from insects to domestic pets – exercised a form of choice; early descriptions of animal behaviour are full of charming, anthropomorphic observations that reflect this view. For example, the diarist John Evelyn was moved to write the following on Italian hunting spiders:
I have beheld them instructing their young ones how to hunt, which they would sometimes discipline for not well observing. But when any of the old ones did (as sometimes) miss a leap, they would run out of the field, and hide them in their crannies, as ashamed, and haply not be seen abroad for four or five hours after.
Galvani had produced movement without volition, A physical demonstration of’unconscious’ action.
The word ‘reflex’ was introduced into biology by the neurologist Marshall Hall and was used to describe the ‘automatic’ or involuntary response of a muscle, or group of muscles, to a given stimulus; however, a number of physiologists and neurologists began to consider the possibility that certain mental phenomena might be analogous to automatic reflexes. For example, involuntary memory (as exemplified by the common and frustrating experiences of being unable to remember a fact or name which at a later date effortlessly pops into awareness). Thomas Laycock (a professor of medicine at Edinburgh) suggested that such phenomena reflected the ‘reflex function of the brain’, while a contemporary rival, the physiologist Benjamin Carpenter, referred to these phenomena as ‘unconscious cerebration’.
In 1876, Carpenter observed that volition seems to play a very minor role in the execution of even the most simple behaviours – which are largely automatic. For example, numerous muscles must be activated and organised for an individual to produce a single musical note or syllable. Achieving the exact configuration is a complex task. Yet this is routinely accomplished without any mental effort:
We simply conceive the tone or syllable we wish to utter and say to our automatic self, do this and the well trained automaton executes it. What we will is not to throw this or that muscle into action, but to produce a certain preconceived result.
A few years earlier, in 1874, the great Victorian populariser of science Thomas Henry Huxley also considered the modest role ofvolition in initiating actions, although he reached an altogether more dramatic conclusion. In his article ‘On the hypothesis that animals are automata’, he argued that all animals - including man – depend largely on automatic processes to function. Somewhat controversially, he insisted:
The feeling we call volition is not the cause of the voluntary act, but simply the symbol in consciousness of the stage of the brain which is the immediate cause of the act. Like the steam whistle which signals but doesn’t cause the starting of the locomotive.
So, consciousness was an epiphenomenon – insubstantial, illusory. Meanwhile, down below, in the mind’s engine room, a machinery comprised of automatic associations and neural reflexes was generating cognition, emotion, and complex actions. With Carpenter and Huxley we begin to see the emergence of an extraordinary post-industrial unconscious, populated not by exotic spirit guides, poetic apparitions, and evil sub-personalities -but by robots.
For those who subscribed to the view that most of human behaviour was produced by automatic processes, the obedience of hypnotic subjects was now readily understood. With the power ofvolition anaesthetised, the will of the hypnotist became a kind of surrogate will. The human body was like an empty carriage, with a new occupant in the driver’s seat.
The concept of automatic and unconscious processes in the brain was also employed to explain certain features of visual perception. For example, how is it that we know when objects are moving away from us? The physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz suggested that initially, to make sense of the world, human beings must learn rules. For
I have beheld them instructing their young ones how to hunt, which they would sometimes discipline for not well observing. But when any of the old ones did (as sometimes) miss a leap, they would run out of the field, and hide them in their crannies, as ashamed, and haply not be seen abroad for four or five hours after.
Galvani had produced movement without volition, A physical demonstration of’unconscious’ action.
The word ‘reflex’ was introduced into biology by the neurologist Marshall Hall and was used to describe the ‘automatic’ or involuntary response of a muscle, or group of muscles, to a given stimulus; however, a number of physiologists and neurologists began to consider the possibility that certain mental phenomena might be analogous to automatic reflexes. For example, involuntary memory (as exemplified by the common and frustrating experiences of being unable to remember a fact or name which at a later date effortlessly pops into awareness). Thomas Laycock (a professor of medicine at Edinburgh) suggested that such phenomena reflected the ‘reflex function of the brain’, while a contemporary rival, the physiologist Benjamin Carpenter, referred to these phenomena as ‘unconscious cerebration’.
In 1876, Carpenter observed that volition seems to play a very minor role in the execution of even the most simple behaviours – which are largely automatic. For example, numerous muscles must be activated and organised for an individual to produce a single musical note or syllable. Achieving the exact configuration is a complex task. Yet this is routinely accomplished without any mental effort:
We simply conceive the tone or syllable we wish to utter and say to our automatic self, do this and the well trained automaton executes it. What we will is not to throw this or that muscle into action, but to produce a certain preconceived result.
A few years earlier, in 1874, the great Victorian populariser of science Thomas Henry Huxley also considered the modest role ofvolition in initiating actions, although he reached an altogether more dramatic conclusion. In his article ‘On the hypothesis that animals are automata’, he argued that all animals - including man – depend largely on automatic processes to function. Somewhat controversially, he insisted:
The feeling we call volition is not the cause of the voluntary act, but simply the symbol in consciousness of the stage of the brain which is the immediate cause of the act. Like the steam whistle which signals but doesn’t cause the starting of the locomotive.
So, consciousness was an epiphenomenon – insubstantial, illusory. Meanwhile, down below, in the mind’s engine room, a machinery comprised of automatic associations and neural reflexes was generating cognition, emotion, and complex actions. With Carpenter and Huxley we begin to see the emergence of an extraordinary post-industrial unconscious, populated not by exotic spirit guides, poetic apparitions, and evil sub-personalities -but by robots.
For those who subscribed to the view that most of human behaviour was produced by automatic processes, the obedience of hypnotic subjects was now readily understood. With the power ofvolition anaesthetised, the will of the hypnotist became a kind of surrogate will. The human body was like an empty carriage, with a new occupant in the driver’s seat.
The concept of automatic and unconscious processes in the brain was also employed to explain certain features of visual perception. For example, how is it that we know when objects are moving away from us? The physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz suggested that initially, to make sense of the world, human beings must learn rules. For
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