HISTNEUR-L: The History of Neuroscience Internet Forum

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Re: Animal Thought 

On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, Christopher A. Robinson wrote:

> At this point, I have concluded that the writers
> were not interested in whether there was in fact an anatomical
> justification for the differences they were making.

I'm not sure who you've read thus far. If you haven't already, you might
want to have a look at _Animal minds and human morals: The origins of the
Western debate__ by Richard Sorabji. Also, see Mary Carruthers _Book of
memory_, and Anthony Kenny's _Aquinas on mind_. Simon Kemp's two short
books on psychology in the middle ages are interesting as well.

I think that your search for "anatomical justifications" has something a
little anachronistic about it--a problem of which the historian must be
wary. As you must know, the brain was credited with fairly limited powers
in the area of cognition by most Ancient thinkers. Thus, they simply
wouldn't have been very much inclined to look for "anatomical
justifications" for mental function.  Thumos was thought to be located in
the chest. Some other "thinking organs" (nous, logistikon, epistemonikon)
were sometimes localized in the head, but I don't recall there often being
claimed an inherent connection with the brain, per se. Higher cognitive
functions were often thought to have some immaterial basis (sometimes
divine, but not always). The Stoics' pneuma was (at least nominally)
material, but was thought to be spread throughout the body--indeed,
throughout the cosmos. Thus, "anatomical justifications" would have seemed
beside the point.

By the time the "cell doctrine" caught on, lower cognitive functions were
widely thought to be located in the ventricles (and this would count, I
think, as a kind of "anatomical justification"), but the higher functions
were widely thought to be divine in origin, and thus anatomy was
irrelevant. Indeed, regarding your specific question, the very difference
between animal and human minds was that the human mind had immaterial,
divinely-given mental capacities *over and above* those present in all
animals. Thus humans larger brain would be thought to give them more
powerful lower functions than those of the animals (though I don't have a
specific a refernce for this), but those function that humans were thought
to have exclusively (the higher functions) would not be expected to be
reflected in the anatomy ofthe brain (or any other part of the body).

I hope these somewhat rambling comments are of use.

Regards,

Christopher D. Green		office:	(416) 736-2100 ext. 66164
Department of Psychology	FAX:	(416) 736-5814
York University
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3	e-mail: christo@yorku.ca
CANADA

      http://www.yorku.ca/faculty/academic/christo
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