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Vygotsky 1925
“The spider makes operations resembling the operations of the weaver, and the bee
creating its waxen cells disgraces some architects. But from the very beginning, the
worst architect differs from the best bee in that before building the cell of wax, he
already has built it in his head. The result, which is received at the end of the process
of work, already exists in the beginning of this process in an ideal form in a
representation of a person. The person does not only change the form given by nature,
but in what is given by nature he, at the same time, realises his conscious purpose,
which as a law determines the way and character of his actions and to which he must
subordinate his will.” K. Marx
But this is not a defect particular to the Bekhterev’s course. The same flaw appears in
one form or another elsewhere and leaves its imprint on every attempt to
systematically produce a theory of human behaviour as mere reflexology.
But human behaviour is organised in such a way that, in fact, it is these internal
movements, difficult to perceive, that actually direct and guide it. When we develop a
conditional salivary reflex in a dog, we are organising by certain external devices the
dog’s behaviour beforehand; otherwise the experiment will not succeed. We place the
dog in a stand, wrap straps around it, etc. In the same way, we organise the behaviour
of a human subject beforehand, with certain internal movements, through instructions,
explanations, etc. If these internal movements suddenly become altered during the
course of the experiment, the entire picture of behaviour changes sharply. Thus, we
always make use of inhibited reactions; we know that they are constantly operating in
the body; and we know that they play a very influential and regulatory role in
behaviour because it is conscious. Nonetheless, we have no means of studying these
internal reactions.
To say this simply, a human being is always thinking to himself; this is never without
some influence on his behaviour; a sudden shift in thought during an experiment will
always sharply make some impact on the subject’s overall behaviour (for example,
sudden thought: “I will not look at the apparatus”). Yet we know nothing of how to
assess this influence.
The law of extinction (or internal inhibition) of conditional reflexes expresses the fact
that with continued excitation elicited by one conditional irritant, not reinforced by
another unconditional irritant, a conditional reflex gradually diminishes in strength
until it finally disappears. Now let us turn to human behaviour. Let us develop a
conditional reaction on some irritant in a human subject. For example, we give the
instructions “When you hear the bell, press the button.” Now let us repeat this
experiment 40, 50, or even 100 times. Does extinction take place? On the contrary, the
connection is reinforced with each instance, with each passing day. Fatigue sets in, but
this is not what the law of extinction is referring to. It is obvious here that simple
extrapolation of a law from animal psychology to human psychology is not possible.
We need some principal stipulation. But we do not know just what this stipulation is,
nor do we even know where and how to look for it.
The law of dominants propounds the existence in the animal nervous system of focus
of excitation that attract to themselves other subdominant excitations impinging on
the nervous system at the same time. Sexual excitation in a cat, the acts of swallowing
and defecation, the embracing reflex in a frog – all these, as experiments have shown,
are strengthened at the expense of any other extraneous irritation. From this a direct
step is made to the act of attention in humans, and it is asserted that a dominant is the
physiological foundation of this act. Yet it turns out that attention is actually devoid of
the capacity to be strengthened at the expense of any other extraneous irritation which
is the characteristic feature of a dominant. On the contrary, any extraneous irritant
distracts and weakens attention. Again, a step from laws concerning dominants in the
cat or the frog to the laws of human behaviour needs some essential corrective.
4. But what is most important is that the exclusion of consciousness from the domain
of scientific psychology to a considerable extent preserves all the dualism and
spiritualism of former subjective psychology. Academician Bekhterev asserted that his
system of reflexology did not contradict the hypothesis of the soul [4]. Subjective or
conscious phenomena are depicted by him as second-order phenomena, as specific
internal phenomena accompanying combinatory reflexes [5]. Dualism is reinforced by
the fact that a special science, subjective reflexology [6], is admitted as not only
possible in the future, but even as inevitable.
Thus we are left with two choices: either this is actually the case, and it is impossible
to study human behaviour and the complex forms of human interrelated activity
without reference to the human mind; or it is not the case, and mind is an
epiphenomenon, a secondary phenomenon, and everything can be explained without
mind, and we shall come to the biological absurd. No third possibility is given.
6. When the question is posed in this way, we are forever barred access to the study of
the most important problems: the structure of our behaviour and an analysis of its
composition and forms. We are forever doomed to retain the false notion that
behaviour is the sum of reflexes. At the same time, “man is not at all a skin sack filled
with reflexes and the brain is not a hotel for conditional reflexes that happen to pass
by. “
The study of dominant reactions in animals and of reflex integration has shown,
persuasively, that the work of each organ, its reflex, is not something static, but only a
function deriving from the overall state of the organism [8]. “The nervous system
works as an integrated whole” – this formula of Ch. Sherrington [9] should serve as the
foundation for a theory of the structure of behaviour.
Indeed, the sense in which we use the term “reflex” resembles very closely the story
of Kannitfershtan, whose name a poor foreigner heard in Holland as a response to any
question no matter what he asked: Whom are they burying? Whose house is this?
Who just passed by? etc. He naively thought that everything in this country was done
by Kannitfershtan, whereas actually, the word simply meant that the Dutchman he met
did not understand his questions. A “reflex of purpose” or “a freedom reflex” can be
presented as patent evidence of such a misunderstanding of investigated phenomena.
It is clear to everyone that these are not reflexes in the usual sense, i.e., in the sense
that a salivary reflex is a reflex, but rather are some sort of structurally distinct
mechanism of behaviour. Only if we reduce everything to one common denominator
can we explain everything in the same way: then a reflex is like this Kannitfershtan.
But the very term “reflex” loses its meaning.
We ought to study not reflexes, but behaviour, its mechanism, its component parts,
and its structure. Each time we conduct an experiment with animals or humans we
have an illusion that we are studying a reaction or a reflex. Actually, what we are
studying in every case is behaviour, since we invariably organise beforehand, in some
way or other, the behaviour of the subject in order to ensure that this or that reaction
or reflex will dominate; otherwise, we would achieve nothing.
Does the dog in Academician Pavlov’s experiments really react with a salivary reflex,
but not with a multitude of the most varied internal and external motor reactions? Is it
true that these reactions had no influence on the observed reflex? And is it true that a
conditional irritant introduced into these experiments did not also itself elicit the same
sort of reactions (orienting reactions of the ear, the eyes, etc.)? Why was a temporary
connection formed between the salivary reflex and the bell, not vice versa, i.e., why
didn’t the meat begin to elicit an orienting movement of the ears? And is it true that a
subject who presses a button of a key at a signal is expressing his whole reaction? The
general relaxation of the body, falling back in the chair, the tilting of the head, the
sigh, etc., – aren’t all these essential components of the reaction?
All this shows how complex every reaction is, how this complexity depends on the
structure of the behavioural mechanism the reaction is a part of, and that it is
impossible to study a reaction in abstract form. Besides, we must not forget before we
draw any major and crucial conclusions from classic experiments with conditional
reflex, that this research has only just begun, and so far has covered only a very
narrow circle, that only one or two types of reflexes, a salivary and a defensive motor
reflex, have been studied, and then only the conditional reflexes of a first or second
order and always of a type that is biologically disadvantageous for the animal. Why
should an animal salivate in response to very remote signals, to conditional irritants of
a high order? Therefore, we should beware of any direct transportation of
reflexological laws into psychology. Professor Wagner [11] is right in saying that a
reflex is a foundation, but the foundation tells us nothing about what is going to be
constructed on it.
Owing to all these considerations, I think that we have to alter the view on human
behaviour as a mechanism, which can be opened completely with the key of
conditional reflex. Without having a preliminary working hypothesis concerning the
psychological nature of consciousness, it is impossible to undertake a critical revision
of the accumulated scientific knowledge in this area, to select and screen it, to
translate it into a new language, to develop new concepts, and to create new problems.
Other requirements are: a hypothesis must, without stretch, explain the major
questions pertaining to consciousness – the problems of conservation of energy, self-
awareness; the psychological possibility of knowing other minds, the conscious
character of the three major fields of empirical psychology (i.e., thinking, feeling, and
will), the concept of the unconscious, the evolution of consciousness, and its identity
and unity.
Here, in this brief and cursory essay we have only outlined the most preliminary, most
general, and most basic thoughts that, when blended together, should, we think,
provide the future working hypothesis of consciousness in the psychology of
behaviour.
II
Now let us take a look at the question from outside, i.e., not from the field of
psychology. In its most essential forms all animal behaviour consists of two groups of
reactions: innate or unconditional reflexes and acquired or conditional reactions.
Innate reflexes, in a certain sense, constitute a biological extract of the inherited
collective experience of the entire species, whereas acquired reflexes are formed on
the basis of this inherited experience through the formation of new connections
provided by the personal experience of the individual. Thus, all animal behaviour may
provisionally be designated as inherited experience plus inherited experience
multiplied by personal experience. The origins of inherited experience were
discovered by Darwin; the mechanism by which this experience is multiplied by
personal experience is the conditional reflex Academician Pavlov discovered.
The situation is different with human beings. If we are to cover human behaviour at
all completely, new members must be introduced into the formula. First, it must be
pointed out that the inherited experience of human beings is incomparably broader
than that of animals. Man makes use not just of physically inherited experience. All
our life, our labour and behaviour draw broadly on the experience of former
generations, which is not transmitted at birth from father to son. We may provisionally
designate this as a historical experience.
Finally, what is fundamentally new in human behaviour is that man’s adaptation and
the behaviour connected with it assume new forms compared with those of animals.
Whereas animals passively adapt to the environment, man actively adapts the
environment to himself. To be sure, in animals we encounter the rudimentary forms of
active adaptation in their instinctive activity (making a nest, building a house, etc.);
but in the animal kingdom these forms, first, do not have a dominant, fundamental
importance and, second, are still passive in terms of their essential characteristics and
the mechanisms by which they are carried out.
The spider that weaves his web and the bee that builds his cell out of wax do this out
of instinct, mechanically, always in the same way, and in doing so they never display
any more activity than in any other adaptive reactions. But the situation is different
with a weaver or an architect. As Marx said, they first built their works in their heads;
the result of their labours existed before this labour in ideal form [12].
Marx’s explanation, which is beyond dispute, means nothing more than a doubling of
experience that is compulsory for human labour. Labour is repeated, in the
movements of the hands and the changes produced in the material being worked on,
what had already been done beforehand in the worker’s imagination, with models, as
it were, of these movements and material. It is this doubled experience that enables
man to develop forms of active adaptation that do not exist in animals. Let us call this
new kind of behaviour doubled experience.
Now, the new part of our formula of human behaviour is: historical experience, social
experience, and doubled experience.
The question remains: With what are the signs to connect these new parts in our
formula with one another and with its original part?
The sign of multiplication between the inherited experience and the personal
experience is clear for us; it refers to the mechanism of the conditional reflex.
We shall try to find the other connecting signs in the following sections of this article.
III
In the preceding section we outlined the biological and social aspects of the problem.
Now let us take a brief look at its physiological side.
Even the most elementary experiments with isolated reflexes encounter the problem
of co-ordination of reflexes or their transmission into behaviour. Above we mentioned
in passing the fact that all of Academician Pavlov’s experiments had already
presumed that the dog’s behaviour was organised beforehand in such a way that a
single necessary connection was formed in collision of two reflexes. And
Academician Pavlov was forced to deal with some other, more complicated reflexes
in the dog as well.
Academician Pavlov more than once referred to the collision of two different reflexes
occurring in the course of his experiments. The results of such a collision are not
always the same: ( see articles XXI and XXV – in one case he discusses the
intensification of a food reflex by a simultaneous guarding reflex, and in the other
case he talks about the victory of a food reflex over an guarding reflex). [13]. Two
reflexes may be seen literally as two pans on a balance beam, observed Academician
Pavlov on this point. He does not close his eyes before the unusual complexity of the
accomplishment of a reflex. He says that “if we take into account that any reflex to an
external irritation is limited and governed not only by another external simultaneous
reflex act but also by a multitude of internal reflexes and by the effects of every
conceivable sort of internal irritants – chemical, thermal, etc – impinging not only on
different segments of the central nervous system but also directly on active tissue
elements themselves, then, and only then, will we begin to have any full and realistic
picture of the vast complexity of the phenomena of reflexes.” [14]
“A reflex is an integral reaction of the organism.” Each muscle, each working organ,
should be regarded “as a check payable to the bearer, which may be any group of
receptors.” The general notion of the nervous system becomes clear from the
following comparison.
“The system of receptors is to the system of efferent path ways as the wide top of a
funnel is to its narrow bottom opening. But each receptor is connected not with one,
but with many and perhaps with all efferent fibres; of course, these connections vary
in strength. Hence, extending our comparison with the funnel, we must say that the
whole nervous system is a funnel, one opening of which is five times wider than the
other; within this funnel are receptors that are also funnels, whose wide openings are
turned toward the outlet of the larger funnel and completely cover it” [18].
From all this follow two statements that are necessary for properly posing the problem
of consciousness as a mechanism of behaviour.
1. The outside world “flows” into the wide opening of the funnel by thousands of
irritants, attractions, and summons; a constant struggle and collision take place within
the funnel; all excitations flow out of the narrow opening as responses of the organism
in a greatly reduced quantity. What takes place in behaviour is only a negligible
fraction of what is possible. At every moment the individual is full of unrealised
possibilities. These unrealised possibilities of our behaviour, this difference between
the wide and the narrow openings of the funnel, is a perfect reality; the same reality as
the reality of victorious reactions, since all three aspects of a reaction are present in it.
This unrealised behaviour can have an extremely wide variety of forms, given even a
slightly complicated structure of the final common field and of complex reflexes. “In
complex reflexes, reflex arcs sometimes ally themselves with one portion of the
common field and compete with one another for another part of the field” [20]. Thus, a
reaction may remain half realised or realised in some, always indefinite, part.
IV
The most elementary, fundamental, and universal law of reflex relationships may be
formulated as follows: reflexes are joined according to conditional reflex laws by
which the response component of one reflex (motor, secretory) may, under
appropriate conditions, become a conditional irritant (or inhibition) of another reflex,
forming a reflex arc with a new reflex via the sensory pathway of peripheral irritations
associated with it. A whole series of such connections may be given genetically and
belong to the class of unconditioned reflexes. The rest of these connections are
formed in the process of experience – a process that cannot not go on in the organism
without ceasing.
Academician Pavlov called this mechanism a “chain reflex” and used it to explain
instinct[21]. In his experiments, Doctor Zelenyi discovered the same mechanism in
studying rhythmic muscular movements that also proved to constitute a chain
reflex[22]. Thus, this mechanism provides the best explanation for unconscious,
automatic combinations of reflexes.
But if we take into account not merely the same system of reflexes, but different ones
and the possibility of reflection of one system on another, this mechanism is also
essentially the mechanism of consciousness in its objective sense. The capacity of our
body to be an irritant (through its own acts) for itself (for new acts) – is therein the
basis of consciousness.
Now we can speak about the unquestionable interaction among different systems of
reflexes, and of the reflection of one system by others. A dog reacts to hydrochloric
acid by salivating (reflex), but the saliva itself is a new irritant for the reflex of
swallowing or expectoration of the acid. In free association I pronounce “narcissus”
on the word “rose.” This is a reflex, but it is also an irritant for the next word –
gillyflower. All this takes place within a system or co-operating systems. The howl of
a wolf, as an irritant, evokes in me somatic and mimetic reflexes of fear: altered
respiration, heart beat, trembling, dryness in the throat (reflexes) – all these induce me
to say or think: I am afraid. Here a transmission from one system to another takes
place.
Our awareness or ability to be conscious of our deeds and states must be seen
primarily as a system of transmission mechanisms from one set of reflexes to another,
that is correctly functioning at every conscious moment. The more correctly every
internal reflex, as an irritant, elicits a sequence of other reflexes from other systems or
is transmitted to other systems, the more capable we are of giving an account to
ourselves and others of what we are experiencing, and the more consciously is that
experiencing (sensing, formulating in words, etc.).
Giving an account means transmitting one set of reflexes into another. The
unconscious and psychical also refer to reflexes that have not been transmitted into
other systems. There may be an infinite varied degrees of awareness, i.e., the
interaction of systems participating in the mechanism of an acting reflex. To be
conscious of one’s own experiences means nothing less than to possess them in object
form (irritant) for other experiences. Consciousness is the experiencing of
experiences, just as experience is simply the experience of objects.
But this capacity of a reflex (the experience of an object) to be a irritant (the object of
an experience) for a new reflex, this mechanism of consciousness, is also a
mechanism of transmission of reflexes from one system into another. This is more or
less what Academician Bekhterev called accountable and non-accountable reflexes.
The problem of consciousness must be solved in psychology in a sense that
consciousness is an interaction, reflection, and mutual excitation of different systems
of reflexes. What is conscious is what is transmitted as an irritant to other systems in
which it has a response. Consciousness is always an echo, a response apparatus. I will
give three references to the literature.
“In contrast to the receptors of the extero- and interoceptive fields, the receptors of the
proprioceptive field are excited only secondarily by influences coming from the
external environment. The irritant of these receptors is the active state of some organ
or organs, for example, contraction of a muscle, which in turn serves as a primary
reaction to the irritation of the surface of the receptor by factors of the external
environment. Usually, reflexes elicited by stimulation of proprioceptive organs join
with reflexes elicited by irritation of exteroceptive organs” [24].
As research has shown, the combination of these secondary reflexes with primary
reactions, this “secondary connection,” can combine reflexes of both allied and
antagonistic types. In other words, a secondary reaction can intensify or terminate a
primary one. This constitutes the mechanism of consciousness.
3. Finally, Academician Pavlov has said that “the reproduction of neural phenomena
in the subjective world is very unique, and so to say, refracted many times over, so
that, on the whole, a psychological understanding of nervous activity is, to a
considerable extent, only tentative and approximate.” [25].
Although here Pavlov did not mean anything more than a simple comparison, we are
ready to understand his words in the literal and precise meaning and assert that
consciousness is the “multiple refraction” of reflexes.
With this, the problem of mind is resolved without any waste of energy.
Consciousness is wholly reduced to the transmitting mechanisms of reflexes operating
according to general laws, i.e., no processes other than reactions can be admitted into
the organism.
The way is also paved for the solution of the problem of self-awareness and self-
observation. Inner perception and introspection are possible only thanks to the
existence of a proprioceptive field and secondary reflexes, which are connected with
it. This is always the echo of a reaction.
Self-awareness as the perception of what takes place in a person’s own soul, to use J.
Locke’s expression, is wholly exhausted by this. It now becomes clear why this
experience is accessible to only one person – the person experiencing his own
experience. Only I, myself, and alone can observe and perceive my secondary
reactions because my reflexes serve as new irritants of the proprioceptive field only
for myself and myself alone.
It is also now easy to explain the fundamental split nature of experience: the mental is
not like any other because it is affected by irritants sui generis that occur nowhere else
but in my own body. The movement of my arm, which is perceived by the eye, may
also be an irritant for both my eye and the eye of another; but the awareness of this
movement, those proprioceptive excitations that occur and elicit secondary reactions,
exist for me alone. They have nothing in common with the first irritation of the eye:
completely different neural pathways, different mechanisms, and different irritants are
here.
The presented approach to the problem enables us, in a very rough and general
outline, to understand the (objective) meaning which the verbal report of a subject
may have for scientific research. Undetected reflexes (tacit speech), internal reflexes
inaccessible to the direct perception of the examinee can be detected often indirectly
by mediation, through observable reflexes for which they serve as irritants. The
presence of a complete reflex (a word) serves as an indicator of the presence of a
corresponding irritant that plays a dual role. In this case it is an irritant for the
complete reflex and is itself a reflex relative to the previous irritant.
In view of the tremendously important and paramount role the mind (i.e., this
undetected group of reflexes) plays in the system of behaviour, it would be suicide for
science to reject its discovery by an indirect method, through its reflection on other
systems of reflexes. Actually, we do take into account reflexes to internal irritants
hidden from our view. Here the logic, the train of thought, and the proof are the same.
But what is most important here is that these reactions themselves will take care to see
that we are convinced of their existence. In the further course of reactions they will
express themselves with such strength and forcefulness that they will force the
experimenter to pay attention to them or to refuse to study the course of reactions into
which they burst. Actually, are there many examples of such behaviour into which
inhibited reflexes would not intrude? So, either we refuse to study human behaviour
in its most essential forms, or we are forced to introduce the obligatory registration of
these internal movements in our experiments.
Two examples will show this necessity. If I recall something and establish a new
speech reflex, is it true that it does not matter what I am thinking during this time –
whether I am simply repeating a given word to myself or establishing a logical
connection between this word and another? Is it not clear that the results in both these
cases will be essentially different? In a free association I say the word “snake” in
response to the cue word “thunder,” although first the thought of “lightning” flashed.
Is it not clear that if I do not take this thought into account, I will get a deliberately
false notion that my reaction to the word “thunder” was “snake” and not “lightning”?
It goes without saying, that what we are talking about here is not a simple transferring
of experimental self-observation from traditional psychology into the new
psychology. Rather, the point is the urgent necessity to develop a new method for
studying inhibited reflexes. We have merely advocated the fundamental necessity and
possibility of that.
In order to finish with the question of methods, let us stop briefly on the curious
metamorphosis recently undergone by the method of reflexological investigation
when applied to humans. Professor Protopopov [28] discussed in one of his articles that
“initially reflexologists applied an electro-dermal irritation to the sole of the foot.
Then it proved to be more profitable to choose a more perfect apparatus, more suited
to orienting reactions as the criterion of a response. So the leg was replaced by a hand.
But once “a” was said, it was necessary to say “b”. The human being has an
immeasurably more accomplished apparatus, with which he has established more
extensive connections with the world, – the speech apparatus. We should turn to
verbal reactions. But the most curious are “certain facts” upon which investigators
stumbled in their work. The point was that the differentiation of a reflex was
extremely slow and sluggish in human beings and what has appeared [my emphasis,
L.V.] was that conditional responses might be inhibited or excited depending on the
speech stimulus presented to the object.”
In other words, the discovery is reduced to the point that with a human being it may
be stipulated with words that he withdraw his hand in response to a certain signal, and
then, when a different signal is given, that he not withdraw his hand. The author has to
assert two statements that are important for us here.
2. The inclusion of this research technique in the reflexological method makes this
method non-distinguishable from the method of studying reactions long established in
experimental psychology. Professor Protopopov mentions this, but he considers this
coincidence as incidental and external only. For us, on the contrary, it is clear that
what it amounts to is a thorough capitulation of pure reflexological method, which is
used so successfully on dogs, to the problems of human behaviour.
It is extremely important to show that all three spheres into which empirical
psychology has divided the mind – cognition, feeling, and will – also readily reveal
the same nature of conscious awareness that is relevant to them, and can be easily
reconciled with this hypothesis and with the method it entails, if one looks at them
from the point of view of the hypothesis we have presented here.
1. James’s theory of emotions paves the way for such an interpretation of conscious
awareness of feelings. Taking three usual components – A – the cause of a feeling, B –
the feeling itself, and C – its corporeal manifestations – James rearranged them in the
following way A-C-B. [29]. I shall not repeat his arguments that are known to all. I
should only like to point out that his formulation laid bare (1) the reflex character a
feeling, a feeling as a system of reflexes – A and B, and (2) the secondary, derivative
character of conscious awareness of a feeling when one’s own reaction serves as an
irritant for a new internal reaction – B and C. The biological significance of a feeling
as a quick evaluating reaction of the entire organism to its own behaviour, as an act of
engagement of the entire organism in the reaction, and as the internal organiser of all
behaviour manifest at a particular moment is also rendered understandable. I can also
note that Wundt’s three-dimensional model of a feeling essentially describes this
evaluative character of the emotions as the organism’s echo to its own reaction. This
accounts for the unrepeatability and singularity of emotions in every particular case.
2. The acts of cognition of empirical psychology also reveal their dual nature, since
they take place consciously. Psychology clearly distinguishes two “floors” in them:
acts of cognition and the consciousness of these acts.
What is especially curious in this respect is the results of the extremely refined self-
observation of the Wurzberg school, that “pure psychology of psychologists.” One of
the conclusions from these studies establishes that an intellectual act itself is
unobservable, that it eludes perception. Self-observation here exhausts itself. We are
at the bottom of consciousness. The paradoxical conclusion that suggests itself here is
the unconscious character of acts of thought. The elements of thought that we find in
our consciousness are rather surrogates of thought than its actual essence: they are
fragments, detritus, and scum of thought.
O. Külpe noted that ‘we have experienced that the “I” cannot be divided. We cannot
completely surrender to our thoughts, immerse in them and observe these thoughts at
the same time’[30]. This means, therefore, that consciousness cannot focus on itself,
that it is a secondary moment. One cannot think one’s thoughts, i.e., grasp the very
mechanism of consciousness, because this mechanism is not a reflex, i.e., it cannot be
the object of experience, the irritant of a new reflex, and is only a transmitting
mechanism between systems of reflexes. But as soon as a thought is completed, i.e.,
as soon as a reflex is formed, it may be consciously observed: “First one, and then the
other,” as O. Külpe says.
In one of his articles Professor Krol comments on this point, that the new phenomena
discovered by the Wurzburg studies of the higher processes of consciousness
surprisingly resemble Pavlov’s conditional reflexes [31]. The spontaneity of thought,
the fact that it is found ready-made, the complex feelings of activity, of inquiry and
search, etc., bear this out. The impossibility to observe the thought also speaks in
favour of the mechanisms we have outlined here.
3. Finally, the will most fully and patently of all reveals those essential characteristics
of its consciousness. The fact that motor representations (i.e., secondary reactions
from the movements of organs) are present beforehand in consciousness clarifies the
point. Any movement must first be accomplished unconsciously. Then its kinesthesia
(i.e. secondary reaction) becomes the basis of its conscious awareness [32]. Bair’s
experiments with ear movements illustrate this. Our conscious awareness of our will
creates the illusion of two aspects: I thought, and then I did. Indeed, there are two
reactions here, but they are in the opposite sequence: first comes the secondary
reaction and then basic or primary one. Sometimes the process is more complicated;
and the theory of a complex volitional act and its mechanism, complicated by
motives, i.e., the collision of several secondary reactions, also agrees completely with
the thoughts propounded above.
But what is most important is to clarify, in the light of these ideas, the development of
consciousness from the moment of its birth, its origin in experience, its secondary
nature, and, consequently, its psychological determinateness by the environment.
Being determines consciousness; this law can, after some elaboration, for the first
time receive a precise psychological meaning and reveal the actual mechanism of this
determinateness.
VI
There is one group of easily distinguishable reflexes in humans that one could
correctly call reversible reflexes. These are reflexes to irritants that in turn can be
created by man. A word that is heard is the irritant, and a word that is pronounced is a
reflex producing the same irritant. The reflex is reversible here, since an irritant can
become a reaction, and vice versa. These reversible reflexes, which constitute the
foundation for social behaviour, serve for collective co-ordination of behaviour. In the
whole multitude of irritants one group clearly stands out for me, the group of social
irritants coming from people. What distinguishes them is that I, myself, can reproduce
the same irritants and that they become reversible for me very early, and hence
determine my behaviour in a different way from all others. They make me comparable
to another, and make my actions identical with one another. Indeed, in the broad
sense, we can say that the source of social behaviour and consciousness lays in
speech.
It is extremely important here to establish, if only in passing, that if what we have said
is correct, it means that the mechanism of social behaviour and the mechanism of
consciousness are the same. Speech, on the one hand, is a system of “reflexes for
social contact” [33], and, on the other, a system, most eminently, of reflexes of
consciousness, a system for reflecting other systems.
Here, too, is the root of the question of another person’s “I”, i.e., of how I can know
the mind of another person. The mechanism for knowing oneself (self-awareness) is
the same as the mechanism for knowing others. Usual theories of our knowledge of
another’s mind either proclaim forthwith its unknowability [34] or, by means of a
variety of hypotheses, endeavour to construct a plausible mechanism that essentially
is the same in a theory of sensations or a theory of analogy: we know others because
we know ourselves; in getting to know the anger of someone else, I am reproducing
my own anger [35].
Actually, it would be more correct to say just on the contrary. We are conscious of
ourselves because we are conscious of others; and in an analogous manner, we are
conscious of others because in our relationship to ourselves we are the same as others
in their relationship to us. I am aware of myself only to the extent that I am as another
for myself, i.e., only to the extent that I can perceive anew my own reflexes as new
irritants. Between the fact that I can repeat aloud a word spoken silently to myself and
the fact that I can repeat a word spoken by another there is no essential difference, nor
is there any principal difference in their mechanisms: both are reversible reflexes –
irritants.
Therefore, a direct consequence of this hypothesis will be the “sociologising” of all
consciousness, the recognition that the social moment of consciousness is primary in
time and in fact. The individual aspect of consciousness is constructed as derived and
secondary, based on the social and exactly according to its model. [36].
A dual nature of consciousness comes from here: the idea of a “double” is the picture
of consciousness that is the closest to reality. This is very close to the division of the
individual person into an “Ego” and an “Id”, which S. Freud analytically describes.
“In its relation to the “Id,” “I” is like a horseman who must keep rein on the
outstanding strength of a horse, with the difference that the horseman tries to do this
with his own forces, while “I” employs borrowed forces. This analogy may be
extended. Just as a horseman who does not want to dismount from his horse must
often perforce allow himself to be taken where the horse desires, so, too, the “I”
ordinarily transforms the will of the “Id” into an action that appears to be its own
will” [37].
The excellent confirmation of this thought of the identity between the mechanism of
consciousness and the mechanism of social contact and the idea that consciousness is,
as it were, social contact with oneself, is the process of development of an awareness
of speech in the deaf-mutes and partly by the development of tactile responses in the
blind. The speech of the deaf-mutes usually does not develop but remains frozen at
the stage of a reflex cry not because the speech centres are damaged, but because,
owing to the loss of hearing, the possibility of reversible speech reflexes is paralysed.
Speech cannot return as an irritant to the speaker himself. Because of this it remains
unconscious and asocial. The deaf-mutes are usually limited to a conventional
language of gestures that links them to the narrow circle of social experience of other
deaf-mutes and develops consciousness in them by virtue of the fact that these
reflexes revert back to the mute himself through his eyes.
The education of the deaf-mute from the psychological side entails restoring, or
compensating for, the destroyed mechanism of reflex reversibility. The mutes learn to
speak by reading articulatory movements of a speaker’s lips and learn to speak
themselves by making use of the secondary kinaesthetic irritations occurring during
speech motor reactions. [38].
What is most remarkable in all this is that conscious awareness of speech and social
experience emerge simultaneously and completely parallel with one another. It is in
some sense a specially arranged experiment of nature that confirms the main thesis of
this article. In a special work I hope to demonstrate this more clearly and fully. The
deaf-mute learns to be conscious of himself and his movements to the extent that he
learns to be conscious of others. The identity of the two mechanisms is amazingly
clear and almost obvious.
Now we can bring together the terms in our formula of human behaviour that we
presented in one of the earlier sections. Historical and social experience are not in
themselves different entities, psychologically speaking, since they cannot be separated
in experience and are always given together. We can link them with a sign +. As I
have tried to show, their mechanisms are exactly the same as the mechanism of
consciousness, since consciousness must be regarded as a particular case of social
experience. Hence, both these parts may be readily designated to with the same index
of doubled experience.
VII
In concluding this essay I think it is extremely important and essential to point out the
agreement between the conclusions I have developed here and those of the brilliant
analysis of consciousness made by William James. Thoughts pursued in completely
different fields and along completely different paths have led to the same view as that
presented by James in his speculative analysis. I should like to see this as a partial
confirmation of my ideas. Already in his Psychology James declared that the
existence of states of consciousness, as such, is not a fully proven fact but rather a
deeply entrenched prejudice. It was the data of his brilliant self-observation that
persuaded him of this.
In the present essay a few thoughts of preliminary character were briefly and cursorily
outlined. I think, however, that it is with them that the study of consciousness should
begin. Our science is still a long way from the concluding formula of a geometric
theorem, culminating the ultimate argument – Q. E. D [what was to be proved]. We
must still schedule what is to be proved, and only then set about proving it. We must
first put forward the task and then solve it. [41]. I hope the present essay should serve as
a statement of the task.
Notes.
7. Ibid., Chapter 4.
8. See the article by Ukhtomsky, A. A., Vinogradov, M. I., and Kaplan, I. I. (1923).
Russkii Fiziologicheskii Zhurnal, 6.
9. Sherrington, Ch. (1906). The integrative action of the nervous system. New York:
Charlres Scribner’s Sons.
15. Sherrington, Ch. (1912). The correlation of cerebrospinal reflexes and the
principle of a common field. (Russian translation in Uspehi Biologii, Odessa; 1912.)
19. Pavlov, I. P. Twenty years of experience in the objective study of higher nervous
activity in animals, Moscow.
20. Sherrington, Ch. (1912). The correlation of cerebrospinal reflexes and the
principle of a common field.
24. Sherrington, Ch. The correlation of cerebrospinal reflexes and the principle of a
common field.
28. Protopopov, V. (1923). The methods of the reflexological studies of man. Zhurnal
Psikhologii, Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii, 3, p. 22.
29. James, W. (1905). Psychology. St. Petersburg. Translated by Lopatin; Chapter 24.
33. Zalkind, A. (1924). Essays on the culture of the revolutionary time. Moscow;
35. Lipps, Th. (1907). Das Wissen von fremden Ichen. See also Lapshin, I. I. (1910).
The problem of other person’s mind in modern philosophy.
37. Freud, S. (1923). The Ego and the Id. Moscow; Chapter 2, p. 25.
38. W. Jerusalem (Laura Bridgman, V, pp. 54-55), analysing the process of thinking
and consciousness in a deaf-mute and blind Laura Bridgman noted: “Thus, for her,
thinking was one of the sensory organs, at first, of course, because it provided
information, but then also because she perceived the process of thinking sensuously.”
Laura herself considered that she had four sense organs (thinking and nose and mouth
and fingers). (Lamson, p. 56). Here it is perfectly obvious that thinking is ranked with
the work of analyzers.
39. Epilogue.
40. James, W. (1913). Does consciousness exist? Russian translation in Novie idei v
filosofii, Vol. 4.
41. This article was already in print when I got acquainted with several works by
behaviourist psychologists concerning this problem. The problem of consciousness is
formulated and solved by these authors very closely to the thoughts developed here,
as a problem of the relation between reactions (See “unverbalized behaviour” in
Watson, J. B. (1924). The unverbalised in human behaviour. Psychological review, 31,
p. 273-280 and also Lashley, K. S. (1923). The behaviouristic interpretations of
consciousness. Psychological review, 30, p. 237-272; 329-353).