United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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11 vox Are We Conscious? By Eunice Bennett The U.S. press (in the exagger¬ ated ‘‘booster - ’ style which is so typical of it) acclaims Dr. John B. Watson’s work, “Behaviorism,” in the most flattering terms. One lead¬ ing paper says: “Perhaps this is the most important book ever writ¬ ten ; another asserts, “It marks an epoch in the intellectual history of man.” Most people who have done much reading know how to rate this stuff. Yet when there is a system which claims “to revolu¬ tionize ethics, religion, psycho¬ analysis—in fact, all the mental and moral sciences,” we should like our readers to hear some of the arguments fairly set forth. No Soul and Not Conscious In 1869 Wundt of Germany dismissed the soul from the study of psychology. He could not find it in his test tube. However, he sup¬ plied in its place consciousness, and this was taken for granted until 1912. Then John B. Watson, of the United States, after attempting to find consciousness in his test tube and failing, threw it overboard and decided all human behavior could be explained by determining the stimulus and response. Indeed, many other attributes of the mind and much good terminology were considered superfluous and had to be pitched out. The “medicine men.” the introspectionists, were buried and with them all such men¬ tal processes as attention and per¬ ception; next went the irreducible sensations and their ghosts, the images; after this clearance they felt able to handle what remained. So “proving absurd all written hither¬ to, and putting us to ignorance again,” they began once more the patient search for truth. Behavior the Problem The problem confronting the psychologist is the explanation and prediction of behavior. When this has been achieved it should result in the control of human conduct. In behavioristic terms one must be able to deduct the response when the stimulus is known, and the most complex act loses its mystery when submitted to these investiga¬ tions, and so their hypothesis is plainly a mechanistic one. The “purposive” psychologists relying on consciousness ask just how can mechanism really explain a single act, and the Behaviorist comes back pat, “Consciousness is not a cause of motor activity.” Now we must consider some of their positive assertions. Heredity Belittled It is to be feared that Watson has struck a death blow to our buried ancestors, and that the po¬ tency of the social register is no more, for he believes that the genus homo has been equipped with the same hereditary structure through¬ out the ages and in all classes of society. Adult performance is not inherited but is accounted for by a certain type of structure plus early training. Indeed, he would guar¬ antee to take a normal child and train it to be anything desired, so sure is he of the adaptability of the human structure. A certain amount of unlearned behavior is allowed us, and is divided into emotion and instinct. When instinct is broken down it is replaced by habit. Consolidations of habit and instinct result in the dozens of so-called instincts of the older school and popular speech. Just here we might mention mem-

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10 vox terance. If the literary criticism of a given nation is worthy of its name, its authors will never be at a loss; in speaking to it, they will speak to that invisible, yet real au¬ dience of the ages to which alone they should not think it below their dignity to speak when they take pen in hand, and presume to set that vast machinery going which is needed to produce a print¬ ed book. This I consider the second in importance among the functions of the critic; of the first I shall speak anon. For, unless the author has this audience, how can he be blamed for going astray in the clamor of the day? It is a strange but indisputable fact that a work of art presupposes at least two, the one who speaks and the one who listens—the one who creates and the one who recreates. Art is es¬ sentially the play of one soul on another. Just as surely as vibra¬ tions created on a desert island by the fall of a tree cannot become sound without being heard by an ear, the work of an artist cannot become art without the reaction of an answering soul. So, unless there is an ideal audience like the one I have tried to sketch, the temotation of the writer to speak to that concrete, ever-present audi¬ ence which wants only to be cheat¬ ed by having something given to it to beguile its time and which is sufficiently and nauseatingly rep¬ resented by the newsmongery of the press—that temptation, I say, is so enormously great as to be al¬ most irresistible. No genius was ever born as such. He was born as a talent. A genius he became by taking pains, by striving after per¬ fection. But it is hard to go on working with incessant care” when there is none to perceive that care and to appreciate it. It is hard to go on striving after perfection, never to be attained, if the work of art is drowned in the ocean of me¬ diocre productions designed for no purpose but to satisfy the demand of the public to be entertained— which means distracted from itself. Yet art aims at the very oppo¬ site: not to distract the hearer from himself but to lead him into the very recesses of his soul and to force him to face the world, not with the periphery of the inessential ac¬ quisitions of his day, but with the innermost essence of his soul which is the same as that of Abraham. Most people go through life in the blissful ignorance of the very fact that they have a soul; how, then, should a young writer even dream of appealing to it, of evoking it, were it not for the fact that at all times there is that ideal audience, represented by literary criticism, to remind him of the fact that, at what he does, the ages look on. Literary criticism—or the body of literary critics—should be to the writer what the Roman Senate was to the general in the field: an un¬ seen presence sitting sternly in judg¬ ment over his blunders, but also voting him a triumph if he did his duty well. Shall I indulge in the sarcasm of the question, Is that what literary criticism is in Can¬ ada today? Critic and the Public I must hurry on to the third point. The critic, facing Classic literature and facing the contempo¬ rary author, also faces the concrete public. What, in this direction, is his function? Edmund Gosse says somewhere something to this effect, ‘It is ex¬ traordinary but very fortunate that (Continued on page 5 6)

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12 VOX ory. It is said to be the perform¬ ance of a habit after a time has elapsed since the last performance. Very Feiv Instincts Watson made a study of one thousand babies, after which he de¬ cided there were but three instincts, and these form the nucleus of all emotional reactions. They are fear, rage and love, and their stimuli are, loss of support or a loud noise; hampering of the body; fondling. Very soon, though, these responses are called forth by other stimuli presented simultaneously with the original ones. They are then said to be “conditioned.” Later these second responses become further conditioned or transferred until the emotional world is varied enough to suit a Rex Beach or an Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The infant is not afraid in a zoo. The adult may run at sight of a mouse. According to this theory, man has no basic instinct, no untutored life, nor are there elemental facts. And alas! no ambitious maid can sigh for a chance at self-realization and expression. All she can do is permit her physiological processes through stimulus and response (conditioned and unconditioned) to adapt her bodily movements to the situation in hand. Thinking Explained Watson is insistent that the or¬ ganism responds as a whole. This is true even in such a hidden proc¬ ess as thinking. One thinks and plans with one’s whole body. When a particular group of muscles works, we say a man is doing some¬ thing. as, for instance, the imper¬ ceptible working of the larnyx and long-e results in thought; the overt working results in speech. “Thought is highly integrated bodily activity and nothing more.” “When we study implicit bodily processes we are studying thought.” “There is really no difference be¬ tween a game of tennis and think¬ ing.” When the kinaesthetic and verbal processes become blocked we have an emotional response where the individual is not able to act. In contrast, we have instinctive re¬ sponses where the person invariably does something. The “organism as a whole” in¬ cludes, beside muscles which move the bones, many unstriped muscles and glands. These parts of the body apparently cause many acts and states of emotion that we have not been able to explain. They are as yet unverbalized, and scientists have not learned how to talk about them. Watson suggests they are the unconscious complexes and sup¬ pressed wishes of Freud, and advises us not to attribute too much to these unknown causes. The Behauiorist Method What the Behaviorist works upon, then, is simply—stimulus, response (conditioned and uncon¬ ditioned) , gland, unstriped muscles and a minimum of instinct and emotion. He dismisses analysis and introspection. He demands that psychological conclusions must stand on a scientific basis, and are useless if they cannot be arrived at in another laboratory and by any psychologist. He is convinced that all human actions are developments of the simple reflexes which a babe displays. He uses the data of psy¬ chology at every turn, but he is concerned most of all with the or¬ ganism as a whole. It is in the United States alone that the wave of behavior¬ ism has swept all before it, and men (Continued on page 55)