spiritdogs
I believe that the reason some mainstream scientists argue that dogs think
is because they have designed some experiments that show that, not because they
are deliberately trying to find reasons to support the hypothesis that dogs don't
think. Years ago, it was argued that dogs don't feel pain. I still
think the subject is ripe for research, and I don't close the book on any of
it, as you seem to be doing.
Anthropomorphism? Interesting take on that subject: http://www.barnard.edu/psych/faculty/Horowitz/pdfs/Horowitz_Bekoff.pdf
I don't know if you were trying to imply that those of us who don't
necessarily share all your views are somehow NOT hanging out with dogs, and
spending all our time on our computers, but I assure you that is not the
case. Some of us hang out quite regularly with them, and with more than
just our own dogs.
I don't necessarily think that scientists are missing the wonders of the
canine species by trying to evaluate their cognitive processes, but I do think
that some research may be flawed by their lack of knowledge of dogs - in the recent experiment that Sioux participated in, her reactions
were muddied by the fact that the "ready" signal they used was a bell
that hurt her ears.
Hi, SpiritDogs,
Thanks for the response. It's cool to hear about Sioux' experiences, teaching
those researchers a lesson in dognitive science! (It's also interesting about the bell, since there's a new study ostensibly showing that dogs have a Theory of Mind, which involves putting bells on containers of food to see if dogs will steal food from the quieter of two containers.)
Maybe I have closed the book, as you put it, on how dogs think. I like to
think I'm open to any possibility as long as it makes sense and passes the
"smell test." As I said, I've been discussing these issues for many
years, and every so often someone will come up with a behavior that has me
stumped*; one whose only explanation would be some form of rational thought.
But it usually only has me stumped (as I said) while I'm at the computer. When
I'm out with dogs, I can see things more clearly, i.e. from their point of view. This is my own thought
process, and is not meant to imply anything about how anyone else approaches
their ruminations on the topic. *(A behavior that has me pondering, if not stumped, is the reports I'm getting that some dogs react to two-dimensional images of other dogs, either on TV, or in paintings or posters.)
As for whether some scientists are deliberately ignoring simpler, more
parsimonious explanations for certain behaviors, that became very clear to me
when I investigated the idea of "inequity aversion."
This concept, which
is probably quite true in humans, was initially brought forth by two
experimental economists. Their paper on the subject was not based on their own
research. They culled their data from various sources, set up a rigorous list of criteria on how the data should be interpreted, which they ignored if doing so gave them the results they
wanted.
Another economist wrote, "It seems that, at least in part of the field of experimental
economics, the scientific standards may not be as rigorous as one may desire. ...
the sad point is not only that two distinguished economists allow themselves to
write in this style, it is also ... that these papers have caused no outcry or
protest in the experimentalist community. Could it be that ... no one has ever
carefully read the details of the paper until now?" "The Rhetoric of
Inequity Aversion,"
Then Frans de Waal and his colleague Sarah Brosnan took this idea and
applied it to captive capuchin monkeys, and then to chimpanzees. In each case, they, too, got the
results they were looking for. (de Waal admitted that his results probably
couldn't be applied to wild monkeys.) Later, in a New
York Times online interview he said, "I expect the same inequity
aversion [to be found] in dogs and wolves..."
So Fredericke Range, at the Clever Dogs Lab in Austria, following de Waal's
expectation, armed with some pre-determined ideas of her own, set up a very
badly designed study (i.e., one with heavy confirmation bias built into it) to prove
that this tendency did, in fact, exist in dogs. Her conclusions that dogs
"know when they're being treated unfairly" was based almost solely on her
interpretation of the look on a dog's face. (Here's my take on that study: "Tuning In to Your Dog's Emotions.";)
Meanwhile, another
group of researchers tested this idea with chimpanzees and came to a far
different conclusion: "These results are exactly the opposite to that of
Brosnan et al. (2005)."
On Charlie Rose the other night, Jeffrey Kluger, a science editor at Time
Magazine (formerly an attorney, not a scientist) was on to discuss the cover story
of tomorrow's issue. He gave a litany of cognitive abilities that "science is
now telling us" animals have. And each and every one of them has been
questioned, disproven, or debunked by other scientists. One example is the idea
that scrub jays will re-cache food only when rival jays "aren't
looking." This caused the initial researchers to conclude that these jays must
have a Theory of Mind. But in Penn & Povinelli 2007b; Povinelli et al 2000;
and Povinelli & Vonk, 2003; 2004, lucid and alternative explanations were
given. (See "Darwin's
Mistake," Penn, Holyoak, and Povinelli, p. 12)
On Charlie Rose, Kluger offered video-taped evidence that Kanzi the
bonobo can understand human language. And it's pretty compelling stuff, up
until the last few seconds.
In the video (which I found, on a certain level, to be very sad), the researcher -- who is oddly wearing a welder's mask (ostensibly to
prevent Kanzi from reading her eyes) -- asks Kanzi to do a series of simple tasks
involving two nouns, each for a different object, and a verb, connecting them.
"Kanzi, could you cut the onions with your knife?"
Kanzi seems to think about it, looks around, locates the knife, and mimes cutting the
onions.
"Could you put some soap on your ball?"
Kanzi finds the dish soap and squeezes some onto a ball.
This goes on and on. But look very closely at what happens at the end, starting at about 1:30.
The researcher says, "Kanzi, pour the Perrier water ..."
Kanzi reaches for a jar of jelly.
"... into the jelly."
Wait!
What? Kanzi's response is
out of sequence with the researcher's words! This means that either this
particular behavior (and perhaps each one of them) was rehearsed over and over --
which removes some of the mystery of how he supposedly "understands" the
meanings of words (they're not words to him so much as they're audio cues) -- or else Kanzi was
picking up a mental image of the jelly jar from the researcher before she actually spoke
the word "jelly." (Another possibility is that it's just a coincidence, though that seems unlikely.)
Why did Charlie Rose and his animal cognition expert miss this? It's right there on the video,
clear as day. And why does the science media, such as Time Magazine, always report the amazing news about scrub jays, or that dogs know when they're being treated unfairly, and you never hear any info about the rebuttals coming from serious cognitive scientists?
This is a long-winded reply to your statement that you don't think that "scientists are missing the wonders of the
canine species by trying to evaluate their cognitive processes." That statement is partially true; any serious attempt at evaluating a dog's cognitive processes is laudable, and affords us a marvelous window into the minds of these amazing animals. What isn't true (at least in most cases) is that these scientists (or most of them) are actually trying to evaluate the cognitive processes of dogs when they're not. In fact, they seem hell bent on setting up their experiments and interpreting their data in a way that automatically guarantees the results they're looking for.
Yes, science should be open to possibilities, but it should also be parsimonious, skeptical, and -- well -- scientific. From my observations, that's not happening often enough.
LCK
PS: Marc Bekoff wrote an article for PsychologyToday.com, lauding anthropomorphism (a kind of precis of the paper you cited). For those interested, here's my reply: "How Dogs Think: The Debate Between Emotion and Logic." As I write in the article, "When people tell me dogs have the ability to reason I say, 'Hold on, let's understand their emotions first before we start giving them intellectual faculties.'"
It's true that to some people, I seem to be throwing a damp rag onto the fire. But, hey, somebody's got to do it!
Seriously, though, which do you think is more scientific: jumping straight to an interpretation based on higher cognitive function (which will also bring you media attention, more grant money, and possible book deals), or looking for an explanation, a la Morgan's canon, which "stands lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development." I think too many dognitive scientists are ignoring the laws of parsimony, Morgan's canon, and are acting almost as if they feel compelled to anthropomorphize animals. (Marc Bekoff, God bless him, certainly does.) Their interpretations may prove to be justified in the long run, but at present, I think it's best to be more scientific, not jump to any conclusions, and look at all sides of the issue.
That's all I'm saying.
LCK