On Tue, 4 Jun 2013 21:00:55 -0400, Christopher Green wrote:
On 2013-06-04, at 3:26 PM, "Mike Palij" <m...@nyu.edu> wrote:
A general search of sources turns up few instances of the term before
1994 though Kohler appears to use the term "blindness of instinct" in
his 1951 book "The Mentality of Apes" (page 207). The book is
available on books.google.com but only in "snippet" form (i.e., a
tiny portion is displayed).
Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden is from the 1917 (based on
research he did during WWI). The 1920 2nd edition, with the slightly
revised title, Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen, is what was
translated in 1925 as Mentality of Apes.
(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mentality_of_Apes .) It might be
interesting to see if the original German uses one of those German "boxcar"
words that is literally rendered as instinct-blindness (whereas the
translator tried to Anglicize it into the phrase "blindness of instinct").
Just a few points but the main one is that Chris' last statement is wrong,
that is, "blindness of instinct" in not an Anglicization, rather, "instinct
blindness"
might be consider the Anglization of the older concept of "blindness of
instinct". But onto to the point:
(1) The Hathitrust (see: http://www.hathitrust.org/ but access is
limited
unless your institution is affiliated with the site but some materials, even
from the 19th century which are in electronic format have restricted access
for copyright reasons) has electronic copies of many of Kohlers books
both in German and English. There are 129 hits with Kohler as author
and 74 electronic documents whose full-text is available as a PDF. The
"Mentality of Apes" books that Chris refers to above are available in
both German and English and in various editions.
(2) My knowledge of German is terrible (a little less than a year in high
school), so I have been reduced to use Google translate to make some
English-German translations. So, the German version of "instinct
blindness" is "Instinkt Blindheit" while the German version of "blindness
of instinct" is "Blindheit des Instinkt". It appears that Cosmides and
Tooby
use the term "instinct blindness" and a Google Ngram analysis of how often
the terms appears in English show that there is some use of the term
circa 1959-1950 but doesn't take off until 1994, probably as a result
of Cosmides and Tooby's use of the term; see:
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=instinct+blindness&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=1&share=
Comparable analysis for "blindness of instinct" shows intermittent use
since 1810 and with reduced use after 1960; see:
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=blindness+of+instinct%2C&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=1&share=
NOTE: the Ngram analysis program doesn't seem to work properly with
German phrases (individual words appear to be okay), so it provides no
hits for either "Instinkt Blindheit" or "Blindheit des Instinkt". However,
if
one searches books.google.com, there are two hits for "Blindheit des
Instinct"
which are different versions of this book:
Flügel, O. (1897). Das seelenleben der tiere. H. Beyer.
The English translation of the title is: "The soul of the living animals".
When one uses "Instinkt Blindheit" there are four hits, three of which are
German papers from 2000 and after and the fourth is Flugel's book.
For Flugel's book, see:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0-IHAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA85&dq=%22blindheit+des+instinkt%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eDyvUYD7Ie7I4AOcqIHwAw&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22blindheit%20des%20instinkt%22&f=false
(3) Over on HathiTrust, using "Instinkt Blindheit" produces three hits,
two of which are Flugel's book (whose full text is available ) and a
book about Friedrich Nietzsche published in 1985.
When "Blindheit des Instinkt" is used, Flugel's book is again hit
and a book by Huch published in 1951, The key points here, I think,
is the *concept* of being "blind" to the effect of instinct on behavior
(which is assumed for animals but promoted by Cosmides and Tooby
as an explanation for some classes of human behavior) is an old one,
pre-dating Kohler and William James. I think that Cosmides and Tooby
may use James' ideas and arguments about the determinants of behavior
because they are unfamiliar with the German literature where discussion
of being blind to the operation of instincts (i.e., what we might today call
automatic processing or priming or unconscious processing associated
with skilled behavior but with the assumption of a genetic basis) appear to
be
hot topics in German science in the late 19th century. If one just uses the
words "blindheit" and "instinkt" on Hathitrust, one get 57,276 hits for
the time period 1700-2009; limiting the search to 1870-1879 one get
1,818 hits of which 46 hits are in zoology. It probably should not
come as a surprise that German researchers/philosophers/psychologists
dealt with the concept of instinct but English only researchers might
start with William James who is most accessible to English-only readers.
Beer (1983) provide a brief history of the instinct concept from Darwin
(though it pre-dates Darwin) to its appropriation by 20th century
ehtologists as well as review of the problems associated with the instinct
concept (e.g., its ambiguity); see:
Beer, C. G. (1983). Darwin, instinct, and ethology. Journal of the
History of the Behavioral Sciences, 19(1), 68-80.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1520-6696%28198301%2919:1%3C68::AID-JHBS2300190108%3E3.0.CO;2-0/abstract
(4) So, the specific phrases "instinct blindness" and "blindness to
instinct"
are less important than the *concept* that animals and people appear to
engage in "instinctive" behavior without awareness that they are being
"instinct-driven", whatever such a term might mean (but consider Richter's
work on sodium appetite where he argues that behaviors whose goal is
to ingest sodium/salt is driven by a genetically based motivation system
to acquire sodium; NOTE that this type of mechanism is very different
from other uses of the term "instinct", such as Pinker's use of the phrase
"Lanaguge Instinct" -- See Tomasello critique of thinking of language
and other congitive processes in these terms:
Tomasello, M. (1995). Language is not an instinct. Cognitive development,
10(1), 131-156.
www.princeton.edu/~adele/MTLngNotInstinct.pdf
Okay, I've said too much, I hope what I wrote wasn't too boring.
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
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