Instinctive Estimation of Practical Values

INSTINCTIVE ESTIMATION OF PRACTICAL VALUES PLANTS, animals, and men are contingently vital beings, and as such are. subject to constant attacks by other forces which threaten to deprive them of their perfection of vitality. They must be able to orientate themselves properly to the world of external reality if they are to continue on in a state of life. Activity of many sorts is incumbent upon all of them if they are to live; but the activity demanded for life is not a disconnected, random activity, nor is it merely a speculative activity concerned only with contemplation of truth as such. In the plant domain there is no knowledge, no possibility of self-determination-in short, there is no psychic consciousness of any sort. But in the animal and human kingdoms there is a conscious life. The animal and the man must become aware of values, of subtle overtones accruing to each and every object of external reality existing in the milieu in which animal or man must seek the conditions needed for maintenance of life. This knowledge is not a speculative knowledge, it is interested rather in action. But art and prudence also are intetested in action, and as a consequence it might be objected that there is confusion here in our distinction. Let it suffice to note that art and prudence are virtues of an intellectual nature, that their knowledge has a certain rational element which differentiates it from the pure sense knowledge which we encounter on the first level of psychic life. Moreover, the knowledge of art and prudence is orientated toward supplying the conditions for a higher type of life, a type not demanded for the simple predication of life on the physical level. The knowledge and consequent activity which men and animals share are concerned with the maintenance and propagation of physical life; their proper causality never rises above the sentient order. These capacities 185 186 WILLIAM A. GERHARD for knowledge and action on the sense level are traditionally called instincts, and our purpose is to investigate their nature. To categorize briefly the methods of considering instincts, we may say that instincts can be considered as psychophysiological phenomena of the cognitive order, or as biological functions . Those adopting the latter point of view may be divided into the mechanists and the vitalists. We are not as yet interested in investigating the nature of the knowledge of instincts , the transcendental relationship existing between this type of knowing power and the external world. We are here on the first level of abstraction where we shall consider properties of material vital forms by that abstraction proper to the biological sciences. Instinctive activity is a phenomenon that has been one of the first properties of animal life remarked by all observers of vital activity. And among the striking characteristics of instinctive activity, its purposeful and unlearned method of functioning is paramount: from the very moment of birth creatures endowed with locomotion move about in their environment in such wise as to seek and appropriate those things which are conducive to the maintenance of life. The sensations that rush pell mell are in some manner sifted and judged, whereupon the useful are responded to positively and the harmful negatively. That is the fact-the explanation is more doubtful. Is there some factor in the instinctive process which is not to be predicated of the matter as such, but rather is a principle entangled in the matter of the body? We have arrived at the point whence arose two schools of biological thought, the Mechanists and the Vitalists.1 With the doctrine of Descartes the great dichotomy of reality was effected: all things could be classed either as spiritual, or thought, reality-in this realm all extension was excluded, or as matter, or extended reality-here all thought was excluded. The psychic was co-extensive with the realm of thought, and all outside of the psychic was to be equated with matter. 1 I do not intend to' go into a historical study of the doctrines on instinct held by various philosophers and ,psychologists. An excellent historical treatise on this matter can be found in the book of J. Drever, Instinct...