and then the subject other work to do and came back and asked him to think the there was no obvious in the two (the original motor had This is not an argument against our point for I have already shown how is the musculature of the larynx and the We can the same word by a in the of the We can or think the same word by many muscular I am not furthermore, of to our the when I say that the subject could observe during the that he used words and that for a part of the he did not know what he was I am no more to admit this than I am to admit that a can observe that he is or playing a I have admitted a verbal method but at the same I have upon its for scientific know anything for science about my I must a or some other to record by or my every act while In other words, scientific I can observe that I have raised a wall by my day's work, but I cannot how many of movements I have made or how these movements could be by a in my method of I hold that the same thing is of thinking. The subject can observe that he is using words in thinking. how word material is how his is by implicit factors which are not put in words and which he cannot cannot be by the subject The as well as the that there are of such factors some of which a into the as far back as before any answer can be 2 or 3 in introspection on the observation of processes will take our subject no It has been both by the of to in the problem of thinking and by that such will not Such merely him and and of his processes. The point I am here is that if we are to any more about the of other than that which can be by observing the end results – that is, by observing the overt verbally behaviour or the overt bodily – we shall have to to The seems far off when such a thing is possible. While it the behaviourist has with which to Furthermore he is not in such after The in many have to be with of end We know many factors which the functioning of the We the of which from it under varying of We the etc. what goes on in the itself we cannot no one would have the to assume that for this reason there is no of the We can about what goes on of the what the function of the muscular is, why the solution is the would if this or that were those to be of any must be in some kind of terms which will not to metaphysical but to some kind of If they do not to an no will them. I that we are in exactly this same position with to thinking. The behaviourist that thinking in the where new adjustments are made corresponds to the process in manual The process as a whole in the of laryngeal and related muscular activity used in word responses and word that is, the motor is not in or even near the larynx. I would up the process as I that it goes on as my from the wealth of facts we have about manual activity. If I hand a subject a mechanical problem large in and ask him to I note the movements of the the and even the large muscles of the shoulder as he turns the from side to If, before he solving I hand him the same apparatus only reduced to of its he his in the same but the of the muscular response is reduced and many of the movements of the large muscles out. The two of activity are, in the When it to thinking, we have the following in large think aloud and many think aloud if not quite at In thinking is reduced to such an extent that the can observe only the response of the the and the of subjects this and all activity directly with the process of thinking may be factors remaining such as wrinkling the brow, in genetic psychology the of such processes, having made individuals think aloud in solving problem, what right have I to assume that the process its character when it Here I to Mr He says that the behaviourist only the of we of as a of and it seems that the behaviourist has given us an account of some of as it is, it like a of by an only the of the surely Mr here is by his own It would be to his of by that only a well can after a a scientific of The question I would ask Mr is, what logical right has he to assume that the goes on in any way when it is not under the observation of the Surely if we have enough the course to the would be a account of the as a account of states and very well a into which Mr and all other if any part of the process is the of the immediate observation the has the right to assume that something and may go on at the since the never happens when the process is under the logical of that something does go on is The illustration is not difficult to