Haddow Press Experiment

The Introspective Pet: Part 1

Archived in Philosophy, Pets |

I was reading through some of the recent posts on this blog and I was inspired by a piece put together by Liz on RELATIONSHIPS and PETS. I, myself, am a dog owner, companion to a mooch of a retriever who inspires me to walk the local trail system with great frequency. The concept of PETS as a philophical concept have let me to explore a few topics, specifically:

• PHILOSOPHY of the Puppy Mind
• The Problem of Pet Ownership
• The Poetic Life of Pet People

My plan, as it stands, is to put together some personal thoughts on each of these topics as I have the TIME. Enjoy.

PHILOSOPHY of the Puppy Mind

When one considers the problem of the so-called ‘thinking dog’, I really believe one usually falls into the trap of personification. That is, we attribute our own knowledge of ourselves and our own mental processes to the familiar behaviors of our canine companions. But how far is that true? How far can we take the idea that a dog exhibiting a behaviour in our company is ‘thinking’ — as opposed to the more likely reality, that we are interpretting those behaviours as ‘thinking?’

Stanley Coren speaks to one possibility, and does so much more ellegantly than I do here. The PHILOSOPHY of the dog mind as a comparison to the Turing machine: a computer intellegence test one might administer to enlighten the tester as to the relative ‘humanity’ of a blind subject. That is, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck — well — it’s a duck. A tester separated from two test subjects is provided information that (should theoretically) only allow them to know the responses to the tests, and not the nature of the test subjects. From those responses, if the tester can distinguish between the two subjects, then a difference exists. And vice versa, if the tester cannot distinguish between the two subjects, then no difference exists. In other words, applied to the turing test of dog intellegence, if a test is administered to a dog and a human, and if the responses are identical, then we should consider the subjects equivalent, at least in terms of the process that led to the reponse. Thus, a thinking response froma human implies a thinking response from a dog.

I’m not sure I’m fully ready to make that leap. There is a factor that has not been considered yet: the theory of mind approach to understanding dog behavior, even if that behaviour is identical to our own indistiguishable in a turning test, is based on the assumptions that (a) there is only one path to exhibiting that behaviour from a given response and (b) the motivations behind the response are identical in a thinking, analytical mind as opposed to a behaviour-response driven mind (ie, a human mind versus a dog mind).

So what is a puppy thinking? Chances are, not as much as you.

What we call puppy affection and love, may simply be a survival instinct: please the one who is in charge.

What we call cunning and trickery, may merely be the result of learned signal accuity: watch for X before attempting Y for the best chance of success.

What we call an intelligent approach to a novel situation, may be the compound interest of experience cashing in: adaptability is an evolutionary advantage.

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