CONCEPTUAL THINKING AND SURVIVAL

WILLIAM GOODDY and MARGARET REINHOLD. National Hospital, Queen Square, London, WC IN 3BG, England.

SUMM~Y ?%e ability of a creature to perform ~~e~t~l twining is of im~rtance comparable to natural selection and mutation of genes in relation to the survival or extinction of a species. The ability for conceptual thinking, like many other psychological abilities, is a compound of many subsidiary abilities. All these abilities are genetically determined and evolved sequentially and cumulatively over a long period of time. Creatures other than man, therefore, must be endowed with some, if not all, of the abilities which make up the total ability for conceptual thinking. Ability for conceptual thinking thus varies in degree and quality from species to species. Conceptual thinking allows a creature to formulate strategies, i.e. patterns of behaviour derived from already existing multiple potentials for behaviour. These strategies may be learned by one generation from its parents and passed down to succeeding gen~ations. Conceptual thinking frees creatures from behaviour dictated wholly by genetically determined responses. Man’s ability for conceptual thinking has led to strategies some of which are useful for survival and others ‘which might cause his extinction as a species.

INTRODUCTION The importance of natural selection and mutation of genes have been fully recognised in relation to the survival or extinction of a species. Attention has been concentrated mainly upon the effect of genetic activity on structure and biochemical functions. The authors wish to point out that there is another modality of functions equally dependent upon genetic activity (which includes “behaviour” and psychology) which is of importance equal to structure and biochemistry in relation to survival or extinction of a species.

Genetic activity produces potentials which permit an organism behaviour’pattems .and:also’pattems of “mental” functions. Thus psychological functions and behaviour patterns evolved in the Darwinian sense together with structure and biochemical activities. By evolution in the Darwinian sense we are referring both to the fact of evolution as described by Darwin and the means by which evolution occurs, that is, as related to the activities of genes. “Psychological” and “behavioural” abilities are related, in a manner not as yet understood, to physical structure and chemical activites, or perhaps merely co-exist with these aspects of being. “Psychological” and “behavioural” attributes have a practical significance for clinical physicians and also for ethologists.

In the practice of medicine “mind’” has not, so far, been satisfactorily defined. Physicians, however, believe pragmatically in the interrelation of “mental” functions to functions of the body. “Psychosomatic” illness implies a disturbance of body functions accompanying mental disturbance. Physicians also correlate disturbances of many mental and behavioural functions with disease of, or injury to the body. Since the correlation of mental activities with those of the body is not understood, from a practical point of view it is appropriate to accept “psychological” and “behavioural” activities as a separate modality of being, co-existing with body, but not readily amenable to analysis and description in the terms used to describe physical and biochemical behaviour. Psychological attributes afTecting the survival or extinction of a species are multiple, but among the most important are the ability to

learn, the ability to experience consciousness and, above all, the ability for conceptual thinking.

HYPOTHESIS We propose that conceptual thinking plays as large a

part as natural selection and mutation of genes in relation to the survival or extinction of a species with a complex nervous system. The ability to learn, the ability to experience consciousness and the ability for conceptual thinking are not unitary functions but are integrated complexes of abilities, all of which evolved gradually over a considerable period of time.

In the practice of clinical neurology, where attention is paid only to man, it is recognised that man’s psychological abilities are not unitary functions. An apparently unitary function such as “stereognosis” (the ability to recognize a solid form by means of touch alone) is an ability which is the inte~ation of multiple other abilities - namely: the ability to experience sensations of light touch and pressure; the ability to experience sensation in terms of three dimensions; the ability to distinguish hard from soft, sharp from smooth, hot from cold; the ability to learn; the ability to remember; the ability to explore the object with touch in a directional manner; the ability to integrate sensory i~ormation.

All the above abilities are themselves compounded of multiple other abilities and all the abilities evolved in the Darwinian sense. The final integration of all the abilities produces a “new” ability, i.e. stereognosis. The analysis of some of man’s apparently unitary functions into component abilities has been previously described by m-any neurologists without, however the recognition of the fact that such abilities are genetically determined. (C~tc~ey (l), Goldstein and Gelb (2), Goldstein (3), Riese (4), Schilder (5)). We have analysed a number of human functions which are integrations of component abilities such as man’s ability to orientate himself in space (Gooddy (6), Gooddy and Reinhold (7, 8, 9)), his ability to “attend” (Reinhold (lo)), his ability to understand spoken language (Reinhold (1 I), his ability to read and write (Gooddy (12), Reinhold (13))

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and other abilities (Reinhold (14)). The evolution in the Darwinian sense of these abilities was not, however, taken into consideration.

Ethologists who study behaviour objectively are in agreement with neurologists regarding the compound nature of apparently unitary functions (Armstrong (15), Lorenz (16, 17), Tinbergen (18, 19, 20)). Innumerable psychological functions have been described as attributes of many living species. The attributes include drives, instincts, ability to achieve imprint, ability to bond, ability to perform ritual behaviour of great variety, aggressive behaviour, placating behaviour, ability to experience mood or affect, the ability to communicate by signals, ability to group or organize social commu~ties and ability to learn. #(Armstrong (21), Lorenz (22), Thorpe (23), Tinbergen (24, 25, 26)). All such attributes and functions evolved in the Darwinian sense. Many possesses all the above mentioned abilities. He also has the ability for conceptual thinking. This latter ability is shared by a great number of other creatures, although it has, perhaps mistakenly, been regarded as man’s particular attribute.

The ability for conceptual thinking evolved as did the other psychological abilities described above. Conceptual thinking, like these abilities, is a compound of many abilities, some of which, if not all, were and are possessed by creatures other than man.

Conceptual thinking is defined here as the ability of a creature to make a deduction from an assortment of information derived from sensory experiences and, having done so, to formulate a strategy for behaviour.

Conceptual thinking requires, among other performances, the ability to isolate one or several sensory experiences from an infinite number of simultaneous experiences; to recognize differences; to abstract common qualities from a variety of experiences; to choose from alternative modes of behaviour potentially available to the creature; (part of one available pattern may be linked to part of another pattern, thus creating a new pattern out of many fragments of previously unitary patterns of behaviour).

Conceptual thinking requires the abiity to learn, the ability to remember and to integrate information derived from one sensory category with information derived from another sensory category.

As a result of these and other psychological activities, a creature endowed with multiple abilities and a complex nervous system may conceive a pattern of behaviour which is not determined wholly by instinctive response.

We have said that the ability for conceptual thinking occurs and occurred in the past in many creatures other than man. The abilities required for conceptual thinking depend in the first place upon the reception and integration of sensory information. The various ways in which sensations are experienced are related to the sensory organs with which a creature is endowed - that is, are related to, or co-exist with, the physical structure and biochemical functions of a creature. Sensory information is derived from visual, tactile or olfactory organs, from the skilled hand, from wings, from fins, whiskers, beaks and claws, from electric current receptors, from receptors able to receive information regarding magnetic fieids and certainly

from other receptor organs (or systems) not yet understood by man.

The variation in sensory organs, the different dossibilities for organisation and integration of information derived from sensory experience, the ~~utations and combinations of such information, permit, in theory, a complexity of orders, degrees and qualities of conceptual thinking. The ability to manipulate multisensory information may occur as a minor or major attribute in any species. The greater the ability and the more varied the sensory information the ,more numerous and complex the resulting strategies are likely to be.

In the course of formulating strategies, creatures with a broadly-based and high ability for conceptual thinking may devise and use aids such as tools, or languages for communication with one another, thereby extending the abilities with which they were born. Conceptual thinking allows individual creatures to plan and put into operation a strategy or piece of behaviour in a relativeIy brief period of time, perhaps seconds or minutes. Had such strategic behaviour been determined only by genetic activity, a vast span of time must have been required for the evolution of the ~haviour’s component aspects.

It is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the present theme that conceptual thinking has, in fact rather than theory, produced over the past 10,000 years a system of record-making which entirely bypasses the need for the immediate transfer of patterns of thought and physical activity from individual to individual; thereby bypassing the need for the evolutionary natural selection process towards improved success as an organism. As soon as permanence of records obviated the need for each individu~ to re-learn a process there was an entirely new method for evolutionary advance. By this method the human being became capable of starting at the point where his predecessors had concluded. The permanence of records ensured for the human organism a continuous passage from peak to peak of learning and achievement. It has been by this method alone that man has progressed in a few thousand years from a poor agriculturalist to his present situation.

Conceptual thinking frees a creature from behaviour dictated purely by genetically determined responses.

Conceptual thinking enables a creature to plan survival, either in an immediate contingency or, as in the case of man and perhaps other animals with a marked ability of this nature, to pian for future contingencies. Conceptual thinking may also enable a creature to plan actions ultimately destructive to its species.

Conceptual thinking, a major attribute of man, has enabled him to create systems of symbols, one of which is the alphabet (Diringer (27)). Other symbol systems involve numerals. These systems of symbols have been used by man, by virtue of further conceptual thinking, to create the achievements of the sciences of physics, chemistry and medicine. Conceptual thinking, assisted by symbol systems, has produced antibiotics and “the pill”, radar and space travel. A further and extremely important extension of man’s powers for conceptual thinking is his capacity to interfere a~ifici~ly with the natural course of the mutation of genes. The survival of people with phenylketonuria and

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cystic. fibrosis has already changed the evolutionary process.

The ability of man for conceptual thinking carries with it not only the capacity for rapid advances and developments but also real possibilites for self destruction.

Conceptual thinking, the pinnacle of multiple genetic achievements as so far represented in modern man, may be seen as a factor in evolution (contributing to the success or failure in the survival of species) comparable in importance with natural selection and with genetic mutation.

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