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 that the solution emerges by pure chance. But even in the first hypothesis, the element of chance is considerable. Let us suppose that the acts A, B, C, D, E, have each, on a former occasion, been part of a series ending with success, but that now for the first time it is necessary to perform them all, and in the right order. It is obvious that, if they are only combined by chance, the animal will be lucky if it performs them all in the right order before dying of hunger.
But Köhler maintains that to anyone watching his chimpanzees it was obvious they did not obtain “a composition of the solution out of chance parts”. He says (pp. 199–200):
“It is certainly not a characteristic of the chimpanzee, when he is brought into an experimental situation, to make any chance movements, out of which, among other things, a non-genuine solution could arise. He is very seldom seen to attempt anything which would have to be considered accidental in relation to the situation (excepting, of course, if his interest is turned away from the objective to other things). As long as his efforts are directed to the objective, all distinguishable stages of his behaviour (as with human beings in similar situations) tend to appear as complete attempts at solutions, none of which appears as the product of accidentally arrayed parts. This is true, most of all, of the solution which is finally successful. Certainly it often follows upon a period of perplexity or quiet (often a period of survey), but in real and convincing cases, the solution never appears in a disorder of blind impulses. It is one continuous smooth action, which can be resolved into its parts only by the imagination of the onlooker; in reality they do not appear independently. But that in so many ‘genuine’ cases as have been described, these solutions as wholes should have arisen from mere chance, is an entirely inadmissible supposition.”
Thus we may take it as an observed fact that, so far as overt behaviour is concerned, there are two objections to the type of theory with which we began, when considered as covering the whole field. The first objection is that in cases of a certain kind, the solution appears sooner than it should according to the doctrine of chances; the second is that it appears as a whole, i.e. that the animal, after a period of quiescence, suddenly goes through the right series of actions smoothly, and without hesitation.
Where human beings are concerned, it is difficult to obtain such good data as in the case of animals. Human mothers will not allow their children to be starved, and then shut up in a room containing a banana which can only be reached by putting a chair on the table and a footstool on the chair, and then climbing up without breaking any bones. Nor will they permit them to be put into the middle of a Hampton Court maze, with their dinner getting cold outside. Perhaps in time the State will perform these experiments with the children of political prisoners, but as yet, perhaps fortunately, the authorities are not sufficiently interested in science. One can observe, however, that human learning seems to be of both sorts, namely that described by Watson and that described by Köhler. I am persuaded that speech is learnt by the Watsonian method, so long as it is confined to single words: often the trial and error, in later stages, proceeds sotto voce, but it takes place overtly at first, and in some children until their speech is quite correct. The speaking of sentences, however, is already more difficult to explain without bringing in the apprehension of wholes which is the thing upon which Gestaltpsychologie lays stress. In the later stages of learning, the sort of sudden illumination which came to Köhler’s chimpanzees is a phenomenon with which every serious student must be familiar. One day, after a period of groping bewilderment, the schoolboy knows what algebra is all about. In writing a book, my own experience—which I know is fairly common, though by no means universal—is that for a time I fumble and hesitate, and then suddenly I see the book as a whole, and have only to write it down as if I were copying a completed manuscript.
If these phenomena are to be brought within the scope of behaviourist psychology, it must be by means of “implicit” behaviour. Watson makes much use of this in the form of talking to oneself, but in apes it cannot take quite this form. And it is necessary to have some theory to explain the success of “implicit” behaviour, whether we call it “thought” or not. Perhaps such a theory can be constructed on Watson’s lines, but it has certainly not yet been constructed. Until the behaviourists have satisfactorily explained the kind of discovery which appears in Köhler’s observations, we cannot say that their thesis is proved. This is a matter which will occupy us again at a later stage; for the present let us preserve an open mind.
[CHAPTER IV]
LANGUAGE
The subject of language is one which has not been studied with sufficient care in traditional philosophy. It was taken for granted that words exist to express “thoughts,” and generally also that “thoughts” have “objects” which are what the words “mean”. It was thought that, by means of language, we could deal directly with what it “means”, and that we need not analyse with any care either of the two supposed properties of words, namely that of “expressing” thoughts and that of “meaning” things. Often when philosophers intended to be considering the objects meant by words they were in fact considering only the words, and when they were considering words they made the mistake of supposing, more or less unconsciously, that a word is a single entity, not, as it really is, a set of more or less similar events. The failure to consider language explicitly has been a cause of much that was bad in traditional philosophy. I think myself that “meaning” can only be understood if we treat language as a bodily habit, which is learnt just as we learn football or bicycling. The only satisfactory way to treat language, to my mind, is to treat it in this way, as Dr. Watson does. Indeed, I should regard the theory of language as one of the strongest points in favour of behaviourism.
Man has various advantages over the beasts, for example, fire, clothing, agriculture, and tools—not the possession of domestic animals, for ants have them. But more important than any of these is language. It is not known how or when language arose, nor why chimpanzees do not speak. I doubt if it is even known whether writing or speech is the older form of language. The pictures made in caves by the Cro-Magnon men may have been intended to convey a meaning, and may have been a form of writing. It is known that writing developed out of pictures, for that happened in historical times; but it is not known to what extent pictures had been used in pre-historic times as a means of giving information or commands. As for spoken language, it differs from the cries of animals in being not merely an expression of emotion. Animals have cries of fear, cries expressing pleasure in the discovery of food, and so on, and by means of these cries they influence each other’s actions. But they do not appear to have any means of expressing anything except emotions, and then only emotions which they are actually feeling. There is no evidence that they possess anything analogous to narrative. We may say, therefore, without exaggeration, that language is a human prerogative, and probably the chief habit in which we are superior to the “dumb” animals.
There are three matters to be considered in beginning the study of language. First: what words are, regarded as physical occurrences; secondly, what are the circumstances that lead us to use a given word; thirdly, what are the effects of our hearing or seeing a given word. But as regards the second and third of these questions, we shall find ourselves led on from words to sentences and thus confronted with fresh problems perhaps demanding rather the methods of Gestaltpsychologie.