6.3. Perceptual psyche. The problem of intelligence in animals

The lowest level of perceptual development of the psyche. Perceptual psyche is the highest stage of development of mental reflection. This stage of mental development is already characterized by the presence of genuine skills and perceptions. The components of the environment are reflected by the organism as integral units, whereas at the previous level of development only individual properties or the sum of the objective components of the environment were reflected. It is at this stage in the development of the psyche that sensual representations appear . The perceptual psyche itself, which is observed in many living organisms, reveals large differences. Therefore, it became necessary to conduct a more fractional classification, according to which the first level of perceptual psyche development is called the lowest.

The lowest level of development of perceptual psyche is characteristic primarily for higher invertebrates - cephalopods and arthropods. Among arthropods, the characteristics of this level of mental development can best be seen on the example of insects, the most numerous class of arthropods.

The specific way of life, various forms of motor activity and a variety of qualitatively different agents of the environment that control the behavior, led to the development of insects of numerous and uniquely arranged sense organs. Among them, the most important is the visual apparatus, since it is well-developed vision that promoted the optical perception of forms as a necessary component of the perceptual psyche. It should be remembered that at the level of the elementary sensory psyche, the distinction of forms by animals is still impossible.

Until recently, it was believed that insects are capable of perceiving form, but only in specific frames. In the first experiments it was shown that bees can perceive only those objects that remotely resemble a flower in their structure (circles, asterisks). But later, in the experiments of the Soviet zoologist Mazokhina-Porshnyakov, it was proved that initially bees can be trained on the perception of unusual shapes, such as a triangle or circle, as a result of which it was concluded that the bees are able to recognize shapes directly from their graphic features.

One of the founders of modern ethology, N. Tinbergen, conducted similar experiments on single wasps. He taught the females of the wasps to recognize a circle of pine cones laid out around the entrance to the burrow. After the wasp flew away for prey, the circle moved 30 cm to the side. Returning, the wasp first looked for a hole in the center of the circle. In the following experiments (in addition to moving the circle), the cones were replaced with black pebbles, and a triangle or even an ellipse of these pebbles was lined up around the mink, but the wasp nevertheless flew in a circle, although it was known from previous experiments that it was completely capable of distinguishing pebbles from the cones. Thus, spatial orientation was carried out here only in form (circle).

The ability to objective perception in higher insects is noticeably lower than that of vertebrates, which can be explained by the specific structure of the organs of vision. In addition, insects are more oriented not on the subject components of the environment, but on their individual characteristics, which is more characteristic of the elementary sensory psyche stage.

Almost more important than insects, vision also plays in cephalopods. For them, vision is the leading reception, as indicated by the complex structure and large size of the eyes. The relative sizes of squid eyes exceed the relative sizes of the eyes of most aquatic mammals (whales, dolphins) dozens of times. The tremendous resolution (vigilance) of the cephalopod eyes is also striking: for 1 mm2 of various cephalopods, there are 40 to 162 thousand sticks, for a man - 120–400 thousand, for an owl with the world's most keen eye - 680 thousand.

Cephalopod mollusks are capable of genuine subject perception, which is expressed primarily in their discernment of the shape of objects. This was proven in the experiments of B. B. Boycott and J. Z. Young. It turned out that octopuses can not only perceive the shape of objects, but also distinguish their relative size as well as their position in space (for example, they could distinguish a vertical rectangle from a horizontal one). In total, these cephalopods have distinguished over 46 different forms.

Higher invertebrates already have the beginnings of communication, which is especially developed in group-leading animals (bees, ants). It is these insects that have the opportunity to transmit information through special signaling actions. Invertebrates are very pronounced and territorial behavior. Its rudiments can be found already in earthworms. In higher invertebrates, marking of an individual site, a peculiar combination of territorial behavior and information transfer are well expressed.

Already at the lowest level of perceptual development of the psyche, all those progressive features that characterize perceptual psyche in general are presented, but in many respects the behavior of the animals belonging to it also carries primitive features that bring it closer to the behavior of lower-level animals. Behavior is still focused on the individual properties of objects, objective perception is weakly expressed. The behavior is dominated by hard-coded elements, it has very little flexibility. At the same time, at this level of development of the psyche, a distinctly expressed active search for positive stimuli appears, the taxis behavior gets a powerful development. There are all kinds of higher taxis, including mnemotaxis. It is mnemotaxes that play an important role in spatial orientation, and in memorizing landmarks, the ability to change behavior, that is, learning, is already manifested.

Although in the invertebrates, in particular insects, the accumulation of individual experience, learning play a significant role, there is a certain inconsistency in the processes of learning, a combination of progressive and primitive features. The transitional stage between instinctive behavior and true learning is clearly visible, which places this level of development of the psyche between the elementary sensory and developed perceptual psyche.

The instinctive behavior itself is represented by already developed new categories, such as group behavior, communication. At the present stage of the development of science, the language of bees is best studied; it has been proved that these insects have well developed complex forms of communication. The most complex forms of instinctive behavior are naturally combined among them with the most diverse and complex manifestations of learning, which ensures not only the exceptional consistency of the actions of all members of the bee colony, but also the maximum plasticity of the behavior of the individual. The psychic abilities of bees (as well as some other higher insects) in some respects are obviously already beyond the limits of the lower level of perceptual psyche.

At the lowest level of perceptual psyche is a number of representatives of the lower vertebrates. The main reason for this is their relatively small size. All invertebrates live in conditions (temperature, lighting), which are radically different from the habitat conditions of large vertebrates. Therefore, the mental reflection of reality in insects, like in most other invertebrates, cannot but be fundamentally different from that of vertebrates. According to the general signs of mental reflection inherent in this level, it can be concluded that insects have a typical manifestation of a lower level of perceptual psyche, but in forms that meet the special conditions of life of these animals, which were mentioned above.

The highest level of perceptual development of the psyche. It was proved that during the evolutionary process in the animal world there appeared three separate peaks: vertebrates, insects, and cephalopods. All these groups quite early separated themselves from the general evolutionary stem and independently reached the heights of development. It is in these animals that the most complex forms of behavior and mental reflection are observed, due to the high development of the level of structure and life activity. Representatives of all these groups are capable of objective perception, but only in vertebrates it has been fully developed. Not surprisingly, only vertebrates have reached the highest level of perceptive psyche development in the course of evolution, and even then not all representatives of this type. Only in higher vertebrates are found all the most complex manifestations of mental activity that are generally found in the animal world.

The high development of the mental activity of vertebrates is directly related to the complexity of their organization, a variety of movements, and the complexity of the structure of the nervous system and sense organs. All the main manifestations of mental activity characteristic of animals, described in other sections of the book, are characteristic of vertebrates. Consider the most important of these manifestations.

First of all, it is manipulation. The extremities of animals, initially performing only supporting and locomotor functions, as they developed received a number of additional functions, one of which is manipulation. For a zoopsychologist, the manipulation of the forelimbs is of particular interest, which eventually led to the emergence of primate instrumental activity and served as a biological prerequisite for the emergence of labor practices among the most ancient people. Manipulation is peculiar mainly to primates, much less often it is observed in representatives of other mammalian orders. When manipulating the animal comprehensively acquainted with the subject, learns more about its properties. Under appropriate conditions, animals receive the most comprehensive and diverse information necessary for the development of higher forms of mental activity. It turned out that bears own three ways of fixing an object on weight, raccoons - six, lower monkeys and half monkeys - three dozen of such methods! In addition, only monkeys have different motor capabilities, sufficient to produce a genuine destructive analysis (dismemberment) of an object on weight. A kind of manipulation is also a comfortable behavior, well developed in many higher vertebrates.

At this stage in the development of perceptual psyche, visual generalizations and the formation of presentation have also developed. It is known that a genuine perception of objective components of the environment is possible only on the basis of the ability to analyze and generalize, since only in this way can one recognize the constantly changing components of the environment. All vertebrates, starting with fish, are capable of objective perception, in particular, perception of forms. Higher vertebrates are capable of generalization, i.e. in experiments, they recognize an object if it not only changes its place, but also changes its position in space. For example, mammals can quickly recognize triangles of different sizes and differently oriented in a plane. With appropriate learning, higher vertebrates are able, even in very difficult situations, to isolate essential details in perceived objects and recognize these objects in a strongly modified form. This suggests the conclusion that vertebrates have fairly complex general concepts.

The presence of vertebral representations, expressed in delayed reactions, and the ability to find workarounds (including extrapolation phenomena), gives their behavior exceptional flexibility and greatly increases the effectiveness of their actions at the search stages of behavioral acts. However, the ability to generalize does not indicate a high level of mental development of the organism. This ability is primarily a prerequisite for the development of complex skills that constitute the main content of the accumulation of individual experience not only in the sensory, but also in the effector field of activity of the organism.

In higher vertebrates, communication processes are noticeably more complicated. They have very diverse means of communication, which include elements of various modalities, such as olfactory, tactile. Olfactory communication was inherited from territorial behavior, when animals actively marked the borders of their own sites.

The components of the instinctive behavior of vertebrates, which serve to communicate, are to some extent ritualized. Optical communication is carried out using characteristic postures, body movements, which are markedly simplified and have a clear sequence of actions. In the first place, they serve for the biological differentiation of species and are more pronounced in closely related species. Specific forms of optical communication in higher vertebrates are distinguished by a great variety and differentiation. In mammals, optical communication is often combined with olfactory, the allocation of communication systems for individual modalities in these animals is largely arbitrary. In varying degrees, this also applies to acoustic signals, which in mammals are often accompanied by characteristic postures. The most developed sound alarm in birds, it covers almost all spheres of their vital activity. Of great importance is not only clear interspecific differences in acoustic communication, but also individual differences, according to which individuals recognize each other.

Thus, it can be said that at the highest level of development of the perceptual psyche all the main forms of animal behavior are formed, and the more ancient of these forms, which arose in the early stages of the evolution of the psyche, achieve their highest development.

Difficult skills are exclusively dynamic motor-receptor systems that, based on highly developed orienting activity, produce highly flexible motor programs. In higher animals, there is a merging of the orienting process with motor activity, and making right decisions in changing environmental conditions is based on a highly developed sensory synthesis. Such complex skills, characteristic of higher vertebrates, became prerequisites for the development of higher forms of animal mental activity - intellectual actions.

The problem of animal intelligence. It is generally recognized that intellectual behavior is the pinnacle of the mental development of animals. In the course of numerous experiments it was proved that intellectual activity is characteristic only for higher vertebrates, but, in turn, is not limited to primates alone. It should be remembered that the intellectual behavior of animals is not something separate, out of the ordinary, this is only one of the manifestations of a single mental activity with its innate and acquired aspects. According to K. Fabry, “... intellectual behavior is not only intimately associated with various forms of instinctive behavior and learning, but also itself is composed (on an innate basis) of individually variable components of behavior. It is the highest result and manifestation of the individual accumulation of experience, a special category of learning with its inherent qualitative features. Therefore, intellectual behavior gives the greatest adaptive effect ... with sharp, rapidly occurring changes in the environment. " ^[29]

The main prerequisite for the development of intelligence is manipulation. First of all, this refers to monkeys, for which this process serves as the source of the most complete information about the properties and structure of the subject components of the environment. In the course of manipulation, especially when performing complex manipulations, the experience of the animal’s activity is generalized, generalized knowledge about the objective components of the environment is formed, and it is this generalized motor-sensory experience that constitutes the main basis of monkey intelligence. When manipulating, the animal receives information simultaneously on a number of sensory channels, but the combination of skin-muscular sensitivity of the hands with visual sensations is of paramount importance in monkeys. In addition, smell, taste, tactile sensation of periotic vibrissae, and sometimes hearing, are involved in the examination of the object of manipulation. Animals receive comprehensive information about the object as a single whole, with different quality properties. This is the meaning of manipulation as the basis of intellectual behavior.

Of primary importance for intellectual behavior are visual generalizations, also well represented in higher vertebrates. According to experimental data, in addition to primates, visual generalization is well developed in rats, some predatory mammals, and of birds in corvids. In these animals, visual generalization is often close to the abstraction inherent in thought processes.

Another element of intellectual behavior aimed at the motor sphere is studied in detail in vertebrates using the problem box method.Animals are forced to solve complex objective problems, find the sequence of unlocking various constipations and gate valves in order to get out of the cage or get to the delicacy. It is proved that higher vertebrates solve objective problems much worse than problems based on the use of locomotor functions. This can be explained by the fact that in the mental activity of animals, the cognition of spatial relations, comprehended by them with the help of locomotor actions, prevails. Only in monkeys and some other mammals, due to the development of manipulative activity, locomotor actions cease to predominate, animals abstract more easily and, accordingly, solve objective problems better.

Важной предпосылкой интеллектуального поведения, по мнению К. Фабри, является способность к широкому переносу навыков в новые ситуации. Эта способность вполне развита у высших позвоночных, хотя и проявляется у разных животных в разной степени. Основные лабораторные эксперименты в данном направлении проводились на обезьянах, собаках и крысах. По словам К. Фабри, «способности высших позвоночных к разнообразному манипулированию, кширокому чувственному (зрительному) обобщению, к решению сложных задач и переносу сложных навыков в новые ситуации, к полноценной ориентации и адекватному реагированию в новой обстановке на основе прежнего опыта являются важнейшими элементами интеллекта животных. И все же сами по себе эти качества еще недостаточны, чтобы служить критериями интеллекта, мышления животных». ^[30]

What are the main criteria for the intellectual behavior of animals? One of the main features of intelligence is that in this activity, in addition to the usual reflection of objects, there is also a reflection of their relationships and connections. In embryonic forms, it was presented even during the formation of complex skills. Any intellectual action consists of at least two phases: the preparation phase of the action and the implementation phase of the action. It is the presence of the preparation phase that is a characteristic feature of intellectual action. According to A.N. Leontiev, the intellect first appears where the process of preparing an opportunity to carry out a particular operation or skill arises.

В ходе эксперимента можно четко разграничить основные фазы интеллектуального действия. Например, обезьяна берет палку и в следующее мгновение с ее помощью пододвигает к себе банан, или же она предварительно строит пирамиду из пустых ящиков, чтобы сорвать с веревки подвешенную под потолком приманку. N.N. Ладыгина-Котс детально изучала у шимпанзе процесс подготовки и даже изготовления орудия, необходимого для решения технически несложной задачи – выталкивания приманки из узкой трубки. На глазах у шимпанзе в трубку закладывалась приманка таким образом, что ее нельзя было достать просто пальцами. Одновременно с трубкой животному давали различные предметы, пригодные для выталкивания корма. После того как проводилось некоторое усовершенствование предмета, используемого для доставания корма, подопытная обезьяна вполне (хотя и не всегда немедленно) справлялась со всеми поставленными задачами.

In all these experiments, two phases of intellectual action are clearly visible: the first, preparatory phase — preparation of the instrument, the second phase — pulling the bait with the aid of this instrument. The first phase, apart from the connection with the next phase, is devoid of any biological meaning. The second phase - the phase of implementation of the activity - is generally aimed at meeting a specific biological need of the animal (in the described experiments - food).

Another important criterion of intellectual behavior is the fact that when solving a problem, an animal uses not one stereotypically performed method, but tries different methods that are the result of previously accumulated experience. Animals try not to perform various actions, but various operations and ultimately can solve the problem in different ways. For example, from the boxes you can build a pyramid to rip a hanging banana, or you can take the box apart and try to knock down a treat with individual plates. The operation ceases to be fixedly related to the activity that meets the particular task. It is this intelligence that is markedly different from any, even the most difficult, skills. Since the intellectual behavior of animals is characterized by the reflection of not just the objective components of the environment, but reflects the relationship between them,here the operation is carried out not only on the principle of similarity of things (for example, barriers) with which it was connected, but also on the principle of similarity of relations, connections of things with which it responds.

Несмотря на высокий уровень развития, интеллект млекопитающих, в частности обезьян, имеет четкую биологическую ограниченность. Наравне с другими формами поведения он всецело определяется образом жизни и биологическими закономерностями, за рамки которых животное перешагнуть не может. Это показывают многочисленные наблюдения за человекообразными обезьянами в природе. Так, шимпанзе сооружают довольно сложные плетеные гнезда, в которых проводят ночь, но никогда не строят даже простейших навесов от дождя и во время тропических ливней нещадно мокнут. В природных условиях обезьяны редко пользуются орудиями, предпочитая при необходимости добывать более доступные корма, чем тратить время и силы на добычу труднодоступных.

The limited intellectual behavior has been shown in numerous experiments conducted by Ladygina-Kots over great apes. For example, a male chimpanzee sometimes made stupid mistakes when using objects provided to him to push a bait out of a pipe. He tried to push a piece of plywood into the pipe despite the apparent incompatibility of its width with the diameter of the pipe and began to nibble it only after a series of such unsuccessful attempts. According to Ladygina-Kots, chimpanzees "are not able to grasp at once the essential features in the new situation." ^[31]

Даже самые сложные проявления интеллекта обезьян представляют собой в конечном итоге не что иное, как применение в новых условиях филогенетически выработанного способа действия. Обезьяны способны притягивать к себе плод с помощью палки только потому, что в природных условиях им часто приходится пригибать ветку с висящим на ней плодом. Именно биологическая обусловленность всей психической деятельности обезьян, включая антропоидов, является причиной ограниченности их интеллектуальных способностей, неспособности к установлению мысленной связи между одними лишь представлениями и их комбинированием в образы. Неспособность мысленно оперировать представлениями приводит обезьян и к неспособности понимать истинные причинно-следственные связи, поскольку это возможно лишь с помощью понятий, которые у обезьян, как и у всех других животных, полностью отсутствуют.

Между тем на данном этапе развития науки проблема интеллекта животных изучена недостаточно. По существу до сих пор проведены обстоятельные экспериментальные исследования только над обезьянами, преимущественно высшими, в то время как возможность интеллектуальных действий у других позвоночных практически не подтверждена доказательными экспериментальными данными. Вместе с тем ошибочно считать, что интеллект присущ только приматам. Скорее всего, объективные исследования будущих зоопсихологов помогут пролить свет на этот непростой, но очень интересный вопрос.