ISBN: 9781164188186

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHA… Plus…

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II The Evidence Of Mind § 6. Inferring Mind from Behavior In this chapter we shall try to show that there exists no evidence for denying mind to any animals, if we do not deny it to all; in other words, that there is no such thing as an objective proof of the presence of mind, whose absence may be regarded as proof of the absence of mind. To begin with, can it be said that when an animal makes a movement in response to a certain stimulus, there is an accompanying consciousness of the stimulus, and that when it fails to move, there is no consciousness? Is response to stimulation evidence of consciousness? In the case of man, we know that absence of visible response does not prove that the stimulus has not been sensed; while it is probable that some effect upon motor channels always occurs when consciousness accompanies stimulation, the effect may not be apparent to an outside observer. On the other hand, if movement in response to the impact of a physical force is evidence of consciousness, then the ball which falls under the influence of gravity and rebounds on striking the floor is conscious. Nor is the case improved if we point out that the movements which animals make in response to stimulation are not the equivalent in energy of the stimulus applied, but involve the setting free of energy stored in the animal as well. True, when a microscopic animal meets an obstacle in its swimming, and darts backward, the movement isnot a mere rebound; it implies energy contributed by the animal's own body. But just so an explosion of gunpowder is not the equivalent in energy of the heat of the match, the stimulus. Similarly it is possible to think of the response made by animals to external stimuli as involving nothing more than certain physical and chemical processes Books Literary Collections~~General The-Animal-Mind~~Margaret-Floy-Washburn Kessinger Publishing Company<

ISBN: 9781164188186

Paperback, [PU: Kessinger Publishing], This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. This scarce antiquarian book … Plus…

Paperback, [PU: Kessinger Publishing], This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!, Anthologies (non-poetry)<