4442198987

the unconscious phenomena of cognition as well, while at the same time it should treat the cognitive process as a concrete activity on the part of the organism. In seeking a better definition of the cognitive process one might well start off with Pavlov’s theory, which treats the mcntal processes as complex nerrous processes of which consciousness is a characteristic feature. Such a conception of the cognitive process, however, is too narrow, and should be extcnded to include the unconscious, purely nervous elements of the mechanism of behaviour. For this purpose it must be shown that these processes, too, possess certain psychological features common both to them and to the conscious processes, a fact which enables one to include both one and the. other under a uniform psychological terminology.

Taking the view that the cognitive processes should be undcrstood as the processes whereby stimuli are received in the central nervous system, the author bases his arguments on psychological experiments on animals. The behaviour of animals is an act of adaptation to the environment, that is, it enables the individual to satisfy its needs and therefore maintain an inner balance (Pavlov). An action that is truły adaptive mcans that the animal reacting to its environmcnt is guided by the various features of the objeets it comes across as indications of w^rhat action should be taken in the given situation. Experiments show that animals of different kinds are able success-fully to guide their actions according to the characteristics of the objeets in their environment, which shows that the processes whereby stimuli are received are differentiated to suit the objective properties of the objeets, that is, they constitute the reflection or mirroring of the objeets (nervous correlates). This thesis, which is reached on the basis of an analysis of behaviour, is then discussed in detail by the author in the light of the electrophysiological research of Adrian and the experiments of Pavlov. According to this argument the reception processes in animals, quite independently of the fact whether they are conscious or not, possess their own particular „mirroring aspect”, which constitutes their psychological aspect. The cognitive processes therefore can be defined as

240