Psychology by Robert S. Woodworth (intellectual books to read .TXT) 📖

certain purpose, in a certain place, go there and find it. You have substituted mental exploration of the situation for purely motor exploration, and saved time and effort. Such instances show the use of reasoning, and the part it plays in behavior.

The process of reasoning is also illustrated very well in these simple cases. It is an exploratory process, a searching for facts. In a way, it is a trial and error process. If you don't ransack the house, at least you ransack your memory, in search for facts that will assist you. You recall this fact {463} and that, you turn this way and that, mentally, till some fact is recalled that serves your need. No more in reasoning than in motor exploration can you hope to go straight to the desired goal.

Animal and Human Exploration

Is man the only reasoning animal? The experimental work on animal learning, reviewed in one of our earlier chapters, was begun with this question in mind. Previous evidence on this point had been limited to anecdotes, such as that of the dog that was found opening a gate by lifting the latch with his nose, and was supposed to have seen men open the gate in this way, and to have reasoned that if a man could do that, why not a dog? The objection to this sort of evidence is that the dog's manner of acquiring the trick was not observed. Perhaps he reasoned it out, and perhaps he got it by accident--you cannot tell without watching the process of learning. You must experiment, by taking a dog that does not know the trick, and perhaps first "showing him" how to open the gate by lifting the latch; but it was found that dogs and cats, and even monkeys, could not learn the trick in this way. If, however, you placed a dog in a cage, the door of which could be opened by lifting a latch, and motivated the dog strongly by having him hungry and placing food just outside, then the dog went to work by trial and error, and lifted the latch in the course of his varied reactions; and if he were placed back in the cage time after time, his unsuccessful reactions were gradually eliminated and the successful reaction was firmly attached to the situation of being in that cage, so that he would finally lift the latch without any hesitation.

The behavior of the animal does not look like reasoning. For one thing, it is too impulsive and motor. The typical {464} attitudes of the reasoner, whether "lost in thought" or "studying over things", do not appear in the dog, or even in the monkey, though traces of them may perhaps be seen in the chimpanzee and other manlike apes. Further, the animal's learning curve fails to show sudden improvements such as in human learning curves follow "seeing into" the problem. In short, there is nothing to indicate that the animal recalls facts previously observed or sees their bearing on the problem in hand. He works by motor exploration, instead of mental. He does not search for "considerations" that may furnish a clue.

The behavior of human beings, placed figuratively in a cage, sometimes differs very little from that of an animal. Certainly it shows plenty of trial and error and random motor exploration; and often the puzzle is so blind that nothing but motor exploration will bring the solution. What the human behavior does show that is mostly absent from the animal is (1) attentive studying over the problem, scrutinizing it on various sides, in the effort to find a clue; (2) thinking, typically with closed eyes or abstracted gaze, in the effort to recall something that may bear on the problem; and (3) sudden "insights" when the present problem is seen in the light of past experience.

Though reason differs from animal trial and error in these respects, it still is a tentative, try-and-try-again process. The right clue is not necessarily hit upon at the first try; usually the reasoner finds one clue after another, and follows each one up by recall, only to get nowhere, till finally he notices a sign that recalls a pertinent meaning. His exploration of the situation, though carried on by aid of recalled experience instead of by locomotion, still resembles finding the way out of a maze with many blind alleys. In short, reasoning may be called a trial and error process in the sphere of mental reactions.

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The reader familiar with geometry, which is distinctly a reasoning science, can readily verify this description. It is true that the demonstrations are set down in the book in a thoroughly orderly manner, proceeding straight from the given assumption to the final conclusion; but such a demonstration is only a dried specimen and does not by any means picture the living mental process of reasoning out a proposition. Solving an "original" is far from a straight-forward process. You begin with a situation (what is "given") involving a problem (what is to be proved), and, studying over this lay-out you notice a certain fact which looks like a clue; this recalls some previous proposition which gives the significance of the clue, but often turns out to have no bearing on the problem, so that you shift to another clue; and so on, by what is certainly a trial and error process, till some fact noted in the situation plus some knowledge recalled by this fact, taken together, reveal the truth of the proposition.

Reasoning Culminates in Inference

When you have described reasoning as a process of mental exploration, you have told only half the story. The successful reasoner not only seeks, but finds. He not only ransacks his memory for data bearing on his problem, but he finally "sees" the solution clearly. The whole exploratory process culminates in a perceptive reaction. What he "sees" is not presented to his senses at the moment, but he "sees that something must be so". This kind of perception may be called inference.

To bring out distinctly the perceptive reaction in reasoning, let us cite a few very simple cases. Two freshmen in college, getting acquainted, ask about each other's fathers and find that both are alumni of this same college. "What class was your father in?" "In the class of 1900. And {466} yours?" "Why, he was in 1900, too. Our fathers were in the same class; they must know each other!" Here two facts, one contributed by one person and the other by another person, enable both to perceive a third fact which neither of them knew before. Inference, typically, is a response to two facts, and the response consists in perceiving a third fact that is bound up in the other two.

You do not infer what you can perceive directly by the senses. If Mary and Kate are standing side by side, you can see which is the taller. But if they are not side by side, but Mary's height is given as so much and Kate's as an inch more, then from these two facts you know, by inference, that Kate is taller than Mary.

"Have we set the table for the right number of people?" "Well, we can see when the party comes to the table." "Oh! but we can tell now by counting. How many are there to be seated? One, two, three--fifteen in all. Now count the places at table--only fourteen. You will have to make room for one more." This reducing of the problem to numbers and then seeing how the numbers compare is one very simple and useful kind of inference.

Indirect comparison may be accomplished by other similar devices. I can reach around this tree trunk, but not around that, and thus I perceive that the second tree is thicker than the first, even though it may not look so. If two things are each found to be equal to a third thing, then I see they must be equal to each other; if one is larger than my yardstick and the other smaller, then I see they must be unequal.

Of the two facts which, taken together, yield an inferred fact, one is often a general rule or principle, and the inference then consists in seeing how the general rule applies to a special case. A dealer offers you a fine-looking diamond ring for five dollars, but you recall the rule that "all genuine diamonds are expensive", and perceive that this {467} diamond must be an imitation. This also is an instance of indirect comparison, the yardstick being the sum of five dollars; this ring measures five dollars, but any genuine diamond measures more than five dollars, and therefore a discrepancy is visible between this diamond and a genuine diamond. You can't see the discrepancy by the eye, but you see it by way of indirect comparison, just as you discover the difference between the heights of Mary and Kate by aid of the yardstick.

If all French writers are clear, then Binet, a French writer, must be clear. Here "French writers" furnish your yardstick. Perhaps it would suit this case a little better if, instead of speaking of indirect comparison by aid of a mental yardstick, we spoke in terms of "relations". When you have before your mind the relation of A to M, and also the relation of B to M, you may be able to see, or infer, a relation between A and B. M is the common point of reference to which A and B are related. Binet stands in a certain relation to "French writers", who furnish the point of reference; that is, he is one of them. Clear writing stands in a certain relation to French writers, being one of their qualities; from which combination of relations we perceive clear writing as a quality of Binet.

Just as an illusion is a false sense perception, so a false inference is called a "fallacy". One great cause of fallacies consists in the confused way in which facts are sometimes presented, resulting in failure to see the relationships clearly. If you read that

"Smith is taller than Brown; and
Jones is shorter than Smith; and therefore
Jones is shorter than Brown,"

the mix-up of "taller" and "shorter" makes it difficult to get the relationships clearly before you, and you are likely {468} to make a mistake. Or again, if Mary and Jane both resemble Winifred, can you infer that they resemble each other? You are likely to think so at first, till you notice that resemblance is not a precise enough relation to serve for purposes of indirect comparison. Mary may resemble Winifred in one respect, and Jane may resemble her in another respect, and there may be no resemblance between Mary and Jane.

Or, again,

"All French writers are clear; but
James was not a French writer; and therefore
James was not a clear writer,"

may cause some confusion from failure to notice that the relation between French writers and clear writing is not reversible so that we could turn about and assert that all clear writers were French.

The reasoner needs a clear head and a steady mental eye; he needs to look squarely and steadily at his two given statements in order to perceive their exact relationship. Diagrams and symbols often assist in keeping the essential facts clear of extraneous matter, and so facilitate the right response.

To sum up: the process of reasoning culminates in two facts being present as stimuli, and the response, called "inference", consists in perceiving a third fact that is implicated in the two stimulus-facts. It is a good case of the law of combination, and at the same time it is a case where "isolation" is needed, otherwise the response will be partly aroused by irrelevant stimuli, and thus be liable to error.

Varieties of Reasoning

Reasoning as a whole is a process of mental exploration culminating in inference. Now, without regard to possible {469} variations of the perceptive response of inference, there are at least