Thinking about thinking
I had a fun Satan Day yesterday, and I hope you did too. After spending a few hours writing about nationalism and things, I kicked back with Her Satanic Majesty’s Request and watched some old New Jersey Devils games on DVD. Funny thing is, if you watch the Devils in super slo-mo, you can see their power play using the demonic “pentangle offense” devised by Lucifer “Lou” Lamoriello.
But when the fun was over and I awoke this morning with all these curious triangles of “scare quotes” carved into my body, I realized with some regret that I’d been kind of harsh this week on the question of left-liberal coalitions (and on the commenters who’d broached the subject, to whom I apologize). All I’d meant to say is that sometimes, in such coalitions, the liberals muck things up, and sometimes the left mucks things up. And when things get mucked up, the leftists tend to think of the liberals as spineless, unprincipled wusses who vote to confirm John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, and the liberals tend to think of the leftists as intransigent, ideological purists who cannot bring themselves to vote for Russ Feingold. Sometimes these characterizations are well-deserved, sometimes they aren’t. But only very rarely, after a muck-up, do you see anyone actually re-evaluating his or her beliefs, as opposed to his or her tactics.
Thankfully, I am beyond all that now. Back in the day, I used to get regularly buffeted by both sides. One time I picked up an academic journal and came across an essay in which I learned to my surprise that I had sneakily (or sheepishly!) disguised my real beliefs in order to break into the pages of the Village Voice (the actual charge was “Bérubé must, given the ideological limits of the mass media, disguise his position as centrist”), where, in 1992, I had noted that both Terry Eagleton (on the left) and Hilton Kramer (on the right) despise postmodernism. This, I was told, was a version of the “left-right equivalent thesis” that “bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the centrist equations in mass media political discourse, as in Georgie Anne Geyer’s identification of the two poles of American extremism as ‘the militias on the far right who hate and want to destroy government’ and ‘academic leftists in American universities who are using their pseudo-Marxism to “deconstruct” America.’” And this “left-right equivalent thesis,” I was reminded, had been “fundamental in mystifying and legitimating U.S. state terror in support of, for example, the ‘governments’ of El Salvador and Guatemala.”
Yep, you read that right: I pretended to be a centrist in order to appear in “mass media.” The evidence for this was that I noted, in the centrist Village Voice, that both Eagleton and Kramer were critical of postmodernism. Never mind the fact that this happens to be true: Eagleton and Kramer were critical of postmodernism. That’s not important. What’s important is that saying so links me to U.S. state terror in Central America.
And a journal actually published this.
Then a few years later, a particularly clueless liberal called me “one of the most enthusiastic epigones of critspeak as revolutionary praxis,” which was especially odd considering that (a) I don’t speak critspeak, (b) I don’t have any revolutionary praxis, and (c) “epigones” is used, like, really incorrectly here. You can be an epigone of William Faulkner, say, or of Margaret Mead. But you can’t be an epigone of critspeak. And a journal actually published that, too, and then followed it up with said liberal’s insistence that in a passage where I’d critiqued the idea of the avant-garde, I was actually endorsing the idea of the avant-garde. That was kind of baffling. And finally, a couple of years ago I was kindly schooled by old Ed Herman, who let me know, in the course of doing a Horowitzian cut-and-paste of a few of my essays, that my opposition to war in Iraq was actually a form of support for war in Iraq, because I wouldn’t put Saddam’s state sovereignty over every other consideration.
At that point I decided I’d had enough of liberals and leftists alike. I couldn’t count on any of these people! (And my replies to each of them were just foolish beyond belief, each in a different way. But I didn’t have a blog back then.) However, it was not until December 2004 that I finally announced the Coalition of Me and formed the Red Party, consisting of me. Chris Clarke, flexing the wit that has made him famous throughout the Internets, promptly wrote its anthem, “The Ballad of the Hemp Beret,” and I sing it to this day to open my party congresses, which take place every six months in my study.
My apologies, therefore, to all of my readers who weren’t aware that I had actually solved the problem of left-liberal coalitions eighteen months ago.
Now to switch gears. Today is the day that Janet leaves for a month, to teach in various secret undisclosed locations in Ireland. She did this three years ago, too (and went with Nick that time), but of course I didn’t have a blog then and couldn’t regale thousands of readers with tales of the Jamie and Michael Show (theme song sung to the tune of “The Itchy and Scratchy Show") as we took road trips every weekend. The waterpark story is definitely worth telling one of these days. Alas, there will be no weekend road trips this time, although Jamie and I do have a cross-country gig at Twin Peaks Lodge, where there’s a conference I have to attend later this month. Jamie will come along for the fun, fun, fun and for a side trip to the Vancouver Zoo.
So it’s time for a Jamie story. I have a couple of ‘em saved up from the past few months, and here’s one. It was mid-April, and we were visiting Janet’s family for the weekend. I was thinking ahead to my graduate seminar on disability studies the next Wednesday, and reading over Alasdair MacIntyre’s Dependent Rational Animals (about which I blogged briefly here, in the midst of a weird April illness). But since everyone was getting ready for an Easter dinner and no one would talk to me about MacIntyre, I decided to ask Jamie about it. Yes, I know, 14-year-olds with Down syndrome don’t often file reviews of the work of neo-Aristotelian philosophers, but Jamie knows he has a disability, he knows I taught a course about disabilities this spring, and he’s extraordinarily disability-aware in general. (More about all this in future installments.) Occasionally, I tell him what I’ve been reading about Deaf culture or people with Down syndrome or people who use wheelchairs. But this time, I wanted to talk to him about animals. So I said, “hey, Jamie, can I ask you a question?” while he played with his grandmother’s bingo pieces, which he can do for hours while watching Animal Planet in the background.
“What is it, Michael?”
“Well, I’ve been reading this book for my course on disabilities. . . .”
At first this was met with “try other stuff” and “bo-ring” and other such teenager-demurrals, but when I explained that this guy was also writing about animals, I got his attention.
“So here’s the question, Jamie. Can animals think? Some people say yes and some people say no. What do you say?”
For Jamie, this was (so to speak) a no-brainer, because his Lucy happens to be the among the very smartest dogs on the planet, capable not only of determining when a family member is ill but also of knowing when she is in Connecticut by using elementary canine-calculus to determine her position in the hemisphere.
So we talked for a bit about how Lucy can be happy or excited or worried (about the thunder, because she does not understand about weather) or sad (when she sees a suitcase), and about how some animals have brains that are very complicated but others have brains that are very simple. “Sharks,” Jamie did not fail to say, “are one of the best predators.”
“True enough,” I said. “Animals can be very clever about finding food. And they can have feelings, like sadness or happiness. And complicated animals like dogs and horses can even understand humans, too.”
“Or chimpanzees,” Jamie added. “Or gorillas, like Koko. Or dolphins.” Here Jamie did his dead-on imitation of dolphin clicking. And being the disability-aware kid he is, he is fascinated that Koko learned sign language.
“But, of course, animals do not speak human language,” I added.
Quick as a flash, Jamie replied, “Parrots.”
“Right, parrots. Good one. And of course dolphins and whales can talk to each other in dolphin and whale language. So we know that animals can understand things, and can figure out how to find food even when it is very difficult. But do they have thoughts about these things? Do you think Lucy can sit down and say, ‘hey, maybe I shouldn’t be so worried about the thunder’? You remember when you were sad, and you thought about it, and we talked about what it is like to be sad. Do you think a dog can do that?”
Jamie mulled this over for a few seconds.
“Well . . . you can train,” he said.
OK, I know I’m a biased observer, but I think that’s just brilliant. Just. Effing. Brilliant. What Jamie meant, I learned, was that animals must be capable of some form of thought if they can be trained. Lucy, for example, must have some reflective relation to her bodily functions in order to learn not to urinate and defecate in the house. (We talked for a bit about the rule, in Babe, that ducks and pigs are not allowed in the house.) But then, as my class argued later that week, even goldfish can figure out when it’s feeding time. But then again, as MacIntrye points out, bottlenose dolphins learned enough of an artificial human-dolphin language to distinguish the sentence “take the surfboard to the frisbee” from “take the frisbee to the surfboard.” MacIntyre comes down squarely in favor of the proposition that animals can think, and he takes to task wankers like Heidegger, who, with their big fat thumbs on the scales, purchase the uniqueness of human language by distinguishing us from what MacIntyre cheekily calls “a welcome variety of bees, moths, freshwater crabs, lizards, sea-urchins, woodworms, and woodpeckers.” So in one way Jamie might be wrong: the fact that you can train an animal with operant conditioning isn’t necessarily evidence that the animal has become, how should we say, thoughtful. I myself trained a white rat to respond to a fixed-ratio schedule in college. (What the rat was doing in college I’ll never know!) But the more radical implication of Jamie’s remark—that you can train an animal to think—is really interesting. And it reminded me of my favorite passage in Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, about which I also blogged briefly about two years ago. From one of Ms. Costello’s (problematic) lectures on animal rights:
Sultan [a chimpanzee] is alone in his pen. He is hungry: the food that used to arrive regularly has unaccountably ceased coming.
The man who used to feed him and has now stopped feeding him stretches a wire over the pen three metres above ground level, and hands a bunch of bananas from it. Into the pen he drags three wooden crates. Then he disappears, closing the gate behind him, though he is still somewhere in the vicinity, since one can smell him.
Sultan knows: Now one is supposed to think. That is what the bananas up there are about. The bananas are there to make one think, to spur one to the limits of one’s thinking. But what must one think? One thinks: Why is he starving me? One thinks: What have I done? Why has he stopped liking me? One thinks: Why does he not want these crates any more? But none of these is the right thought. Even a more complicated thought—for instance: What is wrong with him, what misconception does he have of me, that leads him to believe it is easier for me to reach a banana hanging from a wire than to pick up a banana from the floor?—is wrong. The right thought to think is: How does one use the crates to reach the bananas?
Sultan drages the crates under the bananas, piles them one on top of the other, climbs the tower he has built, and pulls down the bananas. He thinks: Now will he stop punishing me?
The answer is: No. The next day the man hangs a fresh bunch of bananas from the wire but also fills the crates with stones so that they are too heavy to be dragged. One is not supposed to think: Why has he filled the crates with stones? One is supposed to think: How does one use the crates to get the bananas despite the fact that they are filled with stones?
One is beginning to see how the man’s mind works. . . .
At every turn Sultan is driven to think the less interesting thought. From the purity of speculation (Why do men behave like this?) he is relentlessly propelled towards lower, practical, instrumental reason (How does one use this to get that?) and thus towards acceptance of himself as primarily an organism with an appetite that needs to be satisfied. Although his entire history, from the time his mother was shot and he was captured, through his voyage in a cage to imprisonment on this island camp and the sadistic games that are played around food here, leads him to ask questions about the justice of the universe and the place of this penal colony in it, a carefully plotted psychological regimen conducts him away from ethics and metaphysics towards the humbler reaches of practical reason. And somehow, as he inches through this labyrinth of constraint, manipulation and duplicity, he must realize that on no account dare he give up, for on his shoulders rests the responsibility of representing apedom. The fate of his brothers and sisters may be determined by how well he performs.
Food for thought, folks. And with that, we conclude this week’s series of daily posts of two thousand words or more, and for the next four weeks, modulate into the Three Posts a Week we’ll be doing while we’re on the single-parent schedule. See you Friday with a game that will be arbitary . . . but fun. Really fun this time. I promise.
As the son of what used to be known as a “radical behavioralist” who, as a result, trained rats and pigeons from early age, I pay a lot of attention to what my pets do.
Or pet, as it is these days: Dusty D. Dogg.
One thing I’ve watched out for is evidence of thinking--not simply of reacting. And I think I’ve found one.
Over the past two years, Dusty and I have commuted from our home in central Pennsylvania to the college in eastern PA where I have been teaching (staying there during the week) and to Brooklyn, NY where I own a store. I’ve been driving something like 50,000 miles a year--all with the dog.
Dusty has no way of determining our destination, but he knows he may be in the car for four or five hours.
How do I know he knows that?
Because he plans.
As a male dog, Dusty is in the habit of marking, of peeing just a little, but often. However, each time I open the car door now, he pulls away and pees a mighty stream. Clearly, he’s thinking, “If I don’t do this now, I may end up being rather uncomfortable.”
I know adult humans who don’t plan ahead that well.
Posted by Aaron Barlow on 06/07 at 01:48 PMCall me a Liberal, but folks who find the Village Voice “Centrist” and “mass media” give me the heebeejeebees.
Posted by Roxanne on 06/07 at 02:08 PMAhhh, yer a Liberal.
Posted by on 06/07 at 02:15 PMBlast you, Michael. You’ve forced me to learn something.
epigone: A second-rate imitator or follower, especially of an artist or a philosopher.
I shall endeavor to use the term often, particularly in the case of pro sports coaches.
Posted by Linkmeister on 06/07 at 02:23 PMI shared an office in graduate school with an evolutionary biology student working on his PhD. He wanted to write on this very subject. He worked with fish and the working title for his dissertation was something like, “Does a Minnow’s Mind Matter?”
His starting point was to reverse the burden of proof on the question. Since we know our OWN minds and we know We think, why assume that animals do not? Is there anything other than hubris to believe that the human mind is THAT different from animal minds?
Posted by on 06/07 at 03:55 PMAt every turn Sultan is driven to think the less interesting thought.
Reminds me of a graduate seminar I had once.
Posted by on 06/07 at 04:07 PMIf we know people can walk about, drive cars and even fix themselves breakfast, eat it and clean up afterwards—all while asleep (unconscious) under the influence of Ambien, why do we have to deduce that any other animal must be conscious to achieve complex tasks?
If we assume consciousness evolved for a reason then presumably animals are conscious only if they benefit from that reason. Obviously there is at least one difference between people and animals—is the need for consciousness one of them?
Do any animals ever have to perform tasks so complex that even a sleepwalker couldn’t do them?
Posted by on 06/07 at 04:45 PMMiroslav Satan was quite the wash-out. I had high hopes for the guy.
Posted by on 06/07 at 04:46 PMWow, wow. I *loved* the Sultan story, especially since such “behavioral enrichment” practices in which animals must do some problem-solving to get their food (or toys or other desirables) are widespread in zoos. They’re seen as a way of keeping the animals mentally stimulated and avoiding the kinds of trauma and depression that have overcome some zoo animals, such as the polar bear in the Central Park Zoo (who, some of you may know, paced his quarters in a display of “stereotypical behavior”—prison madness, so to speak). But to imagine that the “enrichment” actually drives the animal “to think less interesting thoughts” is simply brilliant!
When I volunteered for the LA zoo doing observational research on the behavior of the orangutans in their new habitat (for fun—once upon a time I wanted to be a zoologist), I came to the highly unscientific and probably completely sentimental conclusion that orangutans are contemplative creatures. Bruno, the male, used to sit for hours on his side of the glass observation room (which, btw, made it seem like the humans were in the cage and the orangutans outside of it, because it jutted into their outdoor space—brilliant design!). Anyway, he’d do that with his hands cupped around his eyes so he could see the kids on the other side better. And he’d look those kids in the eye and watch them almost like the way I was watching him—sans clipboard and list of behavior codes, of course. I thought perhaps he was thinking, “I wonder if they can think. I wonder what they think.”
Posted by Dr. Virago on 06/07 at 04:54 PMBlast you, Michael. You’ve forced me to learn something.
Sorry about that, Linkmeister! I was just ruminating. But then, you schooled me about Hawai’i, so I owed you a word.
At every turn Sultan is driven to think the less interesting thought.
Reminds me of a graduate seminar I had once.
I had that seminar too, Amanda. Did you get a banana at the end? I did.
Posted by Michael on 06/07 at 05:19 PMThen a few years later, a particularly clueless liberal called me “one of the most enthusiastic epigones of critspeak as revolutionary praxis,” which was especially odd considering that (a) I don’t speak critspeak, (b) I don’t have any revolutionary praxis, and (c) “epigones” is used, like, really incorrectly here. You can be an epigone of William Faulkner, say, or of Margaret Mead. But you can’t be an epigone of critspeak.
What a clever epigone you are Michael! To begin with, your interlocutor was not accusing you of being an epigone of critspeak but of critspeak as revolutionary praxis. More importantly, in your attempt to rebut this devastating charge, you may have actually proven her point: perhaps your failure to speak critspeak is itself a sign of your commitment to critspeak-as-revolutionary-praxis as by your own account you have no revolutionary praxis.
You are indeed a dangerous one, Dr. Berube!
Posted by on 06/07 at 05:50 PMIf you go to the Vancouver aquarium to see the Belugas, one look in their eyes will tell you that they are intelligent. That’s not science, though, and I’m not a scientist, so I won’t be able to give you the science to prove it.
Forgive me for being a bit excited by the idea that both you *and* Jamie are going to be mere miles away from where I live.
I wish I could beg and plead for you both to come visit me. I don’t know why it seems important to me. I doubt you remember, but I asked a long time ago if you would come visit if you were ever in the area. I don’t remember how or even if you answered.
I should probably email you, huh, cause this is not really public stuff so you can politely come up with a reason why it’s simply not possible for you to come visit me, ever. In the politest way possible, because you’re kind that way.
I do hope that you both enjoy your visit to the Pacific Northwest. It’s so beautiful here. Maybe you will get to see some orcas?
Um, sorry, I should stop writing.
Love,
Hanna
Posted by Hanna on 06/07 at 06:00 PMWhen I was a child it was received wisdom and beyond question that animals were not capable of thought, that any seemingly complex behaviour reduced to innate impulse. Apparently Animal Thought Studiers weren’t allowed pets. An anecdote —
Sheo the six pound Siamese was quite capable of meowing loudly enough to wake the sound of slumber even several rooms away. She didn’t usually do so preferring physical contact, lightly nipping a big toe through the covers was exceptionally effective. So I was a little on my guard when I went to the kitchen at 2 or so in the am to answer her call.
She was sitting upright, parade rest, facing to the right of the refrigerator. When I entered the room, she stopped meowing, turned her head and made eye contact. Assured I was paying attention she dove behind the right side of the ‘fridge and my little brother’s gerbil came scuttling out from the left. I scooped him up, returned him to his terrarium. Sheo then let me pet her and tell her what a good cat she was.
One might read problem solving, project management and coordination, maybe even empathy into Sheo the Cat’s actions. Not invoking the natural predator – prey relationship seems a statement against natural interest but I’ve had two other cats do much the same thing, narc on hiding escaped gerbils and let the human hand of justice take its course.
But it never occurred to me until typing this up right now: how did these helpful cats just happen to be at the right spot at the right time during every single “escape”?
Captcha: summer. The living is easy.
Posted by black dog barking on 06/07 at 06:02 PMSultan’s attempt to understand the scientist by interpreting the experiment as the scientist’s behavior is a cool trick on Coetzee’s part. I think it comes from R.D. Laing—Politics of Experience, if I don’t mistake. There the point is the craziness of the behavior of an old-school alienist, stabbing the patient with needles etc. to demonstrate his alienation to the assembled students.
(And there’s a touch of Kafka in the notion of Sultan being conscious of representing all apes, but then comparisons of Coetzee with Kafka are easy.)
Posted by on 06/07 at 06:12 PM"When I was a child it was received wisdom and beyond question that animals were not capable of thought, that any seemingly complex behaviour reduced to innate impulse.”
I don’t know if it was the source of the idea, but Descartes seems to have asserted something like this. Descartes was a hands-on empirical scientist, but this particular assertion of his was just an adapter or kludge which helped him evade certain life-threatening theological questions. It wasn’t based on any observation of animals, or any thought about them.
Posted by on 06/07 at 06:27 PMHey, cool! I’m a Bérubé epigone!
That’s kind of fun to say, actually. “Bérubé epigone… Bérubé epigone… Bérubé epigone.” heh.
Posted by Chris Clarke on 06/07 at 06:32 PMThe only thing worse than masking your centrism to defend the atrocities in Central America is your pretending to be a blogger by writing a blog. And what’s worse, you blog in order to defend Pat Robertson for his lie about leg pressing 2000 lbs.
Posted by Crazy Little Thing on 06/07 at 07:15 PMWhat a clever epigone you are Michael! To begin with, your interlocutor was not accusing you of being an epigone of critspeak but of critspeak as revolutionary praxis. More importantly, in your attempt to rebut this devastating charge, you may have actually proven her point: perhaps your failure to speak critspeak is itself a sign of your commitment to critspeak-as-revolutionary-praxis as by your own account you have no revolutionary praxis.
Goddamn, that’s twice in one week that Ben Alpers has run circles around me. I gotta get me some of that counter-revolutionary praxis! But the interlocutor was not a woman. So there.
And what’s worse, you blog in order to defend Pat Robertson for his lie about leg pressing 2000 lbs.
That’s no lie, CLT. I saw him do it. Let me tell you, his God is an awesome, ripped God. My Satan can’t manage more than 800, which is no doubt why he was such a washout for the Islanders.
And Chris Clarke is not a me epigone. On the contrary, I am a devoted follower of the one true Christ Clarke.
Posted by Michael on 06/07 at 08:18 PMMy question is less interesting than Coetzee’s but more up-to-date.
Savage-Rumbaugh has claimed (and I don’t doubt her) to have taught chimps to communicate with a symbolic language she’d invented. In her experiments she used counters that had the sign on them and the word written under it in English, so the people wouldn’t have to remember the signs. She has, however, never done the necessary check; if she gave them counters that had the words but no symbols, would the chimps still be able to use them?
There are limits in this field to what you’re permitted to prove, and even the people who are pushing the boundaries have internalised them - another parallel with disability.Posted by Chris B on 06/07 at 09:05 PMThe key line in both areas is Morgan’s Rule;
“Never attribute to intelligence anything that can be explained without reference to the concept.”Posted by Chris B on 06/07 at 09:15 PMI myself trained a white rat to respond to a fixed-ratio schedule in college. (What the rat was doing in college I’ll never know!)
Serving as president of the Young Republicans?
Posted by on 06/07 at 09:54 PMI heard a couple of weeks ago that dolphins in fact have names for each other. what do you think of that?
btw I believe these two seemingly unrelated topics is just a way for you to justify the fact that due to difficulties in recruiting human candidates for the red party in the upcoming elections, you plan to field an assortment of pigs, monkeys and goats....not that they wouldn’t be competitive ... or for that matter particularly stand out from some of the other candidates.
Posted by brian on 06/07 at 10:04 PMjpj: “why assume that animals do not [think]? Is there anything other than hubris to believe that the human mind is THAT different from animal minds?”
Why indeed. Hubris and I’d say a heady amount of culturally enabled economic and religious self-interest to start with. Strange as it may seem I’d also say there is a relationship between those beliefs and the last two posts on ethnic nationalism v. civic nationalism.
I’m fascinated by the discussions on civic nationalism, but I’m with Chris Clarke, Ben Alpers, Lee Constantinou and others in that trying to repair proceduralism and reassert Rule of Law in America won’t correct its pre-existing, foundational problems. For some it seems Sept. 11, 1973 changed everything, for others perhaps some other date or event but for a great many more it was the State of Georgia’s response to 31 U.S. 515 in 1832 that did it. You might recall that the State of Georgia ignored the Supreme Courts holding that only the US congress can regulate relations with sovereign tribes, and proceeded to displace the entire Cherokee Nation west with tacit approval from President Andrew Jackson.
How does this relate to whether or not animals think? Traditional animist beliefs hold that all creatures (humans included) are of roughly equal spiritual value and are to be accorded with the greatest respect via ritual to ensure harmony. It is debatable how traditional the animism practiced by the Cherokee Nation in 1832 was but nevertheless to a Cherokee, culturally-speaking, humans were not and are not especially seperate or superior in any way to all creatures, the capacity for thinking included.
What the State of Georgia accomplished after 1832, an act to this day that stands uncorrected and merely glossed over with an exceptionalistic faith in “Manifest Destiny”, was a coup of ethnic nationalism over civic nationalism in the USA. Nominally America is a nation of procedure under the Rule of Law, but where the rubber meets the road, and the Cherokees along with all indigenous people know that “road” all too well, the Rule of Law don’t mean squat so long as exceptions are tolerated.
It should surprise no-one then that a culture that practically endorses exceptions with regard something as abstract yet logical as the Rule of Law would also endorse something so ostensibly empirical as superior cognitive capacities in human animals over others.
So my answer to jpj’s two questions, “we” as a culture assume animals don’t think because we believe we’re exceptional animals (probably because “God” told us we were). To answer your second question as to whether there is anything other than hubris that compels our belief in our exceptionality just ask yourself why the State of Georgia blatantly ignored the Supreme Court of the United States of America and I think you’ll have a pretty good idea.
Posted by on 06/07 at 10:19 PMYou may be right about that certain anthropocentric, closet metaphysician, Michael.
I believe my aging border collie friend is currently attesting to her proper finitude as such, in her own way. (Or maybe, she is just captivated. In truth it’s hard to tell.)
Posted by Matt on 06/07 at 10:51 PMI think you can safely answer “No, animals don’t think” provided you define thinking as something only humans do. Short of that, you’re on dangerous ground one way or another. If you try too hard to come up with a more objective definition that will exclude animals you’ll probably wind up excluding people too. Even the most complex, abstract thoughts might be reducible to a thousand internalised “fetch-the-stick-attaboy"s per second.
Posted by on 06/08 at 12:21 AMFood for thought, folks.
So there I was, reading a thoroughly absorbing, preplexing post, my mind spinning off in tangents about whether animals think, whether they think in language, whether their thinking displaces their being ("I think where I am not; therefore I am where I do not think"--would Lucy dig Lacan?), about Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2 in which he practically exhausts the models we have for rationality’s Other from AI to autism, to my love for Elizabeth Costello, and then blammo: a passage about Sultan, who was rewarded for thinking with a banana, followed by the suggestive “food for thought, folks.” Suddenly the song of my free-association gave way to the hum of my instrumental rationality as I wondered, how on earth will I put this wonderful post to use in my comment? That’s some hilarious punning, Michael. Of all the time I spend as a trained monkey, it’s most enjoyable here.
Posted by on 06/08 at 01:08 AMAnd?
It seems to go like this. We start with the admittedly naive and unreflexive judgment that humans and animals are different, very different. The major differences seems to be in behavior and we attribute behavioral control to brains and minds or whatever. So, something about brains and minds is posited to account for the differences we observe: we have language, animals don’t; we think, animals don’t; we X, animals don’t.
Once that is done, the arguments begin. Some people argue that, yes, we really do X, and they really don’t. Others show that animals TOO do X, just like us.
Meanwhile, those naively and unreflectively observed behavioral differences that started this little dialectic don’t disappear.
Posted by Bill Benzon on 06/08 at 06:59 AMI heard a couple of weeks ago that dolphins in fact have names for each other. what do you think of that?
You can read a short Newsweek article about this here.
I’m not really sure what I think of that, other than that the article gives me the overwhelming urge to wander around shouting “Marita!” all day.
I’ll try to suppress it.
Posted by Marita on 06/08 at 10:06 AMWhat a fabulous post. I love it when kids come up with some new and surprising way of seeing a problem. I think my own favorite was when PK pointed out that Bugs Bunny is Bre’r Rabbit’s cousin. Obviously he is, but I’d never thought about it before.
Posted by bitchphd on 06/08 at 11:04 AMFood for thought
That’s how you know it’s bad times in academe - all those “Will Think for Food” signs along the streets of Cambridge and Berkeley.And interesting to see that you were once an experimental subject yourself.
... the mice would be set all sorts of tests, learning to ring bells, run around mazes and things so that the whole nature of the learning process could be examined. From our observations of their behaviour we were able to learn all sorts of things about our own ...”Arthur’s voice tailed off.
“Such subtlety ...” said Slartibartfast, “one has to admire it.”
Posted by on 06/08 at 11:06 AMOf course we also like to think that animals think, sentimental personifiers and self-flattering scientists that we are…
(but really, if Heidegger made an argument strong enough to confuse Derrida and Agamben, maybe there’s still room to debate. Just sayin.)
Posted by Matt on 06/08 at 11:35 AMShe has, however, never done the necessary check; if she gave them counters that had the words but no symbols, would the chimps still be able to use them? There are limits in this field to what you’re permitted to prove, and even the people who are pushing the boundaries have internalised them - another parallel with disability.
Great point, Chris, and it evokes the question Njorl raises in # 25—namely, whether you can define “thinking” as something that necessarily involves human language. Personally, I don’t think language is coextensive with thought, though I admit I was brought up short by Rorty’s reply to me twenty years ago in a seminar: “OK, describe your extralinguistic experience, then.” That one always trumps in seminars, though of course your work (and, for that matter, Steven Pinker’s) has something quite different to say. Personally, I can’t see coming to the conclusion that hominids were incapable of thought until 50- 100,000 years ago when they got that critical voice-box upgrade.
I heard a couple of weeks ago that dolphins in fact have names for each other. what do you think of that?
Don’t get me started on the dolphins, Brian. I’m quite sure they have names and nicknames for each other, and spend most of their pod time throwin’ down and trash talking. Every once in a while, they remark on the fact that if they’d grown opposable thumbs, they’d be in charge of the SeaWorlds and taking their friends on “Human Watch” tours, and we’d be showing them how we can twirl balls and learn an artificial language.
. . . about Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2 in which he practically exhausts the models we have for rationality’s Other from AI to autism
to Down syndrome, Pat! Did you know that Diana and her kids William and Peter, in Galatea 2.2, are modeled on Janet, Nick, and Jamie? And I’m the guy who couldn’t take the dropoff from the “gifted” child to the “exceptional” child and abandoned his family, all so that the fictional Rick Powers could have a candelight dinner with my forlorn fictional wife. It’s OK, though. I’ll get him back. Someday I’ll write a blog in which I create a character named “Michael Bérubé” who writes stuff about Richard Powers. That’ll show him.
I think my own favorite was when PK pointed out that Bugs Bunny is Bre’r Rabbit’s cousin. Obviously he is, but I’d never thought about it before.
Hey, Dr. B., you want to grab the attention of a bunch of undergraduates who’ve never heard of the Herskovits-Frazier debate, just tell them that Bugs Bunny was black. That one works every time. Kudos to PK for getting there on his own. That kid must be a signifyin’ marvel.
And you know no other species signifies—except the damn dolphins.
Posted by Michael on 06/08 at 11:59 AMNote 1: Animals have been known to pass the Turing test; while humans have been known to fail.
Note 2: Dogs always look at me with curiosity, as if to say, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” Not only does this indicate that they think, but that they think I can think too.
Posted by Central Content Publisher on 06/08 at 12:40 PMI thought about this a while back and concluded that some animals could probably think (in the sense of abstract thought), but that it this would make little difference in terms of how people treat them. After all, we routinely treat poor or disabled humans badly. Imagine that orangutans were discovered to have human-level rationality; it would only be about a decade between “Wow, they can think!” and “Why are those orangutans standing in the way of development? Can’t they get jobs?” and then the death squads.
That was before the Bush administration. Now, if we found out that animals could think, the first order of business would be to pick out a few at random and torture them to find out what they knew about terrorism.
Posted by on 06/08 at 12:53 PMPersonally, I don’t think language is coextensive with thought, though I admit I was brought up short by Rorty’s reply to me twenty years ago in a seminar: “OK, describe your extralinguistic experience, then.” That one always trumps in seminars . . .
You could have painted a picture, no? I mean, yeah, you aren’t “describing” anything, but then Rorty cheated by asking you to use language to characterize something that isn’t language.
I sometimes wonder whether philosophers are too clever to do real thinking.
Posted by on 06/08 at 01:18 PMI was under the impression some people’s conscious experience is in images or (written) words instead of (audible) language.
Posted by on 06/08 at 01:49 PMAnd then there is Temple Grandin.
captcha: love
Posted by on 06/08 at 02:07 PMYou could have painted a picture, no? I mean, yeah, you aren’t “describing” anything, but then Rorty cheated by asking you to use language to characterize something that isn’t language.
D’oh! I didn’t think of pictures.
Seriously, Bill, the reason Rorty (and many other philosophers) do this is to avoid the slippery slope: once you suppose that the higher mammals have language, then you’ve got the migrating birds and the cows on the hillside, the minnows and guppies, and eventually the amoeba extending its psuedopod. It’s all language! Many philosophers want to reserve the term for expressions that can be self-consciously self-critical: Rorty’s criterion is “you don’t do that in here,” and Davidson’s, of course, is that it’s a language if it’s translatable into my language.
The real question under all this, I think, is whether animals are aware of their awareness. Because they can’t tell us so, we have to do our sentimental anthropomorphic or parochial exceptionalist guessing, based on what we can observe about the way animals intuit the world.
Oh yeah. I also talked to Jamie about the “sense of futurity” criterion.
Posted by on 06/08 at 02:31 PMThe real question under all this, I think, is whether animals are aware of their awareness.
And if so, can we please give them the vote? Because we’re not doing so well in that arena, it seems to me.
Posted by Chris Clarke on 06/08 at 02:40 PMWe start with the admittedly naive and unreflexive judgment that humans and animals are different
Many people start with the naive idea that animals are people like us, but different. I find this idea widespread—not just animal rightsers, but dog-and-horse loving country folk.
Cows and pigs and chickens are people too, but they’re annoying, low-class people whom you can guiltlessly kill and eat.
Posted by on 06/08 at 02:52 PMCan animals think? I would argue that the question itself is grossly inadequate. This is a yes or no question, after all, and to answer no is to pretty much return to the Cartesian automaton, which I strongly doubt anyone in any cognitive/behavioral science discipline believes. Any serious attempt at an answer demands refining of the term. What sort of thinking? Consciousness? Cognition? Sentience? The question if further muddied by people arguing that molecular recognition and action is a form of cognition (Ladislav Kovac, for one), so you’re left parsing the question out even further as you try to define what cognition means, and what aspects of it you are talking about. All this and we’re still not even on to the question of language yet!
If I could hazard a guess at what someone truly expert in the field might say, it would be something like, “animals are capable of a great deal of the same cognitive feats that we humans would consider part of “thinking”, the main difference being a matter of humans having extended these abilities far beyond what most animals are capable of, especially with regards to language”.
Mind you that’s my guess, made without going back and surveying any literature in the field (well, except for the Kovac article, which I just read last week, and so had it handy). Frans de Waal has a few books written for the lay audience that cover this somewhat, although he’s beyond wondering whether animals can think and asking if they have morality and culture.
Spoiler alert:
They do!!
Posted by on 06/08 at 02:58 PMOh, and Michael, I just remembered the research published recently about a family line in England who have a hereditary language deficiency caused by a specific gene mutation. If I remember correctly, they’re almost all taxi drivers, as this has allowed them to rely on their spatial abilities, which are normal.
While they might not be able to describe their extra-linguistc experiences (what with their language problems and all), they might have more of them than us average folk. Might give you some ammo against Rorty next time…
Posted by on 06/08 at 03:10 PMOK, describe your extralinguistic experience, then.
What if you just gave him the finger? Would that count?
Posted by on 06/08 at 03:28 PMI don’t know if there’s alot of evidence to show that self-realization (or awareness of self, or whatever), is a function unto itself. Instead, it may just be a possible result of thinking; the way asking the question “what is 2+2?” is the result of thinking rather than a rudimentary function of thought. You may be able to say that self-awareness is the possible outcome of all creatures who engage in thought, though it wont neccessarily manifest, or, a thousand monkies thinking will eventually say, “holy cow, I’m thinking.”
Brian (another one) is on the right track here. We’re looking for something in animals that we’re not quite sure about in ourselves. It’s the same problem that artificial intelligence has: how do you simulate something you don’t understand.
Posted by Central Content Publisher on 06/08 at 03:33 PMRorty: OK, describe your extralinguistic experience, then.
MB: (drum solo)
Rorty, interrupting: Parles-tu la langua franca?
MB: Yes. (rim-shot)
Posted by black dog barking on 06/08 at 03:56 PMIn other words, the “Can animals think?” question depends on what you mean by “think,” and I’ll admit I have no idea how to properly define that word.
And, of course, once we’ve agree on a definition, we can move on to the knotty problem of determining who meets it.
Why is self-awareness the marker for “thought?” Why isn’t it the ability to navigate without instrumentation from the Arctic to the Antarctic (or nearly) as some migratory birds are able to do? In which case, they can think and most of us can’t.
Posted by on 06/08 at 04:01 PMDid you know that Diana and her kids William and Peter, in Galatea 2.2, are modeled on Janet, Nick, and Jamie?
Crikey, that didn’t occur to me. I remember cringing for “Richard Powers” when Diana found the candlesticks in his backpack after it became clear the whole thing wasn’t a date. For your sake, Michael, I will re-read that passage, and be all, that’s what you get, Mr. Powers (if that’s your real persona), for being presumptuous.
Posted by on 06/08 at 04:11 PMMy dog was sleeping recently, and as a way of idly humiliating him I stuck a round red bulk mail sticker on his forehead. I do stuff like this all the time: being shaggy in his old age, he can’t feel a piece of paper stuck to the outside of his fur, so unless he can see the thing he misses that it’s there.
In the room where he sleeps there’s a full length mirror on the closet door. Those of you who’ve taken Primate Behavior 101 may know where this is going: I’d accidentally replicated a canonical experiment in the field. Zeke walked past the mirror, saw himself in it, did a double take, then rubbed the sticker off with his forepaw — after wearing the sticker for some hours.
How could he have done that without some knowledge that “the dog in the mirror is me”? How could he have gained that knowledge without something closely akin to human reasoning? If we’re going to call that process something other than “thinking,” what good is the word “thinking” anymore?
Posted by Chris Clarke on 06/08 at 05:33 PM. . . slippery slope: once you suppose that the higher mammals have language, then you’ve got the migrating birds and the cows on the hillside, the minnows and guppies, and eventually the amoeba extending its psuedopod. It’s all language!
Given that last sentence it sounds like the slippery slope to capital Tee Theory. WTXT: all text, all the time.
I concur with those who’ve said that, since we don’t really know what thinking is (& it may well be too crude a notion), that it’s difficult to decided whether or not animals do it.
As for animals and culture, at this point I think we’ve got to grant it to them. Just how far down the scala natura we’ve got to go with culture, I don’t know what the thinking is on that. May be one of those slippery slopes.
Posted by Bill Benzon on 06/08 at 05:34 PMI’ll take a stab at a generous definition of thinking: Thinking is that which the mind (or brain) does.
Posted by Central Content Publisher on 06/08 at 05:44 PMHow could he have done that without some knowledge that “the dog in the mirror is me”? How could he have gained that knowledge without something closely akin to human reasoning?
Same way a sleep-walking person would do it. Just take off the sticker without thinking about it.
Why is self-awareness the marker for “thought?” Why isn’t it the ability to navigate without instrumentation from the Arctic to the Antarctic
That’s just what the word means is all. Doesn’t mean it’s all that. Sometimes I do stuff “without thinking about it”. Don’t you? I think the real question is, what does thinking about stuff really achieve? What’s the point? What does the “I” bit really do to help out the rest of “my” mind and body? For a lot of stuff it seems the answer is “nothing”.
But presumably thinking, reflecting, self-awareness, consciousness—it helps sometimes. For some tasks.
Posted by on 06/08 at 06:01 PMOOOPS! I seem to have confused my studies above. The English family with language deficits (mutation in the FOXP2 gene) were NOT taxi drivers. Rather, there was a separate study measuring hippocampal volume in London taxi drivers, which I somehow mixed together to form one bizarre science experiment…
Mia culpa! My apologies! Verzeihung!
I guess the question now becomes, is animal thinking as unreliable as human thinking?
Posted by on 06/08 at 06:17 PMI’ll take a stab at a generous definition of thinking: Thinking is that which the mind (or brain) does.
Well the brain creates heat. Is that thinking?
For those who don’t define thinking as “consciousness” (or a subset of consciousness) I think that it does require some serious thought as to what the definition could possibly be.
If thought is not consciousness then we are not aware of thinking. No more than we are aware of anything except the phenomena that we assume relates to a “real world”. So how do we know this “thinking” ever happens at all, even in people? If I blink that has a phenomena I sense. What does thinking feel like? If it isn’t to be identified as consciousness itself then it ought to have a feeling, a phenomena - like anything else in my conscious world.
Posted by on 06/08 at 06:18 PMFor an interesting (and somewhat controversial) perspective on this subject I recommend Daniel Dennett. A good essay of his, Animal Consciousness: what matters and why, is available in full several places on the nets including here. Worth the read (as is an overview of the subject at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Of course per the title, this explores consciousness, and I am here equating thinking with some level of consciousness. I do not have a sufficiently pithy gloss of Dennett’s position that I am comfortable posting, but if interested I suggest you click through and at least read the abstract to get a flavor of the discourse.
For thinking about “non-conscious” thought such as (possibly) the migration navigation that jpj describes above, I recommend closing your eyes and doing some experiments with your proprioception system. (say bring your finger to your nose, or hold your finger still & bring nose to finger - which I am not quite as good at [but I presume that I could be trained] or finger to a particular button on your shirt.) Are you thinking while your nervous system performs this rapid and sophisticated “calculation” based on inputs from nerves in your joints? In fact, anyone with a full ACL tear can testify to the jolt that occurs when the equivalent of “Now where exactly is my foot?” impinges on the consciousness when stepping off a curb.
Lastly, just for the perversity of it, I would love to see someone set up an experiment where animals (of sufficient “trainibility") are conditioned to reliably make the “best” choice in the Monty Hall problem (that they switch their initial choice.), thus in practice replicating a thorny analysis which continues to evade most people’s intuition. (I have to slog through it tediously each time I think about it - even when it is spelled out like in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night)
... but of course one could as easily train them to get it wrong.Posted by on 06/08 at 06:22 PMWell the brain creates heat. Is that thinking?
Good point. So: Thinking is the unique function of the brain. I’m assuming there isn’t another organ that thinks? (penis jokes aside)
If thought is not consciousness then we are not aware of thinking?
Where does consciousness fit in, AND, is thinking always a wilful act?
Dreams aren’t conscious - for example. Isn’t consciousness sort-of a label for thinking that we’re wilfully engaged in, and sub-conscious a label for thinking we’re not wilfully engaged in, and perhaps not even aware of? Or is thinking a synonym for wilfully manipulated ideas? Where does inspiration fit in?
Posted by Central Content Publisher on 06/08 at 06:52 PMWhat a wise old dog you have, Chris! And thanks for the story – I had a dog who, though he initially barked at his reflection, eventually came around to more or less ignoring it, and I always wondered (with the behavioral experiment in mind) whether he just got used to the other dog, or actually realized he was the other dog. I think now I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. So while the chimps seem to pick up on this immediately, it seems that with a little learning, other animals can do this trick, and then we’re back to discussing matters of degree.
I tried this experiment with my son at about 6-8 months, but it didn’t work. He’s now two and he’ll still go around all day with yogurt on his face, regardless of whether or not he knows it’s there…
CCP: your brain regulates breathing and blood pressure – is that thinking?
Same way a sleep-walking person would do it. Just take off the sticker without thinking about it.
David, the point here is that the recognition that the image in the mirror is “self” requires thought of some sort. It is presumed that no animal sees an image somewhere outside of himself and reflexively assumes it to be a representation of self. You and I (and Chris’ dog) may do it now because we’ve learned it and can act on it as declarative knowledge, but it required thinking at some point at in the past.
That’s not to necessarily defend this particular experiment, though, which is not really designed to answer the “do animals think” question, although cannot help but address it.
Furthermore, it’s debatable that things done while sleepwalking are done without thinking, but that gets back to how we define thinking…
Posted by on 06/08 at 07:06 PMSame way a sleep-walking person would do it. Just take off the sticker without thinking about it.
OK, more slowly for DavidByron’s benefit:
How would the dog have made the connection between “red dot on dog in mirror” and “something on my face” without some amount of previous cognition, whether the action of removing the sticker was done with volition or absently?
captcha: reason
Posted by Chris Clarke on 06/08 at 07:13 PMah, I see Brian got there first and nicer.
At least I resisted the temptation to blame it on feminism.
Posted by Chris Clarke on 06/08 at 07:15 PMFrom Marita’s (#28) linked Newsweek article:
“They also don’t know why the dolphins seem so self-centered: “They say their names a lot,” says researcher Laela Sayigh.”
Isn’t the most commonly used word in any human language “I”?
MB @#38:
The real question under all this, I think, is whether animals are aware of their awareness.
Isn’t being aware of ones awareness just another way of saying “knowing one has knowledge”?
Posted by on 06/08 at 07:18 PMCan animals think? I would argue that the question itself is grossly inadequate. This is a yes or no question, after all, and to answer no is to pretty much return to the Cartesian automaton, which I strongly doubt anyone in any cognitive/behavioral science discipline believes.
OK, a different Brian, I suppose you could say that the question, “Can animals think? Some people say yes and some people say no. What do you say?” is a yes or no question. But then, I was putting the question to a teenager with a developmental disability, which was part of the point. . . .
And then, as Bill Benzon says, there is Temple Grandin.
And no, parenthetical Brian, giving Rorty the finger wouldn’t work. He’d just say, “you don’t do that in here,” and we’d be back to texts and signs.
Posted by Michael on 06/08 at 08:13 PMChris:
How would the dog have made the connection between “red dot on dog in mirror” and “something on my face” without some amount of previous cognition?I guess I just don’t see the big deal. Complex tasks can be done without thinking. For example the first time I heard the Monty Hall puzzle I solved it without thinking. I knew the answer and why it was so, without any cogitation or process of internal “voice” reasoning over anything else I’d call thinking. I did that stuff after the fact. I think a lot of what I do I rationalise after the fact. But the problem was solved before I did any thinking about it.
If all you mean is that the dog has to have “something going on its head” then I’d agree, but then that’s true of simply putting one foot in front of the other. You claim that something more has to be happening. Well fair enough. But does that “more” have to be an internal voice, a thought? Why couldn’t it just be the thing that brains do? Silently, subconsciously, thanklessly running most of our bodily functions without any attention reqired? It does a lot of complex stuff. Why not that? Think of the computation involved in catching a frisbee. Do you “think” about how you catch a ball? I can juggle four balls. But I don’t think about how I am doing it.
In the case of the Monty Hall puzzle, I assume prior learning of mathematics helped. In the case of the juggling there was some cognition when I was learning. In the case of an ordinary catch however there was never any prior cognition. Why do you claim that “red dot on dog in mirror” is of the former type and not the latter?
CCP:
Dreams aren’t conscious - for example. Isn’t consciousness sort-of a label for thinking that we’re wilfully engagedNo it just means awareness. If you are aware of the dream while you’re dreaming then that’s consciousness.
Consciousness would include I suppose things like feeling pain and the sensation of “red” as well as the “internal monologue” which is I suppose what I think of as thinking.
I’m assuming everyone else knows what I mean by an “internal monologue”?
Posted by on 06/08 at 08:17 PMyour brain regulates breathing and blood pressure – is that thinking?
(I seem to recall there being more to regulating those systems than signals from the brain, but, we don’t even need to get into that. Lets do it this way
I don’t know… is it? Where exactly are we drawing the line? I would suggest that even if we agreed that breathing was a subconscious act; and if we agreed that “wondering why CCP doesn’t blame the patriarchy” is, for example, at the opposite end of the thinking spectrum; and if we agreed to define thinking as that which is completely conscious (which I think is what you’re suggesting): we’re still left with the problem that the transition from subconscious to conscious is at best a graduated one - there isn’t a border between conscious and subconscious that we suddenly trip over. Or is there?
Is thinking an Ubermench notion filled with purpose and possessed of pointed intent?
Maybe we could embrace the verbness of “think”, and define it as a willful manipulation of ideas.
Where does that leave us? Oh ya: Thinking is the willful function of the brain that is unique to that organ.
Posted by Central Content Publisher on 06/08 at 08:20 PMFor example the first time I heard the Monty Hall puzzle I solved it without thinking.
Well, clearly we need another category altogether for super geniuses, then.
Posted by on 06/08 at 08:37 PMJust in case:
My Mind is a Web Browser: How People with Autism Think
Posted by Bill Benzon on 06/08 at 08:40 PMThis is very upsetting for me. Do you mean that not everyone thinks in pictures? There are people who just think in words?
Posted by Central Content Publisher on 06/08 at 08:54 PMMention of “training"---"operant conditioning"----can you train an animal to think..........and then Temple Grandin: Applied Behavior Analysis or ABA---which is based on Skinner’s behaviorism---has been the basis of my autistic son Charlie’s education for the past seven years. And it has indeed taught him to learn, to talk and (I will wager) to think. ---- There are other methods for teaching autistic children and ABA is not preferred by everyone, but Charlie has done very well but it.
Posted by Kristina on 06/08 at 08:57 PMSorry - didn’t mean to be in any way dissmissive of the question as posed to Jamie. In fact, I think his responses were brilliant. I especially liked the way his examples and counter-examples led you to continually refine the question, which was my point (that it needed refining).
Posted by on 06/08 at 09:17 PMHey I know this is probably old news, but having just spent the better part of an hour in the world beyond the looking glass that is Mr. Horowitz’s “Dangerous Professors” site (I highly recommend it if you are ever in need of some levity) and eventually reading this
http://dangerousprofessors.net/2006/02/attack-berube-takes-off-gloves-and.html
I think the relevant question is not “Do animals think?” but “Can David Horowitz read?”
Eric
Posted by on 06/08 at 09:21 PMYes, surely it’s more a question of writing and representation than thinking as such. Cave paintings and then narratives and literatures, and the like..
With all due respect to Horrorwitsas, however, the dolphins just can’t start blogging soon enough. They’d certainly be more poetic writers.Posted by Matt on 06/08 at 09:29 PMCCP: I thought thinking in pictures was rare. By thinking in “words” do you mean “seeing” words or “hearing” them? or do you mean by thinking in pictures that you see pictures of words?
As I said, I have an internal monologue (I “hear” a voice / I “am” a voice). However often I get the impression that the monologue is a sort of running commentary after the fact, like a sports announcer, or a tour guide, or a UN translator. The decision was already taken, and my body has started to move by the time I am “thinking” about why or whether I am doing it.
But this running commentary sometimes comes up with better ideas or at least clearer and better articulated ideas, than the unarticulated initial solution. For this reason I am not sure about defining thought as “wilful” because often it doesn’t seem that way.
Well, clearly we need another category altogether for super geniuses, then.
If my _subconscious_ ever goes on the show. The rest of me has to think things through. Indeed is that all I can ever do?
The Dennett essay has an interesting piece considering the possibility of subconscious pain. The example given is:
the “pains” that usefully prevent us from allowing our limbs to assume awkward, joint-damaging positions while we sleep
Is it worth anything to me to avoid this pain?
Posted by on 06/08 at 09:31 PMFor example the first time I heard the Monty Hall puzzle I solved it without thinking.
Ah, so the hypothetical conditioning experiment was in fact performed.
Do you ever have premonitions of impending disaster after sex, or unusual reactions to certain kinds of plastic?
Posted by on 06/08 at 10:02 PMThis is very upsetting for me. Do you mean that not everyone thinks in pictures? There are people who just think in words?
It’s the Other Minds problem, CCP! Here, let me draw you a picture.
And no problem, Brian. I was just acknowledging that I explicitly posed a complex question as a mere yes/no. Jamie got beyond the yes/no pretty quickly. And with regard to the futurity question, we decided that Lucy knows when someone is going to leave the house with a suitcase but does not know how to wait until next May to go camping.
Eric J-D, thanks for the memories. You might want to check out the dangeral post that sent U. No over the edge, and a couple of followups that disposed of him once and for all.
And while dolphins don’t blog, many of them are clearly better writers and thinkers than David Horowitz. They do podcasts, though. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Sorry. I will go to bed now.
Posted by Michael on 06/08 at 10:03 PMYou bastard! Fine. I’ll expect an appropriate drawing tommorrow morning.
Posted by Central Content Publisher on 06/08 at 10:20 PMMichael,
Thanks for the links. I love the allusive punning streak that runs through several of your rejoinders to Horowitz, particularly the “Readers, I parried him” bit.
In my earlier post I forgot to point to the particularly embarrassing evidence of Mr. Horowitz’s--how shall we say--status as “hermeneutically challenged.” It’s the moment in his post when he says,
Michael quibbles with a bullet-point heading, a stylistic conceit of the book, which claims that Berube believes in teaching literature so as to bring about “economic transformations.” Michael protests that the sentence from which this phrase comes is lifted out of context. This is what the sentence says: “The important question for cultural critics, is also an old question – how to correlate developments in culture and the arts with large-scale economic transformations.”
I’ve posted to his site an admittedly rather plodding explanation of just how badly he mistakes the meaning of this sentence--plodding because, given his illiteracy problems, I wanted to be sure I didn’t lose him at any point. The short version, for those who have no interest in stepping through the Horowitz looking glass, is this: H mistakes a claim about a persistent challenge within theories of cultural production (i.e. how are changes within the sphere of culture related to changes within the economic realm?) for a declaration of pedagogical aims (i.e. Cultural critics believe in teaching literature in order “to bring about ‘economic transformations’"). Stunningly obtuse of someone who, as he never tires of telling us, styles himself a real intellectual.
Posted by on 06/08 at 11:40 PMDavid/CCP:
The question I’m trying to get at is whether or not the initial decision/recognition/action that you do before your internal monologue gets to discussing it can be considered thinking on a par with the internal monologue sort. Is there really a qualitative difference between understanding the Monty Hall problem and thinking laboriously about it? In one sense, there certainly is, and I think you’re right to point out that there is such a thing as willful manipulation of thoughts and ideas that constitute thinking. The real problem lies in whether recognizing or understanding without that conscious manipulation is also thinking.
If we say no, then indeed, we severely limit the possibility of animal thought. However, the definition of thinking as that thinking which requires language is, I suspect, perhaps a bit tautological, but I really haven’t thought about it enough to offer a solid opinion.
If we say yes, then we allow for any number of interesting possibilities. The example of Temple Grandin is a good one (the main problem being that I can never remember that Temple Grandin is a name and not a book or a place or something). I think she would claim to be able to describe a number of extra-lingual experiences, although if the only difference is that she has an internal video rather than an internal monologue, then we really haven’t advanced our understanding much, if any.
I can’t help thinking that from a neurophysiological perspective, the difference between the internal monologue thinking and the more reactive thinking amounts to little more than location in a different, perhaps more complex, circuitry. It doesn’t really seem privileged in any way, other than in it’s outcome, which we don’t really understand anyway.
Ok, getting late on the west coast – time to sleep before I get really incoherent…
(too late?)
Posted by on 06/09 at 12:59 AMAs I said, I have an internal monologue (I “hear” a voice / I “am” a voice). However often I get the impression that the monologue is a sort of running commentary after the fact, like a sports announcer, or a tour guide, or a UN translator.
You should check out the work of Benjamin Libet, who has done experimental work indicating just that. Using fiendishly ingenious methods he was able to determine that consciousness of a willful act comes milliseconds after the action has been initiated in the brain.
Posted by Bill Benzon on 06/09 at 04:52 AMHypothetically Speaking: Tecumseh Fitch reviews a recent book that surveys recent work on language origins. From the review:
An example of the dangers of an uncritical attitude is Johansson’s treatment of the “ape language” controversy, which provides a good lesson about how interdisciplinary misunderstandings and overblown rhetoric (on both sides) have almost hopelessly crippled this field of study. Relying heavily on popular books by ape-language researchers, Johansson concludes that apes have latent capacities for language that approach the abilities of modern humans. Quoting Sue Savage-Rumbaugh’s question “Why are we afraid of apes with language?,” Johansson asks, “Would not our world be richer if they did have minds and language?” Well, yes, it would be wonderful if apes (or dolphins, or dogs, for that matter) had language in a full human sense, so we could discuss with them their ideas, memories, feelings about life, and so on. But unfortunately we can’t, because none of these species has, or can be trained to have, a language in anything like this rich sense—regardless of our hopes or fears. We should not discount the notable and important achievements of chimpanzees and other species; nor should we exaggerate their accomplishments and thus underestimate the evolutionary distance modern humans have traveled since our last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Chimpanzees certainly have important ingredients necessary for human language (for example, the ability to pair arbitrary signals with meanings), but they are still not discussing philosophy or even what they had for dinner yesterday.
Posted by Bill Benzon on 06/09 at 06:06 AMBrian:
Well, I’m willing to go either way with thinking; after all; it’s just a word, and it can mean whatever we want it to mean - as long as we agree on it. Limiting it to willful thought, is fine by me, but at the same time, I think there’s a real case for including any mental actvity including dreaming and inspiration. That said, I think the dominant usage of think implies an act of will.
However, “what is intelligence?”, is a different conversation.
Either way, I think Chris has made a pretty strong case for animals thinking - strong enough that the burdon of proof may be to prove that they don’t think.
Posted by Central Content Publisher on 06/09 at 06:15 AM(Brian), CCP: Two reasons why I think that it’s best to call the internal monologue “thinking” and not the unaware processing the we presume preceeds it.
(1) Mere processing or problem solving is something a mechanical device like a computer, or for that matter a microwave oven can do. Mere processing is what happens all the time in the brain to regulat various chemicals in the body or calculate how to move an arm and hand to catch a ball or juggle. I don’t think of any of that stuff as thinking and suspect you don’t either.
(2) I’m not saying that the internal monologue is thinking because it’s language. I am saying it’s thinking because I am aware of it and more importantly because it feels like “I” am the one doing it whereas the processing doesn’t feel like anything—we are only deducing it’s existence even. There’s no witness of it and the evidence is a sudden “hunch” that we intuitively feel requires more explanation.
In Temple Grandin’s case - reading her description it sounds a lot like what happens to me except without the pictures part. Let’s say there is a pictures part going on that I am unaware of. Ought it be called “thinking”? But then presumably there’s another layer beneath her pictures too that she’s unaware of.
We don’t feel that the catching a ball required more explanation. That was just “what the brain does”. It didn’t “deserve” to be called thinking.
I think part of the problem of the definition of “thinking” is a conceit that “thinking is hard” or that thinking is a sort of higher level function. Thinking is for the complex stuff. I don’t think that’s true.
A lot of my thoughts seem utterly trivial, rote and pretty much mindless, and as I say some of the pre-processing I am unaware of seems complex.
To me the questions, “Am I the one doing it?” or “Am I aware of this happening?” or to some extent “Do I will it?” are the more important questions. You seem to want to define thinking merely as “processing that is complex”. If that’s true then a lot of what I do in my head isn’t thinking and a lot of what my computer does, is thinking, and I need a new word for what it is that happens when there’s a “ghost in the machine”.
Posted by on 06/09 at 09:20 AMI think part of the problem of the definition of “thinking” is a conceit that “thinking is hard” or that thinking is a sort of higher level function. Thinking is for the complex stuff. I don’t think that’s true.
Sometime back in the 1990s the late David Marr made an interesting observation about the history of AI. The earliest work was about modeling activities believed to involve higher mental processes: theorem proving, medical diagnosis, playing chess, and such. This work led to modest success, though not the extravagant claims often advanced in manifesto-style pieces. Then researchers began to work on low level stuff, like artificial vision, or even common sense reasoning (e.g. when do you open an umbrella?). Disaster.
Posted by Bill Benzon on 06/09 at 09:50 AMHere’s some more thoughts on why I don’t think it is conceited to suggest dogs don’t think. An imaginary conversation between a peacock, a dog and a man about who is the best species:
PEACOCK: Well obviously Peacock’s are the best because we have the longest tail. I guess dogs would be better than men. Some of our philosophers have considered whether species with small tails could be considered moral patients but although there are some that have tails there’s really a huge gulf between us and any other animal. There’s no evidence their tails work the way ours do. OTOH some say it’s a conceit to suggest only Peacocks enjoy genuine taily-ness and other species have something similar ... on a smaller scale of course.
MAN: Why do you think a tail is a big deal? Some tails are useful I conceed that, but your tail is just ridiculously big. It’s inefficient and probably makes it easier to kill you. How did you get a tail like that anyway? I suppose you must have had a time in your past when you didn’t have any real competitors as a species so your only real competitor was other peacocks. At that point you ended up developing this huge tail as a way to attract peahens. But why would you think it’s good for anything? Why would you think any other species would want it?
MAN: We humans are the most advanced species and we’d know because we are the smartest and have the biggest brains. A big brain isn’t like a big tail. A brain makes you smart and intellignece is the most important thing.
DOG: Well tails are useful and intellignece is even more useful, I agree with the human there. But there are limits you know. You humans use up a colossal amount of energy on that cranium. What is it? 25% of the total? And what do you get for all that cost? My brain works just fine thanks. I may not have this little add on patch you have—what do you call it? “Consciousness”? What is it good for? Every time you try to explain it to me it seems like it’s not really achieving anything I can’t do.
DOG: In my opinion your “consciousness” serves much the same purpose as the peacock’s tail. At some point in your life you had no competitors and hit an evolutionary cul-de-sac. [Didn’t you tell me you used to get all your food found in just 2 hours a day?] Your competitors were other men and your “consciousness” and your too-big brain was a runaway adaption to compete with other humans within the pack. It’s function is nothing more than to make you more appealing to other humans like that peacock’s tail. But there’s no reason any other species should want what you have.
DOG: In my opinion dogs are the number one evolved species because we have to balance all our “technology” to have the best of all mind and body combinations. We have a ton of competitors and yet we’re number one. We have a brain that could beat the hell out of a human at anything actually useful like catching dinner and we run our social groups every bit as efficiently - probably more efficiently. It seems to me that you two have just come to see what you happen to have in abundance as constituting the measure of a species worth. But the real objective measure of success in evolutionary terms is fitness and competition. From that perspective the huge tail and big brain is actually a negative surely?
Posted by on 06/09 at 10:25 AMTo clarify:
I think it’s a mistake to think that other processing is “mere” processing while what leads to my awareness is something else. I don’t even see the evidence that it is n